Akiri, Sunforger Slinger

Commander / EDH Counterspell Equip Hatebears RW (Boros) Stax Stoneblade Theme/Gimmick Voltron

herpdederp92

Land (32)

• 1x Ancient Den
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Great Furnace
• 1x Inspiring Vantage
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 4x Mountain
• 10x Plains
• 1x Rugged Prairie
• 1x Rustvale Bridge
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Spectator Seating
• 1x The Mycosynth Gardens
• 1x Urza's Saga

Instant (16)

• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Excise the Imperfect
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Lapse of Certainty
• 1x Mages' Contest
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Settle the Wreckage
• 1x Silence
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Tibalt's Trickery
• 1x Wear / Tear

Creature (19)

• 1x Archivist of Oghma
• 1x Archon of Emeria
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Battle Angels of Tyr
• 1x Deep Gnome Terramancer
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Ethersworn Canonist
• 1x Godo, Bandit Warlord
• 1x Hushbringer
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Puresteel Paladin
• 1x Stoneforge Mystic
• 1x Stonehewer Giant
• 1x Strict Proctor
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Artifact (16)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Colossus Hammer
• 1x Conqueror's Flail
• 1x Embercleave
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Hammer of Nazahn
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Talisman of Conviction
• 1x The Reaver Cleaver

Commanders (2)

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Brilliant Restoration
• 1x Farewell
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Open the Armory
• 1x Steelshaper's Gift

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Deafening Silence
• 1x Fighter Class
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Rule of Law
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Smuggler's Share

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Karn, the Great Creator
• 1x Nahiri, the Lithomancer

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Maybeboard

Creature (13)

• 1x Alms Collector
• 1x Containment Priest
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Goblin Engineer
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Harsh Mentor
• 1x Hokori, Dust Drinker
• 1x Magus of the Moon
• 1x Sanctum Prelate
• 1x Soulless Jailer
• 1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1x Tocatli Honor Guard
• 1x Wyleth, Soul of Steel

Instant (5)

• 1x Oblation
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Reverberate
• 1x Wild Ricochet

Artifact (12)

• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mycosynth Lattice
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Oblivion Stone
• 1x Static Orb
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Tangle Wire
• 1x Torpor Orb
• 1x Trinisphere
• 1x Umezawa's Jitte
• 1x Winter Orb

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Scrap Mastery
• 1x Tragic Arrogance

Land (8)

• 1x Boros Garrison
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Lotus Field
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Scorched Ruins
• 1x Slayers' Stronghold

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Darksteel Mutation
• 1x Rest in Peace
• 1x Smoke
• 1x Stranglehold

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Last updated 6/13/2023. Primer is outdated but I'm working on it.

Hello! I'm a longtime commander player, and I am particularly proud of this deck. The deck's entire strategy revolves around tutoring out and abusing a specific card as hard as possible, and that card is Sunforger. Players talk about Sunforger packages, but I want this deck to holistically function as one gigantic Sunforger package.

Sunforger's color identity is Boros, and its two functions are to control the game and beat in faces. With those features in mind, I've built a control-centric stax & voltron deck with a powerful 1-2 punch in the command zone. Want details? Read on!

Sunforger is the best commander Show

The first obvious question is, "Why did you choose to put Akiri, Line-Slinger and Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist in the command zone?" It's a very good question, since the selection of commander(s) was ultimately arbitrary. There are multiple reasons why I like this duo, and I'll try to outline them all.

The first big reason is that I think of Sunforger as being the card in the command zone. Sunforger is a crazy card. With an equipped creature and RW open, we can tutor and cast an instant from our library at any time. That basically amounts to placing our entire deck of instant spells into our hand, provided we have the mana to keep equipping and using the ability. So Sunforger shouldn't die to most removal short of Krosan Grip, and our opponents always have to play around the threat of us Chaos Warping their combo pieces. That's incredibly oppressive, and we can build around it by filling the rest of the deck with stax. Some stax e.g. Rule of Law we can skirt around by abusing Sunforger's ability, but all stax give us more time to whale on people and cast more instants, repeatedly abusing our toolbox of answers. With that deck construction in mind, the selection of commander barely matters except as a beatstick with keywords.

Second, I've playtested several other Boros voltron commanders as the Sunforger-carrier of this deck, and Akiri, Line-Slinger plays the best. Feather, the Redeemed comes close to Akiri's power level, but falls just short due to lacking vigilance, which limits the deck away from running powerful game-ending stax like Static Orb; the same is true of Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh, who plays fairly well alongside Ardenn but fails to efficiently reach 21 commander damage in my playtests. Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas and Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder both work pretty well due to double strike, but both cards feel much weaker than Akiri due to their higher mana value. Boros decks tend to fall behind in mana acceleration, and this particular deck will struggle to win without dealing 21 commander damage, so Akiri's tiny mana cost goes a long way towards keeping her on the field.

Third, why select Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist as Akiri's partner? This is a recent upgrade, but one I'm particularly happy about. Ardenn is the closest card to Puresteel Paladin we can play in the command zone, which makes him an incredibly helpful utility piece to help this deck smoothly shove equipments onto Akiri. While Ardenn could be partnered with non-white partner commanders to get a 3-color identity, I'm not interested in playtesting him alongside multicolored commanders because Sunforger gives us our color identity: Boros. (Notably, Sunforger can cast cards with mixed color identities, so there are plenty of routes to upgrade the Sunforger package by partnering in a third color: Kraum, Ludevic's Opus would give us blue countermagic like Render Silent, Tana, the Bloodsower would give us green tutors like Eladamri's Call, and Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools would give us black removal like Fire Covenant. I'm just not doing those things for flavor reasons.)

Finding Sunforger Show

First things first. Some moron decided to build a deck with a "secret commander" that starts off tucked inside the library. To play Sunforger, we've got to go tutor Sunforger out of the deck, so here's a pile of cards that can do it:

Steelshaper's Gift

Stoneforge Mystic (my favorite version of Magic's best-written villain: Nahiri. )

Enlightened Tutor

Gamble

Open the Armory

Fighter Class

Stonehewer Giant

Inventors' Fair

Godo, Bandit Warlord (no, I'm not running Helm of the Host, stop asking! He's here for free Sunforger and extra combats and that's it)

The Sunforger Package Show

Now, the fun part. The instant that Sunforger hits the field, we "draw" a giant toolbox of instants that our commander can cheat out for RW. I'm prioritizing removal and protection, so here's what we play and why:

Chaos Warp, Excise the Imperfect and Generous Gift are the big 3 that can delete any troublesome permanent.

Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares to exile creatures.

Wear / Tear to nuke an artifact or enchantment.

Mages' Contest as a true counterspell (in red, no less). Admittedly, opponents might accept 30 to the face to resolve a game-winning card like Torment of Hailfire, but we can usually put enough pressure on life totals to keep dangerous opponents lower than us.

Tibalt's Trickery as another true counterspell with lower mana value, albeit one with potentially dangerous side effects (worse than Chaos Warp.) Completely safe alongside our many Rule of Law effects, though.

Pyroblast to kill blue commanders or counter cheesy blue cards like Expropriate. Also good for counterspell wars.

Lapse of Certainty to counter big haymakers like Torment of Hailfire. In an emergency where the same card is going to cause trouble again next turn, we can Chaos Warp something to force its owner to shuffle.

Deflecting Swat to redirect instants, sorceries, and abilities (the latter can get some hilarious results.)

Boros Charm to give Sunforger and the rest of our field indestructibility. Great with Oblivion Stone.

Settle the Wreckage as an upgraded Fog that exiles all the attackers. Best approximation to a mass-wipe, since almost all cards like Pyroclasm are sadly sorceries.

Silence has been getting a lot of play from me over the past years.

Enlightened Tutor Enlightened is our main proactive SF spell, in case we need to grab one specific piece of stax. Other Tutor options include Smothering Tithe or Embercleave to apply massive kill pressure.

And of course the big Momma, Teferi's Protection. This card needs no justification.

Moar Swords? Show

Additionally, I want to discuss the other options for equipments in this deck, since we often run into scenarios (eg. Stonehewer Giant) where we can dig out multiple equipments at a time, and our commander Ardenn incentivizes stacking multiple equipments onto the battlefield:

Conqueror's Flail is probably the scariest of the bunch, because Grand Abolisher on an equipment gives us free rein to force stax locks and/or lethal combat buffs to resolve. ( Grand Abolisher has been boarded into and out of this deck plenty of times as well.)

Sword of Fire and Ice SOFI actually generates a couple of nonbos due to its protection-from-red clause, which prevents Akiri from being targeted by any of Boros Charm, Embercleave or The Reaver Cleaver. As one of this deck's best options for card draw, though, SOFI is more than worth the headache.

Sword of Feast and Famine SOFF is a big ugly beatstick that gets our lands untapped after playing hatebears. Classic tool for control decks, and just as good here as you'd expect.

The Reaver Cleaver This bad boy has been an absolute boon for this deck. In any voltron deck, making a ton of treasure represents lots of mana. Here, TRC also doubles Akiri's combat power every time she connects. That gets very ugly very fast.

Sword of the Animist because we want to ramp out extra mana however possible

Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus because functional reprint

Colossus Hammer because slamming down +10/+10 for 1 mana lets us go for lethal early

Embercleave because trample and double strike makes for a huge finisher

Shadowspear because trample and lifelink (one of the few sources of lifegain in the deck)

Hammer of Nazahn almost exclusively for the indestructible, though the free equip trigger lets Hammer trump similar tools.

How to play Stax for fun and profit: a short essay Show

So, I don't play many stax decks, for the reason that opponents don't like playing against them. But stax decks have a very useful function at the table, and that is to play the referee, deciding who can take what actions and when. At Commander, there are always 3 opponents to your one deck, so the referee always has to say yes to some things...

...in principle, at least.

I separate commander-viable stax cards into three main categories in my mind, based on how they function. (Of course, the context always makes a big difference; cards like Manabarbs can be mild annoyances, or they can make the game impossible to play, depending on the board state.)

--Category 3 stax are the tempo engines, cards that are designed to drain resources and slow opponents down, and sometimes to speed yourself up in the process. These cards are annoying and may put opponents behind by a turn, but ultimately they don't limit opponents' agency that much; since they can make the same choices, opponents may complain, but they won't really hate you for running these cards. Examples: Sheoldred, Whispering One, Blind Obedience, Mogis, God of Slaughter, Kambal, Consul of Allocation, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.

--Category 2 stax are the silver bullets, cards that ban out a specific style of play, blocking combos and "killing" cards in your opponents' hands. It really sucks when that crazy card you were about to win with gets turned off completely, but that's the entire point of playing silver bullets. Opponents will usually be mad enough about these cards that if they can't remove them, they will try to kill you. Examples: Leyline of the Void, Collector Ouphe, Arcane Laboratory, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Linvala, Keeper of Silence.

--Category 1 Stax are the hardlocks. These are scary. These lose you friends if played vindictively. Instead of banning out a single card or mechanic, hardlock stax have the goal of preventing opponents from playing at all, or producing an "unwinnable" game state for them. If played properly, opponents shouldn't be angry, just sad, because forfeiting makes them very sad indeed. Examples: Stasis, Contamination, Decree of Silence, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Puzzle Box + Narset.

I have in the past justified playing all sorts of land-hate cards like Static Orb and Winter Orb in this deck.

White has been getting all sorts of tools to draw extra cards and ramp extra lands/treasures in the past few years. Let alone the 3+ precons that came out since I built this deck devoted to making Boros Voltron work better.

In my personal opinion, Category 1 Stax currently do not belong in Boros Voltron. The deck no longer needs those tools to keep up or force a win.

On the other hand, Category 2 Stax? ABSOLUTELY fair game.

Hatebears and silver bullets Show

OK, so we're a Boros deck. We ramp slowly, our card draw is terrible by design, and we're much better at stepping on faces than at comboing. We always play from behind. How do we win under these conditions? Simple. We buy time. We slow, hinder, and imprison our opponents until they're as far behind as we are.

We've got a whole suite of hatebears. Why hatebears? Because sometimes Akiri gets repeatedly removed and we gotta punch face with somebody else that happens to be sitting around. Here are all the ways this deck says NO to your deck:

Strict Proctor The card I trust more than Torpor Orb to do the job. Strict Proctor is one of the few tools that successfully fights against the infestation of Landfall decks in this format.

Hushbringer Another Torpor Orb, plus a middle finger specifically to Teysa Karlov. There are multiple other functional reprints of this effect, but I find two to be sufficient. Flying and lifelink are very helpful keywords as well, so Hushbringer is a decent target for some equipments.

Lion Sash I used to run Rest in Peace here, but the deck is starting to run game plans like Sun Titan and Emeria that really want us to use our own graveyard. However, I absolutely CANNOT run zero graveyard hate. Looking at you, Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon. Hence, targeted removal with Scooze Cat.

Archon of Emeria No storm for you! An easy effect for us to play through using Sunforger, a hard one for the opponent with 10 mana and a hand full of elves to deal with. The current commander meta favors playing a lot of these Rule of Law effects; these days, everyone wants to ramp and draw cards and do lots of value-related things each turn. The final text on Archon is just annoying icing on the cake.

Ethersworn Canonist Same as Eidolon but asymmetrical. We run lots of artifacts so we can usually sneak in extra spellcasts.

Deafening Silence Yet another Rule of Law effect. We sneak by this one by flopping down our partner commanders whenever we run out of spellcasts, since Deafening doesn't interact with creatures.

Rule of Law Do you see a pattern here? Over the years, I've come to terms with the knowledge that Storm is this deck's natural predator, so I've had to compensate.

Eidolon of Rhetoric Do. You. See. The. Pattern.

Karn, the Great Creator Perhaps the only good artifact-hate card this deck can run, because we absolutely have to play asymmetrically here; Ardenn is the only way the deck can function at all under artifact hate. Conversely, given how common win conditions like Basalt Monolith and Isochron Scepter are, Karn is absolutely essential to the deck's stax package. Also a good sidekick to Winter Orb.

Aven Mindcensor Flashing Mindcensor in to stifle a tutor is soul-crushingly cruel. However, I've played against too many decks that run a playset of eleven fetchlands for no reason whatsoever, and I feel zero guilt dropping Mindcensor against those players.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence Just say NO to Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, to Glen Elendra Archmage, and even to poor little Llanowar Elves. Linvala locks out a surprising number of commanders too. Weirdly, she's also the deck's best option for a flying beater, in case of circumstances like Moat.

Drannith Magistrate To round out our anti-cheat software, the Magistrate prevents any card mechanics that cast spells from other zones. No Gravecrawler and no Syr Carah, the Bold. And also no commanders, which is incredibly rude. I like to advocate for the banning of Drannith from specifically EDH, and this is why.

The notable exclusion I had to make on the current build was Containment Priest, a tool that's been crucial since the days of Flash Hulk. I'd give it a 90% chance that the next time I update the deck, Priest will have found its way back in. Good chance we'll be seeing the return of Blood Moon too in the grand scheme of things.

Value leeches Show

So how about value bears? What does the deck do to draw cards and ramp lands? That used to be a pointless question given the color shard, but now it is not. White has been getting a LOT of tools that look suspiciously like Rhystic Study, and I'd rather play all of that stuff than force Static Orb into this deck:

Archivist of Oghma

Battle Angels of Tyr

Deep Gnome Terramancer

Esper Sentinel

Puresteel Paladin

Weathered Wayfarer

Smothering Tithe

Smuggler's Share

Ramp, recursion, and other useful tools (fully outdated section) Show

So most commander decks put a ton of focus on ramping out mana and drawing cards, and other such "value-oriented" gameplay. Not us. To the extent to which a deck could be "anti-value," we are such a thing.

The Sunforger itself is our main source of card advantage. As I have described plenty of times, equipping the Sunforger is equivalent to drawing every instant spell in the deck. However, we've still got to play a few resource-gaining cards, especially given how mana-intensive Sunforger can be:

Sword of Fire and Ice

Smothering Tithe

Sword of the Animist

Land Tax

And of course we've got plenty of mana rocks. Beyond those generic cards, we do run a small number of recursion effects. Normally white decks are fairly focused on finding ways to get card advantage from the graveyard, but we have to play through our own Scavenger Grounds so we're conservative here:

Brilliant Restoration One mass revive is usually enough

Nahiri, the Lithomancer

Emeria, the Sky Ruin Perhaps optimistic, but this is the only deck I play that can slow down the game enough to get multiple Emeria triggers.

Mistveil Plains A useful function of Mistveil is to loop instants back into the deck for Sunforger. Boros Charm every turn? Sure, why not.

And finally, there are boardwipes. Of course there are boardwipes. As the stax player, we WANT everybody to be back in the stone age at all times:

Austere Command because it has a casting mode that ignores both Akiri and Sunforger, while demolishing everyone else's commanders and enchantments. Or, we can just play it as a Wrath.

Cataclysmic Gearhulk Such a brutal and yet underplayed card. Gearhulk lets us retain Akiri, Sunforger, and a decent enchantment while crushing opponents' overdeveloped boards.

Oblivion Stone because onboard wraths are psychologically terrifying and because I'd rather have a RecSage snipe O-Stone than Sunforger or a stax card. Also works with Boros Charm for a huge aggressive play.

Nevinyrral's Disk for similar reasons to O-Stone. Disk is ultimately the stronger card since it takes less total mana to come online, which is usually this deck's weakpoint.

Potential upgrades: Blasphemous Act is a major omission, given its low casting cost. Based on the amount of creature spot-removal we're running, I'd say it's not essential.

And finally, a couple more utility lands worth noting:

Scavenger Grounds Support for Rest in Peace

Homeward Path Kind of a stax card in its own right, or at least an answer to Blatant Thievery.

Rogue's Passage Because screw blockers, right?

Hanweir Battlements   Because haste is nice

Slayers' Stronghold Ditto

Path of Ancestry Our budget for lands that enter tapped is small, but Path grants tons of scry each game

Potential upgrades: We already have Blood Moon effects for land hate but Ghost Quarter and similar lands would also be nice.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 51 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.81
Tokens	Construct 0/0 C, Copy Clone, Elephant 3/3 G, Incubator, Kor Soldier 1/1 W, Phyrexian 0/0 C, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Stoneforged Blade, Treasure