Magic The Gathering: Decks You Should Totally Try #1 Haktos Control
By Micah Dewey
Sometimes I get this feeling that I might be onto something that few other people are, but then I have to ask myself, Why? We all get the same card previews and analysis from different MTG talking heads, and “pundits” yet rarely do we see a rogue deck out of nowhere do well in a major standard tournament. Part of this, in my opinion, is because of the massive amount of meta-game information that the professional players have, and also because it’s safer to bring a deck that has little or no variance with your teammates.
So this is where this series comes in. I will take a new concept/archetype that is not very meta-friendly and try to make it viable in either Best of 1 or Best of 3 Ranked on Magic Arena. This series will always be one week behind, as I have to obtain the data and theorycraft as best I can.
This week we will be looking at Boros (Red/White) Control.
First, let’s look at what tools the Boros Legion currently contains. Currently, there are several top-tier board wipes with Deafening Clarion, Shatter the Sky and Storm’s Wrath. They each do a specific thing for our deck, but most importantly, they deal with Mono-Red Aggro or RDW. RDW is the most popular deck currently in the Best-of-1 Ranked ladder (I’ll show the stats later) and runs many small creatures, so to deal with that directly, we run 9 sweepers in the mainboard. Deafening Clarion is our most important card against aggro, both to sweep the board and to potentially gain back life that we lost in the first couple turns with a Gideon Blackblade or the deck’s namesake Haktos, the Unscarred.
For the anti-aggro gameplan, we also run two copies of The Birth of Meletis, to pull Plains from our decks, give us a sturdy 0/4 Wall, and finally gain us back a little life. Lifegain as a whole is somewhat of a subtheme to this build, with the previously mentioned Deafening Clarion, The Birth of Meletis, and what can sometimes be a win-condition by itself, Dawn of Hope.
At this point, you might be wondering, well how does it fair against control? Against the most popular decks, Azorius Control, Simic Flash, and Doom Foretold builds we’re sitting around a 64% win rate. We have two planeswalkers that do the vast majority of the work against Control, (minus Simic, creatures are king there) Karn, the Great Creator and Chandra, Awakened Inferno.
Karn allows us to use our sideboard, similar to how the Fires decks use Fae of Wishes to pull out extra goodies, or game-winning cards. Between Shadowspear and Mace of the Valiant, we can gain life, target Dream Trawler’s and Voltron up either a token or one of our other creatures. Chandra is simply an uncounterable clock on opposing control decks, we quickly become the aggressor in these matchups specifically thanks to her, Gideon and Haktos. Overall, our anti-control game is strong except for one rather important exception, Expansion//Explosion.
We do quite poorly against Temur Reclamation, especially those looking to end the game with a massive Explosion. This deck provides two options, aggro them down with creatures and Gideons, or lifegain your way out of range, while keeping Wilderness Reclamation in check with our Enchantments, Banishing Light and Elspeth Conquers Death. I did consider adding blue to the list to enable some of the downsides against that specific deck but found that it was then not viable to run the creatures that make the Boros deck a Boros deck.
Over 79 Ranked games, both Bo1 and Bo3, we ended up with a 57% win rate, which is not super high but is viable. The deck carried me through Gold’s mono-red rush at a staggering 14–1. I feel like I can confidently say that this deck is one of my best homebrews so far, (that isn’t a complete meme). I would highly recommend that if you have the cards, or wildcards to burn, and want to play a good off-meta deck that can win in any circumstance, this is it.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this, next week I will be seeing if a Golgari Reanimator deck is viable, I am feeling slightly less optimistic about this one. Until next time, have fun!
Full Decklist (Importable to Arena)
2 Dawn of Hope (GRN) 8
3 Deafening Clarion (GRN) 165
4 Sacred Foundry (GRN) 254
2 Karn, the Great Creator (WAR) 1
3 Gideon Blackblade (WAR) 13
2 Chandra, Awakened Inferno (M20) 127
3 Temple of Triumph (M20) 257
4 Bonecrusher Giant (ELD) 115
2 Castle Ardenvale (ELD) 238
3 Fabled Passage (ELD) 244
4 Banishing Light (THB) 4
2 The Birth of Meletis (THB) 5
4 Elspeth Conquers Death (THB) 13
4 Shatter the Sky (THB) 37
2 Storm’s Wrath (THB) 157
3 Haktos the Unscarred (THB) 218
1 Labyrinth of Skophos (THB) 243
6 Plains (THB) 279
6 Mountain (THB) 285
Sideboard
1 God-Pharaoh’s Statue (WAR) 238
1 Grafdigger’s Cage (M20) 227
2 Glass Casket (ELD) 15
2 Sorcerous Spyglass (ELD) 233
2 Stonecoil Serpent (ELD) 235
1 Mace of the Valiant (ELD) 314
1 Entrancing Lyre (THB) 233
2 Shadowspear (THB) 236
2 Soul-Guide Lantern (THB) 237
1 Wings of Hubris (THB) 241
