Either your games play out very differently than mine, in cube and retail limited, or you guys just dislike aggressive decks.
Mistral Charger saw play even in powered cubes not long ago. In my lower powered list I'm still running it (as well as
Wings of the Guard), and blue getting slightly worse versions seems adequact. W/U Skies is a classic archetype I like to support a bit. A good tempo deck.
Long post incoming! I feel there's a lot of confusion going on here about what constitutes an "aggressive" deck, so I want to state my position perfectly clearly.
I think many of us are extremely fond of aggressive decks, we just pursue "aggression" in a different way. Personally, I don't think a cube should be built towards the constructed theaters of "aggro", "midrange", "control", and "combo". You end up (as a cube designer) spending a lot of slots on generic beaters to support aggro as a viable archetype, because aggro decks
cannot function without a critical mass of those, which cuts into slots that could be spent on more fun cards. Meanwhile, there's a constant threat of midrange taking over the format, which is the deck most non-seasoned players will gravitate towards once you teach them about Magic and limited deck construction, and the looming threat of control either doing nothing and being miserable to draft, or doing too much and being miserable to play against.
Meanwhile, you're seeing spoiler season and getting excited for the latest limited build-arounds, which further serve to either choke out space from generic beaters, or give too much excitement to the ever-popular "midrange" deck.
Cui bono?
By the way - I mention "fun" a lot in my posts, which I'm sure is endlessly frustrating, as that's a term up for debate. I kindly direct you to
this ancient post, which I crafted many centuries ago, but which still stands up and explains my position.
Considering my goal of "fun-max", my style of aggression is to orient the list towards pairs that can formulate early pressure and translate that into a reach plan to close out later.
does this by leveraging protection effects and cards that provide +1/+1 counters into a late game with big creatures that are even more threatening thanks to counter lords.
does this by playing cheap, evasive creatures and utilizing ninjutsu cards to amp up the pressure, and then repeatedly get them into the red zone backed by bounce and kill spells.
has some great beaters that have discard-for-value and sacrifice synergies built in.
provides big beef and ways to turn lands into other kinds of value, justifying a bigger-than-aggro land count if desired.
is looking to draw lots of cards with
ophidian effects and play a beatdown plan.
can go wide and turn artifacts into all kinds of aggressive pushes.
Now, some would classify many of these under the more generic title of "midrange". I mean, a
deck that has time to level up
Abzan Falconer isn't getting a T4 kill very often, is it? But that's not really a very thoughtful assessment. The
deck tries to keep an aggressive slant to the curve and has ways for enhancing its early-turn beaters as the game goes long. It's primarily an aggressive deck; it's just an aggressive deck that isn't looking to win by T4, in part because bouncelands slow down the format, and in part because there aren't many wraths to "race" against control, minimizing the pressure of the "T4 panic" that sets in for many aggro players in cube. But even if there is a wrath; what kind will it be? My sweepers are primarily damage-based, which the
Little Kid Counter-Beats deck can either
outgrow before or
rebuild after. But the deck is first and foremost oriented towards an aggressive start and a strong mid- and late-game.
anticipates the risk of a stall, and mitigates against it in the deck construction. It's a very interactive deck, and I would like to think that all of my aggressive pairs will be doing this sort of intricate build-up and back-up planning for and against in the long-term.
Then you get to a pair like
. Historically, that means Draw-Go Board Wipe control,
perhaps a skies-aggro deck, or blink. While it can certainly try to leverage some early-game pressure, in my list, my angle is on a decidedly slower midrange pair, because I'm not looking for all color pairs to be able to go equally as aggressive. By varying the points in the game where color pairs execute their plan, you can craft a more involved and engaging tempo that varies between match-ups and adds further variety to the games. So I thought the space could be better-used for a slower deck, since
and
are more aggressive and
was more midrange, whereas all the other blue-connected pairs were looking to be flexible between faster or slower. Though there are plenty of cool fliers available and there's options to go the ninjutsu or spells-matter route really aggressively here, I decided to pursue a slower deck, looking to capitalize on token-producing effects and control tools inherent to the pair to out-value an opponent. In this way, I avoid generic aggro pieces filling up each color, and concede some advantage to different pairs in aggression over others, giving some further variety to a format already oriented towards slower matches. I prefer this, and I think it's a lot of fun, as do my drafters, who think this new style of cube construction is miles more enjoyable than my first, traditional approach to cube construction.
Now, to be clear: That's not to say I think it's incorrect to try and support a
skies-aggro deck, or that I think it's "no fun" or "bad cube construction". I like a good aggressive
fliers plan, quite a bit! What I am saying with all this, is that I love aggressive decks
when they're comprised of fun cards, and I'm not seeing the "fun" factor that would lure me into something like
Wild Dogs or
Gossamer Phantasm. Picks like
Kessig Prowler or even
Rattlechains, which can serve similar purposes, get me far more interested. I'm not saying those cards are power-level appropriate, or that there's no reason to run something strictly-worse like
Gossamer Phantasm, but I'm merely trying to underscore that I'm not some big anti-aggro campaigner; I love aggressive decks. I just have a different idea for how they should be baked into a format.
vs
