Aurelia, the Warleader is one of the many legendary creatures included inMagic: The Gathering’sFoundations 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.

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.

MTG Aurelia, the Law Above card with the art in the background.

Keeper of the Accord

Overlord of the Boilerbilges

MTG Aurelia, the Warleader card with the art in the background.

Scourge of the Throne

Fury of the Horde

MTG Goldspan Dragon card with the art in the background.

x11 Mountain

x8 Plains

MTG Rabble Rousing card with the art in the background.

Sword of Hearth and Home

Sword of the Animist

MTG Iroas, God of Victory card with the art in the background.

Talisman of Conviction

The Reaver Cleaver

The decklistconsists of 27 creatures, eight sorceries, six instants, 14 artifacts, ten enchantments,and34 lands. Many of the creatures either give extra combats or have powerful effects when they attack that you’re able to keep re-using.

Key Cards

Aurelia, The Warleader

Aurelia, the Warleaderis the commander of the deck and one of the best cards in it.It’s a way to get extra combatsin your commander zone, and cangain 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.

MTG World at War card with the art in the background.

Goldspan Dragon

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

Goldspan Dragon only gets stronger the longer a game goes on, asit 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 whereRabble Rousingcomes in, and helps you to constantly maintain a board presence as the game goes on.

If Rabble Rousing gets removed, you will no longer be able to cast the spell exiled with its hideaway ability. As such, you want to be careful to not exile a key card or else you may permanently lose access to it .

Whenever you attack, you create asmany 1/1 creature tokensequal 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 Victoryis 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.

How To Play The Deck

An Aurelia, the Warleader Commander deck is all aboutsetting 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.

WhileAurelia, the Warleadercan give extra combats, there are a ton of other ways to get them as well.Scourge of the Thronegives you one when you attack the player with the most life,Hellkite Charger,andAggravated Assaultboth give you extra combat by paying mana, andWorld at War, Waves of Aggression,andRelentless Assaultare all sorceries that give you extra combat (the former two being able to be used twice).

If an extra combat card does not say that you untap all creatures, your creatures that attacked will remain tapped. If this is the case, you’ll want to be careful with what creatures are attacking.

To help close out games quicker,permanents that causeextra damageare important for closing out games in a shorter amount of combats.City on FireandGratuitous Violenceboth 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.

Theprimary 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.

Cards likeBlade Historian, True Conviction,andLegion Loyaltycan all help push your combat prowess to its limits by giving your creatures powerful keywords.

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 becauseBoros is better in the late-game as opposed to the early game.