Standard

Overwhelming Aggression

Imagine you’re out swimming in the ocean. A cool breeze makes an otherwise scorching hot sun bearable. You drift around, pondering all kinds of hopes and dreams, while you look back at the white beach of the island you are staying on. There’s another island to your left, a little bigger than the one you were looking at, and it seems to have some corn fields on it. It’s quiet. The gentle waves falling onto the shores are the only sounds around. You’re enjoying yourself.

Then, suddenly, a band of crazy locals appear from behind the trees. They’re running, shouting, trampling whatever gets in their way. When they reach your bungalow, they demolish it in mere moments. Like lightning striking a tree, they shatter the glass doors, and your dreams with it. It’s too much, too fast. The pool of emotions that wells up inside you overpowers all your senses, and slowly your sight goes black-you’re fainting.

With a shock, you return back to reality. Slowly, pieces of real life seep back into your consciousness. You are not on a tropical holiday. You are in your hometown. You are at a magic tournament, and you just got absolutely and utterly crushed by a Naya Blitz player.

Turn 1 [card]Boros Elite[/card]
Turn 2 [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card], [card]Lightning Mauler[/card], attack for 7.
Turn 3 [card]Wolfbitten Captive[/card], [card]Mayor of Avabruck[/card], you’re at 3.

You untapped, didn’t see a [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], and scooped up your cards before even putting down a fourth land.

You sideboard in more removal, and the second game goes like this:

Turn 1 [card]Champion of the Parish[/card]
Turn 2 double [card]Boros Elite[/card], attack for 3.
Turn 3 you kill the Champion, but he plays a [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card] into a [card]Viashino Firstblade[/card], putting you to 5.

Another draw step yet again fails to provide you with a [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], and you scoop up your cards. Your opponent starts de-sideboarding, starting by taking out the two [card]Boros Charm[/card]s that were in his hand. You never stood a chance to begin with.

These past few weeks have seen me play a surprising variety of decks, after not being able to find a control deck that I liked enough against the extremely aggressive decks. You see, it is very hard to defend yourself against the many, many nutdraws these decks can produce. My testing partner Joris’s Blitz deck, with its [card]Hamlet Captain[/card]s over [card]Flinthoof Boar[/card]s is also pretty darn good at producing these nutdraws consistently, because a lot of the pieces are interchangeable. The mana is still an issue sometimes, and if the land:spell ratio is skewed too heavily one way or the other, it doesn’t pan out, but I’ve been forced to Verdict or [card]Blasphemous Act[/card] or reanimate an Angel or die on turn four way too often to call the deck “inconsistent.”

What to do then?

It took me quite a while to figure this out. The release of Dragon’s Maze did not help, with all the new, shiny cards distracting me from figuring out why I was losing with them. [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]s and [card]Aetherling[/card]s were rotting in my hand long before I figured out if they were truly good or not. It took me a few losses to a somewhat rogue version of Mono Red (with more than 10 one-drops instead of the usual eight) to figure out what was happening.

The problem
You see, creatures have been improving over time (oh really? I only figured that out now?), and if people just go up the curve with a one-drop that’s a little more powerful, then a two-drop that’s a bit above the curve, then a very good three-drop followed by an awesome four-drop, you can keep up by casting a removal spell on turn two or three and slamming something awesome on turn four.

That’s not what Blitz does though. It’s also not what this Mono Red deck was doing. They were playing a bunch of one- and two-drops that were above the curve in the first few turns. If card advantage doesn’t matter, then casting two one-mana 2/2s is way better than a two-mana 3/3. The damage output of the two one-drops is just higher. The mana:damage ratio is 1:2, whereas that of a two mana 3/3 is 1:1.5. Obviously, this has always been the case.

It’s really fairly simple: the cheaper your spells, the more you get to play early. But nowadays, the cheaper creatures are disproportionately more powerful. A couple of years ago, it was scary to “run out of gas.” The creature decks now are so fast and powerful that before that tipping point comes, the deck has already won.

There are more decks that can function along this principle, the Bant Hexproof deck for example. It’s a fun deck that can easily pound on unprepared people, but it’s a tad too slow to beat these super aggressive decks unless it gets an early [card]Unflinching Courage[/card] onto a creature and can race thanks to lifelink. But, if we bring the curve down like Michael Flores did:

[Deck title=American Auras by Michael Flores]
[Creatures]
*4 Fencing Ace
*4 Invisible Stalker
*4 Judge’s Familiar
*4 Geist of Saint Traft
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*3 Curiosity
*4 Ethereal Armor
*4 Madcap Skills
*4 Spectral Flight
*4 Boros Charm
*2 Syncopate
[/Spells]
[Land]
*2 Cavern of Souls
*4 Clifftop Retreat
*4 Glacial Fortress
*4 Hallowed Fountain
*4 Sacred Foundry
*1 Slayers’ Stronghold
*4 Steam Vents
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Purify the Grave
*3 Nearheath Pilgrim
*2 Negate
*4 Boros Reckoner
*4 Gift of Orzhova
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

We actually have a monster on our hands.

Curiosity, a card not often described as “very good,” becomes almost insane when you get to staple it on “for free” because it’s mana that would otherwise go unspent. Your opponent’s spells might be a little “better,” but combined, yours are way better. Look at it this way: [card]Invisible Stalker[/card] plus double [card]Ethereal Armor[/card] outraces a [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card] and is often even harder to interact with, while costing the same amount of mana. You even get to pay in installments! Crazy good deals for everyone! Buy one enchantment now, pay for the second one in 2014!

Basically, these hyper aggressive decks are full of [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card]s, often on top of playing actual [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card]s. They cast cards that, in the abstract, might not be great ([card]Boros Elite[/card], [card]Legion Loyalist[/card]), but if they play way more of these than you have interaction, card advantage be damned-you will die with five or so cards still in hand.

The control decks in the format rely on [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] to swing back the game in their favor, but if they’re already dead by turn four, that doesn’t help. A [card]Farseek[/card] helps, and if you can go [card]Farseek[/card] into Verdict into [card]Thragtusk[/card] against an aggressive deck every game, that might very well be good enough. The problem is that in many games, that is the only line to prevent yourself from losing to their nutdraws, while they have a ton of interchangeable pieces to produce them.

Trying to one-for-one them with removal often isn’t enough either. In the second game I mentioned against Blitz, I killed their biggest creature and still died easily when I couldn’t beat their board a turn later. One-for-ones when your opponent plays two or three spells a turn just doesn’t cut it. But what does?

Suggestions
One way to battle these new decks that flood the board with cheap threats is ironically to go back to the slower, but bigger threats. Two one-mana 2/2s might do more damage than a two-mana 3/3, but in a direct fight, a 3/3 outclasses a 2/2. No wonder Aaron Barich won an SCG Open filled with aggressive decks with the following list:

[Deck title=Naya Aggro by Aaron Barich – SCG Dallas winner]
[Creatures]
*4 Dryad Militant
*4 Experiment One
*4 Strangleroot Geist
*4 Voice of Resurgence
*4 Loxodon Smiter
*4 Boros Reckoner
*4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*2 Rancor
*2 Advent of the Wurm
*2 Boros Charm
*4 Searing Spear
[/Spells]
[Land]
*2 Forest
*4 Rootbound Crag
*4 Sacred Foundry
*4 Stomping Ground
*4 Sunpetal Grove
*4 Temple Garden
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*3 Pacifism
*3 Volcanic Strength
*2 Boros Charm
*2 Ray of Revelation
*3 Skullcrack
*2 Mizzium Mortars
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

(If you intend to play this list, I could see adding a land. Twenty-two seems on the low side, even if [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card] is your only four-drop. Your color requirements are very harsh: double green on turn two and Reckoner mana on turn three.)

With all the roadblocks you can set up, the hyper-aggressive decks will have a tough time beating you. [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] and [card]Strangleroot Geist[/card] trade for value, and the bigger creatures don’t even have to trade-they just straight beat up one- and two-drops. In a similar vein, Ken Yukuhiro finished in the top eight of GP Guadalajara with a Saito-built list that goes even bigger than Aaron’s list, topping the curve with [card]Thundermaw Hellkite[/card]s and playing no aggressive one-drops but some [card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card]s to get higher up the curve quickly.

Once again, we come back to an old magic truism: If you want to beat someone, you either have to be way faster, or just a little slower, but bigger.

Now, if everyone moves on to these slightly slower aggro lists, that makes it a lot easier for control players to just copy some old GerryT list and win tournaments again.

For those people who would rather try to, you know, tune their control lists to be able to beat hyper aggressive decks rather than wait for the metagame to solve the issues with their out-of-date list, here’s a piece of advice: play more cheap spells.

Seriously, that’s it. Just like in Gatecrash limited, you’d rather have an extra [card]Gutter Skulk[/card] than another Millennium Gargoyle. The format is fast, and those Bant [card]Flash[/card] lists with four [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card], three [card]Restoration Angel[/card]s, [card]Rewind[/card]s and a bunch of Snapcasters (that are really also four-mana spells when everything you’re flashbacking costs two) don’t cut it. Play more [card]Unsummon[/card]s, play [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card], play more [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s, play [card]Farseek[/card]s and [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card]s; there are a ton of options. (I wouldn’t suggest all of those in the same list.) Just make sure your opponent hasn’t played six or seven spells by the time you cast your first.

If you are not on Bant [card]Flash[/card] but the more popular UWR, how about playing some of those [card]Pillar of Flame[/card]s main? I see everybody bring them in after getting crushed game one, but you could always start them. It’s not like the difference between two and three damage is all that relevant in this format. What creatures are you killing for three? Boros Reckoner? Ouch. Thragtusk? Two-for-one-ing yourself. Maybe Champion of the Parish? You could’ve killed that one a turn earlier with a Pillar, and if it gets out of hand you already have [card]Azorius Charm[/card]. Is the extra damage to the dome really worth that much? Especially if you’re playing [card]Aetherling[/card]s, the magic number is 16 so you can kill them in two attacks. You need two of either Pillar or Spear to get them below 17, so that can’t be it.

Here’s a list I’ve been doing a lot better with in testing:

[Deck title=UWR Control by Jay Lansdaal]
[Creatures]
*3 Augur of Bolas
*2 Snapcaster Mage
*2 Restoration Angel
*2 Aetherling
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*3 Pillar of Flame
*3 Azorius Charm
*1 Burning Oil
*1 Izzet Charm
*3 Think Twice
*1 Dissipate
*1 Rewind
*1 Jace, Architect of Thought
*3 Supreme Verdict
*1 Warleader’s Helix
*2 Turn // Burn
*3 Sphinx’s Revelation
*2 Syncopate
[/Spells]
[Land]
*2 Cavern of Souls
*4 Clifftop Retreat
*4 Glacial Fortress
*4 Hallowed Fountain
*1 Island
*1 Mountain
*2 Sacred Foundry
*4 Steam Vents
*4 Sulfur Falls
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*1 Dispel
*1 Pillar of Flame
*1 Negate
*1 Renounce the Guilds
*2 Rest in Peace
*1 Counterflux
*2 Izzet Staticaster
*1 Oblivion Ring
*2 Clone
*1 Jace, Architect of Thought
*1 Restoration Angel
*1 Supreme Verdict
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

No [card]Searing Spear[/card]s, a bunch of Pillars main, and more [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s main. Fewer four drops and fewer creatures overall because you simply need them less with [card]Aetherling[/card] in the mix.

The [card]Jace, Architect of Thought[/card], main with an extra one in the board is an attempt to play a fourth Verdict-like effect main. Jace can make a bunch of creatures on the board almost irrelevant, especially against the Blitz-type decks. This gives you time to find an actual Verdict, or build a board yourself. The reason it’s not just the fourth Verdict is that Jace is also serviceable in control mirrors. You have to play a lot of spot removal to win against the hyper-aggressive decks, which leaves you with a ton of dead cards against control decks. Jace alleviates this a little.

The second Jace comes in fairly often, but always in place of a different type of card, depending on whether you’re boarding it in against control or an aggro deck. Against midrange decks you board the one copy out.

The issue with this list is that it’s still a little iffy against Reanimator. Even with a bunch of exile-counterspells main and two [card]Clone[/card]s and two [card]Rest in Peace[/card]s in the board, you still lose easily to [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] into [card]Acidic Slime[/card], sometimes as early as turn three. It seems like Reanimator is a bit on the decline because of the rise of decks like Naya Blitz and RG aggro, though, so perhaps it’s worth the risk.

Another deck I think is fairly well positioned right now is the Junk Aristocrats deck I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Sam Black has been working on it, Batuthina (an MTGO player) did well with it online, and the deck has a ton of play to it. Here’s my version:

[Deck title=Junk Aristocrats by Jay Lansdaal]
[Creatures]
*4 Doomed Traveler
*4 Young Wolf
*3 Blood Artist
*4 Cartel Aristocrat
*3 Skirsdag High Priest
*4 Voice of Resurgence
*3 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
*2 Maw of the Obzedat
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*4 Tragic Slip
*4 Lingering Souls
*2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
[/Spells]
[Land]
*1 Gavony Township
*4 Godless Shrine
*4 Isolated Chapel
*4 Overgrown Tomb
*2 Sunpetal Grove
*4 Temple Garden
*4 Woodland Cemetery
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*3 Deathrite Shaman
*1 Purify the Grave
*2 Abrupt Decay
*2 Paraselene
*2 Liliana of the Veil
*2 Sin Collector
*2 Unflinching Courage
*1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

This deck can also operate on very few lands, and it easily casts two spells a turn, so it can keep up with decks like Blitz. After game one, you can lower the curve even more, while still having a deceptively powerful deck. By now we all know [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] is good, and it has to be at it’s best (or close to it) in a deck like this one. Those [card]Elemental[/card]s get very big very fast when you play [card]Lingering Souls[/card] and a bunch of creatures that just won’t die.

Conclusion
When people are beating you by playing way more spells than you, lower your curve or start actively punishing them for unloading their hand quickly. Putting everything on the board in the first couple of turns makes [card]Supreme Verdict[/card]s extremely lethal, and playing a bunch of one-mana creatures makes [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] look like a gigantic wall. Adjusting your decks to the speed of the format is a key step to winning more.

Here’s to hoping you can keep up or catch up! See you next time,

Jay Lansdaal
iLansdaal on Twitter and MTGO

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