We Are Legion!

Yesterday I played the Midnight Pre-release for the new Magic set, Gatecrash, and came in a hefty 12th place on 39 players.  Guild of choice?  Boros.

Why, well, because I play a red / black aggro deck in Standard, and with the new set I'm filing in a heap of red and white, expelling the black.  Mainly to be better able to counter on the one hand the life gain currently raging through type2, and on the other hand the new White enchantment Blind Obedience, which would render my Haste creatures all useless.

I was lucky yesterday that out of my 5 boosters and guild booster, I might not have gotten any usefull rares (I had 3 out of 5 Simic's, including the Prime Speaker), but did get for example no less then 4 Skynight Legionairres, getting me a ncie 3 win, 2 loss ratio and both losses actually being caused by top decking and one color screw.

Tomorrow on the third pre-release I'll be playing Orzhov (my favorite fluff guild) for the promo and the sticker, but I'll also be building over time an Orzhov deck, but for the short run, I'm color mutating my black to white to be able to stay competitive, planning to have it completed by the time I return from London.

This is my current Type2 deck, a sort of mix between a Rakdos and an RDW deck:

Lands:

14 Mountains
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Blood Crypt

Creatures:

4 Ash Zealot
3 Gore-House Chainwalker
2 Hellhole Flailer
3 Hellrider
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Stromkirk Noble
3 Vexing Devil
2 Falkenrath Aristocrat

Spells:

2 Brimstone Volley
4 Pillar of Flame
3 Searing Spear

Sideboard:

2 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Havoc Festival
3 Archwing Dragon
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Rakdos Return
3 Slaughter Games
2 Zealous Conscripts

The deck worked pretty simple; race with all the low cost creatures by adding haste if needed with the maulers, get the Aristocrats out and then slice the throats of your humans to make her more powerful.  Archwing Dragons where mainly to counter Supreme Verdicts and the likes.

The deck really shined against Omnidoor which it could easily outrace, and had a field day with Re-animator decks and the recent Chronic Flooding one from the Nagoya GP, but struggled against Band once the Thragtusks came in, and was near chanceless versus the Silverblade Paladin / Wolfir combo white green aggro which actually outraced it.

So what am I going to change?

First of all, Skullcrack.  The wet dream for an aggro deck, and I'll be replacing the two Flames of the Firebrand, the Havoc Festival and a Slaughter Game with it.  Then move a Searing Spear and a Pillar of Flame to the Sideboard and maindeck two of the 4 of the new red burner from heaven.

Rakdos Charm while be replaced by Boros Charm on a 1-by-1 ratio, same as the Rakdos's Return while be replaced by his equivalent of Boros, the Aurelia's Fury, in the sideboard.

The final two Slaughter Games will be replaced by the white Ray of Revelation, to be hopefully able to handle any Blind Obedience's being popped out.  I expect that card to appear in many sideboards, so if I see one plays white, I will be siding in the Ray every time to be sure.

Bigger critter wise, the Hellhole Flailer will be replaced by 2 Boros Reckoners, I love that beast and if I should be able to couple it with a Lightning Mauler, it will hurt, especcially if all the weenie blocks on it transfer damage to the opponent as well.

For the Falkenrath Aristocrat at first I thought of replacing her with two more Reckoners, but seeing the mana curve not comming in issues, I'm going to try out 2 Firemane Avengers.  With all my little one drops, I should be able to trigger the Batallion and do all the extra damage quite easily.

Mana base wise, it's just replacing the black / red dual lands with equivalents in white / red, as I don't have any more 'off colour' cards really then before, au contraire even.

This should give me an equivalent of my current dual coloured deck, starting with fast and aggressive play in round 1, to be able to swap in some tricks if needed in games 2 - 3 if it stalled in the first game.

We'll see how it goes once it is build, and then we can thinker afterwards anyways now don't we.