Throughout the years that I've played Magic (which wasn't since the Martial Law days contrary to what some believe), I have always considered myself as an "agro” player, or someone who believes in bringing down my opponents' life total to zero as soon as possible. This could be accomplished with a combination of efficiently-costed creatures and either a lot of burn or some ways to prevent them from messing with your folks, gaining life or blocking.

Early on, this meant playing red or sligh (goblins was my first real competitive deck at the time with Goblin Lackeys, Mogg Flunkies and Jackal Pups, which is an honorary goblin, for sure) or stompy with those traitorous Wild Dogs and cheap echo creatures like Albino Trolls.

Through the years I've tried many different variations of aggro decks – white weenie, for sure I had that, and even Blue Skies and U/G Madness, which were aggro-control decks (aggressive creature decks with a smattering of permission). However, I would always be nervous sitting across a first-turn island since that sometimes meant Force Spike but more often, a long-drawn out affair which often involved being denied from casting my spells – bringing them to a low life total only for the opponent to eventually stabilize before being brought down to my knees in a cascade of sweepers and card advantage.

I hated control decks, specially those of the Draw-Go variety since that meant my creatures couldn't get into play, ehem, I mean the battlefield or once there would be evacuated, or worse, wrath-ed away. And when they play their few creatures (Morphling, for example), these were hard to kill and worse, could finish you off quickly while your opponent simply hid behind a wall of counter and bounce spells.

(I still hate seeing Chill and Propaganda, up to this day.)

The thing is, with Magic promoted as being a game for smart people, these same people are supposed to play control decks and that dumber folks must settle for playing aggro decks. (Let's not even talk about those combo fanatics for a second, okay?) The knock is that it doesn't take too much brains to play a Jackal Pup, attack, then burn whatever creatures come down on defense and continue attacking with your cheap creatures until your opponent is dead.

(The aggro player's favorite question for his opponent is, "What's your life total again?" On the other hand, the control players most familiar query is "How many cards are in your hand?")

On the other hand, it supposedly takes real skill to determine what the real threats are and to counter them, to try drawing cards at the end of your opponents' turn to fill up your hand and then dealing with whatever creatures had made it to the board by then with a well-timed sweeper.

But guess what? The best players adapt to simply playing the best decks for what the metagame allows, whether it be aggro, control or even combo (see those crazy Elves!, Time Sieve decks and for a while before Cascade Swans and even before that, Dragonstorm). If the smart thing to do is drop a Savannah Lions and swing for two, the champion spellslingers can do that. If the best deck employs a 7cc sorcery to accomplish its task of controlling the game in a "cruel" manner, you best believe that the good players will do it.

And if the deck that functions best needs to resolve a nine-mana sorcery that requires you to play multiple spells beforehand to achieve your goal of winning games, then the planeswalker-wannabe will find a way to make this happen consistently while foiling your well-laid plans.

The truth of the matter is that the best players are those who can play many different styles, and that the select few national champions must not only be adept at the standard constructed format but in limited as well.

Now in defense of sheer aggro players, you can always claim that you know math very well which is why you choose to play this way. And that you lack the patience to play islands anyway. Because if you did, you would probably be at Metrowalk right now playing Texas Hold ‘Em.