This is my Akiri-Bruse (RW, Japan) Aggro-Control deck for multiplayer edh. I've played many games with it now and honestly think it's the best boros deck out there. If you've ever played legacy Parfait, this is pretty much the edh equivalent of it. In fact, I'm confident that the ideas underlying legacy parfait are currently the only viable way to make a competitive RW deck in multiplayer edh.
If you are curious about legacy Parfait, go check:
Chances are that if you've ever searched for an Akiri list before, it had a whole bunch of equipments, some good, some bad, and some really bad. Let me say this right away: The all-in voltron idea is a bad one and only suitable for gimmicky lists (casual). I agree that we should take advantage of Akiri's ability but that's not how we do it. My reasoning is that RW has very limited access to card advantage spells and therefore, every card you play must have an immediate impact on the board and be as efficient as possible (x for 1, in which x > 1). RW also has very limited access to tutors, so whatever you think RW does well, there should be multiple cards with that same function (functional redundancy). Equipments usually do nothing when you cast them, you need to spend additional mana to equip most of the time, and they always require creatures to work. Our main equipments should be the ones that draw us cards because that's what we need the most in RW, and that's it.
The most common mistake that I see in deckbuilding is that a deck should be built either top-down (your list is built around your commander) or bottom-up (your commander is chosen based on your list), when in reality, deckbuilding in edh should find the balance between these two ways of building a deck. In our context, this means that a good Akiri-Bruse deck will be able to rely on them to finish the game but will also be able to find other ways when the game requires us to do that. This is where the control part of the deck comes in. We keep resources in check to minimize the chances of our opponents making big plays and while they try to come back or further develop their board, we get our aggro part of the deck online.
The deck has interactions that help us overcome RW's main weakness (card advantage) and break parity in single turns. I talked about such interactions in the next section.
Main interactions
There are two particularly strong interactions in the deck. The first is the ability to tutor for lands and use them to generate card advantage. In short, it's the same principle you have with tax-rack (
Scroll Rack
+
Land Tax
): You get multiple lands and trade them for spells with cards that allow you to either put them back in your library (
Scroll Rack
) or loot them away (e.g.,
Faithless Looting
,
Daretti, Scrap Savant
,
Nahiri, the Harbinger
). Notable spells that let you tutor lands are
Land Tax
,
Tithe
,
Weathered Wayfarer
, and
Gift of Estates
, which are all good on their own as well because the deck plays less lands than most.
The second interaction is between
Teferi's Protection
and whole board wipes, such as
Cataclysm
and
Jokulhaups
. I've prefered to play teferi over
Boros Charm
because teferi has synergy with cataclysm and
Keldon Firebombers
, whereas boros charm does not. Briefly, you float mana, cast teferi to phase your stuff out, and then cast cataclysm or jokul. This is a very good mid- and late-game strategy, when the game can quickly get out of control, owing to the amount of resources your opponents have available.
Other interactions
Bruse has an interesting interaction with
Immolating Souleater
(or its big brother,
Moltensteel Dragon
). If you are curious about it, I talked and formalized the basic interaction on reddit post (https://redd.it/7phqk1). The interaction is much stronger in 1v1 but in multiplayer, I don't think it's worth a slot.
Final remarks
This is a skill-intensive list and a challenging one to pilot. I've avoided playing blue for some time now because it feels like cheating, owing to the fact that many blue spells are on such a different power-level that even in the hands of a bad player, they will win the game for you. When you try to play edh without blue, skill plays a larger role in the game. (If you give a tuned RW list to a bad player, I can guarantee you such a player won't ever win against good opponents. But if give a tuned Ux list to a bad player, there's always a chance that such a player will pull a win against good opponents.)
I've played with RW lists before and this deck feels different than the regular (bad) boros list. Much of it has to do with its ability to generate card advantage in a color combination that usually does a bad job at it. In addition, the deck is surprisingly flexible against the various strategies we see in edh, and its capacity for big, game-breaking plays will teach your opponents to give RW the respect it deserves.
This deck is not Tier 1 but I'd say that at the very least, it's Tier 2. You'll see me testing one or two cards from time to time but I think this list is pretty tight now and close to its final form. Keep in mind that many card choices should be meta dependent, so customize the list accordingly and make it your own. As long as you keep its core principles (legacy parfait, tax-rack engine), there are definitely room for customization. All that I can say is that if you wanna try something new, give this one a try. You won't regret it.
Single-card discussion
This is the section where I talk about some of my more controversial card choices. This section will likely change more often than the others, as I add and remove cards, review previous opinions about specific cards, and so on.
Land tutor package (
Land Tax
,
Weathered Wayfarer
,
Tithe
,
Gift of Estates
): This package includes a set of the best land tutors that we have access to in white. We play lots of basics, so we can abuse them. They are here for two main reasons. First, we play an arguably low number of lands and therefore, such cards let us develop our board when we are not drawing lands. Second, they function as fodder for loot effects--that is, we trade lands for spells. The best synergy is with
Scroll Rack
: we get lands, put them back in the deck, and "draw" a proportional number of random cards (likely spells because we don't play many lands). In fact, if you are playing any non-gimmicky RW list, it's my opinion that you ought to play this package and things that synergize with it. This is how we usually "draw" multiple cards per turn and have the necessary gas to deal with multiple opponents.
Mass land destruction (
Ruination
,
Ravages of War
,
Armageddon
): I've talked about MLD elsewhere (Grenzo Mono-Red Aggro-Control). In brief, they are a necessary tool for certain colors and color combinations, and Boros is one of them. If you think otherwise, you're being naive. In RW, we don't have the luxury of running unconstrained permission spells (
Mana Drain
,
Counterspell
) or disrupt our opponents' hand (
Mind Twist
,
Thoughtseize
), so we are at the mercy of whatever our opponents are able to cast. Resource denial is a proactive strategy that deals with the latter statement, and MLD is an integral part of such strategy. Personally, I prefer the one-sided nature of
Ruination
over ravages/geddon, and because it usually hurts players who are trying to pull game-breaking plays more than players who are trying to play fair magic. If you play ravages effects, I'd also suggest playing
Crucible of Worlds
.
Moon effects (
Blood Moon
,
Magus of the Moon
): The bane of multicolor decks. Boros is particularly good at finding them, too, because we have enchantment tutors (
Idyllic Tutor
,
Enlightened Tutor
) and 2/2 creature tutors (
Recruiter of the Guard
,
Imperial Recruiter
). Moon effects are part of our resource denial strategy and whenever I'm playing against multicolored decks and my opponents start casting nonbasics,
Blood Moon
is more likely than not your win con (start planning how to resolve it asap).
Whole board wipes (
Cataclysm
,
Jokulhaups
): Our mid- and late-game reset button. It's in the nature of multiplayer edh that sooner or later, the board will get to a state that you won't be able to control it as well as before (e.g., there's a large number of creatures on the board, players ramping and setting up big plays, lots of enchantments/artifacts all over the board). This is when such spells come handy. We also play spells that have excellent synergy with them (e.g.,
Teferi's Protection
) and will end the game on the spot if they resolve (it's our boros combo if you will, even though victory is not always guaranteed). They require a good deal of planning to break their inherent symmetry and should not be cast carelessly. If you've just started playing magic/edh, they are not for you.
Ranger of Eos
: This deck is Eos for a ranger of eos. I've never thought I'd play this card until I noticed how strong it is in RW. Specifically, it's a 3/2 creature that gets a 6/6 flying lifelink creature that costs a single W (
Serra Ascendant
) and a land tutor (
Weathered Wayfarer
) or protection (
Mother of Runes
) or graveyard recursion (
Goblin Welder
). Enough said.
Recruiters (
Imperial Recruiter
,
Recruiter of the Guard
): They tutor over 90% of our creatures and because they are creatures themselves, we can equip them to get even more value. They also curve perfectly with Akiri and Bruse (Akiri at 2 CMC, recruiters at 3 CMC, bruse at 4 CMC). Most of the time, they will tutor for
Stoneforge Mystic
, as it gets us
Skullclamp
or another equipment that lets us generate card advantage. If card advantage is not a problem, they can get us removal for a pesky enchantment and a rock (
Duergar Hedge-Mage
).
Bazaar of Baghdad
: This was suggested to me by another player (elfric) and I've been pretty happy with it since then. It makes the land tutor package even stronger because it adds a source of loot to the package itself (i.e., you can tutor it with wayfarer to loot away other lands tutored with wayfarer or any other spell from the land tutor package). It has good synergy with graveyard recursion (
Goblin Welder
,
Daretti, Scrap Savant
), too, and lets us dig deeper for silver bullets.
Equipment package (
Sword of Fire and Ice
,
Mask of Memory
,
Skullclamp
,
Lightning Greaves
): 75% of our equipments let us generate card advantage. The only exception is LG, which lets us haste our commanders and protect them at the same time. It also protects creatures like
Magus of the Moon
and
Serra Ascendant
, and it lets us activate
Goblin Welder
as soon as it hits the board to return another equipment or other source of card draw (
Memory Jar
,
Sandstone Oracle
). Surprisingly enough, SFI is the worst equipment of the package, owing to its casting and activation costs and bad synergy with Bruse Tarl (pro-red means we target an equipped creature). Mask and clamp are the best equipments of the package. Mask lets us trade lands for spells and works very well with Bruse Tarl. Don't be afraid of letting our commanders die to draw cards with clamp because drawing cards is often better than wasting too much mana to recast any of them.
More to come...
List for 1v1 EDH
Here's my take on a 1v1 list of this deck, following the same banned list (multiplayer EDH banned list): Akiri-Bruse (RW) Aggro-Control 1v1. I do not update the 1v1 list as often as this one.
I'm back to review cards from the latest three sets that we might want to add to this deck. Here's a list of cards that I added and the ones I had to remove to make room for the new ones:
Cards added:
-- Arcane Signet and Talisman of Conviction: Early game rocks that will produce WR. Instant addition to the deck. Arcane Signet is a straight up better Fellwar Stone, so I know what I'll remove to add it. Talisma of Convition is a better Boros Signet but I also want to play the Signet. So, I think it's time to say goodbye to Chrome Mox. As much as I like it, it's always a risky play because it 2-for-1 ourselves and on top of that, trades mana for action.
-- Brought Back: Very flexible instant speed, gy recursion spell. I've been very impressed with how it performs in NatePrawdzik's Breya deck. It can be used proactively--that is, you plan on sac'ing permanents and bring it back--or in response to what your opponents' removals. Obviously, it has good synergy with our late-game board-wipes (Cataclysm and Jokulhaups).
-- Ranger-Captain of Eos and Giant Killer: Another Ranger of Eos to tutor for our amazing one-drops (Goblin Welder, Serra Ascendant, Weathered Wayfarer, Mother of Runes). That's an easy addition to the deck. However, now that we have two Rangers of Eos, I thought that the addition of Giant Killer would make the one-drop package more versatile, so now it covers threat (ascendant), gy recursion (welder), protection (mother) and removal (killer). The new Ranger can also stop combos, protect our own late-game combo (whole board-wipes) and we can use it in conjunction with Brought Back for double one-drop tutor. How sick is that?
-- Dockside Extortionist: This little guy will make Akiri lethal because it produces a degenerate amount of Treasures in the mid and late game. Of course, it will also ramp like crazy. Treasure is a single-turn ramp but usually all that we need to jokul/cataclysm with mana floating and then drop enough threats to take over the game.
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