Boros Control

[TLK]

Just came across this deck by Tom De Decker on mtgtop8. Seemed interesting, so I built it on Xmage and played a few rounds. It was fairly successful against some of the more notable Legacy decks. In particular, I had a crazy 3-game match against MUD in which I was down to 1 land in my deck (Sundering Titan for days) and finally got there with a million Assemble the Legion tokens. Decks is fun and I like the mainboard tutor package.

4 Arid Mesa
1 Great Furnace
1 Karakas
2 Marsh Flats
2 Mountain
5 Plains
3 Plateau
2 Savannah
3 Windswept Heath

1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Stoneforge Mystic

3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus

2 Batterskull
3 Blood Moon
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Helm of Obedience
1 Humility
3 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Pithing Needle
3 Rest in Peace
4 Sensei's Divining Top

I'm not sure why the Great Furnace is in there, but I like everything else. Wouldn't mind a 4th Blood Moon, even.

Sideboard:

1 Assemble the Legion
1 Aura of Silence
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyroblast
2 Pyroclasm
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Sylvan Library

[NiRVeS]

Yeah, that deck's mine alright.
Since I started playing Legacy in 2011, "The Mighty Quinn" has been a pet deck of mine.
I've been working on alternative builds throughout the years, this one being the latest version.

Brief development overview:
- Base Quinn deck: http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/view/3034
- Avacyn Restored gave us the white Miracles. So we could replace Wrath of God, which had become increasingly mediocre. Zoo and other "pure" aggro decks have all died down over the years, and the decks where you wanted WoG were all playing Daze/Spell Pierce or Thalia + Port, so getting access to a cheap sweeper was a real blessing.
- When RtR was released, two things changed:
(1) The RiP/Helm combo became my kill mechanism of choice (since it's not susceptible to creature removal like Painter/Grindstone). Also, half of the combo actually does something against a variety of decks.
(2) Abrupt Decay entered the format, which made the Scepter/Chant lock much less effective.
- This meant that I needed to find another way to lock people and that Orim's Chant/Abeyance were no longer viable options to force lock pieces through countermagic.
Luckily, the printing of Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt decay also caused a shift where plenty of decks started incorporating greedier manabases. This is what lead me to including red for Blood Moon. This, in turn, meant that the old (and barely playable, although it was quite fun) Scrying Sheets-engine needed to go. However, now we get to run run fetchlands instead, which are probably a better "combo" with SDT anyway.
- Shaving Orim's Chant/Abeyance also freed up slots that went to more removal, more brutal lock pieces and planswalkers. Since our opponents now get to counter our stuff more easily, the plan is to just run more of them and try and overload their defenses. Of course, red offers access to REB/Pyroblast from the board, which are obviously great.
- Nahiri is a new addition - this was the first tournament I ran her. The Stoneforge-packet is new as well, and got added to support Nahiri's ultimate. I did run a lone Batterskull in the past anyway, just to have a tutorable win condition that doesn't require any other piece. She was great at stalling the board and drawing heat, so I will continue running her. Although I didn't really miss it last weekend, I think running a singleton Emrakul in the board might be the way to go since it does offer a strong win condition that doesn't require multiple pieces to resolve (which is a problem vs Miracles).

Great Furnace is there because sometimes you just want to tutor for a land. I picked Furnace over Ancient Den because if you're tutoring, it means you probably have white mana anyway.

The green splash is the only way I could think of to have a shot against Miracles.
Miracles is easily the worst matchup of the deck, by the way.
Countertop is really hard to beat and some of your best cards against most of the field (RiP and Blood Moon) do relatively little against them. You can't really affort to lok down Top (with Peedle or Null Rod/Stony Silence) since the deck itself is very reliant on the card itself.

Aside from having a bad matchup against the best and most common deck in the metagame... I feel the deck is actually pretty strong against lot of the more popular decks, because so many of them have difficulties beating maindeck Blood Moon and/or Rest in Peace, especially when you run so much removal as well.
Some examples:
- Pretty much every Delver-variant stops casting spells once you resolve Blood Moon, and they all have trouble keeping pressure in play against 4 StP / 4 Terminus (with Pyroclasm and REB/Pyroblast joining the party post board). In addition, Rest in Peace neuters a lot of their threats as well (Delver, Goyf, Angler).
- Chalice of the Void can lose you games against Eldrazi, but if they don't have it, they are facing what is almost a pre-boarded Miracles build (piles of removal with Moons to close the door).
- Lands is pretty much a joke because, you know, maindeck Blood Moon + Rest in Peace + tutors to find them.
- Storm is tough, although lists without Burning Wish will straight up lose game one if you manage to tutor up and stick the MD Canonist. Unfortunately, this can be to slow when you're on the draw. That's why Leylines were chosen as the go-to plan post board.
- Most midrange decks or stuff like death and taxes also have a hard time getting through all the removal and suffer through RiP/Blood Moon to some degree. Take Jund or Shardless: if you can chain a sweeper into a Moon, they never cast another relevant spell. Top makes you pretty resilient vs discard as well, and they both have difficulties getting rid of Nahiri of Elspeth.

But mostly, it just feels great to randomly blow out people with a deck that looks a janky as this one.

Anyway, glad to see you enjoy the brew. I'm curious to hear some of your suggestions.

Kind regards,

Tom

PS: For reference, here's the list I was at before Nahiri came out, just to give you an idea of what other cards I've experimented with in the past.

4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Sensei's Divining Top

3 Blood Moon
3 Rest in Peace
2 Helm of Obedience
1 Pithing Needle
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Scroll Rack
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Batterskull

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Ajani Vengeant

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Pyroblast
1 Entreat the Angels

2 Eternal Dragon

4 Arid Mesa
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Plateau
7 Plains
2 Mountain
1 Karakas
1 Great Furnace

Notable sideboard-cards I've tried: Choke (when DTT was still legal), Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Orim's Chant, Wear/Tear.

[TLK]

Hi, Tom! Thanks for the thorough response. All of your explanations make a lot of sense, and I definitely like the direction the deck has taken since the Mighty Quinn days. I just stumbled across your list and thought I'd try to give it some spotlight. It's a lot of fun to play. Have you considered going up to 4 Blood Moon, or are you fine with 3 since they're tutorable?

[NiRVeS]

I like 2 or 3 but not the full set, since you don’t really need redundant copies once you manage to stick one.
Also, even though they are great against a large part of the format, they are still kinda dead card in some matchups (miracles, show and tell, and of course imperial painter or burn,....).

[ESG]

I'm not sure why the Great Furnace is in there, but I like everything else.

Because sometimes you want to find it with Enlightened Tutor when you're short on land or cut off of red.

[Gollus]

Hi,

i had Mighty Quinn always as a petdeck around but it just went worse in the last years due to already mentioned reasons. Therefore i also started to tinker around with a red or a blue splash(RiP/Energy Field). My red version looked like that a while ago. Now with Nahiri i wanted to update this approach anyway to see it's strength.

Old WR List:

Land (23)
12 Snow-covered Plains
2 Snow-covered Mountain
1 Plateau
4 Scrying Sheets
4 Arid Mesa

Instant (9)
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Enlightened Tutors
3 Orim's Chant

Sorcery (9)
3 Council's Judgment
2 Terminus
2 Faithless Looting
2 Pyroclasm

Artifact (8)
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Isochron Scepter
2 Helm of Obedience
1 Pithing Needle

Enchantment (10)
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Rest in Peace
1 Humility
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Blood Moon
3 Myth Realized

Plainswalker (1)
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

SB:
(15)SB:
1 Nevermore
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Terminus
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Ray of Distortion
1 Pithing Needle
4 Pyroblast
1 Orim's Chant
1 Wear/Tear


Off of this list i can say Council's Judgment is the most versatile removal because it hits everything including planeswalkers and Counterbalance and True-Name and and and.

With Nahiri i would for sure add a Emrakul in the 75. The Faithless Lootings may be an option for games where the Blood Moons are dead cards for example but Nahiri takes care of that too.

A recent list could look something like that:
Land (23)
12 Snow-covered Plains
5 Snow-covered Mountain
1 Plateau
4 Arid Mesa
1 Great Furnance

Instant (8)
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Enlightened Tutors
2 Orim's Chant

Sorcery (7)
3 Council's Judgment
2 Terminus
2 Pyroclasm

Artifact (7)
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Helm of Obedience
1 Pithing Needle

Enchantment (12)
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Rest in Peace
1 Humility
1 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Blood Moon
3 Myth Realized

Plainswalker (3)
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger

SB:
(15)SB:
1 Nevermore
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Emrakul
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Ray of Distortion
1 Pithing Needle
4 Pyroblast
1 Orim's Chant
1 Wear/Tear

[TLK]

Because sometimes you want to find it with Enlightened Tutor when you're short on land or cut off of red.

Yeah, I just missed the boat on that one. Makes perfect sense now. Thanks!

[TLK]

So I got wrecked with this deck last night at my weekly Legacy event. 0-2 drop.

First round I played against Omni-tell with Sneak Attack. The sol land acceleration made him much too fast, despite all of the good 1-ofs this deck packs in this matchup. Lost to two Sneak Attack activations game 1, and a Show & Tell into Omniscience game 2.

Second round I lost to Shardless BUG. Opposing Jace and Liliana were an issue, even if I could keep his creatures off the board. Second game he countered what would've been a back-breaking Blood Moon and beat me from there. Null Rod kept my Tops at bay. Rough.

[NiRVeS]

Yeah, Omnitell in particular can be rough. The deck has tools to handle the classic show/sneak strategy - it normally comes down to needling sneak attack and finding Karakas, or keeping something in hand to drop off their Show and Tell (Humility/Bridge or Helm to kill them with RiP). The recent inclusion of Omniscience in the common builds makes thing much more difficult however.
They can blow you out on sheer speed - just like they do vs any other deck from time to time.

Shardless should be doable, although it's important to be patient and not try to go too all in on Blood Moon too soon. You actually have quite a few other things they have to deal with (SFM, RiP, Walkers, Bridge), so you should "bait" with those first before trying to Moon them out. Jace is a real problem (one of the reasons Miracles is so rough as well), you have three answers maindeck (O-ring, Peedle and Elspeth) so try and use them wisely.
They will out card you, but a lot of their deck is just dumb creatures, so don't worry too much about that.
Prioritize Top, it is by far your best weapon.
Null Rod is an absolute Pain in the Ass though. I actually side in Aura of Silence to account for it, since it also hinders their Agents and Strixes and killz Sylvan Library (although that card is less problematic than you might think). They'll come ahead on raw CA but your plan is to stick "trump cards" until they run out of answers. It's important to keep in mind that this deck does not play like a true control deck against decks like Shardless, and more like a prison deck. Lead with the pieces that are good/annoying to bait their FoWs and Decays and keep the Elspeths/Nahiris/Moons for last.
If they have all the answers, they win.

I'm really flattered someone else is durdling around with my pile of hate. Thanks for the update :).