Arms Race (Boros Aikido) (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Arms Race (Boros Aikido)

Commander / EDH Casual Counters Group Hug Multiplayer Pillow Fort Redirection RW (Boros)

ShieldOfHolyShadows

Instant (24)

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (1)

1x Sundering Eruption ^Flip

Creature (22)

Artifact (8)

Commanders (2)

Land (39)

Maybeboard

Instant (6)

Land (1)

1x Rogue's Passage

Enchantment (3)

Creature (3)

Artifact (3)

Sorcery (2)

Boros aikido. Buff everyone's creatures and counterattack anyone who attacks you.

Very casual, but more viable than it looks. PlayEDH rated as Low.

(Foils are cards I'm playtesting or need to adjust in my paper deck.)

Design goals: Show

Maximize fun for the entire playgroup. - Obviously this can't be perfect, but my original playgroup played at sub-precon levels of power. I have trouble brewing at that level because I have a natural desire to optimize, so instead I gave myself a goal of maximizing the play experience of the group rather than the deck itsef. After a lot of research, playtesting, theory crafting, etc., I came to an answer that's obvious in hindsight: people want their decks to do something, so let them do their thing. You don't need to give them fancy toys to play with, they have their own already. So I don't bother with stuff like Rite of the Raging Storm, instead I give people choices that are actually choices. I don't force them to attack like Disrupt Decorum, I just try to give them the tools to empower themselves to do what they want. This deck had good games at sub-precon tables, and it has good games at upgraded precon tables.
Maximize fairness. One thing that can lead to not having fun in a casual setting is feeling like the game wasn't fair. This deck tries to make every action feel fair. If someone swing at you and you cast a response like Comeuppance, they're more likely to feel like they deserved it than if you did something like Ruinous Ultimatum. You are simply responding to their aggression, rather than beating them down. On the flip side, most of the buffs are also symmetrical, which keeps you from racing out of control. You can't get ahead of anyone unless they're refusing to work with you, which is their own fault. There's also a good amount of interaction to keep the game more balanced if one person if pulling far ahead of the others.
Maximize winrate. After all is said and done, I'm going to be playing to win and I'm very transparent about that. My goal is to slowly advance my board to a winning state, and if you're not careful, I will just outscale you. However, I want my wins to adhere to the other two goals, so they are fun and fair. That's usually achieved by being super telegraphed, or by being directly related to someone else's attempt to win and turning it back on them.
Maximize simplicity. It's annoying to deal with someone taking 30 minute turns every game. By minimizing my own playtime, everyone has more time to focus on their own stuff, and also reduces my threat profile. This also makes my life easier because I want to be able to play optimally even when I'm up until 3:00 AM and just barely functional.

Commander Choice: Show

Deck Theory: Show

The deck is built around game theory. If someone isn't going to attack you, then objectively they should take the counters. If they do, and another player doesn't, the person who hasn't taken the counters loses winrate because their opponents get a combined +6/+6 (numbers obviously variable based on number of players) per turn, and are likely to be killed off quickly. Then when it's just you and the people taking your counters, odds are that their creatures have outscaled their lifetotals, and you can kill them with an aikido turnaround card.

There's also a major focus on player psychology. This deck is intentionally invisible. It doesn't draw attention to itself. It doesn't interfere unless necessary. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. It's not the strongest at the table. It's not running combos, it's just playing down fair magic cards. And the instants are almost entirely reactive. Meaning people don't notice you unless they're going for chip damage (which is fine) or a lethal, which you can punish in a spectacular fashion.

Normal group hug has everyone drawing cards, but that helps control and combo far more than creature-based decks. By buffing board presence exclusively, we subtly shift the balance towards decks that use creatures as their win condition and help prevent them from stalling out as much. And by encouraging damage as a win condition, it makes it easier to kill someone with a turnaround card later. The ability to give out so many total stats also makes it an excellent king-slayer build, as any player who becomes archenemy has to deal with you giving out stat boosts and having interaction to pick apart their win conditions.

The longer the game goes on, the better of a position you'll be in. Noble Heritage is most impactful when you can force a board stall, where everyone is just sitting there and growing, but not gaining massive amounts of life. If you have a Crawlspace or Ghostly Prison out, people are encouraged to buff one creature up to be huge, and if they attack with it, it's easier to punish than an army of tokens.

The deck can be proactive with its own large creatures, which helps a lot when there's a combo or stax player you need to help rush down. And if the game stalls out, the reckoner creatures plus the flying creatures can usually slowly wear someone down.

Intentional Exclusions: Show

Sunforger: This is a Sunforger deck minus the actual card because it's such a dramatic change to the gameplay. Sunforger makes you archenemy and removes the "wow" factor when you're tutoring your answers every turn.

Duelist's Heritage: Great card, but I want to minimize the number of decisions I have to make and I want to avoid blatantly picking on someone, especially if they're behind on board already. I want my buffs to be my opponents' choice, not my own when I can.

Brash Taunter: This card is super good. I ended up cutting it because I kept accidentally finding infinites with it and I'm trying to keep the deck comboless, plus it's slightly more aggressive than the deck theme really wants. If you want some easy combos, throw it in with Blazing Sunsteel to get two triggers per instance of damage and then use Sunsteel to shoot the taunter again, or use Fiendlash plus Gideon's Sacrifice, Martyrdom, or Saving Grace and use Fiendlash to ping yourself.

Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon: Great effects but I don't want to be the bad guy.

Teferi's Protection: Too meta and I have enough fogs and redirections to usually be able to skip a fog without an aikido theme, even one of the best ones ever printed. Plus, if I save my board, I immediately become archenemy, and I'd prefer to win a little bit more subtly than that.

Boros Charm: See above about board wipes, but also I want to avoid introducing infinite loops with the reckoner creatures.

Blasphemous Act and Star of Extinction: I want to try to minimize board wipes and rely on pillowfort tools instead. Damage based wipes like these will win the game, but winning out of nowhere just makes people remember you as a combo deck and makes them need to kill you in future games.

Agitator Ant: People are way less likely to take these counters. If you're the only one taking them, you start to grow above the rest of the table and become the threat. It's also much worse for player 4 than player 2; people committing to attacking is much more difficult than them committing to NOT attacking you because so much can change over a turn or two.

Disrupt Decorum and Taunt from the Rampart: Goad is a board wipe and a win condition that makes people irrationally angry. I don't need to force people to attack if I can encourage them, and I prefer playing subtly if I can. Still, would be great inclusions

Nils, Discipline Enforcer: This deck is carrot and stick. Carrot is rewarding people with counters for not attacking you. Stick is removal and reckoner creatures. It's very important to not mess with the psychology there, and Nils makes the counters a punishment. People are less likely to do what you want them to if it punishes them.

Olorin's Searing Light: It's very close to being on theme, but I don't like how it blasts everyone. If someone's working with me and taking the counters, I don't want to betray them by blasting them unprovoked. It's also harder than I expected to turn on the spell mastery.

Required Readings: Show

Cut watchlist: Wild Ricochet (clunky), Aurelia Law Above (threatening), Gisela Blade of Goldnight (threatening), Donna Noble (to run boros charm without infinites)

New card watchlist: none

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92% Casual

Competitive

Revision 25 See all

(4 days ago)

+1	Agility Bobblehead	maybe
+1	Kabira Takedown ^Flip	maybe
+1	Kazuul's Fury ^Flip	main
+1	Ondu Inversion ^Flip	maybe
+1	Price of Progress	maybe
+1	Sejiri Shelter ^Flip	main
-1	Smuggler's Share	main
+1	Sundering Eruption ^Flip	main
+1	Witch Enchanter ^Flip	main

Date added	1 year
Last updated	4 days
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 0 Rares 27 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.31
Tokens	City's Blessing, Clue, Elephant 3-3 G, Human 1/1 W, Incubator, Map, Phyrexian 0/0 C, Treasure
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