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Boros Justice Deck Guide and using transformational sideboards by Mogged
About the deck
Boros Justice is a midrange reanimator deck that curves out to a big threat, compared to traditional reanimator decks it is very efficient on mana and can win a grindy midrange game even if it’s reanimator main plan is disrupted falling back to standalone “good cards” like Fable and The Wandering Emperor.
It utilizes a transformative sideboard plan against hard to beat cards like Dennick Pious Apprentice , Disdainful stroke , Make Disappear and more blue cards by strengthening the backup grindy “good cards” plan of the deck and completely abandoning the reanimator plan making hate against it void.
$386/304.83 Tix
Maindeck (60)
| Creature [23] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2 Ao, the Dawn Sky | $1.79 | |
| 2 Cathar Commando | $1.29 | |
| 4 Raffine's Informant | $0.35 | |
| 4 Sanctuary Warden | $1.29 | |
| 1 Serra Paragon | $4.49 | |
| 2 Spirited Companion | $0.39 | |
| 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker | $20.99 | |
| 4 The Restoration of Eiganjo | $0.99 | |
| Artifact [1] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Reckoner Bankbuster | $1.99 | |
| Instant [3] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Destroy Evil | $2.29 | |
| 2 Fateful Absence | $0.79 | |
| Sorcery [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Invoke Justice | $0.49 | |
| Planeswalker [3] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 3 The Wandering Emperor | $29.99 | |
| Land [26] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire | $9.99 | |
| 4 Jetmir's Garden | $22.99 | |
| 1 Mountain | $0.01 | |
| 12 Plains | $0.01 | |
| 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance | $6.49 | |
| 4 Sundown Pass | $12.99 | |
| 3 Wind-Scarred Crag | $0.35 | |
| Sideboard [15] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Destroy Evil | $2.29 | |
| 3 Reckoner Bankbuster | $1.99 | |
| 1 The Wandering Emperor | $29.99 | |
| 2 Banishing Slash | $0.35 | |
| 1 Lion Sash | $2.49 | |
| 1 Unlicensed Hearse | $2.29 | |
| 2 Vanquish the Horde | $5.99 | |
| 4 Wedding Announcement | $13.99 | |
$111.01 Tix @cardhoarder
$2.78 / Week @cardhoarder
$352.54 @tcgplayer
$476.95 @cardkingdom
Visual View
Similar Decks
Proxies
Archetype Analysis
Magic online format
Apprentice and MWS .dec
https://mtgdecks.net/Standard/boros-justice-decklist-by-mogged-1478807
Evolution and current version
The original idea of this deck came from the notorious zoomer prodigy Magic Online user JUJUBEAN__2004 and Hinahara, they showed up to the Standard Challenge with a last minute brew of this deck, JUJUBEAN__2004 top8’d this challenge and proceeded to win the standard challenge 3 weeks after and this is what the list looked like then
Maindeck (60)
| Creature [24] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Ao, the Dawn Sky | $1.79 | |
| 4 Raffine's Informant | $0.35 | |
| 4 Sanctuary Warden | $1.29 | |
| 4 Spirited Companion | $0.39 | |
| 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker | $20.99 | |
| 4 The Restoration of Eiganjo | $0.99 | |
| Artifact [1] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Reckoner Bankbuster | $1.99 | |
| Instant [2] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2 Fateful Absence | $0.79 | |
| Sorcery [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 Invoke Justice | $0.49 | |
| Planeswalker [4] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4 The Wandering Emperor | $29.99 | |
| Land [25] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire | $9.99 | |
| 4 Jetmir's Garden | $22.99 | |
| 2 Mountain | $0.01 | |
| 12 Plains | $0.01 | |
| 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance | $6.49 | |
| 4 Sundown Pass | $12.99 | |
| 1 Wind-Scarred Crag | $0.35 | |
| Sideboard [15] | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2 Fateful Absence | $0.79 | |
| 2 Reckoner Bankbuster | $1.99 | |
| 1 Destroy Evil | $2.29 | |
| 3 Farewell | $8.99 | |
| 1 Lion Sash | $2.49 | |
| 1 March of Otherworldly Light | $1.79 | |
| 1 Unlicensed Hearse | $2.29 | |
| 4 Wedding Announcement | $13.99 | |
$111.41 Tix @cardhoarder
$2.79 / Week @cardhoarder
$363.91 @tcgplayer
$486.93 @cardkingdom
Visual View
Similar Decks
Proxies
Archetype Analysis
Magic online format
Apprentice and MWS .dec
https://mtgdecks.net/Standard/boros-justice-decklist-by-jujubean-2004-1464452
Admittedly this deck had a very powerful game 1, but the plan lost some of it’s cohesiveness post board in my opinion, my suspicion was that his win was based on a good deck idea and leveraging his skill in super long games rather than a surgical approach of how to beat the metagame.
Come october 10th meathook massacre is banned, in my opinion this ban really opens up the metagame in a different path, decks like Grixis who spent turns on loading with cards have no efficient way to turn this card advantage into tempo and lifegain without massacre.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker was the best card in standard and now it’s natural predator is gone, forget everything about black being the strongest color because Red is where you want to be.
I started testing fable decks, and this one stood out to me as being good in an open metagame I asked JUJUBEAN_2004 to help me tune his list and after reviewing all the ways to beat blue cards like Dennick and counterspells we decided that trying to answer their answers is less efficient than switching the type of our deck post board to void their answers.
Transformational Sideboards
Transformational sideboards is one of my favorite things to do in MTG but it has a lot of requirements and usually only works in limited ways, another big issue is opponents calling your bluff and sideboarding differently.
That being said the reward of transforming your deck type can be huge ,misdirecting your opponents answers and being favored in matchups you have no business winning
Let’s go over some of the requirements you have to meet to take this path
- You might be doing something unfair that is easily disrupted like in our case Invoke Justice
- Your sideboard doesn’t benefit a lot from adding hate cards
- You have to target well established decks and know their plan
- Your deck might be somewhat of a combo deck but it plays enough of the generic cards so that ⅔ of your deck could be the base of another strategy
- Your “unfair” part of the deck consists of 8-12 cards, in our case Invoke Justice and Sanctuary Warden
- You have no efficient way to answer their hate plan
Example transformations
Back to the deck, we have somewhat of a combo of using invoke justice on the angel most of the time which is very heavy and easily disrupted, we have trouble having untapped red on turn 2 to include cards like abrade so a lot of our sideboard options are compromised.
We know we are gonna be in big trouble against Esper, one of the most popular decks because of Dennick ,Disdainful etc. Fateful absence could answer Dennick, which is a bad trade for our side and it still does nothing to help us resolve high cmc cards through all those counters.
The deck has a ton of Standard playable cards that could be included in many shells, like restoration of eiganjo , fable and the wandering emperor.
Without reanimator package
This is what the deck looks like without the reanimator package, pretty normal midrange right?
Adapted to grindy blue decks (Grindy go wide plan)
This is what game 2 looks like vs esper and grixis (and whatever else grindy blue deck)
Sideboard Guide
Think of this deck as having 2 plans:
- The Reanimator plan
- The Grindy go wide plan.
I think a good analogy comes from baseball’s pitching. Fastball is the most thrown pitch, it is fast and overpowers batters, a breaking ball can be mixed in the pitching to get some free strikes when the opponent expects a fastball, it can only be thrown because of the main threat of the fastball existing confusing the batter.
The reanimator plan is better and much more powerful the way a fastball is and it is the prevalent plan of this deck because most of the time Invoke Justice is the way to go.
The Grindy go wide plan is used less of the time and is only good because the opponent is bringing in cards to fight your reanimator plan which are bad against your grindy plan, the same way a breaking ball is good when the batter is trying to hit your fastball.
Matchups analysis
Esper midrange
In my esper midrange guide this is how I approached beating Boros Justice and this is close to what esper pilots are gonna be doing versus you , bringing in unlicensed hearse,liliana , disdainfuls, negates , duress and either keeping dennicks or adding more. Normally these cards would disrupt your reanimator plan completely but they are pretty mediocre against your Grindy plan, I dare say this matchup turns from impossible to really close and even favored if everything goes according to plan.
Grixis Midrange
Grixis has a very similar plan with Esper, countering, duressing exiling cards from the graveyard and falling into the same trap of fighting the reanimator plan and losing to a single card like reckoner’s bankbuster or wedding invitation, again this matchups turns from impossible to favored.
Jund Windgrace Titan
This is the hardest matchup for us in the format right now, we got no insurance to fight high cmc cards and no way to punish their extremely greedy plan that completely ignores fast clocks.
In this matchup we are gonna be using the original reanimator plan and hoping we can be a little faster before getting swallowed by the Colossal titan.
Rakdos midrange/ Monoblack midrange
I expect some version of this to survive the meathook ban, Just play it cool, keep the reanimator plan and go over them, this is a really good matchup but they have some graveyard hate during early turns like graveyard trespasser so you don’t want to be discarding your reanimator targets, you would rather hard cast everything and be super greedy.
Monoblue aggro/tempo
Monoblue is a really bad deck but it happens to match kind of well against us, we might have a chance if something big resolves or when they give us time because they lack pressure due to their low number threats.
Monored aggro/Monowhite aggro/ Aggro
You are the control deck, they are the beatdown.
We could have more options for these matchups but it’s the price we pay to have enough slots for the transformational sideboard, I am not sure about these matchups since these decks are not seeing a lot of play. I can’t envision many ways of winning on the draw and I think we might be the underdogs.
Final words
I enjoy playing this deck because it’s like midrange on steroids, long grindy games you can just overtake by slamming your big threat it is a very volatile deck that can be a really good choice depending on the metagame , it abuses the best card in standard “Fable of the Mirror Breaker” and can handle most black decks.
I tried to cover most of the decks but the metagame is still very open and hopefully I have given a good enough understanding of switching plans to adapt to whatever new deck you face.
Transformational sideboards are one of the most tricky and underutilized tools and I would love to talk about it more in the future, always waiting for my chance to play the most generic cards in the sideboard including basic lands.
If you liked this article maybe you will also find interesting on of the following ones Taking the Modern Challenge with Calibrated Blast: primer and sideboard guide, Breaking Standard with Atraxa Reanimator: In-depth & Sideboard Guide, Fine tuning Mono-green in Pioneer: In-depth & Sideboard guide, Mono Green Tron Deck & Sideboard Guide, Top 4 @ MTGO Challenge with Rakdos Midrange: Analysis & Sideboard Guide
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MTGO Grinder
Mogged is one of the MTGO grinders behind many of the top winning decks across formats. He has the most Challenge top8s and wins in 2021, and is currently leading in Challenge wins in 2022. His articles show a deep understanding of the MTG theory and are great for those looking to improve their gameplay, better understanding the game, and learning how the metagame evolves over time.
