Anax Aggro

Commander / EDH*

impropriety

Creature (22)

• 1x Akroan Crusader
• 1x Akroan Hoplite
• 1x Archangel of Tithes
• 1x Eidolon of Countless Battles
• 1x Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1x Hero of Bladehold
• 1x Hero of Iroas
• 1x Iroas, God of Victory
• 1x Kor Spiritdancer
• 1x Legion Loyalist
• 1x Marton Stromgald
• 1x Mesa Enchantress
• 1x Mikaeus, the Lunarch
• 1x Monastery Mentor
• 1x Ogre Battledriver
• 1x Phalanx Leader
• 1x Prophetic Flamespeaker
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Signal Pest
• 1x Sram, Senior Edificer
• 1x Tajic, Blade of the Legion
• 1x Vanguard of Brimaz

Artifact (7)

• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Meekstone
• 1x Memory Jar
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Enchantment (19)

• 1x Battle Mastery
• 1x Bravado
• 1x Crown of Flames
• 1x Destructive Urge
• 1x Emblem of the Warmind
• 1x Ethereal Armor
• 1x Flickering Ward
• 1x Ghitu Firebreathing
• 1x Impending Disaster
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Luminarch Ascension
• 1x Mark of Fury
• 1x Militia's Pride
• 1x Mob Mentality
• 1x Price of Glory
• 1x Shared Animosity
• 1x Sigarda's Aid
• 1x Sigil of the Empty Throne
• 1x Unquestioned Authority

Instant (10)

• 1x Apostle's Blessing
• 1x Bathe in Light
• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Deflecting Palm
• 1x Emerge Unscathed
• 1x Enlightened TutorGC
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Wear / Tear

Commander (1)

Land (33)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
• 1x Inspiring Vantage
• 12x Mountain
• 1x Mountain
• 11x Plains
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Rugged Prairie
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Serra's SanctumGC
• 1x Slayers' Stronghold

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Fell the Mighty
• 1x Launch the Fleet
• 1x Replenish
• 1x Ruination
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

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Introduction

This is my favourite Boros deck of all time. It's fast and hits like a truck - exactly what you want your boros deck to be. It's kind of unique as far as creature decks go because we're frequently spending most of our mana in the precombat main phase. This deck strikes a balance between going wide and going tall, and turns some really objectively horrendous cards into allstars.

Anax and Cymede, in my opinion, is one of the more interesting Boros commanders. The card design rewards you for playing spells that target it, but the reward is a temporary buff for the rest of your creatures. I've taken this in a direction that straddles the line between Voltron and white weenies, using a suite of auras as the primary method for triggering heroic.

Card Advantage

Whenever we talk Boros, we have to talk card advantage before we talk about anything else. I've got three main ways to generate card advantage in the deck:

Enchantresses

Kor Spiritdancer, Mesa Enchantress, and Sram, Senior Edificer are some of the most dangerous cards in this deck. If you've ever played against a group hug deck and a Boros deck in the same pod, you know that a Boros deck is frightening when it's not hellbent by turn 5. This (admittedly small) suite allows us to draw our own cards.

Recursion

The interesting thing about Boros enchantress is that there are a few on-colour auras that allow us to cast the same card more than once. Flickering Ward, Crown of Flames, Mark of Fury, and Ghitu Firebreathing are a gold mine for triggering Heroic repeatedly. These go a long way to preventing us from having to burn a full card on A&C's temporary effect.

Replenish can also be a late game monster, as removal and board wipes will send plenty of our enchantments to the graveyard. These auras entering the battlefield don't trigger heroic, but a critical mass of them will turn A&C into a big enough threat by itself to make this a huge, splashy play.

Land Tax/Scroll Rack

This one's an old standby, and for a good reason. Scroll Rack isn't great by itself in this deck because we're rarely sitting on extra cards. Land Tax is good enough by itself that I'd run it without Scroll Rack, and if we luck out and draw into both we're in pretty good shape.

The Creatures

We're a Boros attack deck, so selecting the right suite of creatures is absolutely imperative to the success of this deck. When selecting the creatures in this deck, I tried to keep the curve as low as possible to ensure that we're able to get the ball rolling quickly, and we're able to operate in a colour identity that doesn't have a ton of options for ramp.

We've already covered off the three enchantresses in the deck, so I'd like to discuss a few all-stars in the deck.

Heroic Suite

Akroan Crusader, Hero of Iroas, Phalanx Leader, and Vanguard of Brimaz all give us a few other ways to take advantage of all the targeting we're doing if we don't have access to A&C for whatever reason.

Backbreakers

With such a low curve, our backbreakers tend to weigh in at around 5 mana. Ogre Battledriver, Iroas, God of Victory, and Archangel of Tithes are downright dangerous when you've got a board full of temporarily buffed tokens and smaller creatures. Monastery Mentor only weighs in at 3CMC but the density of noncreature spells in the deck makes it a slam dunk to help you build up a frightening board state PDQ. Combining it with Ogre Battledriver means you're likely to kill someone by just by bouncing and recasting Crown of Flames a couple times.

The Enchantments

These are the gas that make our engines run, so they're chosen to serve one of two roles that advance our strategy:

Increase Combat Effectiveness

Evasion, increasing power/toughness, protection, keyword soup. Enchantments like Battle Mastery, Bravado, and Unquestioned Authority help A&C or the other creatures in the Heroic Suite slam in for bigger and bigger damage as the game drags on.

Trigger Heroic Efficiently

There's a lot of overlap here with the "Card Advantage" section above, because we're using the inherent properties of these enchantments to gain card advantage. Rather than drawing cards, we're just casting Crown of Flames or Flickering Ward over and over again.

Gameplay

This is an attack deck, so we're generally wanting to turn sideways at every opportunity. We're the beatdown at most tables. Aggro decks are in an interesting place in multiplayer, because you have to be pretty ruthless in picking on people that stumble in the early game. If you don't know who to attack, attack the player with the strongest late game first. If you don't know who that is, go with someone with black in their colour identity. If there's no black players in the pod, pick someone stick with it.

Spreading damage again allows too many people to interact with you in the late game, and you want to eliminate players as quickly as possible.

Using most of our mana during the precombat main phase means this isn't the most responsive deck in the world. We're pretty much F6d on our opponents' turns. This means we're able to pretty reliably take advantage of Price of Glory to shut down more interactive decks. This really makes people think twice about burning a counterspell or spot removal on our big threats, because it could really devastate their board. You definitely have to use this judiciously, because it's a lot like Maralen of the Mornsong or Dosan, the Falling Leaf. This type of effect disproportionately benefits decks that want to be left alone on their turn, so if someone else can take more advantage of it than you it's generally a good idea to sandbag it.

Notable Strengths

This deck does a great job of putting other people on the back foot. It allows us to hammer away and generally causes people to hold off on attacking because they'll be absolutely punished for not having blockers. This deck can generally go shot-for-shot against big mana green stompy decks because it puts out just as much damage, but gets rolling a lot sooner in the game.

Notable Weaknesses

Like any Boros deck, we've got a pretty big problem with decks that keep the board clear via repeated boardwipes. I don't know if there's a way we can win through Elesh Norn, and things like Ethersworn Canonist and Rule of Law effects really impact our ability to cast more than one spell per turn.

Date added	9 years
Last updated	7 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.54
Tokens	Angel 4/4 W, Cat Soldier 1/1 W, Emblem Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Enchantment Cleric 2/1 W, Kithkin Soldier 1/1 W, Monk 1/1 W, Soldier 1/1 R, Soldier 1/1 W
Folders	Boros EDH, Cool EDH Decks, IDEAS, Anax and Cymede Ideas, Decks to Review, To Be Tried, Interesting Decks, EDH Ideas, Boros, good budget brews