YEET! [[Primer]]

Commander / EDH Burn Midrange Primer RW (Boros)

Deathstroke2791

Creature (26)

• 1x Angel of Destiny
• 1x Arni Brokenbrow
• 1x Chandra's Incinerator
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Feldon of the Third Path
• 1x Hofri Ghostforge
• 1x Knight of the White Orchid
• 1x Knollspine Dragon
• 1x Loyal Warhound
• 1x Luminous Broodmoth
• 1x Malignus
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Metalwork Colossus
• 1x Moltensteel Dragon
• 1x Neheb, the Eternal
• 1x Nykthos Paragon
• 1x Phyrexian Dreadnought
• 1x Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded
• 1x Rionya, Fire Dancer
• 1x Serra Avatar
• 1x Solphim, Mayhem Dominus
• 1x Soul of Eternity
• 1x Terror of the Peaks
• 1x Treasonous Ogre
• 1x War Elemental

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Hour of Revelation
• 1x Reconstruct History
• 1x Thud
• 1x Vanquish the Horde
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Wheel of Misfortune

Artifact (16)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Archaeomancer's Map
• 1x Cursed Mirror
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Fiendlash
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Talisman of Conviction
• 1x Thornbite Staff
• 1x Well of Lost Dreams

Instant (11)

• 1x Akroma's Will
• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Brought Back
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Fling
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Wear / Tear

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Lukka, Wayward Bonder  ^Flip

Commander (1)

Land (34)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Detection Tower
• 1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1x Hall of the Bandit Lord
• 1x Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 9x Mountain
• 12x Plains
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Spectator Seating

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Angelic Renewal
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sneak Attack

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Maybeboard

Creature (4)

• 1x Amplifire
• 1x Archivist of Oghma
• 1x Deep Gnome Terramancer
• 1x Gideon's Avenger

Artifact (1)

• 1x Dragon Throne of Tarkir

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We have ourselves a MAJOR update. It's been a couple of years since I've used Brion, but after some newfound inspiration I've picked him back up. So I can fling him of course. I jest, obviously. Brion is the one who will be doing the flinging. The main changes to the deck from a few years ago to now is demolishing the previous mana curve (4.8) down to 3.5 (more like 3.1 if you account for free casting conditions and cost reducing conditions which are almost always met) and updating the ramp package as Boros has been getting some nice pieces recently. I've also streamlined both our removal packages and our reanimation packages.

This is not your stereotypical Boros combat-centric deck, although it can turn sideways if it wants to. This deck wants to abuse creatures whose powers are absurdly high and fling them at our opponents, dealing MASSIVE damage with our commander and then abuse the life we gain from doing so.

These creatures include Cursed Mirror, Malignus, Metalwork Colossus, Moltensteel Dragon, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Serra Avatar, Soul of Eternity, Taurean Mauler, and War Elemental.

• Cursed Mirror early game will just be ramp for us. I normally don't like ramp with mana value greater than two, but if we run into this guy late game, it's a super mana efficient way for us to copy one of our large creatures, and fling it; it even provides its own mana to activate Brion.
• Malignus will almost never kill our opponents outright like others on this list will, but it will hit hard regardless, leaving room for another opponent to finish them off, or leave them low enough for us to finish with our other creatures.
• Metalwork Colossus is 10 power that gets to be flung around for less and less mana as the game goes on since more artifacts will be played. It's a new addition, but it seems like incredible value and I'll keep y'all updated on just how good it is.
• Moltensteel Dragon is GREAT after we've already gained enormous life totals from flinging other creatures already. He essentially says "pay twice x life where x target opponent's life total minus 4 to kill target opponent" pending you have enough life to do so. However, that's going to be a massive load of life to pay, and you won't have that much if you haven't already flung some creatures around; make sure he is the second or third creature you throw.
• Phyrexian Dreadnought is just a really cheap 12 damage to get in. It helps lower our curve significantly. While we can't actually play it turn 1 effectively, it will allow us to do other stuff in addition to "play creature, fling it" on later turns.
• Serra Avatar is our benchmark. Seven mana, power equal to our life total. If it costs more mana than this, it better have upside. If it has less power it better be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper mana value. Flinging will almost always be a one-shot kill. It does have the unfortunate downside of shuffling back in to our library, but we have some ways around that which we'll cover later.
• Soul of Eternity is actually just better than Serra Avatar. It has the same mana value, but requires one less white pip, making it easier to cast. It doesn't shuffle itself back in, and it even gives us its own reanimation ability in encore if we don't have one of our various other methods on board.
• Taurean Mauler will provide us an early game body to keep the board occupied that will progressively get bigger as opponents cast spells. Eventually there will be an optimal time to fling this, but it thankfully gets to come down early and just be an absolute chad for us.
• War Elemental is low on mana with the potential to get really big which is why it's in the list. However, it's a little weird to play around. Firstly, it has to be played in a turn in which you damaged your opponent, so you don't have to sacrifice it on play. But you don't want to waste your big "fling" for this damage. You want it to be some small chip damage from attacking with some of your smaller creatures. Now that this is done, you want to fling one of your other big baddies, making the elemental just as powerful as the creature you just flung.

While flinging creatures for massive damage is normally going to be our win-con I have included a few others that take advantage of the large amount of life we're gaining.

• Aetherflux Reservoir will provide some nice one shots to either finish the game when it's in reach, or an emergency response to kill someone who might win out of nowhere. It's a nice threat to have on board when you have enough to kill one person, but not enough to kill multiple. It will normally keep people off your back.
• Angel of Destiny replaces Felidar Sovereign. It gives us incidental life gain, and its ability can trigger the same turn it comes down. While it can only hit one player at a time, that's going to be enough, and we'll only have to face one or two opponents from there on. If they get rid of Angel of Destiny oh well, that just means they were going to get rid of Felidar Sovereign too. And, it costs one less mana. *insert fringe argument about Door to Nothingness here.

Then there are other miscellaneous ways to either augment my damage or get extra in that I run to speed the deck up.

• Akroma's Will earned a spot after the Sunforger include. If someone lets any creatures through, instant speed double strike with our creatures is legitimately deadly. Giving them wings with that same ability oftentimes will make them unblockable, so that's nice. It can also be used as protection from boardwipes or gaining that tidbit of extra life we need to activate Aetherflux Reservoir or trigger Angel of Destiny.
• Battlemage's Bracers lets me pay one additional mana to copy Brion's ability, choosing a new target as I do so. this "doubles" my damage output, but allows me to deal damage to multiple opponents at once, which is nice. I run these instead of Illusionist's Bracers because at the moment I value the haste more than the free copy rather than copying with one mana.
• Calamity Bearer doesn't double ALL our damage, but it's four mana, and it doesn't hurt us like Furnace of Rath does. It doubles our most important damage: Brion. It also doubles a small handful of other creatures damage: Bearer of the Heavens, itself, and Taurean Mauler, which isn't insignificant.
• Fling always catches people off guard for some reason. When they see Brion tapped and no way to reuse him, they think it's safe to do what they need to do. It's two mana, it's instant speed, and it's deadly. Although we don't gain the life we normally do by flinging with Brion, it's still super effective.
• Nykthos Paragon does wonders. For all intents and purposes it turns all our creatures into whatever we flung with Brion. We fling a Malignus? Great! A previously useless Dockside Extortionist can now swing or be flung to finish off that same opponent, while all our other creatures are just as big, getting exponentially bigger on each subsequent turn.
• Terror of the Peaks gives us passive damage we don't have to pay mana for which is nice. Killing people just for playing our creatures is peak efficiency.
• Thud serves a similar function as Fling. When the win is in sight, and we need that extra little push to get through, Thud is going to be more efficient than untapping and reusing Brion.

However what truly makes the deck hum is the ability to recycle through these creatures for little to no mana. This is going to be done by passive effects of "when creature dies do random thing that is equivalent to a reanimation." Interestingly we're able to choose these effects instead of Serra Avatar's shuffle effect.

• Angelic Renewal is super cheap which helps our curve, but is also super flexible, so we can choose which moment to sacrifice it when it's most optimal.
• Brought Back is a two for one special which is nice, and has the added flexibility to fetch more than just our creatures, but truly it's just mana efficient reanimation to keep fodder to fling with Brion.
• Buried Ruin is run for artifacts such as Aetherflux Reservoir, Grafted Exoskeleton, and Thornbite Staff. We're talking about things that will either win us the game, or provide us with great value.
• Emeria, the Sky Ruin doesn't reanimate upon death like our other sources do, but on our upkeep once per turn, which is still very good. I just wish there was an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth equivalent for plains.
• Feldon of the Third Path is some cheap, repeatable, instant speed reanimation.
• Hofri Ghostforge is arguably our best reanimation effect? Giving the creatures that come back trample and haste, especially when they're as big as Malignus or Serra Avatar.
• Luminous Broodmoth is the other arguably best reanimation effect. Giving massive creatures flying is just absurd. It's pretty good. Not to mention if you bring it back with Luminous Broodmoth the first time it dies, if you have Hofri on the battlefield you can bring it back a second time with that.
• Reconstruct History KINDA fits in this category, so this is where I'll put it, and you can't stop me. Getting up to four cards back from the yard with one spell is crazy efficient for Boros, allowing us to use our best spells over again. We'll take this all day.
• Rionya, Fire Dancer replaces MImic Vat. I found these to be of the same caliber as far as flexibility went, but Rionya is different in the sense of she lets me copy creatures on my board. I already have plenty of options that create copies from the yard or reanimate upon death triggers. MImic Vat took the cut because it was the most inefficient out of the others that we have. Rionya, Fire Dancer provides a little extra oomph in the case we cast some instants or sorceries before combat, which isn't necessary to make the card better than MImic Vat, but it's a plus. She can also do well to hit some of our etb effect triggers like ramp in Knight of the White Orchid, draw in Knollspine Dragon, letting several Terror of the Peaks see each other enter, or give us multiple hasty Angel of Destinys. I think it's a much better improvement.

The next step in making this strategy efficient is making sure we're putting these big hulking creatures onto the battlefield for as little mana as possible.

• Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded does WORK. It is five mana, which feels bad, but it's an indestructible haste enabler which pushes big stompies out for three mana a piece.

• Sneak Attack costs less mana than Purphoros in both casting cost and activation cost, but it isn't indestructible, nor does it provide haste. Eh. Oh well. It's still a really good card.

Let's talk ramp. Boros ramp, while still not the best, has gotten significantly better over the past two years or so. I'll break down any interesting ones, but for the most part, it's pretty standard stuff so I'll just list those.

• Ancient Tomb
• Arcane Signet
• Archaeomancer's Map searches for plains to feed into its second ability which is nice, however what I find more nice is the fact that the second ability is NOT LIMITED to plains, and the fact that the land you put into play comes in untapped which is uncharacteristic of most white land ramp.
• Cursed Mirror can copy a creature which can either attack or be flung or both as soon as it comes in, or it can just be a boring red mana. I much prefer the former, but the latter works in a pinch.
• Dockside Extortionist is nuts. Everyone is running rocks. Two mana make 7-8 treasures is good. Sure those treasures are only a one time use, but it will allow us to push out big stuff early.
• Knight of the White Orchid gives us an untapped plains. Can potentially be Sacred Foundry or Plateau.
• Loyal Warhound is bad Knight of the White Orhcid, but it's still good ramp, so we take it.
• Monologue Tax will almost always give you at least two treasures for a pass around the table. So it's essentially Cultivate because it's three mana for two "lands" sometimes its better because you'll get three treasures, sometimes its worse because you'll get one or zero. I've found in gameplay that it averages out to about two per round.
• Neheb, the Eternal isn't early ramp to push big things out quick. It is mid game ramp to take advantage of the massive damage we've started to deal, letting us pay outright for large mana value spells or miscellaneous activated costs.
• Smothering Tithe is relatively (compared to this deck) new, and is really good, essentially giving us a mana for each card an opponent draws.
• Sol Ring
• Talisman of Conviction
• Treasonous Ogre allows us to be extremely flexible with our mana and abuse the fact that we're gaining so much life. Three life for one mana is steep, but so worth it when we want to push out Terror of the Peaks or Nykthos Paragon.
• Wayfarer's Bauble

Our draw options are mildly limited, but not as limited as everyone would like to believe Boros is.

• Esper Sentinel is a card I'm honestly kinda 50/50 about. A large portion of the time it's only a small tax effect on an opponent's FIRST non-creature spell. A smart player will just pay it every time since they only have to do it once per turn. It definitely doesn't pull as much weight as Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora.
• Knollspine Dragon is NUTS. I don't know why I don't see it in more lists. I'm not saying it's a staple by any means. It doesn't belong in everything, but it belongs in much more than it's seen in. I've accidentally decked myself with this little fella.
• Mangara, the Diplomat is almost guaranteed to get you at least three cards per table rotation by just sitting there. It also works as a small form of dissuasion for potential attacking opponents not wanting to grant you any more card advantage.
• Skullclamp is a card that needs no introduction. We have creatures dying. The Clamp will make an appearance.
• Sunforger is a card that was reluctantly put in here, but everyone was right. It's pretty good. The utility and flexibility it provides is unreal, offering ranges of protection and removal. Wondrous. It's not card draw per se, but it is card advantage.
• Well of Lost Dreams is effectively the same as Dawn of Hope because we never have MASSIVE amounts of mana to dump into it after gaining life, but it's still good in the fact that we only have to pay one mana to draw a card rather than two and if we ever DO have more than a handful of mana after a fling we can fill our hands by paying the mana to do so.
• Wheel of Fortune is the original o daddy g. It's a good card. Let's not dwell on it.
• Wheel of Misfortune is never a gamble for us. Never. I've found that bidding a third of another opponents life total is a good spot to bet in order to give us a good chance to not actually lose life, but never risk not drawing cards.

Lets talk removal. Something that is seen is most Brion decks is using Threatenesque cards and sacrificing them to Brion as a means of removal. I find that doubly inefficient as most of those cards are of a greater mana value than removal you normally see in Boros, and it takes away an activation of Brions to kill a threat rather than kill a player. So bearing that in mind this is my removal suite, boardwipes included.

• Austere Command is something that I chose because of it's flexibility. Normally I try to go as low mana value as I can for board wipes, but I needed boardwipe for enchantments and artifacts but didn't want to waste a slot on JUST that, so here's my solution to that.
• Blasphemous Act is neat in the fact that a lot of the time, it leaves us with a big stompy on board ready to wipe the floor with someone else.
• Chandra's Ignition will pretty much wipe whatever we need it to because we WILL have the biggest creature on board, paving the way for a swing out victory much in the way that Blasphemous Act does. This has the added benefit of potentially taking out all our opponents in one fell swoop. When we don't have one of our big fatties on board we can gain a mess of life by targeting Brion with this. Probably our best board wipe.
• Chaos Warp hits anything we need it to at instant speed and it will almost never hit something worse than what we're getting rid of.
• Deflecting Swat has the downside of relying on our opponents to cast a kill spell first, BUT we get to simultaneously protect something of ours, waste a kill spell of theirs, and get rid of a threat of our choice? Deal.
• Generous Gift gets rid of anything. It's a good card.
• Hour of Revelation will almost always be cast for three mana and will give us a clean slate to work with. Deal.
• Path to Exile needs no introduction.
• Swords to Plowshares doesn't either.
• Wear / Tear gives us some low mana flexibility.

The rest of the cards don't really fall into one of the above categories, so I'll explain them and their purpose here.

• Boros Charm can take out planeswalkers, but it will mostly be used as protection and occasionally be used to give one of our big bads double strike. I have killed exactly one player who was at 4 life though and killing them with Boros Charm was kinda funny not gonna lie.
• Detection Tower is for the off chance that an opponent has hexproof, and that's pretty disastrous for our whole "fling things" plan. So we run it as a just in case.
• Expedition Map is designed to fetch us our utility lands when we need them. Emeria, the Sky Ruin, the aforementioned Detection Tower, and Buried Ruin.
• Flawless Maneuver is a free protection spell, so I guess it's pretty good.
• Lightning Greaves is just general protection, but gives us haste so we can immediately start flinging when Brion comes down.
• Swiftfoot Boots serves the same purpose as Ligtning Greaves.
• Teferi's Protection has become a white staple for a reason. It gives us all the protection we could ask for, but it also works as a perfect way to seal a win with Felidar Sovereign, making sure our life total doesn't change and that the chonky cat survives a table rotation.
• Thornbite Staff essentially reads "this now allows Brion to keep using his ability as long as there are creatures and mana to do it with." It will end games and end it fast.

Top Ranked	Achieved #9 position overall 8 years ago Achieved #6 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Burn 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Midrange 3 years ago
Date added	8 years
Last updated	11 months
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	16 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.62
Tokens	Copy Clone, Elephant 3/3 G, Emblem Lukka, Wayward Bonder, Treasure
Folders	For Funsies, possible decks, Helpful Decks, Deck Ideas for the Podcast, Decks I like, Future EDH, edh, favs, Commander, YASSS