All 2-color decks in Magic have a name given to them by their association with a “guild” on the plane of Ravnica. Decks that are made up of the Red/White color pairing are known as “Boros”. This deck tends to be the slowest of the three decks in terms of speed, due to the fact the cards contained have a typical converted mana cost (CMC) of 4 or 5. But, the trade-off for being the slowest deck is that the creatures it contains tend to have a higher power and toughness and come with stronger abilities. It may start out slow, but once you’ve gotten going, your opponents better look out!
The red aspect of this deck utilizes what the color is best known for, and that’s a game term known as “burn”. Burn refers to doing damage directly to an opponent or their creatures, without having to attack with your own creatures. Whereas your creatures could always be blocked by your opponent’s creatures, you’ll find opponents have a hard time dealing with the burn spells (instants and sorceries) you’re hurling at them, removing their creatures from the battlefield or watching their life total dwindle. Also, since most of the creatures in this deck have high mana costs, often costing 4, 5, or even 6 mana, use your burn spells to help keep your opponents creatures in check until you have enough mana to afford to play your big creatures. Your burn spells begin with Arc Trail. This sorcery provides flexibility because it lets you divide up the damage it does, doing 2 points of damage to one creature or player, and 1 point of damage to another, different creature or player. Shock is similar to the card Lightning Bolt in the red/blue deck. Whereas Lightning Bolt does 3 damage to a creature of player for just one red mana, it was considered so powerful that Shock was created, only this time doing 2 points of damage. Smash to Smithereens will help you deal with the artifacts found in the red/blue deck. It instantly destroys ANY artifact, and then adds insult to injury by doing 3 damage to that opponent! Wear / Tear is referred to as a “split card”. See how it’s two cards in one? You can cast either half of the card, OR because it has the ability called “Fuse”, you can cast BOTH haves at the same time, as long as you pay both mana costs. Your burn spells finish with Flame Slash and Searing Blood. To get the most out of Searing Blood, be sure to use it on a creature that will die the turn you cast Searing Blood.
You do have a few other instants and sorceries that aren’t associated with burn. Raise the Alarm puts two 1/1 soldier tokens into play. Captain’s Call lets you put three Soldier tokens into play, but the trade-off is a higher mana cost and the fact it can only be played on your turn, whereas Raise the Alarm can be cast at almost any time. For combat tricks, you have a Kytheon’s Tactics, which gives all your creatures +2/+1 until end of turn. You’ll get an added bonus with this card if you have two instants or sorceries in your graveyard (all the burn spells you’ve been playing), making those creatures become vigilant, which means they don’t need to tap to attack, so you can still use them as blockers on your opponents turn.
The Boros deck contains the most powerful creatures of all three decks. To begin, there is Blaze Commando, a 5/3 creature, he puts two Soldier tokens with haste into play whenever you cast one of your instants or sorceries. Foundry Champion is a creature that can deliver his own burn if you control other creatures when he comes into play. In addition, you can spend as much red or white mana you have to increase your creatures’ power/toughness. Captain of the Watch may be your biggest threat, as she creates three Soldier tokens, gives all soldiers +1/+1, gives them all vigilance, and has vigilance herself! Elite Vanguard may look dull, since he has no abilities or game text. Creatures without abilities or game text are what are called “vanilla” creatures. What does make him good however is the fact he has 2 power, which is rare for a creature that only costs a single mana. Since a lot of the creatures in this deck are expensive, Elite Vanguard can come down early until you have the lands in play needed to cast your larger threats. Embermaw Hellion isn’t a soldier, but he works too well in this deck not to include him. A nice 4/5 creature on his own, he has the added ability that says whenever a red source you control does damage, either to a creature or player, it does an additional point of damage. This damage can come from one of your red creatures OR one of your burn spells, it doesn’t matter. Wow! Phantom General adds +1/+1 to the power and toughness of your tokens, and Paragon of New Dawns adds another +1/+1 to all your white creatures. Want to frustrate you opponents? Drop Loxodon Gatekeeper into play, making all your opponents artifacts, creatures and lands come into play tapped. Duegar Hedge-Mage also uses “hybrid” mana, just like Unnerving Assault in the red/blue deck. Make sure not to cast him until you have at least two Mountains and two Plains in play. Precinct Captain can make a 1/1 Soldier whenever he damages your opponent. He also has the ability of “first strike”. What first strike does is, if a creature with first strike does enough damage to an opposing creature to kill that creature, the opposing creature dies immediately and doesn’t get to do its damage back. That means the 2/2 Precinct Captain can fight another 2/2, Precinct Captain lives while the other creature dies. Finally there is Tajic, Blade of the Legion. Tajic is indestructible meaning he can’t be killed by creatures, or by your opponent’s Lightning Bolt. However, even an indestructible creature can be killed if his toughness gets reduced to 0, so watch out for your opponents Eyeblight Massacre’s or their Death Frenzy. Finally, what is a way to make all these many soldiers even better? Play Fervor, an enchantment that lets all your creatures attack the turn they come into play by giving them all haste!
As mentioned, the creatures in this deck have high mana costs, so you’ve got three mana producing artifacts (called “mana rocks”) to help you cast your creatures faster. The first is a pair of Boros Signet’s. You must spend one mana to activate it, but when you do, it taps for both a white and red mana. Your last mana rock is Worn Powerstone, which can add 2 colorless mana when tapped.
Finally, you have a pair of lands with an ability not found in the other decks: Temple of Triumph. This land comes into play tapped, but it allows you to “scry” the next card in your deck. That means you get to look at your next card, and you can decide to put it back on top of your deck to draw next turn, or you can put it on the bottom of your deck if it’s a card you don’t need on the next turn, in the hope that the next card will be better.
I'm not sure about your land count comment, did you mean for me to go with 1 more than was in the list (up to 23) or one more than I suggested (the 22 in the list +3 in my comments +1 more, for 26 total) ? I went with 24 as a middle ground for now.
That comment was in regards to the lands you had in the list. So 22 plus 1. It IS still a aggro-midrangy deck and can afford to run sightly less lands, because it has lots of cards that can be played even if the land draw hits a snag.
I'd also like to find a non-basic to replace a few plains, but I'd like to keep them varied from deck to deck, any suggestions for white?
Kabira Crossroads would add a little more life gain, as would Blighted Steppe or Radiant Fountain. Sejiri Steppe would add a bit of choice protection without being downright devastating, it would mostly act as a means to make a creature unblockable for a turn. Rogue's Passage can do so repeatedly. Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and Geier Reach Sanitarium lets you dig into the library, but are symetrical so no real card advantage. New Benalia is actually the best I can find. Scry 1 is much easier than scry 2, since you only have to decide wether you want to draw that card next turn or not.
I agree about White Knight, but it's just so iconic I wanted to throw a few in. I'm only putting in 2, and I'll address them somehow when I build the black deck. For now that deck is actually the one I least know what I'll do with, so I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
Well, the black deck should definitely contain some of black's creature kill spells, like Doom Blade, Terror, or Dark Banishing.
I would also add some reanimation, like Raise Dead or Zombify. Maybe include 1-2 copies of Rise from the Grave to let the deck reanimate the creatures it kills (in that case, leave Zombify out to avoid confusion about which graveyards can be raided). Reanimation needs worthwhile targets to bring back. So some creatures with simple ETB effects should go into the deck, like Nekrataal or Ravenous Rats.
A few Night's Whispers or Sign in Blood as card draw will fit well, too (the later has the potential to deliver the killing blow, but it's so simply worded, that I would choose that one for added strategical value).
The central ability can be deathtouch, there's lots of options for those, and like firebreathing for red, it acts both as a deterrent and as an evasion ability.
As for the big awesome critter, my suggestions are Harvester of Souls (though its trigger may be prone to be forgotten many times), Rune-Scarred Demon (its trigger is a one time affair, but still impactful, and the demon is big and evasive), and Sepulchral Primordial (good luck with speaking the name of the card, but it ties into a reanimation theme, and intimdate makes it unblockable so far).
@SonofaBith
I'm sure the OP appreciates your detailed posts. But I think, your lists contain way too many long worded cards and interactions. Rememeber, that the OP wants to teach his 5-year-old, with English cards yet English is not their native language. The decks and the cards they use cannot be too complicated.
@ Sonofa*****: Wow, those decks look pretty sweet and flavorful, and the accompanying descriptions are pretty great, it shows that a LOT of work went into them. However, as Rezzahan pointed out, they're quite a bit too advanced for my current purposes; teaching a french-speaking 5 year old. I'll definitely save them somewhere for later use though, either to use as is or as something to build off of, if my kids get into it there will definitely come a time when I'll want to crank up the complexity by adding more colors to decks and more intricate interactions. Thanks for sharing!
@ Rezzahan: I'll roll the land count back to 23 then, and throw in a couple New Benalia, like you said it introduces scry but having it be just one card should make the decision much easier to make.
As for the black deck, I kind of know the types of cards I want to include, which are a lot of the things you suggested, since they're the things Black is known for. Discard, creature removal, some graveyard interaction of sorts. The issue (for now) is that I don't have a cohesive idea of how I want to wrap all those things together. I knew before I started building the decks that Red would probably be burn heavy, I wanted First Strike for White, Trample for green and I stumbled onto the ramp aspect pretty early. I'll probably follow a similar pattern to yours for the blue deck, i.e. countermagic, defensive creatures, card draw and a few finishers, but I don't have a clear plan for how I want the black deck to operate yet. I'm saving it for last since I'm still not too sure where I'm going with it, as soon as I have a chance to playtest the White deck and see if it's any good, I'll move on to the Blue deck. I'm unsure about deathtouch though, I might playtest it to see how it goes, but I'm a bit worried it might invalidate some of the other decks too much, especially the Green deck. Trading my 2-3 mana deathtoucher for your 6 mana bomb is rough, on top of Doom Blade or something which will already be doing that. I suppose the fact that a lot of Green's big dudes have trample might balance it out, we'll have to see. Anyhow, thanks again, and Merry Christmas!
the main wincon is Ajani's Pridemate and Brave the Elements. just gain life to power up the pridemate and use brave the elements to make it unblockable
While I’m not advocating this exact list, I find green and red make for some pretty easy mechanics to teach the game. I’ve taught several people over the years with this color combination. The list here has undergone some upgrades over time, but I built it to teach my son, and will still do so when he’s old enough.
It has a lot of card value with 2-for-1 and even 3-for-1 effects, sweepers, creatures that get bigger all on their own with no additional investment, some tutoring, and an uncomplicated theme of blowing stuff up and smashing face while giving veterans lots of choices on stuff to do when interacting with most permanent types. One of my favorite decks, it’s easy to pilot as a loan-out deck in moderate casual groups. An expensive card like Berserk is easily swapped with another Eternal Witness.
Lands (24):
-- Wind-Scarred Crag x2
-- Temple of Triumph x2
-- Vivid Meadow
-- Vivid Crag
-- Sandstone Bridge
-- Blighted Steppe
-- Temple of the False God
-- Daru Encampment
-- Plains x6
-- Mountain x8
Creatures (18):
-- Blaze Commando x3
-- Foundry Champion x2
-- Captain of the Watch x2
-- Elite Vanguard x2
-- Embermaw Hellion x2
-- Phantom General
-- Akroan Phalanx
-- Paragon of New Dawns
-- Loxodon Gatekeeper
-- Precinct Captain
-- Tajic, Blade of the Legion
-- Duergar Hedge-Mage
Instants (14):
-- Arc Trail x2
-- Shock x2
-- Smash to Smithereens x2
-- Wear / Tear x2
-- Raise the Alarm x2
-- Captain’s Call
-- Flame Slash
-- Searing Blood
-- Kytheon’s Tactics
Enchantments (1):
-- Fervor
Artifacts (3):
-- Boros Signet x2
-- Worn Powerstone
All 2-color decks in Magic have a name given to them by their association with a “guild” on the plane of Ravnica. Decks that are made up of the Red/White color pairing are known as “Boros”. This deck tends to be the slowest of the three decks in terms of speed, due to the fact the cards contained have a typical converted mana cost (CMC) of 4 or 5. But, the trade-off for being the slowest deck is that the creatures it contains tend to have a higher power and toughness and come with stronger abilities. It may start out slow, but once you’ve gotten going, your opponents better look out!
The red aspect of this deck utilizes what the color is best known for, and that’s a game term known as “burn”. Burn refers to doing damage directly to an opponent or their creatures, without having to attack with your own creatures. Whereas your creatures could always be blocked by your opponent’s creatures, you’ll find opponents have a hard time dealing with the burn spells (instants and sorceries) you’re hurling at them, removing their creatures from the battlefield or watching their life total dwindle. Also, since most of the creatures in this deck have high mana costs, often costing 4, 5, or even 6 mana, use your burn spells to help keep your opponents creatures in check until you have enough mana to afford to play your big creatures. Your burn spells begin with Arc Trail. This sorcery provides flexibility because it lets you divide up the damage it does, doing 2 points of damage to one creature or player, and 1 point of damage to another, different creature or player. Shock is similar to the card Lightning Bolt in the red/blue deck. Whereas Lightning Bolt does 3 damage to a creature of player for just one red mana, it was considered so powerful that Shock was created, only this time doing 2 points of damage. Smash to Smithereens will help you deal with the artifacts found in the red/blue deck. It instantly destroys ANY artifact, and then adds insult to injury by doing 3 damage to that opponent! Wear / Tear is referred to as a “split card”. See how it’s two cards in one? You can cast either half of the card, OR because it has the ability called “Fuse”, you can cast BOTH haves at the same time, as long as you pay both mana costs. Your burn spells finish with Flame Slash and Searing Blood. To get the most out of Searing Blood, be sure to use it on a creature that will die the turn you cast Searing Blood.
You do have a few other instants and sorceries that aren’t associated with burn. Raise the Alarm puts two 1/1 soldier tokens into play. Captain’s Call lets you put three Soldier tokens into play, but the trade-off is a higher mana cost and the fact it can only be played on your turn, whereas Raise the Alarm can be cast at almost any time. For combat tricks, you have a Kytheon’s Tactics, which gives all your creatures +2/+1 until end of turn. You’ll get an added bonus with this card if you have two instants or sorceries in your graveyard (all the burn spells you’ve been playing), making those creatures become vigilant, which means they don’t need to tap to attack, so you can still use them as blockers on your opponents turn.
The Boros deck contains the most powerful creatures of all three decks. To begin, there is Blaze Commando, a 5/3 creature, he puts two Soldier tokens with haste into play whenever you cast one of your instants or sorceries. Foundry Champion is a creature that can deliver his own burn if you control other creatures when he comes into play. In addition, you can spend as much red or white mana you have to increase your creatures’ power/toughness. Captain of the Watch may be your biggest threat, as she creates three Soldier tokens, gives all soldiers +1/+1, gives them all vigilance, and has vigilance herself! Elite Vanguard may look dull, since he has no abilities or game text. Creatures without abilities or game text are what are called “vanilla” creatures. What does make him good however is the fact he has 2 power, which is rare for a creature that only costs a single mana. Since a lot of the creatures in this deck are expensive, Elite Vanguard can come down early until you have the lands in play needed to cast your larger threats. Embermaw Hellion isn’t a soldier, but he works too well in this deck not to include him. A nice 4/5 creature on his own, he has the added ability that says whenever a red source you control does damage, either to a creature or player, it does an additional point of damage. This damage can come from one of your red creatures OR one of your burn spells, it doesn’t matter. Wow! Phantom General adds +1/+1 to the power and toughness of your tokens, and Paragon of New Dawns adds another +1/+1 to all your white creatures. Want to frustrate you opponents? Drop Loxodon Gatekeeper into play, making all your opponents artifacts, creatures and lands come into play tapped. Duegar Hedge-Mage also uses “hybrid” mana, just like Unnerving Assault in the red/blue deck. Make sure not to cast him until you have at least two Mountains and two Plains in play. Precinct Captain can make a 1/1 Soldier whenever he damages your opponent. He also has the ability of “first strike”. What first strike does is, if a creature with first strike does enough damage to an opposing creature to kill that creature, the opposing creature dies immediately and doesn’t get to do its damage back. That means the 2/2 Precinct Captain can fight another 2/2, Precinct Captain lives while the other creature dies. Finally there is Tajic, Blade of the Legion. Tajic is indestructible meaning he can’t be killed by creatures, or by your opponent’s Lightning Bolt. However, even an indestructible creature can be killed if his toughness gets reduced to 0, so watch out for your opponents Eyeblight Massacre’s or their Death Frenzy. Finally, what is a way to make all these many soldiers even better? Play Fervor, an enchantment that lets all your creatures attack the turn they come into play by giving them all haste!
As mentioned, the creatures in this deck have high mana costs, so you’ve got three mana producing artifacts (called “mana rocks”) to help you cast your creatures faster. The first is a pair of Boros Signet’s. You must spend one mana to activate it, but when you do, it taps for both a white and red mana. Your last mana rock is Worn Powerstone, which can add 2 colorless mana when tapped.
Finally, you have a pair of lands with an ability not found in the other decks: Temple of Triumph. This land comes into play tapped, but it allows you to “scry” the next card in your deck. That means you get to look at your next card, and you can decide to put it back on top of your deck to draw next turn, or you can put it on the bottom of your deck if it’s a card you don’t need on the next turn, in the hope that the next card will be better.
That comment was in regards to the lands you had in the list. So 22 plus 1. It IS still a aggro-midrangy deck and can afford to run sightly less lands, because it has lots of cards that can be played even if the land draw hits a snag.
Kabira Crossroads would add a little more life gain, as would Blighted Steppe or Radiant Fountain. Sejiri Steppe would add a bit of choice protection without being downright devastating, it would mostly act as a means to make a creature unblockable for a turn. Rogue's Passage can do so repeatedly. Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and Geier Reach Sanitarium lets you dig into the library, but are symetrical so no real card advantage. New Benalia is actually the best I can find. Scry 1 is much easier than scry 2, since you only have to decide wether you want to draw that card next turn or not.
Well, the black deck should definitely contain some of black's creature kill spells, like Doom Blade, Terror, or Dark Banishing.
I would also add some reanimation, like Raise Dead or Zombify. Maybe include 1-2 copies of Rise from the Grave to let the deck reanimate the creatures it kills (in that case, leave Zombify out to avoid confusion about which graveyards can be raided). Reanimation needs worthwhile targets to bring back. So some creatures with simple ETB effects should go into the deck, like Nekrataal or Ravenous Rats.
A few Night's Whispers or Sign in Blood as card draw will fit well, too (the later has the potential to deliver the killing blow, but it's so simply worded, that I would choose that one for added strategical value).
The central ability can be deathtouch, there's lots of options for those, and like firebreathing for red, it acts both as a deterrent and as an evasion ability.
As for the big awesome critter, my suggestions are Harvester of Souls (though its trigger may be prone to be forgotten many times), Rune-Scarred Demon (its trigger is a one time affair, but still impactful, and the demon is big and evasive), and Sepulchral Primordial (good luck with speaking the name of the card, but it ties into a reanimation theme, and intimdate makes it unblockable so far).
@SonofaBith
I'm sure the OP appreciates your detailed posts. But I think, your lists contain way too many long worded cards and interactions. Rememeber, that the OP wants to teach his 5-year-old, with English cards yet English is not their native language. The decks and the cards they use cannot be too complicated.
Former Rules Advisor
"Everything's better with pirates." - Lodge
(The Gamers: Dorkness Rising)
"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."
(Girl Genius - Fairy Tale Theater Break - Cinderella, end of volume 8)
@ Rezzahan: I'll roll the land count back to 23 then, and throw in a couple New Benalia, like you said it introduces scry but having it be just one card should make the decision much easier to make.
As for the black deck, I kind of know the types of cards I want to include, which are a lot of the things you suggested, since they're the things Black is known for. Discard, creature removal, some graveyard interaction of sorts. The issue (for now) is that I don't have a cohesive idea of how I want to wrap all those things together. I knew before I started building the decks that Red would probably be burn heavy, I wanted First Strike for White, Trample for green and I stumbled onto the ramp aspect pretty early. I'll probably follow a similar pattern to yours for the blue deck, i.e. countermagic, defensive creatures, card draw and a few finishers, but I don't have a clear plan for how I want the black deck to operate yet. I'm saving it for last since I'm still not too sure where I'm going with it, as soon as I have a chance to playtest the White deck and see if it's any good, I'll move on to the Blue deck. I'm unsure about deathtouch though, I might playtest it to see how it goes, but I'm a bit worried it might invalidate some of the other decks too much, especially the Green deck. Trading my 2-3 mana deathtoucher for your 6 mana bomb is rough, on top of Doom Blade or something which will already be doing that. I suppose the fact that a lot of Green's big dudes have trample might balance it out, we'll have to see. Anyhow, thanks again, and Merry Christmas!
4 Ajani's Pridemate
4 Ajani's Sunstriker
4 Nyx-Fleece Ram
4 Sungrace Pegasus
4 Suture Priest
4 Divine Favor
4 Blessing
4 Ethereal Armor
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Brave the Elements
Land
20 Plains
the main wincon is Ajani's Pridemate and Brave the Elements. just gain life to power up the pridemate and use brave the elements to make it unblockable
It has a lot of card value with 2-for-1 and even 3-for-1 effects, sweepers, creatures that get bigger all on their own with no additional investment, some tutoring, and an uncomplicated theme of blowing stuff up and smashing face while giving veterans lots of choices on stuff to do when interacting with most permanent types. One of my favorite decks, it’s easy to pilot as a loan-out deck in moderate casual groups. An expensive card like Berserk is easily swapped with another Eternal Witness.
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Managorger Hydra
3 Eternal Witness
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Acidic Slime
4 Inferno Titan
4 Primordial Hydra
2 Crater Hellion
1 Genesis
2 Primal Command
4 Clan Defiance
1 Berserk
Lands:
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Gruul Turf
2 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Desert
7 Forest
3 Mountain