This will be the last post on my Brion Stoutarm deck for a while at least, and in this I’ll go over the lands and then continue on with the entire list. Again, it is very much a work in progress, just today I added Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (finally got my hands on one, thanks for the trade, Ludvig!) and Weathered Wayfarer over Griffin Dreamfinder and Journey to Nowhere. While the latter two are very cool cards, the former two are obviously more powerful in most cases, especially since I play about half as many enchantments in the deck now compared to when it was new.

The lands are also budget-y as all hell, I’d like to add a Battlefield Forge, a Sacred Foundry and a Plateau, but I don’t want to drop the cash on it just yet. They’d fit nicely with Kor Cartographer and Arid Mesa, but I like to trade for pieces of the deck as I go along, and not just log onto TrollAndToad or something and buy the entire list of cards. Otherwise it looks like this:

Teaching giants how to toss goats for four generations

1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Boros Garrison
1 City of Traitors
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Kor Haven
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Slayers’ Stronghold
1 Terramorphic Expanse
11 Plains
13 Mountain

I like to keep the basic count high to be less effected by my own Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon, and otherwise it’s very straightforward. The oddest land is probably Slayers’ Stronghold, but I like it for giving Brion and my other creatures Haste, and the art-work is really cool. Auto-inclusion, that is.

The rest of the deck, in its entirety, with the new additions:

1 Brion Stoutarm

This guy does dirty things with the general and many of the deck’s ETB-creatures.

1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Leonin Arbiter
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Wall of Omens
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Kor Cartographer
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Anger
1 Desolation Giant
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Zealous Conscripts
1 Molten Primordial
1 Stalking Vengeance
1 Petradon
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Burnished Hart
1 Pilgrim’s Eye
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Moltensteel Dragon

1 Condemn
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Wing Shards
1 Fling
1 Price of Progress
1 Chaos Warp
1 Grab the Reins
1 Flash Conscription

1 Day of Judgment
1 Wrath of God
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Vandalblast
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Insurrection
1 Blasphemous Act

1 Oblivion Ring
1 Blood Moon
1 Fervor
1 Stranglehold

1 Koth of the Hammer

1 Explorer’s Scope
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Skullclamp
1 Wayfarer’s Bauble
1 Boros Signet
1 Carnage Altar
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Boros Cluestone
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Oblivion Stone

I hope you’ve enjoyed this walk down the path of the worst colour combination in EDH. Hit the like button, leave a comment, and tell me what to do differently when I give Damia, Sage of Stone the same treatment over the coming weeks.

My previous two parts of this deck tech has covered the integral parts of the deck (part 1), and the control elements (part 2). In this part, I’ll cover the mana acceleration and mana fixing in the deck, and finally the rest of the creatures not featured in the previous posts.

Mana accelerants/mana fixers:
1 Kor Cartographer
1 Burnished Hart
1 Pilgrim’s Eye
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Explorer’s Scope
1 Sol Ring
1 Wayfarer’s Bauble
1 Boros Signet
1 Darksteel Ingot

All of these are fairly standard. The deck is quite hungry for coloured mana, so that’s why I have few accelerants that only produce colorless mana, the only one being Sol Ring. Although Koth might not be considered only mana acceleration (since he could technically win the game on his own), but he is very poweful mana acceleration for a turn or so, so he goes here as well.

The other creatures:
1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Wall of Omens
1 Griffin Dreamfinder
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
1 Stalking Vengeance
1 Petradon
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Moltensteel Dragon

Most of these creatures are in the deck by a virtue of having a decent Enters the Battlefield trigger. These include Stoneforge Mystic (who finds Lightning Greaves primarily), Wall of Omens, Griffin Dreamfinder, Petradon and Artisan of Kozilek. All of these could be cast, triggered and then flung with Brion and I wouldn’t care too much, though doing exactly that with Wall of Omens might be bad. Purphoros is there because getting the two damage on each opponent whenever a creature enters the battlefield for you is broken, and the rest are there for minor utility and getting through damage. Moltensteel Dragon is especially powerful later in the game.

The utility (the rest):
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Fling
1 Price of Progress
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Skullclamp
1 Carnage Altar
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

The two cards I want to discuss in this list are Skullclamp and Carnage Altar. They are the deck’s only cards that say “draw a card”, other than Solemn Simulacrum, who cantrips himself. Skullclamp has obvious utility with the general, since any creature could be equipped and flung for value, especially after dealing some combat damage. Carnage Altar is the odd one out, and is a way to make the stealing cards into removals. It’s also very rare to see in EDH.

We’re nearing the conclusion of this series. In the fourth and final post, I’ll share my lands (though it’s – like the rest of the deck – very much a work in progress), and then the list in its entirety.

Thus far, I’ve covered the conceptual phase of the deck, and the parts of it that really makes it tick – the cards that steal creatures and the cards that makes all my dudes hasty. However, since red-white has little natural ramp outside artifacts and other permanents, the deck needs to be able to control the game long enough to gather enough mana to do some of these fun stuff. This is my control package in Brion Stoutarm:

The creature bit:
1 Leonin Arbiter
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Desolation Giant
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Flametongue Kavu

The first three of these are fragile but powerful control elements if they’re allowed to stay on the board, especially the third one. Magus of the Moon has a way of shutting down entire decks, even in EDH, or at least slow them down considerably. Especially if paired with one of the other two, it can buy Brion a lot of time. All three have to be cast with some sense of diplomacy, however, since they tend to gather frowns from around the table. The other half of these six are creatures with useful Enters the Battlefield-triggers, and the first two of these really benefit from having an active Brion in play – cast the creature, respond to the ETB-trigger by flinging them on an opponent, and the permanent they remove stay exiled forever, all while you’re dealing some damage and gaining some life. Flametongue Kavu is just a feel-good card of old, I played a lot of him in Extended back when that was alive, and although 4 damage is not that much in EDH, he can take out some smaller generals and utility creatures, and is techincally card advantage himself. The one in the middle, Desolation Giant, is the odd one out, who, when kicked, leaves nothing behind but himself. What a jerk.

The enchantments:
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Blood Moon
1 Stranglehold
1 Oblivion Stone

The interesting cards here are really only Blood Moon and Stranglehold. Blood Moon has the same effect on the board as Magus of the Moon, but is quite a bit harder to remove than the creature variant. Stranglehold is also very effective against a lot of decks, especially seeing as how it’s only punishing your opponents. The rest of the cards are more or less mandatory, while I do hate Oblivion Stone for blowing up my own Lightning Greaves and mana rocks, it can be tutored by Enlightened Tutor, and it does do its job well.

The spell-based control:
1 Condemn
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Chaos Warp
1 Day of Judgment
1 Wrath of God
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Vandalblast
1 Blasphemous Act

Quite a lot of cards in this section, ranging from pin-point removal for both creatures (Condemn, Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares) to just about anything (Unexpectedly Absent, Chaos Warp), to board wipes that keep Brion and me alive in order to reach the mid game where he gets to do his thing. I’d consider most of these mandatory for a red-white deck, especially Chaos Warp, Hallowed Burial and Vandalblast. There’s no end to the awesome things you can do with especially the latter, just overloading it to kill everyone else’s Sol Rings will effectively turn back the clock for your opponent a turn or so, which sometimes gives Brion enough time to ramp into the big stuff.

That’s it for the control parts of the deck. In the third and last installment on my Brion Stoutarm deck, I will present the creatures and the utility stuff, and then post the list in its entirety.

I know that there’s been quite a few posts about EDH lately, and the reason for the material being slanted towards the casual side is threefold: first of all, there’s no big Legacy event I need to prepare for until November of this year here in Sweden, and even then, I know what deck I’m going to play already. Secondly, EDH is my outlet for deck building and deck teching and creativity. Thirdly, and most importantly, I’ve been listening a lot to the rather excellent podcast The Five Commanders while commuting and walking the dog and so on, and the podcast keeps my mind locked in on EDH. I recommend everyone to have a listen to the podcast, it’s available through iTunes and other places as well.

Through much of my EDH career, I’ve been playing blue. The reason for this is that I’ve always played blue. My first Magic deck was mono-blue with a bunch of flying creatures and counterspells, which was all fine and dandy until my younger brother built a mono-green deck full of spiders and other creatures with Reach. All of my Legacy decks are blue, because the colour is simply the best (better than all the rest) in the format, and that’s just how it goes. My first EDH deck was the preconstructed The Mimeoplasm deck, which I modified with my own cards. Most of my decks have been blue with black and then either white or green. For this project, I decided to pick a general neither blue nor black nor green – I chose Brion Stoutarm.

Honestly, Brion Stoutarm has a lot of things going for him. Although he personifies the “worst” colours in the format, he has a respectable 4/4 Lifelink body at only 2RW, and he has a very useful Fling ability. As far as Boros-coloured generals, the list isn’t really short, a whopping total of 10 legendary creatures are available to those who seek the worst colours in the format, but Brion is by far the most awesome. I chose him for a variety of reasons:

– I wanted a general not already played in either of my play groups.

– I wanted a non-blue general.

– I wanted a general to build a deck around.

– I wanted something “fun”.

Waaaaaaagh!

Brion personifies all of these qualities above, and as a deckbuilding project, he was a perfect fit. I knew from the get-go that I wanted some number of “stealing” spells, in order to steal things from my opponent to throw at them. I also knew I wanted a large number of expendable creatures with good Enters the Battlefield effects that I could play and the immediately throw with little loss. I wanted the deck to be aggro and win honestly in the combat step, and for that I needed stuff with Haste. In our playgroup, the basic rule is that if a creature doesn’t have a good ETB-effect or Haste, it won’t do anything at all, since a lot of the group loads up on board sweepers, understandably.

This led me into adding a bunch of cards that grant my creatures Haste. Aside the obvious Lightning Greaves, I found an ugly 7th edition rare when digging through my boxes. Fervor is an enchantment for 2R that gives all my stuff Haste and that’s it. It’s almost strictly worse than Hammer of Purphoros or Anger, but I play them all!

My list is far from complete, and I’ll only present two parts in this post, the haste-granting and the stealing:

Haste-granting things:

1 Anger
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Fervor
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Hammer of Purphoros

Aside these five, I already play a number of creatures who have Haste naturally, which lessens the pressure on the Lightning Greaves.

The stealing things:

1 Zealous Conscripts
1 Molten Primordial
1 Grab the Reins
1 Flash Conscription
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Insurrection

While Insurrection is in the deck simply because it can sometimes just win the game from nowhere, the rest of the stealing bits are also doing things on their own or bringing additional effects to the table. Traitorous Instinct grants +2/+0 for only a single mana more than Act of Treason (which we must consider some sort of baseline at just stealing a creature for 2R), which is cheaper than Unwilling Recruit. Traitorous Blood grants the creature stolen Trample, which can help getting some damage through. Zealous Conscripts is a 3/3 on its own, and finally, Grab the Reins and Flash Conscription are both Instants, which makes them combat tricks on their own. Grab the Reins also comes with an alternate built-in Fling, or both if Entwined, and Flash Conscription comes with Lifelink (though at a steep price).

On my “to add” list is Conquering Manticore, a bigger Zealous Conscripts, but smaller Molten Primordial.

In the next part, I’ll explore the control elements of the deck, which makes it able to get to enough mana to cast the general, steal something, and then toss it right back all in the same turn.