Who had fun this standard season? I sure did! Even with all of those confounded Lingering Souls, Delevers, and Messengers floating around; I was still able to take a Green and Red deck to a GP and not look like an idiot. Thank you Jackie Lee!!! Right now I am gleely looking towards to this fall, and the Return to Ravinca. But at the same time I am sadden by the fact that key parts of one of my all time favorite decks are rotating out of standard. To overcome this mild depression I have brewed up a modern version of Jackie Lee’s R/G Aggro list.
While the deck plays the same as it did before. The major difference in the modern incarnation of R/G Aggro is speed. Before the Deck had 6 dudes with haste. My modern list has 14 hasty creatures. That is a whole lot of no holds bar smashing face! There are two cards that have sadly been cut from the deck. The first is Green Sun Zenith. Because well this is a modern legal list after all (damn you Dryad Arbor and Gaddock Teeg). The second card is Hunt Master of the Fells. Believe it or not there is a much better choice for the 4 drop slot for this deck. And it is even an uncommon. Can you guess what it is???
- 3 Sword of Fire and Ice
- 1 Sword of War and Peace
- 3 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 1 Daybreak Ranger
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 2 Hellrider
- 1 Thrun the Last Troll
- 1 Acidic Slime
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 1 Garruk Relentless
- 4 Copperline Gorge
- 4 Rootbound Crag
- 3 Kessig Wolf Run
- 1 Ink Moth Nexus
- 8 Forest
- 3 Mountain
At the moment I have not developed a side board for this incarnation of R/G Aggro. I need to spend some time looking closely at the Modern meta game to fill in the decks weaknesses. For now I will leave the mana base alone, sticking with the “Standard” mana base. I will need to do some more testing, but it seems that this deck does not require Shock Lands to function properly. Which is a good thing due to the fact that Sword of Fire and Ice and Noble Hierarch are very costly additions, however they are well worth it. The card advantage provided by SoF&I is very important to this deck, allowing you to not over extend and recover from a Damnation The 3 damage speeds the aggro plan of this deck along nicely as well. Switching out the Llanowar Elves allows for crazy plays like 1st turn Noble Hierarch. 2nd turn Boggart Ram Gang, swing for 4 on turn two!!! Thank you for taking time out of your day to read over my brewing ideals. Please share your thoughts on this. I will be back shortly with an article on the very crazy and very funky cube that I recently built.
