When building decks for Pauper you sometimes find that with the passage of time they become less powerful. The usual reason is other decks evolve in the meta which are more effective. This is the case with my Boros Tokens deck that I designed when Modern Horizons came out. The deck had some very solid showings at my LGS, so much so one player who borrowed the deck wanted to keep it and my wife found playing against it so much fun that she decided it was going to be her next deck.
The Original Decklist
The Original Decklist is as follows
- 4 Wind-Scarred Crag
- 4 Boros Garrison
- 7 Snow-Covered Plains
- 7 Snow-Covered Mountains
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Martyr’s Soul
- 4 Bogardan Dragonheart
- 4 Raise the Alarm
- 4 Dragon Fodder
- 4 Battle Screech
- 2 Rally the Peasants
- 2 Goblin War Party
- 4 Impact Tremors
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Raid Bombardment
Sideboard
- 3 Soul Warden
- 1 Journey to Nowhere
- 1 Ramosian Rally
- 2 Palace Sentinels
- 3 Pyroblast
- 2 Gorilla Shaman
- 3 Prismatic Strands
The process around building the deck can be found in my previous article
Boros Impact Tokens
Reviewing the Deck
So, just over a year later, where are we?
Suffocating Fumes is added to the hate cards that can be used against the deck, though in reality it just replaces Shrivel. More worrying Fiery Cannonade arrived with Commander Legends.
With a year of play behind us, what would we like to change?
Unfortunately, Martyr’s Soul is by far the weakest card and hardest to resolve at full power. Such a shame as this was one of the reasons for building the deck.
We definitely want to keep Bogardan Dragonheart as it’s a fun way to win and also avoids annoying board wipes when you sacrifice a creature in response to removal.
The question now is do we stay true to our core with a Tokens Strategy, or do we push more towards the Boros Bully style strategy? More about this later.
New Cards
The first place I’m going to look for replacements in new sets. Using new cards is fun and allows us to explore potential new directions.
Forbidden Friendship looks like an ideal replacement for Dragon Fodder. We get a Dinosaur with Haste and a White Soldier to assist with Prismatic Strands.
Goblin Wizardry was an absolute beating in Core Set 2021. Play it end of turn and cast a couple of spells on your own turn and you’ve two miniature Monastery Mentor’s swinging into an opponent. Goblin Wizardry stays on track with tokens but synergises too, I’d like it to replace the Martyr’s Soul.
Crib Swap also was downshifted in Double Masters and this can be an additional removal for annoying problems at instant speed. Also, as it replaces the target with a shapeshifter, their is nothing stopping you from removing your own creature to trigger Impact Tremors again.
As I was writing this article the Commander Legends spoilers was released and imagine my surprise to see Makeshift Munitions was downshifted. Makeshift Munitions has plenty of synergy within a deck that creates tokens. This is one of the great things about Pauper, new cards can surface and open up new options for existing decks.
The Bully Option
So, I mentioned earlier in the article the Boros Bully archetype? Basically, the deck is very similar but you can use Seeker of the Way and Mage-Ring Bully as threats that get significantly larger as you cast extra spells.
A great version of this deck and strategy article was written by Alex Ullman on CFB here.
The bird is almost certainly the word as many decks also uses Squadron Hawk as they can tutor each other up and creature a massive air force.
The alternative would be to remove Impact Tremors, Raid Bombardment and Goblin War Party for Seeker of the Way and Squadron Hawk but then the deck truly is more of a Bully style deck than Tokens.
I’m a very big fan of Seeker of the Way as it was one of my favourite cards in Standard, it does some heavy lifting in both my Boros Monarch and Jeskai Snow decks. I could safely just remove Martyr’s Soul, ignore the potential of Goblin Wizardry and just go for the trusted safer option.
With the release of Commander Legends, we also have to consider the relevance of the additional Monarch cards in all colours being used, adding Palace Sentinels and or Crimson Fleet Commodore to respond to Monarch decks is an option but at that point it is probably just better to play Boros Monarch.
Final Decklist
Sometimes you need to have faith and try things, otherwise you’ll never know how good a card actually can be. My final list is as follows
- 4 Wind-Scarred Crag
- 4 Boros garrison
- 7 Snow-Covered Plains
- 7 Snow-Covered Mountains
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 3 Goblin Wizardry
- 4 Bogardan Dragonheart
- 4 Raise the Alarm
- 4 Forbidden Friendship
- 4 Battle Screech
- 3 Rally the Peasants
- 2 Makeshift Munitions
- 4 Impact Tremors
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 2 Raid Bombardment
Sideboard
- 3 Seeker of the Way
- 1 Journey to Nowhere
- 1 Ramosian Rally
- 2 Palace Sentinels
- 3 Pyroblast
- 2 Gorilla Shaman
- 3 Prismatic Strands
In the end I put in Makeshift Munitions, Goblin Wizardry and Forbidden Friendship to the main deck.
For the Sideboard I’ve removed the Soul Warden and put in Seeker of the Way to be our life gain source and is a bit more flexible if we want to shake things up.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and the thought processes involved when trying to refresh an old deck. The deck has a moderate power level within the format but where it excels is giving fun memories from the games.
I still think it is Tier 2 but is fun to play, however, if you’ve any new perspectives on how to improve the deck I would love to hear them.
On_Common_Ground 