Magic: the Gathering - T: Add Three Mana Of Any One Colour To Your Mana Pool

[I3uster]

There's a few bad cards in there so it really depends on your card stock.

Ajani is bad in this. Essentially reads "2WW Sorcery put 2 +1/+1 counters on creatures you control, you gain 5 life"
Swiftblade Vindicator requires you to be able to mentor her which isn't going to happen against people running even the most fundamental anti-aggro so cut all of those.
Legion Guildmage is too slow, for that specific mana cost you can get a lot better options.
Cosmotronic Wave is way too expensive for what it does.
Run Amok is cute and if it works for you over burn do it, but I prefer burn. Since you probably play weaker decks rn combat tricks in general have a higher payoff though so it's not as much of a must-remove as the others. Considering you cut the vindicators though it loses a lot of utility.

More 1 and 2 drops in this. This needs to go faster or all it will do is get locked out.

[Deathhappens]

Funny thing is, I keep Ajani in there mostly to +1/bring back the swiftblade vindicators after they've been shocked early. I disagree with your assessment, they're freakishly strong if you can keep them around for a round or two, and if the enemy wastes resources to take them out early that's still a tempo swing for you. Otherwise yeah, Ajani's the Distraction Carnifex.
Legion Guildmage is pretty bad, yeah, it's essentially subbing in for the Deafening Clarion I don't have yet. Similarly Cosmotronic Wave, it's there for the free hits but also token clearing.
As for burn, I'm not going to bother running any in this deck- too much would compromise what its identity is about (creature synergy to bash people in the face), too little won't make an impact either way. Combat tricks are the way to go.

What kind of 1-or-2 drops would you suggest running here? Leonin Vanguards? Haazda Marshals? Goblin Instigators?

[I3uster]

Control does not "waste resources", they have reload and you don't. I don't know if you should rely on mentor synergy in a meta of clarions and soots.

This basically is halfway towards a midrange build and midrange historically sucks in mtg unless it has access to incredibly overtuned bullshit, which Boros does not. Stick to making this a workable aggro, which means lowering the curve and taking out a lot of your mentoring suite. You want at least 8 more 1 drops.

The problem with combat tricks is once you play people that actually already used like 4 or 5 uncommon wildcards you will have a block-combat trick-eat instant removal situation very often, resulting in 2 for 1s and prevented damage. Burn doesn't let that happen.

[I3uster]

As for the one drops, anything with 2 atk is good so Skymarchers and Dauntless Bodyguards should be your first priority. After that Haazdas or Legion's Landing (it's an enchantment but well, look at what it does. That's a 1 drop with a good chance of mana accel)

[aldeayeah]

MISCLICK OF THE DAY

I was in the middle of casting a lethal Sleep when the opponent said "Hello!"

Being a polite person, I immediately clicked on my avatar to reply, Slept myself, and lost.

i'm not even mad

[aldeayeah]

midrange historically sucks in mtg unless it has access to incredibly overtuned bullshit

Since ZEN rotated out, midrange decks have been almost continuously viable, even dominant, in Standard

What has sucked for ages in Standard has been control (after Cawblade, it's only been dominant during the standard tenure of RTR, and then recently since the latest round of Standard bans)

And of course midrange plays all the overpowered cards, it's what it has always done.

[I3uster]

Guess thats the fruits of trying to continously reduce game complexity and synergy.

FWIW I would say that principle still applies. See Golg midrange essentially being a good stuff collection that jusz plays every high power card both of its colors have access to. Mid Boros meanwhile is nowhere to be seen.

[mAc Chaos]

Is that deck Standard, deathhappens?

[Nihilm]

Since ZEN rotated out, midrange decks have been almost continuously viable, even dominant, in Standard

What has sucked for ages in Standard has been control (after Cawblade, it's only been dominant during the standard tenure of RTR, and then recently since the latest round of Standard bans)

And of course midrange plays all the overpowered cards, it's what it has always done.

Do you mean original zendikar, because I remember mid range being ridiculously strong even when I started around Battle for Zen, Collected Company......

[mAc Chaos]

Midrange was strong when I played Onslaught ~> Alara.

It was always strong. :thinking:

It was always overshadowed by stuff like mono red or combo or control though.

[I3uster]

I've basically never seen a midrange deck from playing 8th ed to Lorwyn because high value creatures in the t3-t5 play range without ETBs, some form of removal hate or LTBs basically did not exist in constructed (first example of that I can remember is like what, Baneslayer?). Quadratic increase of creature power from 2cmc on started at like what, Ravnica and they were very reluctant with it still until Scars.

As such, if you played a fat creature it was a control finisher and nothing else.

That isn't necessarily bad though. Midrange decks existing generally means design fucked up individual card powerlevel to a degree where you can ignore any kind of synergistic deck building in favor of just putting everything above the curve in one package and say "go".

[Deathhappens]

Is that deck Standard, deathhappens?

I only play Arena at the moment, so perforce it is, yeah.

Although even if I were to make an ouverture to paper Magic one of these days (thinking of attending Ravnica Allegiance pre-release if I can find a nearby LGS that does that, maybe) I don't think I'm anywhere near ready for Modern, let alone the older formats.

[mAc Chaos]

I've basically never seen a midrange deck from playing 8th ed to Lorwyn because high value creatures in the t3-t5 play range without ETBs, some form of removal hate or LTBs basically did not exist in constructed (first example of that I can remember is like what, Baneslayer?). Quadratic increase of creature power from 2cmc on started at like what, Ravnica and they were very reluctant with it still until Scars.

As such, if you played a fat creature it was a control finisher and nothing else.

That isn't necessarily bad though. Midrange decks existing generally means design fucked up individual card powerlevel to a degree where you can ignore any kind of synergistic deck building in favor of just putting everything above the curve in one package and say "go".

I lived for that moment someone tapped out to drop a big creature so I could Terror it.

The midrange decks I'm thinking of would be stuff like B/G Rock, or R/G Beasts, or Ramp, which would use synergy with creature abilities or enchantments to make the big creatures come out faster and stick. (Stuff like Kird Ape, Ravenous Baloth, Avarax, etc.)

R/G Beasts was actually a Tier 2 contender during Onslaught block, for instance; the top decks were Affinity, U/W Control, Astral Slide, Mono Red, and Dragonstorm. R/G didn't have enough strength to be top, but it was a counter to some of the Tier 1 decks.

In Mirrodin you had R/G beats decks with cards like Troll Ascetic, and in Ravnica it was Gruul.

[I3uster]

R/G Zoo was way closer to an aggro deck when I was around. And I would argue Ramp at its strongest is a combo deck (see Tooth and Nail as well as the bane of Modern, Urzatron, that basically follow the combo game plan rather than the midrange gameplan of generating value early to outpace, not to cause an immediately winning board state.)

Though arguably Midrange decks generally create that boardstate anyway because thanks to quadratic creature growth it basically means once you run out of answers for a 3-5 cmc creature you're dead. Which as said before is fine on principle because before this change this game was basically Magic: The Instant And Sorcering (creatures that act as sorceries are allowed). It just is something that has to be carefully monitored before you have decks that have combo deck tier must-answer-pressure with no required synergy.

[aldeayeah]

In hindsight, I think the turning point was the rotation of Lorwyn block. Alara-Zendikar Standard had a bunch of very "modern" midrange decks such as Mythic, Naya and especially Jund at the top.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you mean original zendikar, because I remember mid range being ridiculously strong even when I started around Battle for Zen, Collected Company......

I meant original Zendikar.

That's when you joined? Man, that was a rough time for standard. Shadows Over Innistrad Standard was extremely midrangey even for the current standards. BFZ was the four color format that eventually devolved into a single deck format (Rally). And then came all the bans...

[I3uster]

Scars just sticks in my mind because I kinda drifted out of MTG by Lorwyn so I saw Alara/Zendikar stuff sporadically so egregious over the curve cards didn't stick out with me too much.

Scars in general was the balancing part of R&D just doing a whole bunch of coke so even for a casual observer it was impossible to miss just how dumb it had gotten. Green instant speed permanent removal, Mental Misstep and basically every Phyrexian Mana card that wasn't total trash, Obliterator. (Which wasn't even good! Show that card to a player in the mid 2000s! People thought Watchwolf was over the curve when it was revealed!)

All of this is basically to make a creature based strategy that wasn't hand vomiting everything by t3 viable. Instead of tweaking 2cmc counters and 2cmc close-to-unconditional removal.

meanwhile wizards put ramp at 3 mana because its too strong

[Deathhappens]

This is, of course, anecdotal, but I just styled over a fellow Boros deck that built its board entirely around Haazda Marshals and Healer Hawks (2 of each) by judicious use of my meatier creatures to keep up on board state until I Cosmotronic Wave'd the lot of them.
Granted, maybe I just got lucky he didn't play anything bigger (his Ajani's Pridemate only came online one turn before the Wave), but he also got lucky as I sat for 3 turns on the Cosmotronic Wave and just one mana short of casting it.

[I3uster]

You can outvalue aggro decks with a midrange build. The problem is consistency. If you wish Boros lets you go all in on hunting faster aggro decks because they simply can't answer your mentor suite without losing all of their gas but then you're completely screwed against control. And a dream aggro start that goes like Skymarcher into double Dauntless into Benalia is not gonna get stopped by your deck.

[Nihilm]

I mean don't forget the best 2 drop in standard right now, Adanto Vanguard

It can carry you to victory on it's own

[mAc Chaos]

watchwolf IS over the curve