General Making Aggro more inclusive

[Lucre]

Man does ion storm seem slow.

Notes on young pyromancer.
- He's pretty strong in low removal environments
- Incedentally most low removal environments rely more on enchantments which are usually bad against pyro, and woes with him. That sort of removal is also just bad in general for graveyard environments as it neuters graveyard dorks major advantage while providing grave or recursion decks with fewer spells I'm their yard.
- The bodies become irrelevant very quickly if your format is midrangey, but control decks oddly enough will still find them useful for preventing profitable attacks.
- He's kinda an aggro hoser.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I think you are probably right about ion storm.

To clairfy, the types of decks yp fits best in (over here) are delver aggro-control decks, which I am more than fine with. I've been ok with pacifism removal: between sacrifice outlets, and the already minimal amount of graveyard hate that I run, its been fine.

 

[CML]

i like YP, one of their finer recent designs that scales to the power of the format a la Lilly. i am hard-pressed to find or imagine and format where there isn't a home for him

 

[Chris Taylor]

i like YP, one of their finer recent designs that scales to the power of the format a la Lilly. i am hard-pressed to find or imagine and format where there isn't a home for him

Theros

 

[Lucre]

Yeah, I think you are probably right about ion storm.

To clairfy, the types of decks yp fits best in (over here) are delver aggro-control decks, which I am more than fine with. I've been ok with pacifism removal: between sacrifice outlets, and the already minimal amount of graveyard hate that I run, its been fine.

I sware I saw memory's journey and suffer the past in your last draft deck though!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

x2 memory's journey, x2 krosan reclamation, x1 suffer the past, and x1 vessel of endless rest is all of my gy hate. MJ and KR are the main pieces of GY hate, and its not always best to use them as such.

I had a memory's journey last week, but there was no suffer the past in the draft, sadly.

But what I meant by that more, was that I don't run things like tormod's crypt that completly hose the yard: you can play around MJ and recover from it.

 

[CML]

I did an 8-4 VMA draft with a friend last night and managed to win while drinking his liquor and with little difficulty. Off the top of my head the deck looked like this:



The last two decks we battled did more powerful things, but it didn't matter, because we just killed them. Notes:

-Benevolent Bodyguard is a good card and is worth a whirl in the Wadds Cube. It always eats removal, turns on morbid, and so on and so forth. Orcish Lumberjack, Pianna, and Battle Screech are also worth a look.
-Reckless Charge does like infinity damage sometimes. Put it in your Cubes!
-Cycling really holds the format together, and we had a lot of interesting decisions every turn because of it. Even something like "leading with Secluded Steppe or keeping it in case of flood but maybe curving out worse if things work out" is fantastic and skill-testing. Cards like Astral Slide and Lightning Rift, both of which we passed, are probably poison (and poison's in-game corollary, "useless or GRBS") but we had to make a lot of judgment calls, by no means 100% correctly, on the order of "do we pitch Radiant's Judgment that might blow out his on-board Wild Mongrel?" or "do we pitch Akroma's Blessing to try and hit a 3-drop turn 4 for more pressure, or just keep it up?" M2G2 we won because we kept the blessing and countered a Crater Hellion (anyone run this card?) trigger
-As for Cycling, the traditional view is that it's overpowered in Limited (incl. high-powered retail limited like Vintage Masters here) and bad in Constructed, with the exceptions of Living End and the Slide decks of yore. This is almost certainly because the increased mana cost doesn't make up for the increased flexibility in Limited (mana-inefficiency is OK), while in Constructed it's unacceptable to pay 3 for Doom Blade (mana-inefficiency means the card isn't playable). A big recent idea of mine is Cube is "in between" those formats, so something like Cycling -- a high density of Cycling! -- should be perfect for Cube, which means maybe Slide and Rift could be things. Anyway, we should dig out the Cycling thread and start yapping about it.
-In general aggro is roughly as skill-testing as control, because there's combat math and the decisions are high-impact and low-margin. Aggro mirrors in particular are very stressful and require a LOT of math and reading and playing to your outs and fluid role-changing. I punted such a mirror at GP Portland to put my team out of day 2, for example.
-That deck was a bunch of commons (it's on the 3-0 thread somewhere) and was routinely beating my friend's mythic deck (Chandra, Soul of Zendikar, etc.) ~2/3 of the time. For us, as Cube designers, but especially for Wizards, with the constraints of retail limited, this is fucking great. More and more I am convinced that aggro is both the only counterweight to powerful cards obliterating synergy, and a "macro-archetype" worth explicitly supporting.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I agree that a R/W cycling aggro deck would be sweet. Goblins would also be great.

It also just dawned on me that after brilliantly breaking VMA with a flying token maker at common, they than turned around and brilliantly broke m15 limited by printing another flying token maker at common...

 

[CML]

thank god for mythic commons, huh

after giving it another look-see the cycling theme will probably not work in higher power environments, but is totally perfect for, say, low-power graveyard cube

candidates for anywhere:

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, the issue is that the cards are just really low power level, even compared to my cube. This was a cycling list I was toying around with. What makes cycling great though is the way it connects the early game with the late game, but i.m.o the lands are the best of the bunch.

This is ugly, but, for aggro, in the principle G/R/W slide/rift color shards, I would imagine something like:

Early Game Cyclers that Also Act as Late Game Threats




Beaters that benefit From Cycling





Tribal Options




Support




Another benefit, is that you can run artifact/enchantment destruction cycle cards

 

[CML]

Yeah I'm not seeing it there.

oh well. LOW POWER CUBE PEOPLE GO

 

[Lucre]

I more or less consider cycling a control or combo theme. I haven't thought of it at all for aggro.
I like green and black (sometimes white) cycles because I like seeing more cards in those colours and there is reanimator support. I'll tell you this is a peasant magic tactic in its heart and may not work on rare cubes but a necromancy'd shriekmaw or Krosan tusker has been the foundation of many game.

I really think necromancy is the closest thing to fair and incentivized reanimation. I really like that the 2nd mode encourages ETB surprise blocks.

But I'm totally off the topic of inclusive aggro now.
What else can we learn from peasant? Maybe madness and the crossover with graveyard, reanimator, classic control draw spells might have legs.

Peasant taught me how boring and unfun and powerful pants aggro decks are in formats without sweepers.

Peasant taught me how hard it is to activate a threshold mongoose.

Peasant taught me how similar it is playing with ETB tapped lands to having overcosted removal spells.

Peasant taught me blue is way harder to get to stand on it's own legs if you can't compliment it with splashy spells or consistently efficient plays.

Hmmm very few of these pertain to aggro. Oh! 2/1s for one mana feel really powerful when you have clunkier stabilizing creatures / removal. But that really doesn't feel like it makes the game more interesting for an aggro player.

I think I realized cards like fire bolt and fiery temper make games way more interesting for aggro and control players alike. Same as how I like shriekmaw a lot more than straight terrors when trying to add interest to your format.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

There is a decently powered graveyard aggro deck in there. You can take some of the more powerful green counter stuff from before (namly experiment one) and than throw in common stuff like:




lower power support




Probably just have to break singleton in the right places, and provide some overlap spots with the rest of the cube.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh Peasant. I used to be a driving force behind that format in our local community, until I largely withdrew from tournaments to spend more time with my family. I even ran a blog with deck lists etc: peasantmagicgroningen.blogspot.com. Two guys took over when I quit, but despite their efforts that didn't last too long sadly because of other reasons that split our community in two.

Anyway, I learned from Peasant that innovation is still possible. I built some awesome decks in that format based on cards like these:



In other words, if you want to run cyclers in your cube, don't forget to run this:

 

[Diakonov]

It's Dust Devil!

 

[Chris Taylor]

It's Dust Devil!

I feel like you've said this about another card somewhere...

 

[Lucre]

Oh Peasant. I used to be a driving force behind that format in our local community, until I largely withdrew from tournaments to spend more time with my family. I even ran a blog with deck lists etc: peasantmagicgroningen.blogspot.com. Two guys took over when I quit, but despite their efforts that didn't last too long sadly because of other reasons that split our community in two.
Anyway, I learned from Peasant that innovation is still possible. I built some awesome decks in that format based on cards like these:

Hahaha, okay I know I'm not addressing any points right now, but it sounds like you me and Anotak need to talk! At least you can probably help me put my dumb cube experiment together. Don't worry about pedigree man, I never knew how to play proper peasant competitively and I was always really in and out. Apparently I designed a bunch of banned storm decks before I realized storm was banned. Peasant was always a weirdo casual league here and I only looked at the yahoo groups every once in a while (lol kobold clamp must have been the worst).

I see pauper right now and I get scared and depressed.

But mainly my familiarity with peasant is not just in normal constructed format, it's with playing peasant cubes, trying to design peasant cubes, making casual peasant standard decks etc. God I'm sure peasant constructed is a whole different animal since modern design, besides pestilence still being absolutely over powered.
P.S. The moment I heard the french had their own Elder Dragon Highlander format figured out, it cemented their place as the custodians of casual magic because they have been the face of peasant magic for ages and from what I hear are one of the nations most interested in vintage (also more or less a casual format)

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Hahaha, okay I know I'm not addressing any points right now, but it sounds like you me and Anotak need to talk! At least you can probably help me put my dumb cube experiment together. Don't worry about pedigree man, I never knew how to play proper peasant competitively and I was always really in and out. Apparently I designed a bunch of banned storm decks before I realized storm was banned. Peasant was always a weirdo casual league here and I only looked at the yahoo groups every once in a while (lol kobold clamp must have been the worst).

I see pauper right now and I get scared and depressed.

But mainly my familiarity with peasant is not just in normal constructed format, it's with playing peasant cubes, trying to design peasant cubes, making casual peasant standard decks etc. God I'm sure peasant constructed is a whole different animal since modern design, besides pestilence still being absolutely over powered.
P.S. The moment I heard the french had their own Elder Dragon Highlander format figured out, it cemented their place as the custodians of casual magic because they have been the face of peasant magic for ages and from what I hear are one of the nations most interested in vintage (also more or less a casual format)

Pestilence is not at all overpowered in Peasant constructed. It is a fun card though, and I did play the classic Pestilence + Cemetery Gate combo There are multiple decks that can beat you though, and enchantment removal can be prevalent depending on the meta (Wispmare and Bonesplitter make quite a good pair in the Unearth deck).

The French, who are also avid Peasant players, have a pretty weird metagame by the way, because they don't use Gatherer to determine rarity for older sets but crystalkeep.com. So for them, the Spring printing of Mishra's Factory was printed at C1 and is thus a common, whereas Gatherer labels it as an uncommon (and the other three versions as rare). Likewise, the Arabian Nights printing of Serendib Efreet is U2 and thus uncommon in France, whereas Gatherer labels it as a rare (though it is now available as an uncommon for those using Gatherer as well, thanks to Vintage Masters). Don't be fooled either, their metagame is pretty competititve

 

[Diakonov]

I feel like you've said this about another card somewhere...

This

I'd like to defend Ion Storm a bit. It does sound terrible when you say that it costs 3RR and a +1/+1 counter to do 2 damage, but I think that's a bit misleading. It's a long-term effect that gives you incremental gains throughout the game. That's like saying that Phyrexian Arena costs 1BB plus waiting a turn to draw a card. I don't think the card is amazing by any standard, but it has the potential to accumulate a lot of value over the course of a longer game if the deck is designed for it; especially if you're comboing it with Undying and such.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, its a bit like burning vengeance where you just have to be careful that its not going to be overshadowed by your other removal.

My question is, would it be something you would rather use in a G/R midrange shell with something like golgari grave troll, or in a G/R shell with cards like stormkirk vampire and experiment one? The ion storm giving midgame reach/control for the vampire/experiment deck.

 

[Diakonov]

Yah I would hesitate to put it into a more direct aggro deck. I feel like it belongs in midrange. Though, Experiment One is decent in midrange, right? I imagine he can get pretty large.

 

[Lucre]

I'd like to defend Ion Storm a bit. It does sound terrible when you say that it costs 3RR and a +1/+1 counter to do 2 damage, but I think that's a bit misleading. It's a long-term effect that gives you incremental gains throughout the game. That's like saying that Phyrexian Arena costs 1BB plus waiting a turn to draw a card. I don't think the card is amazing by any standard, but it has the potential to accumulate a lot of value over the course of a longer game if the deck is designed for it; especially if you're comboing it with Undying and such.

So like, after you've sunk 7 or 9 mana and several points of power into it you may have done 4 or 6 damage?
I know it's a way to turn things that aren't cards into damage, which is great and all, but it still cost a card to put it into play and it costs what a spell would cost for each activation.

What does arena cost you? Life? For actual cards? Please, a much better comparison to Ion Storm would be Greed, and how do we all like that in cube?
I'm sure ion storm is fine if you are abusing undying all the time or something, but I'd be pissed off with that card in my hand early trying to decide how best to spend my mana and my slith firewalker counters.

Pestilence is not at all overpowered in Peasant constructed. It is a fun card though, and I did play the classic Pestilence + Cemetery Gate combo There are multiple decks that can beat you though, and enchantment removal can be prevalent depending on the meta (Wispmare and Bonesplitter make quite a good pair in the Unearth deck).

The French, who are also avid Peasant players, have a pretty weird metagame by the way, because they don't use Gatherer to determine rarity for older sets but crystalkeep.com. So for them, the Spring printing of Mishra's Factory was printed at C1 and is thus a common, whereas Gatherer labels it as an uncommon (and the other three versions as rare). Likewise, the Arabian Nights printing of Serendib Efreet is U2 and thus uncommon in France, whereas Gatherer labels it as a rare (though it is now available as an uncommon for those using Gatherer as well, thanks to Vintage Masters). Don't be fooled either, their metagame is pretty competitive

Yeah I totally played that deck too! It was really good when stompy and goblins were some of the strongest decks. Demonic Tutor was such a good 3x uncommon with coffers. I think I was playing that before things got weird with mirrodin though. After mirrodin I don't remember what I played in real peasant because there was this weird alternate peasant format in Ontario where I think you were allowed only 5 cards of a rarity greater than common and only 5 cards from any given set. It was pretty cool. I do remember playing a really fun RB Night's whisper + Empty the Warrens + Tendrils of Agony deck in real Peasant when TSP was out though!

Oh man I totally made a really horrible Disturbed Burial + Spore Frog Deck! Transmute was such a sweet mechanic for peasant!

 

[Diakonov]

So like, after you've sunk 7 or 9 mana and several points of power into it you may have done 4 or 6 damage?
I know it's a way to turn things that aren't cards into damage, which is great and all, but it still cost a card to put it into play and it costs what a spell would cost for each activation.

What does arena cost you? Life? For actual cards? Please, a much better comparison to Ion Storm would be Greed, and how do we all like that in cube?
I'm sure ion storm is fine if you are abusing undying all the time or something, but I'd be pissed off with that card in my hand early trying to decide how best to spend my mana and my slith firewalker counters.

I wasn't trying to make a power-level comparison, I was just pointing out that it falls into a category of cards where the benefits are little to nothing at first but add up over time. I agree that Greed is a better example power-level wise. Some of us do play with Erebos, God of the Dead. In both cases (Ion Storm & Erebos/Greed), the fact that each use costs 2 mana is much less of a issue later in the game.

I agree that it's a terrible card for the early game, and certainly so with Slith Firewalker. I think it really only fits in certain midrange or creature-based control decks. For example, I run Forgotten Ancient; I haven't had a chance to play them together yet, but I imagine it would be fun.

 

[Lucre]

Speaking of Arc-Slogger, how many cards would that have to mill to be playable in cube. I mean it's amazing against most point based removal and in wildfire decks!

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Do you not think it can be a hard to stop finisher for aggro decks too? It doesnt end fast like fireblast (one sided fun/uninteractive) but if you have rakdos cacklers and gore house chainwalkers then you can go to the dome while allowing for both players to find ways to respond and deal with it. Im playing ion storm and like it a lot.

If youre interested in all of this then the +1 counter thread is required reading.