While Standard is scheduled to continue suffering until November 10th at the very least, Modern is actually doing pretty well at the moment. There’s a wide range of viable decks there, and a good play rate balance across the top tiers. On top of that, we’re also seeing rogue brews get regular results. The Boros Land Destruction deck that took down today’s MTG Online Modern League is a prime example of this.
This deck comes to us via GingerGuy83, and it’s seriously innovative stuff. It takes the foundation laid down by the Mono-White Land Destruction deck we saw back in May and takes that idea even further. The result is a brutal Control deck that can totally lock opponents out with the right draws. While consistency issues may keep this list from the top tables for now, it’s still an exciting deck that spotlights a bunch of underused cards.
Boros Land Destruction In MTG Modern
As the name suggests, Boros Land Destruction is an MTG deck all about getting rid of your opponent’s lands, thus denying them access to mana. There’s pretty much no ‘true’ land destruction in Modern, in the sense of cards that just remove lands full stop. There are a bunch of cards that destroy lands and let the opponent fetch basics to replace them; however, and this deck plays a lot of them.
The best cards in this category are White Orchid Phantom and Magmatic Hellkite. Both switch out an opponent’s nonbasic land for a basic, while also serving as evasive threats in their own right. This deck plays like a Control deck, aiming to slowly deplete the opponent’s resources over time. It does still need to close out the game, mind you, which is where these cards come in clutch. They’re good early to progress your plan, and they’re good late to finish things off.
This pair is joined by Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer’s Gambit, two sorceries with the same land removal effect. These two can target any land, which means they can also hit basics if need be. This is great because it lets you deal with the replacement lands your opponent searches up from your other effects. Both of these cards draw you a card, too, which keeps the gas flowing so you can stay in control. Demolition Field gives you more redundancy for the effect in your mana base, and even tutors you up a basic of your own.
The reason these cards are so effective is that most current Modern decks barely play any basic lands. Goryo’s Vengeance runs a few, but Boros Energy only tends to play two, and Belcher doesn’t run any. This means just a few of these effects can force your opponent into a position where they’re behind you in lands.
Sealing The Deal
Reducing your opponent’s land count, powerful as it is, is a long-term strategy. This means GingerGuy83 also needs to include plenty of Control tools to stay alive until the deck’s primary goal is accomplished.
Thankfully, Boros has no shortage of great options in this regard. Galvanic Discharge is an excellent early game removal spell, dealing with everything from Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to Guide of Souls. The ability to scale up and down based on your energy count is great too, and pairs wonderfully with Wrath of the Skies. This is actually one of the most important cards in the deck. No matter what your opponent is playing, this gives you a way to sweep their entire board under the rug. If you can land this after you’ve brought down their land count, it’ll be nigh-impossible for them to recover.
Solitude comes in as additional creature removal for threats outside Galvanic Discharge’s range. The fact that it can come down for zero mana at instant speed here is crucial. Boros Land Destruction can be very slow in the early game, so having a panic button like this you can press will often save your life against MTG decks like Boros Energy.
The final pieces of GingerGuy83’s control package are more unusual. Reprieve is a sort of counterspell in white, giving your opponent their card back but also letting you draw. In this deck, it’s much better than usual, since your opponent will be running on few lands, and therefore likely won’t be able to just replay their bounced spell. Relic of Progenitus is mostly tech against Goryo’s Vengeance, but it can also deny Amulet Titan the ability to recur their destroyed lands via Icetill Explorer or Aftermath Analyst.
A Powerful Position?
GingerGuy83’s Boros Land Destruction list is in a pretty good spot in MTG Modern right now. None of the top decks are really built to handle it mana-wise, with most running just three basic lands at most. This makes it easy to start properly blowing up lands, at which point victory likely isn’t far off.
The deck’s problems arise when you start to take speed into account. The first few times you remove a land will be very low-tempo plays, since your opponent gets another right back. Unless you’re playing one of the land destruction creatures in the deck, this means you have to set yourself behind in order to get things rolling. This is far from ideal when you consider how quickly the top decks in Modern are moving right now. By the time your land destruction starts to really affect them, Boros Energy will probably have a winning board state in place. Goryo’s Vengeance is a similar story. It can easily cheat in huge card advantage creatures to offset the land loss.
Land Destruction does have an absolutely killer Belcher matchup, mind you. Because it only plays MDFCs as its mana base, Belcher can never search up a basic to your land destruction effects. This means you can start Sinkholing them as early as turn two, to keep them from ever popping off. Domain Zoo is also a pretty solid matchup. Since you can blow up the deck’s Triomes and dual lands, they really need to hit Leyline of the Guildpact to keep their synergies intact.
Overall, Boros Land Destruction is a mixed bag matchup-wise. That’s not bad at all for a rogue deck, mind you. With a few more aggressive pieces, this could easily be a deck to watch in the next few years.
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