btw, if anyone wants to school me on B/W design go on ahead. I always have a frustrating time making it both compelling and competitive.
Its two best cards are basically defacto wedge/shard cards:
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of a concrete (competitive) strategy for at least an aggressive deck (champion + champion humans?) and the bigger grindy decks.
It might have gotten lost in between our UG discussion, but I did lay out some brief thoughts on BW Aggro (and sample lists) in a post a few replies back. This is 100% my jam though and one of the archetypes I've devoted the most time to fleshing out, so I'll lay it out more thoroughly.
For the aggressive shells, you just need to maximize the pressure that you can generate from recursive bodies. The following cards shape the archetype in my cube:
Your gameplan is to curve the first three turns and look into deploying 4-6 power on board across 3+ bodies, leverage pressure by attacking continuously with recursive threats, then pushing through for the final points of damage through going very wide or through Artist and Cutthroat triggers.
The cards that are most important include the following:
Champion of the Parish: A horrible late game topdeck, but it can be the most impactful one-drop within white if you curve out from it. As you can see from the list above, there are a ton of humans available. It's not uncommon to grow it to a 4/4 or greater if you are on the play, representing a very potent threat that can't just be ignored or shot down that easily. Players need to actually devote removal towards it if it grows too quickly. I love the feeling of someone forced into using their 3 CC removal spell to deal with my one-drop.
Bloodsoaked Champion: The aggressive one drop of choice. It is an amazing card that will keep coming back and forcing blocks or chip in for 2 damage all throughout the game. If you combine it with a sac outlet (either
Carrion Feeder or
Grafted Wargear) alongside Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat, you can have turn where you just swing in for 2 or occupy a blocker, have it die somehow for triggers, then just recast it. If it's the later game, you can keep recasting off the raid trigger and build your own mini-Fireball.
Gravecrawler and
Carrion Feeder: Gravecrawler is the 3rd card I look for when drafting this archetype. Alongside Carrion Feeder, you can build your own large threat constrained only by your access to
. Drain effects from Artists and Cutthroats have even greater reach with your own engine in play.
Blood Artist and
Zulaport Cutthroat: Reach. Every point of life drain is crucial and kamikaze attacks with Crawlers and Bloodsoaked Champs are encouraged. You make every trade of an x/2 with a Crawler or Bloodsoaked less enticing when you have the option of draining AND just getting the threat back.
Mother of Runes: Not really an archetype specific card, we all know how powerful Mom is. She just fulfills the same role here as she does in Legacy by allowing you to basically negate pieces of spot removal or allow your guys to get in for damage through bodies on the ground.
Dark Confidant and
Asylum Visitor: A lot of people will draft Bob just as a generically powerful card, but I feel like this is the one archetype where he truly shines. Your curve is skewed towards one and two drops so I guess you can assume something like 1.4-1.7 damage on average but that's just fine for a deck that's aiming to leverage pressure and needs to keep the gas flowing. I haven't had any actual drafts yet with the Visitor, but I could definitely see it draw one or two extra cards once the game has stalled and you've played out your hand.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and
Vryn Wingmare: The biggest problem facing this deck are wraths that can clear the board and leave you without any meaningful threats to redeploy. You are dumping your hand very quickly and can be thoroughly punished if you blow your load too early. Stemming off the likes of Wrath of God and Languish until the 5th turn is a major boon and might just be the small opening you need to force an opponent into lethal range. This deck has some real inevitability unlike Rx counterparts who might not be able to recover without burn in hand.
Brutal Hordechief: I was so bummed that this guy never found a home in Constructed. He can lead to some insane lifeswings out of nowhere with the Hellrider effect. Hellrider is a bit too powerful for me to play, but this hits the sweet spot by providing reach while allowing you to stabilize as well. Plays well with tokens or a curve out of 1/2/3 drops just as well. This is the best curve topper for this archetype by far, he's the glue that really brings the archetype together.
Ajani, Caller of the Pride: White walkers have the issue of being too goodstuff-y or just flat out gamewarping in the cases of
Gideon Jura and
Elspeth, Sun's Champion, but smallest Ajani is the perfect tool for white Aggro. He can buff up your guys one counter at a time to force trades or allow you the change to get in there with a single threat for 5-6 damage in one shot. The -3 plays amazingly well with grown Champions or Bonesplitter wielding dudes.
Bonesplitter: The most important piece of equipment in the entire cube. Doubling up on these is all that my aggro decks needed to be able to punch through annoying early blockers with large butts. It's pretty demoralizing for opponents to trade with a recursive threat only to see you bring it back in the 2nd main phase, re-equip, and have a 4 power threat ready to attack the next turn.
Wastelands: Not as important, but this might be one of the bigger draws for me. With the lack of cards with CC mana costs and such a low curve, I've found this to be the most effective archetype for leveraging the pressure of Wasteland. This also allows for the easier splashing for the effects of cards like
Eldrazi Displacer,
Bearer of Silence, and
Thought-Knot Seer since you are a deck that will mostly be content once you have 2 white sources and a single black source in play. The problem it had in Rx Aggro was that later in the game, I wanted to fire off multiple pieces of burn and after incorporating more CC cost spells, this was actually an issue if you drew too many colorless sources. No problems here though!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This deck lives off of 1 drops, often times I will have 9+ one mana cards in the deck (though I guess Bonesplitter is usually just a T2 play+equip). I almost always go 16 lands since the decks tend to top off with one or two 4 drops. An ideal sequence is something like:
T1: Plains,
Champion of the Parish
T2: Swamp,
Bloodsoaked Champion, Bonesplitter, swing with a 2/2 Champion
T3: Land, Equip Bonesplitter to the Bloodsoaked, play a 2 drop Human to grow Champion to 3/3, swing with a 3/3 and a 4/1
At this point, unless your opponent has played something like a Wall of Omens, you've likely hit them for around 5 points of damage. If they drop a blocker in your path, it's not really a big deal since your Champion of the Parish will likely be able to punch through x/4s on the following turn. If it dies? Just bring back a
Bloodsoaked Champion and re-equip the
Bonesplitter. You usually just save any of your removal spells for T4 or T5 and fire it off if they've stuck some midrange-y threat that you can't attack into profitably. Similarly, you can also start off with Gravecrawlers and Feeders for another aggressive early curve, this time saccing Crawlers post-combat to grow the Feeder to sizes that allow you to punch through annoying 1/3s. I especially love board where your opponent is forced into tougher decisions with a Feeder out. Take for instance this scenario:
A1: Swamp, Bloodsoaked Champion
B1: Fetchland
A2: Attack with Champion, Swamp, Gravecrawler, Carrion Feeder (opponent EOT cracks fetch for tapped dual)
B2: Forest,
Sylvan Advocate
A3: Attack with Feeder, Champion and Crawler
What does your opponent do in this scenario? The Feeder can eat the Advocate if it blocks through saccing the Crawler and Champion. If it blocks either the Crawler or Champion? They still take 3 damage and you can recast the threat. It's a scenario that can happen more often than you'd think. I have found that if you can average around 3 points of damage from each threat you deploy, I think you're in great shape for the later game.
With Rx Aggro, once you've knocked them down to 8 or 9, you can usually just stockpile burn in hand to finish them off in the meantime. The reach you get from the Hordechief, Cutthroat and especially Blood Artist is crucial in being able to drain out the last bits of life from your opponent. It makes combat more interesting by representing some loss of life no matter what block an opponent makes in most cases.
Any token producers like
Bitterblossom or
Lingering Souls can help supplement the theme by providing evasive bodies that can peck in for damage or can be converted to a drain of 1 life whenever it dies. Those tokens are FAR more valuable if you can average around 2 points of damage from your opponent over the course of their lifetime.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Easily one of the most fun archetypes that I've incorporated and I try to draft it as often as I can. I think it's powerful, gives Aggro players a great alternative to the Rx archetype, and it is more decision intensive in regards to sequencing.
