M:tG Precon Decon - Ravnica: CoG Part 1: Charge of the Boros

Nostalgic ramblings about preconstructed theme decks from Magic: the Gathering's history. In this video, I look at Charge of the Boros from the 2005 Ravnica: City of Guilds expansion. #mtg #MagictheGathering

Card images courtesy of Gatherer, I do not own or claim to own any of the art assets used in this video. Decklist format courtesy of TappedOut.

[bumbuyman]

Ravnica block precons were absolute gamechangers. The guild theme stuck extremly well, and the precons did them justice. Most of them were competitive out of the box, and easy to upgrade further. The aesthetic was great, everybody could find something to identify with, overall great fun to play with and against, a legendary in each precon to enjoy AND a big "guildmaster" legendary in the colors to collect later, which did more for the love for legendaries than the whole Kamigawa block with it's focus on legendaries. Truly a gamebreaking set of precons.

The boros one was in big demand, mostly due to the Lightning Helixes, and also being one of the strongest ones in the whole Ravnica block. People even bought 2 of them and jammed them together to complete playsets, so they were gone from the shelves super quick. Sunforger was also so good and fun to play with - huge bonker to put on your fliers, double strikers or first strikers, while searching up your helixes if needed. In the boros precon mirror - which happened so much where I played - it was the key card.

The only nitpick would be the Radiance cards - they didn't play well at all from my experience, but that also has to do a lot with the amount of mirrors I played.

[Shadow]

I am officially out of the game at this time period I occasionally would keep up with spoiler season but other then that I had effectively stopped playing Magic and paying attention to the game. I was still working at an LGS but I had actually started playing the Upper Deck Versus TCG.

That being said the Ravnica set was just so interesting.

I was amazed when Invasion block came out as when I had started playing I didn't even know you could have multi-colour cards Invasion blew my mind I can only imagine how Ravnica would have done to a newer player coming out of Mirrodin and Kamigawa the amount of multi-coloured cards is mind shattering.

I could trake or leave Argus but Sunforger is such a unique feeling card. I had built a Jeskai Commander deck that used Sunforger it was one of my only single player wins was just using Sunforger and Elixer of Immortality to cycle through my deck for answers to everything my oponnent played. The anmount of good red and blue and whie and blue instants is quite vast.

[Hetapapa]

Ravnica <3 And we start things of with Boros, my favourite guild (alongside Izzet). Still amazed how much build-up and love they invested into the world, it was awesome, I read the 3 books and am playing in a D&D-group on Ravnica, with my first charakter being a Boros-Fighter.

So, I wasn't very keen on the Box, I thought the punk-guildmage looked dumb. But I loved both red and white, and as some mentioned, this was the first precon with this colourcombo in ages, so I had to get it. Glad I did, this would become my favourite deck for years to come (of course modified over the time). I liked it from the get-go: An aggressive deck, that kept hitting the enemy through the first blockers thanks to thundersong trumpeter and lightning strikes, and finished with a hard hitting Flame-Kin Zealot, Agrus Kos or Rally the Rightous. I often used the latter before declaring attackers, just so I could activate trumpeters another time (or attack with it).
I mostly agree with your card-evaluation. Some additions: I believe haste is actually a good fit in cases like this, it synergizes well with "until end of turn" so to speak, since 1 turn is all you need it for anyway. And I would propose the Frenzied Goblin in your "what could have been", one of my first and favourite additions: Cheap goblin that disables hostile creatures, no idea why he wasn't in this deck, fits so well.

My small gripes with Boros in the first block: I can see Radiance as a way to buff you're wide board...but still, a spell-mechanic in one of the most creature-focused guilds. And I wished for more rare Boros-creatures, aside from the 2 legendaries there was only (the very awesome) firemane angel, such a shame. Still, to this day I love the look of red-white cards, they always invoke this feeling of righteous flames in the sunset. Also, fiery Angels, heck yeah!

[ReubenAotearoa.]

The first WR theme deck since Nemesis, 5 and a half years earlier. Making all 10 colour pairs equal, essentially ending the whole Allied/Enemy thing, was the best thing Ravnica did. And it did a lot of things right, obviously.

I didn’t play during this block, but did during Return. My Gatecrash prerelease pool had 5 Skyknights - didn’t realise it was a reprint - and I did quite well. Amazing card.

Radiance… is not great in a multicolour block. Only 3 other guilds don’t share a colour with you, and if you are playing the mirror! I do really dig the flavour of it for Boros though, I get what they were trying to do. Definitely would have been easy enough to tweak though.

Snare is a blatant Johnny card: it’s point is to get some weirdo building some Rube Goldberg type deck in order to break it somehow. Everyone else it’s an easy first card to cut.

This is great. Pretty much what you want from the colour combination, and fits the vibe of the faction. Radiance is not perfect, of course, and the few bad cards are there for a reason. Don’t think WoTC could have done too much to change it really.

[Zarbon]

This is my favorite Ravnica Block theme deck! I love the flavor of an aggressive Army, Boros! I still have this deck box with my Ravnica block Boros aggro deck in it! It’s casual, so no expensive cards, so I just run it in the box without sleeves!

[jasoncheung]

Ravnica - the Invasion block of the modern era, a beloved multi-color block that saved Magic after a broken block (Urza/Mirrodin) and then an underwhelming block (Mercadian/Kamigawa). Revolutionary for its time, whose progress has since been incorporated into Magic's DNA (factions, watermarks, etc.) Each Guild in the world represents a different social group, but taken into its extreme. For Boros, they represent the police force and army of the plane. Ironically, their guild symbol (a red/white raised fist) looks like a real world symbol that has been used to protest police brutality. Not sure if that was intentional...

My notes on a couple of cards:

Flame-Kin Zealot - Secretly a Golgari double agent. He was used in eternal dredge decks with bridge from below, make a bunch of zombies, dread return the zealot, and attack for 20 with a bunch of hasty zombie tokens.

Argus Kos - The hero of the original Ravnica story. *Spoilers* He actually shifts through the white based guilds as the story/block progresses. Kos starts as a Boros police officer in the first book, works for the Orzhov in the second book, and becomes an Azorius champion in the last book.

Will you be covering the Guild Kits that came with the most recent Ravnica block? The Guild Kits are pretty well-rounded since they take aspects from all three Ravnica blocks.

[Zarbon]

For “What could have been”, I would chosen Bottled Cloister. It’s 4 mana Artifact, EOT you exile your hand, in your upkeep your hand comes back and you draw an extra card. Perfect to keep your foot on the pedal in an aggressive Boros deck. The card appeared in the Ravnica Block constructed Pro Tour in the Boros deck.

[StarkMaximum]

And so it goes from arguably one of the worst blocks in Magic's history to one of the best. This set is probably the peak of my early Magic nostalgia, even back then I knew this set was a winner. I know it's basic as hell to say Ravnica is your favorite plane, but you know what? The more I grow up, the more I realize how basic I am. Pepperoni is my favorite pizza, Leonardo is my favorite Turtle, and damn it, Ravnica is my favorite plane. It's the perfect example of Magic doing something kinda new and neat but still making it feel iconically "Magic". The urban environment is such a cool change of pace from the sweeping lands of high fantasy, the ten guilds ensure that everyone has a favorite, and even back then the art is just so, so cool in every way. Ravnica was, is, and continues to be something special.
And the first set introducing us to the plane is arguably my favorite guild! It's definitely up there, all of the red/green/white guilds could be my favorite, but Boros is the one I have the strongest affinity for both gameplay-wise and aesthetic-wise. I'm all about cool armored knights, fire and holy magic, and the passion of emotion that comes from protecting The People and the ones you love. And while it might be questionable as to why the Guildmage is an emo chick, I assure you when I was in high school that fact was _very, very important_ to me.
And yeah, tragically Radiance sucked. It asks you to keep track of so much during a game, and if you miss just one thing it can really punish you. It's weird that a mechanic in a set all about the various color pairs, ensuring each individual color shows up in four different factions, punished you for playing against someone that shared your color(s). Boros mirrors must have been a nightmare.
Cyclopean Snare's only real use is being added to the Feet Deck. Why on _earth_ is that person's foot so heavily detailed and also _why are they barefoot?_ It took me a long time to even parse what was going on in this art because I couldn't believe it was someone's foot, I thought the foot was like, steam from the two lasers meeting or something? It's bizarre.
Master Warcraft always leaves a sour taste in my mouth because I always loved that card (I even had a foil one) and I loved using it to just be like "I attack, nothing blocks, I win lmao" but I remember a long time ago someone I was playing against insisted it didn't work that way but I don't remember how they thought it worked, I just remember them like, dismissively tossing the card back to me after reading it and saying something snide like "you should read cards better". Like I said, I don't remember how he claimed it worked (I don't even think he was _playing, _ he was a spectator), but he was always kind of an asshole anyway (older brother of my friend, I always just sort of put up with him).
I feel like there's more specific things I wanted to talk about but I don't remember them and also this comment is long enough as it is because I could just jabber for hours about Ravnica and how cool it is.

[tserrofz]

*feels good man* I actually just completed getting 100% collection for a block cube of OG rav block. Ravnica is my jam. the end of the bamboozle.

I feel like the rav precons we're basically proto commander inspiration. I remember wanting to build decks around the legendaries.

Another thing i wanna add is the "Watermarks" it was such a cool thing from the set showing what the guilds were doing so you could align things. I think Rav CoG is my absolute favorite set of all time for sooo many reasons.

Also Radiance was underappreciated. =(

I think Firemane would have been too powerful for a PreCon but I do think that Master Warcraft would have been a good rare. I think each deck should have had all the hybrid cards.

I wanted to touch on your comment about the Rav Keywords not being great...Hard disagree here.

Radiance was the weakest, objectively, I think, particularly in 1v1, but Convoke is really strong, Transmute is really strong (on demand tutors, especially muddle the mixture), and Dredge was a mistake it was so op. The Irony of dredge is though, and this might be fair to counterpoint me is "it became busted later" and wasn't particularly OP during standard.

I also had horror flashbacks from Boros Swiftblade, Razia, Blazing shoal.

[ForeverDayGreen]

Heavily disagree with your take on radiance. Making spell unilateral makes them boring. Some goes for tribal synergies like slivers imo.