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By: walkerdog, Tyler Walker
Oct 31 2007 10:40am
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AGGRO IN CLASSIC. 
 
By Tyler Walker
Walkerdog on MODO
 
(Classic is the online version of Type 1. All cards except for Gleemox are allowed, and only Flash and Vampiric Tutor are restricted to one per deck.)

Classic is a very powerful format. In terms of power, it is somewhere between the paper formats Legacy and Vintage.  Why is this such a strong format?  There is a HUGE pool of cards available for deckbuilding.  Two decks can have the same basic goal and skeleton, but disagree on key cards to get to that goal.  Classic is my favorite format, due to the high power-level, and potential for absurd plays, quick kills, and crazy come-backs.
 
The “simplest” decks in classic are probably aggressive decks.  Aggro is a fine, usually reliable choice in this format, and is strengthened by the fact that most decks are reliant on Onslaught Fetchlands like Flooded Strand and Ravnica shocklands, like Sacred Foundry that end up hammering their life totals.  This is not to mention that Force of Will, the best counter in the format, also eats a point of life.  There are multiple ways to build aggro decks, and I’ll cover four basic aggressive standards that you might run into if you wanted to play some Classic.
 
The first is that standard of Magic, present in almost every format ever, the Red aggro deck, often called Red Deck Wins (or RDW for short). RDW tries to play the cheapest most efficient damage-dealing cards in any given format. They look both for pure damage potential, for example, Lava Spike does three damage for one mana; quite a deal. They also are concerned about efficiency. That Lava Spike is nice when you need to deal three to your opponent’s head, but what about when your opponent decided to drop a turn two Watchwolf, suddenly putting out a permanent source of three damage a turn? Cards like, Lightning Bolt which hits creatures AND players, Seal of Fire, which you can cast, then leave it until you need to either kill a creature, or drill a player, and Firebolt, which you can use early and late, all are examples of efficiency and utility.
Lightning Bolt
 
RDW looks to utilize not just the best burn, but also the most efficient creatures at dealing damage. Mogg Fanatic, Kird Ape, and Ball Lightning are all examples of creatures that a red deck is happy to run, due to their ability to deal a lot of damage quickly.
 
Finally RDW needs at least a LITTLE bit of disruption of enemy strategies, either maindeck or sideboard. Manabarbs, Ancient Grudge, Cryoclasm, Pyroclasm, Gorilla Shaman, and Molten Rain are all examples of cards that can slow the enemy down while you crush their face.
 
RDW can be a relatively inexpensive build, which I will highlight with a sample decklist.
 
Sample RDW list
A sample “quick kill”. Your hand is 2 Mountain, 1 Lightning Bolt, 1 Mogg Fanatic, 1 Incinerate, 1 Fireblast, and 1 Seal of Fire. You’re on the play, and lay a mountain into a Mogg Fanatic. Your opponent drops a fetchland, and passed their turn. On your turn, you draw another mountain, swing with your little goblin (opponent at 19), lay a mountain, and drop the Seal of Fire. End of Turn (EOT for short), he breaks his land for a blue Ravnica shockland, plays it untapped (going to 16), casts Brainstorm, and takes his turn. He puts a shockland into play untapped (him at 14), and passes his turn. At his EOT, you Lightning Bolt his face, dropped him to 11.  On your turn you draw into Lightning Bolt. You swing with your mogg, (10), cast your Incinerate at his dome (him, counterspell it), cast your Lightning Bolt at his dome (he takes it to seven) and you pass your turn. On his turn, he drops an island, lays a Psychatog and passes the turn tapped out. On your turn, you draw a ball lightning, and play it. He casts Force of will going to six, and you Fireblast him out. This is a turn four kill through disruption, although faster kills are possible.  Note that you also have to activate the Seal of Fire as the Fireblast will leave your opponent on two life.  
 
Part of the appeal of the Red deck currently is the low cost of build and that it has a definite edge against the current "Best Deck" in Classic, Threshold, and has access to sideboard cards that punish Affinity, such as Shattering Spree.  I will cover Thresh eventually, but for now it's worth knowing that you will be competitive against strong decks with RDW.
 
 
The second Archtype we’ll take a look at is Affinity. Affinity in Classic can play cards like Skullclamp, Arcbound Ravager, all the artifact lands and Disciple of the Vault. These are ALL BANNED in their block AND in their time in standard.  Affinity is an aggro deck that runs a bunch of cards that work well together. ALL of these cards were banned to give other decks a chance at the time. Wizards felt like they could not ban only one piece or Affinity would arise again with a slightly tweaked build. Honestly, that’s really all there is to it. Its strengths are that it is fast, can beat control relatively easily due to being hard to hate out unless you run sufficient amounts of artifact hate (Four of whatever hate card in the side usually isn’t enough), and that it plays Skullclamp, turning all those cheap creatures into damage and cards when they go away, often due to being sacrificed to a growing Ravager. I’ll provide a generic sample affinity list.
 
Sample Affinity
4 x (Tormod’s Crypt)
Arcbound Ravager
Sample affinity kill:
 
On the play again: Lay Ornithopter, Tormod’s Crypt, and Great Furnace. Opponent plays Mountain, Mogg Fanatic. You draw an Arcbound Ravager, play Blinkmoth Nexus, and play the Ravager. You pass the turn. Opponent draws, swings with fanatic, you take (19). He then lays another Mountain, and Lightning Bolts your Ravager. Now, you can either let him die and try to use his ability to buff your Nexus or Ornithopter, or you can attempt to keep him. We’ll activate the Nexus and put the modular counter onto him. Opponent passes turn with one mana open.
 
We draw a Vault of Whispers, play it, play the Skullclamp, and equip clamp to our Ornithopter. Attack with the 'thopter (18). End of turn, opponent casts Lightning Bolt at our face (16).
 
Opponent draws his card, lays a Mountain, and plays Ball Lightning, attacking with it and Mogg Fanatic, taking us down to 12. He passes turn.
 
We draw an Arcbound Worker and play it. We attempt to equip Skullclamp to the worker, and our opponent responds with saccing his Mogg Fanatic to kill the worker before the equip. Fine, he loses one from the disciple, and we activate the blinkmoth and drop the worker’s counter onto him. Attack with the Blinkmoth and the Disciple, dropping him to 13.
 
Opponent looks about out’ve gas, but RDW is scary… he draws and suspends a Rift Bolt, with 3 cards left in hand. That doesn’t scare us! He passes turn.
 
We draw an Arcbound Ravager. We play it, and attack with disciple, dropping him to tweleve. 
 
He plays the Rift Bolt on us, we’re at nine, and plays Incinerate, Lightning Bolt and… Mountain. We’re at three, but he only has one card in hand, and didn’t play a kill spell, so we have it with luck.
 
We draw into Shrapnel Blast, and float one black mana and one red mana, casting it after sacrificing artifacts one at a time to our ravager, for five life lost from the Disciple, then swing for seven with the ravager and disciple and win.
 
Part two will be next, covering two more archtypes. Please let me know if you enjoy this article, what you do and do not like about it, and any advice you have for future articles.
 
Thanks,
Tyler Walker

9 Comments

by drob (Unregistered) 67.160.13.43 (not verified) at Fri, 11/02/2007 - 19:54
drob (Unregistered) 67.160.13.43's picture

that quick kill walkthrough against a blue (tog?) deck is unfortunately a joke. Why would anyone burn 2 life with a shockland just to counterspell an incinerate? That's totally stupid. Also there's no reason why he didn't fetch for just an island to avoid another 2 life point hit during his 1st turn since he has another shockland in hand already. 

by walkerdog at Sat, 11/03/2007 - 10:22
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From talking to him later, I think it was counter-balance tog yes.  His reaction was, "Nice deck."  I said something to defend it, "It won right?  No offense," and he complained it was a kinda janky deck that didn't have much of a chance against most Classic decks except for with a lucky draw, and wasn't very original.  Honestly, I think he was a little contempual of the deck, and didn't play his tightest.  You are correct though, those weren't the finest plays, and I'll try to give 10 match sets in the future, for a little more reference, and more varied look at deck's performances.

by Anonymous (Unregistered) 74.244.226.49 (not verified) at Sat, 11/03/2007 - 17:45
Anonymous (Unregistered) 74.244.226.49's picture

I just wanted to agree with the burn decks in classic.  Brutal!  I run:

4 Spark Elemental, 4 Raging Goblin, 4 Firebolt, 4 Lightning Bolt, 4 Shock, 4 Incinerate, 4 Lighting Serpent, 4 Ball Lightining, 4 Blistering Firecat, 4 Lava Spike, 1 Firecat Blitz. 21 Mountains. 

The toughest decks to deal with are built around Counterspells.  Not much trouble with others. 

by walkerdog at Sat, 11/03/2007 - 21:02
walkerdog's picture

I might suggest running 3-4 Barbarian Rings in that list, just to give you that extra bit of reach (And they're harder to counter!)  Just a thought though.

by Anonymous (Unregistered) 195.241.104.64 (not verified) at Wed, 10/31/2007 - 11:13
Anonymous (Unregistered) 195.241.104.64's picture

kinda nice articles but the playthu's dont really do it for me.

All sounds very theoratical.

 I mean, why does the RDW win turn 4 vs the threshold but cant win in 5 turn vs the affinity.

Isnt 24 lands a bit much for affinity anyway?

 lookiong forward for part 2

by walkerdog at Wed, 10/31/2007 - 11:26
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The walkthroughs were just a couple of replays from notes from testing that demonstrated decent, but not AWESOME (for the most part) draws on the part of each deck, showing the capability to fight back, and in that game, RDW just didn't have the gas.  24 Lands is high for Affinity, the white lands would probably be the first to drop in favor of something such as Myr Enforcer or more 0CC artifacts that "do things"; that's not a super-tuned or teched out list, just an approximentation of the "average" list you might run into in a PE.  Thanks for your feedback, and I'll work on the playthroughs.  What would you like to see from them that would make them more entertaining or insightful?

RDW vs Thresh by hamtastic at Wed, 10/31/2007 - 11:50
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Not to steal Walker's thunder, but RDW wins faster against thresh (and many decks) due to the pain involved in playing a deck that relies on fetchlands + ravnica duals.  Essentially the Threshold deck starts at 15 life, which is an easy target for such red decks.  I imagine he'll go more in depth with this later.  This was one of my largest lamentations about the real Duals not being in MED1.  A complaint which has apparently come to fruition, based on the last Classic PE (Burn deck won it all)

As for Affinity... many decks are changing their construction to better fight through hate.  One such card being run is (sorry) Tarmogoyf.  It's brutal in Affinity, survives hate and actually gets stronger if most of the hate resolves...   just ridiculous.

Looking forward to part 2! 

majorsite by dungdung at Mon, 01/03/2022 - 02:45
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web tasarım fiyatları o deck to be "competitive" anyway, and is something I'd expect to see in casual. Casual != Budget, so I think it's more than acceptable to have Psychatog decks packed with Fo

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