Hey, thanks for this deck! Having both fun and success with it. Could you explain the mana base to me? Why so many plains? Is there a math reason that you need x amount of white sources to reliably have one by turn two for the Topan? I'd often rather have 4 red sources by turn 4.

because kytheon is a card that wants to be played on turn 1

This deck has had the highest winning percentage of any I've tried since BFZ came out (22/25 for 88%). It's Boros Tokens, but at heart it's a combo deck, though it's more than happy to just go wide and beat down. It's not as fast as RDW, but it is much more resilient, and able to force through lethal damage around turns 6-8 against moderate life-gain, removal, etc. The basic idea is to go as wide as possible, then pump the team with the white enchantments and/or Gideon emblem. It's very synergistic.

I believe that it is really well positioned for the current meta. If it were to become popular it'd be pretty easy to hate out (enchantment hate and sweepers are both bad news), but against decks that don't disrupt what it's trying to do, I don't think much can keep up with it.

Creatures

1 x Kytheon, Hero of Akros
2 x Knight of the White Orchid
2 x Abbot of Keral Keep
3 x Akoum Stonewaker
3 x Chief of the Foundry
3 x Thopter Engineer
4 x Ghirapor Gearcrafter
1 x Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
1 x Akoum Firebird
2 x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 x Oblivion Sower

Enchantments

3 x Valor in Akros
3 x Retreat to Emeria

Spells

4 x Dragon Fodder

Planeswalkers

1 x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Lands

7 x Plains
7 x Mountain
2 x Clifftop Retreat
4 x Evolving Wilds
3 x Boros Guildgate
3 x Foundry of the Consuls


The Foundries are a key to the deck. The dream with them is to have a Retreat, a Valor, and a Thopter Engineer in play, play the Foundry, sac the Foundry, and swing with the fresh tokens pumped for +2 and everything else pumped for +3. Valor in Akros is a card I've bashed pretty strongly in the past, but with Retreat to Emeria and Akoum Stonewaker, it's time to take it seriously. Pumping the entire team when you've gone wide is a huge deal, particularly with a deck that by turn five or six can commonly put three or four creatures into play in a turn. Evolving Wilds are also fantastic with Retreat to Emeria.

I'd be very curious to know if others have the same success with the deck that I have had. I think it's a fairly close to optimal list for what it's trying to do. The flex card is Oblivion Sower. He's great if you've got Retreat to Emeria down, but I suspect he's actually a bit too win-more. The fourth Boros Guild-Gate is probably the stronger (if less fun) option for that deck slot. Retreat to Valakut would be another possible option.

valor is exclusively win-more "okay so I've got a thopter engineer and a retreat and a stonewaker and a valor all in play then I attack and win"

sound like you already won before mentioning the valor

It really, really isn't. This deck has 19 cards that create more than one creature, not including Akoum Stonewaker, or Retreat to Emeria, or Abbot, or Gideon. With Valor in play, you've got a great chance to give all your creatures +2/+2 repeatedly. If you have Stonewaker or Retreat and Valor, every land is +1/+1 to all creatures and a token (1/1 and it sticks around with Retreat, or 3/1 trample and only lasts a turn for Stonewaker). I used to be a skeptic too on the card, but it works here.

Glad it's worked for you sol, I just split the mana down the middle to make sure I can cast the white spells rather than not. The shuffler has been pretty forgiving and I usually have what I need for mana, if it's two plains I'll just mulligan.

I think since bfz I've changed one champion for one akoum firebird .. But as far as mana goes, whatever works for you really - this is just a red deck with a few different spells I found was worth the change to boros

Think I've lost to Plains-flood more than I have seen Gideon in my hand. Will try some adjustments, maybe 12/8.

Very fun deck and quite strong too. Went 6-1 with it.
I removed Chandra and Sower in favor of 2 Consul's Lieutenant cause I feel that card should be in there for sure. Pumping the whole team is very good. Also -1 Mountain +1 Plains to accomodate it.

Everyone should give this deck a try. Valor in Akros might be a pretty bad card but in this deck it works. Very satisifing deck to play, nothing better than pumping a wide board by +2/+2 and swining in for a million.

Nevius, thanks for giving the deck a try. I'm glad you enjoyed playing with it!

Consul's Lieutenant was in my first draft of the deck, and I ultimately dropped it because four WW two drops felt too greedy, but it certainly is a thematic fit. I might have been wrong to take them out. Chandra doesn't have much to do with the themes of the deck, but she has won every game I've drawn her in where my opponent doesn't have removal, and reave soul/fiery impulse/twin bolt seem a lot less ubiquitous than they used to be, so I think Chandra's pretty well positioned right now. Oblivion Sower is absolutely sketchy though. I mean, it's a fun combo with Retreat to Emeria, but honestly it's pretty win-more. I'm sure you're right to swap it out.

I know from my own experience that Chandra is pretty nutty. I just felt that there was not that many cheap red spells and things like Impulse / Twin Bolt to push her trough.
I'm gonna give her a try though the next time I play the deck. She's one of my favorite cards.

WW on turn 2 can be pretty awkward but I think it's fine in a 2 color deck. Lieutenant is just such a powerful card especially in this deck that I think it probably is worth it to run him.

Thanks for this fun deck though! Make sure to post if you make any changes/optimizations on it.

On another note, why did you remove a champion? That's the second best card in the deck imo and the reason to go Boros. I don't know if I ever won without either CotFM or a champ, but the two combined spell "rape".

Great deck randomname, very fun to play and viable. I'm still missing some cards like 2 stonewakers and the firebird but it has still been working very well for me, just awesome.

Well I only had time to take the token deck for a couple rounds this morning, but it struck out big time for me. Maybe there were piloting errors, but I lost to RDW, mono-green ramp, and an artifact deck that was neither well-put-together nor well-played...pretty discouraging. I found it was just too slow. With no removal I had to sack my guys blocking to stay alive, and felt outclassed offensively at every point in the game. When you're shut down by a turn two Perilous Myr and a turn three Esperzoa it's not a good thing. I think I'll go back to my Azorius version of this with a lot of stalling effects; maybe try splashing red for a couple of the key cards. I am running Unified Front with extra dual lands; +4/+4 from a single Valor in Akros is pretty awesome when it happens.

Played the deck again and had a lot of problems against Red Aggro this time around. I just had no answer to their 1-drop into enchantment start. I was thinking maybe adding some removal in the form of Fiery Impulse or Twin Bolt could be the answer? What's your experience against Red Aggro with this deck?

I'm 4-0 against Red Aggro, though I don't think the tokens deck on the draw has a way to beat T1 Glory Chaser T2 Aura. Fortunately you're not going to run into that in a particularly high percentage of games you play over a large sample size (Red Aggro is 20%-ish of the meta, you're going to be on the play half the time, they won't have a T1 Glory Chaser much of the time, or won't have an aura, etc). I think the original list holds up fairly well. I did try a couple variants of the deck with Consul's Lieutenant, and the card under-performed for me. It reduces the consistency of the deck. One swap I've played around with is taking out the Knight of the White Orchid x2 for Flameshadow Conjuring x2, which slows the deck down a bit but improves the combo potential. I think it's basically an even trade, either way. The original list seems as good as anything else I've tried in search of improving upon it.

I think putting removal in the deck is a bit of a trap, possibly excepting one or two Angelic Edict. Removing the density of combo pieces hurts a lot, and low CMC removal is often a functionally dead draw, whereas a creature or land or one of the enchantments are pretty much always useful. What makes the deck good is largely it's consistency in my opinion, so I'm pretty hesitant to sacrifice that to tune the deck against specific opposing decks. It seems better to take a "you're the one who needs to stop me - I don't care what you're doing" approach.

It's possible that you just ran into a series of games where their draws matched-up unusually well with your draws. I personally haven't had excessive trouble playing against any of the archetypes you've mentioned being a problem.

The deck can take a bit of practice to pilot well I think. One principle that is pretty helpful is that you want to keep your creatures on the board if at all possible, even at the cost of a fair bit of your life. I avoid chump blocking and trading far more with this deck than I do with most other decks. You want to be able to build a big enough board to combo-out and end the game, and you need a lot of creatures in play to make that happen. It isn't always possible though - I took the deck out for a spin, and it worked like clockwork 8/9 games, but in one I just got run over by GW renown. Happens.

I wonder, did you try firemantle mage? The 3 cmc red ally that gives menace. In some of my games with this deck I had a problem with green/black token decks in that I had a huge board but coudn't quite push for lethal because they had a wide boards of blockers.

Firemantle Mage is a magnificent finisher when you need those few points of damage to go through 1-2 huge blockers.

I am slowly starting to believe it's one of the best cards in the set. 'Oh, you thought you'd stabilized against my aggro or midrange deck?' Boom! Firemantle Mage... /flips table

Yep...that's why I put 4 Myrs there, they help a lot, and go well with the theme...took out the 2 Knights (they tend to sit just there, and screw the mana count quite a bit, nice against moss I guess, but even so...) the Sower and Chandra (not that easy to flip in this deck) and at least for me, things went clearly better. Also, I can put more red mana now without the Knights

Love this deck, how it can have a seemingly weak board and then...boom!! 3-4 5/5 flyers to the face

Testing one copy of Flameshadow Conjuring in exchange from one Emeria (probably timmy), and also +1 Exquisite firecraft/-1 Akoum (probably stays)