For the sake of magic, Aggro decks are the way to go for Magic: The Gathering players who like to hit hard and frequently. When you can crush your opponent in the face with a dozen goblins, who needs well-studied control strategies or a sense of pacing?
Despite their reputation as the “no thinking, turn cards sideways” archetype, aggressive decks provide a lot more than you may expect. Here’s all you need to know about the aggro archetype in Magic: The Gathering, as well as what makes them so lethal.
What Is An Aggro Deck And How Does It Work?
Aggro (short for ‘aggressive’) decks are designed to deal a large number of little smacks of damage as rapidly as can. Their goal is to outrun the opposition and eliminate them before they have a chance to form a defense. Aggro decks, on the other hand, differ from burn decks in that aggro decks primarily deliver damage through combat rather than the direct-damage spells used by burn strategies.
Aggro is the ‘purest’ version of Magic in many ways: the entire game centers around going to battle and swinging with creatures, and aggro decks are all about that. The pace of an aggro deck is what characterizes it the most, as this archetype prefers to win quickly with a large number of low-cost creatures and other throwaway tokens over a few massive, heavy hitters.
It’s a successful tactic, but it’s also aggro’s worst flaw. If a game stretches on too long, you’ll often discover that an aggressive deck “runs out of gas” – that is, you’ll struggle to punch through your opponent’s defense. Aggro foregoes long-term strategies in favor of early-game tactics, and it struggles if it can’t get an advantage in the first few turns.
Miranda Meeks’s Werewolf Pack Leader
Aggro is a strategy family that can be designed with any color in mind, rather than a single color identity or deck. However, there are a few kinds that are staples of Standard and are widely regarded as the best choices for Aggro decks.
Mono-Red Aggro is by far the most well-known type of Aggro deck, as it is the color in which the haste keyword appears most frequently. They may combine aggro and burn into “Red Deck Wins” strategies to increase their damage output, or they may specialize in something like Mono-Red Goblins, a special breed of Aggro deck that includes a lot of goblins and cards that expressly benefit goblins, such as Goblin Javelineer (like Goblin Trashmaster in older Standard formats).
Mono-White Aggro is the current Standard top deck, and it relies on white’s anthem effects (board-wide bonuses), inexpensive creatures, and strong removal to keep the opponent vulnerable to attackers. White weenies are one of the most prevalent mono-white aggro decks, focusing on little creatures over everything else, but slightly slower aggro tactics like Mono-White Angels still play a large role in the game.
Any aggressive deck with green in it is known as “Stompy” – for example, Gruul Stompy is a red/green aggro deck. Though some players equate green with enormous creatures that deal a lot of damage, Stompy prefers to win with smaller creatures like the Werewolf Pack Leader, Old-Growth Troll, and Ascendant Packleader. Stompy decks may feel more comfortable pushing up their mana curve a little more with cards like Erika’s Chariot and Wrenn and Seven because green has some of the greatest ramps in the game.
Aggro decks, as previously said, are all about speed, which means their mana curve is quite low. “Mana curve” effectively means ensuring you have the appropriate ratio of lands-to-mana cost to ensure you can cast a spell every turn, whereas a low mana cost deck employs a lot of one-or-two mana spells to ensure you’re casting things as soon as the first turn.
Take, for example, the top deck in the current Standard meta, Mono-White Aggro. Hopeful Initiates, Usher of the Fallens, and Luminarch Aspirants are all one- or two-mana creatures with significant game impact. In fact, thanks to cards like Legion Angel and The Wandering Emperor, the greatest mana value in most of these decks is only four.
Aggro decks have a strong focus on creatures. They may play a few other card types – Mono-Red Aggro, for example, uses a few powerful spells like Play With Fire – but the majority of their plan is to cast as many creatures as possible each round. This is significant because of the concept of “gas” – when the deck runs out of creatures to cast, it is effectively dead.
Although attacking with creatures is vital, many aggro strategies also employ other cards that serve as support. In these decks, anything that offers your creatures board-wide bonuses is wonderful, such as Wedding Announcement/Wedding Festivity, which has become a staple of Mono-White Aggro. In the meantime, the Barbarian Class can be leveled up to give all of your animals more abilities. In Mono-Red or Boros (red/white) aggressive decks, Haste and Blade Historian grants attacking creatures you control double strike.
