Magic: The Gathering - Standard 2024 Mono-Red Aggro Deck Guide (2024)

One of the most well-known facts about Magic: The Gathering constructed play is that whenever a rotation happens, it's a good day for mono-red aggro. New cards flooding the Standard format means that players will be trying all kinds of different deck permutations as they attempt to figure out which strategies have legs and what cards are worth testing.

Aggressive decks like mono-red aggro that are looking to win the game as fast as possible have a very easy time taking advantage of a field of decks that aren't exactly sure what they're doing. Consequently, players interested strictly in winning will most likely have no better option than mono-red aggro as we move into the next Standard season.

Sample Decklist

Key Cards

Slickshot Show-Off

See Also

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It's not an overstatement to say that this card alone brought mono-red to the next level of competitive viability. This is the best creature in your deck, thanks to its trigger which allows you to swing in for massive amounts of damage in the air out of nowhere.

Knowing when to plot this creature so that you can safely deploy it and cast some noncreature spells alongside it to swing in for a huge chunk of life is a very important part of piloting this deck properly. The best mono-red players will be sure to get as much value out of their Slickshots as is possible.

Urabrask's Forge

This is your tool for providing an inevitable clock against midrange and control decks. Eventually, this artifact will print a big enough token with trample that the opponent will run out of life. While this is an extremely important card against midrange and control decks, it's next to useless when you're in a mirror or facing an otherwise aggressive deck. Sideboard accordingly.

Lightning Strike / Blooming Blast / Witchstalker Frenzy

Access to damage-based removal is part of what makes mono-red an archetype that keeps on coming back. Knowing when to aim at your opponent's life total when casting Lightning Strike and Blooming Blast is another facet of this deck that will separate the pros from the novices.

Blooming Blast in particular is a spell you want to sit on if you can. Gifting a treasure is a very real cost, so be sure to gift it at a time that's not ideal for your opponent. Meanwhile, Witchstalker Frenzy is a main board answer for high toughness creatures. You can typically get away with casting this card for a heavily reduced cost thanks to your extensive suite of cheap, hasty creatures.

How To Play Mono-Red Aggro

Play hasty creatures, turn them sideways, and kill your opponent as fast as possible. This is the creed of mono-red players in its simplest form. It's important to understand that playing mono-red is often more about playing against your own deck than it is about playing against the opponent's deck.

Your spells are very cheap, so you can deploy them very quickly. However, the fact that they're so cheap also means that they will quickly be outvalued by cards that cost more mana. Consequently, you're in a race to defeat your opponent before they can extract the greater value of the cards in their deck. In other words, mono-red aggro is more akin to solitaire than chess.

On the first few turns, you'll want to establish a board presence and start to chip in for damage. Any blockers the opponent presents should be removed as efficiently as possible so that your creatures can continue to attack for value. By turn four or five, your opponent might have played a blocker that you can't answer.

At this point, you have to decide whether it's worth it to lose some of your board in exchange for further reducing the opponent's life total. More often than not, the answer to this question will be yes. If your creatures can reduce the opponent's life total to five or less, there's a good chance that you can win the game by drawing a Lightning Strike or haste creature off the top of your deck.

In cases where you don't win the game early, you still have a chance to steal the game later on thanks to Urabrask's Forge, Fugitive Codebreaker, and Squee, Dubious Monarch. All of these cards give you a little bit of late game viability, so look to lean on them when things don't go to plan.

Sideboarding

Like most things mono-red aggro, the sideboard is fairly self explanatory. Lithomantic Barrage comes in against white or blue decks fielding creatures and planeswalkers and Witchstalker Frenzy is your answer for the pesky Sheoldred, The Apocalypse.

Your final copy of Urabrask's Forge as well as Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest are great against control decks as well as midrange decks relying on single target removal. Lastly, Obliterating Bolt and Koth, Fire of Resistance are for dealing with decks that present lots of four toughness creatures like Sentinel of the Nameless City and Zoetic Glyph. The exile phrase on bolt gets around death triggers.