Card/Deck Aggro-combo archetype

Greetings :D

I'm slowly exploring the ideas on this great site and I stumbled upon an archetype that interests me a lot: aggro-combo.
I'm coming from a 3 player free-for-all cube experience and aggro struggles in that environment (needs to deal 40 damage, not 20). I see aggro-combo decks as the way to avoid midrange decks taking over all the time.

I found a couple of posts talking about it and wanted to see if I was missing any:
+1/+1 counters from Dom Harvey
Aristocrats from Grillo_Parlante


Another aggro-combo deck resolves around pump spells and double strikers in naya colors:

All instants that can double your damage output for cheap.


Permanent based double strike. The paladin pulls double duty as he has the keyword himself.


And so on. All reasonable creatures on their own, but with potential to get out of hand.


Finally, the pump spells that go so well with double damage

That's all I've found. What aggro-combo decks am I missing? Do you see a non-infinite combo alternative to making aggro work in a (small) multiplayer game?

Thanks for your feedback!
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
It can work in a small FFA multi-player setting.

Generally, you're ok if you provide them with early pressure tools, than give them some utility pieces to grind in the mid-game. Their strategy is to basically spend the early game building a board position while getting some knocks in, than spend the mid-to-late game putting together their "reach" plan, which can either be a big burst of damage against one player, or some incremental damage from a difficult to deal with source etc. Evasion grantors or creatures with evasion really help them, or maybe some cards to help negative mass or spot removal.

You just have to get away from that idea of glass cannon aggro decks that want to win the game by turn 4. They should be more positional, more robust, more value oriented. I would argue this isn't actually that far from how they should be functioning in any format.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
A couple other ways to think of aggro in these settings is that you are trying to encourage a "low CC matters" deck, or a tiny control deck, or tiny midrange deck.

Everyone is drawing from the same index of cards, and you're just trying to create incentives for someone to prioritize a deck made up of 1-3cc spells, rather than 4-6cc spells.

If you can have a sort of base aggro shell, that provides that level of stablity using a concentration of 1-3cc cards, they can sort of hang in the game, and than you can build into the format whatever sort of game ending mechanism you feel is appropriate, for them to end it with. Sometimes they will get the curve out, and crush it; but they'll still fine--putting some pressure in--with a more average draw. Players feel more safe going into that deck, and its more interactive and fun for everyone.

Having a game style that focuses on setting up these big positional uppercuts is also exciting, adds a form of suspense to the game, and a nice break from matchups that otherwise feel like they overly revolve around "play out the battlecruisers until someone runs out of answers" magic that multi-player often times devolves into.
 
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