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Boros Token Control is Its Own Deck
The Boros deck was one of the first new decks I encountered playing Bloomburrow Standard. At the time I was probably running a red aggro deck (go figure) and all of a sudden hit this brick wall. Mana efficient Torch the Tower! Lightning Helix (oh my)! Beza to stabilize the battlefield and gain life!
It was easy at the time to identify Boros as "merely" an anti-deck... A deck that rose up solely to combat the popularity of aggressive Red. But in the weeks since, I've come to wrap my head around this deck's many engines. It's kinda sorta a work of art; and I hope this article will help you understand and navigate one of the most important decks in Magic's best official format.
For reference, this is the version I've been playing:
Boros Token Control | BLB Standard | Michael Flores
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 Archangel Elspeth
- Instants (11)
- 3 Get Lost
- 4 Lightning Helix
- 4 Torch the Tower
- Sorceries (5)
- 1 White Sun's Twilight
- 4 Sunfall
- Enchantments (9)
- 2 Temporary Lockdown
- 3 Virtue of Loyalty
- 4 Caretaker's Talent
- Artifacts (8)
- 4 Carrot Cake
- 4 Urabrask's Forge
- Lands (25)
- 4 Plains
- 2 Mountain
- 1 Mirrex
- 1 Wind-Scarred Crag
- 2 Battlefield Forge
- 3 Inspiring Vantage
- 4 Elegant Parlor
- 4 Fountainport
- 4 Sunken Citadel
You'll notice that this version now eschews Beza, the Bounding Spring. Part of the reason, believe it or not, is that between Lightning Helix and Caretaker's Talent, you're so often ahead on every axis, so Beza ends up little more than an 4/5 creature for five mana!
How does this deck work?
If you're up against one of the many styles of Red aggro in Standard, it often functions the way you imagine. Efficient removal and life gain - and lots of it - allows you to bowl over a powerful but essentially one-dimensional attacking opponent. Lightning Helix shines in its ability to interact with especially Slick-Shot Showoff at instant speed, and the "exile" effects - Torch the Tower, Temporary Lockdown, and Sunfall - help to keep you alive against Cacophony Scamp and Heartfire Hero.
If you're stuck not playing against specifically Red aggro, you have a number of individually powerful cards, some of which combine into engines, that allow you to overpower many other mid-range and control opponents.
One of the things that I was most struck by was the ability of this deck to beat Azorius Control, almost solely on the back of Urabrask's Forge. If the opponent doesn't Counterspell your Urabrask's Forge on turn three, it will be difficult for them to keep up. Get Lost is one of the most important White control cards in Standard because of its ability to deal with Caretaker's Talent, a Planeswalker, or an attacking red creature... But Get Lost has nothing to say about Urabrask's Forge.
Barring a specialty card like Requisition Raid (or at least a Soul Partition to buy time) they will often just lose to damage. This is mostly true across much of the metagame. Against Golgari, for instance, you should prioritize killing Glissa just because if you keep Glissa off the battlefield, Urabrask's Forge will probably kill them.
Here are some of the key card combinations that make Boros go. Note that in most cases each card is good by itself... They're just great together.
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Both of these cards cost three mana, so you might be wondering which one to play first. Generally, it's better to lead on Urabrask's Forge, just to get damage moving faster. You can follow up with Caretaker's Talent and draw a card. In fact, you'll draw a card with these two cards in concert every turn until your opponent answers them. Note that you can go to Level 2 on Caretaker's Talent by copying an Urabrask's Forge Phyrexian Horror token... and the token will not die at the end of turn!
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Fountainport is one of the new Bloomburrow cards that really makes this deck. It's got a lot of things going for it... It takes a land slot instead of a spell slot; it can kill your opponent by itself (and is kind of hard to interact with)... It can even accelerate your mana. But one of the smaller (yet vital) abilities on this new land is just the option of sacrificing a Phyrexian Horror that was going to die anyway to draw a card. When you start to get your overlapping engine pieces in play, even Blue decks will have a hard time keeping up on pure material.
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Caretaker's Talent in many ways feels like the realization of that "personal Howling Mine" that players have been looking for since the mid-1990s. What's better than drawing an extra card each turn cycle? How about drawing two cards? Carrot Cake, the front side of Virtue of Loyalty, or one of your token-producing lands can all trigger Caretaker's Talent on the opponent's turn.
Here are some cards that I haven't played main deck that you might want to consider:
- Abrade - Good overlap with Get Lost on mana and functionality. The down side is that it is less good at killing powerful creatures (toughness-ful?). But on balance the ability to answer an opposing Urabrask's Forge is a symmetry breaker.
- Brotherhood's End - You would probably cut Temporary Lockdown if you wer going to play Brotherhood's End. It has overlap at the three in terms of sweeping small creatures. Brotherhood's End is a little harder to cast, and loses certain interactions (like against Case of the Uneaten Feast or Up the Beanstalk). On balance this is another card that can interact with an opposing Urabrask's Forge.
- Beza, the Bounding Spring - Beza just doesn't fit perfectly to me. First of all, it can be difficult to get value because of your other engines. Secondly, even against Mono-Red it can be awkward and too expensive on the draw. You actually want more fast cards to prevent losing life rather than catching up your life total. Against Control or Ramp, it's just not impressive (weirdly). Still, a great card... Just not right for this build at this time.
- Season of the Burrow - This is yet another card that can deal with an opposing Urabrask's Forge. But the even cooler element is bringing back a card... indestructible! They might have gotten your Mirrex or Caretaker's Talent the first time, but they won't get it twice!
Watch Out or the Auto-Tapper Will Get You
This deck probably has the most difficult mana base to navigate in all of Standard. This is because you often have a Sunken Citadel on Red and a Sunken Citadel on White!
I'm a goober so I played two Battlefield Forges and one Wind-Scarred Crag. When are you supposed to play Wind-Scarred Crag versus Elegant Parlor?
The sad answer is that it depends. No, really.
I think if you're going to play this deck you should bone up on The Little Lies We Tell Ourselves... make sure you know your general early game land drop operations. In general you'll want to play a card like Wind-Scarred Crag or Sunken Citadel (that enters the battlefield tapped) on turn one. But how do you counterbalance that with drawing multiple copies of Inspiring Vantage?
I think that a lot of the time you actually want to play Inspiring Vantage immediately so that you can Torch the Tower on turn one... and put off Elegant Parlor a looooong time so that it can help you to hit, say, your fifth land drop.
Land management is difficult here. I can't tell you the number of times the auto-tapper left me a White Sunken Citadel when I ripped into a Torch the Tower or a Red Sunken Citadel when I wanted to copy a token I had in play. Really, the way the auto-tapper works (and don't get me wrong, its very existence is a huge quality of life increase) it never "considers" just leaving up an Inspiring Vantage when you have no special lands to activate.
This is neither here nor there, but it's neve been easier to revisit The Little Lies We Tell Ourselves...
This is the Sneakiest Burn Deck
My friend Lanny Huang recently made the argument that many decks - not just the Modern Burn deck - can access the combo, suppression and inevitability gears.
Though it is far less pronounced than that other Inspiring Vantage / Lightning Helix deck, the Standard Boros Tokens deck is a good example of Lanny's argument.
Repeat after me:
This deck has four copies of Lightning Helix.
Boros Tokens can frustratingly overwhelm aggro. It can ride an unanswered Urabrask's Forge against control. Between Caretaker's Talent, Fountainport, and all the removal it can out-grind most Black mid-range and discard decks.
But what it is way behind against is anything really and truly trying to go "over the top" ... Domain, graveyard reanimator combos various, or Ixalan-centered artifact decks.
In these matchups, Boros has to take the beatdown role, even though it can be uncomfortable. How does a deck that is going to be drawing Temporary Lockdown and Sunfall half the time play the beatdown?
This deck has four copies of Lightning Helix.
Get damage in.
Get any damage in that you can.
Get them to six. Heck, get them to nine. If you have a plan you might be surprised at how well your draw engines pay you.
You should watch (or really listen to) this whole vid. Because COME ON it's How to Win a PTQ. But the last match showcases how drawing multiple Lightning Helixes can get around Heaped Harvest, a 7/7 lifelink Angel, and even a tricky Herd Migration for three on the stack:
Even After Everything... You Can Draw the Wrong Side of Your Deck
I've learned a healthy amount of humility playing this deck, especially given how much I've lost to the Red aggro bunch.
Of course I've won against Red more than I've lost... But the fact that I've lost at all was a little surprising.
You don't necessarily know what your opponent is on when you queue up to the next match. A grip full of three casting cost engine spells might smell fabulous against 
... but it might also be a recipe for doom against the Red Deck.
Just know that you can draw not just one or two "bad" cards... Half your deck can be wrong.
If you find yourself in such a spot... You might not have to play for very long (the Red Deck can win on turn three) but hopefully you won't be wholly without tools. If I can offer you any advice it would be to leave up mana for your instants; sometimes even if you can get a two-for-one with Temporary Lockdown. It might be bad either way, but if they have a Showoff plotted there is probably nothing they'd like to see more than you tappping out for some supposed card advantage on the battlefield.
Still, you will often draw the "right" side of your deck! And thanks to Caretaker's Talent and Fountainport, you get to see so much of it so many games! This is not just a great deck, but an important one to understand if you're interested in Standard. I hope this article helped in that regard.
LOVE
MIKE
