Fresh-Faced Recruit

Creature — Human Soldier

As long as it's your turn, Fresh-Faced Recruit has first strike.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (8)

SlitherySnek on Winota, Human Tamers

3 years ago

Master Splicer seems a bit slow and out of place. Trying to cast it normally without a Winota trigger seems to always put me off curve. When I have been play testing this deck, it's always the first card I sideboard out. Maybe cutting it and looking for another human instead like Ardenvale Tactician that way you could send use it for its adventure spell first. Also, maybe a card like Bounty Agent would give you more utility against all of the legendary creatures coming in Ikoria. Apostle of Purifying Light might make for a good sideboard against black. Maybe even cards like Fervent Champion, Fresh-Faced Recruit, Ghor-Clan Wrecker, Haazda Marshal, Hero of Precinct One, or Inspiring Captain might help you curve out a stay aggressive a little better than some of your other choices like Agent of Treachery. Just suggestions.

LadyZ on Religion is War

4 years ago

Some of the cards you're running aren't the best in commander. Some cards I'd look at cutting are Renewed Faith , Repel the Darkness , Gideon's Reproach , Vengeance , Tectonic Rift , Demotion , Demolish , Screaming Shield , and Fresh-Faced Recruit .

There are a variety of cards you could look at adding, depending on the exact focus of your deck. Some cards you will likely want regardless however are Boros Charm , Swords to Plowshares , Path to Exile , Smothering Tithe , Commander's Sphere , Solemn Simulacrum , Burnished Hart , Staff of Nin , and Marshal's Anthem

Boza on Will Conditional First Strike Become …

5 years ago

I would argue that conditional first strike is bad, because on other people's turns, that creature is basically vanilla. Having regular first strike allows you to have a decision to leave back a blocker with first strike, as it can "trade up" for an opponent's creature.

Leaving a Fresh-Faced Recruit back, you will rarely ever block with him, as he is worse than a Grizzly Bear on defense. Thus you are either attacking or not doing anything with him, leaving you less options and worse creatures.

DespairFaction on Tajic, slayer of control Deck

5 years ago

Hey, so Ive actually been working on the Boros strategy guide. And you exhibit a problem of one of the first topics that Im going to be talking about. Which is trying to build aggro the same way you would for RDW in standard. This is a big issue that a lot of people run into when building Boros, and it shows up very frequently with Iroas. Anyway, ill have a whole video on that. But that main point is here that your primary damage shouldn't be coming from 1 and 2 drops. The bulk of your damage should come from 4-7 drops. So you'll need to go bigger than what you have right here. Not so big that you get blown out by counterspells and removal, but anything you land into play should have at least some impact. Your 1 and 2 drop creatures should be all about abilities, not about damage. A few examples would be cards like puresteel paladin, stone forge mystic, and grand abolisher. Awesome abilities, and although they may attack when its profitable to do so, damage isn't their primary purpose. And when you think about it, of course low cost creatures can't live up to the damage that something like an Aurelia or Gisela will pump out. So the summary, small creatures should be about value and ability, bigger creatures are more about the damage, but should still have good abilities. One last point, while it is possible to aggro out a table on turn 5 or 6 with something like Aurelia, which I've done. Its so so weak to removal. One board wipe can completely crumble a deck like this, so we want to mitigate that risk as much as possible.

What all of that means is that we want to be cutting low costed creatures that don't give us much benefit, and replace them with higher costed things that have a lot more thump. So heres what I would cut: Leonin Vanguard , Boros Challenger , Fresh-Faced Recruit , Sun Sentinel , id probably also cut the Akroan Hoplite . There are times when it can be good, but there are enough times where its not good that I don't love it.

As far as creatures to add, you can take a look at my Tajic list. I believe I got really clunky around 4 mana, lots of good soldiers there. Also like Lena at the top to protect against board wipes. 2 that I missed were the exile creatures one, and the 6 mana lord one.

You'll generally want the creature count to be between 25-30 for a swarm style deck, but if you wanted to be a bit more controlling then you can drift down to 20 or so.

As far as stopping control. here are the things to think about. You don't need to kill a control deck on turn 5 to be successful. You can kill them turn 9 or 10 as long as you keep them off whatever their plan is, which generally comes down to removal. I cant mention it enough times how much I love running wear/tear, crush contraband, and return to dust all in the same deck, usually with an austere command to boot.

Some classic control breaker cards are Grand Abolisher you have the flail already, and Price of Glory . Becareful with price of glory. Thalia is good against the free counterspells if those are an issue. Cavern of souls is pricey but helpful for a tribal deck.

Another thing to consider is that you'll generally have a lot of creatures on the ground, so you can block for planes walkers. And walkers are usually good for control. The best ones in boros are usually Chandra, Torch of Defiance , Elspeth, Sun's Champion , and Chandra, Flamecaller is very reasonable, oh and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar . Either Nahiri is also fine, but not usually overwhelming.

And one final bit of control breaking Keldon Firebombers is a soldier. You can decide if thats a route you want to go.

At the macro level, your land count will need to come up as your deck gets higher on cmc. 37 lands is the place to be. Your spell count could come down slightly, I would consolidate the artifact/enchantment removal into the 3 mentioned above, unless you have some really meta specific things you are tuning for.

Again check out my list for some interesting adds. My list isn't perfect, theres a few things I would change. I probably need to cut a few artifacts and creatures for wear/tear, crush contraband, return to dust and also just smooth out the curve a bit more. But its a very good start.

Best of luck!

Boza on None

5 years ago

The Fresh-Faced Recruit versus Sunhome Stalwart is more about the flavor behind each card. Check out the flavor of the recruit - it talks about ideals, which is very white-centric, but also emotions, which is a very red thing to do. The stalwart is more focused on using its battle prowess to teach and nurture those weaker - a strictly white thing.

Boza on None

5 years ago

I should clarify - you want to know the philosophy of or the philosophy of ?

Hybrid mana represent what each color can do on its own that is shared eg Fresh-Faced Recruit is something that can be either mono-white or mono-red. It represents the parts of the colors that match.

Having both colors next to each other represents what the colors can do when working together, rather than on their own. For example, Undercity Uprising is a black/green card - the black part gives all your creatures deathtouch. Green is the primary color for fight cards. So, bring the two together and you get Undercity Uprising.

On Ravnica you have both. Which one are you most interested in?

Bushmonkey on Returning player

5 years ago

Great I'll throw it in.

My only other issue now is that I don't have a full player of anything. I have 3x Boros Challenger but only a max of 2 of everything else worth putting in. Also can't decide on which creature to use between Sunhome Stalwart or Fresh-Faced Recruit. One has constant 1st strike but the other has the mana colour flexibility. Opinions??

Yamfish on Boros Aggro

5 years ago

Simply out of curiosity, what makes you want to run Fresh-Faced Recruit over Sunhome Stalwart?