#9 Aggro

Magic players love aggro.

They love aggro because aggro is usually the first kind of a deck that a player builds, that has any semblance of focus in their early career.

This is quite a step up from what decks were like before players collectively labeled and theorized about aggro. Before that, it often meant playing with every single card that one owned (that looked cool) and putting a rubber band around the deck.

Aggro isn't exclusive to Magic the Gathering, but generally is understood as an aggressive strategy, or the best defense is a better offense.

This should be no surprise, as when players learn new games that involve opponents, it doesn't take that long for the question to go from "how do I win at this game?" to "how do I beat the enemy and feast off the wails of their kin?"

For Magic players, aggro also is a great teacher, a great way to start learning all about the game. Aggro has the potential to teach the player about every single step and phase of the game just by its very nature, more than a non aggro strategy.

Most aggro decks try to end the game before it even gets going (preemptive clock), try to take advantage of the combat phase inside and out (tricks) and try to make the fullest use of land/mana (resources).

It's not that hard to see that aggro players generally have an advantage in building manabases and manacurves when looking at Draft and Sealed events. There is a subtle but very strong foundation in math that an aggro player uses because he's realized he has to deal this much damage in this much time, so nothing can be wasted.



Even if a player doesn't like aggro strategies, chances are he will love foiling, preventing and making aggro strategies come to a grinding halt.

Ask a control player if he loves aggro and he might reveal a sideboard that's full of aggro hosers that he would absolutely love drawing. Ask a combo player if he loves an aggro deck that can win on turn 4 on a regular basis, and he might be determined to make his deck win on turn 3. Because aggro even exists, control and combo players can show love for their own strategies and think in ways that wouldn't be possible if aggro didn't exist.

Because aggro is great on all levels across all formats, and was and always will be an integral part of the game's evolution and development, Magic players love aggro.