Faith Requires Sacrifice (EDH / Commander) [Revisão 1]

This is my favourite deck and it has gone through a number of iterations and commanders, but the goal has always been to do a lot of damage and have an Angel at the helm. The longer I played with the deck the more it became Voltron style, which became one of my favourite styles to play. In the current form I am aiming for the deck to synergise with Archangel Avacyn as much as possible to make use of her transform ability. At the same time, I am trying to mitigate Boros weaknesses, namely poor draw and ramp.

Broadly speaking, I have identified three main things that I want the deck be able to do as I believe these things synergise with Archangel Avacyn in a Voltron style deck .

1. Help Avacyn to do Combat Damage to opponent's life.
2. Find, cast and re-use Equipment cards.
3. Be able to kill non-Angel Creatures under my control to trigger Avacyn's transform ability.

Power Level

Using the Command Zone guide I rank my deck between 6 and 7 out of 10. The deck is focused and optimased for that focus, but it has no infinite combos and inherently the archtype and colours of the deck limit how powerful it can be.

Strengths

This deck has a single-mind focus of doing Commander Damage. Only a few, if any, slots are wasted on cards that do not support the strategy. The average CMC is low and there are enough cost reduction effects, mana fixing and tutors to make it consistent, relatively fast paced and resilient. It is rare for the deck to stall by itself, mostly this only happens when I misplay or become the main target for all my opponents. Majority of times the deck can do something to get around obstacles that would stop it from doing Commander Damage.

Weaknesses

The deck is likely to struggle against decks that focus on combat damage prevention and/or repeatable artifact removal. Without artifacts and enchantments it is significantly harder to do enough Commander Damage quickly. This deck can also be susceptible to being overrun by decks that go wide and attack with lots of power. Most creatures in this deck are for utility rather than defense. There are no single target removal spells in the deck so dealing with specific threats can be difficult. The options are usually to target that opponent with Commander Damage and/or convince the other opponents to remove that threat.

A surprising weakness I came across was when playing against decks that were able to create tokens early. One tactic for this deck to ramp is through attacking with certain Equipment attached and when every opponent had a token they could block with that tactic was slowed down significantly. Though I do believe this was misplay on my part as I didn't pay enough attention to enemy commanders when deciding on my opening hand and early game tactics.

Beside deck and strategy specific weaknesses, Boros colours notoriously struggle with ramp and draw. This deck tries to mitigate those as much as possible and in most games I do not feel I struggle because of the colours.

Card Selection

I have no budget limit on this deck, my main focus is as much synergy as possible so the deck is consistent and has a decent chance of winning or at least being relevant in the game. I do try to spend more time thinking about each card and how it fits in the deck, which I hope stops me from keeping in cards for the sake of being themed or me just liking them; I'd like each card to have a purpose to maximise consistency and efficiency.

Creatures

When choosing creatures for this deck I wanted them to be able to do one or more of three points mentioned above, but preferably also have an additional use. When it comes to buffs I wanted more than just straight up power and Toughness bonus, my main interest was in Haste and Double Strike (or other effects that multiply damage). Haste I found especially important in the late game when the Commander Tax is high, plus I always prefer to attack with Avacyn when she is Indestructible from her own ETB effect. Double Strike I believe makes it easier to achieve 21 Commander Damage as I only need to get Avacyn to 11 Power for her to one-shot my opponents, or 6 Power to do it in two attacks. Plus First Strike increases her survivability in combat. When it comes to sacrificing creatures I wanted to have few creatures that can sacrifice themselves when I want them to so I don't have to purely rely on other sacrifice outlets.

Artifacts

Excluding Equipment, most of the artifacts are mana related. Originally the focus was fetching lands but I changed those to low CMC mana rocks, as it helps considerably with early game ramp to establish board presence quickly. Personally I prefer Equipments over Auras in this deck, mainly because I expect my Commander to die often and I'd rather not automatically lose the cards that were attached to her when she leaves the battlefield. When selecting Equipment I tried to go for cards that not only give Power and Toughness bonus, but also protect my Commander in some fashion; either by Colour Protection, Hexproof/Shroud, Indestructible; or have some other useful ability. Admittedly, the Kaladesh Masterpiece Swords also look amazing and I do aim to have all five in the deck (currently I have four in the deck, three of which are Masterpiece).

Enchantments

As mentioned before I prefer Equipments over Auras, and so I only have one Aura in the deck. The other Enchantments were chosen to provide ramp/mana, draw or to support the deck's Voltron strategy.

Planeswalkers

The planeswalkers in this deck were mainly selected to provide repeatable draw effects and graveyard recursion for Equipments. On average you get two activations at least so I do believe they are more efficient than single use sorcery or instant spells

Instants & Sorceries

I do play very few actual non-permanent spells in this deck. I have tried to limit these to the ones I feel are necessary. Most spells are either to draw through looting or to tutor for Equipment. The remaining few are mass removal and protection. I do not play any single target removal spells, which can sometime feel like a weakness of the deck, but most of the time it is not a major drawback.

Lands

My aim with the lands is to not struggle for the right colours. When it comes to two-colour lands, or lands that can provide any colour, I prefer to have lands that do not enter tapped, or at least have the option not to, as I want this deck to be as fast as possible. Given the many different ways I can fix mana, it is rare to struggle for the right colours with this deck. I also run quite few utility lands as they are more reliable to stay on the battlefield than other permanents. Most of these produce only colourless mana but it is not really much of a drawback in this deck because of the number of colourless artifacts.