General Fight Club

I vote for mindshrieker as well, but +1 to welkin tier for the simplicity of it. I'd say welkin is actually easier to read as "blue tempo / fliers deck" than mindshrieker if I'm unfamiliar with both of the cards. Mindshrieker runs the risk of reading as some kind of dorky mill card, when it's actually just a evasive beater.

vs

I know we kind of have a simic thread already, but I'm on the fence on these. I'm already running horizon chimera and for some reason I feel much better when the gold section complements itself, and for that reason I'm tempted to rune lorescale coatl. It seems like a much more fun card to draft around, because at it's core it seems like a beater that grows every turn, but it also really wants you to fill your deck with good cantrips. Bounding krasis seems much less impactful on the way you draft and construct the deck.
 
Krasis gives you guaranteed value and can sometimes be a 2 or even 3 for one. But Lorescale is a must kill creature and it gets really strong with looters and such.

Do you prefer GU Tempo or a something like a flash deck, go with krasis imo
You prefer midrange and value lists, go with Lorescale I would say


The main reason my simic 3-drop is the Coatl, is it's awesome art though :p
 
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. {W}{G} 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. {U}{B} 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. {B}{R} has some great beaters that have discard-for-value and sacrifice synergies built in. {R}{G} provides big beef and ways to turn lands into other kinds of value, justifying a bigger-than-aggro land count if desired. {U}{G} is looking to draw lots of cards with ophidian effects and play a beatdown plan. {W}{R} 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 {W}{G} 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 {W}{G} 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 {W}{G} 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. {W}{G} 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 {W}{U}. 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 {W}{R} and {W}{G} are more aggressive and {W}{B} 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 {W}{U} skies-aggro deck, or that I think it's "no fun" or "bad cube construction". I like a good aggressive {W}{U} 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

I know we kind of have a simic thread already, but I'm on the fence on these. I'm already running horizon chimera and for some reason I feel much better when the gold section complements itself, and for that reason I'm tempted to rune lorescale coatl. It seems like a much more fun card to draft around, because at it's core it seems like a beater that grows every turn, but it also really wants you to fill your deck with good cantrips. Bounding krasis seems much less impactful on the way you draft and construct the deck.

I hate to double-post, but I don't feel like further dragging out my last post or muddying its message, so here we are.

I hugely prefer Lorescale Coatl between the two; I think it's a fun, exciting card to me that I'd really love to draft alongside Quirion Dryad and Deeproot Champion, and does that sort of "card draw and beef" deck that I love for {U}{G}. If it weren't for Edric, Spymaster of Trest and my general preference to avoid stacking cmc's in the multicolor section, I'd be running it, and I'm sure at some point on the horizon I'll find a way to argue it into my list regardless. Card's a really sweet design, and ditto on ravnic's art statement - it looks awesome!
 
RBM u gotta find some laconism in your toolbox again...these posts are so long. it's not that they're contentless but there is so much information conveyed that it becomes difficult to tell which point explained is the most important one
(ilu)
 
Nice post(s) RBM! I've basically stopped using the roshambo and just call decks 'fast-game' and 'long-game'. besides 'midrange' nearing t***o levels of abstractness, I feel agro is often conflated with 'sligh' (https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Sligh ... It's word for word what 'agro' is generally thought of in the classic model). It personally feels like I have more room to think when I simply understand if, at its core, is this deck trying to speed the matchup up, or slow it down. Aren't constrained by 'well control means counters!!' etc.

Anyways, seems pretty easy what you are doing with your agro fast-game decks. Basically, design the decks around their colors. Sounds stupid to write it like that, but your UB 'aggression' description is a very... UB way of increasing game pressure, for example. What does each color actually need to be doing in the format. Again, opportunity cost. Can deck [insert deck] work with [insert card]? Yeah maybe. But is it actually contributing, or just being there?

To try and add some actual discussion; about the UW fliers, maybe U or W or both don't actually want a Mistral Charger effect. Maybe the U half of the deck really wants Thieving Magpie or Mulldrifter because they actually contribute to the format meaningfully without being relegated to Skies.dec or bust. Maybe the deck really wants Glint-Nest Crane because the format is equipment and/or artifact heavy and GNC contributes to the Skies strat while bolstering a context of the format. Older powered Cubes didn't generally run Wilkin Tern, for instance, because their blue section had better things to be doing, and those old UW skies decks utilized those better things. Chart a course is another amazing card for UW cuz the evasive attackers can trigger the raid easily. both colors need not contribute the same components for the same decks.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
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.
Supporting WU Skies is fine, but there's more interesting cards than Welkin Tern and Gossamer Phantasm for that, surely.



Just a few 2/1's with actual upside, for instance.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I don't know if its possible to have U and W in the same cube and not have a UW flyers deck result naturally, haha.

Won't comment on tarn of charger, because i.m.o thats a different critera of selection, and am not really interested in any controversy surrounding them, but fwiw these are the white flyer cards I tend to lean on.




But I like that kitty style of deck.

My main reason, personally, for not running welkin/charger, is that I like to support ninjas for my aggressive decks, so 2cc evasive flyers with an ETB are something I'm always in the market for, and that beats out the welkin/charger as picks for those slots.
 
Long post


I think we just can't agree completly, but that's okay, different opinions make for better discussions. I want to give you 3 points to make my stance clear though.

1.) In my opinion, Savannah Lions is a fun card.
Aggro doesn't need 23 super exciting, flashy cards, because the strategy itself is one of the most thrilling ways to play the game. The pace of the game, the risk you're taking, the battle of your opponent trying to stabilize, while you are looking for the last few points of damage is huge fun to me. Even when I'm on the other side. It is subjective what fun is, but I know that quite a few of my drafters feel similar.

2.) I try by all means to make my aggro decks more diverse and synergistic.
Kor Skyfisher bouncing Sarcomancy. Sacrificing Mogg War Marshal to Carrion Feeder. Pairing Lightning Mauler with Keldon Marauders. Having such synergies and many more helps making the fast games even more interesting. Also, I like havin my beaters coming with interesting abilities themself like Wild Mongrel or Captain Lannery Storm.

3.) I think sufficient aggro support makes for a better cube experience.
Not saying by any means your list ist bad or not fun, and you should certainly go for whatever you want, but when I look through your list, I don't see actual aggro decks coming together. The low number of good 1- and 2-drops give me the impression, that a midrange deck, that tends to be a little less grindy is the best thing, that can come together and win games. In slower formats, starting with a turn 2 play can be fast enough, but then this 2-drop needs to be actually aggressive. Ainok Bond-Kin and Kitesail Freebooter aren't enough in a relatively strong cube environment, if you want to play what I call aggro. But you know your cube surely better than I do, just from looking though your list, and I'm sure you know how to balance it.


That said, I am going to bring in Mindshrieker for Gossamer. Not because it is boring, but because it really only goes in the Skies deck, as blue has no aggro support here. Also, the drawback is real with equipment. I will keep Welkin Tern for the moment though.
 
I'm going to need to do a longer response to this later as there's so much to unpick here, but for now I just wanted to dive in with a quick draft I did of rbm's cube that demonstrates aggro quite easily I think

Quick red black aggro from CubeTutor.com











Aggro doesn't have to mean seven one drops and try to kill them before turn four before they Wrath. You can build your cube accordingly. Not saying you are wrong with your approach but you might find you have more fun if you open yourself up to different possibilities.
 
Okay, you've proven me wrong, this is clearly an aggro deck.

But with few 1-drops which aren't even exactly aggro except the mage maybe and 6 aggressive 2-drops it just looks not really consistent to me. Maybe the quality of some individual cards makes up for this, but this is not the way I like to balance my aggro decks.

Another guess is, that I fear such a deck could come together not all that often in actual drafts with this cube.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
If we want to go down the rabbit hole, I feel there is an important issue to tease out:


We would start off with that mana base. Its not surprising to me that tattermung and cackler are rated so highly by you, considering how hostile the mana base seems to be for these aggro decks. I would consider this a mis-draft off of the mana alone. The hyper-aggro decks, and CIPT mana base, are two forces that exist in contridiction.

These decks need good fixing at least just as much as any other deck--probably much more in practice--and a CIPT based mana base throws a major wrench in their works.

I also wouldn't describe a lot of your one drops as being particularly efficient. You basically have the same setup that I've had in the past, with a lot of utility cards, than a set of aggro enablers. It just is that you still have the expanded set of aggro enabling one drops, where I've trimmed the parasitic ones, largely on the experience that parastic one drops end up in all sorts of goofy places where they do parastitic things, and that hyper aggro decks with CIPT mana bases (or basic mana bases) tend to get beaten by there more consistent aggresive midrange or midrange brethern.
 
Okay, you've proven me wrong, this is clearly an aggro deck.

But with few 1-drops which aren't even exactly aggro except the mage maybe and 6 aggressive 2-drops it just looks not really consistent to me. Maybe the quality of some individual cards makes up for this, but this is not the way I like to balance my aggro decks.

Another guess is, that I fear such a deck could come together not all that often in actual drafts with this cube.

As he noted, it was a quick and not-totally-perfect draft, but it's a rather functional list, and it's not really unusual to see a deck with this aggressive slant come together - although I'd probably build it a bit differently, the pool is there and capable of being fun to play and going 2-1 or better, potentially.

The need you're feeling for 1-drops is informed by a meta where the match must start on T1 for aggro to supply sufficient pressure. That's just not the case in my format.
  1. There are a limited number of 1-drops globally, and a highly limited number of strictly defensive 2-drops. This means board development generally begins around T2 for many decks, but the 1-drops included are all flexible enough that everyone is happy to play them. There is no safe-to-wheel Savannah Lions here; the 1-drops are all pretty sweet for everyone, no matter how fast or slow the deck in question is looking to be. As Grillo notes, trimming to a universally-usable core of 1-drops reduces some of the strain on the cube that traditional 1-drop aggro tends to result in, while also helping to avoid leading players down the wrong path.
  2. The manabase is centered on CIPT lands; bouncelands and scrylands all help to slow the game down so that there's less racing pressure for aggressive decks in the early game, and greedier decks are, by way of the mana base, even slower than usual. They make up for that slow-down with more flexibility (due to playing more colors), but the slower the manabase, the more time aggressive decks have to chip in and lower the bar for their reach plan later.
  3. There's no 1-drop mana dorks, only 1 straight-up 2-drop mana dork, and the rest of the ramp effects cost 3+ or have a condition attached. This further alleviates the pressure on aggressive decks, as there's less chance to burst past them on the curve, and if you do get ahead of them, they can always start setting up their reach plan. (This is a major problem for lists that include the signets or things like Mind Stone; skipping ahead in the curve leaves Jackal Pup and friends looking awfully silly in a hurry.)
  4. There are very limited sweeper effects and less efficient removal overall. This, again, lowers the pressure on aggro decks quite a lot. My players are actually, legitimately excited for Saltblast entering the format.
As to the final point you raise, about whether such a deck even exists in live drafts: it does, actually. Aggressive decks with a reach plan are the most popular in my meta. My players like build-arounds and putting together the archetypal puzzles presented by the color wheel in different ways, and many of them encourage an aggressive deck. My last draft session was pretty impressively won by a {W}{G} aggressive deck utilizing +1/+1 counter synergies and catch-all removal like Cast Out besting a slower, grindier {R}{B} discard/sacrifice midrange deck. It was a really great series of games, and the {R}{B} player stuck God-Pharaoh's Gift two different times to great effect.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah I'd say I agree basically all around on your arguments for the Coatl. If the format is high powered enough for Chasm Skulker, that seems even better, but the Coatl is great in lower power. I believe Grillo runs it, and maybe RBM too, in their lower powered formats.


I liked Coatl in a heavy brainstorm environment. I also ran the Skulker, but sometimes it was a really game ruining in a not super fun way. It pushes a theme but I'm not really the biggest fan of its design. I wish the backside did something different.
 
I liked Coatl in a heavy brainstorm environment. I also ran the Skulker, but sometimes it was a really game ruining in a not super fun way. It pushes a theme but I'm not really the biggest fan of its design. I wish the backside did something different.
Oh yeah totally agree it's got some design issues. Even just creating a Penumbra Squid would be better imo. Still a powerful and relatively unique blue effect, so I've been happy to keep it thus far.
 
I vote for mindshrieker as well, but +1 to welkin tier for the simplicity of it. I'd say welkin is actually easier to read as "blue tempo / fliers deck" than mindshrieker if I'm unfamiliar with both of the cards. Mindshrieker runs the risk of reading as some kind of dorky mill card, when it's actually just a evasive beater.

vs

I know we kind of have a simic thread already, but I'm on the fence on these. I'm already running horizon chimera and for some reason I feel much better when the gold section complements itself, and for that reason I'm tempted to rune lorescale coatl. It seems like a much more fun card to draft around, because at it's core it seems like a beater that grows every turn, but it also really wants you to fill your deck with good cantrips. Bounding krasis seems much less impactful on the way you draft and construct the deck.


I am so much on the other side from everyone on this.

I don't believe that Lorescale Coatl makes draft or construction any more interesting. Blue drafters already want to be filling their deck with good cantrips. Unless, your group really undervalues cantrips, I don't see this being a big enough shift to make draft more interesting. And in deck construction, was anyone ever cutting cantrips anyway? On the other hand, having Bounding Krasis when you're in UG can have a much bigger impact on your draft because it has two modes of power you can try to balance or maximize. If you're currently heavier on creatures, do you continue hedging that direction to harness Bounding Krasis's power of influencing combat or do you dip into more instants to synergize with the instant speed trickery it provides? And vice versa if you're heavier on instants. Then, in deck construction, it's flexible power gives you meaningful reasons to shift your deck towards more battlefield focused or stack focused when you may not have otherwise done so.

All that aside, the main reason I strongly prefer Bounding Krasis is game play. For how simple it reads, it provides so many more options. Sure, sometimes the board obviously dictates what to do with it. But when it doesn't, you get a lot more play from it than "play beatstick, draw cards, protect it".

In my experience, having strong flash creatures makes Collected Company a much better card, if you're trying to support that. Collected Company decks very much want for ways to interact while maintaining a high creature count.

I also find it hard to say no to any ways of spicing up cube combat. This point probably applies less to some of the cubes here that are lower powered and are already running combat tricks.

One main argument I see for Lorescale Coatl is that it more strongly pulls someone who is only in one of the colors to play the other. This is a fairly important point for gold cards. Yes, it's true that Bounding Krasis probably won't pull a green drafter into blue unless (they have Collected Company?) or a pull blue drafter into green (unless they're twin comboing?). Whereas Lorescale Coatl will pull a green drafter into blue if they have Quirion Dryad or Deeproot Champion and a blue drafter into green if they have a bunch of cantrips. However, these conditions may be narrow enough that it's not that high percentage of an upside.

The another argument of wanting to support the "miracle grow" archetype is the most defensible in my opinion. If that is your stated goal, you should 100% play Lorescale Coatl. Otherwise, I strongly prefer and would recommend the flexibility and interactivity of Bounding Krasis.
 
If we want to go down the rabbit hole, I feel there is an important issue to tease out:



We would start off with that mana base. Its not surprising to me that tattermung and cackler are rated so highly by you, considering how hostile the mana base seems to be for these aggro decks. I would consider this a mis-draft off of the mana alone. The hyper-aggro decks, and CIPT mana base, are two forces that exist in contridiction.

These decks need good fixing at least just as much as any other deck--probably much more in practice--and a CIPT based mana base throws a major wrench in their works.

I also wouldn't describe a lot of your one drops as being particularly efficient. You basically have the same setup that I've had in the past, with a lot of utility cards, than a set of aggro enablers. It just is that you still have the expanded set of aggro enabling one drops, where I've trimmed the parasitic ones, largely on the experience that parastic one drops end up in all sorts of goofy places where they do parastitic things, and that hyper aggro decks with CIPT mana bases (or basic mana bases) tend to get beaten by there more consistent aggresive midrange or midrange brethern.

Thanks for the feedback.

To the mana base, you might be on the right track. I do have painlands, City of Brass, Mana Confluence and Gemstone Mine as untapped fixers, which makes it possible for aggro decks to get 2 of those relatively easy. I'm playing with the thought of adding more for quite some time, though, either another guild cycle or another rainbow land.

But in reality there are sometimes 2-color aggro decks with only 1 fixer. But I haven't found this to be a misdraft when it plays out. To keep my 7 I usually want to have both colors in mana and at least 2 lands anyway. So it doesn't matter which color my 1-drop is. And because all my 1- and 2-drops only have 1 colored mana symbol (with one exception), a hand with Mountain+Forest will do the trick, and even a single Karplusan Forest can make the likelyhood of mana screw pretty small.

Now, to the 1-drops themself, would you mind telling me which ones you dislike? Because this could help me improving them. As a general rule of thumb, I like them to be good but not better than Savannah Lions.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I would want to draft your cube first before I started making changes like that. I understand the aim you've set for the format, and respect it--I don't want to disrupt what you're trying to do. If I go in and just start cannablizing 1 drops, I'm essentially just supplanting your will for mine.

Besides, I've toyed with this issue, and its an interesting one. I also think you're approaching the problem from the right direction, with the focus on hyprid 1 drops, and aggressive artifacts like spined thopter, that plug gaps in the curve, while working around color fixing issues. Provide them with more fixing bones where you can, while maybe adding something like a chronomaton, or other aggressive artifacts to help with awkward mana, or more hyprid options.

The next big step up from that is the artifact aggro package, with the fixing baubles that entails, but that point is a substantial shift from what you already have.
 
or ?

The UB control decks have been getting overwhelmed by aggressive decks in the last few drafts. I have both of these cards sitting in my "I wonder if this would be fun" pile and want to give one a shot.
 
Toxic Deluge is much better, one of the best sweepers in the game. Drown is fine, but actually no match when it comes to power level.

To answer Grillo and Chris, I have found that not every 1-drop needs to hit for 2 or more a turn. Evasive 1/1s are better than people give them credit for. Dudes like Soltari Foot Soldier get in for 4+ damage easily and they can be game winners with any form of power boosts.
 
Deluge is definitely the better card in a vacuum, but if you are trying to specifically help control against specifically aggro, Drown is probably better. It hits a large majority of creatures in a classic aggro deck while preserving your life total and digging to further answers etc.

Black sun's Zenith is also a good option here.

I'm also noticin that your Black spot removal is a little sacrifice-based. Another destroy effect might help. And having a couple 1/3's in blue can really help too. That PT is great against aggression
 
I've always liked Black Sun's Zenith, so those looking for something slower than Toxic Deluge should try it. It's quite good actually. The fact that you shuffle and can redraw it (so it's more than one sweeper in practice), the -1/-1's are permanent so it doesn't have to kill things just maim them - both make the card better than it gets credit for. It's inefficient but flexible. Particularly good in a midrange list where there's more time. I get super high powered lists needing T3/T4 immediate wrath effects and this is more like T5+ sometimes.

Good discussion on the whole agro debate. I think there are many ways to balance things. My 2 cents, the faster you make agro the more polarized (roshambo'ish) your meta will wind up. If you can reliably assemble T4 goldfish agro in draft, you set that as your bar and other decks have to meet that or fail to be viable. So you either need a ton of sweeper effects for control, or specific agro hosers or lots of obtuse high end creatures and/or spells, etc. In essence, it forces you to power up the other end of the spectrum. On the opposite side, if you have T2 agro and things are slower and blunted, you have to take care about what you let control and midrange have access too. Give them Wurmcoils, et all and you are just asking for problems.

To some extent both designs force your hand. IMO, it would be a mistake to run the best agro cards in history and blunt your top end, or to run slow T2 agro and play obtuse finishers and/or super efficient removal/sweepers. These things don't mix well. That said, this format being largely singleton you can misfire on a lot of card choices in a cube list and still wind up with a very playable meta. I've run some pretty bad cubes over the years and it took a long time for people to break even the worst version. Truthfully, cube is a pretty forgiving format.

My personal objection to hard agro (T4 goldfish style agro) is how limited your options are during the game. As an opponent, you either have the answers or you don't. As the driver, you either get (or mulligan) into a fast start or you lose. And the most important decisions are being made during draft and when side boarding. For me, I'd rather have as many important decisions as possible made during a game in response to things happening. And that's why I side with RBM and others on the idea of making things a little more towards the middle. You have fast decks that want to exert pressure and you have slower decks that want to stall until the later parts of a game. My experiences lead me to believe the best version of Magic is the one where games go for a little while and there are lots of twists and turns. High decision density basically. And that version of the game IMO is less common with hard control/agro/midrange theater design.
 
ahadabans has a good take on the aggro discussion, but I want to talk about one part in particular...

Good discussion on the whole agro debate. I think there are many ways to balance things. My 2 cents, the faster you make agro the more polarized (roshambo'ish) your meta will wind up. If you can reliably assemble T4 goldfish agro in draft, you set that as your bar and other decks have to meet that or fail to be viable. So you either need a ton of sweeper effects for control, or specific agro hosers or lots of obtuse high end creatures and/or spells, etc. In essence, it forces you to power up the other end of the spectrum.

This is a strong point; in traditional cube design, you build towards the "constructed archetype theaters" of aggro, midrange, control, and combo. You're then put in the position to balance 4 deck styles against each other, while also not disrupting the mythical understanding of a "rock-paper-scissors" relationship between them all, where each one has clear edges on another and clear shortcomings to another, which are supposed to generate the tension, the "lots of twists and turns" people want out of Magic. It easily becomes an arms race that is premised on a strength vs weakness evaluation of each theater that you are supposed to both shore up (so aggro stands a chance vs control) while also not disrupting (so control doesn't auto-lose to aggro); it's a paradoxical design goal that defeats itself in its implementation, but as ahadabans has said frequently, even a really lousy cube can still be fun, so it's not always clear to the designer why their design goals are working against them.

But when you look at these decks from a different angle, one of speed rather than strategy, you get a sort of fast, medium, slow, and (for lack of a better combo analog) "wildcard" relationship. This is how we get "Dragon formats" (centered on slower gameplay), which is a style of cube we all recognize as an alternative to a "standard" cube. The proposition I'm making is merely an elaboration on that: if we orient our cube such that all decks are interested in interacting across the same sort of speed relationship (here, a "medium" setting), we can ditch the traditional 4 theaters and instead balance 10 (or more, or less) deck archetypes that play out in different ways but keep the same "rhythm". If we do this, the competitiveness of each pair is more easily manipulated, as we are no longer attacking some nebulous 4-way split in the cube, but instead each guild pair we choose to support and the ways we support it.

We then wind up with differently-themed decks that can play towards and against different objectives, which are free of the time constraints normally placed on each "theater" of deck. A good "aggressive" deck is then not evaluated by whether it can get there by T5; it can still win later and it has planned for this outcome, as it does not have to go all-in to get under the other deck types. Similarly, a ramp deck doesn't need all of its mana right away, but instead is looking to build towards a point in the game where the mana superiority can be translated into an overwhelming amount of pressure. I could go on, but I won't (;)); my point is, if we limit the speed of our format and trend it towards one center point that everyone can pivot around, we allow for a diversity of strategies to emerge, and increase our ability to manipulate a list by addressing weak spots or strong spots in different color pairs, which in turn gives us more games of magic with "lots of twists and turns".

Anyway, at this point we're pretty off-topic, so I think if we're going to continue this sort of discussion, maybe all the relevant posts should be moved to its own thread? Most of my posts are just wildly off-topic diary entries, really; perhaps I should be writing down these ideas in my cube thread.. :p
 
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