Marauding Modern: Hammer Time

Hello, internet, my name is Blue, and today I’m excited about a combo deck that sprouted up a little under a year ago and has recently been making a resurgence. I originally heard of the deck when SaffronOlive from MTGGoldfish played it for Budget Magic and I completely forgot about it until he played it again recently with Lurrus as a Companion. If you’ve heard of the deck before but might’ve forgotten about it, then let this be a refresher! If you’ve never heard of it before, then welcome to the world of Boros combo decks! let’s get into the deck then, shall we?

The Hammer

First off, let’s go over the hammer itself, Colossus Hammer. Colossus Hammer gives the equipped creature +10/+10, which results in a lethal attack from either a double strike creature or infect creature. The equipped creature also loses Flying, which will be important later. In addition to the Hammer itself, most versions of the deck also play two different ways to find it. Steelshaper’s Gift is the most straightforward, as it’s a single mana to go find it. There’s also Stoneforge Mystic to find it as well. That being said, I understand SFM is over $150 for a playset, so if you can’t afford Stoneforge, Open the Armory is a fine replacement. It costs the same mana and Stoneforge’s ability is mostly useless, so the main downside is losing a creature to put the Hammer onto.

Equipping the Hammer

For equipping the Hammer, that’s where things get a little tricky. is a lot of mana to equip naturally, especially in Modern, so we need to cheat a little. There are three different ways to do this in a cost-effective manner. The first and probably most efficient is Sigarda’s Aid. It allows us to play the hammer during combat after a creature goes unblocked and it automatically equips it for free. The downside to this one compared to the other two is that we have to play Aid before Hammer, which can lead to problems if we play Hammer on turn 1 then draw Aid, but that doesn’t come up often. A major upside to it though is that it sticks around, so if we can keep finding Hammers, we can keep trying. Next would be Magnetic Theft. For a single mana, you can attach any equipment to any creature and that includes your opponent’s equipment and creatures for janky blowouts if you wanted. Lastly and probably the worst, but played for redundancy would be Kor Outfitter. The upside to it is it’s a creature so it’s a backup if we don’t have anything in the next section. The downside though is that it’s the slowest. It costs instead of or and it has to be cast at sorcery speed, so our opponent can telegraph when we’re going for the kill rather easily.

One-Shot Creatures

This deck plays quite a few creatures, but there’s a couple that is more important than the rest. First, and easily the most important, is Kor Duelist: for a 1/1 isn’t that great but it has double strike as long as it’s equipped, so playing it on turn 1 could result in a turn 2 kill with Aid + Hammer or Hammer + Theft. After that, there aren’t any other 1-mana ways in Boros to get a turn 2 kill, so unless you go into green for Glistener Elf, you’ll need to play a 2-drop as a backup way. Staying in Boros, there are a few ways, like Adorned Pouncer as a resilient threat but the one most people seem to be going with is Swiftblade Vindicator. For , you get a 1/1 with vigilance, trample, and most importantly, Double Strike. The Trample is nice too though since it means you can still win through blockers with Swiftblade. Lastly, we get to take advantage of our lands a little bit with Inkmoth Nexus. Using this one puts our combo kill off for a few turns, but it’s harder to interact with until we combo since it’s a land.

Protection

Lastly, let’s go over protecting our combo pieces so we can still win through removal. There are two big ones I’ve seen most often with Giver of Runes and Spellskite, but I’ve also seen Apostle’s Blessing and God’s Willing. These cards let you protect your combo pieces from removal, especially Spellskite since it’s the only one that can protect the Hammer from removal.

Lands & Sideboard

The lands are pretty straightforward. Sunbaked Canyon, Sacred Foundry, and Inspiring Vantage are the bulk, plus the Inkmoth’s we talked about earlier and some basics. Recently I’ve noticed a build or two running Cavern of Souls since nearly every creature in the deck is a Kor, you can name that to force your combo creatures through counterspells. For the sideboard, there’s a ton of options, but I like to play cards that can help force through the combo against control and keep us alive against other combo decks. I like Silence since it can be beneficial in both scenarios, protecting our combo against control and stopping other combo decks by Silencing them right before they go to win. For example, against NeoBrand, Silence them on their last draw before casting Laboratory Maniac or right before Grapeshot against Storm. Damping Sphere is an option for Tron and combo, Grafdigger’s Cage for graveyards and Chord of Calling decks, and Stony Silence for artifacts. We don’t care about Stony because this deck very rarely pays the equip cost for Hammer. Other than that, the sideboard can be whatever you feel necessary for your meta.

Wrap-Up

What did you think of the deck? I know it’s becoming a relatively well-known deck so it’s nothing new for most of you, I just wanted to cover it and give you guys something to read. If you’re curious about any other choices for the deck, feel free to ask in the comments or ask me on my twitter @TheRealBlueMTG! Follow the site while you’re there @MTGOracle! Anyway, that’s all from me for now. This is Blue, signing out!