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Iroas, Making Combat Great Again - A Boros Primer

Commander / EDH Aggro Midrange Primer RW (Boros)

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Creature (39)

Land (36)

Enchantment (8)

Planeswalker (1)

Sorcery (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Iroas, God of Victory

Artifact (9)

Instant (5)

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Artifact (3)

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Sorcery (1)

Iroas, Making Combat Great Again - A Boros Primer

Iroas, Making Combat Great Again seeks to do just that. At its core, this deck wants to do everything it can to make creature based combat in EDH a viable strategy at the table. We do this by amplifying our damage dealing capabilities to such a degree that we present a constant threat at the table seeking to knock our opponents down before they have the opportunity to build up to their coup de grâce.

This deck seeks to add an element of speed to the game, not cEDH levels, but with Iroas, we look to present real danger to the game-state. Games can get very interesting when one wrong move could lead to an opponent losing upwards of 30 life in one swing, usually resulting in a players removal. A common gripe I hear in regards to EDH is that the games can take a rather long time to play. We're here to shorten that clock and allow for more games to be enjoyed in an afternoon or evening.

Welp, you did it now, jumping into the rabbit hole like that... Might as well keep going and see where it leads.
Theros: Beyond Death just released and I felt that things had finally come full circle. Iroas came out in the original Theros block, and after pushing this deck as far as I could over the last several years, I felt that thematically, it was time to share this monstrosity with the rest of the community. It also helps that THB gave the list a rather impressive spike in consistency and utility. So here we are. Also, after looking around I found a total of three Boros Primers, and none of them were on Iroas…

I would like to keep this primer as a living piece of literature in a sense. I intent to update the deck-list as sets release, and update the primer with useful information not only as cards are added or removed, but as people ask about various cards that I either chose to include or exclude from the build.

Bare with me here… this list is actually a finely tuned killing machine designed to make the absolute most of every available slot in the ninety-nine. There are no pet cards. Every choice has been carefully contemplated and thoroughly tested in a wide variety of playgroups. I feel it’s also necessary to point out here that this deck list is "incomplete" by design. Playing creature aggro requires a fine understanding of the potential threats you may come across, and you may find in practice that it's necessary to swap a couple things around depending on the meta you play in. The other side of the coin is that there are cards that I would like to slot in, but have simply been unable to actually acquire and test. These are mentioned throughout the Primer where i feel like they are necessary and usually give mention as to why I feel they may be a good fit for the deck.

The most important thing here is that this list is a base line, a place to fall back to when your own personal experimentation goes off course and you lose the heart and soul of the deck somewhere. I've carefully crafted this list over time to be effective in almost every environment I may find myself in. A good judge of its power is to ask yourself if your winning approximately 25% of your games. In a healthy meta, i feel this is exactly the win rate you should be striving for.

As a side note, I have intentionally left out certain infinite combos, namely Godo, Bandit Warlord and Helm of the Host. While other combos like Neheb, the Eternal and Aggravated Assault are present, it is because they interact with everything else the deck is already trying to do and just happen to combo off together. Godo and Helm have little synergy with the rest of the deck and therefore I chose to not include them.

Iroas, Making Combat Great Again is all about building a board presence and smashing faces in. While there are a few key tutors, at the end of the day, the card you draw, should be the card you need. This idea is facilitated by ensuring that we attach as many of the effects that we need to bodies where able. A spell that destroys and enchantment is cool, but when its attached to a 2/2 body, it continues to add value to our board state long after it has served its initial purpose.
Iroas, God of Victory has three rather important things going on that we want to focus on.
Iroas gives all your creatures menace (attacking creatures must be blocked by two or more creatures). He also prevents ALL damage that would be dealt to attacking creatures. This means that in our deck, we need to load up on as many bodies as possible (within reason) to throw at the enemy.
Damage prevention extends beyond just protecting ourselves from blockers. card:Pryhemia is a large part of the strategy of this deck. During a main phase, it is a universal board wipe, but while we are swinging, every single attacking creature we control is immune to its damage allowing us to pour mana into it to clear the way before blockers are even declared. Depending on your personal meta, you may find cards like Starstorm are also required to help pave the way if you need more effects like this. Just remember, board-wide damage at instant speed is going to be your friend here.
Iroas has 7 power. This is important as it only takes 21 commander damage to knock someone out. We leverage this by stuffing our deck full of damage doublers and repeatable multi-combat step enablers. It's completely acceptable to send the army at one opponent, and Iroas at another knowing that it will take 2, or sometimes just 1 combat step to remove them. And it's not even a voltron deck.
This deck wants creatures. There's actually more creatures than land, and several of them generate even more creatures. It doesn't matter if that creature is a 6/6 or a 1/1. Can it swing? Yes? Good, throw it at someone. Things like blockers with deathtouch or lifelink are someone else's problems. Just throw everything you can and bring your opponents down. Iroas will keep them alive.

One of my favorite examples in regards to "creatures matter" is my decision to include Boros Keyrune over Boros Cluestone or Boros Locket. In the vast majority of mana bases, if you were going to take a three mana rock, cluestone and locket are just better in every regard because they can get you cards when you need them later. In our list here though, we take Keyrune because its a mana rock thats ALSO a 1/1 doublestriker when we need it... And its actually not all that difficult to hit someone in the face with this little guy for 16 damage on our turn after an opponent casts a Wrath of God type spell.

Understand your threats, understand the scale. There's three people across from you trying to win. They will try to stop you. From turn zero you need to be assessing the commanders and trying to identify possible builds. It is absolutely acceptable to drop a mountain on turn one and go straight into a Legion Loyalist swinging for someones face. Congratulations, you did 1 damage, only 119 more to go. Why did i say 119 and not 39? Because here, scale matters. Understanding the hurdle you have to cross from the onset will help you set up the frame of mind to burn everything down around you. Pick a target, burn them down, pick a new target, rinse, repeat.

When building our deck we keep the scale in mind. Tectonic Giant just released and this card is amazing. First, it lets us effectively look at the top two cards of our library, then cast the best one a little bit later. But for this example, regarding scale, we are going to look at his damage ability. "Whenever Tectonic Giant attacks or becomes the target of a spell an opponent controls, deal 3 damage to each opponent." That free damage plus the additional 3 power is 10% of the total life you have to chew through. Gratuitous Violence, or any of the other similar effects we have kick this up to 20% of the total damage we need to deal in a single swing, on a single creature. That's insane. So keep the scale in mind. While its true, smacking one player for 120 damage in a single swing will not win the game, because there are two more opponents, understanding that you do need to do 120 damage to win is going to help you make smarter decisions when altering the list, or constructing your own build.

Know your math. Were going to use Pyrohemia as our example here against a single opponent with two creatures out. By paying one red mana, you deal 1 damage to each player and each creature. Not bad, three mana equals 3 damage to each creature and each player. Normally one mana per damage is where red wants to be at for burn, so naturally, the more things there are to damage, the more efficient this becomes.

By adding Torbran, Thane of Red Fell to the mix, each red mana suddenly does 3 damage to each opposing player and each creature they control. So that that three red mana from earlier is now going to do 9 damage to everything. I'm not positive, but i believe I've heard it said that Lightning Bolt is some of the greatest burn ever made. With the current setup, one red mana is bolting every opponent and every creature they control, and it's repeatable.

We're going to add one more piece to this puzzle, Repercussion. Now, with our previous example of one opponent with two creatures, and Torbran on our side, one red mana will smack our opponent in the face for 13 damage… WHAT?!?!? The single red mana deals 1 damage to each player and creature. Torbran kicks that up to 3 damage per target, and Repercussion will see that 3 damage to each creature and send it to their owners… only Torbran will see that damage AGAIN and kick it up to 5. Multiply that by two creatures, plus the original 3 and you have 13 damage to face for one red mana. At 3 mana, your 39 damage in. Math.

As a quick side note, with this example, remember to do these absurd things at instant speed while attacking with your creatures. Iroas will protect your own board from damage which will also prevent repercussion from smacking your own face more than one ping at a time. You will also likely clear out several opposing creatures before they even get the chance to be declared as blockers.

A fairly large number of folks in the EDH community have criticized Boros over the years as being subpar due to several key reasons. And while it used to be true some time ago, WotC has done a lot in terms of amping the power and consistency of RW. The question now, “Is Boros still under-powered, or are we just not looking at it correctly?” In the following subsections I'll look to examine the commonly accepted wisdom, and directly challenge it through card choices that have been made for this specific deck.
We start examining the perceived deficiencies of Boros by looking at one of the most important aspects of EDH as a whole, mana.
In our manabase, we actually choose to run an abnormally high number of basic lands. This is intentional. the most important land drops for Iroas are lands two through four. These MUST be untapped to allow us to have adequate tempo and agression when presenting a boardstate. The only reason you should ever have a land enter tapped between drops two and four is if it was in your opening hand and you played a "fast land" turn one into a one drop. Most players include Boros Garrison in their list because it increases their number of land drops by a turn. We do not run it here though because if it appeared in our opening hand, it would be detrimental to furthering our gameplan on tempo. In practice, the high number of basics has not been counter intuitive to achieving a steady flow of colored mana throughout a game. While I tend to prefer normal basics, I have chosen to include snowlands in an effort to test Rimescale Dragon.
We know these ramp pieces. Their commonplace and their presence is not unexpected. The important thing to note here is that each one is three mana or less, and enter the battlefield untapped.

These pieces require a bit more explanation on either why their included, why i consider them ramp, or maybe even why I think their special and deserve to be here instead of in the generalized section.

  • Boros Keyrune - The amount of dislike this card has garnered is actually incredible. In almost every conversation I've had, Boros Cluestone and Boros Locket have been the preferred choice of others due to their ability to draw cards later on. I however believe that the 1/1 doublestrike creature is infinitely more valuable in our build. Ever been the victim of a board wipe? Got a rock, an equipment, and an enchantment or two left over on the field? Well, suit this guy up and watch him smack someone in the face for 16 damage out of nowhere. It's surprising how often people underestimate this little guy, and its ability to remove a player immediately after a wipe is insane. As a side note, he's also a red creature so Torbran, Thane of Red Fell will actually be able to affect him, and this matters more than you would think.
  • Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Chandra is an amazing piece of ramp in our deck. It's actually rather rare to not play Chandra, +1 for RR and play a creature. Plus she's draw/burn when needed, and that 4 damage ability will remove a lot more than people give it credit for. If that wasn't enough, she pseudo increases your life total. Anybody trying to remove her is likely going to have to swing in, mitigating damage your face takes.
  • Smothering Tithe - I put this down here because it isn't necessarily cut and dry in its application. Do you play this card in your deck? YES! But be wary of it, as four mana is a big ask to pay for ramp that you cant use immediately after playing it. And after a game or two, your opponents will be more apt to pump mana into preventing you from getting treasure making the effectiveness of this card taper off.
  • Sword of the Animist - This one I'm on the fence about. Arguments can be made to switch this out for Land Tax… But at present, this has just put in an absurd amount of work for me. Happens to pair well with Sword of Feast and Famine or multiple combat steps.
  • Sword of Feast and Famine - In a traditional sense, this is not ramp necessarily. However, in our build, it becomes incredibly rampy due to the mass of our curve existing in the three to four cmc range. Being able to play one or two spells main phase one, untap lands, and play more stuff main phase two is just really good. Tends to pair well with Aggravated Assault, Underworld Breach, and Vedalken Orrery. Try to equip on a double striker if at all possible. You will need mana sinks to use between first strike and normal combat steps, but the double untap is legendary, and double discard doesn't hurt either.

  • Treasonous Ogre - I've wanted to be able to test this guy out for a while, but have been unable to get my hands on a copy. At face value he's incredible. A 2/3 body that grows is exactly what we want. And the ability to generate red mana at instant speed is exactly the ability we’re looking for. My only concern is that paying 3 life per mana is going to get expensive fast, and we already paint a rather significant target on our back with this deck.
  • Fellwar Stone - While it fits the criteria of being an untapped 2 mana rock, the lack of a guarantee that we will have red or white early game when we need it most leaves this one out for me.
  • Knight of the White Orchid - One would think that this would be an auto include for my decklist, however it has one inherent flaw. It’s an ETB requiring an opponent to have more land out than you. While this would seem like an open and shut case, I’m not sure the double white for a one time payoff is what we're after. I'm open to testing further, but in personal practice, it has always ended up underwhelming.
  • Land Tax - First, I know this isn't ramp. I just didn't have a better location to add it, and it was close enough that I stuck it here. This card, is REALLY GOOD. but it doesn't hit face, and its a slot where we could put something else. At the end of the day, if you NEED this card for your mana in 2 colors… you likely have some fixing to do in your mana base. That being said, I am open to swapping this in for either Sword of the Animist or even just a Mountain, but I will have to do some extensive testing to gauge the viability.
It's been said that red and white lack in the area of card draw… and this is not incorrect. The other three colors of the wheel have much better access to straight up “draw”. However, I'm a firm believer that “card draw” and “card advantage” are NOT synonymous. The most important thing to look at here is not “How much of our deck can i flip into my hand,” but rather “How many cards can i have access to.” Strangely enough, red is very adept at borrowing your opponents cards, and Boros in general actually has the ability to generate some great value off of cards your already working with.
  • Furious Rise - Literally says "draw a card." While at first glance it would seem like we won't hit this very often due to 23 of our creatures having power 3 or less, with the sheer amount of pump available to us, the odds of actually having this out and not triggering it are rather slim. It also helps that our commander has 7 power.
  • Palace Jailer - This piece is amazing. It is temporary removal for a present threat, and enables the Monarch mechanic which is going to allow us to draw a card at the end of our turn as long as we are still the Monarch. This in turn can lead to some interesting politicking as the Monarch is passed around among players. Not only that, we’re playing a deck that allows us to just take it back if an opponent doesn't want to politely give it to us.
  • Sin Prodder - Yep, believe it or not, this has “draw a card” right there in the text box… almost. If an opponent wants to deny us the extra card, they can do so for the low low price of taking damage equal to the CMC of the revealed card. This damage works in conjunction with our damage doublers. It might seem like a good idea for someone to take 7 damage to prevent us from having a Balefire Dragon… but what about 14 damage? Or more.
  • Tectonic Giant - Swing and look at two cards, play one of them before the end of your next turn. Effectively has "draw the better of two cards."
  • Captivating Crew - I'll give you this one, it doesn't look like card advantage on its face, until you pay four mana to borrow the funnest creature on the table for a turn. I treat this like a single use spell. Pay 4 mana do a thing. Only we can do that thing as long as we have mana, every turn. This directly gives us access to pieces of our opponents board states. And more cards at our disposal is exactly what we are after.
  • Etali, Primal Storm - Swing and look at four cards. Cast them, for FREE, right now. Literally says “draw four and do fun stuff.” Not only that, but three of those are our opponents cards giving us access to things outside our colors.
  • Feldon of the Third Path - Take the shiniest creature in your graveyard and use it for a turn. The amount of value this is providing is absolutely insane. Especially because Aurelia, the Warleader and Aggravated Assault don't care if you creatures actually attacked to untap them. The loops you can get into with this guy and Aurelia in the graveyard are nuts.
  • Robber of the Rich - Swing in and get a card from someone else's deck. Sounds like spicy card advantage to me. And honestly, if you have the most cards in hand at the table and aren't able to trigger this ability, you aren't playing this deck properly. Play those cards. Get them out there.
  • Sun Titan - Hits almost 30% of your deck, and is a giant vigilance beater… nuff said. Small side note, it's really fun to ETB this guy, get Arid Mesa back, sac it for a land, swing with a hasty Sun Titan, and do the Arid Mesa again... Not the most efficient play on it's face, but that kind of ramp is actually really good.
  • Underworld Breach - This card is absolutely busted. For two mana casting this enchantment, and exiling some stuff you don't actually care about in your graveyard, you get to recast literally anything… and Sun Titan can recur this...
  • Grenzo, Havoc Raiser - Step 1. Do the thing your trying to do (hit people's faces). Step 2. Profit. Seems good. The ability to gain card advantage, or force your opponent's creatures into your other opponent's faces is REALLY good. And it triggers for EACH creature you control each time they connect with a face. I'm looking at you doublestrikers.
  • Stolen Strategy - I'm actually on the fence about this one. I want to try it out, as having access to my opponents’ decks is an incredible ability, but the five mana for a “do nothing this turn” enchantment is a hard ask.
It’s true, we can't play Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Natural Order, or Birthing Pod… But that doesn't mean that we can't tutor at all. It just meant we need to be more conscious about our build as a whole, and have a greater understanding of how we can fetch the pieces of our toolbox as needed.
This is likely the most valid of all the arguments that we have a hard time answering effectively. White has an incredible suite of exile effects at its disposal, but a lot of them come in the form of enchantments, or single use spells. And while its good to include some of these effects, we must be very careful to not dull the teeth of our deck in trying to stop other people's plans. One of the most important things to remember in Boros is that the most effective way to remove a potential issue at the table, is to just remove the player that owns the issue.
Magic is a game where attacking wildly is not considered optimal as combat tends to favor the defender. Your opponent having the choice of which creatures to block, and which creatures to block with. This generally leads to very bad experiences for the attacker, which is why most people won't swing unless their likely to either win, knock out a player, or receive zero punishment for doing so. Never, in anyone's right mind, would they ever swing Aurelia, the Warleader into Vampire Nighthawk. Iroas takes this idea, and completely flips it on it's head.

Let us tackle the elephant at the table, Life Totals. Combat based strategies are considered less powerful because, in order to win, you have to reduce three opponents from forty life, to zero… Thankfully, WotC has given us an amazing tool for accomplishing this task. We call it “The Color Red.” Everything we do is not to reduce three players life totals from forty to zero, its to apply 120 points of damage across three players, and while this sounds like it would be exactly the same thing… it's not. (ok, it really is, but the mentality behind it is everything).

Let's explore Damage Doubling, and how we can abuse it. For our example we’re going to use one of my favorite setups, Balefire Dragon, Repercussion, and any one of the various damage doublers.

  1. Our dragon attacks an opponent with 2 creatures on the board, one of which has flying...
  2. Due to Iroas, and our opponent only having a single flier, Balefire gets through successfully dealing 6x2 damage to our opponents face, triggering Balefire’s ability.
  3. Balefire is going to then deal, not 6, but 12x2(remember the doubler on field) damage to each creature, at which point, we have another trigger.
  4. Repercussion is going to see each creature our opponent controls that took damage and send that at their controller’s face, but again, remember the doubler… 48 damage per creature.
  5. When the dust has settled, our opponent will have taken 108 damage, in a single swing. Not bad for a 6/6 with a little support. (For the sake of math, an additional damage doubler on field would net 792 damage to your opponent’s face with this example)
Is this particular example easy to disrupt? Sure, but with a mass of aggressive threats in your library, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because you’ll keep pumping out threat after threat after threat.

Let's explore one more example, this time with Torbran, Thane of Red Fell and Tectonic Giant. Now, the observant among you will notice that Torbran does not actually double our outgoing damage, this is perfectly ok. Torbran is going to cause all of our red sources to deal an additional 2 damage. When Tectonic Giant attacks, we will choose to have it deal 3 damage to each opponent. And thus we have reached the point where perspective is important. In this example, Tectonic Giant is going to immediately deal 15 damage across the table (5 per opponent). This is 12.5% of the total life pool that we have accounted for having to chew through. And on top of that, it still has an additional 5 points of combat damage yet to be assigned, which, again, is 12.5% of one players life total. So you are very likely to hit one player for 25% of their life and the other 2 for 12.5% with this one creature buffed by Torbran. That’s just shy of 17% of the total damage needed to win. This example wasn’t even true damage doubling, just a flat additional bonus.

A common gripe I often hear is how slow some games can get. With stax and combo trying to do everything they can to protect themselves and go over everyone else's head, an aggressive deck like this may be just what you need to slip under the defenses (or smash right through them) and really shake up your playgroup bringing new life into people's creative minds to get around this monster. Some common feedback your likely to hear is that its to fast for your casual friends, or to slow for the cEDH tables (this last point… not entirely inaccurate). But really, if the combo deck can slowly build to the point where it gets to take infinite turns, the stax deck gets to try and slow everybody down to a crawl, and the value engines get to take their time setting up board-states to “go off”, why shouldn't you be allowed to punish them for taking their sweet time? Iroas will forcibly pull players out of their comfortable pillow forts and demand that they do something to deal with you, and this is a good thing. It promotes politics, interactivity, and creative problem solving. And realistically, the only thing wrong with making the game end several turns faster is that you'll have to shuffle up and get a second one in before the evening is through.
While I've tried to keep this list in particular as universal as possible to be able to take it to as many different tables as i can and still be effective. The following subsections will go over both current cards and ideologies in the deck, and possible replacements to help counter various meta specific situations. (Under construction, will update as I flesh out this area)
The next few sections will be updated over time as discussion occurs and i find notable things to put in here. I will also update the Deck-list and Primer over time as sets release and the build grows and evolves, recording any notable changes in the appropriate logs.
Cards to acquire and subsequently test out. Will update with notes as applicable.
2/2/20
  • Ilharg, the Raze-Boar -> Odric, Lunarch Marshal: While on its face Ilharg is a beast as a 6/6 trampler able to cheat things into play, the list of targets that we catually WANT to hit with Ilharg is rather small. Most of our larger bodies we would rather stay on the board through our opponents turns to provide additional benefit beyone just swinging. He is also a direct nonbo with our creatures that care about activating "attacks" triggers. Slotting in Odric in this slot helps bring our curve down, and has the added benefit of applying our "word soup" of abilities on creatures around the board for added synergies.
2/3/20
  • added Sensei's Divining Top to CtT
  • renamed "Lackluster Ramp" subsection to "Manabase Issues"
  • added "Land Selection" subsection after a thought provoking conversation with jamesmac42
2/2/20 1/31/20
  • primer goes live
  • fixed issues in the "strategy revolves around combat" section relating to math
  • added "Cards to Test" section
  • added Odric, Lunarch Marshal, Winds of Abandon, Price of Glory, War's Toll, Emergence Zone to the "CtT" list
  • added "Meta Specific Cards and Builds", currently under construction
  • added section to "why the decklist looks incomplete" regarding opting out of infinite combos

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

19 - 0 Mythic Rares

45 - 0 Rares

9 - 0 Uncommons

5 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.66
Tokens Cat 1/1 W w/ Lifelink, Cat Soldier 1/1 W, City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Elemental 1/1 R, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Golem 3/3 C, Soldier 1/1 W, Monarch Emblem, Treasure, Zombie Warrior 4/4 B
Folders My Builds, Iroas
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