BorosLegendary Creature — Human KnightAdriana, Captain of the Guard
Mana value5Rank#4,596
The Commander
Melee (Whenever this creature attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn for each opponent you attacked this combat.)
Other creatures you control have melee. (If a creature has multiple instances of melee, each triggers separately.)
Guide
Gameplan
Adriana turns a wide creature board into an explosive attack by giving your whole team melee, rewarding you for attacking multiple opponents at once. Flood the board with tokens or aggressive creatures, then swing at every opponent simultaneously so each attacker gets a stacking +1/+1 buff. The more opponents you hit, the larger your army becomes mid-combat, letting you close games out of nowhere.
Strengths
- Free, scaling anthem effect that grows your entire board the more opponents you attack
- Cheap to abuse with go-wide token strategies in efficient Boros colors
- Combat math is brutal for opponents who can't block multiple swinging armies
- Rewards multiplayer politics—incentivizes spreading attacks across the table
Weaknesses
- Melee only triggers on attack, so she does nothing on defense or against control sweepers
- Highly vulnerable to board wipes that erase your token army
- Boros lacks card draw and ramp, leading to running out of gas
- Single removal spell on Adriana shuts off the team anthem
Key Cards
- Skullclamp — Solves Boros's card-draw problem by sacrificing chump tokens for two cards each.
- Iroas, God of Victory — Makes your melee-buffed attackers unblockable-ish and indestructible in combat while pushing damage through.
- Assemble the Legion — Generates an ever-growing army of tokens to maximize melee triggers across multiple opponents.
- Dolmen Gate — Lets you attack everyone freely without losing attackers, enabling all-out melee swings.
- Combat Celebrant — Grants an extra combat phase so you trigger melee twice in one turn for double the buffs.
Upgrade Path
Add token doublers (Anointed Procession), evasive enablers (Iroas, Dolmen Gate), and extra-combat effects (Aggravated Assault, Aurelia) to multiply melee value. Shore up Boros's weaknesses with Smothering Tithe, Sun Titan, and Skullclamp for ramp and card advantage, then top off with a hard finisher like Craterhoof Behemoth or Triumph of the Hordes to convert your wide board into a one-turn kill.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Alpha-strike all opponents at once with a melee-buffed token army
- ▸Commander damage from a pumped, equipped Adriana
- ▸Extra combat phases doubling melee triggers for lethal swings
- ▸Overrun-style finishers like Craterhoof Behemoth or Triumph of the Hordes
Archetypes
- Tokens — Wide boards turn melee into a massive collective buff when you swing at the whole table.
- Aggro/Go-Wide — Adriana rewards committing to the board and attacking aggressively across all opponents.
- Voltron-lite — She herself grows huge with melee, making her a viable commander-damage threat.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (RW), by popularity.
