Quintorius, Field Historian - Boros Graveyard Shift

[MeowZeDung]

Quintorius, Field Historian - The Boros Graveyard Shift

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander (1)

1 Quintorius, Field Historian

Ramp/Land tutors (12)

1 Expedition Map

1 Sol Ring

1 Wayfarer's Bauble

1 Land Tax

1 Weathered Wayfarer

1 Arcane Signet

1 Walking Atlas

1 Burnished Hart

1 Coalition Relic

1 Archaeomancer's Map

1 Smothering Tithe

1 Mana Geyser

Interaction (11)

1 Path to Exile

1 Swords to Plowshares

1 Cleansing Wildfire

1 Shenanigans

1 Tibalt's Trickery

1 Sunforger

1 Generous Gift

1 Chaos Warp

1 Surly Badgersaur

1 Cleansing Nova

1 Austere Command

To the yard (13)

1 Mishra's Bauble

1 Urza's Bauble

1 Faithless Looting

1 Gamble

1 Perpetual Timepiece

1 Cathartic Reunion

1 Goblin Lore

1 Thrill of Possibility

1 Thrilling Discovery

1 Shattered Perception

1 Wheel of Misfortune

1 Aggressive Mining

1 Reforge the Soul

From the yard (19)

1 Bag of Holding

1 Conjurer's Bauble

1 Scrabbling Claws

1 Soul-Guide Lantern

1 Myr Retriever

1 Conspiracy Theorist

1 Underworld Breach

1 Salvager of Ruin

1 Scrap Trawler

1 Workshop Assistant

1 Gift of Immortality

1 Sevinne's Reclamation

1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

1 Marshal's Anthem

1 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle

1 Trove Warden

1 Reality Scramble

1 Throes of Chaos

1 Reconstruct History

1 Sun Titan

1 Emeria Shepherd

Spirit beats (4)

1 Metallic Mimic

1 Akroma's Will

1 Anger

1 Hofri Ghostforge

Sac outlets (2)

1 Ashnod's Altar

1 Goblin Bombardment

Lands (36)

1 Bonders' Enclave

1 Buried Ruin

1 Darksteel Citadel

1 Drownyard Temple

1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity

1 Inventors' Fair

1 Myriad Landscape

1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin

1 Flagstones of Trokair

1 Mistveil Plains

1 Ancient Den

1 Great Furnace

1 Cascading Cataracts

1 Command Tower

1 Fabled Passage

1 Lotus Field

1 Reflecting Pool

1 Spire of Industry

1 Flooded Strand

1 Alpine Meadow

1 Battlefield Forge

1 Boros Garrison

1 Clifftop Retreat

1 Rugged Prairie

1 Sacred Foundry

1 Sunbaked Canyon

5 Plains

5 Mountain

Approximate Total Cost:

This do be my first draft of Quintorius, Field Historian, who I discovered has a lot more to him than first meets the eye. I reckon there's a viable build using our friendly neighborhood elephant to helm any of the following: Astral Drift/Slide.dec cycling, blink, all-in artifact recycling a la Daretti, Scrap Savant, spellslinger with a heavy flashback theme, storm, creature combo, aristocrats, etc. I took some elements of what I felt where the strongest synergies in a couple of those themes and smushed them together into this list, which is primarily a token swarm strategy.

There are a couple of ways the deck wins. First and foremost, combat. There's lots of ways to cast/sac/recur cheapo stuff and efficiently pump out 3/2s (psych! they're 4/2s, let's be real) and then beat down once they are buffed up with stuff like Tears of Rage, Akroma's Will, and Shared Animosity.

If straightforward, fair magic fails, there are a couple of ways to combo out. Underworld Breach is the easiest, no surprise there. Escaping Goblin Lore and alternating in a Battle Hymn or Mana Geyser every few casts can produce an absurd number of spirits and mana, which can then be used to do something silly like pass around Quintorius's boots for Lorehold Apprentice tappy shenanigans or just launching a Goblin Spirit Bombardment at opponents' faces.

I thought about adding loops with Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and more sac outlets, or even just Nim Deathmantle to go with Ashnod's Altar. There's also more ways to go heavy on Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle loops, or add things like Angelic Renewal + Auramancer + sac outlet, but I don't want to be too combo heavy. It's meant to be plan B.

Boros is Boros of course, so there's the age old issue of ramp and draw. I think some of the new toys, namely Archaeomancer's Map, will smooth things out a bit. I'm excited to see how that card plays out with stuff like Weathered Wayfarer/Expedition Map + Flagstones of Trokair/Cascading Cataracts/Darksteel Citadel + Cleansing Wildfire/Lotus Field. I also can't wait to unlock the achievement of having Aggressive Mining in play with Archaeomancer's Map, drawing 8 in a turn cycle, and never falling behind on land parity.

Changelog

5/2/21

Show

Hide

5/2/21

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

IN (13)

1 Wayfarer's Bauble

1 Urza's Bauble

1 Conjurer's Bauble

1 Bag of Holding

1 Ancient Den

1 Great Furnace

1 Scrabbling Claws

1 Soul-Guide Lantern

1 Land Tax

1 Reality Scramble

1 Wheel of Misfortune

1 Tibalt's Trickery

1 Mistveil Plains

OUT (13)

1 Lorehold Apprentice

1 Tears of Rage

1 Shared Animosity

1 Stonecloaker

1 Open the Vaults

1 Scrap Mastery

1 Brought Back

1 Illuminate History

1 Battle Hymn

2 Plains

2 Mountain

Approximate Total Cost:

5/29/21

Show

Hide

5/29/21

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

IN (3)

1 Marshal's Anthem

1 Gift of Immortality

1 Mishra's Bauble

OUT (3)

1 Lightning Greaves

1 Yidaro, Wandering Monster

1 Junk Diver

Approximate Total Cost:

[darrenhabib]

There is a lot of cool stuff going on here. I would say the thing that is lacking is the number of actual artifacts given the many "artifact matters" cards.
The "baubles" go a long way to giving you more action at low cost, Wayfarer's Bauble, Mishra's Bauble, Urza's Bauble.

Bag of Holding will automatically give you the Spirits when you discard cards.

Ancient Den and Great Furnace are options as you can get them back from graveyard with a lot of your cards. You can use Cleansing Wildfire, Lotus Field on them and be pretty sure you'll get them back.

Scrabbling Claws, Phyrexian Furnace, Soul-Guide Lantern as cantrips as well as ways to exile your own cards to make Spirits.

Squee, the Immortal is an option as you can just keep casting him all game if necessary.

Tithe is nice with Sunforger and works into the whole Archaeomancer's Map plan.
Land Tax also works nice with this plan and even discarding basics due to hand size works into ways to give you more graveyard fodder for the Scrabbling Claws type card plans if you go that way.

Maybe Altar of Dementia is better than Goblin Bombardment as you do have a heavy graveyard plan.

In my personal opinion even if you have 4 x 4/2 that is 16 damage a turn and that represents such a short clock that I don't know if you need cards like Shared Animosity or Tears of Rage.
I think Waves of Aggression might be a more fun card for this sort of thing. Retrace to get more tokens.
Also I like Reality Scramble as you sac a Spirit but make another with the retrace.

Wheel of Misfortune as another Reforge the Soul effect.

Tibalt's Trickery as a hard counter with Sunforger.

Selfless Spirit is such good insurance and another target for Trove Warden, Teshar, etc.
Keep Idol of Endurance in mind if you up your 3 cmc or less creature count.

Emeria, the Sky Ruin seems like it never going to happen. I'd play High Market instead so that you can get more value out of your graveyard recursion plan.

Mistveil Plains will create a Spirit when you use it and works real nice with renewing Sunforger targets.

Lorehold Apprentice, Tears of Rage, Stonecloaker, Open the Vaults, Brought Back are cuts I'd make given my suggestions.
I'd go down to 35 lands if playing Tithe and Land Tax.

[MeowZeDung]

Lots of good suggestions there. Some of them were cards that were some of my last cuts (Tibalt's Trickery, Reality Scramble, baubles), but some I hadn't even considered. I'm surprised you didn't mention Conjurer's Bauble, which is the one I wanted to keep the most.

Somehow I missed that Bag of Holding let the cards go to the yard first. In my head they just exiled instead of going to the gy first. That's sweet tech.

I want to read your recommendations over and process them a bit before I incorporate changes. Thanks, as always, for the feedback darren.

[Cyberium]

What do you think of Spirit Bonds and Spirit Cairn? You can make use of both discards and spirits already in this deck.

[Artemis132]

The new Lorehold Excavation is just such a flavourful card for the Lorehold archeology theme and unique effect for Boros colours. Of course milling is a bit more narrow than selected discard as its more random and you only play a limited number of cards to get other things than artifacts back from the graveyard... that said, it also lets you turn non-artifact creatures into two spirits with Quintorius. Have you considered including it?

[pokken]

Mistveil Plains seems pretty automatic with the interaction plus the dude making white tokens (per a friend of mine who I showed the list to )

[MeowZeDung]

*Many excellent suggestions*

I went through all your recs and I think you are right on 99% of them. The only one I think I firmly disagree on is cutting Emeria, the Sky Ruin, although I understand your rationale. Oh, and Squee, the Immortal. I don't love paying 1RR/turn for a 4/2 when Squee, Goblin Nabob essentially does the same for free with all my discard outlets.

Some of the others I won't be including just because I don't own them and they have a substantial price tag, such as Tithe, Waves of Aggression, Selfless Spirit, etc.

I really appreciate the suggestions though. Thank you for taking the time to look the list over and give feedback!

What do you think of Spirit Bonds and Spirit Cairn? You can make use of both discards and spirits already in this deck.

Spirit Bonds is a nifty way to protect Quintorius, Field Historian and, in theory, synergize with various "spirits matter" cards. What I don't like is that the payoff of running it is really quite small given that I'm going to be making 4/2 spirits regularly. I've also not really had great experience with "beneficial tax" effects a la Spirit Bonds, Goblinslide, etc in Commander. Really the only ones I've ever found worth running have been Lifecrafter's Bestiary and Mentor of the Meek because drawing cards is just so necessary and powerful in the format.

Spirit Cairn gives me the same general feeling, although I will say that it looks stronger since I will be discarding plenty. I dunno, it seems like the occasional w wouldn't be asking too much because it allows me to always spend all my mana on turns where I would otherwise waste 1-2 of it, but I just can't get the bad taste of 2ww plus a card for that initial 1/1 spirit out of my mouth.

The new Lorehold Excavation is just such a flavourful card for the Lorehold archeology theme and unique effect for Boros colours. Of course milling is a bit more narrow than selected discard as its more random and you only play a limited number of cards to get other things than artifacts back from the graveyard... that said, it also lets you turn non-artifact creatures into two spirits with Quintorius. Have you considered including it?

I did consider it. I like that it's relatively cheap and the self-mill will essentially make the investment worthwhile after a couple of turns. My issues with it are that it costs a card slot in a format that is just flooded with more powerful options, and the activation is above rate for two vanilla 4/2s IMO, since we will be making them essentially for free with the various useful interactions already in the deck. I suppose you could build around Lorehold Excavation a bit and set up some arbitrarily huge amount of mana to dump into it at instant speed with a full GY and untap for your turn with a big ol pile of attacky ghosts. I would definitely run it in a budget, theme, or super casual build of this commander.

Mistveil Plains seems pretty automatic with the interaction plus the dude making white tokens (per a friend of mine who I showed the list to )

Ermagersh can you believe that I wasn't even aware this card existed until like a month ago, despite being a big Sunforger fan? Yeah, I'm getting a copy to play in every forger deck from now on, and it does even more work in this deck. Tell your friend I said thanks!

Here's the adjustments I'm making to the list:

5/2/21

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

IN (13)

1 Wayfarer's Bauble

1 Urza's Bauble

1 Conjurer's Bauble

1 Bag of Holding

1 Ancient Den

1 Great Furnace

1 Scrabbling Claws

1 Soul-Guide Lantern

1 Land Tax

1 Reality Scramble

1 Wheel of Misfortune

1 Tibalt's Trickery

1 Mistveil Plains

OUT (13)

1 Lorehold Apprentice

1 Tears of Rage

1 Shared Animosity

1 Stonecloaker

1 Open the Vaults

1 Scrap Mastery

1 Brought Back

1 Illuminate History

1 Battle Hymn

2 Plains

2 Mountain

Approximate Total Cost:

[Cyberium]

What about Court of Grace? I find it particularly useful with Solitary Confinement, which goes back to my suggestion with Spirit Cairn where I use them together in 60 cards enchantress deck. Lorehold benefits from discard and graveyard, and you got Squee, Goblin Nabob.

[MeowZeDung]

What about Court of Grace? I find it particularly useful with Solitary Confinement, which goes back to my suggestion with Spirit Cairn where I use them together in 60 cards enchantress deck. Lorehold benefits from discard and graveyard, and you got Squee, Goblin Nabob.

Solitary Confinement + Court of Grace is card neutral via a slow rummage, and that's if you retain/regain the monarchy. Fine with squee, as you mentioned, but otherwise kind of meh in 100 card singleton unless I'm missing something. I grant that the spirit/angel and the discard aren't nothing. It just seems not enough for an opportunity cost of 2 cards in the deck.

Court of Grace by itself is not *bad* in my estimation because I think the deck can play favorably with monarch given that it spits out beaters, and the fliers from the court itself are great on defense and for reclaiming the crown. I just have this bias against incremental value over explosiveness in multiplayer. I guess I'm more with the Reforge the Soul draw plan than the monarch/Mind's Eye approach in commander. Maybe I'm wrong to bias that way, who knows.

[MeowZeDung]

I just pulled these cards together and got them sleeved, so I should get a game or two in with the deck this weekend. A couple quick changes:

5/29/21

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

IN (3)

1 Marshal's Anthem

1 Gift of Immortality

1 Mishra's Bauble

OUT (3)

1 Lightning Greaves

1 Yidaro, Wandering Monster

1 Junk Diver

Approximate Total Cost:

Lightning Greaves → Marshal's Anthem - Greaves is protection for Quintorius I guess, but it was mostly in the list to allow me to ping with summoning sick spirits thanks to Lorehold Apprentice. Since I cut apprentice, greaves don't really justify a slot. Anthem is. . . an anthem which also gives some upside to the deck's strategy and scalable recursion.


Yidaro, Wandering Monster → Gift of Immortality - I could have sworn I had a Yidaro, but it turns out I don't. I think I assumed it was in the Jeskai cycling precon from last year. Oh well. Gift can make up for some of the loss of commander protection from taking greaves out while also triggering Quintorius when it brings itself back from the yard. Even better is to put it on Salvager of Ruin or any derpy creature while I have a sac outlet in play and just load up on the spirit creation triggers.


Junk Diver → Mishra's Bauble - Diver was yet another card I could have sworn I owned a copy of but apparently do not. Lucky me, I ran into a bauble that I thought I DIDN'T own but apparently do. Funny.

[duducrash]

Cool deck! Sorry I dont have much to add, just a question! With so few Plains is Emeria, the Sky Ruin is ecer relevant?

[MeowZeDung]

Cool deck! Sorry I dont have much to add, just a question! With so few Plains is Emeria, the Sky Ruin is ecer relevant?

Thank you! Emeria, the Sky Ruin got called out earlier too, and it's a fair point. My arguments in favor of running it are the various land tutors, Land Tax, and the fact that recurring a milled plains or sacced Fabled Passage gives me a lot more ways of playing seven plains than just dropping them out of my hand. That said, tonight I got a game in and I had a pretty ideal situation with Archaeomancer's Map, Emeria in hand, Sevinne's Reclamation to buy back the map if it got removed, and some other landsy stuff, but I never got closer than 5 plains online while it was in hand. That was due to a number of factors and I actually voluntarily pitched emeria to a Cathartic Reunion thinking I'd get it back later. Another player's Scavenger Grounds had different plans. TBH, emeria is probably on the chopping block even though I love it so much.

---

The game overall was great though! Way too much to recount in any sort of play by play fashion, so here's some highlights:

• Scrabbling Claws and Bag of Holding were big time workhorses early on, and I put together a solid army of 8 spirits over the course of a few turns with them.
  
  
• Throes of Chaos was also a good role player early on as far as building up my board. Unfortunately I had some unlucky hits with it, and the one good hit I had (Chaos Warp) got countered.
  
  
• A board of 4/2s is cool and all, and I was pretty much the only player pressuring life totals, but unfortunately I started getting outclassed (...sort of?) by x/2's and x/3's that present unfavorable trades. Derpy stuff like the Rashmi, Eternities Crafter deck's Portal Mage and similar flash bears and the Adrix and Nev, Twincasters deck's Kazandu Tuskcaller tokens. Unlike in 1v1, it just doesn't feel good to trade sometimes, even when you aren't the one who's down a card or a "real" creature because you know there's other players to deal with.
  
  
• As a result, I was the first to wipe the board. The deck really impressed me with how resilient it was building back from this initial wipe plus future wipes/shenanigans from my opponents. The point at which I was faltering the most I had an Aggressive Mining in play (Archaeomancer's Map had already been played and exiled at this point unfortunately) just because I was desperate for the draw at that moment, and I think I went down 4 lands total before I removed the enchantment and started re-deploying. That said, Walking Atlas + Trove Warden with lands in the yard and a Goblin Bombardment ready when needed + Quintorius, Field Historian rebuilt my manabase and board quite fast.
  
  
• Rashmi had nearly won with Decimator of the Provinces, and we saw her draw End-Raze Forerunners, so I had to miracle cast Reforge the Soul even though my hand was decent. I got rid of her big pig, but drew into 7 lands.
  
  
• My highlight of the game was after Quintorius had been removed for the second time and I didn't think I would survive a trip around the table: I topdecked an Inventors' Fair, had to put a Great Furnace into play with my Walking Atlas just to crack the Fair, then got Sunforger, which got me Akroma's Will, choosing the flying/vigi/DS mode and eliminating Adrix and Nev, Twincasters who had just made 18 plants with Avenger of Zendikar. I had just enough mana to forger up a Path to Exile for Rashmi's Progenitor Mimic which was a copy of Elder Deep-Fiend. I was good to go with sufficient blocks at that point, but Rashmi topdecked Altered Ego to copy the Fiend anyhow and tap down my team.

TL;DR - my first game with the deck was a sweet one. I felt like the deck had a lot of play and that I was able to keep up with two simic decks while playing boros. I didn't get to see a lot of the engines I built into the deck and look forward to going ham with, like the various baubles, Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, Squee, Goblin Nabob, etc., but I was very pleased with what I did see.