{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. The author tries to limit the number of non-land rares as a way to limit the cost of the decks. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Dark Confidant, Birds of Paradise, or Wrath of God. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks “set in stone” or “done.” If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
When Fred and I finished up last week’s column, we left you with this first iteration of a cheap Boros deck:
Creatures (23)
- 1 Savannah Lions
- 4 Soltari Priest
- 4 Icatian Javelineers
- 3 Suntail Hawk
- 3 Suq'Ata Lancer
- 1 Giant Solifuge
- 3 Scorched Rusalka
- 4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
Lands (21)
Spells (16)
Non-Dual-Land Rares
1 Pillar of the Paruns @ $2.50 each = $2.50
4 Icatian Javelineers @ $1.00 each = $4.00
1 Savannah Lions @ $7.00 each = $7.00
2 Soltari Priest @ $4.00 each = $8.00
2 Soltari Priest @ $5.00 each = $10.00
1 Giant Solifuge @ $8.00 each = $8.00
3 Suq’Ata Lancer @ $0.50 each = $1.50
Total Cost of Non-Dual-Land Rares = $41.00
The first thing I did with this deck was march it into the Tournament Practice room on MTGO. Just because the deck has been budgetized doesn’t mean that I’d feel comfortable playing it in the Casual Decks room. This isn’t a “casual” deck. It’s based on Boros Deck Wins, and win it does. The original, that is.
I played fourteen “matches.” The word “matches” is in quotation marks because I didn’t run a sideboard. When I first work on a deck, all I care about is whether it works at all in game 1. If it’s bad in game 1 all the time, I’m thinking that a sideboard won’t cure all of its woes. A deck has to work in game 1.
This one didn’t.
It went 2-12 in the first fourteen games.
Ouch. Verily, I say unto thee, the sting of failure be unbearable.
I noticed three things that kept coming up, losing-wise. First, Bennie Smith is right. If your deck can support the Red and White, use Skyknight Legionnaire over Suq’Ata Lancer. The Lancer will almost never get through. When it does, it’s only two points. Sure, sometimes, it might take down a Watchwolf or Serra Avenger, but usually, they just let the two damage through. If you’re gonna pay three mana to get two damage through, make it fly. That way, it can also block Silhana Ledgewalker when you need it to. Also, Pillar of the Paruns just sucked in a way that suckage had never contemplated. It was a much deeper suck than I personally thought possible. I had dreamed, of course, about the existence of such long hard suction, but I never truly thought there could be a suck as sucky as this. Apparently, four Lightning Helixes and a Giant Solifuge were not enough to justify the Pillar. It had to go for another Mountain. Ditto the fourth Boros Garrison. Why anyone would run four Ravnica block “Karoo” lands in a deck with so few total lands, I’ll never know. These changes left the main deck at a skinny thirty-seven dollars for non-dual-land rares.
Before I took this revamped budget Boros deck back into the Tourney Practice room, I wanted a sideboard. Yeah, that’s a little bold considering the moves I had just made hadn’t been tested yet, but I felt good about them. Call me Joel, for I am in the business of risk.
So, what would I need for my sideboard? First and foremost, I wanted something to deal with those decks like Glare of Subdual, Mono-Green Aggro, and the various Scryb and Force decks. I looked and looked ‘til my looker was cooked. The best card I found turned out to be one of the best sideboard cards I’ve ever used… when the other guy doesn’t have removal.
Best. Sideboard Card. Ever.
Fortune Thief. Tell me when you’re done laughing. I’ll still be here.
Now, look at her — yes, her — again. If your opponent has no creature removal – and, by that, I also mean bounce – how does he win? Answer: he can’t. Okay, sure, he could get you to one and then do some sort of life loss thing. (See, e.g. Urborg Syphon-Mage.) Those tricks, though, are almost exclusively Black.
Romeo ← Crosses finger that Planar Chaos doesn’t give Green or Blue life loss; stupid color-pie-cobbler-makin’ block
Black, though, won’t need the life loss trick to win with Fortune Thief on board. Black will have a way to kill Fortune Thief. Green does not. G/W decks that don’t pack Wrath don’t have a way to kill Fortune Thief. U/G decks can bounce her, but that’s why you don’t flip her, thus tipping your hand, until the last second.
And for the love of all that is sacred and holy and beautiful, do not ever, under any circumstance whatsoever, attack with her when she’s face down. You’ll run into that one guy who runs Sprout for gits and shiggles. He’ll drop it and pump it up, and your Fortune Thief will go down with your game.
The other slots seemed to suggest themselves. Against Empty the Warrens decks, some mass removal was needed. Pyroclasm would be okay, but what if those Goblins had Haste? Sulfurous Blast it was, then. The Rack was rearing its ugly head again, although, according to Frank Karsten, after a huge jump, it then took a huge dive. Whatever. You need artifact kill. Drop in Disenchants. Finally, for the decks that bring far, far, far too many Enchantments, Cloudchaser Kestrel. Why not Ronom Unicorn? Two reasons. First, the Kestrel flies. Second, the Unicorn is too easy to remove before dropping an Enchantment. I want something that kills as it comes into play, not something that sits around with a bullseye on its forehead. So, my final best-two-out-of-three-ready deck was:
Creatures (23)
- 1 Savannah Lions
- 4 Soltari Priest
- 4 Icatian Javelineers
- 3 Suntail Hawk
- 3 Skyknight Legionnaire
- 1 Giant Solifuge
- 3 Scorched Rusalka
- 4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
Lands (21)
Spells (16)
Sideboard
Non-Dual-Land Rares
4 Icatian Javelineers @ $1.00 each = $4.00
1 Savannah Lions @ $7.00 each = $7.00
2 Soltari Priest @ $4.00 each = $8.00
2 Soltari Priest @ $5.00 each = $10.00
1 Giant Solifuge @ $8.00 each = $8.00
4 Fortune Thief @ $1.00 each = $4.00
Total Cost of Non-Dual-Land Rares = $41.00
Why don’t I have Disenchant in the rare calculations when I did put Suq’Ata Lancer there? I mean, both are Timeshifted. The answer is because Disenchant is everywhere. Go down to any local card store that’s been open for more than two years. I know, I know. It might be tough to find one of those. Anyway, rummage through that big ol’ box of commons sitting on the floor in the corner. You should find about eleventy-million Disenchants. I don’t care if it’s “purple” now. I refuse to calculate it in the rare cost of any deck.
The other question that I’m sure is running through your mind is “Sulfurous Blast? But that kills almost all of our stuff, too?” Yes, except for the Priest, the Blast kills dead everything we have. Oh, yeah, and the Knight of the Holy Nimbus. Honestly, after they’ve “gone off,” do you think an Empty the Warrens deck will have mana to stop him from regenerating? No, they won’t. So, Sulfurous Blast kills all of the Boros creatures except for Soltari Priest (for sure) and Knight of the Holy Nimbus (probably). Do you have another suggestion for dealing with twenty-two Goblin tokens? Me neither. When it comes to Sulfurous Blast, we just have to play smart, then, don’t we?
The Match-Ups
Mono-Green Aggro
I’m going to start with Mono-Green Aggro because I played the most matches against that archetype. Apparently — and I was completely unaware of this phenomenon — Jaime Wakefield has a rather large following. You see, when I started testing this deck, those first fourteen matches, I played against one MGA deck. One. And I beat it without a sideboard even with the Ledgewalker coming at me. (Having fliers to stay home while I threw burn and dying creatures at my opponent’s head was nice.) After Jamie published his piece on his MGA deck, I faced MGA more than any other deck. That was the bad news. The good news was that this deck went 6-1 against MGA. (The one loss was to an MGA deck against which I could not flip my Fortune Thief over in either game two or three due to getting stuck on four and three mana.) (Yes, that means that it is possible to beat MGA in game 1 with this deck.) During one of my MGA matches, Ben Bleiweiss was online in his Building on a Budget guise. I mentioned how good Fortune Thief was against decks with no removal. He shot back “MGA: Running Serrated Arrows since 1-24-07.” Geez, I hope not.
U/R Magnivore / Wildfire / ‘Vore / Land Destruction / Land Denial / You Know the Freakin’ Deck
Reports of the death of this deck are greatly exaggerated. Okay, so it may not be posting the numbers that it used to. You should never confuse absolute numbers with quality. Remember, According to Jim is still on the air, and it draws significantly more viewers than Everybody Hates Chris. The fact is that the deck is still strong, having lost essentially nothing from the rotation of Kamigawa Block out of Standard. (Eye of Nowhere was fantastic, but its loss doesn’t seem to have slowed the deck down.) I faced the deck twice with Boros Deck’s Cheap. Match 1, I won two games to none. The only sideboard change I made was to drop the Solifuge for a Kestrel. This wasn’t for killing Enchantments. I simply made sure that I didn’t play out more than three lands. Normally, in fact, I stayed at two. That kept Wildfire from hurting too much. After that, I let the Priests go all the way. I often kept a Hawk or Nimbus back to block. If I had Threaten, I’d drop a third land if I could take a Magnivore.
Unfortunately, I lost the second match, 0-2. It wasn’t even close in either game. The ‘Vore deck looked identical to the one I had played against right before. In fact, it was! The same guy asked for a rematch. I had to mulligan to five in both games just to get a one-land hand in which that one land wasn’t a Garrison. That kind of opening is like a free pass to the ‘Vore deck. He hammered my lands, and my entire offense and defense was an Icatian Javelineer here and a Scorched Rusalka there. It was truly sad. Like seeing a puppy that’s been squished by Ford F-350. Tears are welling up as I write this.
Black Rack
While my record against Black Rack decks was 3-1, it was a lot closer than that record indicates. Two of three that I won were nip and tuck down to game 3. The third one that I won came on the back of him getting mana hosed and not getting The Rack until it was way too late in the deciding game. The one that I lost was an 0-2 drubbing much like Carol Channing gave to Mike Tyson in the “Patriot Games” episode of The Family Guy. The Rack came out early in game 1, while I couldn’t find Disenchant in game 2. Still, the fact remains that Boros Deck’s Cheap did come out on top 3-1 against Black Rack.
Zoo and Gruul Beats
I lumped these together because they share so many of the same features, if not the same cards: quick hard-hitting creatures backed up by burn. Threaten actually ended up being one of the best cards against these decks, often turning the tide. By “often” I mean, “It was the only thing that turned the tide.” I went 1-4 against these decks. When the standard backside of your opponent’s creatures is four (Loxodon Hierarch, Burning-Tree Shaman, et al), Char is truly missed. Moreover, when the other guy has Char, it’s extremely bad.
U/W CounterMesa
I only got one match against this deck, but it was a laugher. I mean that literally. I giggled at how quickly it got out of hand for me. In both games — yes, I lost 0-2 — he got Urza’s Power Grid online quickly. With Spell Burst, that meant I was never going to resolve anything useful. Meanwhile, he quickly went from Wrath of God to Sacred Mesa, squeezing out Pegasi like Britney squeezes out kids. They just wouldn’t stop coming.
I have no idea how a Boros deck, even the original, can beat CounterMesa.
Dragonstorm Combo
I faced this deck twice. I won once. When I won a game, it was because Lightning Helix gained me enough life to withstand four Bogardan Hellkites coming into play at once. In those games, Soltari Priest, obviously, did the lion’s share of the damage. When I lost, it was to quick and ugly Dragonstorms. Interestingly, both matches were 2-1 for the winner, meaning that I was completely even against that deck at 1-1 for matches and 3-3 for games. Sideboarding was almost nil against the deck. I dropped the Solifuge for a Kestrel (hmm… where have I heard that before?) so that I could get damage in with less mana needed. Threaten was huge. In one win, my opponent was down to three life and had just dropped four Hellkites into play. We both had four creatures on the board. One of mine was a Soltari Priest. So, I knew I could get two damage through. However, without drawing burn or Threaten, I couldn’t finish him off. My other three guys would be running into a wall of Dragons. Up came Threaten, and the non-Shadow ratio went from four to three against me to four to three in my favor.
Decks That I Did Not Face
Panda Connection;
Angelfire;
Any of the U/B decks;
Martyr of the Sands; and
Believe it or not, Boros Deck Wins. Interesting, no?
What I’d Change
This deck needs Tormod’s Crypt in the sideboard. Between Martyr of the Sands, decks powering up Storm with Rite of Flame, Magnivore, and Dralnu, you need to be able to wipe out opposing graveyards. Most likely, I’d drop the Kestrels. They were nice in a pinch, but the sideboard needs those Crypts, and it already has Disenchant. The question really becomes what if you think you need four Crypts instead of three? What else do you drop from the board? You need four Disenchants. There are too many Artifacts and Enchantments that “just need killin’.” Those Sulfurous Blasts have to be in hand when that Empty the Warrens goes on the stack. Best to have four, not three. It looks like Fortune Thief is the odd woman out. I’ll let that be your call, though, because she came up as the MVP more times than I can remember; or, at least, more times than I kept track of.
Next Week
I will be taking a break from budgetizing Pro Tour-winning decks to cast an eye on Planar Chaos… From Right Field. Until then, I leave you with a quote that I saw quite a bit two weekends ago on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I want this on a plaque for my wall:
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963)
Chris Romeo
FromRightField-at-Comcast-dot-net
P.S. I am obviously disheartened by my Saints losing to Da Bears, but I figured it would happen. You don’t go into Chicago in the Winter with Winter weather and beat that defense, regardless of how great your offense is or how horrible Da Bears’ quarterback is. I will be rooting for The Colts in The Super Bowl. Partly, of course, it’s because I like Peyton Manning. He went to U.T., and I live in Knoxville. It’s kinda required. Mostly, though, I am rooting against Da Bears. Why? Because no one should ever be able to say this phrase and be correct: “Super-Bowl-winning quarterback Rex Grossman.”
P.P.S. I’m not sure any of this will matter in a few weeks anyway since the world is obviously ending soon. How can I say that? Because Borat got an Oscar nomination. Yes, really. It was for Best Adapted Screenplay.