Drafting Thundersong



Introduction: Thunderstruck
It all began with one horrible draft. I was drafting Boros, but after two packs I simply had none of the staple cards of the deck. No Skyknights, no Arcs, no Fangtails, and only a single Thundersong Trumpeter. And definitely nothing as crazy as a good uncommon. What I had was bunch of filler cards: Sell-Sword Brutes, Goblin Spelunkers, Sparkmage Apprentices, War-Torch Goblins, Rally the Righteous,... Not bad cards, but simply nothing game-winning. Luckily, the third pack provided at least something nice with a couple more Trumpeters, but still I felt the draft hadn't gone good at all.

The deck overperformed. It showed an odd tendency to win games on turn five or six.

I started analyzing why this deck had done so well, while it seemed for the most part made up of very mediocre cards (which is not meant insulting to fans of Viashino Slasher). It turned out the strength of the deck was the combination of loads of cheap creatures (as I hadn't found removal all draft), Thundersong Trumpeter and Rally the Righteous. And so I started willingly drafting this strange archetype.


Some of you are probably thinking: Strange archetype? Isn't that just a normal Boros deck? After all, it has the same goal: win very quickly. The answer is no. Of course the fact that it uses Red and White cards means it'll overlap with a typical Boros deck. But the pick order is totally different. The most notable difference is that you draft Thundersong Trumpeter over anything. And I mean anything.

The deck: Thundersong


Always pick this.
Before I move on to an example draft, let me summarize what the "Thundersong" deck looks like.
1) As many Thundersong Trumpeters as come to you in the draft. The nice thing is they can come around quite late, as there's typically only one other Boros drafter at the table, and even then there are some cards he will take over it.
2) At least two, and up to four(!) Rally the Righteous. You don't really need to pick them too high as they tend to table.
3) Aside from the Rallys you only want about three spells. Also, in this deck you play only 16 lands (and - I hope this didn't really need to be said - never play a Signet or other such nonsense). The spells should preferably be really good (Galvanic Arc or Lightning Helix good). A single Boros Fury-Shield is usually nice too but I personally don't like to run more than one. I also don't want Fiery Conclusion in the deck - every creature counts.
4) This obviously makes a lot of room for creatures. The bulk of your deck should be two-mana creatures. Veteran Armorer is clearly the best (after our herald, of course), next is Sell-Sword Brute, Sparkmage Apprentice, Courier Hawk and Viashino Slasher. The last two I prefer to leave out unless I'm desperate for 2-drops.
5) Try to get a few one-mana creatures too, but not too many. Three or four will do. The best one-drop is by far the uncommon Frenzied Goblin cause he's like an extra Trumpeter. Next is War-Torch Goblin, and if nothing better comes around, even Boros Recruit will do as a good target for Rally the Righteous.
6) You want only a few three- and four-mana creatures, and nothing that costs more than that really. Skyknight Legionnaire, Nightguard Patrol and Viashino Fangtail will always make the deck, the rest can act as filler.

Let's get to a draft and see what all this means in practice!

The draft

I'm using the same "spoiler tag" format bateleur used earlier cause it's more fun to read drafts that way, in my opinion. If you don't want to make your own picks, that's fine too. I won't check it. Promise.

Pack 1 (RA):

Pick 1:


I don't like to take Sisters of Stone Death here because 1) I don't like to draft green in Ravnica, 2) Golgari seems often overdrafted and 3) I don't like 8-mana cards, even huge bombs like this one. Galvanic Arc is my easy first pick here. I also notice the Rally which will hopefully table... meaning I'm all set to draft my new favourite deck. (Of course I'm going to draft that... otherwise I wouldn't have picked this draft to show in this article, right?)

Pick 2:


The on-color cards are Hunted Dragon, Wojek Embermage, Dogpile, Boros Signet and Barbarian Riftcutter. (Not counting the two crappy white cards, of course). And actually, none of those is particularly good for this deck. I'll go with the most obvious pick though - the Dragon can win games by itself. Remember I said you shouldn't play anything that costs more than four mana? Well, at five mana for a 6/6 hasty flier this might just be one of the only exceptions.

Pick 3:


This might be a kick in the nuts to a lot of people, but I'm passing the Devouring Light. I have several reasons for that. First, the double white is really hard for this deck. You play 16 lands, and usually the focus of the deck will be red, dividing the lands 9/7 in favor of the Mountains. You usually don't have many white creatures either. Tapping a Trumpeter to pay for it is pointless too, since you could just tap it to prevent that creature from blocking. The other important reason is that Devouring Light just isn't that great on offense. Long story short, I pick one of the signature cards of this deck, Rally the Righteous, also because, looking at the several weak cards in the pack, it looks like it might not table.

Pick 4:


Trumpeter. I hope I needn't explain more.

Pick 5:


The last pack had two other cards I wanted to take. Obviously, that had to mean this pack has nothing. I take the only cards that might make it in the deck, and pray it won't be necessary. Viashino Slasher.

Pick 6:


Here's an uncommon I value very high for this deck. Boros Swiftblade would be a great creature for this deck already without his interaction with Rally the Righteous. The fact that he gets the bonus twice makes him spectacular.

Pick 7:


I'm not telling you.

Pick 8:


Nothing for me, so I semi-hate-draft Fists of Ironwood.

Pick 9:


Yep, the Rally tabled. What's really nice to see is two other decent Red cards lapping the table.

Pick 10:


Dogpile, though I don't want to have to play it.

Pick 11:


Flash Conscription, same as above.

Pick 12:


An awesome twelfth pick Frenzied Goblin. As I said, these can act as extra Trumpeters.

Pick 13:


Pick 14:


Pick 15:


Riftcutter, Quickchange and Grozoth keep the bench warm.

Pack 2 (RA):

Pick 1:


I suppose you're getting it?

Pick 2:


When you already had two Rally the Righteous from the first pack, it's not necessary to take one from the second pick of the second pack. Unfortunately, when there's nothing else worth taking over it, you don't have much choice.

Pick 3:


And when I said take it over anything, I meant anything. I don't think there's a better example possible. When I was taking the Trumpeter I actually wasn't sure if passing a Lightning Helix could ever be correct - but the games reminded me that for this deck, the correct pick was indeed the Trumpeter. The Helix is of course still a great card to have for this deck - but the Trumpeter is crucial. He makes the deck work.

Pick 4:


Nothing useful in this pack. Divebomber Griffin is one of the more powerful cards, and he's on color. I take it, but unless things go very wrong from now on he doesn't go in my deck (remember what I said about five mana, and about double-White).

Pick 5:


Again, I take a pretty good on-color card that I don't want to end up playing, Fiery Conclusion this time.

Pick 6:


This one is tricky. Master Warcraft or a fourth Rally the Righteous? I think, despite being the fourth one already, the Rally is still the better card for the deck. The basis of the deck is the Trumpeter/Rally combo, and Master Warcraft simply doesn't work well with the Trumpeter. Being able to cast Rally and Warcraft in one turn is highly unlikely too. Therefore I go with another Rally.

Some Boros drafter further down the table has gotta be happy. Helix and Master Warcraft going late... but I told you this wasn't traditional Boros.

Pick 7:


I took the 3/1 over the 2/2. I'm actually not sure which of these is better.


Pick 8:


I don't have anything on four mana yet, so I'll take the Zealot. He does a lot of damage, and the haste offsets the extra mana. Looking back now though, the correct pick was probably Frenzied Goblin. I already said this guy acts as extra Trumpeters, but still I was underestimating him. This guy IS an extra Trumpeter, and therefore should probably be taken just as high. As in, over anything except Trumpeter itself.

Pick 9:


Pick 10:


Pick 11:


Pick 12:


Pick 13:


Pick 14:


Pick 15:


Nothing good in the late picks this round. Note that Ordruun Commando is too expensive for this deck, I take the Boros Recruit over it.

Pack 3 (RA):

Pick 1:


As stated before, Devouring Light isn't great in this deck. The double-White hurts, and you aim for a kill by turn five or six. You want to spend your time casting creatures for a huge Rally. And in this pack there is of course one quality creature. The Skyknight is especially nice considering this deck would even gladly play Goblin Chariot.

Pick 2:


I consider Sunhome nearly broken in Ravnica Limited. But I hope by now it's clear that the land has no place in this deck. It's too slow, requires you to run more lands, etc. If you play all creatures with 1 or 2 power, giving one creature double strike somewhere in the late game isn't impressive (as opposed to giving all of them +2/+0 on turn five). I'm however very happy to get a Veteran Armorer; he's the next best two-drop.

Pick 3:


A single Indentured Oaf is, while not really needed, good enough for the deck. He's only my second four-mana card. I'd rather have a Viashino Fangtail, but since none seem to come today I'll take the 4/3 instead.

Pick 4:


Nothing in this pack. I took Caregiver, but I should've hated the Clinging Darkness in fact.

Pick 5:


Cleansing Beam will never make this deck. Screeching Griffin and Dogpile are also too slow. I do like a single Boros Fury-Shield for this deck though; it has a lot of uses. It's about equally useful as Dogpile for me, but costs one mana less.

Pick 6:


Two-drops are the core of this deck, and Grizzly Bears that bite you when they die are just fine.

Pick 7:


I took Wojek Embermage as a sideboard card.

Pick 8:


See pick 6.

Pick 9:


Goblin Spelunkers: a good SB card at worst, a mediocre MD card at best.

Pick 10:


Frenzied Goblin; see above.

Pick 11:


Pick 12:


Pick 13:


Pick 14:


Pick 15:


Courier Hawk, Surge of Zeal, Leave No Trace, Goblin Spelunkers, Zephyr Spirit. Anything goes, really.

The deck

"Thundersong"Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures
2 Frenzied Goblin
1 Boros Recruit

4 Thundersong Trumpeter
2 Sell-Sword Brute
1 Boros Swiftblade
1 Veteran Armorer

2 Goblin Spelunkers
1 Skyknight Legionnaire
1 Centaur Safeguard

1 Flame-kin Zealot
1 Indentured Oaf

1 Hunted Dragon

Other Spells
4 Rally the Righteous
1 Galvanic Arc
1 Boros Fury-Shield

Lands
9 Mountain
7 Plains


Conclusion: The Song of Thunder

The above list is a nice example of what a typical Thundersong decklist looks like. So, should you draft this? After quite a few drafts with this decktype I'd answer: the deck is quite good, in that it regularly kills on turn 5. That's nothing to sneeze at. It is, however, vulnerable in several ways. First, you might get "Thunder-screwed". This will severely weaken your deck. In that case you could still try to draft a more normal Boros deck though. The deck also doesn't like early removal against it. Especially mass removal is annoying. "Mass removal" in Ravnica, that's Rain of Embers and Rolling Spoil. (Yes, I've actually lost games to Rolling Spoil. Worst of all, the guy maindecked that crap.) There's also the recurring Darkblast which your Trumpeters don't like. All of these cards are reasons to make sure you still have enough 2-toughness creatures. And even then, they'll hurt, because your most important guys still die. On the upside, even if your opponent finds such pieces of hate to board in against your deck (or *maindecks* them), at least he doesn't get much time to draw into them. Hate versus a fast deck isn't as dangerous as hate versus a deck that takes forever to kill you. Also you can avoid this if you can draft enough Veteran Armorers - but that's not so easy of course, considering it's a very high pick.

I can't leave you without sharing my funniest victory ever with a Thundersong deck. My opponent, clearly a true fan of this deck idea, played a turn three Hunted Phantasm. Did he even realize those tokens are RED?? Needless to say, on my turn, I hit him for 28.

Sharing the Song


Finally, a disclaimer. I'm definitely not perfect at drafting this archetype (or at drafting at all). During the above draft, I already pointed out some mistakes, and I'm sure there are more. I've drafted a lot to be able to write this, but then again I can't force this deck every time, and besides, the play level where I draft is low. Luckily, Lesurgo managed to solve both problems by trying out this archetype at a higher level. I'll let him explain:

I go to a casual unsanctioned draft on Tuesdays with a lot of players that have done well at Nationals and other large events, and while the list is very long of their accomplishments, I'm sure that the fact that Alan Corner, the Hall of Fame inductee, plays there on a regular basis would probably grab your attention. Anyways, my goal was to draft this archtype, so I did. It looked like a pile and I bent your rules a little bit, but it worked out quite well, going 6-1. Obviously the number of some of the cards would lead to that conclusion (4 Viashino Fangtails are pretty good, I hear) but even without those the deck still seemed pretty crazy. I only ended up with 3 Trumpeters but I also had 3 Frenzied Goblins so it all worked out. Here is what I drafted:

Lesurgo's DraftMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures:
3 Frenzied Goblin
1 War-Torch Goblin
1 Boros Recruit

3 Thundersong Trumpeter
2 Sell-Sword Brute
1 Sparkmage Apprentice

1 Skynight Legionnaire
1 Nightguard Patrol

4 Viashino Fangtail
1 Sunhome Enforcer

1 Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran

Other Spells:
3 Boros Fury-Shield
2 Rally the Righteous

Lands:
1 Boros Garrison
7 Plains
8 Mountains

Relevant Sideboard Cards:
2 Sabertooth Alley Cat
1 Boros Recruit
1 Barbarian Riftcutter
1 Viashino Slasher
1 Incite Hysteria
1 War-Torch Goblin
1 Golgari Signet
1 Wojek Siren
1 Boros Fury-Shield
1 Courier Hawk
1 Screeching Griffin


As you see, he went for a slightly higher mana curve, because his "expensive" cards were just bombs. But again, the core of the deck is made of the six "Trumpeters".

I'd say, give this a try and let me know how it went! What are your own tweaks to this deck type? Agree or disagree about certain cards for this deck? Experiment away - just stay true to the idea of the deck: lots of little guys and Rally for the win.


-Tahn

Thanks to Lesurgo for trying this out so quickly, at a higher level than where I get to play.
Thanks to iloveatogs for great art and banner.
Thanks to Binary for editing.

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