Advanced Jumpstart: The Boros Legion

Posted on January 6, 2021

The Boros Legion is the army of Ravnica, who uphold and enforce the laws set forth by the Azorius Senate. They stand for law and order, but aren't afraid to get a little overzealous and violent in the process. Originally founded by the parun Razia, the angel Aurelia now runs the guild in her place. With this week's Advanced Jumpstart, we're going to ride for glory and victory and crush our opponents with the force of the Boros Legion!

Ravnica: City of Guilds Boros | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Artifacts (2)
1 Boros Signet
1 Sunforger

As with many of these Advanced Jumpstart articles, the original Ravnica: City of Guilds just doesn't really compare to the later sets. It's great in its own time and is accurately revered as one of the best limited environments of all time. However, when you look at the card quality to what you see in the other sets, it's almost a joke. There's still some solid aggressive cards like Lightning Helix and Flame-Kin Zealot to get some strong damage in. Boros Guildmage is also great as it can just be a simple 2/2 bear or it can give your creatures some sweet keywords.

Sadly, the guild mechanic for the Boros is pretty mediocre for what we're doing here. This mechanic does an effect targeting a creature and then does that effect to every creature that shares a color with it. This can be something that we make work to our advantage in something like a normal draft or even in Constructed, but it can just as easily backfire in Jumpstart when your packs can have upwards of three colors at random, since they affect both players' cards. I put Bathe in Light here to give a little extra protection, but it's definitely important to be careful with how you cast it.

Many of the creatures in this set are a little overcosted by today's standards, which makes it hard to justify playing some of them even in Limited. Razia is a total house, but at eight mana, we're probably better off just sticking to the Firemane Angel instead. We are able to make up for it, though, with a few low cost creatures like Boros Swiftblade and the classic Skyknight Legionnaire - who will be making a lot of appearances today!

Speaking of, we've got plenty more to go through so let's check out the Boros of Gatecrash!

Gatecrash Boros | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Enchantments (1)
1 Assemble the Legion

Artifacts (1)
1 Boros Keyrune

If you ever played Gatecrash Limited, you know that Boros was far and away the absolute best thing you could draft in that format. After that, Orzhov was solid and could hold its own, but the other three guilds just couldn't compare. Heck, Dimir was borderline unplayable. I'd forgotten just how lopsided that was until I started picking out cards for this pack and even as a bunch of singleton cards, this pack is an absolute house!

Battalion was a really sweet mechanic, but not one we make too much use of here. As it happens, though, the ones we do use are still very powerful effects that allow us to go in for heavy damage. Frontline Medic makes our creatures indestructible, meaning we can go in for an alpha strike worry-free. Firefist Striker lets us get some blockers too, but if that weren't enough Firemane Avenger lets us get a basically free Lightning Helix to wipe out more blockers or send straight to the face.

Our other creatures aren't slouches either, with Sunhome Guildmage single handedly making us an army on its own. Truefire Paladin is a house that you can sink excess mana into, Boros Reckoner is nigh unbeatable, and Skyknight Legionnaire is, well, as reliable as ever. It's no wonder that it's one of the only cards printed in each of the Ravnica blocks, after all! And if we need more creatures, we can always drop an Assemble the Legion in the late game to completely overwhelm our opponents' forces.

It's important to remember as well all the cards that aren't being included here. There's no Boros Elite, no Legion Loyalist, no Fortress Cyclops, and no Wojek Halberdiers. There's not even Gideon, Champion of Justice here! He's not as great as the many other iterations we've seen of this iconic planeswalker, but he was important to the story with the guild all the same. Boros was unreal powerful in Gatecrash and it really shows here.

But now, the Legion continues to swell in the Guilds of Ravnica!

Guilds of Ravnica Boros | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Artifacts (1)
1 Boros Locket

Guilds of Ravnica provided us with Boros at its most diluted and distilled. Many of these cards barely have any text on them, and certainly less than the majority of the other sets we looked at. That's because they rely a lot more on keywords, especially thanks to the mentor keyword. While nearly every creature in this pack has it, it's likely that we won't be mentoring many of our own creatures all that much. That's fine, though, because they can juice up the smaller creatures the other pack might provide us.

In truth, I don't know what more there really is to say. These creatures attack, get bigger, and do a bunch of damage. There's nothing particularly fancy or intricate with what we're doing, so turn those creatures sideways and go all-in. Remember: face is the place!

With that all having been said, we can finally bring them all together!

All Sets Boros | Jumpstart | Kendra Smith

Instants (2)
1 Boros Charm
1 Lightning Helix

Enchantments (1)
1 Assemble the Legion

Artifacts (1)
1 Boros Signet

As you might expect, we don't get too much representation from Ravnica: City of Guilds' creatures (only the lone Skyknight Legionnaire makes the cut) but that's fine when it's still got plenty of spells and lands to help bolster our other strategies. After all, the creatures from Gatecrash and Guilds of Ravnica (just noticed I didn't grab any cards out of Dragon's Maze. Sorry Legion's Initiative) all make up for it in spades. We've got the cream of the crop here with nothing but an absolute powerhouse suite, all ready to bring the beatdown. And taking from Gatecrash again, we can always make our own armies with the likes of Assemble the Legion and Sunhome Guildmage.

The Boros Legion's ranks will always continue to grow in order to ensure a secure and peaceful life for all the citizens of Ravnica. Aurelia and her angels will lead the Legion to victory both on the city plane and in your next game of Jumpstart! I'll catch you all next week with some more sweet Advanced Jumpstart goodness! See you there!

Kendra Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

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TAGS articles, draft, casual, limited, drafting, series, decklist, boros, kendra smith, jumpstart, advanced jumpstart, 01062021