The Three Styles of Boros Aggro
Boros Aggro took a whopping six of the Top 8 spots at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica.
Basic Mountain: Boros Aggro? Boros TOKENS!
PT Champion Jeremy Dezani showed us one of the new styles of Boros Aggro. Relative to the other decks in Top 8, this “redder” r-w deck had many points of differentiation when compared with the “whiter” or even mono-white builds.
Chief among this would be a missing Benalish Marshall. Benalish Marshall is very good… Unless you are playing lands that don’t tap for white.
Dezani played a whopping four basic Mountains!
These Mountains helped to support a couple of gold cards (two Boros Challengers, and two copies of Aurelia, Expmplar of Justice), but more importantly, four copies of Goblin Instigator.
Instigator is thematically appropriate for such a tokens-centric deck list. Jeremy played both Hunted Witness and Heroic Reinforcements; neither is an automatic four-of in Boros Aggro.
Mini-Soul Sisters: Ajani’s Pridemate in Boros Aggro
One of the most unique takes on Boros was played by Luis Scott-Vargas.
Luis and team “splashed” Ajani’s Pridemate into their White Weenie deck. This card starts off with a little bit of life gain with Healer’s Hawk. Adding Leonin Vanguard gives the Pridemate plenty of things use to grow Ajani’s Pridemate. The Pridement itslef can play a little bit of Tarmogoyf; it only costs two mana, but it can pack quite the punch. Given the limited spot removal of some of these white aggro decks, an Ajani’s Pridemate with too many +1/+1 counters is just going to kill you.
Rustwing Falcon: Trusty Rusty in Boros Aggro
One card you might have espied in the PT Guilds of Ravnica Top 8 is Rustwing Falcon.
“A 1/2 flyer for W?” you ask. “Why would you play this?”
There are two reasons:
- If you think people are going to play Healer’s Hawk — and all the Boros Aggro decks are playing between 2 and 4 copies — Rustwing Falcon rules the skies.
- Goblin Chainwhirler. The success of these White Weenie-type decks is largely predicated on people just not playing Mono-Red, and therefore being able to ignore its indiscriminate slaughter of x/1 creatures. Rustwing Falcon, with its two toughness, offers some incidental resistance to Goblin Chainwhirler.
The winning list, played by Andrew Elenbogen, went even lower: If 1/2 flyers make you scratch your head… What do you think about 0/3 dinosaurs?
Beyond Boros Aggro…
While there were six Boros decks in the Top 8, those slots were largely earned on Limited records. Consequently, Standard has lots more viable decks. And boy do we talk about them!
