[I still need to trim a few cards from this, so any suggestions on what to cut are appreciated. Busy playtesting it to see what can go and what needs to stay. There is also an alternate built that runs Ardenn and red partner as the commanders instead of Tiana.]
I really wanted to make a relatively budget deck that messes around with tap/untap creatures, creature tokens, and ETB effects in Boros, so here it is.
Thematically, the deck is kind of all over the place, with multiple different infinite combos technically being possible, although each of them need three or four cards to pull off. There's also a lot of overlap, so the goal is that even when we don't have a combo assembled, our deck is still impacting the board state.
The core of this deck is a set of five cards that untap on certain triggers: Famished Paladin, Midnight Guard, Galvanic Juggernaut, Village Bell-Ringer, and Zealous Conscripts. Notably, these cards don't require us to be casting spells, making it much easier to go infinite with them than with something like Traxos or Leonin Battlemage, who you can get endless untaps using 0 drop artifacts, but that's more the sort of thing I'd do in a Teshar deck.
To get these cards untapping, we need to do three different things:
Gain life for Famished Paladin
Kill creatures for Galvanic Juggernaut
Make creatures for Midnight Guard
Make a copy for Village Bell-Ringer and Zealous Conscripts
To meet these three criteria, we turn to a staple of Boros card collections, aura's and equipment. Elemental Mastery and Splinter Twin make tokens, which can become lifegain when combined with cards like Ajani's Welcome, Lunarch Veteran
, or Suture Priest or give us death triggers using sac outlets like Fanatical Devotion, Martyr's Cause, and Betrothed of Fire. Goblin Bombardment an excellent combo piece here, allowing us to sacrifice our tokens and get death triggers to untap Galvanic Juggernaut and keep making tokens to sac for damage. Infinite tokens can also net infinite damage when combined with an effect that deals damage on a creature ETB, such as Impact Tremors or Witty Roastmaster.
Apart from tokens, we also have ping damage from cards like Power of Fire, Fire Whip, Viridian Longbow, Lightning Prowess and Arcane Teachings. These give us something useful to do with our tap focused creatures, even when we aren't going infinite, but combo very nicely with deathtouch and lifeline effects. Lifelink and ping lets Famished Paladin deal infinite damage, so we have a fair number of lifeline granting effects, including the eponymous Lifelink, as well as Spirit Link, Spirit Loop, Rune of Sustenance and Felidar Umbra. Deathtouch meanwhile allows us to wipe the board with a pinging Galvanic Juggernaut, or a Famished Paladin with ping and lifelink (although that should be enough to get the job done anyway since it's already infinite damage). Basilisk Collar is the obvious star of the show here, granting both deathtouch and lifelink, but Gorgon's Head and Gorgon Flail both deserve a mention too.
Since we're running a lot of equipment and auras, we'll be using those to fuel our card draw and keep this muddled-up engine moving forward until we get one of our various combos assembled. Sram, Senior Edificer draws on both card types, while Kor Spiritdancer turns auras into more cards, and Mesa Enchantress gives us card draw on every enchantment we play, getting value from the non-aura enchantments the deck runs too. Our other card draw is a combination of cantrip effects on auras like Unquestioned Authority, or else tied to lifegain like Dawn of Hope and Well of Lost Dreams. card:Symettry Matrix can also do some work in this deck due to the numerous tokens we'll be making, and Sage's Reverie can work as a truly explosive draw spell if it hits the field when we already have several auras attached.
Since we're running a lot of targeted damage and deathtouch pinging, we might have some opponents trying to hide behind hexproof or indestructible. To deal with that we have Detection Tower, and Glaring Spotlight to make them viable targets, while Burn from Within and Rebel Salvo can both make an indestructible creature very vulnerable to deathtouch which can help to deal with some hardier commanders, particularly if you have opponents running voltron decks.
Everything else in the deck is removal, protection, and recursion. Since we have a handful of specific cards that facilitate many of our combos, we want to make sure they stay alive, or at the very least, that we can get them back from the graveyard if they die. For this reason, we have protection that covers many card types, to shelter our auras, equipment, and creatures, and a similar variety of recursion to fetch any of those cards out of the graveyard. Removal is just to pick off key pieces on our opponents board and make sure our plans can go through without a hitch by destroying things like enchantments that say "players can't gain life", "creatures enter tapped", or "creatures can't attack".
Our Combos are:
Famished Paladin
Famished Paladin + Token Maker + ETB Lifegain = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Life
Famished Paladin + Ping + Lifelink = Infinite Damage and Infinite Life
Famished Paladin + Token Maker + ETB Lifegain + Token Damage = Infinite Damage
Famished Paladin + Ping + Deathtouch + Lifelink = Clear the Board (Redundant)
Galvanic Juggernaut
Galvanic Juggernaut + Ping + Deathtouch = Clear the Board
Galvanic Juggernaut + Token Maker + Sac Outlet = Infinite Tokens and ETBs
Galvanic Juggernaut + Token Maker + Sac Outlet + ETB Lifegain = Infinite Tokens/ETBS and Infinite Life
Galvanic Juggernaut + Token Maker + Sac Outlet + Token Damage = Infinite Tokens/ETBS and Infinite Damage
Galvanic Juggernaut + Token Maker + Goblin Bombardment = Infinite Tokens/ETBS and Infinite Damage (Efficient)
Midnight Guard/Sunstrike Legionnaire
Midnight Guard/Sunstrike Legionnaire + Token Maker = Infinite Tokens and ETBs
Midnight Guard/Sunstrike Legionnaire + Token Maker + Token Damage = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Damage
Midnight Guard/Sunstrike Legionnaire + Token Maker + ETB Lifegain = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Life
Village Bell-Ringer
Village Bell-Ringer + Splinter Twin = Infinite Tokens and ETBs
Village Bell-Ringer + Splinter Twin + ETB Lifegain = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Life
Village Bell-Ringer + Splinter Twin + Token Damage = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Damage
Village Bell-Ringer + Splinter Twin + Any Other Creature with Ping = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Damage
Zealous Conscripts
Zealous Conscripts + Splinter Twin = Infinite Tokens and ETBs
Zealous Conscripts + Splinter Twin + ETB Lifegain = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Inifinite Life
Zealous Conscripts + Splinter Twin + Token Damage = Infinite Tokens/ETBs and Infinite Damage
Village Bell-Ringer and Zealous Conscripts are more restrictive as they only combo with one other card in the deck, Splinter Twin. Our other untappers have several ways of assembling the combo which makes them a little bit more reliable, but fortunately, we have several tutors capable of fetching a specific aura/enchantment if we need it.
Almost any of the above combos should win us the game, as something as simple as creating infinite tokens with haste is normally enough to overwhelm most opponents, unless they have a strong pillow fort strategy in place that we haven't been able to dismantle. In that case however, we have several ways of turning infinite tokens into infinite damage, so we should be good to go in that case as well.
