Vigorous Virtue: Modernizing Aggro Boltyn

With the recent guarantee of Dromai’s departure from the metagame at Pro Tour Los Angeles, one of Boltyn’s natural predators has made her dramatic exit from Flesh and Blood. While this brings excitement, her ascent to Living Legend will also unleash a swathe of powerful heroes looking to get one over on the Warrior of Sol with hands full of cards that never activate his first line of text while blocking: Dorinthea, Kassai, Uzuri, and other heroes who emphasize reactions. 

The solution? A deck focused entirely on being above-rate even with no interaction from the opponent.

Boltyn’s card pool is flush with powerful 1-cost attacks capable of presenting wide turns faster than you can blink. The problem is pitching for them. Charge taxes our hand frequently, making it often an unreasonable ask to keep an entire extra card with which to pay for attacks. Fyendal's Spring Tunic can ease the pressure, obviously, but Tunic alone does not a gameplan make.

The first card I want to highlight here is Goblet of Bloodrun Wine. I’ve long held that the correct amount of blues in a Boltyn deck is zero, but Heavy Hitters dropped this gem in my lap and proved me wrong. Now it’s three. It’s difficult to overstate just how much Goblet does for us. Slamming it and arsenal-ing a V of the Vanguard is an obvious route, of course; but even if your next hand is a 0-cost charger, a Take Flight, and a third card, you’re glad to leverage the Agility/Vigor combo to go an extra chain link wide without burning a single card out of soul.

To similar effect, Lead With Heart generates a Vigor for our next turn - fantastic off a Tunic counter or an errant Vigor, but also fine to start your Vigors rolling in a hand already pitching yellow into a Take Flight or similar. Additionally, the +3 buff allows you to go wider and force through on-hits like Bolt of Courage or Ironsong Versus.

Banneret of Vigor isn’t necessarily a Vigor token itself, but it generates free resources all the same. This card has the unique effect of allowing otherwise less valuable charger attacks to strip cards from the opponent if they want to deny you that free resource.  

Other cards that have impressed and may be worth your consideration have been Slap-Happy - defending for 2 and generating a Vigor can often be worth two whole cards, and it’s no slouch in the Uzuri matchup - and Grains of Bloodspill. Though you won’t always be swinging Raydn twice, pushing our fridge up to 6 points of block for one attack lets us ignore powerful disruption, and rolling Vigors off resources you were otherwise unable to convert lends more consistency to our hands as a whole.

1-2 free resources a turn grants some extra power to classic staples in the hero, neglected cards in Boltyn’s pool, and some clunky Majestic bombs.

Valiant Thrust is hilariously above-rate, and its downside is typically that it’s difficult to play out on a 4 card hand, and impossible in a smaller one. When you begin your turn with a Vigor on board, it’s as easy a play as any other card in the deck. Using just 3 cards to present a charged attack, Valiant Thrust, and a Raydn swing is the core of this deck’s engine, and helps keep the pressure high on decks hoping to ignore you.

Battlefield Blitz, a draft champion from Monarch, hasn’t seen much time in the sun, but it's extremely compelling for this deck. 1 resource for 5 with go again without taking a card from soul or relying on blocks from the opponent can present a truly smothering turn backed up with any of Boltyn’s classic power cards like V of the Vanguard or Lumina Ascension. It may not always line up, but when some combination of 2 free resources aligns with a Bolting Blade in your hand, ending your turn on the card will ruin your opponent’s hopes to keep a 4-card hand without penalty.

In the midst of all this, Boltyn’s tailor-made arms equipment Ironsong Versus allows easy conversion of resources into value. Courages are an invaluable token for the hero, and threatening them on fewer cards makes us more explosive and interactive without making any sacrifices.

Your suite of charge attacks remains largely the ‘greatest hits’ of Boltyn’s options; red and yellow Take Flight, Beaming Bravado, red Light The Way, Engulfing Light, etc. However, the increased output from Vigor generation lets us consider some cards that have otherwise gone underappreciated like Spirit of War. It asks some considerable setup of us, pairing best with a Goblet turn and a decent chunk of soul built up, but the pseudo-Art of War effect it offers sets a higher ceiling for those who want to introduce a bit of extra variance for race matchups, and asks more cards of your opponents.  If you wanted to really stretch the usage of your free resources, options like Cross the Line offer considerably more efficient hands. 

 All this said, making space for innovation requires parting with some old friends. I’ve often found Command and Conquer both ineffective in a metagame so heavy on armor, as well as occasionally difficult to want to pay for when you could be using those 2 resources in a considerably more explosive manner.

While this package will take up the majority of your list, there’s plenty of space for expression and teching into a metagame. I’m incredibly reliant on cards like Snatch to punish decks not wanting to interact, and Courageous Steelhand to make every answer to what you present wrong. Other considerations may include Tenacity to go over the top into fatigue, Steelblade Shunt to stifle Azalea’s plans, and Sink Below to shut down Warriors and Assassins. 

Boltyn remains an incredibly flexible and explosive hero capable of taking games, and in combination with a Vigor-heavy package, he’s well-poised to take a wider field head-on, be it your local armory or next Battle Hardened.