Whispers of the Muse: Styles O’s ‘Fiery Dawn’ (AVR)
Fresh off the success of our recent Depths of Power piece, another reader has come forward with a precon deck that they’d like to get some extra mileage out of. And so, welcome to the next installment of Whispers of the Muse!
Whispers is our occasional feature where you, the community, get to help someone improve their precon deck. Styles is a new convert to Magic, and picked up Fiery Dawn after reading its reviewed. He’s looking to test it out at his local FNM, so he’d like to keep its colours but make it faster. That said, he adds, “if there is a good reason for the deck to be Modern legal I wouldn’t mind.”
Here’s what he’s come up with so far:
12 Mountains
12 Plains
He concludes with:
I didn’t know what to do with the non creatures except add one more Thatcher Revolt. I’d like the deck to be built with this card in mind. As I stated earlier I’m new and I have no idea if something’s wrong with the mana curve.
And there we have it, the latest build to go under the microscope. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice for Styles?
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Ertai's Lament 
Just going to look at the NC for the moment. Will try to glance over anon. I’m not familiar with standard and limited, so take all I say with a tank of salt. Heck, I don’t even know what FNM runs. I’d assume limited.
Armaments, Banners, and Commander’s Authority I’d drop. They’re okay, but they seem out of place to me. The banner does too little. Commander’s seems too costly for so little in this “I want to zoom zoom” deck. The equip would serve a purpose, but I think you could replace it for more bang.
I’d consider running 4 incinerate as your removal. Maybe another crusade. That Pillar might be better replaced by another Pacifism if there’s not a stronger removal at a reasonable cost ($ & CMC) that you could replace both with for bigger threats.
Fireball is nice, but I’m sure someone can point to something that would serve you better.
I couldn’t put it better, every piece of advice from Icehawk here is gold. Sorry for not being a lot of help, but your deck is already pretty good, i wouldn’t know what cards should you change apart from the mentioned.
nice, thx for the suggestions….the NC are a lot cleaner now.
This is a fun deck and there are lots of ways you can go with it… that said, I do like the changes you’ve made so far!
First of all, mana: if you can afford it, get some Clifftop Retreats, they’ll treat you well. And 24 land is probably ok, but I’d skew your mana a little so you have slightly more plains than mountains (maybe 13-11 instead of 12-12?). This will help ensure you have a turn 1 plains for a Champion of the Parish.
Option A, Leverage ETB effects, starring Thatcher’s Revolt
DROP: 1 Angelic Armaments, 1 Banners Raised, 1 Commander’s Authority, 1 Cathar’s Crusade, 1 Pacifism and 2 Moorland Inquisitors, 2 Incinerate
ADD: 2 more Goldnight Commanders, 3 Pillar of Flame and 4 Lightning Maulers (for more early drops – you could also use Reckless Waifs instead… sure, they may turn into werewolves later, but they start off as humans! :))
Consider this scenario: let’s say you it’s turn 5; you’ve hit your land drops, curved out nicely and have a board of 1 Champion of the Parish (4/4), 1 Kruin Striker (2/1), 1 Kessig Malcontents (3/1) and 1 Goldnight Commander (2/2). Now if you cast Thatcher Revolt, here’s what the board state will look like: a 10/10 Champion of the Parish, an 8/4 Kruin Striker with trample, a 6/4 Kessig Malcontents, a 5/5 Goldnight Commander, and three 4/4 Human tokens with Haste. You’ve gone from 11 attack power on the board to 41 (41!!!) by casting one 3cmc spell. That’s going to be quite the surprise for your opponent. You even have (at least one) mana open to cast some burn to clear the lanes.
Option B, Combos!
DROP: 1 Angelic Armaments, 1 Banners Raised, 1 Commander’s Authority, 1 Cathar’s Crusade, 1 Pacifism, 2 Moorland Inquisitors, 2 Goldnight Commander, 2 Incinerate, 4 Thatcher Revolt, 1 Fireball and 2 land
ADD: 4 Cloudshift, 4 Restoration Angel, 4 Fiend Hunter, 2 more Vigilante Justice, 2 Oblivion Ring and 2 Seraph Sanctuary
There are two distinct combos in here, one of which revolves around Fiend Hunter and Cloudshift, and the other revolves around Fiend Hunter and Restoration Angel (which has a few variations).
First off, Fiend Hunter + Cloudshift will let you permanently exile another creature. To do this, cast Fiend Hunter, then in response, cast Cloudshift targeting the Fiend Hunter you just cast. This will let you stack its Enters-the-battlefield (ETB) and Leaves-the-battlefield (LTB) triggers in such a way that you’ll permanently exile a creature, then do a normal “temporary exile” when all the blinking is done. For details on that, check out: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=418194
Secondly, there are two infinite combos you can achieve if you have 2 Restoration Angels and 1 Fiend Hunter. To do this, have Restoration Angel A on the battlefield. Then cast Fiend Hunter and use his ETB exile targeting Restoration Angel A. Next, cast Restoration Angel B, targeting your Fiend Hunter B with her blink ETB ability. This will return Restoration Angel A and let you exile Restoration Angel B with your Fiend Hunter while using RA A’s blink on your Fiend Hunter, which will bring RA B back targeting Fiend Hunter with her blink, which will… you get the picture. As many ETB triggers as you like (assuming your opponent doesn’t interrupt you somehow). There are two ways in the deck to use these ETB triggers. Seraph Sanctuary will let you gain infinite life (which doesn’t end the game on its own…), and Vigilante Justice will let you deal infinite damage (which, on the other hand, does).
Phew! Two pretty different ways to take the deck! Good luck!
If you want to read more on that second infinite damage/life combo, check out this thread: http://essentialmagic.com/forums/Thread.asp?ID=805033
As i said i´m new to magic…..but is this infinite combo legal? (don’t i get punched in the face for winning like that?)…because if it is i may just have to make two decks instead.
It’s definitely legal. And I suppose you might get punched in the face… but for every punch in the face, I bet you’ll get an “oh nice!” or two to offset it. 🙂
Go for gold with Cathar’s Crusade. Also, put in at least 2 Increasing Devotion for the human spells in the deck that do damage for the amount of humans.
Speaking of creatures, you’ve already designed a very consistent package. The only suggestion would be removing your Inquisitors(too much mana for the activation cost) and adding 1 Goldnight Commander and 1 Zealous Conscripts. As for the noncreature spells, I would cut the Armaments, Banner, Authority and Fireball, replacing them with 2 more Incinerates, 1 Pacifism and 1 Pillar of flames. If you find yourself facing an Undying deck, I’d suggest removing the Pacifisms and getting 4 Pillars on the field 😉
remove moorland inquister, angelic, banners raised, cathers crusade, commander’s authority, pacifiism and fireball thats eight card slots conside a pair of fiend hunter’s or mentor of the meek to replace the inquister a playset of brimstone volley would be good due to frequent creature deaths and 2 more goldnight commaders also consider incinerate while its still legal overall this is alredy a pretty good attempt at boros
thanks guys…l´m taking every sugestion and trying them out. i can´t play this week´s FNM but next week looks promising.
Let us know how it goes and what you wind up taking!