Today,  I’m going to take a step into the realm of a player, and look at the state of Modern leading into the Pro Tour. With the banning of Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom the modern meta-game is currently wide open. With that in mind I’m going to explore some of the different archetypes and cover what I think are the top decks of each. Today I’m going to cover Aggro.

I’m going to divide Aggro down a little further into Classic Aggro which just plays cheap efficient spells and creatures, and Combo Aggro where the aim is to build a big creature with some form of evasion.

Classic Aggro

Burn

Creatures (17)

4 Goblin Guide

1 Grim Lavamancer

4 Monastery Swiftspear

4 Wild Nacatl

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

Spells (23)

4 Lava Spike

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Atarka’s Command

4 Boros Charm

3 Searing Blaze

4 Rift Bolt

Lands (20)

4 Arid Mesa

3 Bloodstained Mire

2 Copperline Gorge

2 Mountain

3 Sacred Foundry

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Stomping Ground

Sideboard (15)

3 Molten Vortex

3 Path to Exile

1 Rending Volley

1 Deflecting Palm

3 Destructive Revelry

3 Kor Firewalker

1 Skullcrack

Zoo

Creatures (29)

1 Dryad Arbor

4 Experiment One

4 Goblin Guide

4 Kird Ape

4 Wild Nacatl

4 Burning­Tree Emissary

4 Flinthoof Boar

4 Ghor­Clan Rampager

Spells (13)

4 Lightning Bolt

1 Mutagenic Growth

2 Path to Exile

4 Atarka’s Command

1 Boros Charm

1 Domri Rade

Lands (18)

2 Arid Mesa

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Forest

1 Mountain

1 Sacred Foundry

3 Stomping Ground

1 Temple Garden

4 Windswept Heath

4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

2 Tormod’s Crypt

2 Hallow

1 Oxidize

3 Vines of Vastwood

2 Ancient Grudge

2 Destructive Revelry

2 Kor Firewalker

1 Lightning Helix

Merfolk

Creatures (28)

4 Cursecatcher

4 Harbinger of the Tides

4 Lord of Atlantis

4 Master of the Pearl Trident

4 Silvergill Adept

1 Tidebinder Mage

2 Kira, Great Glass­Spinner

3 Merrow Reejerey

2 Master of Waves

Spells (13)

4 Aether Vial

1 Spell Pierce

4 Vapor Snag

1 Negate

3 Spreading Seas

Lands (19)

15 Island

4 Mutavault

Sideboard (15)

2 Engineered Explosives

1 Pithing Needle

1 Relic of Progenitus

2 Hurkyl’s Recall

1 Negate

2 Tidebinder Mage

1 Dismember

4 Monastery Siege

1 Master of Waves

The game plan for each of these decks is simple, play creatures and spells that allow for a constant stream of damage that will reduce the opponent from 20 to 0 in the quickest time possible. Burn is doing it in the most efficient of ways with mostly spells, if a spell costs 1 or 2 mana and deals 3 or 4 damage to a player with no additional costs then the Burn deck will consider playing it.

Zoo plays a selection of cheap creatures which are possibly 2 or 3 power with a little bit of work but has a low mana cost with the aim being to start attacking on turn 2, or even turn 1, and not stop. The deck will then use the burn spells to either keep the opponent’s side of the battlefield clear of any blockers that would keep their creatures from dealing the needed damage or to deal the final few points of damage.

Merfolk is one of the borderline decks, sitting more prominently in the Classic side of things. Merfolk likes to go wide, playing 4­-6 creatures and attacking with them. The reason I class it as nearly a Combo Aggro deck is that normally each one of your creatures has a Lord effect (Lord effect:  A creature that  gives +1/+1 to all creatures of a specific quality/type,  in this case Merfolk), these Lord effects mean that each creature while starting off as a 2/2 for UU, normally end up attacking as a 6/6 or 7/7. The deck’s spells like Spreading Seas which combines with Lord of Atlantis, and Vapor Snag are used  primarily to make potentially blocking these creatures harder.

Combo Aggro

Infect

Creatures (14)

1 Spellskite

4 Blighted Agent

4 Glistener Elf

4 Noble Hierarch

1 Viridian Corrupter

Spells (26)

1 Wild Defiance

2 Apostle’s Blessing

3 Become Immense

1 Groundswell

4 Might of Old Krosa

4 Mutagenic Growth

1 Twisted Image

4 Vines of Vastwood

4 Gitaxian Probe

2 Slip Through Space

Lands (20)

2 Forest

3 Breeding Pool

4 Inkmoth Nexus

1 Verdant Catacombs

4 Windswept Heath

4 Wooded Foothills

2 Pendelhaven

Sideboard (15)

1 Spellskite

1 Wild Defiance

2 Dismember

2 Dispel

4 Nature’s Claim

2 Spell Pierce

2 Twisted Image

1 Dryad Arbor

Bogles

Creatures (13)

1 Dryad Arbor

4 Gladecover Scout

4 Slippery Bogle

4 Kor Spiritdancer

Spells (28)

4 Ethereal Armor

4 Hyena Umbra

3 Path to Exile

4 Rancor

4 Spider Umbra

2 Spirit Link

4 Daybreak Coronet

2 Spirit Mantle

1 Unflinching Courage

Lands (19)

3 Horizon Canopy

4 Razorverge Thicket

1 Snow­ Covered Forest

2 Snow­ Covered Plains

4 Temple Garden

4 Windswept Heath

1 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)

2 Natural State

1 Path to Exile

2 Pithing Needle

2 Relic of Progenitus

2 Gaddock Teeg

2 Stony Silence

4 Leyline of Sanctity

Affinity

Creatures (26)

2 Memnite

4 Ornithopter

4 Signal Pest

4 Arcbound Ravager

4 Steel Overseer

4 Vault Skirge

2 Etched Champion

2 Master of Etherium

Spells (18)

4 Mox Opal

2 Welding Jar

2 Galvanic Blast

4 Springleaf Drum

4 Cranial Plating

2 Thoughtcast

Lands (16)

4 Blinkmoth Nexus

4 Darksteel Citadel

4 Glimmervoid

4 Inkmoth Nexus

Sideboard (15)

1 Dispatch

2 Grafdigger’s Cage

3 Spell Pierce

1 Thoughtseize

2 Ancient Grudge

1 Spellskite

1 Whipflare

1 Etched Champion

2 Ghirapur Aether Grid

1 Wear/Tear

A combo aggro deck’s aim will be to play make a single creature that your opponent is unable to block or interact with and “build a monster”. Infect changes the game from being about trying to deal 20 damage to dealing 10. It’s main game plan is to attack and deal a little bit of infect damage here and there with an Inkmoth Nexus attack, here and there with a  Blighted Agent attack, until it thinks the coast is clear at which point these creatures are turned into a force to be reckoned with and are able to deal a single knock­out punch and kill you. Tapping out against Infect is always going to be dangerous due to this.

Bogles is very similar to Infect, in that it plays a creature that the opponent will have a hard time dealing with due to having Hexproof. The Bogles player will then dump as many Aura’s onto the creature as possible and attack, attack, attack! One of the key Auras that the deck plays is Daybreak Coronet giving the creature Vigilance and Lifelink in a single card can be back breaking to most strategies that are looking to attack you down.

Affinity/Robots, like Merfolk is one of those decks that sits at the boarderline of being a Classic Aggro and a Combo Aggro deck. The deck is built around playing lots of cheap creatures with Springleaf Drum turning every creature into a mana producer to help accelerate yourself, but where Merfolk is a bunch of creatures boosting each other Robots has the option to go all in on one creature either by equipping something with Cranial Plating or by sacrificing everything to an Arcbound Ravager. Due to this secondary line of attack Robots strays slightly into the Combo Aggro territory.

In my next article we will move onto the mainstay of modern – Midrange