At first glance, this deck may look like a simple aggro deck. When I first started playing it, I thought so too. The more I play it, however, the more I come to see it as a combo deck, setting up big turns to annihilate your opposition.
This deck utilizes the heroic mechanic to quickly build enormous creatures which will threaten large amounts of unblockable damage very quickly through the offensive use of
Gods Willing
and Brave the Elements combined with targeted pump spells. On defense (if the game even gets that far), it becomes a nightmare for your opponent to swing into your creatures when you have mana open. You either blow them out with combat tricks, while gaining +1/+1 counters, or you strategically let a non-lethal amount of damage through so you can kill them on the crackback and smile on the inside at their disbelief. As you may have guessed, being on the play with this deck is an enormous advantage.
Fabled Hero
is the all star of the line up. even with no other creatures on the board, he can easily threaten over 20 unblockable damage by himself on turn 4. As a simple example, turn 3 drop
Fabled Hero
, turn 4 play Titan's Strengthx2 (and either
Gods Willing
or Brave the Elements if there are blockers) and swing for 20.
Anax and Cymede
as well as
Phalanx Leader
are great Heroic targets as they pump your whole team when they get targeted. Hit two of them with a multi-target spell like
Coordinated Assault
and you just pumped your whole team by 2 and your targeted creatures by 3 and First Strike. One thing to note is that
Anax and Cymede
is a Legendary creature so don't drop more than 1 at a time. Usually 1 at a time is more than enough anyway.
Favored Hoplite
is an early beatstick that makes your opponent very wary of swinging in to you early. His heroic ability includes the bonus of taking no damage for the turn, which can make him great at blocking fatties, or killing opponent's creatures instead of trading with them. Judge's Familiar prevents opponents from tapping out for tricks with it's sacrifice ability and can get in a few points of early evasive damage which can be very useful.
Of the tricks,
Gods Willing
and Brave the Elements are the heartbeat of this deck. It is important to note that for Brave the Elements, all of the creatures in this deck are white, so all will be protected by it's ability. These instants can be used defensively if you need to save your creatures from kill spells or combat when blocking. Their main purpose, however, and why they are so essential to the deck is their utility on offense. I struggle at the moment to think of a deck that is prevalent in the meta game right now that runs more than one distinct color of creature. RG isn't running mono-red AND mono-green creatures, mono U, B, or R devotion decks certainly only have 1 color of creature, and control decks usually have little to no creatures. So, these spells will basically give your creature(s) protection from your opponent's deck for the turn. You can pump your guys up as much as your hand and mana can afford, and get in for an exorbitant (usually lethal) amount of damage.
All 3 of Boros Charm's functions are very good in this deck. You can give a non-double-striker double-strike to get a ton of damage in while triggering Heroic, prevent board sweeps or combat losses with indestructibility, or simple finish your opponent with 4 to the face. Fantastic card in the deck.
Titan's Strength,
Coordinated Assault
, and
Martial Glory
just pump your dudes some of which multi-target, hopefully letting you get there with damage before your opponents can set up. The scry off of Titan Strength and
Gods Willing
is also very useful.
Matchups and Sideboard strategy:
This deck performs well against a wide variety of decks in the current meta. The main reason this deck is not a Tier 1 deck is that it struggles vs. a couple of very specific Tier 1 decks.
The matchup against RDW is very even. Usually the die roll will determine the winner although I think that this deck might have a slight edge.
Flames of the Firebrand
and
Chained to the Rocks
comes in from the board in this match up.
Flames of the Firebrand
can kill their weenies while also hitting your own creatures, giving them their heroic bonuses, and
Chained to the Rocks
just removes pesky creatures like Chandra's Phoenix so that it can't keep recurring.
This deck beats Mono-Blue devotion fairly convincingly. No sideboard very necessary, but if you wanted to side in Keening Apparition as an additional few creatures which can take out their Bident of Thassa, I could see that possibly.
The deck also has a favorable match up vs. mono-green ramp or RG-Ramp. They just can't interact with the deck soon enough before they are dead. Bring in
Flames of the Firebrand
to burn mana dorks and hit your own guys for the heroic triggers. Maybe
Chained to the Rocks
also, but hopefully you can kill them before they are beating you down with fatties anyway.
Mono-Black Devotion can be tough, but not impossible to beat.
thoughtsieze
, which is usually not at it's best vs. aggro, is actually quite good against us, as I said earlier, we are more of a combo deck masquerading as an aggro deck. Spot Removal is our deck's main issue. Gods Willing and Brave the Elements may have to be used on defense in this match up. Whip of Erebos can also be a concern, and one of the primary reasons (alongside
Assemble the Legion
in UWR and Detention Sphere in Esper) that our sideboard runs Keening Apparition.
Esper Control is a bit tough also as they also run a lot of spot removal. Counterspells are mostly dead, fortunately, as they are hopefully just too slow to stop our beat down. Side into
Burning Earth
and Keening Apparition and do what you can.
Other rogue decks struggle immensely at the speed and strategy of this deck, so it is well positioned against non-meta surprise decks. Sideboard as needed, but your main deck will probably do.
Anyway, that is the deck. The synergy is superb. I have been running the deck for the past month or so, and I have come 2nd on game day in a 5 round tournament, top 8'ed a GPT in my home city, come 6th at a local comicon event, and finished high enough at every FNM I have participated in since I built the deck to take home the weekly promo card. This deck is no joke. And the caveat to all of this is that, other than the mana base, the most expensive card in the deck is $2.00!
