From Affinity to Zoo, there are a lot of different takes on aggro in Modern. Between various Tribal Flames decks and Death's Shadow builds, there are even quite a few Five-Color builds of aggro. But I don’t know that we’ve ever seen anything quite like this aggressive build by Jack Rumpf:

Five-Color Aggro ? Modern | Jack Rumpf

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Tidehollow Sculler
• 2 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 2 Kitchen Finks
• 2 Qasali Pridemage
• 3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 3 Mantis Rider
• 3 Spell Queller
• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Siege Rhino
• 4 Voice of Resurgence

• Spells (6)
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 4 Path to Exile

• Lands (22)
• 1 Forest
• 3 Gemstone Mine
• 3 Pillar of the Paruns
• 3 Reflecting Pool
• 4 Ancient Ziggurat
• 4 Mana Confluence
• 4 Razorverge Thicket

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Gaddock Teeg
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1 Sin Collector
• 1 Spell Queller
• 2 Izzet Staticaster
• 2 Stony Silence
• 3 Fulminator Mage
• 3 Tidehollow Sculler

Buy This Deck

The card that makes this deck possible is Ancient Ziggurat. That card, in conjunction with Reflecting Pool and Pillar of the Paruns, gives you a painless way to cast all of the best multi-colored creatures, regardless of their colors. Because the deck is capable of playing all of the threats with the most raw power at each step along the mana curve, you’re able to overwhelm a good chunk of the metagame.

Mana creatures give the deck the opportunity to get ahead. However, they exist primarily for ramp rather than fixing in this deck, since you have so many five-color lands. Voice of Resurgence and Spell Queller provide a means of punishing opponents who try to interact. Mantis Rider and Falkenrath Noble let you apply enormous amounts of pressure in the air. Of particular interest is the interaction between Falkenrath Noble and Voice of Resurgence, allowing you to generate an enormous elemental at will. In addition to that, you have both Siege Rhino and Kitchen Finks gaining life to get you out of reach of other aggressive decks. The ability to play all of the best versions of all of these types of threats is definitely not to be underestimated.

The best part? That’s not the end of the options. Being fully five-colors means that you have near infinite options, particularly out of the sideboard. If you expect to play against a lot of non-basics, you could play Fulminator Mage and potentially Kolaghan's Command. If you’re expecting Combo decks, you can play Tidehollow Sculler and Sin Collector. In more attrition-based matchups you could board in Huntmaster of the Fells.

The only problem with this strategy is that you don’t get to play the great interactive spells in the format. No copies of Lightning Bolt or Thoughtseize is tough to stomach, but you have to play a lot of five-color lands to make this deck work. That means there’s not enough space for the fetch-shock manabases that allow people to fix specific colors early on. Instead, your manabase is conditional. Ancient Ziggurat can only cast Creatures, while Pillar of the Paruns can’t cast many one mana spells.

In spite of that, you get to play a lot of the best cards in Modern, and if any opponents stumble it’s likely that they’re just going to be dead to a combination of hasty, evasive threats and Siege Rhinos. Even if they have a reasonable draw, if they’re expecting to lean on Lightning Bolts to contain your aggressive starts, that’s not really a card that many of your threats care about. If you think people are trying to get too cute, then it may just be time to overpower them with Voice of Resurgence, Mantis Rider, and Siege Rhino.