MTG Salvation

I've been working on a Boros aggro deck for a while now. I've been having trouble deciding between Aurelia and Gisela. I've played with both and both have their strong suits. Since I know there's a lot of overlap between the two in terms of what would be good in a deck built around them, I decided to build a core deck and then change a small suite of cards to better suit the strengths of each. I have a bit of fun with this flavorwise since it feels like special forces (Green Berets, SAS, KSK, etc.) because instead of a big army, you've got a smaller group of powerful and flexible creatures coming together in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts. But I digress.

Let's start with the core package I'm pretty confident in.

Starting over.

Extensive playtesting and I have come to the conclusion that Gisela is the commander for me for this deck. With a bit of tweaking, I've created a more focused Voltron deck. Without further ado, the revised decklist.


Commander: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
"Why Gisela?" Why not Gisela? She's one of the best angels in Boros. Her ability is excellent. I will grant that she's a bit expensive for a Voltron commander, but with the right support pieces, she can definitely kill with a single swing.

The Assault Team

• Aurelia, the Warleader - The other best angel in Boros. This deck will actually work almost as well with her as the Commander. I would maybe change out the damage spells (Earthquake, Starstorm) for other things, but that's not 100% necessary.
• Boros Swiftblade; Fencing Ace; Kor Duelist; Markov Blademaster; Mirran Crusader - The cheap double strikers. Give them an equipment and let them loose. Equally good on offense and defense. Extra bonus in that they can all be recurred with Sun Titan.
• Silverblade Paladin - The double strike enabler. Silverblade can turn any of our support team into threats, too.
• Wrecking Ogre - The Ogre is mostly here for the blood rush ability. Not the most efficiently costed creature in the deck, but co*d swing for 6 in a pinch.

Support Team

• Godo, Bandit Warlord; Stonehewer Giant - Effective equipment tutoring on beefy bodies.
• Grand Abolisher; Imposing Sovereign - Two of my favorite white hate bears. Really helpful in setting up the final haymaker.
• Leonin Shikari; Puresteel Paladin - Two really useful interactions with Equipment
• Mother of Runes - Useful against point removal and makes Gisela unblockable in a number of situations.
• Sun Titan - There isn't a reason to not run Sun Titan. It fits the mana curve and everything.

Reserved for future use.

I'd play Mana Vault over Worn Powerstone pretty much any day of the week. Path to Exile/Swords to Plowshares should be in the deck as well.

Mana Vault is something I hadn't thought about. I've never been a fan of it/Grim Monolith/Basalt Monolith/&c. outside of more artifact focused decks. Certainly worth testing, though.

I've already got StP in there. I generally prefer Condemn to Path to Exile because life gain for opponents doesn't mean much to me, but giving the threat player an additional land drop would certainly be a problem.