Budget Magic: $100 Rokiric Multicolor Boros (Modern)
Happy New Year, Budget Magic lovers, it's that time once again! This week, we're heading to Modern to play a card that I think is among the most underrated from Modern Horizons 2: General Ferrous Rokiric. The idea is to overload on as many multicolor cards as possible; back up General Ferrous Rokiric with Hero of Precinct One, which is basically a mini version of the General; sling some multicolor spells to make some tokens; and then finish the game with a huge burst of damage from Heroic Reinforcements or by taking an extra combat with Response // Resurgence. How good is General Ferrous Rokiric in Modern in a Boros deck full of multicolored spells? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Budget Magic: Rokiric Boros
The Deck
Rokiric Multicolor Boros is a weird mixture of Boros Aggro and Boros Tokens. The goal is to play General Ferrous Rokiric and Hero of Precinct One early in the game, both of which take advantage of the fact that all of the non-land cards in our main deck are multicolor, then cast a bunch of spells to make a bunch of tokens with our payoffs, and finish the game with a big burst of damage from either Heroic Reinforcements or Response // Resurgence.
Generals and Heroes
The two most important cards in our deck are General Ferrous Rokiric and, to a lesser extent, Hero of Precinct One, both of which make tokens whenever we cast a multicolor spell, which our deck is full of. General Ferrous Rokiric is actually a pretty insane threat in the right deck. Having hexproof from monocolored means that none of the most popular targeted removal spells in Modern can kill it (Lightning Bolt, Prismatic Ending, Path to Exile, Fatal Push, etc.). If we can get it onto the battlefield, it's likely to stick around for a while and reward us with a massive 4/4 Golem token whenever we cast a multicolor spell. Meanwhile, Hero of Precinct One is the one monocolored card in our main deck because it's basically a smaller version of General Ferrous Rokiric, giving us a 1/1 token whenever we cast a monocolored spell. Together, our General and Hero allow us to flood the board quickly with tokens, which we (hopefully) can use to win the game by beating our opponent down.
Other Creatures
Rounding out our creature package are two one-drops, which might look a bit strange but are actually quite powerful in our deck since they are multicolored. While Dryad Militant is just a Savannah Lions with upside and Figure of Destiny starts off as just a 1/1 for one, both are fine early-game plays. They get even better later once we have General Ferrous Rokiric on the battlefield to make a 4/4 token when we cast them. Dryad Militant also has some sneaky upside in some matchups if we can play it on Turn 1, exiling any instants or sorceries that hit the graveyard, which helps keep opponents from turning on Dragon's Rage Channeler or filling their graveyard for Snapcaster Mage or Murktide Regent. On the other hand, Figure of Destiny is pretty matchup dependent in a world of Prismatic Ending and Fatal Push. While we often level it up to a 2/2, we often just leave it there because there's a fairly high risk that we will spend all of our mana to upgrade it only to have it killed by a one-mana removal spell, which is a huge tempo swing.
The Big Finish
Probably my favorite card in the deck is Heroic Reinforcements—an all-star from Standard a few years ago—which works incredibly well with General Ferrous Rokiric. By itself, the four-mana sorcery makes two 1/1 tokens and also pumps our team and gives it haste (making the tokens 2/2 with haste for a turn, which isn't a horrible deal for four mana). But the real reason why Heroic Reinforcements is great in our deck is our synergy with General Ferrous Rokiric. With a General Ferrous Rokiric, with the way the stack resolves, when we cast Heroic Reinforcements, we get the 4/4 Golem token first, which means it will be on the battlefield when Heroic Reinforcements resolves, giving it +1/+1 and haste, and allowing us to smash in for a huge amount of damage, hopefully just winning the game on the spot. Meanwhile, Response // Resurgence might be a little too cute for the deck, but it can do some powerful things. Its first mode is a not-great removal spell, but its second side is an extra combat step for five mana, which does work pretty well if we can make a big board of tokens with General Ferrous Rokiric and Hero of Precinct One.
Other Stuff
At the top end of our curve is Showdown of the Skalds for some card advantage. Drawing four cards for four mana is a pretty great deal for Boros, especially when attached to a multicolor enchantment that can trigger General Ferrous Rokiric and Hero of Precinct One. The +1/+1 counters it makes with the second and third lore counters can also be fairly valuable. They work especially well with General Ferrous Rokiric, which is hard to kill with targeted removal but also hard to attack with since it normally only has a single toughness. Growing General Ferrous Rokiric can turn it into a Voltron threat that is pretty tricky for most decks to stop.
Otherwise, we have Lightning Helix for more removal, Boros Charm to save our board from a sweeper (or to dome our opponent for four), and Manamorphose as a free way to trigger General Ferrous Rokiric and Hero of Precinct One.
The Mana
Most of our lands are just fixing our mana, but I did want to mention a couple specifically. Our MDFCs are really strong. Kabira Takedown takes advantage of the token production of General Ferrous Rokiric and Hero of Precinct One and, by the mid-game, often can kill any of our opponent's threats. Meanwhile, Spikefield Hazard is a sneaky way to snipe Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer on Turn 1 before it starts snowballing cards and Treasure tokens. As for Windbrisk Heights, it looked like a good idea in paper, but I don't think we actually managed to cast a spell from under it a single time in our matches. It might be worth cutting or at least trimming, especially considering that many of our most expensive spells (like Heroic Reinforcements and Response // Resurgence) are awkward when played during or after combat, and they really want to be cast during our main phase to get full value.
Wrap-Up
All in all, we finished 4-1 with Rokiric Multicolor Boros, which is a great record for a budget deck, and doubly so considering our one loss came to Gruul Blood Moon, and budget decks simply aren't equipped to beat an early Blood Moon. With non-budget decks, you can beat a Blood Moon by fetching out basics on the first couple of turns, but budget decks don't really have that option, so we're mostly left hoping to draw our *checks notes* one Plains. The good news is that we beat a lot of other powerful decks, including the win over Hammer Time, which was one of my favorites in quite a while.
As far as changes to make to the budget build of the deck, it felt solid in general, although a couple of cards probably could be improved. First, as I mentioned during the mana section above, Windbrisk Heights didn't play as well as it looked on paper. Trimming back to one or two copies of more basic Plains probably makes sense. The other card that wasn't all that impressive was Response // Resurgence. We ran into some situations where it was unable to kill a big creature (like Tarmogoyf or Death's Shadow), and the five-mana extra-combat mode was pretty inconsistent. While it wasn't so bad that I want to cut all the copies, I'm planning to trim back to two copies and run a couple of Path to Exiles or Prismatic Endings in the main deck for some additional efficient removal.
So, should you play Rokiric Boros? I think the answer is clearly yes! General Ferrous Rokiric itself is a pretty absurd card and more than worthy of being the centerpiece of a Modern deck. Our record was good, and we played some really fun, interesting games with the deck. If you like aggro decks, tokens decks, or the multicolor theme, Rokiric Boros seems like a pretty solid budget option for 2022 Modern!
To get Rokiric Boros down near $50, we mostly need to cut Manamorphose from the main deck and Path to Exile from the sideboard, along with adding Evolving Wilds to the mana base over our Pathway. While Manamorphose does work really well with our payoffs as a free multicolor spell, it doesn't really do anything outside of triggering Rokiric or Hero. We replace it with Blade Historian, which seems like a pretty sweet payoff if we can go wide with tokens, and Justice Strike for more removal. Meanwhile, in the sideboard, we add Rip Apart, which will struggle against big creatures but does come with the flexibility of hitting artifacts and enchantments as a sort of super-powered but sorcery-speed Abrade.
Finally, for our non-budget build, we mostly upgrade the mana base and make the changes we talked about throughout the article (like trimming Response // Resurgence for Path to Exile), along with updating the sideboard a bit. Technically, it is probably correct to throw some Modern Horizons 2 cards into the deck (it's possible that Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Esper Sentinel would be better than Dryad Militant and Figure of Destiny, even though they aren't multicolored and don't really support our General Ferrous Rokiric plan), but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. The upside is that the upgraded version is still just over $400, which isn't cheap but is nowhere near the average of a top-tier deck in Modern, which is currently close to $1,200.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. 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.
