Lands:
3 Island
1 Plains
2 Izzet Boilerworks
2 Boros Garrison
2 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Hallowed Fountain
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Steam Vents
2 Adarkar Wastes
2 Shivan Reef
1 Urza's Factory
Creatures:
2 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Court Hussar
4 Lightning Angel
Other Spells:
3 Azorius Signet
3 Boros Signet
1 Sacred Mesa
4 Remand
4 Wrath of God
4 Demonfire
4 Compulsive Research
4 Lightning Helix
Sideboard:
3 Condemn
3 Faith's Fetters
4 Annex
2 Ivory Mask
1 Sacred Mesa
2 Giant Solifuge |
   Angelfire
2007.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
This deck originated from the Blue/Red/White
deck that Kenji Tsumura played at the Hiroshima Champs. His deck looked
quite appealing, so I set out to tune it. I tweaked the numbers, and
ended up cutting the Careful Consideration/Akroma, Angel of
Wrath/Resurrection package for more efficient cards. Perhaps the most
influential change was made by Quentin Martin, who added more Demonfires
to the deck. I have tested over hundreds of matches with this deck, so
I'm fairly confident this version is close to optimal. I also played the
deck to a second place finish in an online 183-man Thanksgiving 4x
Standard event online.
Against control decks such as Izzetron or Solar Flare,
you are the beatdown. To your opponent, it might appear as if you are
still aiming for a control game, as you run cards like Compulsive
Research, Remand, and Wrath of God. But that's wrong. Your actual plan
from the start is to lead into a hellbent ten-point Demonfire on turn
nine. You play Court Hussar on turn 3 and attack for a couple points. Then
you get in for three with a Lightning Angel before it gets killed and
proceed to Lightning Helix your opponent for three damage. A Bogardan
Hellkite nugs your opponent to an unsafe life total, after which you empty
your hand and point a Demonfire at your opponent to finish it without
fearing countermagic. It's surprising how often the games play out like
that. After sideboard, you take out Wrath of God and Lightning Helix for
Annex, Sacred Mesa, and Giant Solifuge, and solidify your aggressive
stance.
Aggro decks such as Boros Deck Wins or Zoo are good
matchups. You need to take the control role and preserve your life total
as well as you can. You stall their development with Remand or a Lightning
Helix, and then you clear the board with Wrath of God. You trade a Court
Hussar or Lightning Angel for Giant Solifuge, and then put down a win
condition (another Lightning Angel, Bogardan Hellkite, Sacred Mesa, or
Urza's Factory). You then put try to kill them before they topdeck burn
cards, perhaps using Compulsive Research along the way to draw into a
Lightning Helix to stay at a healthy life total. After sideboard, you get
to remove expensive/slow stuff such as Demonfire and Remand for Faith's
Fetters and Condemn and improve even more.
Combo decks such as Dragonstorm or MartyrTron are tough,
since you lack disruption and are not that fast. But fortunately, these
decks can lose to themselves a reasonable amount of time. Your plan A is
that they get mana screwed. You even have Annex after sideboard to
capitalize on that. Plan B is that their deck fizzles. They might not draw
any of their combo pieces, which will likely happen if they have to take
multiple mulligans. It might seem stupid to put this down as game plans,
but actually it is your main chance and it surprisingly tends to work more
often than you might think. After that, the actual deck comes into play.
Against MartyrTron, you can either go for a quick turn 3 Lightning Angel
with Remand backup and hope it's fast enough, or you can abuse Sacred Mesa
to make more Pegasus tokens than they can handle. Against Dragonstorm, you
can Lightning Helix your way up to 23 life, then when they play
Dragonstorm for five you allow their Bogardan Hellkites to take you down
to 3 life and chumpblock their Hunted Dragon with Lightning Angel, untap
and play Wrath of God. After sideboard you also have Ivory Mask protection
against Bogardan Hellkite.
The deck is solid, it plays some of the best cards in
the format, it is pretty consistent due to the blue card draw, Lightning
Angel is pure gold, it can easily mulligan down to 4-5 cards and still win
because of all the card advantage, and not many control decks are prepared
for four Demonfires. It's definitely recommended. |
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