Assess your Strategy

The first step when building any deck is to consider how you plan to win the game. For most aggressive decks, a winning strategy tends to manifest in one of two ways primarily - pressuring the board, and/or pressuring life totals. Most aggressive decks will combine some mix of either of these two strategies to close out the game before their opponent can use their powerful lategame cards. Take a look at the cards you are interested in using. Are these cards going to win the board quickly with aggressive creatures, or do they aim to establish a commanding board pressence to out muscle your opponent on the board.

This will determine which one-drops are best for your deck. If you’re going for a aggressive strategy to pressure your opponent’s life points early so that you can end the game in a flurry of burn spells, you’ll want to focus on creatures with haste or evasion, like Raging Goblin or Silent Prowler. If you’re looking for a more board-centric tempo-oriented approach, you might want to consider creatures with abilities that disrupt your opponent’s game plan, like Mana Constrictor or Cranial Consultant.

Balance your Mana Curve

In a red deck, having a good mix of one, two, and three-drops is important because these are the turns where you typically want to establish board presence and pressure your opponent. If you have too many three-drops and not enough one-drops, you might find yourself falling behind early on, which can be difficult to recover from. On the other hand, if you have too many one-drops and not enough three-drops, you might run out of gas later in the game and struggle to close out the game.

Three drops often provide the most powerful effect for an aggressive deck, but three drops are also the hardest cards to cast and maintain mana efficiency. Relying on three drops will make your deck very vulnerable to disruptive cards like Absorb, or Wildspeaker’s Fury. In situations where you have to cast a three drop off curve, consider if you have enough one drops or mana sinks to continue to play efficiently.

By considering the distribution of mana costs in your deck, you can choose one-drops that complement your other spells and help you maintain a smooth curve. For example, if you have a lot of three-drops, you might want to choose one-drops that can help you maintain pressure early on and ensure that you have a good board presence, even if you don’t draw many three-drops. Conversely, if you have fewer three-drops, you might want to choose one-drops that can provide utility later in the game, such as by generating cards or dealing additional damage.

The reason why the amount of three drops matters when choosing your one-drops in Spellslingers is related to the concept of curve. A curve is the distribution of mana costs of spells in a deck, and it is important because it affects how consistently a deck can execute its game plan. In general, you want your deck’s curve to be smooth, with a good distribution of spells at all mana costs.

Fight the Metagame

Finally, take into account the current metagame. If you know what types of decks you’ll be facing, you can choose one-drops that are particularly effective against those decks. For example, if you’re expecting to face a lot of creature-heavy decks, you might want to consider one-drops with good combat stats, like Pouncing Lemur or Sun Dancer. Alternatively, if you’re expecting to face a lot of control decks, you might want to choose one-drops that can be very scary on empty boards, like Two-Headed Hellhound or Pir, the Dreamer.

Putting it all together

Here is a Nahiri build by Grgapm, a team member of MTG-SS, which he has piloted successfully at top 10 mythic.

Barbarian Nahiri is a popular strategy as the pairing of Emberspawn Crags with Nahiri’s build in ability to empower attackers means she will find no shortage of 5 power haste creatures to trigger five face damage every turn. There are some very deliberate choices across the curve in this specific build of the deck, especially when it comes to the chosen one drops.

This deck eschews popular Nahiri cards like Raging Goblin and Inferno, and even skims on Skyknight Legionanaire, a card considered by many to be staple of the deck. According to Grgapm, he stated that he aimed to minimize the amount of 2 power creatures in the decklist, as they are the most difficult to raise to 5 power. This allows him greater freedom to use his axe more aggressively in the early turns to force trades and establish tempo. While a card like Sun Dancer might not be able to deal two damage on turn one but later on she will make up for this lost damage with the ability to convert into a 4/3 making her easily able to trigger barbarian class if needed. Give a try!