Modern Front Page Feature #1

Features Opinion

ChiefBell

10 June 2016

1315 views

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#1 - Boros Value

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I’m bringing you a fresh deck each Saturday from our homepage that caught my eye as it floated down on a deckcycle. I’ll show you the list, provide you with insights directly from the creator, offer improvements, and display a few runners-up that barely missed the cut. Join me as we celebrate our community’s creativity and get the lowdown on a sweet brew!

When am I most likely to see your deckcycles? I’m always taking peeks at TappedOut throughout the day (and night), so there’s not one specific time each week I’m looking for new lists. It’s the luck of the draw, but deckcycling more often can’t hurt you.

This week’s deck belongs to PigFacePie, who wanted to build a flexible Boros deck.

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Boros Value

Modern PigFacePie

SCORE: 6 | 2 COMMENTS | 870 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS

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Creatures:
2x Boros Guildmage
4x Boros Reckoner
3x Firemane Avenger
3x Frontline Medic
1x Inferno Titan
2x Sun Titan
3x Tajic, Blade of the Legion
4x Truefire Paladin
Enchantments:
3x Assemble the Legion
Instants:
2x Boros Charm
3x Lightning Bolt
3x Path to Exile
3x Lightning Helix
Lands:
2x Boros Garrison
4x Clifftop Retreat
9x Mountain
7x Plains
2x Slayers' Stronghold

This is a flexible Boros midrange deck that aims to simultaneously exert control over the opponents’ creatures whilst also building up its own board presence. The efficiency of Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt is such that on turn three they can be played alongside a creature, such as Truefire Paladin. The typical feature of midrange decks is the ability to simultaneously carry out multiple strategies due to how efficiently costed all the cards are. In the late game we see some very potent threats that present a degree of inevitability such as Sun Titan and Assemble the Legion. Cards such as these produce a definite clock that the opponent will struggle to escape from.

        Strengths

This deck obviously has a lot of flexibility which is fantastic because it means it will find something to do against most opponents. Playing against control? That’s fine! You have a whole range of creatures to use. Playing against aggro? That’s great too! You have plenty of removal to deal with their threats. Being able to pick and choose the line of play creates interesting, varied games in which the player is easily able to adapt to most situations.
Another key strength of the deck appears to be the remarkably solid late game threats. Assemble the Legion is tricky to remove because it dodges Abrupt Decay and Terminate etc. Sun Titan is also fantastic because it recurs creatures that died earlier in the game.

        Weaknesses

The quality of some of the creatures is questionable here, and it does seem the deck can be slow. For example, whilst Boros Guildmage might be relatively useful on turn two, it is certainly not a good top deck on turn six. Conversely, whilst cards like Sun Titan are great on turn six, they are horrible to draw early. Decks that attempt to mix both early and late game presence often have to make this compromise where occasionally their curve works very well, but sometimes cards are drawn at the wrong time and it all feels a bit clunky. One way to avoid this is to lower the curve and perhaps run four and five mana threats instead of six, but then as a result the quality of the late game decreases. Lacking quality card draw makes these questionable top decks hurt even more.

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        Creator Insights

What inspired you to build a midrange style deck in red and white over other colour combinations?

"I was looking through colour combinations, and Assemble the Legion seemed like a card that would be awesome for this archetype, so I figured it seemed deck-worthy and started to build around it. It was a bit off-the-bat though, really. I had been pretty bored of my other decks and wanted to construct an alternative."

It seems like the deck is fairly grindy, wanting to power out higher mana cost cards such as Assemble the Legion or Sun Titan. Do you have a preference for a controlling early game with things like Path to Exile? Or do you instead like to play an aggressive early game with cards like Boros Guildmage?

"Well, i generally prefer keeping a couple of burn spells to deal with any particularly dangerous early cards they may play, and keeping the Path to Exiles for their higher end (in case they get there). Having a Boros Reckoner in play definitely helps to protect me so I can get out Assemble the Legion and stuff later. The first strike and buffs from the Truefire Paladin are really good for taking out higher toughness targets."

The manabase seems somewhat shaky. I imagine there were budget concerns with things like shocklands and fetchlands. Is this correct??

"Yeah, I did not really want to chuck in expeditions and the like, simply because I didn’t want to go way too far with the price. I mean the deck is already around 100 bucks, so I decided to keep it lowish."

In playing and/or designing the deck have you spotted any particular problems or all-stars? Have any cards turned out to be much worse or better than you initially expected?

"Well, so far the Sun Titan has proven to be really great, bringing back boros Reckoners (which are REALLY good against almost anything, especially large targets without trample). Unfortunately, the Slayers" Stronghold is not nearly as effective as I"d hoped it to be, since I generally use all of my available mana to play creatures. Assemble the Legion has been alright, but unfortunately, with the deck in it's infancy, I generally die before it has a chance to save itself with a giant army of tokens. I still have faith in it"s ability to work, I think I simply need to play the deck a bit more and get more accustomed to it "

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        Potential Improvements

-2 Slayers' Stronghold, +2 Needle Spires

The stronghold has not been working too well so instead it seems reasonable to swap it with a land that can tap for either colour and can also become a potent threat in its own right.

-2 Boros Guildmage, +2 Knight of the Holy Nimbus

This card may be too difficult to cast in the deck given the requirement for two white mana, so it remains to be seen whether this addition is reasonable. The reason I suggest this card is simply because it is able to block seemingly infinitely unless the opponent pays for it to not be regenerated, whilst still being able to put out two damage on the attack.

-1 Inferno Titan, -1 Sun Titan, -1 Assemble the Legion, +3 Hero of Bladehold

Trimming the top of the curve down to avoid dead draws leaves just one Sun Titan, and two Assemble the Legion. In the place of these cards we put in three Hero of Bladehold due to its ability to block comfortably but also close out games very quickly.

-2 Boros Charm, +1 Lightning Bolt, +1 Path to Exile

The creatures in this deck get ever better as the game goes on and therefore it is very important that we can survive the early stages to reach later turns in which the deck shines. In order to do this it may be necessary to simply add more removal that costs one mana. It is far more likely we will be looking to remove threats than make creatures indestructible, or have doublestrike in a deck like this.

-2 Boros Garrison, +2 Temple of Triumph

The garrison seems far too slow because it comes in tapped and returns a land to hand. Given the deck may have problems with draws, running just a few scrylands seems sensible.

This leaves us with the following list:

Creatures:
2x Knight of the Holy Nimbus
4x Truefire Paladin
3x Frontline Medic
4x Boros Reckoner
3x Firemane Avenger
3x Hero of Bladehold
3x Tajic, Blade of the Legion
1x Sun Titan
Enchantments:
2x Assemble the Legion
Instants:
4x Path to Exile
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Lightning Helix
Lands:
4x Clifftop Retreat
2x Needle Spires
2x Temple of Triumph
9x Mountain
7x Plains

SIdeboards are very meta specific so it would be impossible to suggest something that is fully formed. I will try to make a few budget suggestions nevertheless, but cannot recommend the number of copies to run of each:

Sideboard
1x Lone Missionary (burn)
1x Wrath of God (zoo/affinity)
1x Suppression Field (Abzan Coco and other combos)
1x Rest in Peace (Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf to some extent, Gurmag Angler etc)
1x Anger of the Gods (zoo/affinity)
1x Relic of Progenitus (Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf to some extent, Gurmag Angler etc)
1x Shatterstorm (affinity)

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        Runners-Up

Check ’em out, leave some feedback, and give ’em an upvote already.

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The Music of the Night (Opinions Please)

Modern slagathor3

SCORE: 18 | 55 COMMENTS | 3909 VIEWS | IN 4 FOLDERS

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Do you have anything else to add? What would you do differently? What do you think? Let me know down below!

Keep deckcycling out there! You never know when I could be eyeballing your list.

Happy tapping, players!
ChiefBell

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