Deckspotlight #3: Borborygmos Enraged

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

As promised I'll be writing a lot of these Deckspotlights in the next weeks, so here goes the first one. Some of my decks are a lot more refined than others and many of them are still changing a lot so it only makes sense for me to start with one of my older and more tuned decks: Borborygmos Enraged aka 51-Lands Combo.

Back in the day when I had just recently quit Legacy - where I exclusively played combo - I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to build a combo deck that DIDN'T play blue and/or black. And that is exactly what I did with this deck.

Intro - That one "Pre-Ban" Game

My first draft of the deck featured a copy of Burgeoning. And even though some people in my playgroup will deny it, the first version of this deck was responsible for Burgeoning getting banned ("houseruled out") in our playgroup... after the first game I played my shiny new Borb-Deck.

Let me illustrate how this game went with some advanced Paint-Graphics:
 

At this point I was hellbent but had a ton of lands in play, more than my opponents combined, so I untapped turn 3, drawing a land and cast Borborygmos. Somehow he lived for me to untap with him and my draw for the turn was what won me the game... again let me illustrate this:
  

... aaaaaand at this point it was gg. I had 10 mana left after casting Keen Sense on Borborygmos and I kept hitting people in the face via discarding lands, drawing some additional lands from the trigger and occasionally dredging Life from the Loam to get back more fuel. I'm not entirely sure what happened exactly but at the end of my turn I'd drawn 90% of my deck, my graveyard was filled with lands and my opponents were dead.
Now I'll be honest, this draw was basically picture perfect and you're not going to get many of these games. But what it illustrates is how fast and "out of nowhere" you can win with this deck even at later stages of the game. If you don't hit that Turn 3 Borborygmos, no harm done! The deck can go slow and steady, where you really set up your combo and win, win through "traditional means" aka beatdown or like described above go for a fast and ruthless "kill everyone without playing magic".

Chapter 1 - The big Players

Let me start with the key cards of the deck, the cards that you want to look for while ramping the first few turns as they'll let you do the insanely unfair things this deck is capable of:

Whenever you're looking to combo-off you need two cards + your commander: Either Keen Sense or Snake Umbra plus whatever card you can find out of category #2.
Obviously the best card to get is Abundance. It let's you filter each draw you get from your enchantments basically letting me choose to get more lands to throw at my opponents - which is sometimes enough to win the game since they might've already taken some amount of damage - or to get non-land cards that could let me net more lands in the long run - which I will need in order to actually win the game since lifetotals are still too high.

But other cards can work aswell depending on your mana. Creeping Renaissance will let me return all the lands I've thrown once I've eventually hit too many non-lands, same goes for Knollspine Dragon. Scouting Trek let's me stack my deck, working as a substitute for Abundance in some games. Storm Cauldron is somewhat of a backup strategy, essentially making me go all-in, bouncing my lands to throw out which hopefully draws me into some sort of way to win the game.

Life from the Loam is a completely different monster: not only will it help immensely in  comboing-off with a sufficient amount of mana available, but it will also help me find important pieces of my combo when combined with other recursion cards while also supplying me with a never ending stream of landdrops.

Chapter 2 - Protection and Reloading 

Of course people will try and stop you from winning... because that prevents them from winning. And of course I try to stop people from stopping me...




The first row is the "protection"-part. When I first built the deck I threw in Autumn's Veil just to test it and I've never looked back: That card is one of the MVPs of the deck for me. A nice set of boots is pretty standard in EDH so I won't talk about those two and Savage Summoning let's me play around counterspells and sorcery speed removal with my Borborygmos. It basically gives haste, buffs him so that Soul's Majesty and Hunter's Insight draw even more cards and protects from counterspells... pretty good card for one green mana.

The second row is the "reload" category. Skullwinder and Eternal Witness let me return destroyed combo-pieces from previous, failed attempts OR - combined with Life from the Loam - let me find them in the first place. Soul's Majesty and Hunter's Insight are, as I already mentioned, the big drawspells a deck such as this needs. As long as you have a fatty in play those two are good to go.

Chapter 3 - Ramping

Now this wouldn't be a RG Deck sporting 51 lands without a proper amount of ramp. Especially since the commander costs 4RRGG. Simply hitting landdrops just won't do it.

While I usually play cards like Explosive Vegetation when looking for ramp in green, this deck is a little different. The problem I have with cards like these is that later in the game, drawing them won't do anything. That's why I only play Boundless Realms in the "put onto the battlefield" section and favor Cultivate and Nissa's Pilgrimage: They at least put a land into your hand aswell, and lands in hand can provide more than just mana.
So cards that will cards into my hand will be more favorable once I'm done ramping... and to turn them into ramp"ish" cards early game, I'm playing cards like Azusa and Oracle of Mul Daya.
Letting you put additional lands into play is already very good since the average starting hand will feature at least 4 lands and the first three draws will also yield one to two lands on average. Throw in a Seek the Horizon and Ill be going very fast while not having as many dead draws when comboing - it's even quite the opposite since Seek the Horizon, for example, represents 6 damage + 3 draws... not bad for 4 mana.

Chapter 4 - Plan B

Ever played a game of magic? Then you've probably experienced the "this didn't go as planned" scenario. The deck can cast big ol' Borborygmos two to three times, no problem, but sometimes you just won't be able to combo. You know what that means: Plan B!

  
Well, I ramp hard, so the obvious answer to what Plan B might be is: Fatties! Upon closer look they even feature Landfall a lot of the time, synergizing with all those ramp spells and additonal landdrops even after they're in play. 
Wildfire and Destrucive Force are kind of a plan on their own aswell: I can choose to try and take over the game early since for my opponents those cards will be an Armageddon while I'm able to recover very easy and win the game from there - additionally they'll clear the board so that noone can pull ahead with their Brago or any other creature that provides too much value. Same goes for later in the game where they will still hurt your opponents while clearing the board... just not as gamebreaking as when you cast them early.

Sadly I only own a single copy of Kozilek which I currently play in my colorless Eldrazi EDH but if I ever get my hands on a second one I'll put it into this deck for sure because 12/12s with Annihilator 4 that draw four cards upon cast usually make for a nice Plan B if you ask me... 

Chapter 5 - Gameplay

Last but not least let me explain how I try to shape my games.

Starting hands: One of the easiest decks to mulligan I own. 

1. At least 2 Lands + at least one Rampspell? Keep, since you'll draw 1-2 lands in your first drawsteps for sure. 
2. At least 3 Lands + a combo piece? A keep aswell, since ramp and lands are way easier to draw than those.
3. At least 4 Lands + a drawspell? Keep it! Drawing lands and ramp is easy and if you ever get that drawspell to resolve you'll be in a very, very good position.
4. At least 4 Lands + a fatty? A bit wonky but if you're confident that the game will be slow and grindy you can probably get away with it.

Early-game: Ramp, ramp, ramp! Try to keep one or two lands in your hand for when Borborygmos comes down, but other than that just slam those landdrops and ramp spells and try hitting 8 mana as fast as possible. There might be an opportunity for a game-winning Wildfire/Destructive Force though, so watch out for that... 
  Mid- to Late-game: This is when things get spicy. Depending on the types of decks my opponents play I'll be playing very ballsy with my combo or very cautious. While it's true that most of the games re-casting Borborygmos isn't too hard to achieve it isn't something that you will want to do, so try and protect him. Timing is very important in order to get the combo through so I try to keep track of my opponents ressources as best as possible: How many removal spells has Player X played this game, how much mana does he have available right now, etc etc.
In many games, a window will open up for me to cast Borborygmos, protect him and ride him to victory provided I didn't waste my ressources earlier. 

Outro

As always I hope you enjoyed the read on my Anrgy-Borb deck and maybe one or two out there are even considering building a deck similar to mine because of this spotlight. If you've got any questions on other cards in the deck (the full list is linked above) or the deck in general feel free to message me. 

See y'all 'round!