Macho Man Madness!

Commander / EDH Lifegain Primer RW (Boros) Theme/Gimmick

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Creature (26)

• 1x Adarkar Valkyrie
• 1x Archon of Justice
• 1x Baneslayer Angel
• 1x Calamity Bearer
• 1x Duplicant
• 1x Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Hamletback Goliath
• 1x Hellkite Tyrant
• 1x Hoarding Dragon
• 1x Inferno Titan
• 1x Karmic Guide
• 1x Luminous Broodmoth
• 1x Malignus
• 1x Mother of Runes
• 1x Neheb, the Eternal
• 1x Phyrexian Dreadnought
• 1x Selfless Squire
• 1x Serra Avatar
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Stonehewer Giant
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Sunscorch Regent
• 1x Taurean Mauler
• 1x Wall of Reverence
• 1x War Elemental

Instant (6)

• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Fatal Frenzy
• 1x Leave No Trace
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Artifact (19)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Avarice Amulet
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Cauldron of Souls
• 1x Champion's Helm
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Illusionist's Bracers
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mimic Vat
• 1x Phyrexian Processor
• 1x Pristine Talisman
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Staff of Nin
• 1x Sun Droplet
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Well of Lost Dreams
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Cradle of Vitality
• 1x Dictate of the Twin Gods
• 1x Gift of Immortality
• 1x Gratuitous Violence
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Sigil of the New Dawn
• 1x Sneak Attack

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Akroma's Vengeance
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Phyrexian Rebirth
• 1x Reforge the Soul

Commander (1)

Land (37)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Boros Garrison
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Kher Keep
• 1x Kor Haven
• 11x Mountain
• 11x Plains
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Slayers' Stronghold
• 1x Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Temple of Triumph
• 1x Wind-Scarred Crag

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Maybeboard

Creature (10)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Duergar Hedge-Mage
• 1x Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
• 1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Phyrexian Devourer
• 1x Stalking Vengeance
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer
• 1x Zealous Conscripts

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Furnace of Rath
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Luminarch Ascension

Land (1)

• 1x Kor Haven

Instant (1)

• 1x Orim's Chant

Artifact (3)

• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Sword of Light and Shadow

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Insurrection

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I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place!

---Macho Man Randy Savage

Welcome to the #1 Brion Stoutarm deck on TappedOut! I wanted to make an EDH deck that was different then anything I've seen in the past and I absolutely love Brion Stoutarm . Don't forget to +1 if you like the deck and the primer!

Why Play Brion?

Brion allows for a grindy sort of playstyle where you stay ahead of your opponents through good creatures and gaining life for value until you arm one of your nukes and just disintegrate an opponent.

Lifelink means that we have the potential to gain a decent amount of life through attacks and blocks and we have a number of ways to capitalize on it but the true power of this deck comes from Brion's activated ability. For just and tapping Brion we can sack another creature to deal damage to target opponent equal to the sacrificed creatures power. The important thing to note here is that Brion himself deals the damage which means we have the potential to one shot our opponents and gain tons of life in the process!

You will enjoy this deck if:

• You want to play an interesting commander that is still very powerful

• You want to play a Boros commander deck that doesn't revolve around combat damage

• You enjoy gaining life in commander

• You enjoy big flashy plays

That being said you might not enojoy playing Brion if:

• You hate playing Boros in EDH

• You want to play a deck with tons of infinite combo potential

• You're trying to build a tier one competitive edh deck

Strengths

Life gain is a strong subtheme to the deck. Wall of Reverence , Sunscorch Regent , Baneslayer Angel , and of course Brion Stoutarm himself all let us gain tons of life throughout a game and card like Serra Avatar , Cradle of Vitality , and Phyrexian Processor let us capitalize on it. Another big strength is just in how hard it can be to deal with Brion's way of getting in damage. Pillowforting means nothing when you have a Serra Avatar and Illusionist's Bracers to fling a 40/40 at two people and gain 80 life! This deck is also fairly resilient to board wipes since we have a decent recursion package and ways to protect our board.

Weaknesses

The biggest counter to a Brion Stoutarm deck is an opponent with hexproof. Cards like Leyline of Sanctity , Orbs of Warding , and Aegis of the Gods prevent us from flinging any of our creatures at that opponent. I'm running a decent package of removal to address these cards ( Chaos Warp , Leave No Trace , Return to Dust , Swords to Plowshares ) but if someone in your playgroup tries to counter you I would recomend upping the removal package. The second thing that this deck struggles with is counter magic. Our best answer to this obviously is Grand Abolisher . For a while I ran Wild Ricochet and you could run cards like Fork or Increasing Vengeance but my playgroup doesn't countain any dedicated counter spell decks. If you are more worried about conterspells try adding more cards like Conqueror's Flail . Of course you should always watch blue players and pay attention to the mana that they leave up as well.

Deck Overview and General Strategy

So this deck really revolves around Brion. It's important to know when you're safe to play him and when to really make yourself known as a threat. We can break down the general strategy into three parts, early, mid, and late game.

Early Game Show

So in the first few turns like most decks you should be focused on making land drops and playing mana rocks. Playing Boros definitely restricts our options but it's not as bad as it seems. Card like Solemn Simulacrum and Knight of the White Orchid are great for ramping and I plan on eventually picking up a Weathered Wayfarer and Land Tax . If you don't draw into some form of protection for Brion it's probably not going to be worth running him out as early as possible. Lifelink means that the sooner he is out the more life we'll be able to gain but people tend to recognize him as a threat fairly early on.

Mid Game Show

We have an average CMC of around 3.8 but our real payoff cards come from having a well developed board state which is typically achieved from this part of the game. Playing Brion with protection is very important here because even though the deck can still pull through without him on the table it still relives pretty heavily on our commander. Now is the time to try and cycle through the deck to find a Sneak Attack or mid game threats like Taurean Mauler , War Elemental , or Illusionist's Bracers for double fling damage. I'm a huge fan of politics in EDH so I tend to gauge the table and work with my opponents to address mutual threats suck as combo decks or opponents who had great starts. Letting your opponents kill each other and working together to stop other players will help you to slip under most of your opponents threat radar at this point until it's too late.

Late Game Show

Hopefully by this point you've set up a decent mana base, gotten a few threats to stick on the board, and have Brion with some form of protection on the field. Now is the time to really strike at your opponents. There are obvios bombs in this deck such as Serra Avatar , Gisela, Blade of Goldnight , Hamletback Goliath , and Malignus that have a lot of potential in letting us one shot an opponet, even if they are at 40 life! Getting a damage doubler like Gratuitous Violence , Dictate of the Twin Gods , Gisela, Blade of Goldnight , or Illusionist's Bracers makes it very easy to kill anyone with a simple fling and will let us gain so much life back in the process. One important thing to note is that when you do attempt to close out a game you'll typically have a window of 1-3 turns to kill everyone at the table because when they realize just how powerful Brion is you will definitely be the threat at the table.

Card Explanations

Recursion Show

Adarkar Valkyrie - Flying and vigilance allows us to typically get in for 4 in the air and still leave up her tap ability. Tapping her allows us to fling a creature and it instantly reenters the battlefield. This gives us a ton of obvious advantages like a free Brion fling, protection from board wipes, and protection from some removal.

Karmic Guide - Not running the combo with Reveillark because I'm trying to avoid infinite combos and Reveillark just doesn't do much in this deck. Karmic Guide on the other hand can obviosly get us back any huge creatures from our graveyard.

Sun Titan - One of the best recursion cards in EDH and an obvious inclusion.

Gift of Immortality - Let's us fling something every turn for free and makes it a lot harder for opponents to get our threats off the table. It can definitely be worth to put this on Brion as well.

Sigil of the New Dawn - Lets us bring any card, including our commander, back to our hand when they would go to the graveyard. Turning a fling into to put the creature back in our hand is really powerful and its a great way to get around removal.

Cauldron of Souls - Persist is a very easy mechanic to break and even though we aren't running any infinite combos we still have a few ways to add counters to creatures to negate the -1/-1 counter.

Mimic Vat - Mimic vat is an insanely powerful card. Holding on to one of our bombs or one of our opponents good creatures on the way to the graveyard and being able to get it back out for just is ridiculous. Also helps a little with graveyard based decks since we can exile something on its way to the graveyard.

Life Gain and Ways to Use It Show

Pristine Talisman - Cool way to sneak in some extra life gain. With a well of lost souls it just taps to gain a life and draw a card every turn which is definitely solid.

Sun Droplet - Consistent free way to gain life. Sun Droplet is an artifact that sneaks by a lot of the time because people don't want to have to use their removal on it. With all of the ways we have in capitalizing on the life gain this card definitely pulls its own weight.

Baneslayer Angel - With all of these keywords how could you resist? Super powerful creature that can gain us a ton of life and is a pretty serious threat if left alone.

Sunscorch Regent - Gaining one life every time an opponent plays a spell can add up very very quickly. Of course the real threat in this card is being able to attack with a huge flier and fling it when need be but the life gain here is no joke.

Wall of Reverence - I love this card in this deck. if we have something like a Serra Avatar it lets you double your life total every single turn. Even just with Brion on the field we get to gain 4 life per turn and most of our creatures add even more.

Cradle of Vitality - Another pay off card. Paying lets us add a counter for every single point of life gained. This has insane potential with how many ways we have to gain life. Even just swinging with Brion lets us double his power every turn!

Well of Lost Dreams - Boros will obviously take any card draw that they can get and with Well of Lost Dreams even if we just swing with Brion Stoutarm we can pay - mana to draw that many cards.

Aetherflux Reservoir - We aren't playing a storm deck and typically only cast a few spells per turn but it does gain us some life and with all the other ways to gain life throughout the deck it should be very easy for us to already be over 50 life when Aetherflux Reservoir hits the field and at that point you'll have a nuke loaded up and ready to fire at anyone who tries to challenge you. Aetherflux Reservoir can gain us some life while its on the field, but I think of it as a 4 mana tactical nuke.

Damage Doublers Show

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight - This card is dumb. Gisela doubles ANY damage that our opponents would take from any source. That is a good enough effect to justify running but we also take half damage from all sources rounded UP. Rounding that effect up is so just so dumb. Any effect that deals one damage actually does no damage to us and two damage to our opponents.

Gratuitous Violence - Another all star damage doubler since we deal double damage but our opponents can't make us pay for it.

Dictate of the Twin Gods - As far as the damage doublers go this one is the weakest since we take double damage too. It can pay off letting our opponents kill each other and flash can definitely blow people out for a kill.

Illusionist's Bracers - Not an innate damage doubler but it does give us double damage on all of our flings. We can also change the target of the copy and we still only have to sack one creature.

Removal Show

Archon of Justice - Let's us hit any permanent on the field and exile it.

Duplicant - Awesome card, especially for a Brion build. Exiling a creature is super powerful and netting a big creature for flinging fuel with Brion is awesome.

Akroma's Vengeance - Aboard wipe that hits pretty much everything. Our hail merry to get us back in the game if someone is too far ahead and going to win soon.

Phyrexian Rebirth - Creature board wipe that typically gets us a huge token for Brion to fling. At the very least we're getting a big beater and wiping the field so no one has any chump blockers

Chaos Warp - Best removal spell red has to offer. Hitting any permanent is super powerful.

Leave No Trace - Great enchantment wipe. Can get around shroud or hexproof by targeting an enchantment with a color in common that doesn't have either (or worse case scenario targeting one of your own if needed.)

Return to Dust - Great spell for getting rid of artifacts or enchantments. Another spell that exiles so our opponents won't be able to get them back.

Swords to Plowshares - EDH staple, great removal spell, also an exile effect.

Chandra's Ignition - Playing this on something like a Serra Avatar is obviously insane. Playing it on Brion deals 4 damage to all of our opponents and their creatures AND we get to gain 4 life for every single one of them. We can just gain so much life and potentially wipe the board. If we have a Cradle of Vitality and have been pumping Brion we gain even more life and can potentially just kill the table.

Ramp Show

Boros Signet

Commander's Sphere

Fellwar Stone

Sol Ring

Thran Dynamo

Solemn Simulacrum

Knight of the White Orchid

Pristine Talisman

Neheb, the Eternal

Not much to say here. General good mana rocks for ramping. If you can afford it throwing in a Weathered Wayfarer or Land Tax is definitely worth it.

Tutors Show

Hoarding Dragon - Good tutor for artifacts that we can fling for a ton of value or just beat down with or chump block with if need be.

Stonehewer Giant - A great tutor for searching out our Avarice Amulet for card draw, Illusionist's Bracers for double fling damage, or Lightning Greaves / Swiftfoot Boots for protection.

Beaters and Top Fling Targets Show

Hamletback Goliath - Oh man this card is so much fun to play. This card builds up counters so fast and even though it doesn't have trample we can fling it whenever we want for ridiculous amounts of damage.

Hellkite Tyrant - Great beater since it let's us steal all of whichever opponent we connect with's artifacts. I typically don't try to win off of his 2nd ability but if your meta contains a lot of artifacts it's definitely possible.

Homura, Human Ascendant  - Great card to fling. When it dies we get an enchantment that pumps our field by +2/+2, flying, and gives them all firebreathing. Getting an extra 2 damage on our flings is always nice and being able to dump all of our mana into pumping a creature is great!

Inferno Titan - Solid creature to beat down with and has a firebreathing ability if we need to fling or just pump.

Malignus - Since Malignus has power and toughness equal to half the highest life total among your opponents with a damage doubler on the field it's a guaranteed one hit kill that will gain us so much life.

Serra Avatar - Super Malignus ! Since we have so much life gain we'll typically be able to one shot any opponent even without a damage doubler and we get to double our life total.

Phyrexian Dreadnought - This card might seem aweful but the idea is to fling it while its trigger is on the stack. This lets us deal 12 lifelink damage for only two mana. Obviously with any of our damage doublers that changes to 24 lifelink damage for two mana!

Sunscorch Regent - Mentioned in the lifegain spoiler but again this card can build up really quickly and can swing in for a ton of damage since it has flying and we can leave Brion up to fling him if someone plays removal.

Taurean Mauler - Similar to Sunscorch Regent Taurean Mauler gets really big really fast. and is an awesome fling target.

War Elemental - The mana restriction of is pretty intense but I think War Elemental is worth it. Dealing damage and playing him on main phase 2 is no problem at all and he gets a +1/+1 counter any time an opponent takes any damage from any source.

Phyrexian Processor - Pay all of your life -1 then fling the token and deal a ton of damage AND gain all of that life back due to lifelink! Obviously you shouldn't pay all of your life unless you are fairly certain no one can deal few points of damage instant speed. However much life you do decide to play let's you get a token with power and toughness equal to that amount every single turn and fling it. I would say it's typically best to save this until you have so that we can gain that life back as soon as we play Phyrexian Processor

Selfless Squire - We take no damage for the turn from any sources including ourselves and gives us a creature with a +1/+1 counter for every 1 point of damage prevented. Awesome blow out when someone goes all in on an attack when we can turn around and fling it for 1+ however much damage they tried to hit us with.

Protection Show

Mother of Runes - Awesome for protecting our creatures from removal. It also makes your creatures unblockable by creatures of whatever color you choose and you can block creatures of that color and they take no damage.

Selfless Squire - Mentioned in fling targets. This card basically gives us a one turn window when we just can't take any damage from any source. Aren't fog effects great?

Whispersilk Cloak - Making something like our Serra Avatar / Hamletback Goliath unblockable can allow us to one shot some of our opponents. Shroud obviously provides protection but it also keeps us from being able to fling the creature that it's equipped to. Even just equipping the cloak to Brion though lets us get in for 4 commander damage and we'll gain 4 life.

Champion's Helm - Having protection for Brion is not 100% necessary but it certainly helps the deck to function so between keeping him and Gisela, Blade of Goldnight alive I think Champion's Helm will be able to pull its weight.

Lightning Greaves / Swiftfoot Boots - EDH staple, great protection for our creatures.

Card Draw Show

Avarice Amulet - Vigilance is great for Brion, +2 power is great for Brion, and drawing a card every upkeep is so great in Boros. The negative effect on Avarice Amulet does nothing if we put it on Brion because our commander is never actually going to die. (If you don't know what I mean when your commander is destroyed if you put it in your command zone then if never actually goes to the graveyard and never actually dies)

Staff of Nin - Another way to draw an aditional card every upkeep and being able to shoot down 1 toughness creatures or just pinging an opponent is a nice extra ability.

Well of Lost Dreams - With Well of Lost Dreams even if we just swing with Brion Stoutarm we can pay - mana to draw that many cards. With all of the life gain in this deck it should be very easy to keep Well of Lost Dreams online and drawing cards.

Reforge the Soul - Wheels are one of the great things red can bring to the table. Reforge the Soul is a great way to refill your hand and where as it will probably help at least one person at the table it will probably hurt at least one person as well.

Miscellaneous Show

Grand Abolisher - All of our spells can't be countered and none of our opponents can mess with our turns in any way which is very very powerful.

Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs - Great card when needing to play on defense. Not a bad target to fling if someone plays removal on it and getting a 3/3 when our opponents attack is going to really discourage them from hitting you.

Duelist's Heritage - This is a card that I'm currently play testing. Like I mentioned earlier I really enjoy politics in EDH and giving my opponents double strike when they attack each other is great.

Sneak Attack - This is definitively the most broken card in the deck (which is saying a lot.) Paying to play any creature in our hand for free is so dumb. The fact that we get to swing with it and fling it will give us a ton of value and if we have something like Adarkar Valkyrie on the field already we don't lose the other creature at the end of the turn. Having Sigil of the New Dawn means we just have to pay to swing with a creature, fling it, and still just put it right back in our hands.

Fatal Frenzy - Doubles the power of any one of our creatures for the turn and gives it trample. I'm sure you're tired of me mentioning Serra Avatar by now but this is just so insane. We can get in with most of our creatures for so much damage and we get to fling it before it has to be sacrificed!

Recently Added for Testing

This panel contains all of the cards that have been recently added to the deck and are currently undergoing testing. These cards have not been added to the primer yet but when I decide on if they will stay permanently I will remove them from this list and add descriptions and synergies in the primer.

Neheb, the Eternal - Neheb seems great for generating a ton of extra mana. I'm expecting him to really shine with all of the high cmc cards in this deck.

Alter Source

The alter I'm using was created by my friend Jordan Howell. He is a really talented artist so check out his Instagram if you're interested! https://www.instagram.com/jrdnhwll/

Notable Exclusions

Threaten Effects- This is the most common suggestion players give me by far when they look at this deck. Stealing your opponents creatures and Fling ing them for value is certainly satisfying and has the potential to blow one of your opponents out but its just not reliable enough to include in this deck. That being said variance is the spice of life when it comes to commander so if you decide to brew up a Threaten Brion deck definitely leave a link in the comments so I can check it out!

Grafted Exoskeleton -we only have to fling for 10 since Brion Stoutarm deals the damage when flinging a creature. This is a card I've been on the fence about because I want this deck to be enjoyable for me and not ridiculously annoying to play against. I've actually removed this card now but if your play group is cool with infect or if you just want the deck to be as good as possible you should definitely add it.

Angelic Renewal - with a sac outlet and Sun Titan it creates an infinite loop. I'm just not trying to run any infinite combos in this deck but it's a viable strategy for sure.

Sunforger - Awesome card. I originally had a better package of instants and ran Sunforger for a while but I just don't think it's good enough in this deck. If you want to run it in your own deck I'm sure it could be a powerhouse card though if you build around it!

Brion's Friends

User Suns_Champion has an awesome budget friendly Brion build that revolves around playing cheap, high power creatures that have, "sacrifice this creature on the next endstep" clauses. His deck swings with those creatures and then flings them through Brion for extra damage. He is also using threaten effects as his removal which is something that is totally viable but I personally avoided in my version. If you're interested in building your own Brion Stoutarm deck definitely don't miss out on his deck!

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Bad Luck Brion

Commander / EDH Suns_Champion

SCORE: 221 | 145 COMMENTS | 15359 VIEWS | IN 73 FOLDERS

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Commander Clash

This deck was actually featured in an MTGGoldfish Commander Clash so if you want to see the deck in action, and check out an awesome MTG YouTube channel, check it out

Expect the Unexpected in the Kingdom of Madness!

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

You will eat my rear rockets and like it! Ohhhh yeahhh!

---Macho Man Randy Savage

Top Ranked	Achieved #6 position overall 8 years ago
Date added	8 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.92
Tokens	Copy Clone, Kobolds of Kher Keep 0/1 R, Minion X/X B, Phyrexian Horror X/X C
Folders	Clever EDH Concepts, Sounds Fun - EDH, cool decks I might build, want, Hurrdurr, Fun Decks, possible decks, Decks I Like, EDH, ideas to plunder