CDW
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| He'll bring out the Fanatic in YOU!
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After my less than stellar performance at the Billings State Championships I took a break from magic and focused on the real priorities in life. Family, church, friends etc. and it helped remove the funk I'd allowed myself to fall into. Last week I decided to return to my comfort zone in Red based aggro decks. Almost every deck I've ever played in a competitive scene has featured red in it. The GW I took to the States Championship was a completely new beast and my lack of familiarity with designing a deck based upon these colors and attitude set me up for failure.
The red deck I chose to bring with me to a tournament in Milwaukee, Oregon was Boros or R/w Devotion build.
Boros Fanatics
Creatures:26
Spells:13
Lands:21
Sacred Foundryx4
Temple of Triumphx3
Plainsx2
Mountainsx12
Quick Analysis
This particular Red Devotion design splashes white for access to Boros Charm and non-red removal in the form of Chained to the Rocks. The charm protects the decks board presence and devotion count. While Chained to the Rocks allows the deck to efficiently remove threats, such as Desecration demon or Master of Waves, which are immune to many of red's threats and removal. No Mutavaults removed the possibility of missing a turn three reckoner.
The Tournament
The venue of choice was Epic Games. An excellent shop located in Milwaukee, Oregon. Every opponent I faced was at least a solid player and if you are the type of player seeking a competitive environment, this could be a great home for you. We had almost thirty attendees.
Note: While the match scores are completely accurate, I'm writing the games from memory so I apologize to my opponents if they stumble upon this and see an inaccuracy.
Note: While the match scores are completely accurate, I'm writing the games from memory so I apologize to my opponents if they stumble upon this and see an inaccuracy.
Match 1: Matched up against a relaxed gentleman named Bruce, running Rakdos or RB Aggro. This was a straightforward match as I used a mixture of burn and Ash Zealots to control the board until I began dropping Phoenixes in both mathes. Scoring 2-0 in my favor.
Match 2: My Second round opponent's last name was Nishimoto. He ran a Mono-Black Devotion variant that seemed to focus on using lifegain to stall and deal damage using Sanguine Bond. Game 1 he flooded and I overran him with phoenixes, even after I had mulliganed down to five. Game two he quickly stabilized between removal and a turn four Desecration demon. The last game came down to a timely Boros Charm deflecting his Heroe's Downfall from killing Boros Reckoner, allowing the Reckoner and a Phoenix to swing in for five. He never recovered from this loss in tempo and I won the game shortly thereafter. Boros Devotion goes 2-1 this round.
Match 2: My Second round opponent's last name was Nishimoto. He ran a Mono-Black Devotion variant that seemed to focus on using lifegain to stall and deal damage using Sanguine Bond. Game 1 he flooded and I overran him with phoenixes, even after I had mulliganed down to five. Game two he quickly stabilized between removal and a turn four Desecration demon. The last game came down to a timely Boros Charm deflecting his Heroe's Downfall from killing Boros Reckoner, allowing the Reckoner and a Phoenix to swing in for five. He never recovered from this loss in tempo and I won the game shortly thereafter. Boros Devotion goes 2-1 this round.
Match 3: Round 3 was Mono-Black again! My opponent's name was Chris Cech. His version of Mono-black seemed even very removal heavy and relied only on Grey Merchant for life gain. I took game one as Chris drew mostly lands and all of his copies of underworld connections. Game two, was extremely close, but an early and active Erebos stonewalled and pressured me as his plethora of removal allowed him to begin to attack in. The final game came down to Chris facing a difficult choice after I put him down to four life, the same as mine. He had Erebos, Nightveil Specter and a Grey Merchant upon the field. They were facing a single phoenix as a blocker. He failed to draw a removal spell and spent five minutes pondering whether to go for it and risk one of the cards in my hand being a kill spell, which would leave me alive to swing back for lethal, or staying back and blocking. Finally he decided to go for it and I showed him a hand with two lands. An excellent match against a great opponent. Loss 1-2.
Match 4: I played a Mono-Blue Devotion deck piloted by Max. There isn't much to report here as I had a slow hand game one and succumb to his flyers and game two I mulligan twice before getting stuck on one land and dying soon after. Loss 0-2.
Match 5: The final game was against a GR Ramp deck. The deck focused on using early land destruction to slow its opponents and ramp into huge threats. However like most land destruction decks in Standard it fell short. My opponent would draw a few good ramp creatures, such as sylvan caryatid. Allowing him to destroy one of my lands early on. However, agro decks do not require any significant amount of land to function and all his land slaying efforts did was allow me to build my board. Boros Reckone was a beast both games killing Ember Swallowers and swinging past Caryatids. A relatively easy 2-0 win.
Match 4: I played a Mono-Blue Devotion deck piloted by Max. There isn't much to report here as I had a slow hand game one and succumb to his flyers and game two I mulligan twice before getting stuck on one land and dying soon after. Loss 0-2.
Match 5: The final game was against a GR Ramp deck. The deck focused on using early land destruction to slow its opponents and ramp into huge threats. However like most land destruction decks in Standard it fell short. My opponent would draw a few good ramp creatures, such as sylvan caryatid. Allowing him to destroy one of my lands early on. However, agro decks do not require any significant amount of land to function and all his land slaying efforts did was allow me to build my board. Boros Reckone was a beast both games killing Ember Swallowers and swinging past Caryatids. A relatively easy 2-0 win.
Results and Thoughts
My 3-2 finish was good enough to net me seventh place and fifteen dollars in store credit. A positive beginning, after my break. A real eye opener was how much I've missed playing red based decks. The deck was a solid contender, but we can do better. I will be experimenting with many variants based upon R/w and will report their results in the future. This coming week we'll be taking a step into a Let's Build X article where I will select an underplayed or interesting card and build an aggro deck around it. The card we will be examining is Lyev Skyknight, for you Azorius fans.
