There are few things in Magic I like more than a good aggro-control deck, maybe nothing. One of my greatest regrets is not playing Faeries at the height of its power, a mistake I remedied when U/W Delver appeared a few years later.
The greatness of aggro-control is that when things go right, you’re invincible. You get ahead early with efficient threats, and once you untap with a lead, you have the tools to stop any means of interaction your opponents have until the time at which they are, of course, dead. So many games end with your opponent saying “Oh, if I had just one more turn or if you hadn’t had that last counterspell, I would’ve turned everything around.”
But, of course, that’s how you drew it up. The game only looked close to the player who couldn’t see how firm a grip you had on it. When you play an aggro deck, you’re conceding the late-game to your opponent, and when you play a control deck you concede the early-game, but a good aggro-control deck can dominate in both phases because its cards are so efficient.
It doesn’t get more efficient than one-mana 3/2s, two-mana 4/4 fliers with vigilance, and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. Spell Queller is the perfect threat for this style of deck, letting you get ahead on tempo and card advantage while you have the best tools to defend it from opposing removal in Blossoming Defense and Metallic Rebuke.
Tamiyo, Field Researcher pulls the entire room together, giving you another planeswalker to crew Heart of Kiran, another piece of interaction against creatures that is great whether ahead or behind, and some much-needed card advantage. I especially like her interaction with Heart of Kiran, since the vigilance creature can draw a card on both offense and defense with a single activation.
As with any four-color deck, I’m worried about the mana, but with how little the deck touches into green and black, I don’t see it being an issue. The deck just wants to have all the cheapest spells so it can always take the aggressive position, and Fatal Push and Blossoming Defense are too important in that respect to cut.
Okay, there may be something I like more than aggro-control: one-mana spells. Those two things may or may not be related. One mana is just such a bargain! And mana efficiency is really what aggro-control decks pride themselves on. Constantly trade one mana for two or three mana and eventually your opponent falls too far behind. Hopefully they end the game staring at all the powerful, expensive sorceries stuck in their hand. It’s the only way they’ll learn.
Creatures (19)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
