General Gruul Aggro-Madness

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Basically impossible to use effectively, to the extent that the one deck that's ever played it in Constructed mostly doesn't any more
 
Basically impossible to use effectively, to the extent that the one deck that's ever played it in Constructed mostly doesn't any more

I piloted said deck on MTGO while it did and Manabond was easily the worst card in the 75. Don't go cubing manabond.

More arguments in favour of Dom and I being right:
-you obviously want to slam this card on t1, which means you can't madness any of your disco'd cards
-if you wait to slam it you basically have just created an only-yourself Sire of Insanity that can't attack but sometimes you get a little bit of graveyard value and maybe cast, like, one Madness card? This is also a bad outcome!
-your hypothetical cube deck that wants Manabond does not have the important lands it enables, like Glacial Chasm or a fast Depths/Stage combo.

there's just so much downside and so little upside, even if your deck literally only casts from the graveyard.
 
The Manabond talk gets me thinking if a package like this could help RG madness pivot into a hybrid with that sweet “lands in yard aggro” archetype from the Bears Masters set...
 
I was looking for fun archetypes and I always loved Madness-style decks. I think that the last five years or so have given us many interesting new cards for this type of deck, so I wanted to revive the topic.



Give me a {0} cost madnesser every day of the year! It is even on-colour. Both rootwallas are very great for this archetype, especially if we want to have it aggressive.



Looks off-colour, but this is just a Squee #2. Probably uncastable in the deck, but it may be worth to add in a cube where this archetype is present. Surely though it has to count as a colourless or maybe RG card, but idk. Maybe a good designer could even have a UB archetype where this is playable in the same cube?



This is PERFECT. Flameblade Adept was great, this is the same card but stronger (most of the times). I have not much to say.



So, this is interesting. It maybe looks a bit slow? But being able to use it both as a madness enabler AND to fasten the clock with haste makes it look very good. I think that rules-wise if you discard a madness creature with this and you cast it, it also gains haste, right? So, very good indeed.



Maybe slower, but can be used as a bridge with a UR spells archetype, since it is a card that I can see played in both.



I like giving "madness" to each card in my deck, yes. Maybe not too aggressive, but a lot of value

I haven't posted many green cards for the archetype, because I have the feeling there aren't been many lately. Maybe the best ones are:



Many of them have connections with lands --which connects to discussions already had in this topic.

I am curious: is somebody on this forum playing this archetype in their cube? How do you feel about it? Other recent (or less recent) cards I missed? Which other archetypes in other colours does this overlap well with? Surely with stuff like graveyard and lands and landfall, but maybe something else I missed?
 
I'm currently running lots of these cards and their ilk in a way that crosses over well with the Rx discard-matters, Grixis reanimator decks, RU welder, and GB graveyard-matters decks.



I've been doing a lot of meta-analysis on a list of 100+ Cubes I like, and I was both surprised and pleased to see a recent favorite of mine that initially went under the radar as one of Red's most-played cards: Ivora, Insatiable Heir.

And some payoffs:

 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Miles got there first but Rx Discard has picked up more substantial tools than almost any other archetype in any colour in recent years and those two-drops + three-drops are a great core for aggro and midrange alike. Special shout-out to Sabin, which flies under the radar as a recent printing from a Commander deck in a UB property but is an outstanding curve-topper for these decks.



Inti is strong in ~any proactive red deck and totally absurd here



A weird but great card, often the scariest thing in a board stall or after a sweeper



This does want you to be discarding consistently and constantly but goes nuts when you do; ideal with free outlets like Wild Mongrel



More suited to UR decks or more combo-y RG decks but a nice engine for those; great with Life from the Loam etc
 
There's a lot of depth to this archetype nowadays, especially with the plethora of cards that let you discard and/or self-mill to accrue additional value. Through my voucher system I've updated with Marauding Mako, Vengevine, and Hollow One so that archetype is definitely possible to draft once in a while. These also play well with incidental discard in Black or looting effects in Blue so you can really flesh out the archetype across colors.

I'd say it's less a madness oriented lean (though you get value from Rootwalla cards) as much as it is a way to get additional value off discard triggers. Much more open-ended and less timing restrictive.
 
I haven't posted many green cards for the archetype, because I have the feeling there aren't been many lately.
You've hit the nail on the head here. Outside of Speaker, Green's best discard outlets remain Wild Mongrel, Noose Constrictor, Fauna Shaman and Survival of the Fittest. The Mongrels play nice with Berserk and Temur Battle Rage if you have Berserkers.

Green also has the tools to go bigger thanks to lands stuff, so that might be worth exploring to give your discard decks more range



One thing I've tried to do for my cube is find overlap between discard and self-mill. They have a lot of similarities and can work together sometimes. Delirium bridges the two archetypes nicely and sometimes even leads to artifacts matter.


(+FoMO from Miles)

BG has a lot of tools to go into discard or mill.



Sacrifice, artifact discard in Rakdos?



Spells in Izzet with the discard cards as enablers?



Lots of overlap to go alongside the discard cards!
 
Top