Tajic and the Humans

BOOYAH! It’s your favorite flaming-sword-shiny-armor boy leading his rag-tag gang of Red-White humans! Do you want to turn your creatures sideways and lose to a turn-2 Oko? Well you have come to the right place my friend!

This deck is the latest in standard-legal tribal jank technology. Taking advantage of Tajic’s dual-colored nature and his Human creature type, this deck jams all the most annoying and aggressive humans straight at your opponent’s face! If that doesn’t work, take advantage of the value knight synergies to overpower your opponent with powerful buffed creatures.

Aggressive humans:

These are your low-drops, the creatures you want to be jamming in on the first couple of turns to lay the groundwork for our shiny boy. This is one of the decks in which your first turns can be quite important, as a good 1, 2, Tajic, Legion’s Edge curve can be truly backbreaking. These creatures are your ideal ones to play on early turns, but any early board presence will be put to good use with this deck.

Utility Humans:

The Boros humans’ utility kit, though limited, does give us some interesting counterplay to some of the decks out there. Giant Killer serves as good removal, and together with Law-Rune Enforcer will allow your more damaging creatures to break through the board. Embereth Shieldbreaker is an all-star, likely killing either an Arcane Signet or a Golos, Tireless Pilgrim for just one red mana. Bounty Agent is also great in the creature matchups, but MAN I wish it could hit planeswalker. 

Value Humans:

These humans are the engines to keep your deck going. Hero of Precinct One has fantastic synergy with our commander and if it survives him hit the board, we are golden. Worthy Knight does a decent impression, though unfortunately our boy joined the Military and not some weird horse-riding school, so it will only trigger from select other knights. The cool part of this, though is that all the tokens created are humans, and as such are all buffed by our Icon of Ancestry. Skyknight Vanguard also only makes soldiers, but curves rather nicely into Tajic, plus the token doesn’t hurt. Inspiring Veteran is here to buff all your knight, and synergize with both Hero and Worthy knight, while Boros Challenger helps trickle down some of that mentor goodness bestowed upon him. Robber of the Rich, Acclaimed Contender, and Syr Carah, the Bold count as the card draw in the deck, which together with the Icon of Ancestry should help keep us from stalling out.

Annoying Humans:

These cards are here to be either annoying or hard to deal with. Both Apostle of Purifying Light and the Unchained Berserker have protection (from black and white, respectively) making them pretty good at sneaking damage through, perhaps with Embercleave. Tithe Taker is a classic human hatebear to protect from counterspells, while Tomik, Distinguished Advokist will shut down Nissa, Who Breaks the Game. Embereth Skyblazer and Truefire Captain also make for good finishers with the ‘cleave.

The Rest:

We run Arcane Signet because we may be aggro, but we are not stupid. And speaking of Aggro, this is a good deck for the Tome of Legends as well! Icon of Ancestry is one of the main reasons to run our deck, and you’ll notice a huge difference the games where your humans have that extra +1/+1, as well as the ability to fetch for more gas when we run out. We run one cheeky Gods Willing for some blowout potential and one Crystal Slipper for more hits with Acclaimed Contender (though you could easily replace it with a The Circle of Loyalty, if you own it) and surprise haste. Make of the Valiant can serve as a good way to buff our humans and Conclave Tribunal will help deal with any particularly problematic permanents in our way. Syr Alin, the Lion’s Claw and Embercleave serve as our finishers, as they both make great use of a full board ready to smack into the red zone. Oh, and did you know Gideon Blackblade is human in his creature form? Neat!

The Mana Base:

To be honest I just kept it at 24 lands and put in all the lands that felt relevant. I think the Evolving Wilds might be wrong, so feel free to remove it for more untapped lands! Apart from that I think having all your colors is quite important, so all dual lands go in! Castle Ardenvale conveniently makes humans while Castle Embereth will buff them, and Cryptic Caves is in here because we are Boros and we need all the help we can get to keep us from running out of steam.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this write-up, and look out for more to come!