Boros Tokens: A Wide and Aggressive Alchemy Deck

Hey all, Strickles here. Aetherdrift is around the corner, with spoilers starting on the 21st, so while we wait and prepare for that, I’ve been playing some Alchemy, as per usual.

Boros Tokens is an aggressive deck that is looking to go wide, buff up our team in various ways, and then end the game before our opponent can stabilize. To do this, we have various token makers, buffers, and solid removal.

Let’s break it down!

Key Cards and Strategy

Let’s start with our token makers, the core part of the deck.

Resolute Reinforcements is the bread and butter of the deck. Two mana for two bodies, at instant speed. The instant speed is key because it can help us not overextend into sweepers, leaving up our mana to flash it in on our opponent’s endstep.

Dragon Fodder is a simple and clean token maker. Two mana for two tokens. It is a sorcery, unlike Resolute Reinforcements, but it is still a solid rate, and helps us get to the three creature threshold that several of our cards need.

Hop to It is also a very straightforward card. Three tokens for three mana. This is both a great card and an awkward card for us. Three bodies when we have various buffs in play is great, but all of our other three drops are a bit more powerful, meaning that sometimes we don’t get to deploy the bunnies on curve.

Sanguine Evangelist is both a token maker and a token payoff. It comes alongside a 1/1 bat token with flying, and when it dies we get another one. More importantly, it has battlecry, so when it attacks all of our other attacking creatures get +1/+0 until end of turn. This is one of our ways to buff up our army of tokens and make them a much more threatening force. The death trigger is nice because it lets us attack with Sanguine Evangelist into blockers to buff up the rest of our team and still get something out of it after it dies.

Heroic Reinforcements is one of our finishers, giving us two tokens but then buffing our whole board and giving all of our creatures haste. When we have five or six mana, we can use this haste to even greater effect, by deploying a one or two mana play and then using Heroic Reinforcements to give them +1/+1 and haste.

Heroic Reinforcements is also one of our ways to recover after a sweeper, as even on its own it is four damage, and maybe even more if we have an anthem in play.

Next, let’s talk about our buffs.

Warleader’s Call is a great tool for this deck, both buffing our creatures and giving us extra damage by pinging our opponent every time a creature enters. This means that Warleader’s Call is both good when we have a board, and fine when we don’t, because as we build our board we will be doing extra damage to our opponent. It is also a great tool to have against sweepers, as it can help us get in those last few points of damage after our board is cleared.

Ruby Collector is a sweet card for this deck, giving us a way to pump our creatures multiple times, and if we meet that three creature threshold I mentioned earlier, and attack with them, we conjure a Mox Ruby into our hand, which is really useful not just for activating Ruby Collector’s activated ability, but because we do have a low land count and the mana from the Mox Ruby can help us cast our more expensive spells.

Case of the Gateway Express is our main removal spell, helping us take out problematic blockers on the opposing side, but also another card asking us to meet that threshold of three attackers to solve and turn into a permanent +1/+0 buff to our team. Even if our board gets cleared, this buff will remain, making all of our future tokens much more threatening.

Lastly, we have Pollen-Shield Hare, which is a flex slot in this deck. It is quite good, just being a 2/2 for two mana that buffs up all of our tokens, but we do have a hard time making use of its adventure, although with Captivating Crossroads it is possible to cast. 

One of the powers of our deck is that most of our creatures are not worth using a removal spell on, but when we have creatures like Pollen-Shield Hare or Ruby Collector in play, it helps our opponent figure out their gameplan.

Rounding out our main deck we have Seasoned Warrenguard, a great play on turn one, as we have a variety of ways to make tokens on turn two and turn it into a 3/2 attacker. Our most aggressive draws involve Seasoned Warrenguard getting down early and getting in hits for three right away.

We also have one copy of Song of Totentanz, just as a big finisher later in the game, maybe after a sweper or once we have several buffs in play. This is also a flex slot in the deck and could be a variety of cards.

Our mana is a