Games - Aggro deck

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	Games - Aggro deck

Aggro deck is a Magic: The Gathering term for a deck of at least sixty Magic: The Gathering cards which attempts to win the game through persistent, quick damage dealing. Usually these decks will use small, hard-hitting creatures to win the game.

Aggro history

Early aggro decks were rather slow and usually included both small and large creatures. Due to this, today an "aggro deck" is commonly misinterpreted as a deck which contains many small, efficient creatures (see White Weenie below), which is not necessarily the case. Aggro decks were also generally unable to deal with the far more powerful Control decks and later the blazingly fast Combo decks. As new sets were released, the relative power of the aggro deck increased as a result of an increase in the availability of aggro-friendly creatures and spells, and a decrease of power in control and combo decks. Today, nearly every tournament metagame includes competetive aggressive decks.

Evolving Aggro Archetypes

Some aggro decks are linked merely by their color, but they remain similar enough in style that one may refer to all incarnations of the archetype by a single name effectively.

White Weenie

White Weenie is the eternal aggro deck. It is the second-best color for creatures, particularly cheap and efficient ones, and specializes in global effects, such as , which strengthen all its creatures at once. Finally, White also offers a number of large "board clearer" or "reset button" spells, such as the land-destroying or the creature-killing . It has been played since Magic began, but was at its most powerful during the Mercadian Masques block, when the Rebel mechanic allowed the deck to dominate. Another powerful White Weenie incarnation includes when the Tempest block was legal in Standard, when the "Shadow" mechanic and the card helped the deck compete against the myriad of other Aggro and Control decks.

Sligh

Sligh was the first example of a modern Aggro Deck. It introduced the Magic world to the Mana Curve principle, whereby the deck is built to maximize its resources every turn. Like White Weenie, Sligh has gone through multiple incarnations, all of which have combined small creatures with burn and the Mana Curve. The first Sligh deck appeared during the Ice Age block in 1996. The original deck, entitled "Geeba," was built by Jay Shneider and popularized by Paul Sligh. A list may be found . The most powerful incarnation of Sligh came soon after, with the release of the Tempest set. Cards like , , and , combined with Mirage block cards , and , made Sligh one of the most successful tournament decks of the era.

More modern versions of Sligh have been called "Red Deck Wins." These decks have more control elements than traditional Sligh, and it is debatable whether or not they deserve the title.

Red/Green Aggro

Many color combinations in Magic happen to work well together consistently, and the most aggressive of those combinations is Green/Red. This is an archetype that, like White Weenie, has been around since the birth of the game and is still being played today. These decks usually combine the mana acceleration and fat creatures of Green with the burn spells of Red. Often Red/Green aggro decks include a land destruction component, but these variants are more controlling and less aggressive. The most successful incarnation of the Red/Green aggro archetype came when both the Invasion block and the Mercadian Masques block were legal in Standard. These decks used the card Fires of Yavimaya to give Haste to large creatures like Blastoderm and Flametongue Kavu. Another successful incarnation of Red/Green aggro came when both the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks were legal in Standard. These decks used powerful cheap creatures like Grim Lavamancer and Wild Mongrel coupled with a strong burn component in order to give Control decks problems. The deck had a short run of Vintage (Type I) relevency under the name San Diego Zoo.

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