Aurelia: Boros Legion theme deck

[Aggro_zombies]

So, aggro in general and RW specifically are not things in which I've ever really been that interested in EDH: you have little card advantage and get owned by Wraths pretty much all day while trying to kill an entire table of players without triggering a backlash. The lack of an interesting red-white general mostly helped this; I fiddled with Jor Kadeem or whatever his name is when New Phyrexia came out but quickly tossed the deck for being shitty.

Then some guy posts pictures of foil Gatecrash mythics and this was in there:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=137174&d=1353145146

Aurelia, the Warleader
:2::r::r::w::w:
Legendary Creature - Angel
Flying, vigilance, haste
Whenever ~ attacks for the first time each turn, untap all creatures you control. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase.
3/4

The potential for damage output seemed staggering, provided you had enough guys running around to break through. A sufficiently large and/or unblockable army could even one-shot players, solving some of the issues with needing to marshal diminishing resources to kill multiple players while fending off alliances against yourself. Furthermore, her status as current leader of the Boros Legion tickled my "curb your min-max impulses by making a theme deck with defined curbs on power" fancy: I could build a Legion-themed deck focusing on Soldiers and Angels. So, the following deck was born:

1 Ballyrush Banneret
1 Benalish Commander
1 Captain of the Watch
1 Catapult Master
1 Daru Warchief
1 Field Marshal
1 Fencing Ace
1 Frontline Medic
1 Gideon's Avenger
1 Hero of Bladehold
1 Legion Loyalist
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Mentor of the Meek
1 Oathsworn Giant
1 Odric, Master Tactician
1 Precinct Captain
1 Preeminent Captain
1 Rhox Pikemaster
1 Soltari Champion
1 Sun Titan
1 Sunhome Guildmage
1 Veteran Armorer
1 Veteran Armorsmith
1 Veteran Swordsmith

1 Elspeth Tirel
1 Decree of Justice
1 Mobilization

1 Angel of Glory's Rise
1 Angel of Jubilation
1 Angel of Serenity
1 Angelic Skirmisher
1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
1 Commander Eesha
1 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
1 Nobilis of War

1 Armageddon
1 Boom / Bust
1 Catastrophe
1 Decree of Annihilation
1 Ravages of War
1 Winter Orb

1 Allay
1 Chaos Warp
1 Return to Dust
1 Shattering Pulse

1 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Stonehewer Giant
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Skullclamp
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Umezawa's Jitte

1 Boros Charm
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Glory of Warfare

1 Boros Signet
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Coalition Relic
1 Fire Diamond
1 Mana Crypt
1 Marble Diamond
1 Sol Ring

14 Plains
5 Mountain
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Battlefield Forge
1 Boros Garrison
1 Boros Guildgate
1 Clifftop Retreat
1 Dust Bowl
1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Plateau
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Strip Mine
1 Terramorphic Expanse

Obviously, good Boros cards will go in over some of the weaker current inclusions. Token makers for Soldiers have the highest priority, as do other "army in a can" cards. Firemane Avenger, the 3/3 for four angel that Lightning Helixes stuff when three guys attack, also seems decent.

[mrjumbo03]

Stonehewer Giant is better than the Taj-Nilad Swordsmith even though he ain't a soldier.

[FieryBalrog]

This is a sweet idea for a deck. I was weighing something similar when Aurelia was spoiled, as I have a Razia deck (completely different gameplan; Angel-heavy with defensive pillowfort enchantments and sweepers). Aurelia really wants this sort of deck though.

The main bonus in my eyes is getting to play sweet :r::w:-defining cards like Glory of Warfare and Nobilis of War instead of having them be mostly useless.

[Aggro_zombies]

So, now the full set is spoiled. The following cards look interesting:

Angelic Skirmisher: First strike doesn't matter as much because many of my guys have it already, but extra ways to get vigilance are nice and the lifelink makes you more resilient to multiple people attacking you back. The 4/4 flying body is acceptably beefy.

Court Street Denizen: A Grey Ogre seems bad on first read, but it has two relevant creature types, and the deck's creature token generation means it can tap key blockers or lock down big attackers with some regularity. Not bad for a common.

Frontline Medic: Indestructibility is hugely important and the body is decent. The counterspell ability can randomly matter (big but not infinite Exsanguinate, Blue or Green Sun's Zenith, etc.).

Legion Loyalist: "Can't be blocked by tokens" is big because I feel like a large percentage of the chump blockers in this format are tokens. This guy basically ensures that I am trading for actual cards from my opponent, and the trample can sometimes be relevant.

Aurelia's Fury: Not much to say, honestly.

Boros Charm: I'd play this card if it was just "Creatures you control are indestructible until EoT" as an instant, but luckily it has two other, significantly less useful modes. But seriously, the ability to save your guys from a last-ditch Wrath is big.

Sunhome Guildmage: Mostly useful for his ability to spam dudes. Can also randomly kill people when giving +2/+0 or greater.

Boros Keyrune: Mana fixing that can also dodge Wraths and wield equipment well. It's not great, not by a long shot, but it's good enough in a deck of this power level.

There are some other middling cards, like Assemble the Legion and Boros Reckoner, that do something but don't quite do enough. AtL will almost never get up to enough counters to be worth it and Boros Reckoner's role seems like it will be to chump an Eldrazi and dome someone for a bunch, which is okay but not great.

I'm not sure how many of the above cards I actually want to include. Crucially, only three of them are humans and three are Soldiers, which means I have to be careful about cuts to avoid messing with either my Soldier tribal or diluting the usefulness of Angel of Glory's Rise. However, I have updated the OP with the latest changes I made to the deck.

[Mnemon]

Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran and Herald of War seem worth considering for this deck. Also if there was no boros legion theme, what would you think of Gisela, Blade of Goldnight as the commander?

[Aggro_zombies]

Gisela is probably the best straight RW Commander available, but I think she's better as a Voltron/control deck than Aurelia is. Going aggro in EDH is generally not a good idea because 120 or more combined life from the opponents is just too much, and at least one player will be playing sweepers. Aurelia's extra attack steps do more to help this deck than Gisela's double damage, I think, even if the end result is ultimately very similar between the two. For example, you can split attacks, such that one player gets hit during one attack step and another gets hit during the next attack; Aurelia thus gives you a little bit of protection from "overkilling" a player because you can ship extra damage elsewhere during subsequent attacks. Six is also much better than seven for an aggro general, especially if the general dies.

I've actually updated this deck quite a bit from the OP list, but the list I currently have is in Cockatrice and copy-pasting it into the OP would result in a total mess because of how Cockatrice tracks list changes. I'll update the OP list a bit later, but my interests right now lie with Zirilan of the Claw rather than this deck. 120 life is really a dealbreaker for any kind of aggro deck and Gisela gets much better the more midrange you get.

I also have no desire to build Aurelia tokens, which is probably the "correct" implementation of Aurelia aggro.