FJT Aggro (peaked #4, Far Horizons league)

A pretty solid aggro deck that did well in the Far Horizons league. Peaked at #4 with a 31-9 record, although I expect to fall out of top 10 by the time the league ends. (EDIT: down to #14. Alas!)

My experience with leagues is that in the early weeks, many decks are focused on splashy bombs and winning the lategame - people often have sketchy influence and questionable curves. This deck had some solid lategame cards in General Izalio and Pillar of Amar, which pulled me into Praxis. However, I also had three Combrei Banners, which made it really easy to also splash Justice for a few extra powerful cards like Awakened Student, Relentless Deadshot, and Paladin Oathbook.

As things progressed into weeks 3 and 4, the format (and this deck) became more focused on curving out consistently. My mental model for a good week 4 deck is one filled with GAS ('Generic Aggro Stuff'). I'm running a lot of two power 1-drops (earlier weeks features a Headhunter over the second Oni Patrol), which meant that triggering onslaught was really easy for Oni Patrol and Svetya's Faithful, allowing me to hit the board fast and hard, and apply a lot of pressure.

If my opponent was able to play down some blockers, I also had a few extra options for punching through extra damage - either by putting a weapon on a unit, or using something like Paladin's Oathbook or Horn of Plenty. However, I wouldn't say that this deck is particularly well set up for the long game - other than a few shift units, I don't have a lot of evasion or reach, so it's possible to be stonewalled by a big blocker. My pool also didn't contain any good pump spells or combat tricks, which caused issues at times. I do think that tricks get worse later in the league when people are able to run more removal, but it's still nice to have one or two.

I would say that this deck's primary weakness was fliers - I'm very light on removal, so if things get stalled on the ground, I'll pretty much always die in the air. Ideally, I'll be able to race most fliers (which are usually a bit inefficient for their cost), but that doesn't always happen.

MVP: my 1-drops. They consistently allowed me to trigger onslaught to pump up my other cheap cards, and getting immediate value from Paladin Oathbook is really, really good.