Much Abrew: Hit Yourself Boros (Modern, Magic Online)

by SaffronOlive // Mar 25, 2019

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, it was the spicy self-damaging Hit Yourself Boros for Modern that won the poll. As such, we're heading to Modern today to see if using some weird cards to damage our own Boros Reckoners and Swans of Bryn Argoll is a legitimate plan for the format. The main idea of the deck is to play some strange creatures that like taking damage and then use cards like Pyrohemia, Blasphemous Act, and Pyroclasm to deal damage to our own stuff for value. Is it really possible that a deck built around hitting its own creatures can compete in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we can talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: Hit Yourself Boros

Discussion

As for our record, the story is a bit complicated this week. I started out with the original build of the Hit Yourself Boros from the Instant Deck Tech and finished a league 2-3. The deck felt solid-ish, but it was pretty inconsistent. As a result, I decided to make a few small updates (mostly dropping Nahiri's Wrath and Light up the Stage, which is pretty bad with Wall of Omens being our main two-drop) and try again. The second league (the one featured in the video) went much better as we actually managed to finish 4-1, beating Ponza, Spirits, Merfolk, and a spicy Goryo's End deck while dropping a close match to Ad Nauseam!

Before you get too excited about our performance, I think one of the reasons why our record was so good is because we managed to hit some decent matchups. Hit Yourself Boros does best against creature decks where our removal and sweepers like Blasphemous Act are relevant, and we managed to play against mostly creature decks. That said, we also pushed the one combo deck to three games, and being in white does give us good sideboard options to fight against unfair decks.

As far as the deck itself, the combo of Boros Reckoner, Volcano Hellion, and Worship was a lot better than expected. We won several games that way, including some in which things were looking good before we managed to deal infinite damage to our opponent seemingly out of nowhere.

Pyrohemia was also oddly effective (in part because we played a lot of creature decks). Thanks to all of our indestructible and protection from red creatures, it often ends up as a really slow but repeatable board wipe that also slowly kills our opponent. At its best (especially with Worship to keep us alive), it can lock some decks out of the game entirely.

As far the updates to the deck, even though Hit Yourself Boros doesn't have any cards that especially synergize with Faithless Looting, adding the one-mana card0filtering engine to the deck was a massive improvement. While Faithless Looting is technically card disadvantage, the fact that we often have extra land (or situational removal spells) to discard means that even though we end up down a card, our hand is typically improved once we cast a Faithless Looting.

Even though we are very far away from some of the Swans of Bryn Argoll combo decks we've played in the past, the four-mana flier was still solid in the deck. While it can be risky since our opponent gets to draw a bunch of cards if they have a Lightning Bolt, a 4/3 flier isn't bad, and we occasionally have games where Swans draws us an absurd amount of cards and basically wins the game all by itself.

As far as further updates, I think the sideboard could be tweaked a bit, but in general, the deck is pretty solid (especially considering its jank game plan). Leyline of Sanctity isn't all that impressive at the moment in most matchups. Replacing it with something like more removal or artifact or graveyard hate might be a good idea. Otherwise, the deck was a lot better and more competitive than I expected it to be heading into our league.

So, should you play Hit Yourself Boros in Modern? While I'm not sure the deck is quite as good as it looked in our league (consistently going 4-1 or 5-0 is probably a stretch), it's a lot better than I expected when looking at it on paper. It's super fun to play and kills people in a really unique way. It seems more than good enough to compete at the FNM level, especially if there isn't too much combo and control running around in your local meta. If you're looking for something different to play in Modern, give it a shot! If you're looking for a way to cut the price down a bit, you can change Arid Mesa to Windswept Heath and save more than $100 (without losing much in terms of win percentage), and the three Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard are probably better as another Wear // Tear, Rest in Peace, and Anger of the Gods, which would save another $60-ish, bringing the total deck cost down to around $400!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.