Parhelion II, aka God's limousine, am I wrong?
~ tune from 'Forgot about Dre' plays, Eminem comes on... ~
"lkylkylky Lord God! hotter than a set o' lightning rods,
in a 'helion II with an Angel Crew gonna rain on you ridin' rough-shod!"
Yes this card is full o' flava, man from Del Monte sez yessss. It is the kind of jank that demands an EDH tribute, and you know what? Crazy as it sounds this deck actually works! It also forms a worthy counterpart to my demon deck, Damn it all to Hell! - Rakdos / Hellcarver.
First, you gotta have an angel commander. The obvious choice would of course be Avacyn, Angel of Hope but let's face it, that is boring. More importantly it denies you red, which is the supreme colour of artifact shenanigans and sudden, unexpected, devastating attack phases. These you will need if you want to stand a chance of winning using an 8-drop vehicle.
So instead we go with the secret red splash of Archangel Avacyn
and turn the deck into an angel/goblin/artifact deal. The flavour justification for this funky assemblage is that while angels may be great at driving and hanging out on the Parhelion II, they are way too exalted to get under the hood and actually repair the thing! For that, even if it is a little disreputable, you need goblins, the best damn mechanics both in this world and the next.
So the strategy of this deck is essentially a phased build up to the proverbial rapture. In theory, you could get the Parhelion poppin' as early as turn 3 with a lot of luck. But that is a bad idea because you are just begging for a cheeky Path to Exile to ruin the party. No, first you gotta prepare the way baby. That means getting your boardstate together and making yourself a hard target for early aggro and win-cons while cantripping and searching your way toward not just the Parhelion, but also the proper tools to make it a decisive battlefield presence.
Phase 1 (roughly turns 1-5) is ramp out, cantrip and defend. The aim in these early turns is not at all to win or even to deal damage to your opponents, but simply to avoid taking bad damage and stop early win-cons going off, while pushing through the deck for value. By turn 4 you can usually afford to flash out Archangel Avacyn
, but the mere prospect of this is usually enough to deter opponents looking for soft aggro targets. The flash-ability of Avacyn allows you to hold up mana to take out early threats at instant speed with your removal spells. These are tuned for maximum flexibility and impact, denying recursion strategies by focusing on exile and shuffle-into-library effects. If opponents' boardstates start getting out of control then you can throw a wipe into the mix to just calm things down.
In Phase 2 (turns 5-8) you prepare the way for the Lord by stiffening up your boardstate. With things like Martyr's Cause out your stuff gets harder to deal with, and you can set up little loops and engines like Angelic Renewal with Sun Titan, or Eldrazi Displacer with Dockside Extortionist to power up and make removal ineffective. If you are suffering badly the Basilisk Collar can bring you roaring back if you get it on Archangel Avacyn
and then flip her. This is also the phase where you normally go get Parhelion II either by looting into it or by searching it out with Thalia's Lancers, Gamble or Inventors' Fair.
Finally in Phase 3 you drop the mothership into play (usually by reanimating it after a cheeky discard effect) and swing away while singing a joyful hallelujah. By this time you should usually have one or more haste enablers down, and with any luck you are also going to run into an extra attack phase or two with Aurelia, The War Leader or Seize the Day. Or failing that a well-timed Armageddon can bake in your suddenly terrifying angel-army boardstate, preventing the inevitable attempt by the doomed sinners to prevent judgement day by conspiring against you.
Honourable mentions...
Warping Wail is a massively under-rated card. Opponents rarely, if ever, factor in the possibility of getting countered (other than by a cheeky Red Elemental Blast) when they go up against a Boros deck, and when that late-game Rise of the Dark Realms or Tooth and Nail gets dropped, waiting for it to resolve and then dealing with the fallout is a very bad idea. With Warping Wail you nyx the coup de grace and frequently cost your opponent their entire turn, for just two mana! It also potentially saves you from getting wiped when your boardstate is really scary, setting up the win for the following turn. The other modes are pretty useful too. Generating a 1/1 at instant speed can save your important creature from an edict effect, or put an extra mana on the board for next turn, and exiling a power/toughness 1 creature actually catches a lot of key creatures - Blood Artist and Urza, Lord High Artificer spring to mind.
Unexpectedly Absent is, in my view, one of the best bits of removal in white, and possibly in any colour. Two mana to get rid of any nonland permanent at instant speed. Think about that. There is literally no other card that does this outside of blue, anywhere. Now of course it only goes on top of the library, but there are many, many scenarios where your opponents would rather see their stuff go to the graveyard, and of course if you have mana to spare you can always bury your target deeper. And you cost your opponent a draw step, which is not to be sniffed at. Do it in response to a Demonic Tutor or Cultivate to make it a 2-mana Chaos Warp with no downside! And the best thing about this card is that it can save your own important stuff (Parhelion II I'm looking at you) from getting stolen or exiled. Super-flexible, super-effective, ridiculously under-appreciated card.
Indomitable Creativity is a recent addition that has a lot of flexibility, but its real utility lies in its late-game potential for trading your many innocuous artifacts for potentially powerful creatures and artifacts. With Dockside Extortionist it can go absolutely crazy. The ultimate achievement unlocked for this deck has got to be hitting Parhelion II, Hammer of Purphoros, Indomitable Archangel, and Aurelia, the Warleader off a single Indomitable Creativity for 40 points of instant angelic beatdown!
Both Tragic Arrogance and Descend upon the Sinful work super-well with Parhelion II in play. No additional explanation necessary.
Overall this is a very fun mid-range deck that can hold its own against some much more powerful decks because of its very un-Boros generation of value combined with surprise moves and a sacrifice-and-recursion strategy that makes your boardstate very hard to break down. Unlike most Boros decks, your hand is almost never empty, you rarely get caught with your pants down and, despite everyone knowing that you are looking to roll them over with Parhelion II, your opponents find it hard to set up effective defenses or de-fang your board.
Hallelujah babaaay!!!
