Deck Anatomy: Aggro

Written By - Thomas NeilsonInspiration From - @KalvioniSeptember 11th, 2025

Sometimes my ideas for articles come from the goal of diving into a topic that I haven't explored in the context of LRAW like with sideboarding, or archetype definitions. Others, with a particular interest that pops up. Sometimes, I can't take credit for the idea for an article at all.

This is one of those ideas, and one of those articles. So with a quick shoutout to Kalvin for an interesting topic of discussion, let's dive into what an aggro deck actually looks like in Legions: Realms At War.

Laying The Groundwork

Now what is an Aggro deck? The topic of Archetypes is something I've personally dug into, since they're such a core component of how we talk about TCGs and the decks that appear within them, but they can also be unhelpfully ephemeral terms at time. If you're curious to checkout my deep dive into defining the Archetypes of LRAW, you can check that out here! If you're understandably not interested in digging through nested articles, here's a quick definition for Aggro in the context of LRAW:

An Aggro Deck is an archetype of deck simply looking to win the game as quickly as possible. In the context of LRAW, that entails pushing your opponent's DCM from zero to max as quickly as you can.

Combo and Storm are slightly different, but I'll let them under the "Aggro" umbrella for the purpose of this article.

In Short: An Aggro Deck Wants to Win. Fast.

Now in terms of actually building an aggro deck, a few ideas popped up fitting in the 5 word prompt on the Discord. A few aggro decks got tossed around and referenced, but the general consensus mostly coalesced around the idea of "go fast". My personal entry was "Win ASAP, interact as necessary".

While correct for the archetype overall, what does this actually mean in deckbuilding? A full dive into every possible complexity is likely going to push this article past the round timer, and that's not really aggro's style. So, to try to simplify, I'm going to be focusing on some main card categories in an aggro deck, and show off how they actually appear in tournament placing lists.

Also, to stay on track, the goal here is helping to build aggro decks, so I'll try to keep the ideas generically applicable, and not just for specific legions.

Picking It Apart

Categorizing cards in a deck is something I'm a big fan of employing in deckbuilding. A pile of 50 cards, (or 60 if you insist) can be uninformative in just a big picture block, so when I'm exploring an idea in deckbuilding I like to group cards to explore what purpose they fulfil in a deck. These categories can be as specific as you want, but for here I want to explore 3 larger parts of an Aggro Deck.

1: The Kill | 2: The Engine | 3: The Interaction

These are vaguely ordered in the rank of their priority in deckbuilding, although how these appear in a deck will shift drastically, and a deck will have a hard time succeeding without all 3. Let's first break down what these labels actually mean.

1: The Kill

As expected, the defining feature of an Aggro deck is speed: it's ability to take an opponent out of the game as quickly as possible. As such, a big thing to keep a focus on is how you actually close out the game, as this is often the thing your deck will be built around. For example, in Sapphire Storm your main kill tool is Ancient Relic - Sword Of Sacrifice, a card which takes great advantage of a bunch of free Warriors. With a supporting cast of Help From The Hood and The Hood Becomes The Resistance, Sapphire Storm looks to get a couple swings in with the big Sword to close out a game as early as Turn 1 as the second turn player.

Not every aggro deck will have a "singular" win condition, and many will have multiple ways to push in damage. While Blastforge's favourite way to kill is Blastforge Melt-Cannon, the deck also pushes in plenty of damage with it's waves of Warriors, and especially the (Snapshot) from Grue, The Blastforge Hunter Owl.

This can be the place where the distinction between an Aggro Deck and a Combo deck can really come through. Combo decks like Sapphire Storm will likely be more reliant/all in on a singular key win condition. An Aggro deck like Sharn in comparison, will usually have a few ways to push in damage like Outer Rim Exclusion Zone, alongside it's bigger win conditions.

2: The Engine

Now you can't just fill your deck with only cards that kill your opponent of course, although you can certainly try. As such, you're going to need more cards to flesh out your deck, and with most single-card win conditions, it's going to take a lot more than that one card to win the game.

Sharn Aggro is a great example of this, as her deck has a very powerful card draw engine. This engine not only lets you very quickly go through your deck to find more cards to play, but also helps to fuel your central win condition. Temple Of Duskzog gives your Boar tokens +1 Attack for each Orc Warrior in your discard pile, while the Wartorn Wasteland synergy gives the same attack buff, but to all of your Orc Warriors.

Now the engine is a difficult thing to singularly define, and it'll look different for every Legion, but your main goal is usually going to involve seeing as many cards as you can, as quickly as you can. Note that I'm saying seeing cards and not drawing cards. While putting cards directly into your hand is the most convenient familiar form of card advantage, many decks take advantage of the discard pile or eradication zone which can make cards like Into The Blastforge especially useful.

For Sharn Aggro, your engine consists of a few overlapping synergies. Reservoirs Of Revival Ooze lets you tutor multiple Warriors to discard, and revives one per turn. Sildud's Call Of The Orcbane synergizes with Pride Of The Orcbane, with Sildud's Call both finding and discarding Pride, which draws additional cards. While there are more separate "pockets" of synergy, your main focus on discarding and destroying your own cards/Warriors offers various sources of interplay between cards.

3: The Interaction

Now you've got cards in your deck that kill your opponent, cards that help you find them and you're all good to go! Until your opponent flips a Mists that is. Now this ties back to my initial 5 word response: Win ASAP, interact as necessary. The first 2 categories I've laid out fall firmly into the "Win ASAP" part of this equation. This category, is where the second half comes into play.

No matter how fast you're going, you'll have to contend with the fact that your opponent is also in the game, and most likely isn't a fan of your goal of killing them. As such, it's important not only to have the tools to kill your opponent, but to have the tools to push your win condition through their defences.

Interaction is a pretty varied category, covering any way of messing with your opponent's cards, but with so many options, what should you be looking for in your deck? Some pieces of interaction will be built into your deck already, with cards like Blastforge Melt-Cannon, or Zelfor'Tork, The Fatal Frenzy both functioning as Kill cards and/or Engine cards, while also having removal built in. In terms of cards exclusively ran to disrupt your opponent, your main focus is going to be stopping their defensive cards, generally Fortified cards. There's two categories of cards that excel at this:

Negates

A constant staple, Dismantle is almost synonymous with aggressive decks as an easy fix-all for everything from Mists From The Fata Morgana, to Tethered To The Chaos Divine, to The Twilight Gardens. Having the ability to point and click shut down your opponent's most important defensive pieces is the reason that Dismantle has made it's way into a myriad of aggressive decks, alongside various other Unified negates.

Fortified Destruction

While Negates are great for stopping cards that have already been activated, they only shut down a single card. In contrast, there are a selection of cards which are especially powerful for removing a bunch of Fortified cards in one fell swoop. For example, Outer Rim, Trial Grounds Of Blood lets you take down 2 Fortified cards, forcing your opponent to use them, potentially earlier than they'd like to.

What is especially powerful and useful to keep an eye out for is Fortified cards that can destroy Fortified cards like Pits Of The Outer Rim. Since your opponent can't activate their Fortified cards on your own turn, cards like this can blow your opponent out of the water if they don't expect it by taking out multiple cards before they can even be used.

4: Plan B?

The main 3 categories I've listed are going to be the bread and butter that most aggressive decks rely on to quickly and consistently close out games, but there are certainly cards that escape from those three categories. While they may loosely fit one or skirt the lines between two, some of these cards just don't fit the philosophy of "killing your opponent ASAP".

And they don't necessarily need to.

Take for example, a card like Uthrall, The Blood Shaman. While 6 Atk isn't nothing when it comes to pressuring your opponent, it certainly isn't an all star killer on it's own. It's Ritual Ability lets you reap some life for your opponent's bloodbourne, and while DCM is certainly a resource that aggro decks will use, and certainly wouldn't mind having more of, it's reliant on your opponent taking game actions to get the healing, and it won't be drawing you any cards unless your opponent is real desperate.

In this case, Uthrall is a bit of a "Plan B" card. Not necessarily something you're hard pivoting your strategy towards when the initial gas dies down, but rather a solid midrange piece that offers a bit of extra attrition power in a game that gets extended by a turn or two.

The definition of "Plan B" can also extend quite a bit, take for example one of the most staple cards in the game: Mists From The Fata Morgana. The ability to guarantee survival for a turn is huge in a game which can have such a notable back and forth, and where with the right resources players can turn the tide back from a big advantage. Despite this strength, Mists is a bit of a "Plan B" card in an aggro deck, as the goal of your deck is killing your opponent as soon as possible, and ideally most opponents shouldn't be able to threaten a kill as quickly as you can. Despite this, the interaction available in LRAW means that a quick kill isn't a guarantee, and having tools to enable your own survival can allow you to rebuild to finish the game, even if a few turns later than you would like.

Cards in this category can be great to give your deck a bit more long-term survivability, but be careful about weighing your deck down with cards that aren't supporting your main strategy, or the strategy of your deck might shift to a slower direction than you're expecting.

Now not every card in an Aggro deck is going to do exactly one of these things, and some cards will stretch into 2 categories (or even 3!), but this is a solid baseline to start breaking down some decks. I've chosen 3 specific High Placing Aggro decks from a selection of tournaments to look at and categorize.

Test Subjects

Alongside Prometheus, Sharn is one of the original aggro decks, and a deck that's been a competitive staple from LRAW's inception to the present day. I've decided to go with an older list, where there's a little more distinction between the categories. Of course if I'm looking for a Sharn Aggro list, I've got to go with one of Patrick Watt's, and this one specifically landed 2nd place at the first Kingston Siege Series back in 2023.

Patrick Watt's Sharn Boars Aggro - Kingston Siege Series October 2023

Kill - 11 Cards | Engine - 29 Cards | Interaction - 12 Cards

The Kill

So let's start from the top with the Kill. As you might note, the "Kill" section here is bigger than the other 2 decklists I'll be showing off, and to a degree a large number of these cards would also qualify as sort of a "Plan B".
Temple Of Duskzog is your main kill tool for the deck, buffing up the Boars you generate with Outer Rim Wrangler, Dyadaz and Outer Rim Exclusion Zone.
The 5 Attack Warriors and Slugoth's Legendary Blood Axe also push in a bit more damage, and help the deck to push in damage in situations where you haven't/can't setup Temple Of Duskzog.

The Engine

To start a theme we'll see across these 3 decks, the Engine is easily the largest portion of this deck, with all of these cards in someway contributing to the "draw" power of the deck. Notably here, there are several cards that fit into a "Interaction" role too, with ZelforTork, The Fatal Frenzy and Welcome To Alburdunn also functioning as interaction tools, but I've sorted things based on their arguably most notable role in the deck.
As mentioned in the breakdown on Engines, the draw power of this deck comes through in several overlapping themes and mini-engines. Sildud's Call Of The Orcbane and Pride Of The Orcbane makes for a consistent draw package, but Sildud's also sets up your other Orcbane Engine pieces, and Pride can also be triggered off of cards like Desolation Outpost Of The Outer Rim.

The Interaction

For Interaction, we can see a few main categories. Mists From The Fata Morgana and Majik Void Hollow both fill a similar role, letting you survive through opposing player's turns. Mists being more relevant against an aggressive opponent, and Hollow being more relevant against more controlling decks.
Dismantle, Seal Their Fate, and The Twilight Gardens offer negates on both the Unified and Fortified side, helping to shutdown control tools on both player's turn. In more recent Orc Decks, Duxvox's Doomdrill is another popular Fortified negate to slow down your opponent's setup, or to take down control tools like Welcome To Alburdunn.
Pits Of The Outer Rim and For The Love Of Carnage are two key cards which can take down opposing player's defensive pieces, and most crucially, face-down Fortified cards before they can be activated.
The last card here, Duxvox Orcbane Weapon, Zavic, is a more generic interactive piece which could arguably be considered a "Plan B" card to a degree, but in combination with the Orcbane engine is able to consistently take pieces off of the opponent's board, whether taking out a stax piece, or just removing pieces to fight a slightly longer game.

Next up is a much more recent list that heavily highlights the principles I've laid out here, with Hunter Smith's Sapphire Storm Combo deck, specifically the initial build that took first place at the Guardian's Creed Siege Series. Built around the combination of Sapphire Amulet, The Hood Becomes The Resistance, and March Of The Resistance, there isn't another deck that follows the 3 categories of Kill, Engine, and Interaction quite as clearly as this one.

Hunter Smith's Sapphire Storm Combo - GCD Siege Series 2024

Kill - 5 Cards | Engine - 33 Cards | Interaction - 15 Cards

The Kill

As I've mentioned, this list arguably fits within this categorisation easier than any other, and very few cards fit into multiple categories. Help From The Hood is one of the exceptions, and could be considered more of an Engine piece, but the only thing that Help fuels is the Ancient Relics used to win the game, so I've categorised it here as a card used exclusively to prepare your kill tools.
Ancient Relic - Sword Of Sacrifice and Ancient Relic - Brazen Bracers are your main tools to win through huge Warrior Attacks, while Ancient Relic - Greaves Of Gallantry is used to push a kill through Walls of Warriors, especially Undead death-loops, or Holy Counter protected Warriors.

The Engine

Compared to the overlapping synergies of Sharn Aggro, Sapphire Storm is a deck built around a very specific engine:
The Hood Becomes The Resistance turns all Hero Warriors into Resistance Warriors, March Of The Resistance lets you draw a card whenever you conscript a Resistance Warrior, and Sapphire Amulet lets you Swift Warriors into play for free. These three cards let you turn every Warrior into a free card draw source, so the deck is built to find these 3 cards as consistently as possible with Marovin's Ancient Text.
Past that, every single Warrior in this deck either generates cards (Wisdom, Plunder, Retrieve) or removes Warriors from the board to allow you to draw more cards.
Betrayal From Within is another card I want to point out here as it's primarily used to setup your interactive pieces, but it can get used in this deck alongside Retrieve Warriors to clear board spaces to continue drawing cards.

The Interaction

Again, this deck heavily highlights the principals I've discussed, and it's interaction suite very cleanly fits into 2 categories.
A large number of copies of Dismantle and Seal Their Fate offer strong protection to be able to shut down multiple Fortified cards in a backrow.
Fandorian Ferocity and the combination of Betrayal From Within + Dark Wood Archers Of Evergreen both offer strong ways to bust through defensive Backlines. Dark Wood Archers lets you take down 3 cards at once, while Fandorian Ferocity can be activated on your opponent's turn, and even before your first turn.
Cornelius, The Magi Changeling is nice here too, letting you make a bunch of key cards un-negatable, including all 3 of your engine pieces, and your Betrayal From Within.
Notably, Sapphire Storm cuts both Mists From The Fata Morgana and Majik Void Hollow, leaving these turn shutdown pieces to the sideboard, since the list would rather shut a game down asap then mess around with trying to slow down an opponent.

The third deck to break down here is the best performing aggro list from LRAW's biggest tournament to date: Lukas Richardson's Quartzheart Blastforge Aggro list took 3rd place at the 2024 Rally The Realms tournament, and it's an incredibly explosive aggro list that takes the idea of an Engine to the Xtreme. Blastforge's popularity has had an interesting arc, going from a decent aggro contender in the early days, to losing popularity, to shooting back up in more recent metagames.

Lukas Richardson's Quartzheart Blastforge Aggro - Rally The Realms 2024

Kill - 8 Cards | Engine - 31 Cards | Interaction - 13 Cards

The Kill

While Sharn and Sapphire Storm both generally build into one central win-condition, Blastforge's kill tools build off of the deck's bounce focused engine. Both Blastforge Melt-Cannon and Grue, The Blastforge Hunter Owl let you crank up the damage you deal while cycling through your Warriors in play, by gusting them back to hand.
This version of Lukas' Blastforge list also featured a Plan B Born Of Blastforge Fire as a way to push in a chunk of effect damage against decks like Gaia, which can lock down Warrior attacks, and Twilight Lotus is a funky way here to skip the heavy cost on the card, which can be easily picked up with Twilight Princess Hyacinth.

The Engine

Blastforge sits sorta in-between Sharn and Sapphire Storm where it's engine is focused around one main card, Into The Blastforge. Into triggers whenever you Conscript a Blastforge Warrior, allowing you to Conscript more Warriors into play to trigger it again, while also funnelling other cards into your Discard Pile where they can be picked up with your Storala, The Blastforge Apprentice, or Keltorr's Explosive Kit, or you can activate their in-discard abilities.
Blastforge Xtreme is another strong piece, being a repeatable way to both dig deeper into your deck, setup cards in discard, and to bounce Blastforge Warriors back to hand. In certain situations, Xtreme can look like a true infinite engine in the same vein as Sapphire Storm's engine, but the deck works in a much more free form manner.
Several other cards build out little engine pieces that look much more similar to that seen in Sharn, such as with Blastforge Turbine being a one-shot setup piece to help get your Engine rolling.

Interaction

Nisty's Warcleaver joins Dismantle and Seal Their Fate as an incredibly potent trio of negates, with Blastforge Barrier Buckler and Twilight Thorn joining The Twilight Gardens on the Fortified side. Blastforge Blastbombs and Blastforge Melt-Hammer also offer some Fortified tools to punch through back lines, while also playing into another important portion of this deck.
As you may have noticed, there's a lot of overlap from the previous 2 decks in what interactive tools are valuable, and I'm not particularly interested in repeating myself thrice, so let's dig into a more interesting/notable consideration here.
This deck features two archetypes that heavily inform it's Fortified Lineup: Blastforge is clearly one, with the Fortified tools available being easy to tutor off of Blastforge Xtreme. Additionally, this deck also uses Twilight Princess Hyacinth, which is able to find your two Fortified Negates consistently.
The flexibility of the card advantage engine here allows the deck to pivot from digging for a kill, to digging for a full backline setup. While the list doesn't have enough Fortified cards to play a "control" game, it can make sure that if it goes first, it has enough control tools to heavily handicap an opponent's first turn, to have a seamless kill on it's second turn.

The Golden Aggro Ratio?

Now if you've been paying attention to the numbers, there's a surprisingly consistent pattern here. When I went about breaking down the data/categories of these decks, I didn't expect to have things fall so cleanly together, but it makes sense that the ratios here match so closely. Let's start by exploring the individual categories and ratios.

The Engine

Unsurprisingly, this is consistently the largest part of the deck which makes a lot of sense in the context of an Aggro deck. When you're trying to kill as fast as you can, you're looking to find things consistently and quickly.
Your kill tools are only one small part of your deck, which will be reliant on several other components to function. As such, a lot of your deck will need to be devoted to both finding your kill tools, and setting up a board state where they're effective.
This category leans towards roughly 60% of the decks. The only list here which doesn't hit at least 60% is Sharn, who arguably has certain cards in the other sections, like Outer Rim Exclusion Zone, that also fit under the category of "Engine".

The Kill

The other fundamental part of an aggro deck, this is the section that had the most flexibility, ranging from 21% to 9%, but that's largely due in my opinion to the dividing point between a true aggro deck and a true combo deck.
An aggro deck like Sharn leans into a more varied and diverse package of kill cards, lending to more flexibility if one is removed.
On the flip side, a combo deck like Sapphire Storm is all in on a very select kill, unless it's packing a backup plan.
This section has the biggest range, but it seems to stick around the 10%-20% mark.

The Interaction

The last third of the categories, and the last quarter of the decks, interaction is also a pretty consistent category ranging somewhere around the 25% mark.
The flexibility here seems to also slightly reflect the differences between aggro and combo.
Aggro decks feature a few less "combo" oriented interaction, like negates and fortified destruction, but do pack other tools that can interrupt opposing players while fulfilling other goals, like Gone But Never Forgotten.
On the other hand, all in Combo decks lean heavily into whatever interaction allows their deck to do the thing as consistently as it can, and through whatever control tools it needs to, even shaving other strong control tools to make room.

Building a Definition

In short, while 5 words is maybe a little too tight, 3 words and 3 numbers seem to work just fine to define aggro:

15% Kill, 60% Engine, 25% Interaction.

But that's a little ephemeral and unhelpful, so here's a quick rundown of what to look for when building an aggro deck.

Your Kill and Engine will almost certainly be linked. While the categories of cards I've sorted as "Kill" cards is relatively small, the cards in your engine will often contribute to how much damage you're doing. Sapphire Storm doesn't need any particular Warrior to perform it's win condition, but it does need some number of Warriors in play to equip Armaments to and to sacrifice. Sharn Aggro doesn't need any particular Warriors in play to win, apart from Boars in Outer Rim builds, but you do need a certain number of Warriors in your discard pile to buff up your Warriors.

As such, your Kill and Engine more so fit into 3 parts:

The specific cards that kill your opponent
Engine cards that fuel your ability to kill (I.e. Warriors in Orcs, Sapphire Storm, Blastforge, or Grimm / Holy Counter generators in Castiel)
The engine cards that let you generate cards, and especially setup cards in category 2.

As for your Interaction, the 2 categories that I've mentioned over and over again will be your bread and butter.

Negates, especially unified Negates, to shut down defensive Fortified tools
Hard removal which can deal with defensive cards, whether Face-down Fortified cards or ACT Stax cards.

There are tons and tons of good interaction pieces available to every legion, and you'll almost be guaranteed to have too many options rather than too few. That being said, be careful about how many you run, and think about what your interaction is achieving that works towards the goal of your deck.

Ultimately, having a "Plan B" can be a useful thing in a deck, but it can also be a trap. If you're running a lot of cards that help if your plan doesn't work, you might end up with a self fulfilling prophecy by making your plan too inconsistent. If something doesn't actively aid your main game-plan, make sure you have a good reason for including it. Also, depending on the deck/archetype/tools, you might find that the "Plan B" is actually better than your "Plan A". Look at Prometheus for example, where the deck has pivoted from a traditionally aggressive archetype to a much more midrange one, thanks to strong control tools allowing it to play a slower and more consistent game, while still having it's ability to push in huge chunks of damage.

As for the "Golden Aggro Ratio", the important thing isn't matching the Ratio 1 to 1, but it's a helpful tool, and jumping off point to compare to your own aggro deck. If something doesn't line up by a large margin, it might be a sign that your deck is missing in a certain area. Maybe your Interaction package is a little light, and you could use more pieces to help ensure that your aggro start can actually push through your opponent's defences. Maybe your Engine is too small, and you aren't finding your pieces as quickly/consistently as you would like.

The differences between archetypes can push the "ideal" ratios of any given deck to look quite different; the important part is to understand why your ratio is different, and what about your deck pushes the numbers.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, here's 4 easy tips.

Your deck should be built around your Kill/win condition.
Your Engine fuels the consistency of everything you do, and consistency is speed.
Interaction is crucial for slowing down your opponent, but be careful it doesn't slow you down.
Having a "Plan B" is great, as long as it doesn't get in the way of your "Plan A".

Also, I've really enjoyed working on this article, and it's various sections, and I'll almost certainly be expanding on some of the ideas I've explored in here. If there's anything that particularly interested you, let me know on Discord! (@manawyrmtcg) if there's something that jumps out, I might be inclined to turn it into a spin off article. Additionally, if you've got any questions about deckbuilding or deck ideas, you can always post them on the LRAW community discord, where me, and a bunch of other helpful people can give tips and thoughts!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse