Back duringvmy mtg salvation times I got teached that aggro always needs to start witz a 1-drop to be competitive. And while I lowered the power level of my aggro dudes to fit my overall environment, I always stuck to that premise. But here in these boards I often heard about "2-drop aggro" ... and I was skeptical. I had the fear, that if I changed certain aggro archetypes by taking away their 1-drops, I would either just make them weaker OR turn them into something good which doesn't feel like an aggro deck anymore.
Is there some truth to my fear?
I'm still working on the perfect execution of my gruul aggro madness. And while going 2:2 with it was okay, I feel like it could've done a little better with 3 of my 4 opponents being newbies.
I'm curious, if I have the right understanding of the 2-drop aggro concept and what advantage it could give. Also what downsides it would bring. Can anyone tell me?
One example, if this is a 1-drop aggro version ...
I may be misunderstanding the question, but my answer would be that either are viable, and it depends on how aggro matches up with the rest of your cube, and how you want aggro to match up with the rest of your cube.
If you are not finding 1-drop-centric aggro oppressive, I would be really hesitant to slow down your aggro decks by another turn. You might end up killing them completely.
From my perspective, aggro decks, if well-tuned to your environment, can lead to some of the most fun and tense games of magic. The ideal Aggro vs. Non-aggro game follows three stages: (1) Aggro pressures, (2) Non-Aggro stabilizes, and (3) Aggro strains for the last bit of damage while Non-Aggro tries to turn the corner.
Each cube is going to be a little bit different regarding when you want stage 2 to occur. For me it is <10 life for Non-Aggro. Our job as cube designers is to give aggro the tools it needs for stage 1 to provide enough pressure to allow stage 3 to offer it a viable opportunity to win. Of course, we also need to make sure aggro has stage 3 tools as well, but the 1- vs. 2-drop aggro idea is all about stage 1.
If your cube has strong midrange creatures at 3 and 4 CMC, your aggro decks will likely still need 1 cmc creatures to operate an effective stage 1.
I totally agree with everything you said, and I handle the topic similarily to you, I think. I was mostly just wondering, if moving aggro starts into turn two can have some advantages for that deck (not for the cube environment and it's health, but the power level of aggro), maybe because you'd open up more room for curve toppers, burn and such.
But of course we can also talk here about the general philosophy question: How do you handle aggro in your cube and why?
My problem on the other hand, I think I have finally solved. Or at least found a temporary solution, but that's off topic here.
It's absolutely dependent upon your power level. The Aggro gameplan is to play out multiple threats on the field to apply pressure early and often. By putting your opponent on the defensive, you can influence their potential blocks and how they utilize resources to mitigate your pressure. If you move the majority of your aggressive cards to the two drop slot, this limits the window that an aggressive deck can deploy threats to the board. A two mana investment means that you're stuck deploying one creature a turn until T4, but at that point your opponent may have already stabilized with a road block blocking off your attacks. My aggro philosophy has remained mostly the same since I first wrote about it a few years ago and I've continued to develop and tweak my cube offerings in a similar manner.
The biggest thing with aggressive decks is that there is a limited window to establish board impact and pressure prior to stabilization. Your cards will simply be outclassed by more impactful cards with higher CMC costs. That's mostly why R/x decks are the most viable form of Aggro in higher powered formats; they can mitigate this issue with reach from damage based removal. The problem with that is that is if there ends up being competition for these damage based removal spells from other red decks. This puts you in the predicament of not having enough reach if there's too much competition for the same pieces of removal.
I find that two mana is too much for a generic aggressive threat if you're just trying to reach a critical mass of early pressure, regardless of what colors you're in. Cards like Kari Zev, Skyship Raider or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben that impact the board in unique ways are far and few between. If you had a critical mass of those types of creatures backed by interaction, you could probably make it work eventually. However, this would also require the suite of midrange creatures to be re-considered in order to figure out how to balance the cube effectively.
By all means you can try out the shift and see how it works, but I know for a fact that it would not work in an environment like mine due to power level concerns.
Uff, there's a lot to consider when it comes to clarify the standing of aggron in an environment.
You are talking about 'turn 2 aggro' - I think Grillo was the one who used that or similar terms? - but that's actually not enough information to approach that issue in a serious manner. You need to talk about:
-Manabase: Does your fixing allow you to use it right away? Shock lands and pain lands usually do that for a price that could easily be neglected by aggro decks while midrange/control does have a tougher time using those lands. If you use bounce lands, temples or other CIPT lands you make it harder for aggro decks to go 2+ colours. Personally, I'm still finding out which is the best way, as I'm supporting 1 mana aggro but also like my manabase to be somewhat limited. Evolving Wilds, Ash Barrens (to support certain strategies while also being good for 3+ coloured decks) and bounce lands looking great so far, but I want another 10 lands that fix the mana in my cube. Temples looked great, but other decks that are in one colour of a temple will happily pick it because Scry 1 on a land is just very good. That's not my intention, so I'm still testing which is the manabase I like.
-Sweepers: One of the most efficient moves against aggro is wiping their board full of creatures. Doing this as early as turn 4 or even 3 doesn't look too great to me. I like my sweepers to be somewhat conditional, like Radiant Flames, Languish, Wave of Reckoning or Blasphemous Act. I'm even still testing Divine Reckoning as I want it to be playable so badly.. anyways, this is a very important choice to make, and it goes along with your choice of when aggro should be able to swing for damage.
-Blockers: To me, this is a bit more complicated. You can have good 1-drops in your cube, if it's usual in your environment that a player can slam down a 2/3 vigilance or lifelink body as early as turn 2, then aggro will nearly always have a hard time. Thinking about it, it's even hard if that body doesn't have any keywords attached to it. Look at the toughness of creatures, especially at turns 2, 3 and 4 (usually the turns before a sweeper), so your aggressive creatures don't get outvalued that fast.
-Actual Aggro Creatures: Personally, I LOVE growing creatures like Experiment One, Stromkirk Noble and the likes. You just need to get rid of an early blocker, maybe grant them some evasion, or just keep playing stuff so they grow by themselves and there you go: early pressure. You won't reach that with cards like Jungle Lion or Jackal Pup. Carnophage is okay obv because it does offer one of Magic's best art.
Another important aspect is if you have a lot of cheap spot removal, and if it comes at instant speed. I like removal to be (potentially) mana efficient, but I don't like 2 mana get rid of everything at instant speed, like Go for the Throat and stuff. This actually matters.
Moving away from classic 1-drop aggro, especially in red, was a big step for me:
- It takes up so much space as you care a lot more about the quantity of 1-drops than the quality. It's hard to rethink red if half of red's card pool is spoken for with cards that only fit in dedicated aggro decks
- Many creatures that push more interesting themes are naturally good against Savannah Lions et al. If I draft Ux artifacts in my Cube I might naturally end up with Glint-Nest Crane, Sai, Master Thopterist, Spellskite, Chief Engineer, and Hangarback Walker just off the top of my head. None of these cards are there because they blank X/1s but it's tough to justify keeping all of them if you also want 1-drop aggro to be a viable strategy
- It's hard to blend the 1-drop aggro decks/colours and 2-drop aggro decks/colours: for example, RG Aggro never really worked for me as red wants to be hyper-aggressive and go wide whereas green wants to go tall and focus on individual threats. I've seen many players trapped into BG Aggro decks that suffer a permanent identity crisis
- The biggest problem is that red doesn't have enough good 1-drops with late game potential. White and black both have more than enough of these, which is why I support white and black aggro and WB is the most likely pair to produce a 'blitz' deck.
To me the main appeal of 1-drops for my 'larger' aggro decks is as a mana-efficient setup for midgame plays. If I lead on Icehide Golem I'm not expecting it to be a relevant attacker for long but, after it's got 2-4 damage in, it can make Emry cheaper, be fed to Shrapnel Blast, or help Whirler Rogue send someone through. Carrion Feeder isn't putting much pressure on their life total early but it ensures that I have an immediate payoff when I stick Murderous Redcap or Nightmare Shepherd.
Here's an example of a themed aggro deck with a low curve that illustrates what I want:
The 1-drops are varied and most remain useful throughout the game. Experiment One is the most linear card of the bunch but its ceiling is high and it lets you have a two-spell turn later in the game where it's still easy to pile counters on it. Hexdrinker is often a better draw on Turn 7 than Turn 1; Thraben Inspector sets up your Loxodon/E1/Rishkar starts by offering a blank body and lets you replace it when you need more to do. Stonecoil Serpent's strength as a modal X-drop shines through here too. Warden of the First Tree gives a fast start by itself (T1 Warden, T2 level Warden, T3 anything or T1 Warden T2 2-drop, T3 level Warden and attack with both is pretty formidable) and tangles with anything if given enough time. Meanwhile, you have enough ways to use a generic body (Mikaeus, Loxodon, Games/Siege, Rishkar, Township) that even the much-maligned Savannah Lions wouldn't be too bad here
Oh yeah, I'm all for themed aggro decks. There was a time, where I just slammed aggressive one- and two-drops in almost every color, blocking up space while playing similar in all color combinations. Boring. I think, even if you don't move away from using 1-drops, having aggro decks with themes helps not only the deck itself being more interesting to draft and play, but also gives you more options to find aggro dudes, which are interesting for other decks. Heck, 75% of my green aggro cards are interesting for Dredge/Tokens/Landfall/etc.
I think my personally greatest succes in this regard might be the lifegain deck. It can play very fast and has a huge interest of 1- and 2-drops, but it has enough valueable synergies going on to be prepaired for longer games.
You can start with Vault Skirge into pridemate into Path, having your opponent down to 12 at the end of turn 3, than drop a Cliffhaven Vampire for 4 additional life loss next turn. But the very same deck can also stabilize and take over a board with Soul Warden plus Regal Bloodlord, backed up by the recursion from Order of Midnight.
Personally, I'm on with Wx Human tribal, UGR Flash with lots of Werewolves, BR Vampires/Madness, Tokens, Aristocrats and Selfmill as my possible aggressive decks, though they all could take a slower path and play midrange-y or even somewhat grindy, really depends on your drafting.
I'm also thinking about implementing Heroic as a theme (RWG with maybe U) as another aggressive deck, but I'm still not sure if it's even possible without lowering the overall powerlevel too much.
The way I see it, if you are designing from an archetype-driven point of view, this thread is almost a moot point. If you've properly considered the needs of all of the archetypes you are trying to represent then all is well, no matter if it's one 1-drop or eight that make that happen. the generic term "aggro" runs out of usefulness really fast IMO.
While this is true, I still think it's meaningful to roughly divide decks into those that try to win quickly by leveraging tempo (presenting threats quicker than they're answered) and decks that predominantly answers threats until they can finish the game with one or a few threats inevitably with the former as 'aggro' and the latter as 'control'.
the problem is the terms carry historical baggage, as admitted in the OP.
I prefer to use even more generic terms like fast-game and long-game. Not all "slow" decks are traditional "control decks", for instance. It should only be one generic facet of your archetype design. You use a loaded term and you can fall into a rut (Like control deck = counter spells and blue)
While I agree, this is largely a matter of semantics. The problem I believe isn't the words necessarily but the lack of a consistent definition instead of just a kinda fuzzy grouping of stuff that's been called 'aggro' or 'control' before. I think using aggro as synonymous with 'fast deck' and control as 'slow deck' (but not vice versa as you pointed out) is a pretty good heuristic. I would argue that the 'tempo' aka 'aggro control' deck is also a fast deck, and that 'midrange' is a slow deck, but this easily boils down to different opinions on what these words mean.
Personally, I think it's a matter of disruption versus speed. The faster you are, the less disruption you need and viceversa. Hence, "2-drop aggro" needs better and heavier disruption to compete.
At a glance, the "2-drop" deck you've posted seems much worse than the 1-drop. The reason is pure tempo: Turn 1 you do nothing. Turn 2 you play a spell, Turn 3 you play another spell. Compare this to the first deck, which can play 5 spells in the same time. The "2-drop" version will lose a lot of games simply because it went second and the opponent played a Wall of Blossoms or what have you.
I've been working on putting together some version of "aggro" for my environment. I roughly envision this as meaning decks that are low-to-the-ground and pressure the opponent's life total. I started the move last September and in the last couple months, I've struck upon 3 themes that I'm more or less happy with:
(1) Aggro decks that are good at the long game
(2) "Cards, not Decks"-based engines, i.e. Ambient Combo
(3) Pressure-Combo hybrids
The first point addresses something I tend to dislike about aggro gameplans: your typical streamlined aggro decks goes all in and you either get there or the opponent stabilizes and you're usually out of gas. So far the most interesting aggro decks in our drafts haven't had this problem - they don't necessarily try to win the game fast, they try to keep pressure on the opponents life total. Then they utilize the natural spell velocity and card drawing engines to keep gas in the tank over long games. I can see roughly four variants for keeping up over a longer game:
(a) direct card advantage (just find new threats directly)
(b) recursion (if they kill your threats, bring them back)
(c) resilience (need to answer your threats multiple times)
(d) equipment (if you top-deck wimpy creatures, they're still powerful)
I've also been very happy with board-based removal to fight the control game ala Walking Ballista or Pia and Kiran Nalaar. This plays out especially well against combo decks with token generators like Sai, Master Thopterist because you get really engaging swapping back and forth between who needs to be controlling and disruptive and who needs to be on the attack.
Here's a deck I drafted that felt like an aggressive deck but had an absolutely phenomenal long game with a ton of ways to draw cards and individual threats that come back or can be recycled:
Abzan Artifact Aristocrats
The spell velocity plus the possibility for big combo-y +1/+1 counter turns when the pieces came together still feel very much in the spirit of the Mox Cube. But you didn't HAVE to combo to win - more on that later.
The second bullet I've called "Cards, Not Decks" was a nice deck-building and cube design breakthrough for me in trying to make aggro work. I think for aggressive decks, I was designing too narrowly around archetypes like "the aristocrats deck", the "+1/+1 counters deck" but I was having trouble squaring these "aggro archetypes" with the overall theme of the cube. But it turns out by having enough combo pieces that were typically used in pure combo decks you can end up with aggro decks that don't revolve around a particular "theme" per-say, but can still emergently have high-velocity, engine-based game play. Here's a great example one of my drafters concocted:
BR
As a whole maybe it's just a pile of vaguely aggressive and disruptive cards. But during the actual game play, the pilot was constantly finding setups to suddenly gain a lot of advantage all in one go. Chainer, Nightmare Adept plus Experimental Frenzy, for example, complement each other in delightful way. So do Grafted Wargear, Midnight Reaper, plus tokens. The deck wasn't necessarily a "sacrifice deck" or a "discard deck" as a whole, but since these themes are integrated throughout the cube it consistently turned out that whatever particular combination of cards he happened to draw, there was some unusual gameplay angle to chase after. I guess this is the beauty of cube but I'm pleased that the result still feels true to the Mox Cube ideals.
Lastly as with "artifactifying" an existing archetype to make drafting more flexible and dynamic, I think there's natural cross-pollination between combo and aggro archetypes. Except here I think the cross-over is a considerable upgrade for the combo decks. Playing an all-in combo deck can sometimes mean if you can't go off you can't really do anything. But if you can combine a combo-finish with individual pieces that just happen to pressure their life total then you always have a nice backup plan. E.g. Guttersnipe, prowess creatures, and burn in a Red-Blue deck that could either play storm or tempo. Or consider a Green-White deck revolving around going infinite with cards like Kor Skyfisher, Cloudstone Curio, and Earthcraft. If you can ramp out a lot of small creatures fast, then if they disrupt your combo with Duress you can still beat them to death the old-fashioned way. I hope the ambient combo pieces can make the aggro decks more fun, but vice-versa for making certain combo decks less brittle.
As an example, here's a very much all-in version of Boros Teshar I drafted last week:
Boros Teshar Combo
The deck is ALMOST an aggro deck. It's low-to-the-ground and could easily play 15 lands. But because I focused on trying to make the combo more consistent it wasn't actually possible in practice to pressure the opponent's life total. In fact, if they managed to nix too many of my key pieces like: Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, Scrap Trawler, and Goblin Bombardment I just straight up couldn't win. Here was a chance to compromise a tiny bit and pick up some beaters like Porcelain Legionnaire or Arcbound Ravager which would still synergise while opening up new avenues of attack. I'll keep this in mind in the future.
I'll conclude with a deck from out last draft - the first time anyone has tried to build Mono Red. They narrowly eeked out a first-place finish over GB Griselbrand-Oath in a tense 3 game match. Very dope.
