How To Play The Aurelia, The Warleader Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

Aurelia, the Warleader is one of the many legendary creatures included in Magic: The Gathering’s Foundations set. Aurelia itself isn’t a new card, having been in the game since 2013’s Gatecrash set. As such, its strength as a card is very well known and it is one of the most popular Boros (red/white) commanders.

Related

Magic: The Gathering – Tatyova, Benthic Druid Commander Deck Guide

Tatyova, Benthic Druid is one of the best land-focused commanders in MTG. Learn which cards can create a great deck for this commander.

For new players to the Commander format, it’s a great first deck to build with how straightforward and powerful its effects are. There are a ton of different ways to build and upgrade it, though the best is a combat-focused deck that utilizes ways to take extra turns.

Decklist

The decklist consists of 27 creatures, eight sorceries, six instants, 14 artifacts, ten enchantments, and 34 lands. Many of the creatures either give extra combats or have powerful effects when they attack that you can keep re-using.

Related

Magic: The Gathering – Ovika, Enigma Goliath Commander Deck Guide

Here’s how to play the Ovika, Enigma Goliath Commander Deck in Magic: The Gathering!

Key Cards

Aurelia, The Warleader

Aurelia, the Warleader is the commander of the deck and one of the best cards in it. It’s a way to get extra combats in your commander zone, and can gain extra combats the turn it enters thanks to having haste.

Aurelia, the Warleader has solid stats and keywords to keep it safe in blockers. You don’t want to attack Aurelia into an opponent that has a way to block it, ensuring that it won’t die in combat. It’s important to stick Aurelia onto the battlefield, as it has a high mana value that Boros can struggle to ramp up to if it ever does get removed.

Goldspan Dragon

Boros is notoriously bad at ramping, so getting to your more expensive spells can be a struggle. Goldspan Dragon is the best way to relieve that struggle. Whenever it attacks you create a Treasure token which can be used to generate two mana instead of one (so long as Goldspan Dragon remains on the battlefield).

Goldspan Dragon only gets stronger the longer a game goes on, as it triggers off each time it attacks. This means once you start taking multiple combats during your turns, Goldspan Dragon will trigger multiple times.

Rabble Rousing

One flaw with the deck is that you’ll often find yourself defenseless as you’re slowly getting your mana generation high enough to cast your big spells. This is where Rabble Rousing comes in, and helps you to constantly maintain a board presence as the game goes on.

Whenever you attack, you create as many 1/1 creature tokens equal to how many creatures you attack with. As you take more combat steps, you’ll continuously make more tokens until you have an army of them that can keep multiplying themselves.

Iroas, God Of Victory

Iroas, God of Victory is a guaranteed way to make sure your creatures are safe in combat. So long as it’s on the battlefield, all attacking creatures will not take any damage (combat damage or otherwise). Iroas is indestructible itself, making it harder to remove to keep the effect around for as long as possible.

Since Aurelia, the Warleader is a combat-focused deck, Iroas helps you to attack with all your creatures, as they won’t be killed in combat and be able to attack for each extra combat. All creatures are given menace as well, making them even harder to block and helping you connect for even more damage.

Related

Magic: The Gathering – Linden, The Steadfast Queen Commander Deck Guide

Life finds a way with Linden, the Steadfast Queen.

How To Play The Deck

An Aurelia, the Warleader Commander deck is all about setting up your battlefield full of creatures, and constantly taking extra combat steps to keep attacking all your opponents. It’s all about putting pressure on your opponents and overpowering them before they have the creatures to protect themselves from the onslaught.

While Aurelia, the Warleader can give extra combats, there are a ton of other ways to get them as well. Scourge of the Throne gives you one when you attack the player with the most life, Hellkite Charger, and Aggravated Assault both give you extra combat by paying mana, and World at War, Waves of Aggression, and Relentless Assault are all sorceries that give you extra combat (the former two being able to be used twice).

To help close out games quicker, permanents that cause extra damage are important for closing out games in a shorter amount of combats. City on Fire and Gratuitous Violence both accomplish this. Aurelia is a race against the clock before your opponents have their answers, so the extra damage can be the difference between winning or losing.

The primary win condition of the deck is winning through combat. There are many powerful creatures and ways to help bring life totals down to zero quickly. With how many extra combats you can take, it’s easy to take at least one person out of the game in one turn, especially once you have a big battlefield.

The biggest flaw of the deck is its speed, as Boros is very slow at building up mana, hence the higher-than-average amount of mana rocks; since it just can’t amass an early board presence, you are going to have no defenses at the early stages of the game. Once you can start generating a lot of mana, you can get set up, but getting to that point might be a struggle because Boros is better in the late-game as opposed to the early game.

next

Magic: The Gathering – Fynn, The Fangbearer Commander Deck Guide

Inject a bit of venom into your Commander games with Fynn, the Fangbearer.