Today’s article is by Lily who previously designed a Modern Event Deck for us. Enjoy!
It’s been a long time coming for me to write another article but recently, I’ve been playing a lot of Commander in anticipation of the new decks. I’ve noticed that one colour combination often gets left by the wayside, well that ends now.
The Boros Legion, the fabled White/Red colour combination, boasting little draw power and not much in the way of gaining even virtual card advantage, is usually shunned at EDH tables. But why should we play them? Well aside from them having the coolest aesthetic on Ravnica, and the best choice in colours (Red and White is very in right now) you still get some solid benefits. The main benefit is aggression. White and Red are certainly two of the most aggressive colours in Magic and the commanders you have to choose from are certainly no slouches in that department either.
When looking at EDHrec the three most popular commanders in the Boros colours are Aurelia, the Warleader, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, and Iroas, God of Victory. All three are very competent commanders but all are a little high in mana cost if you ask me, instead, may I invite you to look at the powerhouse that is Tajic, Blade of the Legion. For 4 mana you get a 2/2 with Indestructible (must be those rock hard abs), he’s also packing the Battalion ability: if you attack with Tajic and at least two other creatures he gets a whopping +5/+5 until end of turn. See Hearthstone, we can do 4 mana 7/7’s too. Tajic currently has 466 decks on EDHrec at the time of me writing this and the most popular way of building him, which is how I will present here, is Soldier Tribal.
The Soldier tribe has always been an interesting one, it has seen play in Legacy in a fringe Death and Taxes-like list aiming to generate amazing value out of cards such as Daru Warchief, Preeminent Captain, and Enlistment Officer, and our list we will also be playing all of these cards. Soldiers is a solid tribe with a number of lords, some very efficiently costed creatures with, more often than not, very low mana costs.
Now then, onto my actual decklist:
As you can see, our deck is aiming to counteract the lack of ramp and card draw with some key pieces. A solid suite of mana rocks provide solid acceleration, and while we may be behind on real card advantage, we are playing Skullclamp, Enlistment Officer (which can on rare occasion draw us 4 cards, but more frequently grabs us 1 or 2) and Mentor of the Meek. The aforementioned cards offer us actual card advantage but on top of that cards like Umezawa’s Jitte, Hero of Bladehold, Soltari Guerrillas (more on that a little later), Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Launch the Fleet, and Militia’s Pride, offer us a whole suite of virtual card advantage giving us effects that are similar in value to drawing cards attached to good cards in their own right.
Sunforger – This card is utterly fantastic and provides both a tutor effect and also an instant speed cast of a toolbox of powerful threats, it’s honestly one of the bigger draws to playing WR as it just offers so much value (and the +4/+0 is nothing to scoff at). We are only playing 6 instants in our list but all of them offer a great deal. Chaos Warp provides the ability to deal with any problem permanent out of nowhere, Enlightened Tutor can at the end step grab us any key card we need to swing the game back in our favour, and most powerfully of all, being able to, at instant speed, search up and cast Boros Charm in the face of a board wipe means we can protect our entire army from a board wipe and swing back with the full fury of the Boros Legion!
Decree of Justice – This card may be overlooked as the cost of XX2WW might be a little offputting to only create X 4/4 Angels, but what if I told you we are actually far more interested in the cycling part of the card. For the rather low cost of 2W we can draw a card at instant speed and then create as many 1/1 soldiers as our mana can stretch to, giving us an instant speed board similar to Secure the Wastes. And whilst are paying 2 more mana for the privilege we get to draw a card AND have a more resilient threat, requiring a counter that can stop abilities rather than just spells.
Soltari Guerillas – Now this is one that your playgroup will definitely have to take a second look at. For 2RW you get a 3/2 with Shadow, which often just reads as “unblockable” and “this creature can’t block”. However, on top of it also being a soldier it has the very interesting ability allowing us, for 0 mana, to choose a creature our opponent controls and have the Guerillas deal their combat damage to it instead, essentially giving us a repeatable Lightning Bolt, a card which is very much playable in EDH.
Worldslayer – Now with an already existent equipment package and the fact we are also playing a Stoneforge Mystic, there is no reason not to play this card. If you can ever suit up Tajic with this and connect with any player, then everything gets destroyed except Worldslayer and our already indestructible general. Now, yes it is mass land destruction, but with the setup required I think its perfectly acceptable and lets face it, you’re already playing Boros, we should be allowed some unfair things.
Now onto the costs of this deck, at the current time of writing our deck comes to a cool $811.34 at TCGplayer mid. Whilst that does sound like a pretty penny indeed, I am a predominantly MTGO commander player and for this deck, with a full suite of lands, powerful artifacts, and many cards which can be used in many other decks, it will only set you back 58.71tix, a fair price if you ask me! Of course, there are ways to shave this price down, cutting out some of the expensive lands is a surefire way to plummet that price as well as cards like Mana Crypt, Stoneforge Mystic and Umezawa’s Jitte. If you make these cuts you could easily get the deck in a very playable state for a fraction of the cost.
Well, that’s all from me, I hope you enjoyed my first deck tech, if you ever want to see any more EDH decks, I currently play a large number of generals and can likely build whatever people would want to see a tech on. So thank you for reading, and see you next time!
