Temur Aggro!

Phoenix Rising

When Fate Reforged was spoiled I instantly fell in love with Flamewake Phoenix and all it had to offer. A recursive hasty flier that just wanted to jam into the red zone every single turn was something that I could appreciate. Unfortunately my attempts at Red Devotion and Rabble Red variants were just not cutting it in a field of Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix. Luckily for those who appreciate the finer things in life (read: huge hasted monsters), I came across this fine little number while looking at SCG Indianapolis Premier IQ results:


Temur Aggro
Pilot: Jacob Eckert


Maindeck:

Creatures
3 Ashcloud Phoenix
3 Elvish Mystic
4 Flamewake Phoenix
4 Frost Walker
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
4 Savage Knuckleblade
3 Shaman of the Great Hunt

Enchantment Creatures
3 Boon Satyr

Instants
3 Lightning Strike
2 Wild Slash

Sorceries
4 Crater's Claws

Basic Lands
3 Forest
2 Mountain

Non-basic Lands
4 Frontier Bivouac
2 Mana Confluence
3 Shivan Reef
1 Temple of Abandon
1 Temple of Epiphany
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Yavimaya Coast


Sideboard:
4 Disdainful Stroke
2 Magma Spray
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Charm
3 Surrak Dragonclaw
2 Barrage of Boulders



Now this deck is ferocious! (Pun Intended)

This is everything a Flamewake Phoenix has been hoping for:

    1) 17 creatures enable Ferocious
    2) Accelerants so Flamewake can have some friends
    3) A stack of cheap removal for those pesky blockers


At first glance we have some weird ones like Frost Walker or the underappreciated Shaman of the Great Hunt but trust me when I say both are the realest of deals. Frost Walker is going to happily exchange with any removal, Planeswalkers excluded, or just take nice 4 points life chunks from your opponent. This means he also TRADES with Courser of Kruphix. Trading with Courser makes your Flamewakes better because the more pressure you generate on your opponents lifetotal the better seemingly underwhelming 2/2 fliers become. Mix in Shaman of the Great Hunt to quickly grow our Flamewakes OR draw us more copies of the phoenix and we have a nice aggro deck with a grindy mid-game.


While I wasn’t able to watch any of Jacobs matches on Sunday, it is very clear that this deck wants to start pressuring early and never let off the gas. This combines nicely with all your removal doubling as reach in the late game. When you combine cheap, efficient threats with a variety of burn spells you end up with a control crushing strategy that can also hang with smaller creatures decks thanks to the low cost on its removal. The best part is the sideboard lets you change the way you interact with your opponents whenever you please!


8 Counterspells, Temur Charm is a Mana Leak at heart, allow you to trade effeceintly with all the Siege Rhino decks out there while allowing you to transform some of your underwhelming threats into clean answers to just about anything your opponents throw at your post board. While I think the Surrak Dragonclaw might be a bit unnecessary to win your Control matchups he is very effective at ensuring you land threats when you want instead of when your Ux Control opponents are feeling gracious enough to let you have a creature.


While this deck has many benefits to it I would say that playing this in a field of Abzan Aggro is probably asking for trouble. Their mix of equally efficient, or better if you ask Andrew Tenjum, threats with Thoughtsieze and Abzan Charm make it so they can almost always trade up for your creatures will keeping the pressure on. That’s not to say that the Abzan aggro matchup in unwinnable but if you expect it to be heavily played in your area I would consider Stormbreath Dragons or sideboarding some planeswalkers.


While I cant say with absolute certainty that this exact 75 is the future of Temur aggro, I do think it presents a cohesive and powerful strategy that plays some cards people are unprepared for. So if you want to be turning guys sideways and winning games without taking 30 minutes check take this deck for a spin.


-Kent “Can’t Close” Ketter