Heroic Boros .dec

Heroic is a surprisingly strong and diverse archetype in cube. It can be built in most combinations of red, blue, green and white so long as it includes the white. It also has a vast depth of powerful and interesting cards that can trigger heroic. I have called it a surprisingly good archetype as it has several warning flags fundamental to it. Firstly it is an aggressive deck that has few key threat cards and a bunch do nothing buff cards when those threats are not in play. Typically the best aggressive decks have high threat counts and minimal potential do nothing cards. This makes the deck vulnerable to disruption and less consistent. Next up we have relatively few actual heroic cards meaning we can't tweak the balance of buffs to dorks beyond a certain point without seriously hammering the power level of the deck. Lastly the list has pitifully few on theme one drop dorks. Good one drop dorks is why red and white aggro decks are so potent and it just feels wrong limiting yourself to a handful of good ones. I initially planned to do this deck in Bant colours but when I started laying it out the red one drops lured me in. As I refined the deck the green got thinner and thinner to the point where I just cut it for simplicity sake. I find that the simplest versions of decks are a good place to start with the more unfamiliar archetypes and while I have played against heroic decks a number of times I have never piloted one myself until now.

So what is it that makes a heroic deck strong in the face of all these dodgy elements? Well, it is a couple of things that all add up. Many of the heroic cards are highly tuned because the development team is also aware of the natural weakness of creature buff strategies and compensated for that a little. You get to play with some very powerful and cheap cards when you build around them. Next up, the buff cards are incredibly potent for much the same reasons as the heroic dudes but you also get to pick and choose from the whole of magic history rather than being restricted to one block as you are for your threats. You get to tune your buffs to exactly what you want and you get to stay very low to the ground without hurting your power levels. Essentially both your threats and your buffs are a little over tuned and then on top of that you get to scale them both up with the synergies between them. Other perks of the deck include impressive speed. When goldfishing this list tends to outpace most other aggro decks. It trades a little bit of consistency and resilience to disruption for that increased speed. The deck holds its own very well in combat too as the dorks it has typically get powerful fast. Some cheap creature based aggro decks come unstuck in the face of medium to large dorks hitting play on the other side of the board but this one just ploughs on through. The last perk this list has is the burst damage it can output. You can feel relatively safe with some blockers and a good life total and suddenly a small dude gets massive, evasive and double strikes you to death all with just a few mana. Here is the list I played, it has several poor cards I would change in future builds which we will cover along with replacements after;


27 Spells

Defiant Strike
Crimson Wisps
Launch the Fleet
Ajani's Presence

Gird for Battle
Gryf's Boon
Cartouch of Solidarity
Hyena Umbra

Integrity // Intervention
Coordinated Assault

Nyxborn Rollicker
Nyborn Sheildmate
Dauntless Bodyguard

Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
Favoured Hoplite
Akroan Crusader
Satyr Hoplite

Akroan Skyguard
Phalanx Leader
Vanguard of Brimaz
Hero of Iroas

Mogis Warhound
Arc Trail
Boros Charm

Fabled Hero
Tethmos High Priest

Conflagrate


13 Lands

2x Plains
Mountain
City of Brass
Mana Confluence
Battlefield Forge
Inspiring Vantage
Arid Mesa
Plateau
Sacred Foundry
Needle Spires
Clifftop Retreat
Rugged Prairie






I used a lot of the space in the deck to try and compensate for the issues it faces. This means packing lots of protective cards to ensure my heroic dudes survive. It also means finding ways to up the creature count without hurting the game plan and synergies of the deck. This latter issue I was attempting to resolve with bestow creatures. While both buffs and potential threats they are sadly just low powered versions of both. Buffing up a Nyxborn Rollicker sounds like a pretty poor game plan! He was also the best of the bestow cards I played simply for being the cheapest all round. I would probably keep him in future builds but cut the Sheildmate and Warhound. I think I would probably try Everflame Eidolon, Sightless Brawler or even Hopeful Eidolon over the more vanilla ones I played. They are less efficient overall but they all offer something unique you can leverage in games. One or two bestow guys is plenty to help round out the deck a little. At least the bestow cards make Hero of Iroas a little less sad looking as he gets to make use of his cost reduction ability! Perhaps there is an enchantment subtheme (Mesa Enchantress anyone?) you can make work in this deck at which point the bestow dorks jump massively in value.

Luckily you can lean more on protective creatures to bolster your threat count and those are typically a lot higher power than the bestow dorks. I didn't bother playing Mother of Runes or Selfless Spirit as they are fairly known quantities but both/either would obviously be amazing. As I had gone so hard on the bestow dorks I only felt like I needed a tiny bit more in the way of creature cards and just ran Dauntless Bodyguard. He is the most aggressive of the options at least. Even Benevolent Bodyguard is more aggressive than Mother and perhaps even spirit. Low cost did turn out to be a very big deal. For that reason I should absolutely have been playing Mutagenic Growth as one of my buff cards but that is a bit of a tangent.

Playing fewer protective creatures allowed me to play more spells that protect and also therefor trigger heroic! You want to strike a bit of a balance between protection effects and indestructible ones. Typically indestructible are a little better against mass removal and the protection ones a little better against spot removal. The latter can also help force through damage but it does have the downside of potentially removing or fizzling buff effects. Red and white are two removal heavy colours after all! I totally failed to include any protection cards and had an over reliance on Gryf's Boon to force through damage. Emerge Unscathed is the spell of choice for low cost and double heroic trigger potential. Hyena Umbra is another kind of spell that affords protection and heroic triggers and it also has the bonus of being proactive.

Much as many of the sorcery speed buffs are the most powerful they also don't afford that same level of threat to combat. With a couple of mana open you can ensure no creatures of value will block for your opponent until they need to. This means you only want the cream of the crop. I liked the Cartouch for the high power and that it helped increase the body count. Sadly it doesn't do what you need extra bodies to do which is be something useful when you don't have a body! As such I would cut it. Launch the Fleet is a far better tool for making bodies with and you don't even have that much payoff for going wide. Launch is good value but mostly it is about the multiple heroic triggers it affords.

This is why Gird for Battle and Coordinated Assault are so good in the deck. Gird is huge tempo and Assault is a deadly combat trick. It is also why I ran the Conflagrate although in hindsight it was a bit cute. It is nice because you can target any number of things and do them 0 damage so you can trigger all your heroic cards for one mana and then again for another two red. You even have the option on some pinging with extra cards and mana. All nice in theory but a little bit situational to really cut it. This deck is already an aggro deck that needs land threat and enablers rather than just land and threats. Adding in conditional cute cards to that kind of mix is super dodgy. Cauldron Haze is likely a better version of Conflagrate. It is cheaper, more trickery and offers some protection elements.

What might be a better means of getting bonus heroic triggers are the enchantments that you can bounce and replay. The most suitable of which include Crown of Flames, Flickering Ward, Mark of Fury, Conviction and Ghitu Firebreathing. The latter two are a little pricey without a Hero of Iroas in play. The others would likely need fitting in appropriately. Mark of Fury for Wisps or Flickering Ward for a protection card. That sort of thing. These bounce cards give you some solid late game but feel limp early when you are trying to press your advantage most heavily. I think more than one such card would be overdoing it.

Removal is light but that is OK. You plow through most dorks and kill quick enough to mitigate the relevance of many other high priority threats. Arc Trail was included as a high powered card that you can use to trigger you own cards thus upping the value of it somewhat. Integrity // Intervention is also a great split card that allows this deck to stay streamlined while adding to its overall utility. Guilds of Ravnica has helped this deck out more than I would expect. Arena Athlete might even be a better tool to add in that more removal. Sadly it would often feel like a waste using heroic triggers on him. Ordeal of Purphoros is another option on removal that fits into the theme of the deck without lowering the synergies. I quite like it but it does feel clunky. Pyrokinesis is another potentially cute card. It can freely trigger up to four heroic targets and it is also a solid removal card. I felt my list was a little light on red cards to run but it was close.

One thing this list really lacked was global pump. There isn't that much that also triggers heroic which is a shame. With two heroic dudes that churn out 1/1s and Launch the Fleet it feels like you really want more pump than just Phalanx Leader which is already one of your best cards. Perhaps you can make Benalish Marshall work. Perhaps you can just run Glorious Anthem and take the hit on no primary synergies. What might be the best call is to run Anax and Cymede. They don't buff forever but they are decently powerful, on theme and probably enough punch that you only need the one turn with them and some tokens to win. You can easily fit them in as both the other three drops felt underwhelming. Simply too slow to be as one theme as you would want them to be. Fabled Hero is punchy but easy to see coming and block. You are far better off with spells that give doublestrike so as to turn any of your cheaper dorks into instant finishers.

In that light Boros Charm was one of the best cards in the deck. It was protection and a finisher with the doublestrike. It was the last spell I cast in my winning games more than any other. I would strongly consider bolstering that ability count to two in the list with either Temur Battlerage or Double Cleave. The only other obvious inclusions you could make are Monastery Swiftspear and perhaps Soul-Scar Mage. These are semi heroic and don't even need to be targetted! They are both high tempo and high powered cards that could round out the one drop section without having to resort to vanilla 1/1 and 1/2 bestow cards. Even Bomat Courier is probably sufficiently more powerful to consider as an extra early drop although it is in a bit of a different role and is far less on theme. Another land probably isn't a bad call either. While the deck is super cheap it also wants to dump its load very quickly and thus wants to see three lands quickly. I had more bother than I would like with my lands being awkward and preventing optimal curving. I was leaning a little bit hard on my cantrip cards counting for that extra land but this resulted in slowing me down. Here is roughly what I think I would try and run next time with the benefit of hindsight;


27 Spells

Defiant Strike
Crimson Wisps
Launch the Fleet
Ajani's Presence

Gird for Battle
Gryf's Boon
Hyena Umbra
Integrity // Intervention

Coordinated Assault
Mutagenic Growth
Flickering Ward
Emerge Unscathed

Nyxborn Rollicker
Monastery Swiftspear
Soul-Scar Mage

Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
Favoured Hoplite
Akroan Crusader
Satyr Hoplite

Akroan Skyguard
Phalanx Leader
Vanguard of Brimaz
Hero of Iroas

Double Cleave
Arc Trail
Boros Charm

Anax and Cymede

13 Lands

2x Plains
Mountain
City of Brass
Mana Confluence
Battlefield Forge
Inspiring Vantage
Arid Mesa
Plateau
Sacred Foundry
Needle Spires
Clifftop Retreat
Rugged Prairie