Hello, people of MTGvault. I have come to talk about the infamous aggro deck that has been consistent in the standard format. As you might have noticed throughout my decks, I hate aggro decks, especially the troublesome Naya Blitz that I even posted a deck all about hating it and doing weird sentences about hating on Naya Blitz. Honestly, I'm going to sound like a real annoying kid for complaining about something like this, but there has to be someone out there who can agree with me about hating on aggro decks. Without further ado, let's begin our little conversation.
Now here's why I want to talk about the Aggro decks: THEY'RE OUTRIGHT BROKEN!!!! Seriously, how does someone take on such fast-paced decks such as Naya / Jund / Junk Blitz and say "Oh it's fair." It can't possibly be that easy, especially with Innistrad's aggressive cards and RTR's Boros / Gruul Support. To those who don't know aggro decks, and I assume that's about 3 of you, Aggro decks are decks that use cards to deal damage very quickly and can possibly win on turn 4, even 3. Now the problem being addressed here is winning on most likely, turn 4. Now that's just plain ridiculous, because the other player can't even do LITERALLY ANYTHING DECENT because they're already beaten on turn 4 most of the time. It's sad, because it wasn't that good of a game. You couldn't do shit because some guy beat you down with tiny creatures that give themselves power a Midrange deck can't handle.
Most of you would probably say "Well what do you expect from such a fast-paced format?" I have noticed that the format is very much fast-paced, but hello? There's still Midrange decks and CONTROL decks, decks that play somewhat peacefully and can actually give you somewhat of a chance to oh, I don't know, PLAY THE GAME!?!? Now you can kind of think of this as a rock-paper-scissors game. Aggro beats Control, Control beats Midrange, and Midrange beats aggro with some minor exceptions. Midrange decks use some 3 to 4 mana costing creatures to wall off aggro and strike for game. Let's not forget here Aggro has removal in the form of burn, via Searing Spear, Brimstone Volley, etc. that means all those big creatures you play are burned to death and aggro will keep striking at you for more damage. Control decks do an even worse job at that because they don't run that many creatures and a lot of their removal is pretty much "remove 1 creature from the battlefield."
Now I should probably talk about Supreme Verdict (listed in the list of cards above). It's a sorcery that only costs 4 and pretty much kills all creatures on the field, leaving the opponent with nothing in their hand after playing all their 1 to 2 drops. Now I thank MTG for making such an awesome card, it's even uncounterable! But even then, it can have some weird flaws.
-Sometimes, aggro decks will kill you BEFORE you can play a Verdict.
-Well crap, you got mana screwed, so you can't play Verdict on turn 4 and you die.
-Even if you got Verdict out, you're probably at 5 life and they start attacking with creatures they draw.
-Supreme Verdict is your only 4-turn boardwipe in your deck, and it'd from a 60 card deck. This means it's a 1/4 chance to beg to god that you get a Supreme Verdict to your hand. Supreme Verdict is one of the only cards that can give you a great advantage against aggro decks, and you need to draw it. What if you don't?
So Supreme Verdict is VERY affective against aggro decks and it's your best option! But it's your ONLY option and a Midrange deck doesn't compare.
So more in the list of cards above are creatures that are very common in decks like Naya Blitz. So let's just see what we're dealing with. Champion of the Parish is a one-drop, it's a 1/1, and it gets bigger as you play more humans. On turn 2, it can immediately become a 3/3 and swing for a lot of damage along with all it's other human aggro brothers. One of those brothers, or sister I guess, is Burning-Tree Emissary. Now holy crap, this card is utterly broken. You can pay either 2 green, 2 red, or 1 green and 1 red to play this, it's a 2/2, and when it ETBs, It adds R and G to your mana pool. Like I said, BROKEN, and everyone can agree with me because it let's them play something else aggressive ON THE SAME TURN such as Flinthoof Boar, which will then become a 3/3 already if you have a mountain, and Lightning Mauler to give Burning-Tree Emissary haste and swing for more damage. Now if you don't know this combo already, think about it: Turn 1; Parish. Turn 2; Burning-Tree (Parish gets a counter) and with the mana by Burning-Tree it plays Lightning Mauler (Parish gets a counter) and gives Burning-Tree haste. What you have out on turn 2 is a 3/3 that CAN ATTACK, a 2/2 that can attack thanks to the last human you played, and a 2/1 that gave Bruning-tree haste. so you deal 3 damage + 2 damage + 2 more damage from all the creatures attacking and that means you take 7 damage. That's over 1/4 of your life total gone already on Turn 2. If that's not utterly broken, I don't know what is......
Now then you might be thinking "Well it's a powerful deck that would require such thinking-" and you can stop right there where you said thinking, because making an aggro deck requires almost no thought. Just around $100 - $200 and you'll make the greatest deck ever. Now remember what MTG was kind of all about? Playing with these new cards and EXPERIMENT WITH THEM!! Experiment to create some kind of special deck that CAN work in Standard. Take for example the Pro Tour Gatecrash event. There was a player that won 3rd place by the name of Ben Stark. He used a mill deck. It didn't really mainboard Jace, Memory Adept, or even any kind of spell that milled. So how did he mill people? By KILLING THEM WITH LANDS! Yeah, he used 4 Nephalia Drownyards and made a control deck using lands as his win condition. Nice, very nice. Kind of inspired me a little bit since I was running Esper Control at the time.
Not creative enough for you? How about the Bant Wolf Run deck? It's kind of like a Midrange-Control that used Bant colors and mixed in RED to splash in Kessig Wolf Run and swing with a hefty Thragtusk with major power. Very nice idea! Not only was SHE (yes, it was a girl) the first female MTG player to make it in top 8, but she created another way to use Control / Midrange decks that I have seen others play at a local Tournament.
Now Aggro decks, I barely see creativity. For one thing, You'll almost always want to run a Playset of 4 of almost everything in the deck besides Basic lands. Take for example, a Naya Blitz deck can look like this creaturewise:
4x Champion of the Parish
4x Burning-Tree Emissary
4x Boros Elite
4x Flinthoof Boar
4x Lighting Mauler
4x Experiment One
and goes on....
There's barely any creativity because you usually want to run 4 of EVERYTHING! Now I can see running as many copies of 1 kind of card increases consistently throughout the deck. However, some decks would only use only 2 copies or even 1 copy of this card. Alright, maybe you put some thought into that and thought "maybe I don't want to run 4 of this card because it's to big or not necessary every time at the moment. When making aggro decks, you want playsets of 4 and 3 of everything while making the deck.
Now think about the last Tournament that went off, the MTG 2013 World Championship. Here was the top 8 decks that won:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/wmc/qualifiers/0407burnaby
about 5 out of 8 of those decks were aggresive decks with red in them, 3 of which containing a playset of Burning-Tree Emissary. Why Burning-Tree Emissary? BECAUSE THE CARDS BROKEN AS F$$K!!!! It's lets you play a third creature that's scary on turn 2!
Now I'm done with my bickering about aggro. Now here's where I say I might have made a tiny bad decision posting this complaining about aggro. Somebody here is going to reply and say something smart that completely counter's every word that I said on here. But here's what I am going to say: Somebody here is probably going to agree with me and tell a horribly negative experience about fighting these kind of aggro decks and how they can't win without a Supreme Verdict or some kind of Midrange magic (heh).
Now one more thing: I'm not saying aggro decks should end. I'm saying aggro decks should get toned down. I take 4 damage on turn 2? Fine, but just don't deal so much on turn 2 that it will utterly kill any hope you have on turn 2! I mean god! Well, speaking of gods, let's not forget about the Theros block and how we can't wait for the spoiling of the card list to begin. From looking at Erabos, or whatever was the name of the black god, They seem to be looking like huge creatures that can be playable in Standard and they would need to tone down aggro decks in order for players to have time to play these gods. I mean they have to. Aggro decks have taken their turn in Innistrad, so now it's Midrange decks / Control decks turn to have some power to beat aggro more efficiently.
And after my possibly stupid words I have said, I bid you farewell!