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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Rules Q&A
Take Heart
Instant
Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. You gain 1 life for each attacking creature you control.
legendofa on
Boros Legion
2 years ago
EDH evaluation isn't really my strong point, but here's what I got.
Daru Warchief is reliable Soldier tribal support, and Cenn's Tactician offers another 1-drop creature.
I'm not really seeing the purpose of Eldrazi Conscription. It's a good card, but it doesn't offer much to the go-wide, strength in numbers approach that Soldier tribal decks usually take. I also don't see a way to get it out quickly and reliably, so it's just kind of there.
Related to this, any effect that pumps a single creature probably isn't worth it. Sanctuary Blade, Angelic Gift, Eternal Thirst, and Gift of Orzhova in particular don't seem right for this deck.
I see a lifegain subtheme, which is fine as long as it works. How often does Angelic Accord trigger? Unless it's going off every turn, that's another one that can be taken out. Outside of that, I don't see any other payoffs for the lifegain. If you don't have any reason to include it other than "not losing," I would also drop Take Heart; there are better combat tricks.
Duress seems out of place, and doesn't really contribute anything to your soldiers. Champion of the Parish would be better served in a more Human-focused deck, since many of your creatures and almost of your tokens don't have the Human subtype.
Makeshift Battalion and Skymarch Bloodletter are generally pretty weak creatures.
For upgrades and replacements, you have some budget room, so I'm going to try to use that up. Rootborn Defenses should be Heroic Intervention, to save mana and get hexproof for your stuff instead of another 1/1 token. Switch Navigator's Compass for another mana rock that can provide mana instead of just changing it, like Fellwar Stone. Unless you regularly see regeneration, like multiple times every match, Dreadbore is better than Terminate.
Your lands are generally pretty slow, and I don't recommend the bounce lands (Rakdos Carnarium and friends) without a specific purpose beyond simply mana fixing. If you can, get the shocklands (Blood Crypt and friends) in their place. There are other land cycles as well for every level of budget. Look for ones that give the option to enter untapped. Clifftop Retreat is a good start. The Luxury Suite cycle (I forget what the nickname is) can get expensive, but if you can afford the investment are definitely worth it.
When looking for cuts, keep one question in mind: "How does this help advance my strategy?" If the answer is only "Because it's a Soldier" or "Because it gains me life," it's probably cuttable. Soldiers in particular are a very synergistic tribe, and ideally every card should help support every other card.
Hope this helps!
Nectaria_Coutayar on
Orzhov Ravens
4 years ago
Tried the deck, it works!
Cause I don't have the Planeswalker I either run Take Heart or Despark , both seem to work just fine without ever having a gamebreaking impact.
Lots of fun against RDW, R/W Knights and The Rock, neither of them seem to have an answer.
Murphy77 on
Mowu Money, Mowu Problems
4 years ago
With Ajani's Pridemate front and centre, you might want another life-gain trigger. Evolution Sage is almost a must for any counter deck as you just keep adding counters. In place of Huatli's Raptor (if you have Evolution Sage ), you might consider something like Pelt Collector , which can be generating +1/+1 counters from turn 2. Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants would also work in this deck.
The dilemma with this type of deck will always be the choice between 1-drops and early counters - growing an attack force or being more aggro from the start and battling to find room for full sets of Stony Strength , Pledge of Unity , Evolution Sage and other cards that accelerate the rate at which you collect +1/+1 counters. I found it easier to build a deck if I focused more either on life-gain or on counter-gain.
Life-gain decks would then bring in cards like Fountain of Renewal , Twinblade Paladin and Take Heart . With more focus on counters, you want full sets of Gird for Battle , Battlefield Promotion and you will rely more on Evolution Sage for proliferation.
I honestly don't know what strategy is stronger, but have had fun playing Ajani M.
nathanl69 on
Boros Fun Stuff
4 years ago
Also, I tested this deck and it 100% needs more lands. In my testing it consistently misses land drops and gets its hand filled up with 5 and 6 drops. I'd also recommend cutting Phalanx Leader , it doesn't fit the deck very well. Akroan Crusader doesn't work very well either. If you're casting your targeted cantrips, you would almost always rather target your Feather (she has evasion) or Zada. Take Heart is meh, Assault Strobe is much more impactful.
The biggest thing I'd recommend, however, is cutting the entire Feather subtheme. This seems like two decks mashed together, and even if they synergize a bit, Firesong/Sunspeaker and Feather clash on which instants or sorceries they want.
ChibiNature on
The Pie Raker's Army
5 years ago
VaalVanir First off Electrostatic Field is indeed a great addition is you feel like you've been falling back on to AoE damage as your main win condition. Let's say your play group runs a TON of artifact hate or something, than the damage you get from it is worth the card slot. the only reason I run Firebrand Archer instead is because she deals damage on more than just Instant and Sorcery cards being cast, so the little bit of damage helps.
Sentinel Tower is also a good addition as well, but I haven't gotten around to playtesting it. The main issue with it is that it ONLY works on your turn. But Feather, the Redeemed usually plays her cards on EVERY turn. Which means this card is only really working 1/4th of the time. Its effect is still strong tho, so we shall see.
And here is the reason I do not run any lifegain cards in my deck, I will try to explain as best as possible. Aetherflux Reservoir gives FAR more lifegain than we need. When it gets used, it either dies right away to removal (nothing you can do about that) or you pop off with it and win. I've never had it only go kinda halfway then peeter off, and here is why. The rest of the game I was preparing my boardstate for it, and not gaining life. When Aetherflux Reservoir and Paradox Engine aren't on the field, you'll want to be spending almost all your resources on getting several things; a bunch of mana rocks, 2-3 cantrip cards, and a field full of targetable creatures with either Mirrorwing Dragon or Zada, Hedron Grinder to back them up). If you spent that time gaining life here and there than you would have enough life to MAYBE kill someone right away if you were able to attack with enough guys. But if we are ready for Aetherflux Reservoir when it hits the field in a normal game, we can win that turn easily by cycling through our hand. It will get to the point easily where you are gaining 9-10 health a single spell without the need to attack.
Which also leads me to the second reason we do not run those cards, and it is their restrictions. I'll talk about each one individually. Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant are both ONLY good if you already have a token engine on the field, and at most they will then be gaining you only a little bit of life before we need to do other things with the board (maybe about 7-8 if we're lucky). Soul's Grace will really ONLY ever hit for 1 about 80% of the time, a 2 mana spell that only gains us one life is nowhere near good enough for us. Which means it is only SOMEWHAT decent with you have Zada, Hedron Grinder or Mirrorwing Dragon on the field, and cards that are completely useless without another in a 99 card deck are almost always a bad decision. Spirit Link , Spiritualize , and Take Heart all REQUIRE you to attack with something in order to be effective, and if you recall from earlier, attacking is almost always the way we dont play our deck. We will get maybe 1 solid attack with up to a dozen or so creatures before we either combo off with Aetherflux Reservoir or we eat a boardwipe and need to rebuild. Also Spiritualize is just WAY to heavily costed for a card that will be gaining us 1 life 80% of the time, it draws a card sure, but so do a TON of 1 mana spells in the deck. Student of Ojutai also falls under the WAY to heavily costed category, in fact, he is as expensive as our main win condition, so let us compare the two. Let's say we cast about 8-12 spells a turn when we get the ball rolling, I'll average it to 10 for simplicities sake. With Student of Ojutai on the field that means we will be gaining 20 life, not bad. But with Aetherflux Reservoir on the field that means we will be gaining 55 life, MUCH better. NOW let's say we DONT cast Student of Ojutai and instead use that mana for up to 4 more spells, since he costs 4 and we run a ton of 1 cost cards. Add that on to our already 10 cards cast and that's and extra 50 life! So investing in casting more small spells and cantrips instead of investing in Student of Ojutai is a lot better for our lifegain. Syndic of Tithes is just WAY too taxing on us. Almost all of what we do is 1-2 mana so his extort makes our spell twice as expensive, aka we will be doing half as much for only minimal returns. And you can ONLY use white mana for it, not colorless or red, and we are already stretched pretty thin for colored mana in our deck since many mana rocks tap for colorless. Tablet of the Guilds this one is probably the most "ok" of the lifegain cards so far, unfortunately tho the artifacts in our deck are all good because we can tutor for them a lot. And there is little to no circumstances where I will be tutoring for Tablet of the Guilds instead of something like Paradox Engine or Sunforger , but as a budget option Tablet of the Guilds isnt totally horrible, just not good enough to make the cut. And lastly we have Tandem Tactics for 2 mana it does very little, most of our cards do something, and raw us a card, this card does something and gains us a bit of life. That little bit of life is almost never worth the loss in card draw. Since card draw is afterall, one of Boros main weaknesses.
You also need to consider what you would have to give up for the lifegain cards. You could choose to cut into the Sunforger tools, but then you have no protection, or way to interact with the enemies board state. If you choose to cut into the tutoring creatures/cards then we no longer have any consistency in our deck, and our win percentage drops drastically. And if you cut into our card draw then we are back to square one in Boros EDH where we no longer have enough cards to win the game or combo off. In the end tho it all comes down to how unnecessary it is. Aetherflux Reservoir is more than enough for us, and cards that are being used to to its job but worse, would be better spent helping it do its job safely. "There aint no kill like overkill" is a very false statement in MTG, overkill is expensive and unsafe.
Hope that explained it well enough :)
VaalVanir on
The Pie Raker's Army
5 years ago
I just re-read Take Heart , um... OP? Swing with 4x 1/1 tokens and cast Take Heart on Zada, Hedron Grinder ... You now have 4x 9/9 tokens swinging and you gaining 32 life!!!
VaalVanir on
The Pie Raker's Army
5 years ago
More cards that can gain life: Student of Ojutai , Syndic of Tithes , Tablet of the Guilds , Take Heart , Tandem Tactics sorry for the double post.
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