by Johnny Cycles, November 22nd, 2024

Welcome to another edition of Keeping Modern Janky! This month, I’m playing another guilty pleasure card of mine, Boros Reckoner!

Boros Reckoner‘s effect wasn’t new to the game, as Stuffy Doll was printed back in Time Spiral in 2006. But Boros Reckoner was the first constructed playable creature given such a static ability. 3 mana, even if color intensive, for a 3/3 with additional upside was ahead of its time back in 2013, particularly given that it’s a rare and not a mythic. Of course, now we can see it as a harbinger of the power creep that was to follow.

Tangent aside, Boros Reckoner was Standard legal alongside not just Blasphemous Act, but a group of powerful cards that could win games all by themselves, or go over the top with 13 to the dome for a single . The deck? The Aristocrats, which made the top 8 of Pro Tour Gatecrash with Tom Martell as the pilot. You can read about the Aristocrat archetype here, but Boros Reckoner gave the deck a powerful on-curve threat that made attacking extremely problematic, as well as a combo piece for Blasphemous Act once the board got too clogged.

I played a version of this deck back in Standard and have been in love with the archetype ever since. I remember looking down at a board full of Spirit tokens from Lingering Souls and two Boros Reckoners against an opponent who had also flooded the board and wondering how I’d punch through damage without dying on the backswing. Then I drew Blasphemous Act. 26 points to my opponent’s face later and the match was over.

Can we relive that dream in today’s Modern?

Boros Reckoner and Blasphemous Act before Modern Horizons 3

I first attempted a deck like this before Modern Horizons 3 was released. Over the years, Magic had printed several more cards that gave us a critical mass of Boros Reckoner effects up the curve.

Surely a deck built with this top end and an aggressive, flood-the-board-with-creatures angle could compete in Modern, right? And, if we got to a point where attacking was too difficult, we’d have Blasphemous Act to fall back on.

Here’s my original decklist.

Decklist – Mono Red Blasphemous Reckoner

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (30)

4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Reckless Bushwhacker
4 Boros Reckoner
3 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Ill-Tempered Loner
3 Brash Taunter

Spells (8)

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Blasphemous Act

Lands (22)

2 Castle Embereth
20 Mountain

Sideboard (15)

3 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Unholy Heat
2 Cleansing Wildfire
2 Smash to Smithereens
2 Blood Moon
3 Light Up the Stage

I won’t go into all the ins and outs of this deck, but you can see we’re trying to have an aggressive creature start with a powerful top end. Unfortunately, the deck played very clunkily, in part due to this hybrid strategy of needing to flood the board with creatures and play a critical mass of Boros Reckoner effects. And even when we curved out, our 1- and 2-drop plays were largely unimpactful, outside of multiple Burning-Tree Emmisarys into Reckless Bushwhacker.

Enter Modern Horizons 3

With the printing of Modern Horizons 3 and the appearance of Energy in the format, there was suddenly a top tier deck that wanted to flood the board with creatures. Throw in the various Rakdos decks and suddenly the meta had shifted to be more creature heavy.

This meant that we didn’t have to be the ones playing all the cheap creatures. Instead, we could play a more Midrange game, I thought. In my playtesting of other Midrange strategies, I was already main-decking Anger of the Gods whenever possible. Blasphemous Act is just better, right?

But then I realized that Energy actually provides us with the shell we had hoped for when I first made the deck. It’s full of 1- and 2-drop creatures to help reduce the cost of Blasphemous Act, but those creatures are all legitimate, must-answer threats that can power us to victory all by themselves. Whether it’s the MH2 all-star, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, or the new hotness, Ocelot Pride, our 1-mana threats can snowball quickly. Meanwhile, the synergies between Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, Ocelot Pride, and Guide of Souls is painfully familiar to anyone who’s tried to win a game in Modern recently.

But another card was also printed in the interim between my first Blasphemous Act deck and now: Phyrexian Vindicator. Ill-Tempered Loner is okay as a threat, while Brash Taunter is more of a meme card. On an empty board the former can close out a game pretty quickly, while the latter durdles like few others. On a clogged board, both make combat problematic for our opponent, at least.

Phyrexian Vindicator has far more upside without any of the issues. For 4 mana, we get a 5/5 with evasion that doesn’t die in combat. We get a big beater that can end games quickly. And we get a late-game draw that will make our opponent scoop far more often than make them laugh, the way Brash Taunter would.

The final piece of the puzzle is another MH3 card: White Orchid Phantom. Phyrexian Vindicator is about as mana-intensive as it gets and Modern is still a fast format. A turn 2 Flagstones of Trokair and White Orchid Phantom, then, ramps us into a turn 3 Phyrexian Vindicator if that’s what we want. At the very least, it lets us set up our next draw by snagging an Elegant Parlor, while all but ensuring we’ll have four when the time is right.

White Orchid Phantom is more than just ramp in our deck, though. The Spirit Knight has both flying and first strike, giving us a way to chip in some early damage if necessary or blocking our opponent’s Ocelot Pride and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer to our advantage. Finally, Modern is still a format full of non-Basic lands. Having main-deck interaction with greedy mana bases or Tron is a huge plus.

Which leads me to this overhauled decklist:

Decklist – Boros Blasphemous Act

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (28)

4 Guide of Souls
4 Ocelot Pride
4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
4 Ajani, Nacatl Pariah
4 White Orchid Phantom
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Phyrexian Vindicator

Spells (10)

4 Lightning Bolt
2 Cleansing Wildfire
4 Blasphemous Act

Lands (22)

4 Arid Mesa
4 Elegant Parlor
4 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Mountain
5 Plains
4 Sacred Foundry

Sideboard (15)

4 Static Prison
4 Surge of Salvation
4 Suncleanser
3 Thraben Charm

Deck Tech

The 60 passes the eye test in a way my Mono Red version failed to do. And while I’m all for playing jank, I still enjoy casting Ajani, Nacatl Pariah as much as the Boros Energy player. Will it be competitive in Modern? Can we keep up with Energy, while winning against the unfair decks still roaming the format? Let’s find out!

Practice Matches

Match 1 vs. Twiddle Storm

Match 2 vs. Rakdos Shadow

Match 3 vs. U/W Affinity

Match 4 vs. Goryo’s Vengeance

Match 5 vs. Naya Energy

My opponent didn’t want me to post the video of our game, so I’ll give you the run-down and a few pics, circa 2023 when this site first went live.

Game 1 – my opponent ran away with the game on the back of Cat and Insect tokens (they won with 26 creatures on the battlefield). This is the exact match-up that inspired me to try Boros Reckoner and Blasphemous Act again, but we can’t cast it if we don’t draw it!

Game 2 – I cast Blasphemous Act without it being lethal, but leaving me with a Phyrexian Vindicator.

Gam3 – the power of Boros Reckoner on full display, here, as is the power of Ocelot Pride. This is the first game in which I really get to see the new MH3 mythic shine. I’ve definitely underappreciated its power, even having lost to it frequently enough.

The other all-star? White Orchid Phantom. To narrate the game above, I blocked Voice of Resurgence the previous turn, then cast Phyrexian Vindicator. Opponent top-decks Static Prison for the Vindicator, then swings as you see in the picture. 6 to the face from blocking the giant Elemental token, then 2 in the air with our evasive Spirit Knight for exacties. Just how we drew it up!

Overall Record: 4-1

Impressions from Practice Matches

I never know how much time I’m going to have in a given week to record games, so I record everything and hope I get enough quality content to represent the power and potential of whatever deck I’m playing. I also tend to play matches in the free zone because I enjoy the more wide-range of decks played there and players are often friendly and chatty.

However, the free zone is not always indicative of what you’ll find in a more competitive environment, like FNM. I’ve 5-0ed in the free zone against a variety of jank only to go 1-4 in a league with the same 75. My content, of course, is geared more towards the casual Modern player and I hope to offer fun brews that can be competitive in league play, so I’m typically content with free zone play.

This deck is different. We’re playing some very powerful cards that make up the core of one of the best decks in the format. I’m going to run it through a league and I expect it to do significantly better than most decks I play there.

These matches were different. Sure, Twiddle Storm isn’t widely played, but Storm is and they attack in a similar way. Furthermore, it’s a match-up that I imagine is tough for us. Our games bear this reality out. Even with nerfing their Grapeshot, our opponent stormed off…in the very same turn!

U/W Affinity, meanwhile, is the true outlier from the top tier of the meta. The other decks we played are ones that I expect to see in league play. And we did very well against them.

Our inspiration for trying this combo out again – Energy – we played once. The go-wide creature strategy it’s a part of, though, we played three times total. We won all those matches.

We played two unfair decks and got extremely lucky against Reanimator in game one. Our opponent just couldn’t find a Goryo’s Vengeance until it was too late, despite putting an Atraxa, Grand Unifier in the yard on turn 1. They did eventually cast two copies of Goryo’s Vengeance in the same turn, but by then we had a big enough board and creatures that don’t mind taking a lot of damage that we won through it.

Game 2 saw them execute their game plan, but run out of gas when they only had an Ulamog, the Defiler to reanimate and we had enough permanents not to care. All that’s to say that I think we lose against Goryo’s Vengeance more often than not. Maybe we need more graveyard hate.

There were a few tier decks we dodged.

We did NOT play any Dimir Frog decks featuring the true best card from MH3. I imagine Psychic Frog builds will pose the biggest challenge for us among the fair decks, given how much interaction they have. We also didn’t play a true Rakdos or Mono Black Midrange deck flush with non-damage-based removal. I can see us struggling against them, as well.

Overall, though, the deck felt great! Resolving some of the busted cards from MH3 that I’ve spent the past few months losing to was as fun as it looks when my opponents play them. But I didn’t just win games on the back of these pushed and overpowered 1- and 2-drops. No, we just as often won with Boros Reckoner, Phyrexian Vindicator, and Blasphemous Act!

And it was so. Much. Fun.

Stay tuned for the video of this deck in league play! As always, thanks for reading and watching!