Standard Boros Soldiers

~
Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

We trust all had a great weekend.  For us, the highlights were of course the season premier of Doctor Who (Season 8, episode 1 featuring the new twelfth doctor, Peter 'Mad Brows' Capaldi) on Saturday.  The other highlight was Friday Night Magic where we took a decklist rather similar to that of Alex Sittner's 'No Limit Soldiers' to OMG! Games & Collectibles in Barrie, Ontario, Canada-Land. 

Land (20) : 4x Battlefield Forge, 4x Mana Confluence, 1x Mountain, 3x Mutavault, 4x Plains, 4x Sacred Foundry
 
Creature (23) : 4x Akroan Crusader, 4x Boros Elite, 4x Dryad Militant, 3x Favored Hoplite, 4x Legion Loyalist, 4x Soldier of the Pantheon

Sorcery (4) : 4x Launch the Fleet

Instant (8) : 4x Dynacharge, 4x Raise the Alarm

Artifact (4) : 4x Obelisk of Urd

Enchantment (1) : 1x Spear of Heliod

Sideboard (15) : 3x Boros Charm, 4x Electrickery, 3x Gods Willing, 3x Keening Apparition, 2x Phyrexian Revoker

One of the challenges we set for ourselves is to play standard constructed with as many of the interesting cards available before they rotate out of the format.  One such card we wanted to get to play is Obelisk of Urd, which has resigned itself to the junk rare bin in most game stores.  This artifact does cost a whopping six colorless mana but as it has convoke, you can tap dudes to get a Kmart blue light special (are we dating ourselves with this reference?).  

Anywhoos, getting a +2/+2 pump on the cheap for a named creature sub-type ain't that bad and we certainly wanted to give this a try.  We've seen some ideas using a Blue-Red Elemental list featuring Master of Waves and Young Pyromancer and even a Bird-Urd list with Blue-White birds such as Cloudfin Rapton and Warden of Evos Isle.  Our first choice however is soldiers and that's why we liked Sittner's List.  Without further ado, let's have a looky-loo and see how we did . . .

Three wins and two losses in a field of approximately 40 players :

Match 1 Loss (+0) Jason M
Match 2 Win (+3) Zack O
Match 3 Loss (+0) Mike D
Match 4 Win (+3) Jon M
Match 5 Win (+3) Michael SH

The crux of the matter is that our list is only similar to Sittner's list - specifically we only have 3 Obelisk of Urd and no Legion Loyalist at all.  In most games when we did plant the Obelisk, it carried us over the finish line.  Failing that, if we did not get to cast a Dynacharge and / or Brave the Elements, our game went sideways.  In summary, we thought this a fun and exciting game and think that the local metagame is not quite robust enough to deal with an early game onslaught of pumped soldiers.  We are contemplating getting our fourth Obelisk from MTG Mint Card, as well as perhaps moving this list to mono-white with the addition of at least one Hall of Triumph.
~