“Share them with me, your thoughts, your ambitions”
Art:Lorehold Apprentice
by Manuel Castañón
Table of Contents
Todays Featured Commander Is:
Lorehold Apprentice is at the helm of a really sweet Boros spirit deck that is as Boros as it comes! We are able to turn all of our spirits into pingers just by triggering magecraft. Combining this with cantrips and ways to untap our creatures and we have a ton of ways to deal some damage and end the game! This deck is fast efficient and full of instant and sorceries, its like a spellslinger deck in Boros! Without further adieu lets get it!
The Deck:
Lorehold Apprentice Spirits Pings!
Why Lorehold Apprentice?
The main reason we chose Lorehold Apprentice is that she is the key to our deck, with her we are a fast and efficient high damage output deck, without here we just have a bunch of creatures that are pretty small and cant do that much. Lorehold Apprentice is key to our deck and is just a great card that really ties the whole list together and makes it work!
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck!
Creatures:
We of course have a bunch of small creatures since we want to swarm the board for when Lorehold comes out and we can start swinging. One of the best defensive card we have is Kami of False Hope
which can be a great way to prevent combat damage and kami is also a spirit! Hearth Kami
is another great card that allows us to take out an artifact and since it doesn’t need to be tapped to activate we can easily tap this to ping and take out a key artifact. Village Bell-Ringer
is one of our best cards since we can tap all of our spirits and then untap for even more damage!
We also have some additional damage cards like Thermo-Alchemist
and Guttersnipe
these are both not spirits but are great ways to get some extra damage and get us closer to ending the game. Waxmane Baku
is another great way to tap down an opponents creatures this can work great against stompy decks with really big creatures! Soul of Magma
is the biggest creature in our deck and we can do some damage when casting spirits which we will never say no too!
Instants:
Since we are a deck that cares a lot about magecraft we of course have a ton of instants and cantrip style spells to help us get those triggers! Blessed Defiance
is a cool card that gives us a buff which can help kill an opponents creature and we will get another spirit out of the deal Make Your Mark
is a card along the same lines but gives us an even bigger spirit! Defiant Strike
and Expedite
which are both great cantrips that trigger magecraft and give us a card out of the deal! We also have one of my favorite white cards in Mana Tithe
which is always good for a surprise counter!
We also have Rally the Righteous
, War Flare
and Call to Glory
which are all great ways to untap our creatures and get them ready for another round of damage! Orcish Cannonade
is a cool card to deal some damage and draw a card, while we do take some damage its usually fine and we get to trigger magecraft out of the deal! Expel
is another interesting removal spell that we can use to take out an attacker or any problematic tapped creature!
Sorceries:
We only have 3 sorceries but they all are pretty cool, Rousing of Souls
can get us up to 3 tokens, so essentially 3 additional damage and we give everyone a card not a bad card at all for 2w. Spectral Reserves
and Triplicate Spirits
are both great ways to get some more creatures and some more damage!
Artifacts:
Our artifact package mostly consist of mana with format favorites like Arcane Signet
, Marble Diamond
and Fire Diamond
just to name a few. Orazca Relic
is a cool card that is a mana rock but also lets us draw a card so that’s a pretty sweet benefit.
Land Base:
Our land base is pretty much what you would expect for a Boros landbase, but we do have every single Boros cycling land that we can have. We don’t have that high of mana cost and drawing cards is never bad so we will often cycle some of the lands to get an extra card. This deck doesn’t need a ton to operate but I found 35 lands was much better than 32 and 34, I tested with both and found 35 to be perfect. Other than our plethora of cycling lands a lot of expected lands Evolving Wilds
and Cabaretti Courtyard
which are both great ways to grab a basic!
Strengths of the Deck:
- Easy to draw a bunch of cards through instants and sorceries
- Easy to do a ton of damage with our spirits without going into combat
- Many ways to untap creatures after tapping them all for damage on our turn
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Deck is worse without commander
- Weak to creature hate
- Not a lot of interaction
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Main Win Conditions:
Our main win conditions are killing our opponents through combat or we can use Lorehold Apprentice and ping our opponents to death, we also have cards like Thermo-Alchemist and Guttersnipe. This deck can win in multiple ways and is just a ton of fun to play and we can pile on damage and win pretty easily!
Conclusion:
In conclusion Lorehold Apprentice is a really sweet commander that allows us to turn all of our small spirits into pingers when we trigger magecraft. Since we are in red and white we have a ton of cantrip spells and ways to untap our creatures. This deck is fast efficient and we can end games pretty quickly. Hope you enjoyed this article, and don’t forget you can always suggest a PDH, EDH and CEDH article on our twitter or discord. Thank you for reading to the end!