Iroas, God of Land Reform

Commander / EDH* Enchantment RW (Boros)

Phithinker02

Land (37)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flamekin Village
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld
• 1x High Market
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Rugged Prairie
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Secluded Steppe
• 1x Serra's Sanctum
• 1x Slayers' Stronghold
• 8x Snow-Covered Mountain
• 9x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Sunbaked Canyon
• 1x Tectonic Edge

Sorcery (9)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Open the Vaults
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Replenish
• 1x Rout
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

Creature (18)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Alms Collector
• 1x Captain Lannery Storm
• 1x Cavalier of Flame
• 1x Dire Fleet Daredevil
• 1x Dragon Mage
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Magus of the Wheel
• 1x Mangara, the Diplomat
• 1x Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion
• 1x Neheb, the Eternal
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Runehorn Hellkite
• 1x Seasoned Pyromancer
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Surly Badgersaur
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Instant (9)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Leave / Chance
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Teferi's Protection
• 1x Valakut Awakening  ^Flip
• 1x Wear / Tear

Artifact (9)

• 1x Bag of Holding
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Hammer of Purphoros
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Ruby Medallion
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring

Commander (1)

Enchantment (17)

• 1x Aggravated Assault
• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Curse of Opulence
• 1x Fractured Loyalty
• 1x Gift of Immortality
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Karmic Justice
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Omen of the Forge
• 1x Opalescence
• 1x Parallax Wave
• 1x Planar Collapse
• 1x Seismic Assault
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Spirit Cairn
• 1x Tectonic Reformation
• 1x Underworld Breach

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Maybeboard

Creature (7)

• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Brallin, Skyshark Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• 1x Knollspine Dragon
• 1x Skyclave Apparition
• 1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
• 1x Stonecloaker

Artifact (1)

• 1x Talisman of Conviction

Instant (5)

• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Faith's Shield
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Heliod's Intervention
• 1x Sarkhan's Triumph

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Hate Mirage
• 1x Not Forgotten
• 1x Wrath of God

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Act of Authority
• 1x Darksteel Mutation
• 1x Molten Vortex
• 1x Pursuit of Knowledge
• 1x Spiritual Focus

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Intro

Welcome to Iroas's fair and just land redistribution deck!

What originally started as a deck that played with moving lands between different zones for card advantage, this deck is now honed to an enchantment-based combo deck. It's generally a control deck that tries to stay under the radar, police the board, and then combo off using a few different enchantment-based infinite loops like Opalescence + Parallax Wave. If you like enchantment-based decks, playing interactive games using a color combination not typically known for that play style, and finishing games with a combo flourish, this is a deck for you!

Deck Breakdown

General

Iroas, God of Victory - Usually when people see Iroas across the table they think he's going to feature in the game plan, either by being a team buff in an aggro deck or a focal point of a devotion-style build. In this deck he's actually more of a defensive card. He's got decent stats and is indestructible, making him an excellent blocker. On occasion when the opportunity cost is low, he can go on the offensive to pressure opponents. He gets the nod over other generals largely out of his defensive capabilities and the fact that he's an enchantment. The latter helps with various cards that care about enchantments as we'll cover below.

Mana Ramp

Ancient Tomb - Pretty self-explanatory. Mana ramp on a land is good.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - The deck really leans on permanents, and most of them are colored enchantments. As a result, Nykthos becomes a powerhouse once there's a handful of permanents on the battlefield and becomes one of two go-to ramp lands.

Serra's Sanctum - Ramp land #2. Rewards you for having even a few enchantments on the battlefield, and it only gets better from there. Nykthos and Serra's Sanctum are part of the reason this deck focuses on enchantments as much as it does. They're fairly tutorable, and with the number of wheels and rummaging effects there's a decent chance to draw into these lands.

Boreas Charger - This is conditional ramp, and plays a solid role as a speed bump in the early game. It's an excellent card at helping you catch up with decks that ramp like crazy. If there's a severe imbalance between you and the player with those most lands, this card can do work in fueling things like Seismic Assault and Tectonic Reformation.

Weathered Wayfarer - One of several engine cards. Finds you ramp lands, cycling lands for card draw, utility lands. It does a ton of work for only a single mana, and Boros tends to fall behind other colors in terms of lands on the battlefield, so the conditional clause is usually satisfied.

Commander's Sphere - Colored ramp is pretty good, but this gets the nod over other cards with the same cost as it can sac to draw and can form an infinite combo with Sun Titan (more on that later).

Expedition Map - Serves as a one time unconditional Weathered Wayfarer activation. Everything that is true of Wayfarer is true for this card minus the reusability.

Manascape Refractor - New addition from C20! Currently being tested for its ability to copy any ramp land on the battlefield without getting binned due to the legend rule. This is the reason I don't run any copy lands. Might swap with Mind Stone if it turns out that it doesn't quite do enough.

Pearl Medallion - Most of the important permanents in the deck are white, so the cost reduction of this card can really speed things up on a given turn. This enables the Opalescence + Parallax Wave combo to get played on turn 6 instead of turn 8, for example.

Sol Ring - This thing is dece.

Curse of Opulence - Pretty conditional and requires astute assessment of who can reliably attack as well as the table's threat assessment. However, few cards fulfill a ramp function and are also an enchantment.

Smothering Tithe - Combo piece, format all-star. The interaction between this and wheel effects is one this deck reliably exploits.

Card Advantage

Academy Rector - On-board tutor, defensive deterrent, brings any enchantment onto the battlefield and potentially does it at instant speed with sac outlets like Goblin Bombardment and High Market. Typically used to find missing combo and engine pieces. One of the most powerful cards in the deck.

Recruiter of the Guard - Finds lots of critical pieces for the deck. Effectively a combo piece tutor by finding Seasoned Pyromancer, Academy Rector, or Grand Abolisher for protection from interaction on the turn you go off. It can also find mana fixing and ramp via Weathered Wayfarer and Boreas Charger. This card does some serious heavy lifting.

Gamble, Idyllic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor - More tutors! There's definitely a critical mass of these, and one of the reasons the deck has more consistency than one would expect for Boros. Gamble occasionally wiffs, but the risk gets mitigated by having a hand stuffed with lands and other cards as well as multiple ways to recur lost cards.

Land Tax - One of the key enablers of the deck. Card advantage largely comes out of rummaging away lands in hand into other cards, plus wheel effects. It is one of the few cards that actually puts additional cards into hand and nets card advantage, and it can also provide fuel for some of the board control elements like Molten Vortex and Seismic Assault. Also since it's an enchantment there's several ways to tutor for it.

Scroll Rack - the O.G. partner to Land Tax. It's an all-star on its own right, turning lands and dead cards into potentially more useful cards. With the various shuffle effects, the card advantage potential of Scroll Rack gets that much better.

Tectonic Reformation - Scroll Rack #2. Forms one of the core engines of the deck with Land Tax, and it's a great engine on its own right when looting away lands. With Surly Badgersaur, all lands cycle for free which is just gravy.

Outpost Siege - One of the finishers of the deck when paired with the Opalescence + Parallax Wave loop. Also just fantastic for the Khans mode card advantage and is sometimes a tutor target for when there's nothing else I can assemble on the board.

Pursuit of Knowledge - One of those sleepers that few decks seem to run. It's a pet card, but it also fits so perfectly when there's so much looting going on. Normally in a white-based deck a card like this would be too painful to run, but when paired with cycling lands and other loot effects it becomes way easier to activate within a single turn cycle. Personally I love it for the surprised expression on my opponents' faces when they see it. It can also do fun things with repeatable recursion from Starfield of Nyx.

Magus of the Wheel, Wheel of Fortune, Runehorn Hellkite, Reforge the Soul - Wheel effects. Refill the hand, make massive amounts of mana with Smothering Tithe, combo off with the latter + the non-creature versions + Underworld Breach. Magus comes down early but rarely eats removal, and Hellkite is fairly easy to sneak into the graveyard with multiple discard outlets in the deck.

Mesa Enchantress - The deck runs lots of enchantments, so it fits really well.

Skullclamp - Most of the creatures in this deck are pretty sacrificial thanks to their ETB abilities. Since many of the bodies are pretty disposable, Skullclamp becomes a solid option for generating even more value for cheap. Most fun when paired with Spirit Cairn and other repeatable token generation effects.

Bag of Holding - When it comes to a deck that does a ton of discarding, finding ways to refill your hand becomes pretty critical. This artifact does that in spades, holding onto your loot while turning dead cards into new ones on its own. The bag does some fun tricks with Sun Titan, Seismic Assault, Tectonic Reformation, and C20 newcomer Surly Badgersaur. Also acts as an insurance policy for wheel effects and discard effects from my opponents.

Desert of the True, Desert of the Fervent, Forgotten Cave, Secluded Steppe - Cycling lands. They are tutorable with Weathered Wayfarer, serve as fuel for Pursuit of Knowledge, and in the case of the deserts, provide additional utility with Scavenger Grounds for graveyard removal. Sunbaked Canyon gets an honorable mention as effectively a land that cycles from the battlefield.

Geier Reach Sanitarium - Tutorable, repeatable rummage land. Interacts really well with Smothering Tithe and Spirit Cairn.

Cavalier of Flame - This card has a metric ton of utility packed into it. ETB selective rummage, mass haste and team buff, aggressive stats, significantly contributes to your devotion count, and a death trigger that has incredible synergy with this deck as lots of lands get dumped into the graveyard.

Seasoned Pyromancer - Great rummage trigger, and it turns useless nonland cards into tokens while digging me into combo pieces. It's a fantastic early game card, generates bodies for Skullclamp, and it can serve as a tutorable combo piece. If I'm hellbent it's also pure card advantage. With a Gift of Immortality and sac outlet it becomes a card advantage engine.

Faithless Looting - Digs real deep for cheap, turning lands in hand into potentially real cards. Also sets up explosive plays with mass recursion like Replenish, and it triggers discard payoffs. All around solid card.

Restoration Specialist - Decent 2-for-1 recursion on a tutorable body. It gets the nod over Auramancer variants that have an ETB trigger because I can activate it at instant speed and it gets artifacts, a few of which are valuable.

Sun Titan - Format all-star, combo piece, great beater. Holy crap does it do work here. Most of my cards are CMC 3 and below, so the Titan usually has targets. Great beater, but mostly it's the triggers we care about. It combos with Gift of Immortality and Goblin Bombardment, both of which are easy to excavate out of the yard. Also does insane things with one of the other enchantment combos in the deck, which I'll elaborate on later.

Removal

Austere Command - One of the best board wipes in all of EDH. Typically I use it for creature removal, and occasionally artifacts. Easily one-sided when most of the deck doesn't care about its creatures and heavily leans on enchantments.

Rout - Instant-speed Wrath. This card is perfect as it helps shore up the early game, and considering how fast the meta has gotten over the years, having early removal is important to making it to the later stages of the game. Late game this card becomes a blowout.

Wrath of God - The O.G. 'Nuff said.

Aura of Silence - Possibly one of the most frustrating cards for my opponents to play against. People have an irrational hatred for it. I wonder why...

Darksteel Mutation - There are a lot of commanders now that are not only threatening due to their abilities, but are also cheap enough to recast should they get killed a couple of times. The only removal that effectively deals with that are effects that shut down the commander but keep them on the battlefield. This is the only option in white that not only neuters utility commanders, but also shuts down the option of recasting from the command zone as the indestructibility makes it harder for them to die, and it comes down early enough to keep those commanders from spiraling out of control.

Karmic Justice - Not removal in the sense that I can cast this and affect the game proactively. It's more of a defensive card that says, "Leave me alone." Sometimes if people wipe my board though they'll pay a pretty hefty penalty for doing so.

Molten Vortex - Early game instant speed interaction. Turns fuel from Land Tax and other land tutor effects into a repeatable Shock, which can be critical when dealing with low-toughness combo commanders and annoying utility creatures.

Omen of the Forge - Instant-speed Shock on an enchantment. The scry ability is occasionally useful and can be fun when paired with Starfield of Nyx, Sun Titan, or other repeatable recursion effects. Also serves as a combo piece and win-con through infinite flicker loops.

Parallax Wave - Combo piece, amazing defensive deterrent, hits any creature at instant speed. Often, just casting this to remove one problematic creature and hold for a few turns is enough to dissuade most opponents from either casting another threat or attacking you with a valuable beater. There are no replacements for this card, so protecting it is very important. Luckily once the combo with Opalescence or Starfield gets going, it protects itself and the rest of your creatures. As long as this is animated, it becomes very difficult for opponents to interact, let alone keep any creatures on the battlefield.

Planar Collapse - Enchantment-based wrath! It takes a turn for it to do anything, which is a big downside. However, the fact that it's an enchantment makes it easy to recur, and its cheap cost makes it great at all points in the game. In the early game this can slow down board development as opponents will be reluctant to commit lots of resources early, or your opponents will walk into the trigger. Either way it's a win-win!

Seal of Cleansing - Another instant-speed onboard removal piece. Recurrable, hits artifacts AND enchantments, is cheap enough to shut down early plays, and serves as a nice rattlesnake when there are no targets on the battlefield.

Seismic Assault - Fun police, discard outlet, and win-con all in one package. Ups your devotion count which is sometimes relevant. Mostly gets used to kill problem creatures, but it can also turn into a win-con in some of the loops in this deck. Best paired with Land Tax for maximum fun.

Utility

Grand Abolisher - Protects you from interaction on your turn (incredibly important for combo safety), tutorable, and contributes to devotion for Iroas.

Surly Badgersaur - Newcomer from C20! The first two modes are usually skipped, but that last mode is exactly the kind of effect this deck has been waiting for. It turns Seismic Assault and other discard effects into mana generation, which is incredible value. This also allows lands to cycle for free with Tectonic Reformation out. It can even form a combo with the Parallax Wave + Opalescence loop, Sun Titan, Bag of Holding, and Seismic Assault.

Replenish - One of the best reasons to be an enchantment-based deck. The default mode is to use this to recover from a mass board wipe. This also enables explosive plays with looting cards into your graveyard to later cheat into play.

Open the Vaults - Replenish #2, although this comes with both the added benefit of bringing artifacts back and the downside of being symmetrical for opponents.

Elixir of Immortality - Library replenishment. Specifically benefits Land Tax and keeps you from running out of ammo, and it becomes even more useful when considering the number of wheels, looting, and discard effects. Protects your graveyard in a pinch, and gains you life to boot.

Leave / Chance - Protects your permanents from targeted removal and board wipes alike. Also useful for resetting auras like Gift of Immortality, Darksteel Mutation, and Curse of Opulence. Chance is tailor made for this deck, serving as yet another way to pitch dead cards (and selectively too!) to dig for combo pieces.

Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast - There's a lot of annoying blue cards in the format that are difficult to interact with outside of hand disruption and counterspells. Being able to stop a Cyclonic Rift or Expropriate for one mana is a super sweet deal, and the permanent removal mode is also nuts.

Teferi's Protection - Rift/ wipe protection, and buys you a turn to combo off no matter what your opponents do.

Blind Obedience - One of many cards for slowing down the game. Prevents blowouts from mass haste or busted artifact plays, plus gains a bit of life.

Ghostly Prison - Defensive deterrent, and great for surviving the early game. Most people don't pay unless they're way ahead on mana or playing a voltron deck.

Gift of Immortality - Turns any ETB/LTB creature into an engine or repeatable effect with a sac outlet. Also turns any creature into a speed bump. Combos with Sun Titan and Goblin Bombardment for infinite damage. Criminally underplayed.

Goblin Bombardment - Combo piece, engine piece, protection against exile effects, and occasionally picks off small creatures.

Omen of the Sun - Instant-speed token generation isn't bad, and it can serve as a combo piece for infinite life and tokens via the Parallax Wave loop.

Opalescence - Enchantment animation effect #1 and one of the main combo pieces of the deck. Can also enable enchantment beatdowns and silly interactions with other cards too.

Spirit Cairn - Discard payoff. Probably one of the most skill-testing cards in the deck as it is hard to evaluate whether you should spend mana on making tokens or doing other things. That said, it pairs beautifully with Geier Reach to generate board presence for little investment, and generating flying tokens at instant-speed can catch opponents off guard or throw off combat math. Also does wonderful things with Skullclamp.

Starfield of Nyx - Enchantment animation effect #2. Repeatable recursion, and can help cheat bigger enchantments onto the battlefield with discard effects.

Underworld Breach - The most busted card in the deck. Forms a combo with any non-creature wheel effect and Smothering Tithe. Recasting tutors repeatedly and using discarded lands for fuel makes this such a powerful inclusion and is often the reason for comboing off on a single turn.

Combos

The secret sauce. The deck is primarily based around 3 combos, with other cards interacting with them for redundancy or added coolness.

Combo #1 - The Parallax Wave + Opalescence Loop

The combo starts with getting Parallax Wave and either Starfield of Nyx and at least three other enchantments or Opalescence on the battlefield.

Step 1: Target up to 4 creatures with Parallax Wave.

Step 2: Target Parallax Wave with itself since it's a creature. When the ability resolves, Parallax Wave will leave the battlefield, triggering the last ability. All creatures previously exiled with Parallax Wave, including itself, will return to the battlefield.

Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2.

This creates an infinite flicker loop. For permanent exile, you merely need to change the timing of activations. With the first ability on the stack, exile Wave so that the LTB trigger goes off. Wave will return, but since it's a new object and the LTB trigger resolved before the exile ability did, the original targets do not return.

At a minimum, this combo creates a lock where creatures you don't want on the battlefield will end up in exile. What gets more interesting is what happens when you pair this loop with the various ETB effects from your own creatures and animated enchantments:

Outpost Siege set to Dragons Mode OR Omen of the Forge: Infinite damage to any targets. Note that if you have Outpost Siege on the battlefield set to Khans mode, you can flicker it to reset to Dragons since it is a creature.

Seasoned Pyromancer: Loot through as much of your deck as you want, generating a lot of tokens in the process. With Surly Badgersaur this generates mana, and with Goblin Bombardment you can sac the tokens for the damage kill. If you're missing a combo piece to win, this guarantees you'll find it and win on the spot if you have mana. Typically Omen of the Forge is the piece to go for in this scenario.

Cavalier of Flame: Same as Pyromancer, but minus the tokens.

Recruiter of the Guard: Find as many creatures with toughness 2 or less as you want. Typically grabs Grand Abolisher to protect your combo, then finds Pyromancer if you haven't drawn into a finisher yet or Rector if you have a way to kill it.

Omen of the Sun: Generate infinite life and tokens. Doesn't win you the game immediately, and gives your opponents a turn to do something, but if paired with Goblin Bombardment it's GG.

Sun Titan: Infinite recursion of permanents with CMC3 or less (of which there are many).

Sun Titan + Commander's Sphere: Draw your deck and generate mana equal to the number of times you repeat the process. You might deck yourself without the use of Elixir of Immortality, so this loop is conditionally infinite.

Sun Titan + Goblin Bombardment: Sac bombardment or any creature with CMC3 or less to itself. Bring back with Sun Titan and repeat for infinite damage.

Sun Titan + Tectonic Edge + Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx OR Serra's Sanctum: Generate infinite mana.

Sun Titan + Sunbaked Canyon: Draw a card. By recurring discarded lands, you can repeat this process. With Seismic Assault you can keep pitching lands to draw more cards. Infinite mana also works.

Sun Titan + Seismic Assault + Bag of Holding + Surly Badgersaur: Discard at least 4 lands and generate 4 mana. Use the mana to activate the Bag, returning the lands to hand. Blink Titan to get back the Bag. Repeat for infinite damage to any number of targets.

Note: if you are looping with Starfield instead of Opalescence, you need at least 6 enchantments on the battlefield to combo off with any of the non-creature pieces.

Combo #2 - Gifted Titan

This combo is much more compact and straightforward than the previous. All you need is Sun Titan on the battlefield, Gift of Immortality either on hand or the graveyard, and Goblin Bombardment either on the battlefield or in the graveyard. Sun Titan can either get enchanted by Gift or have it attach via the ETB trigger. Sac the enchanted Titan to Goblin Bombardment to deal 1 damage to any target. Sun Titan returns to the battlefield. With the ETB trigger, pick up Gift from the graveyard and attach to Sun Titan. Repeat the process for infinite damage.

The combo fits in the deck really well as two of the three pieces are easily tutorable, and there's a lot of flexibility in assembling them from different zones. On top of that, each individual piece is pretty powerful on its own.

Combo #3 - Underworld Breach + Wheel effect + Smothering Tithe

This is another compact combo but is fairly easy to assemble as well. Have Smothering Tithe and Underworld Breach on the battlefield. Cast either Wheel of Fortune or Reforge the Soul and generate 7 treasure tokens for each opponent (most likely people won't be able to pay for most of the Smothering Tithe triggers). Cast any cards from you hand and leave enough treasures to pay the mana cost of the wheel effect, then use at least three cards in the graveyard to pay for the escape cost. Repeat and you'll eventually draw into the other win conditions.

This interaction is largely an enabler for the previous combos, but the main benefit is that it enables the kind of explosive plays typically reserved for Green ramp or Storm-style decks. You can generate tons of mana, draw any number of cards, and cast tons of spells all in one turn. With mana ramp this interaction can happen as early as turn 5 or even 4, and it is responsible for the fastest wins in the deck.

Game Play

Opening Hand

An average opening hand consists of at least two lands, some way to draw or tutor for additional lands, and some low CMC early plays. Ideally there's at least one removal spell in hand. Removal is critical to making it to the later stages of the game, but if there is none you'll have to lean on draw power to find answers or cards that can slow/ disrupt your opponents long enough to get an engine online.

Early Game (turns 1 - 4)

There is not a lot of early ramp, so the name of the game here is setup. You want to prioritize getting defensive cards and onboard tricks onto the board, police any problem creatures or other permanents, and don't draw too much attention to yourself. The highest priority is to hit land drops though, so any opportunity to tutor and draw for lands should be taken. It's ok to spend removal early as there's lots of ways to recur and refuel cards and answers once a card advantage engine comes online.

Mid Game (turns 5 - 7)

At this point people start making strong plays, either off of ramp and card draw or playing threats that demand answers. You'll still be taking a controlling, defensive posture. Ideally you've drawn into a wrath effect or answers that can interact with your opponent's board. You'll have to rely on politics in case neither of those are true. This deck really relies on flying under the radar with lots of deterrents and things that say "Don't mess with me."

Late Game (turns 8+)

Assuming you haven't drawn a god hand and you've been answering threats in a strategic manner, most board wipes and creature removal typically leave you unscathed. This deck doesn't really care about its creatures, so there's lots of speed bumps, removal, and defensive cards to help you get to the later stage where you can start casting multiple tutors and combo enablers. There's also pretty decent recovery power should people target your permanents with things like Aura Shards. A lot of combo pieces have their own utility, so they should have been deployed in the earlier turns. All you need is to draw or tutor your way into any missing pieces and go off!

Alternatively, if it's been a particularly interactive game you can always go on the beatdown path with Iroas and animated enchantments or a mass of creature tokens. Cavalier of Flame plus a ton of creatures can be very threatening, especially thanks to the mass haste ability.

Alternative Directions

On the deck construction level, this is still a work in progress. There are many ways to build this deck outside of the core components: RW cycling, enchantments skewing red for more damage based effects, or going on a heavier stax build. Cycling is even more tempting to try now that C20 and Ikoria have really boosted support for that in Boros.

Thoughts on Stax

This deck can break symmetry with cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth or Winter Orb due to the deck's ability to draw cards at instant speed and running lands that can produce a lot more than a single mana per turn. Alms Collector is particularly nasty with wheel effects. I've chosen not to pursue this path largely out of a meta choice, but I'm really curious as to how to build the deck more in that kind of direction. Stax as a play style runs counter to this deck's reliance on flying under the radar, so it's not easy to incorporate a few elements here and there and expect people to turn a blind eye. However, given the increasing speed of the format I may have to bite the bullet if I want games to last past turn 6 in metas that are mid to high power.

Inspiration for the Deck

History and Theme

In order to get into the inspiration for this deck, a brief history lesson is in order:

During various revolutionary times in the 20th century, peasants in countries with large agricultural sectors would demand for land reforms from the landed elites who controlled and owned vast swaths of the land the peasants toiled on. The great majority of the wealth produced by the peasants went to the landed elites, with little left for the peasants beyond subsistence. As rebellions went under way over the course of the century, the demands for reforms would give rise to more radical demands such as land redistribution.

Boros, as we all know, is the color combination that represents revolutionary fervor and righteous zeal. It's pretty fitting that any deck that tries to encapsulate the feeling of the aforementioned history would feature this color combination!

On top of that, this deck is largely defined by 2 things: its interactions with lands and enchantments. It is an enchantments deck at heart with all the usual goodies (Serra's Sanctum, Replenish, Academy Rector, etc.), but it also has a few engines that feature discarding lands for effects and value. The best of these is Land Tax + Tectonic Reformation. Hence the title: God of Land Reform!

Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.97
Tokens	Elemental 1/1 R, Enchantment Golem 3/3 C, Gold, Spirit 1/1 W, Treasure
Folders	inspiration