What's a former guild leader to do when the war is over? Much like a certain mustachioed former president, our favorite Boros angel Feather decided to go out on a safari. Now she is back and has some new tricks up her sleeve!
After the rotation I lost a lot of my favorite cards for Feather cough
Sheltering Light
cough. So I started trying new things in Boros colors but nothing seemed to work. My late game potential was not as good as a control deck and I wasn't running enough creatures or removal to consistently survive aggro. It was quite a sad moment for me and made me stop playing Arena for a bit (I put some more time into my Feather commander deck). When I finally came back I had edited my favorite modern deck Aura Aura Aura! (V3.1) to add green for
Season of Growth
. I love this card but even more so now that I've run it in Feather. Holy shit is this card amazing for this deck, but I'll get to that in a sec.
First I needed to find an alternative to certain cards I lost to rotation. The most important by far was
Sheltering Light
. One mana indestructible is hard to beat. Two mana indestructable and throw in a +1+1 counter is not quite as good but still valuable. That is why I added in
Assure / Assemble
. Having this plus
Gods Willing
Are my main protection package. The biggest disadvantage that
Assure / Assemble
has is it's mana cost in the graveyard. Getting this card out of the grave with
Dreadhorde Arcanist
is nearly impossible. Still, as long as we have Feather out there it wont matter too much.
Some other dual cards we are running come to us from the Gruul clan.
Collision / Colossus
and
Thrash / Threat
both are very nice cards to have. In particular Thrash is a godsend when dealing with planeswalker heavy decks, something I struggled with in my previous Boros build. Collision has been great for either beefing my creatures or getting rid of annoying fliers when Feather is not out to block and Colossus isn't our best pump spell it's nothing to turn your nose up at and the added trample can make a very scary
Tenth District Legionnaire
. Another added bonus is that the whole card is CMC 4 in the grave so getting it out with Arcanist isn't too hard. Threat I haven't used too much but a 4/4 tample for 4 is good value and having that as a backup in case our creatures are being removed left and right is just good.
I am running fewer creatures now which is something I've been debating with myself if I should change. There have been games where I only see two or three creatures and if they get removed I am screwed. That being said aside from the usual trio of
Feather, the Redeemed
,
Tenth District Legionnaire
, and
Dreadhorde Arcanist
we have a new friend to add and her name is
Gruul Spellbreaker
. When I first threw this card in here I was not expecting it to be so good. A 3 drop 3/3 is okay. Add riot. Okay, that's cool. Makes both itself and ME hexproof on my turn!? VALUE! I love this card. It has pulled me ahead in games so much I can't believe it sometimes.
Now to talk about two cards that really sold me on green and help make this deck what it is. Those would be
Season of Growth
and
Giant Growth
. Giant is easy to see why. +3+3 for 1 mana is fantastic. Swinging with Dreadhorde never felt so good. Season on the other hand solves a long standing problem I have had with Feather and that is it lets me feel okay about using my instants without Feather being on the board. Before, if I didn't have feather out I would hesitate to use some of my instants because without Dreadhorde I wouldn't be getting those cards back. Now, even though I don't get the cards back, I'm guaranteed a new card to replace the one I just played. Not only that it scrys when I play a creature. So as long as I am playing spells I am getting value from this card. It's a 2 drop, it's an enchantment, and it stacks. Having two of these out and then playing
Defiant Strike
feels great and has happened in many games I have played. There have even been a few games where I get in danger of decking myself. I've only played this deck against mill twice but I already know it will be weak to that. Other than that though the card is a huge boon.
So that's it. Feather is back! She has a new friend and some new toys to keep her relevant! I really like this deck but mana has been an issue for me. In Arena I don't have enough rares to run 4 of all the shocks or 4
Fabled Passage
but that is the goal (so that's what I'll put here in the decklist). Sadly with the prices of shocks and Passage in paper right now it will be some time before I am able to get this up and running without proxying it with my friends. It is a little frustrating that I have all the cards except for the lands to run this in paper but that's a whole other topic.
Anyway please enjoy the deck, enjoy Feather, and as always, any suggestions for improvement are welcome!
