Much and More - Aggro

Last time in much and more I talked about Rush, and how rush is now a thing. Since that time, at least 2 American regional tournaments have been won by decks that self identify as rush. And while I'd really love to say "and those two decks were as different as could be" the truth is, they had the same agenda. The Long Voyage. Other than that, however, those two decks were as different as can be. (Come on, you saw that coming.)

But I'm not going to talk about rush again in this article, instead, this article I'm going to talk about aggro. Aggro, which stands for aggressive as it does in pretty much every other card game in the known world, is all about winning challenges. However, its philosophy about winning challenges is different than rush. Where as rush wants to win challenges in order to claim power and close out the game, aggro isn't in a hurry, it wants to win challenges to get claim, and generally the more claim the better. Furthermore, we're not usually talking about power claim, we're talking military and/or intrigue claim, which is to say that aggro is more about position, and less about rushing to the win.

So does that make aggro a control deck? And the answer to that is, kind of. Most people think of control as challenge control, and in that regard, no, aggro really isn't a control deck. On the flip side, it is hard to say that a deck that is plucking 2 cards out of your hand and 3 - 4 off your board every turn isn't a control deck. Welcome to Game of Thrones, even our non-control decks are control decks. Of course, aggro can also be rush as well, since rush and aggro are both about winning challenges, but hey, nobody said this would be easy.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain aggro is to give some examples. Imagine, for a minute we have a Greyjoy warcrest deck. Its all about wiping cards off the board with its events, claim, and heck, even its characters are good at wiping away unwanted cards. That deck is an aggro deck, no doubt about it. The line gets fuzzier, however, when one looks at something like a stark epic siege deck where they can drop 4 epic battles and win first turn (and no one can deny that winning first turn is a heck of a rush) but even if they don't win first turn, they still got nearly half a dozen military challenges against you. I bet you didn't have that many characters in play, did you?

So what does all that really mean? Well, aggro is generally fairly well matched up against rush, since they're both about winning challenges consistently aggro will have the tools available to slow down the rush deck's game and eventually (hopefully, if you're the aggro player) since aggro is generally better prepared for the long game come out on top. So as you're preparing for the regionals, not only should you expect to see the copy cat rush decks (and non-copy cat rush decks) but be ready for aggro decks that are positioned and designed to beat the rush decks.