Winning SCG Standard Open: Kansas City

Hello, my name is Pat McGregor, and I just won the StarCityGames.com Kansas City Standard Open. I’ve played Magic for a long time and historically have
done well at Legacy — namely through Top 8ing GP Philly, winning the first StarCityGames.com Legacy Open, and winning some Black Lotuses locally.
Recently, however, due to Legacy costing one-million dollars and never firing on MODO, I’ve turned my attention to Standard and Top 8ed the
StarCityGames.com Invitational and also won the most recent Open with seventy of the same cards. Â

I chose Boros for this tournament because I had a ton of experience with it on Magic Online and Top 8ed the SCG Invitational, starting off that tourney
at 1-1 before I’d even arrived. It’s the fastest deck in the format and also has a decent late game with all of the equipment and Koth.

Â After Worlds, I read a lot of articles about Standard, and they all essentially said that U/B was the best deck and that Boros had an almost
un-winnable matchup against it. I’m not sure if these people actually tested it or just assumed that since removal kills guys and they have removal,
they win. But with the addition of Koth and their subtraction of Persecutor, it made is so if they don’t have the Mana Leak or a manland, you cannot
lose. Also when they’re adding cards like Spreading Seas maindeck and taking out removal for the mirror, it makes it very hard for them to come up with
the necessary combination of removal to stop your giant landfall guys from getting them. I’m not saying you want to play against U/B every round, but
it’s not the hopeless battle that people make it out to be.

A lot of matches besides U/B are heavily in your favor. All of the other aggro decks are usually not as fast as you and post-board not as controlling.

A Rundown Of The Deck

Dudes:

Steppe Lynx and Geopede: The landfall guys are the main reason to play this deck. They give you your nut draws that let you win so many games before
the opponent even starts playing.

Goblin Guide: I’m sure everyone knows how good this card is in red decks, but I think it’s even better in here. If you already have a game-winning
board, you can sandbag these so when they wrath your board, you can often get right back into the game, attacking for a hasty six damage.

Squadron Hawk: Though I’m pretty sure this is mostly accepted as good in the deck over Kor Skyfisher, I have still seen people running Skyfisher for
some reason. This card is ridiculous in this deck because most of the time against control, you just need bodies to hook up your Gears and Sword to.
This weekend in one game, I had the Squadron Hawk team eat two Doom Blades, a Disfigure, and a Consume the Meek. It’s always nice when you can out-card
advantage the Jace decks.

Stoneforge Mystic: More card advantage guys to make the aggro deck not run out of gas. Allows you to play the singleton Sword of Body and Mind and the
Sparkmage Collar plan out of the board.

Spikeshot Elder: Another one-drop is necessary for the deck, and this guy is the next best thing you can get. I used to have four maindeck, but
everyone is running either U/B or Valakut right now, against which he isn’t very good, so he was cut to three. He’s very good against the other aggro
decks and also is insane if you ever get to hook up equipment to him, as he’ll just machine gun down creatures and players alike.

3 Adventuring Gear, 1 Sword of Body and Mind: Gear makes all of your guys huge, and the non-landfall guys that are in this deck are very good to hook
up equipment to, having evasion or haste.

3 Journey to Nowhere, 4 Lightning Bolt: Having some ways to get your opponent’s things out of the way is important, but you don’t want to
overload on burn with this deck, as you’re relying on your creatures to do almost all the damage and don’t want opening hands that contain one guy and
three burn spells. The Journeys get the nod over more burn for their versatility in taking out Titans and Walls.

2 Koth of the Hammer: At the SCG Invitational, I played zero Koths main or side, which was a mistake. I had previously dismissed him online due to the
presence of Abyssal Persecutor. When you land a Koth and they have a 6/6 flying trampler in play, it gets pretty embarrassing pretty quickly. Now that
people have cut that card, it’s actually pretty hard for U/B to interact with him beyond having one of the Mana Leaks, which usually have to be used
early to stop the initial onslaught.

No Teetering Peaks: Do not play this card. With eight landfall guys and three Adventuring Gears, you’d much rather just have another Evolving Wilds. It
also is embarrassing when you lose your board to Pyroclasm, just so your Goblin Guide could get in for two more, instead of having an uncracked fetch
to make Clasm a nonfactor.

Sideboard:

1 Koth of the Hammer, 3 Goblin Ruinblasters, 1 Tectonic Edge: This is the anti-control package that generally comes in for some amount of Spikeshot
Elders and Lightning Bolts. Since their plan is to board into a ton of removal, you want to have a steady stream of value guys and planeswalkers to
eventually run them out of removal. Ruinblaster is so good against these decks because if you kill their manlands, they have a tough time dealing with
Koth, and it also sets them back a turn on Grave Titan, which is often game over. Having more hasty things to hook up equipment to isn’t terrible
either.

3 Mark of Mutiny: These are for the Valakut and mono-green matches, as they cannot usually just durdle around and not play Titan against you. Journey
is usually taken out for these, as you don’t want to have a hand with a glut of removal in what is essentially a race.

4 Cunning Sparkmage, 1 Basilisk Collar, 2 Arc Trail: Against the other aggro decks, you become a control deck, removing all of the Goblin Guides and
some amount of Adventuring Gears and Koths depending on how aggressive the other deck is. Usually the aggro mirrors just end up being a removal fest
with the last creature that lives being the one that ends it. With seven pingers and Collar, your removal spells have legs and blank all of the little
creatures that these other decks play as long as you have time to set up. The Arc Trails are just another two-for-one that helps you set up your
late-game card advantage plan and make sure you don’t just get bowled over by a bunch of one-drops.

G3

It eventually gets to a game state where he casts a Jace, and I kick a Ruinblaster, equip Sword of Body and Mind and an Adventuring Gear, and swing him
down to one. He mills ten cards, and I say “put a Wolf into play” and take a card divider and put it onto the battlefield next to my Ruinblaster. Then
next turn, he thinks for a long time about what to do and eventually taps out for Gideon, kills my Ruinblaster, and fateseals me. He asks me if I have
the burn, to which I point to the Wolf and tell him that I have this Wolf in play. He calls a judge to see if he can take back the Gideon play because
he forgot that I had a Wolf. The judge no-sirs him, and the appeal is also no-sirred. I feel that this was a pretty poor way to end what was a very
good back and forth match, but I’ll take it.

R9 vs. Boros

G1

We both know that the other is playing Boros, so it’s a little odd to me that he commits the cardinal sin of attacking me with Goblin Guide in the
aggro mirror. I guess I could see that being correct if he thinks his hand is very quick and has a poor chance of going long, but it doesn’t pan out,
and the three lands I draw off of Guide let me win.

G2

He mulls to six, and I keep a hand that would be definitely good on the play but should’ve been mulled on the draw. He gets a double Geopede start and
is able to keep up a fetch, so my Sparkmage is just short of embarrassing.

G3

He mulls to five but has a Squadron Hawk, which makes it closer. We both Arc Trail some things, but I sandbag a Sparkmage, and it starts to take over
when I hook it up to Collar. At the end, my board was Collar, Sparkmage, Spikeshot, and Geopede with another Sparkmage in hand.

R10

ID

Top 8 vs. U/g/w

I mull into three lands, Steppe Lynx, Geopede, Goblin Guide on the play. He casts a Spreading Seas turn 2 on my Mountain. I get him to seven on my turn
3. He Spreads another land and gets a garden token. I have the Journey for it.

G2

I keep a three-land hand with Lynx. I think I’m in trouble when he has the turn 2 Battlement, but he has no fifth mana source or double blue. I Journey
his Battlement, and he concedes a couple turns later.

So after thirteen rounds, I’m the champion. After looking at the Top 16 breakdown, I’m the only Boros player, as my Round 9 opponent lost his next
match against Pozsgay and got knocked down to Top 32.

I’ll end with a quick breakdown of the reasons I believe you should consider this deck over some of the other choices in the format. Especially if you
don’t like casting Primeval Titans and don’t want to slog out control mirrors all day.

Reasons you should play this deck:

It’s very fast and punishes bad draws.

It has multiple “nut draws” that kill on turn 4 or 5 through removal.

It has a solid game plan against control and actually runs a bunch of card advantage engines
that can power through the 1-for-1 removal.

Its ramp matchups are generally a bye as long as you play around Pyroclasm, which this deck can
do very well.

You’re heavily favored post-board in aggro mirrors due to the pinger-Collar package, as well as
your guys being huge threats on their own.

Currently the meta seems to be U/G Conley Ramp, U/B, Vampires, and Valakut. I’d say Boros has a
favorable matchup against all of these except for U/B.

Thanks a lot for reading and hope to see you at the StarCityGames.com Open in Indianapolis!

Pat McGregor

SARCASTO on MODO