Card/Deck Blue Aggro/Tempo/Non-Control: the sequel

Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Because I just won't take a hint:

Ways of converting creatures into cards:



Cheap creatures:







Rewards for having creatures:



Possible Faeries subtheme?



Combo potential:

 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
Things I've noticed about blue aggression:

1) Aura based aggro decks love blue. Countering the card that blows you out is completely sweet. Filtering away the redundant cards is also sweet.
2) Throwing a couple delvers into a control deck is sweet. If you draw them early, you clock them while killing all their stuff is awesome. If you draw them late, you filter them out with stuff like enclave cryptologist.
3) Blue has amazing mana denial. Mana Breach and Mana Vortex are silly cards.
4) Combining bounce is really, really good if you have a tempo advantage and/or the aforementioned mana denial cards.
5) You've really gotta lean on the other color for a lot of the creatures that aren't three mana.

Cut some hard and scalable counters for spell pierce and daze, throw int he really aggressive bounce, mix in some mana denial, and don't overthink the creatures. So far, its worked for me.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I think Ux tempo is sweet. And it works in my cube reasonably well (at least the couple times it has come together - my cube is slow, my group durddles, YMMV, blah blah blah).

The key for this deck IMO is solid fixing and tempo counter spells plus bounce guys.




There's also weird stuff you can add to it. Like this


And you can make a more midrangy version with stuff like this


Wolfir is money with cheap tempo dudes since he turns them into monsters later after they've given you their ETB value.

And then if you really want to get ridiculous, you can throw in really retarded stuff like


Good times. I love these types of decks. Abusing ETB is my forte. I live to build these kinds of decks.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Most of what Dom's suggested is identical to what made me despair for this kind of thing earlier, it's just that other decks don't want these cards at all so it all becomes rather poisony in addition to being underpowered and having by the nature of Cube a lot of 'bad fair' matchups. Looking at Cloud of Faeries and Warden of Evos Isle makes me want to spend my Cube time on something more likely to work. I am excited for Dakra Mystic and Hypnotic Siren, though, and Edric and Sky Hussar merit a try too.

Opposition is incredibly unpleasant to play against
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
The problem I have with blue tempo is all the good cards cost 3 (virtually or actually, as with Snapcaster or Serendib)
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member


This guy can totally attack. For two! No joke! He clocked me for about ten damage in one game today.



If you run Thassa, there's a good argument for including this merfolk.



Don't laugh - he totally draws you some cards, much the same way Edric does.

What kind of decks does Sky Hussar work well in? That's a sweet find, I don't think I've even heard of that card until now.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

CML said:
Most of what Dom's suggested is identical to what made me despair for this kind of thing earlier, it's just that other decks don't want these cards at all so it all becomes rather poisony in addition to being underpowered and having by the nature of Cube a lot of 'bad fair' matchups. Looking at Cloud of Faeries and Warden of Evos Isle makes me want to spend my Cube time on something more likely to work. I am excited for Dakra Mystic and Hypnotic Siren, though, and Edric and Sky Hussar merit a try too.

Opposition is incredibly unpleasant to play against
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If Opposition were printed in white or red... really ANY other color than blue, I wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot pole. It would be all kinds of broken. But I feel like at 2UU, this isn't super easy to abuse. Blue has crap for creatures, so you really have to dig into other colors to get dudes to use with this. It's certainly abusable and potentially oppressive, but it isn't one of those annoying type of cards that is auto include in every deck that can cast it. That makes is a cool card IMO. Tapping down your opponents lands is par for the course in cube as far as broken shit you can play. It certainly isn't any more annoying than losing to baneslayer or wurmcoil or some other BS game changing 5/6 drop.

Your point about bad matchups and poisony cards is totally valid though. And how much of this you can run without hurting your cube is going to be very group/cube dependent. I try very hard to not run super narrow stuff that only the Ux tempo deck wants. A couple cards here or there to encourage the deck I think is a good thing, but jamming your one drop section with delvers or cloudfin's IMO is a bad idea. Tempo can certainly work though (at least aggressive midrangy versions - I can vouch for those) and I don't think it has to be underpowered or at a disadvantage to most of the field if you are willing to dial back the power level of your cube overall (which guys on this site seem very open to doing). How much you have to dial back power and what that means you'll have to cut? Something you'll have to experiment with.

Here's a couple other ideas.


I don't run either, but they are certainly in the right vein.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
ahadabans said:
If Opposition were printed in white or red... really ANY other color than blue, I wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot pole. It would be all kinds of broken. But I feel like at 2UU, this isn't super easy to abuse.
Click to expand...


Oh, it is. I mean, you're certainly right that U is the worst color for it, and it represents a big cost in a Cube without much fixing like yours, but it's still so overwhelmingly strong esp. given said Cube's lowish power level that, well, you know. I'm not sure "U/G Opposition is the best deck" territory (which completely describes the powered Modo holiday cube, for example) is where I want to be -- decks named for a single card; it's a hell of a card! And the games where it hits the table do have an annoying way of lingering on for a while while the controller is bored and playing with his food and his opponent is as alive as Terri Schiavo. Not much decision to "tap your lands and/or guys" etc.

Glare of Subdual is also quite something, but at least it lets them cast spells ...

Not to degenerate into a bad-beat story but the other day I was playing a powered Cube (some of the old guard put on a satellite to a Vintage Rotisserie Draft -- dinosaurs) and was facing down a morph, I untapped and flashed back lingering souls and played scroll rack and he made an opposition and tapped my bounceland on upkeep. Needless to say, my Wickerbough was stuck in hand (yet another reason bouncelands are bad) which would have been a certainty even had the morph not been Thelonite Hermit ...

The thing is, with my 2-lander, I was really happy to draw the bounceland t2. As dumb as it sounds, bouncelands are a way for powered Cubes to increase their decks' consistency. I guess that's the punchline, along with "CML dies, could have not died" and "ugh Opposition"
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

You bring up good points. And one of the goals of my next update is to remove all cards that are clear P1P1 and/or format warping. I hadn't considered opposition in that bucket, but I'm wondering if I'd be better served running something else. It's not like I don't have a billion options for blue 4 drops.

On a side note, this was a really painful exercise at first (removing what are essentially powermax staples), but then it became very liberating. Recurring nightmare - gone. Necro - gone. Jitte - gone. Sword of X and Y - gone. Hey, all of a sudden I have a whole bunch of slots I can put fringe stuff into. Nice! Guys are going to miss the moxen - not going to lie. And probably Jitte. Definitely the swords. But it's for the best. I'm just tired of how these cards define the meta.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
CML said:
Most of what Dom's suggested is identical to what made me despair for this kind of thing earlier, it's just that other decks don't want these cards at all so it all becomes rather poisony in addition to being underpowered and having by the nature of Cube a lot of 'bad fair' matchups.
Click to expand...

Yes, but you could say the same thing verbatim about the white/red aggro cards and people seem to treat their presence as a given. Maybe that's because there are few other things you can do with those colours while blue has an embarrassment of riches, but unsurprisingly aggro is more interesting in blue as well.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Dom Harvey said:
Yes, but you could say the same thing verbatim about the white/red aggro cards and people seem to treat their presence as a given. Maybe that's because there are few other things you can do with those colours while blue has an embarrassment of riches, but unsurprisingly aggro is more interesting in blue as well.
Click to expand...


nah, those cards are a little more flexible. for example, people pick them over other cards, put them in decks, and use them to win games.

(i'm all for the anti-power-max mindset but pretending Cloud of Faeries fits in one of our Cubes gets us nowhere, of course trying to put it in once will cause you to never want to do so again)

to make a less obvious point, the problem with balancing the bad blue cards with something super-strong Opposition is that someone will just take the Opposition and the Faerie Impostor will go 15th again. of course, this is better than Faerie Impostor being picked earlier and someone actually trying to build a deck with it, which isn't something they'll try again ...
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
One of my cubers pointed out this week, while drafting as decent of a blue attacking deck as I've seen as any, that this type of tempo deck can never beat an actual aggro deck in a million years. They're great at keeping the momentum when they're ahead, but have a really hard time trying to play catch-up, even if they fall just one step behind.

With aggro being as strong as it is in our cubes these days, maybe it's not surprising that I can't get UR Delver to win more than one match on any given night, whereas it was a respectable archetype here two years ago.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Eric Chan said:
One of my cubers pointed out this week, while drafting as decent of a blue attacking deck as I've seen as any, that this type of tempo deck can never beat an actual aggro deck in a million years. They're great at keeping the momentum when they're ahead, but have a really hard time trying to play catch-up, even if they fall just one step behind.

With aggro being as strong as it is in our cubes these days, maybe it's not surprising that I can't get UR Delver to win more than one match on any given night, whereas it was a respectable archetype here two years ago.
Click to expand...

I think if you try and force a true U aggro deck, this is true. But it's true in much the same way that a run-of-the-mill B aggro deck loses to the Rx/Wx varieties. Efficient creatures really isn't blacks sweet spot any more than it is blue's. Black has discard and removal. Blue has counters and bounce. If you want to make a competitive blue aggressive deck, it has to utilize the strengths of the color IMO. And that means it has to be some flavor of tempo. Straight aggro is going to suck in U just like it sucks in B.

On a related note, this is why I've tried recently to focus less on what I want colors to do and just let them do what they do well. Weird things pop up in cube - stuff you didn't really expect as the cube designer - and I think that is what makes it fun. The more I've tried to control the arch types and force things, the less it seems to work. So I've just tried to let it happen organically. It's a difficult thing to balance though because supporting arch types has a lot of value if you do it correctly. But by the same token, it's easy to try too hard and you do more harm then good in my experience.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
Ok, as someone who doesn't pay attention to constructed magic, I'll ask. What is it about that deck that makes it work and is the card pool available to slam it into a cube? Is it just leaning on the ridiculousness of Master of Waves or is it something deeper in the design that we can extract?
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
also Frostburn Weird and Nightveil Specter matching up well against 2/1s and 2/2s, Tidebinder Mage locking down lots of creatures in a format full of hybrids, Jace AoT if the game goes that long

The lesson is that if your guys' stats compare favourably to the baseline P/T of the format, you're going to be good against aggro without having to try too hard. Augur of Bolas and Calcite Snapper look real nice if it's all about Firedrinker Satyr.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
The likes of Frostburn Weird, Augur of Bolas, and Calcite Snapper are very controlling, though. I mean, opposing control decks playing their own 1/3's and their sweepers won't really be intimidated by you nipping them for one or two damage a turn.

I suppose a blue tempo deck that keeps these guys in the board for the aggro matchups could work, as you could remove your small evasive fliers for some ground guys with big butts. In practise, though, I guess I haven't really seen this work out that well in cube. Defending against a Jackal Pup is one thing; trying to get a handle on a large Tarmogoyf, a growing Experiment One, or a freshly bestowed animal is another.
 
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