Budget Modern Boros Ground Rift - Deck Guide on ChannelFireball.com

To many players, Modern is a format of self-expression. Deck selection, playstyle and even card art choices are how players express themselves in Modern. While many players are simply happy to play what they believe to be the best deck in the format on any given weekend, one of the greatest appeals to Modern has always been the ability to learn and solidify yourself as a master of a “rogue strategy.” Players who cement themselves as these deck specialists take pride in competing versus the top decks with these off-the-wall strategies.

Finding one of these strategies that clicks with you is a truly special and personal process. For players looking to find a new deck in any format, I generally recommend first spending time researching deck lists and consuming content until you find a deck that looks interesting to you. Once you’ve found one that looks fun, there are lots of ways to start playtesting. I’ve generally found that playtesting with your friends or family using proxies or using a MTGO rental service or all-access token (when they’re available) are the best ways to jam a bunch of games and learn a deck.

Unfortunately, MTG has always been a prohibitively expensive hobby for many players and while solid budget options for formats exist, there’s a distinct lack in archetype diversity for these budget options. Usually budget options are simply monocolored aggro decks, and while these can certainly be fun in their own right, it’s also the case that there’s a wide range of players that are more interested in playing different archetypes and, in my opinion, you should always try to enjoy yourself while playing MTG. So in these budget deck guides, I try to present fun and interesting fresh decks under $200 that can be tons of fun at your LGS meta while also being able to compete with the non-budget decks of the format. I also always try to make sure that your money is well spent, picking up staples that you can use to start building a collection.

For those players who like to play with pump spells and cast lots of cheap instants for an explosive combo finish, I’ve recently been working on a Boros brew featuring Ground Rift and a handful of creatures that can deal massive amounts of damage when paired with the card.

For a while now, some Modern pilots have tried various red/white/x aggro decks featuring Ground Rift alongside Clever Lumimancer and Nivmagus Elemental. Since magecraft triggers for each storm copy and Nivmagus Elemental can eat the storm copies for two +1/+1 counters, Ground Rift can easily turn these one-mana creatures into threats that can one-shot your opponent. However, I’ve always felt that these decks were missing one good threat that works with Ground Rift. Since Rift is a card that can be a complete dud without one of these unique creatures, having the extra four copies of these kinds of creatures really would do wonders to raise the floor of this somewhat clumsy storm spell. That’s where the recently printed Illuminator Virtuoso comes in.

Illuminator Virtuoso is absolutely incredible with Ground Rift. With each copy of Ground Rift triggering the Virtuoso separately, you get to connive for each spell you’ve cast that turn. These connives will let you immediately filter through your deck, often drawing you to Lava Darts or Mutagenic Growths to cast on your Virtuoso for zero mana (your Lava Darts will often target your Virtuoso, even when you don’t draw Ground Rift). Illuminator Virtuoso also gives the archetype some much needed card advantage/selection that I felt older lists were lacking.

I’ve found the deck to be incredibly fun and surprisingly competitive. At the time of writing and after a few days of playtesting, I have a 20-19 record with the deck, which while not groundbreaking, is a very satisfying win rate for such a fun list.

Here’s the non-budget Boros Ground Rift deck list. I’ve found it to be great against most of the linear decks in the format, and is surprisingly resilient to decks leaning on red removal like Murktide or Burn. I have, however, found it to be weaker against decks with white removal like Prismatic Ending and Solitude since your Mutagenic Growths and prowess triggers won’t save your creatures.

Non-Budget Boros Ground Rift by Evart Moughon
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Companion

Creature (16)

Sorcery (10)

Instant (17)

Land (17)

Cards 60

Sideboard (15)

You’ll probably notice that aside from the mana base, this deck is incredibly cheap .With every card being a common or uncommon, the spells in the main deck are a whooping $34, with around half of that price coming from the four copies of Manamorphose. With the mana base and sideboard however, the deck comes out to be a little about $400 USD. While not super expensive when compared to most other Modern decks, this of course means that in order to build this deck under our $200 budget, we’ll simply need to build the mana base cheaper and choose some less powerful but still effective sideboard options.

Here’s the budget list:

Budget Boros Ground Rift by Evart Moughon
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Companion

Creature (16)

Sorcery (10)

Instant (17)

Land (17)

Cards 60

Sideboard (15)

As you can see, the main deck is the same as the non-budget list aside from concessions to the mana base. I know that the mana base still accounts for the majority of the cost, but with a two-color mana base that needs to maintain a high density of Mountains to support Lava Dart, I think building the mana base any cheaper would result in significantly diminished consistency. Thankfully, Arid Mesas are at an all-time low and picking up fetchlands is always a wise use of your MTG budget. It’s always good to have a clear upgrade path for these budget decks, and this is one of the simplest and cleanest upgrades I’ve ever had to write for.

As always, thanks for reading. This has been the most fun I’ve had playing a deck in a while and I highly recommend the list for players looking for something fresh and fun.

Here’s how I would sideboard with both the budget and non-budget variants: