General Making Aggro more inclusive

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, i'm very happy with my U/R delver decks, which have a lot of incentive cards, and can basically shift between being an aggro, control, or burn deck to close out games. I want to buff a bit my U/W delver decks. For the U/R decks, these are the core cards.





Temblor could be earthquake: its just a question of having a ground sweeper that leaves flyers intact. The burning vengeances are probably outclassed in titan formats by higher power removal options. Other than that, I think the core is strong. Talrand and young pyromancer are like fixed storm cards and a lot of fun: very explosive with flashback spells. Staggershock is another option if I wanted to increase power. Daze, gush, and force of will are other possibilities. In the very creature light versions, delver consistently flips naturally, and the deck can capitalize on the early damage to shift into a burn deck and close out the game.

For U/W the strategy is similar, unfortunatly, WOTZ has given less attention to creature light U/W tempo decks. The strategy is to run token makers and combine those with rally effects or anthams to control the board, but also provide pressure. Due to the high spell count, delver also flips consistantly.

Right now I am running lingering souls, spectral procession, and midnight haunting for (relevant) token makers. My support is dictate of heliod, cathars crusade, and rally the peasants.

I think I need at least one more token maker, but none of them seem ideal. My choices seem to be triplicate spirits, eyes in the skies, and battle screech.

I've found dictate is also a bit too highly priced for this strategy, so I probably should be running at least one more rally effect.

I'm also feeling the lack of white incentive cards for this strategy, other than geist of saint traft and feel its a little one dimensional, lacking the flexibility of the U/R list. I would like to have at least one more interesting incentive card but can't think of any, and sadly the only U/W aggro-control lists I have to look at are spirit delver lists, caw blade, and stoneforge lists.

Any ideas?

 

[Lucre]

Double burning vengeance is damn weird to me as you seem to be wasting 3 mana worth of tempo to play it and then most of your flashback spells cost like 3+ mana and mystic retrival and it's ilk are really not worth the tempo investment to get rolling. Like if I were sinking that mana in there I'd sorta want most of my flashback + vengeance plays to be of the quality firebolt brings to the table. Plus how often are you reliably flashing things back?

Do you feel like it's earned it's 3 mana and card the first time you flash something back and get a use out of it? It's just weird to me to go deep on an enchantment that may well read "your six mana flashback card and your snapcaster get a little better". Anyway it's your cube. Maybe with all the Shuffle 3 cards from a graveyard flashback spells you have it's worth while. I just tend to think I'd like a creature whenever I see a card like that.

So are you complaining that your spells matter decks are rarely white? I think running a lot of token generators can help. Counters and brainstorms get a long a little better with raise the alarm and midnight haunting than with a lot of creatures. It also gets along great with all sorts of buff cards UW value decks often rely on to get their guys to the finish, like equipment and global enchantments or tradewind rider. The problem with white in spells matter is that we live in an era where most of white's removal is not instant or sorcery anymore, it's like 3-4cc enchantments or things that care about attackers. I've drafter a lot of really boring WW decks and then just taken counters because blue seemed open. It can be sorta annoying because it tends to lack character and doesn't use wasteland well, but manowar is usually as good as any removal to that deck.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I've had a grand old time with spear of heliod despite my hatred of anthems. I did get my Inferno Titan killed last draft, for what it's worth.

possibly that one from gatecrash?
Edit:

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Flashback extracts a heavy tempo cost in exchange for card advantage. BV helps ease that tempo cost, and provides a good long term value plan for when the deck switches to a more controlling game plan. In addition, when you aren’t running powered point removal, the burn off of BV becomes a reasonable form of board control, rewarding your deck for just doing its thing. It also provides further archetype depth and a reason to explore spell based decks.

There is not a lot of direct card draw in the format, so the best way to dig through your library is with self-mill. Consequently, flashback is one of the major sources of card advantage for control or aggro-control decks, and is quite common.

Yeah, I’m just looking for some spice for U/W aggro-control. I have 6 strong archetype pieces for U/R, compared with only one for U/W: geist of saint traft. My plan was originally +1 triplicate spirits and + 1 army of allah/fortify/rally the peasants/intangible virtue, and go with the spirit delver plan of beating with small buffed flyers. I expect the deck to be more U/W/r, but I was hoping for something with more spice to it. I'm also concerned that triplicate spirits and battle screech would slot in better in the humans deck.
Edit: Have you found the creature kill ability on spear oppressive at all?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Have you found the creature kill ability on spear oppressive at all?

Nope. It's what makes the card able to be played in multiple archetypes!

As for aggro support, I run these:


Those are nice cards that go well into aggressive tempo decks. The funny thing is that slower decks will play the three "multicolor" cards as well, because they can stall the game so you get time to deploy larger threats.

Edit: Obviously these do nothing for your token/spells theme, but neither does Geist of Saint Traft really.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Geist is just so much raw power that it sucks people into that deck, which i'm fine with. I know its a controversal card to run.

Lyev skyknight looks great. A little weak maybe for a direct delver shell, but I could see it as part of a nasty W/U humans deck, that sometimes shows up in a delver list.

How do your cloudfin decks look? I always imagined it as more of a U/G card.

Also, it just dawned on me:

 

[Onderzeeboot]

There's a few cheap 3/x's in white, including the Skyknight and the Marshal, so it does really well in a skies shell. It's also great in , especially if you get the +1/+1 counters Thieme Rolling, and I'm still figuring out if I want to cut something for Ion Storm, so that might be a thing in the future. I squadroned Raptor in my cube by the way.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Edit: Have you found the creature kill ability on spear oppressive at all?

In my cube it has literally been activated once (The time it killed my inferno titan above)

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Wake thrasher looks like the perfect example of an inclusive aggro card. It is of course in blue.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Wake thrasher looks like the perfect example of an inclusive aggro card. It is of course in blue.

Which I love, because it lets me put a few cards that support aggro in blue without being too obvious. Blue is not really an aggro color, but it sure has the tools to support an aggro color.