I want to start off this deck discussion with a quick description of what you could expect playing this deck. This is a fast killing Boros aggro-enchantress deck. You're going to to sit back for a couple of turns, setting up a defence of devotion-granting enchantments and then BAM!! A player is dead. Standing over them? Your similar-to-but-legally-destinct-from-centaur-Heracles.
How does this deck work during the game then? Well, the general jist is that you whip your opponents' creatures to charge into each through a barbed wire fence to kill themselves and each other. How does it win? Well, by turning a 7/4 indestructable God, often with doublestrike, sideways of course!
So, lets start with a discussion of that central strategy then. It comes in three central parts, the "Barbed Wire," the "Fence," and the "Whips."
The "Barbed Wire" are the cards that hurt our opponents' creatures for attacking. Powerstone Minefield, Caltrops, Lightmine Field and Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile all work to this effect. It's worth noting that three of these four cards are symetrical, but we don't care because Iroas protects us from damage.
Now, it's all well and good having the barbed wire, but it does no good unless our opponents attack in the first place. That's where the "Whips" come in. Our whips are Grand Melee, Master Warcraft, Goblin Spymaster and Fumiko the Lowblood. We have a couple of "pseudo-whips" too. Angel's Trumpet punishes people for not attacking, so much so that they're really going to want to whilst War's Toll and Total War mean if they want to attack with one creature then they're going to have to attack with all of them.
But I think you can see the problem with this strategy. If you opponents are forced to attack why won't they just attack you? And that's why we have the "Fence." These are pillow fort cards that prevent our enemies from attacking us without cost. Ghostly Prison, Baird, Steward of Argive, Archangel of Tithes, Archon of Absolution, Sphere of Safety and Norn's Annex are our core "fence" cards.
And that's the core strategy! However, no deck works off it's central idea alone and as such we have a whole support network with which to work. How the rest of the deck is structured starts with the tutors available. The tutors in this deck are Expedition Map, Enlightened Tutor, Open the Armory, Plea for Guidance, Idyllic Tutor, and last but most certainly not least Sunforger! So, we have one that searches land, one aura searcher, three that search for enchantments, two that search for equipment (one of which will search for any artifact) and finaly Sunforger, that will search and cast any instant of cmc four or less. And this gives us a very solid direction to take the deck. We can either search our value-lands such as Hall of Heliod's Generosity, Mistveil Plains, and Geier Reach Sanitarium or we can search coloured lands like Boros Garrison. This lets us more comfortably play colourless lands such as Slayers' Stronghold and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion. With our other tutors we want to be able to search for removal as well as value cards. As such, we include Darksteel Mutation and Seal of Cleansing for creature and artifact/enchantment removal. I previously had Oblivion Ring in the deck, but with the inclusion of Open the Armory I found that I wanted some form of removal attached to an aura. And, either way, I have come to value the commander removal over the flexibilty of the Ring, and I feel the deck has enough enchantment/artifact removal as is. And finally, in realtion to the tutors, most of the interaction in our deck is on instants with cmc four or less.
Now, let us discuss win conditions. The most obvious is just to kill people one by one with Iroas. Three hits base, two hits with Sunforger, Aurelia, the Warleader, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight or any of the three double strike effects: Duelist's Heritage, Boros Charm or True Conviction. Just one hit if you combine any two of these effects. Sometimes, however, for one reason or another this won't work. In this case we have one or two backups. Repercussion, when combined with our standard array of damaging enchantments can just kill multiple people and leave us unscathed due to Iroas' protection. Starfield of Nyx, Sigil of the Empty Throne and Luminarch Ascension will allow us to go wide if needs be. There are no fancy-shmancy combos or anything. Just beating face.
So now we can go over some other subthemes of the deck.
Enchantment Payoffs: As one can hopefully see, we have a lot of enchantments. Thusly, we want some payoffs for enchantments. Mesa Enchantress, Starfield of Nyx and Sigil of the Empty Throne fill this role. I would like some more but they're mostly in green.
Ramp: Boros is famously shite at this. But we have a few intersting tricks to help us do this. Knight of the White Orchid, Myriad Landscape and Wayfarer's Bauble give us a small amount of land ramp, with the knight being able to search for Mistveil Plains too. Whilst Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Smothering Tithe give us some reoccurring ramp. The philosophy of our mana rocks is that they either cost less than three mana or give us devotion, that way the can power out Iroas on turn 3. Our best and most explosive form of ramp is Oath of Lieges. Whilst this does effect the entire table, Boros going from 5 to 6 mana is far more significant than the green player going from 8 to 9 mana, and thus maximum polictical effort should be expected to protect this enchantment. I threaten to focus and kill the person who touches the Oath first. My playgroup have learned to leave it be.
Draw: Boros is, once again, famously shite at this. Geier Reach Sanitarium, Nahiri, the Harbinger and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea are our only true sources of draw, but our Chandras and Outpost Siege provide us with some "impulsive draw".
And that about sums up the descisions behind the choices of the deck. I hope it was clear and informative! I'll now go over some tips and tricks that I've picked up over gameplay.
1) Never keep a hand of fewer than three land
2) Open the Armory is best used searching for Sunforger
3) In a 1v1 situation a "Whipped" creature does not HAVE to attack when you have cards that make there be cost for attacking you, even if they can pay the cost.
4) Don't play Angel's Trumpet whilst you have no creatures/pillowfort cards.....just trust me here....
5) You can pay kicker costs whilst casting an instant from Sunforger, very useful with Orim's Thunder.
6) Hour of Devastation is included because it both gets round indestructable and can become asymetric with our damage protection.
So yeah, that's all I can think of right now. Please, feel free to let me know what you think! And if you have any suggestions let me know, I'd love to discuss them!
