Super janky deck that's fun to set off! Based off of Travis Woo's Act of Bees list, but sticks to red and green on a tighter budget. Wall of text incoming, thanks in advance if you read it all!
The object here is to get out your
Hornet Nest
or
Boros Reckoner
, fill the board with creatures along the way, then wipe the board on turn 4 (possibly by turn 3 with the right opening hand - example below), or even faster if your opponent is running a creature-heavy deck. This is either going to create 13 flying deathtouch tokens for you, do 13 damage to your opponent, or both.
Every creature we play makes
Blasphemous Act
easier to drop.
Birds of Paradise
speeds up our mana base immensely with its flexibility.
Elvish Visionary
gives us another body and draw speed.
Burning-Tree Emissary
pays for itself and gives us another body with some power.
Manamorphose
is essentially a free draw that helps us tear through our deck and flexes our mana to help cast
Boros Reckoner
. At some point, our opponent is going to realize they can't attack us without getting slapped in the face. That's where
Setessan Tactics
comes in: we make them slap themselves in the face. We can also force a fight with one of those squishy 1/1 spirits that we gave our opponent. If we need some extra toughness, the +1/+1 at instant speed is there as a bonus. Also, be aware you can target your own creatures here, and if you're clever, you can pop out some hornets without losing any bodies. Finally,
Chain Reaction
, while weaker in most cases, gives us another option to blow things up in case we're not drawing into our nuke.
Purphoros, God of the Forge
is an awesome drop.
Blasphemous Act
won't kill him. When you blow up your
Hornet Nest
, 13 hornets show up, and I guess they're on fire or something, because your opponent also gets slammed for 26 damage. Once we get some devotion, he also serves as an indestructible big body that we otherwise don't have access to. We only need him as a situational one-of, and if we don't have quite enough on the board to end the game, his shock can close it out. In the deck, he also counts as a creature and can be flashed in with
Chord of Calling
.
Xenagos, the Reveler
does everything we want. He isn't affected by our board wipes, he gives us a ton of mana essentially in our choice of colors, drops decent tokens at no cost that synergize with our ETB shock, and directs removal away from our creatures. His +1 works beautifully with
Blasphemous Act
, and his free tokens help replenish our offense if it stalls. His -6 is absolutely useful in case we need it, but we should rarely have to.
Dosan the Falling Leaf
protects
Xenagos, the Reveler
from getting instantly
Lightning Bolt
ed or countered, as well as our win condition combo.
As far as lands go, the choices are fairly standard.
Forbidden Orchard
does 3 things we love - give us mana flexibility, make
Blasphemous Act
cheaper, and give our opponent a 1/1 that our
Hornet Nest
can block to generate a token, which makes
Blasphemous Act
cheaper again. The "drawback" can actually help us, but is obviously also risky and shouldn't be abused.
Swarmyard
lets us wipe the board and bring
Hornet Nest
back again, lending it some resilience. With so many draw cards, having a scry option in
Temple of Abandon
is a helpful filter.
Westvale Abbey
can work as an outlet if our tokens aren't packing enough power, or if they are at risk of an uncontrolled wipe. Lifelink and indestructible are both obvious pluses. In a non-budget build, shock, fetch, or check lands could improve our speed.
Sideboard picks are all defensive, since our main board isn't doing a lot in the way of defense outside of
Dosan the Falling Leaf
.
Autumn's Veil
helps vs. heavier control decks and removal, since effects that minus us to death yield no tokens. If we play against mill,
Gaea's Blessing
gives us some protection, and a cheap, in-color regen/draw option.
Destructive Revelry
helps slow down their artifact and enchantment game.
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
keeps us from getting completely shut down by infect.
Scavenging Ooze
gives us a creature, access to life gain, a potential big body, and graveyard hate.
Boros Charm
can either protect us from a boardwipe from either our combo or an opponent's blanket burn spells. This could potentially swap out for
Selfless Spirit
.
Gnaw to the Bone
works well with our combo and with an aggressive opponent, and can be flashed back in after a board wipe for a ton of life.
Phyrexian Revoker
is great because it'll help shut down abilities and planeswalkers, but also gives us a mana-flexible body on the board. It can also be
Chord of Calling
ed into play instantly.
Overall, some weaknesses are the few defensive and tough cards this deck runs. It's not quite fast enough to be an aggro deck (generally going off on turn 5) and won't ramp as hard as a mid-range, but falls somewhere in between. The creatures we're filling the board with aren't very tough by themselves. We also don't want to detonate too early, do our 13 damage, and have nothing left to play with. Despite being scary combat matchups, all those 1/1 hornets are still fragile. This deck shines in it's jankiness and should catch people off guard and be really fun to play with, and that's what really matters, right?
For a non-budget build, I suggest splashing white and adding in dual, shock, or fetch lands.
Grand Abolisher
, besides mana restriction in this build, totally trumps
Dosan the Falling Leaf
.
Soulfire Grand Master
can swap in for
Gnaw to the Bone
.
Selfless Spirit
takes the place of
Boros Charm
. If you like danger,
Volcano Hellion
can replace
Chain Reaction
. You get the idea - using creatures instead of instants or sorceries, although
Gift of Immortality
and some hand destruction might be worth considering. There's a million ways you can probably run this, but this cheaper iteration of the deck works well consistently and gets the job done.
Thanks for checking this out and thanks to Travis Woo for sparking the idea! Any feedback is appreciated and welcome!
