The single most important thing that any Magic player can do while deck building is to be creative. More than merely be creative, a good deck builder has to know what will work and what will not, and what sort of environment the deck will need to thrive in. In an environment where there is any dominant deck, no creative endeavor, no matter how clever, will be of any value at that time if it cannot defeat the most prevalent decks in the format.

With that in mind, anyone developing any deck with an aggressive theme in Type One needs to be able to beat control — most specifically five color control decks known as Keeper (with their origins in Weissman's The Deck) and more recently mono-blue decks that use four Morphlings, four Fact or Fictions, and about twenty-five counterspells (affectionately dubbed BBS, or Blue Bull Sh!t for its complete lack of talent). With the majority of skilled Type One players playing control decks, these types of decks have evolved past Zoo and most Sligh decks with leaps and bounds.

This has happened for numerous reasons, but the one I think is the most important is simply that control decks have a stigma attached to them as being the hardest kind to play and build, so naturally the more skilled players gravitate toward them because they feel that winning with an elaborate control deck is somehow more meaningful than winning with an elaborate aggressive deck. As a result of this, control decks have had more attention paid to them and have thus become the best deck... Not because it is an inherently better style of deck to build, but because that is where the effort is going.

I am intentionally ignoring SRB and BBS in this discussion, chiefly because I think either deck requires little more than a list of card to build and play reasonably well. With one it is play a creature, burn a path, and with the other it is counter everything, play Morphling. Who needs either?

With the conjunction of most of the better players focusing on control and the problem of Deadguy Red style aggressive decks being very easy to make, aggro players have been left in the cold. My previous red deck, "Rubefacere," was my effort at building an aggressive deck that can consistently beat Keeper, and I have had nothing but success with it thus far. To follow up with that success, I started working on a deck that could consistently beat BBS.

BBS wins because of three cards: Powder Keg, Morphling, and Back to Basics. Powder Keg gives blue a way to deal with fast, cheap creatures, where before it had to turn to Nevinyrral's Disk as a board sweeper. Keg allows blue to defeat the early rush of Deadguy Red and Sligh and allows it to get into a situation where it can counter later damage sources. Morphling is Morphling, and playing four of them backed by heavy countermagic can stop just about any later game creature rush, and the ways of dealing with a Morphling supported by a Force of Will and Mana Drains are few and far between. The five colors of Keeper would easily defeat the single mindedness of BBS, except Back to Basics provides BBS with a way to attack Keeper's mana while emerging unscathed itself. Back to Basics should have been a green card.

Keeping these three things in mind, I designed the following White Weenie deck. Bear in mind that the main deck is somewhat metagamed against BBS, such as the two Abeyances maindeck over two Swords to Plowshares:

Azhrei WW:

9 Plains
3 Adarkar Wastes
4 Tundra
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Diamond
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine

1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

1 Balance
2 Seal of Cleansing

3 Armageddon
4 Orim's Chant
2 Abeyance

4 Savannah Lions
4 Soltari Priests
4 Soltari Monks
4 White Knights
3 Serendib Efreets

4 Winter Orb

Sideboard:
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismantling Blow
2 Abeyance
2 Story Circle
1 Zuran Orb
1 Timetwister
4 Null Rod

Now, if the first thing you thought after reading that list was "This will lose to any aggressive deck," then you are probably a little right — well, you are if you leave the maindeck as is, anyway. There are a few sideboard slots that should be in the maindeck for a general field, and vice versa, but right now I am concentrating on the control matchup. With that in mind, consider the three points about BBS I brought up earlier.

This deck has a lot of cards in the 2cc slots, but it also has aggressive measures in 1cc and 3cc, which means that Kegging at two is not going to be enough to stop the attack completely. Secondly, in the sideboard you will notice four Null Rods, which do not negatively affect your Winter Orbs. The best thing about this deck against control (and aggro, really) is that you can make maybe three different kinds of decks depending on how you sideboard. You can bring in Null Rods, Abeyances and Story Circles, or a mixture between the two, and you can also make game two and (if needed) three totally different for the opponent by going with one and then the other.

Morphling is a 3/3 creature. It has a lot of special abilities and is a great attacker and blocker, but it is a 3/3 creature. Morphling does not interact with Winter Orb well. Counterspells do not interact with Winter Orb well. Orim's Chant and Armageddon in the same turn make Morphling a terribly overcosted Gray Ogre. Morphling can rarely be blocked. Shadow creatures operate much the same way, but Orim's Chant and Story Circle make the Morphling's attacks less than effective. Morphling takes mana to be worthwhile, and if it eats the mana that needs to be used for countermagic, then too bad. If Morphling doesn't attack to save mana for countermagic, then too bad.

Back to Basics? If there were not nine basic lands, maybe that would be a problem.

As far as aggressively-oriented decks go, this one is not simple. I admit, I am still getting the hang of exactly how to sideboard when and what combinations of sideboard cards work best in what situations. The deck itself, however, is a very strong one based in a proven concept. What sets this apart is that it approaches its enemy in different ways than other WW decks, and that surprise factor gives it a significant advantage against an opponent that is expecting something else as soon as you play a Plains.

As Rubefacere was all about giving elegance to the much-maligned red deck, Azhrei WW is about being unorthodox and using that creativity to gain advantage. Not many people think of Orim's Chant and Abeyance as white's Duress and Hymn to Tourach against control, after all.

Next week I will go into the creative process for designed competitive Type One decks — it's a lot more strenuous an affair than some would have you believe. To help me along with this, if anyone has any special requests that they would like to have worked on and see them built from the ground up, please email me and let me know. Specific strategies, goals, or cards included are all good starting points.