Historic Boros Midrange by James Rutherford

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James Rutherford used Historic Boros Midrange to deck to go 18-2 on stream and get to #6 on the Arena mythic ladder. I’ll be absolutely honest, when I first saw this post on Twitter, my first reaction was “wow, no way.”

Couldn't quite pass Nassif and Rumti on the Mythic ladder today, as I got to #3 twice but could not reach #2!

Thanks everyone for your support, and special thanks to @astralsflame for the raid!

Current list, 69% win rate through 299 matches: pic.twitter.com/sTIs2SBOwA

— Charizard_James Rutherford (@charizardjames7) May 23, 2021

When I think Historic, I think of powerful combo decks like Dimir Pact, Izzet Phoenix bringing back three Phoenixes from the graveyard in the early turns or powerful control decks that snowball Teferi, Hero of Dominaria protected with counterspells.

Is it possible that an innocent looking Boros Midrange deck goes on such dominating streak? Well, clearly it is! I’ll sure be trying this deck out next time I have a chance and I’m curious to see how it plays out in the metagame.

This deck is full of powerful midrange cards like Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Bonecrusher Giant and Glorybringer, but what surprises me is a complete lack of one-mana plays. I suppose there just aren’t really very many good early plays in these colors.

What I like about the deck is that it has a lot of things to do when it floods out thanks to all the double-faced lands and Blinkmoth Nexus. Even the Triomes make sense to me, because thanks the lack of early plays, you don’t need to play an untapped land on turn one.

Flamescroll Celebrant is an interesting new addition from Strixhaven, especially for the back side of the card that can sometimes break your opponent’s combo.

Perhaps this is what the format is going to look like after the banning of Thassa’s Oracle, though Pact can still use Jace, Wielder of Mysteries as a win condition. I’m gonna need to try this myself, but for now it looks like Historic is taking quite an unexpected turn.