Without irony, not try and force traditional beat-down-from-turn-1 agro? Is it possible to make things like ludevic's test subject, calcite snapper, etc to stall early game, then bounce/whatever their early game and convert into big threats?
Card/Deck Making Delver Work
- Thread starter Chris Taylor
- Start date
Yeah, but i think people normally call this "control".
Maybe we're overloading words too much to be useful then. I did just dig up this thing, which indicates Wizard's aim of Aggro → Midrange → Ramp/Combo → Control/Disruptive Aggro, although I'm sure there's another article which lists this as 5-fold with control -> disruptive aggro. It seems like blue doesn't have the tools to manage raw aggro, so moving it back around the circle a bit to disruptive aggro doesn't seem too much of a stretch, and also matches the tools it has better.
The closest blue has to raw aggro is Phantasmal Bear.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Bob: I don't think anyone is having trouble with that type of deck, though. And even if they are, that doesn't seem like a topic for this thread of Delver, NOT THAT SOME OF US (ME) HAVE BEEN TERRIBLY ON TOPIC.
I find aggressive blue works fine in Blue/White. You get down something (white creature, looter il'kor, welkin tern), slap something on it (empyrial armor, grafted wargear) and disrupt them until you win the game. This worked fine, but the new Theros cards allows this to work smoother with some new, more interesting cards that blue control doesn't really want allowing it to come together more often. A couple of these cards are fairly poisonous, though, but most of them have good crossover. I'm ok with ~10% of the cube being fairly posionous, because 90% of the cards are still being fought over and having a few lynchpins per deck is nice. This deck should like delver, but its probably can't flip it reliably to be good.
I find that people attempt to draft Blue/Black aggro and it always seems like a decent pile, then loses every game. Delver might be good here, but since the deck sucks it doesn't matter.
Red/Blue can utilize Delver, but really doesn't seem to care if it doesn't get it.
Green/Blue has no use for this card at all.
I find aggressive blue works fine in Blue/White. You get down something (white creature, looter il'kor, welkin tern), slap something on it (empyrial armor, grafted wargear) and disrupt them until you win the game. This worked fine, but the new Theros cards allows this to work smoother with some new, more interesting cards that blue control doesn't really want allowing it to come together more often. A couple of these cards are fairly poisonous, though, but most of them have good crossover. I'm ok with ~10% of the cube being fairly posionous, because 90% of the cards are still being fought over and having a few lynchpins per deck is nice. This deck should like delver, but its probably can't flip it reliably to be good.
I find that people attempt to draft Blue/Black aggro and it always seems like a decent pile, then loses every game. Delver might be good here, but since the deck sucks it doesn't matter.
Red/Blue can utilize Delver, but really doesn't seem to care if it doesn't get it.
Green/Blue has no use for this card at all.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I think my current plan is 3 power fliers which can block (Sorry Rishadan Airship), 2 cost walls which don't suck at attacking (Frostburn Weird, Aquamoeba) and Cloudfin Raptors. I'm pulling the rest together at the moment, but I might be able to make a full primer out of this.
Someone oughta give a shout out to kranny to come check out this thread, isn't he the one who wrote that Blue-Gro article back in the day?
Someone oughta give a shout out to kranny to come check out this thread, isn't he the one who wrote that Blue-Gro article back in the day?
CML
Contributor
as 2013 has "still had all these" and 2012 had "durdles" i modestly propose, in the spirit of 2011, that we start saying welkin tern is "not a card." aquamoeba? "not a card." hallmark on black friday? "not a card." etc.
i linked the kranny article earlier up the thread and, though i appreciate the concept and attempt and many of the card choices, it looks like it would not only never work at all with the singleton constraint (or would work only when the control decks did nothing, like a worse mono-red), it also might never work at all in the context of this thread. Sigggggggghh
i linked the kranny article earlier up the thread and, though i appreciate the concept and attempt and many of the card choices, it looks like it would not only never work at all with the singleton constraint (or would work only when the control decks did nothing, like a worse mono-red), it also might never work at all in the context of this thread. Sigggggggghh
Chris Taylor
Contributor
That's what I'm saying, I think the article needs an update for modern times, maybe to be a bit less instructional and a bit more theoretical.
The current WotC crop of 3+ toughness 2 drops which attack well is....5 cards (Aquamoeba, Incursion Specialist, Frilled Occulus, Frostburn Weird, and Riptide Mangler if you squint at it sideways) so I'm giving aquamoeba a shot. I might swap him out for my 1/3 Metropolis Sprite custom card (Snapdragon, from the custom cards thread)
The current WotC crop of 3+ toughness 2 drops which attack well is....5 cards (Aquamoeba, Incursion Specialist, Frilled Occulus, Frostburn Weird, and Riptide Mangler if you squint at it sideways) so I'm giving aquamoeba a shot. I might swap him out for my 1/3 Metropolis Sprite custom card (Snapdragon, from the custom cards thread)
I dunno Chris, normally I am with you but a lot of these cards look like turds. If doing this requires running them, I start to wonder whether the archetype is worth pursuing in the first place.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Frostburn Weird is kinda the only one I've found that looks good. He might be the standard guy since so many cube 2 drops have 3 power, and he's the only card that would block them at all
Frilled Oculus would be great if it weren't 2 colors.
Mangler/Incursion Specialist are horrible, but I wanted to mention them in case anyone disagreed with me.
I'm seeing how the 'moeba plays, or maybe making some that work well.
Frilled Oculus would be great if it weren't 2 colors.
Mangler/Incursion Specialist are horrible, but I wanted to mention them in case anyone disagreed with me.
I'm seeing how the 'moeba plays, or maybe making some that work well.
Yeah, I mean, I am sure there is a theoretical environment where Aquamoeba is not a huge pile, but even Wild Mongrel is pretty terrible these days so I'm not optimistic.
Part of the problem I always had with people who tried to make green aggro work (as a primary color) is that the color really didn't do anything new. They were just running bad white cards that had green colored frames. I get it, support aggro, blah blah, but at a certain point if we're jamming shit dudes so we can say we "support blue aggressive decks" I have to wonder if we're really achieving anything.
Probably the biggest thing you can do to support tempo decks is provide good fixing so that attacking decks can play multiple colors.
Probably the biggest thing you can do to support tempo decks is provide good fixing so that attacking decks can play multiple colors.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I'm going to see how it goes. Maybe they're all terrible but frostburn weird works, or maybe we make it so blue sections run a few fog banks if this is their plan, who knows.
I sure hope it's the former
I sure hope it's the former
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I'd be inclined to agree, but blue does offer something green doesn't: Time (Tempo)
Blue actually does have a unique angle to attack being an aggro deck from, where white usually swarms, black never stops coming, and red has reach.
Green has plow under. That's it. a 5 mana mostly-feel-bad not-quite-armageddon spell of which there is a single (Patently worse) analogue that midrange players keep stealing from you so they can go off with eternal witness. Other than those two cards, all green brings to the table is dudes and spells that rely on you having dudes. In a world where removal exists at all, green just shouldn't be an aggro color, it removes green's whole strength of going over the top when you try and force the color to go under wrath instead of over it.
With vengevine, thrun, and a host of garruks, green is exhibiting some of black's never stop coming mentality, but they ALL cost 4 mana, which makes them curve toppers for aggro decks, roles that style of card is unsuited to playing.
Green aggro doesn't work for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is not bad creatures. It's nothing for those creatures to do.
Yes, Frostburn is a real card, but I think, in my cube at least, you don't really make blue tempo better with some of these random beaters. Like, I thought your post on CML's thread was spot on, and then this last wave of suggestions had me scratching my head a bit. In the same way the Kranstuber article did.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Blue's contribution to U/X aggro decks in my experience has almost invariably been cheap disruption, card draw, and 3/4-drops. It's very rarely anything other than that - the occasional Snapcaster-as-Ambush Viper I guess?
The blue 1/2-drops aren't good enough on power alone to just jam a bunch of them and be confident that they'll contribute enough. If you're including them, it has to be because they work in fun ways with other cards/themes, such as tribal or, yes, devotion.
The blue 1/2-drops aren't good enough on power alone to just jam a bunch of them and be confident that they'll contribute enough. If you're including them, it has to be because they work in fun ways with other cards/themes, such as tribal or, yes, devotion.
CML
Contributor
I think Frostburn Weird is awesome, it's all the other cards that are the problem ;/
Re. Green aggro -- lol wut?!?! G/R and G/W aggro are easy to support and, as for archetypes, WotC employee who is (surprisingly) very good at the game has drafted G/U two of his times chez Degu to great success, while our control spike has made unbeatable Deed + Grave Titan G/B. Yeah as Green you're bad against sweepers but good against spot removal and there are ways to mitigate the former deficiency and give other colors the tools they need to fight on the latter axis, too.
I am overcome with a feeling Green is just so easy to design and develop in Cube, and though my love of Green has helped me develop that Cube section, it's sad that the collective passion for Blue has been unable to surmount the design difficulties of tempo in that color for Cube; Wadds's 'What's wrong with the card pool' thread and its twin, the Chris Taylor.set, may be the only answers. Really, it would take effort to not make Green awesome with every other combination of colors. BLUE, HOWEVER ...
Re. Green aggro -- lol wut?!?! G/R and G/W aggro are easy to support and, as for archetypes, WotC employee who is (surprisingly) very good at the game has drafted G/U two of his times chez Degu to great success, while our control spike has made unbeatable Deed + Grave Titan G/B. Yeah as Green you're bad against sweepers but good against spot removal and there are ways to mitigate the former deficiency and give other colors the tools they need to fight on the latter axis, too.
I am overcome with a feeling Green is just so easy to design and develop in Cube, and though my love of Green has helped me develop that Cube section, it's sad that the collective passion for Blue has been unable to surmount the design difficulties of tempo in that color for Cube; Wadds's 'What's wrong with the card pool' thread and its twin, the Chris Taylor.set, may be the only answers. Really, it would take effort to not make Green awesome with every other combination of colors. BLUE, HOWEVER ...
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Green/Anything aggro doesn't have those problems because it can lean on the other color for dude supplementing duties. Like I said, red has reach, blue has tempo black has etc etc etc
To be an aggro color, you can't be embareassed playing a mono color version of that deck, since sometimes you get the wrong fixing or someone on your right is in the same color etc. I've only ever seen green aggro be 22 dudes and an overrun, and a good deck that does not make.
I'll also posit that grave titan and deed have no business being in an aggro deck
You might be right about blue just not having the right cards at the moment to do this. But damn it I'm not going to try what I can
To be an aggro color, you can't be embareassed playing a mono color version of that deck, since sometimes you get the wrong fixing or someone on your right is in the same color etc. I've only ever seen green aggro be 22 dudes and an overrun, and a good deck that does not make.
I'll also posit that grave titan and deed have no business being in an aggro deck
You might be right about blue just not having the right cards at the moment to do this. But damn it I'm not going to try what I can
CML
Contributor
that is silly, decks need to sometimes not "work out" completely, and i think it's acceptable for mono-Green to be, in a healthy Cube, a deck that exists rarely and is purely aggressive even more rarely, while Green can still be an "aggro color." though I'm fond of the devotion theme (Nylea yo) and pushing things a little more towards mono-color (w/ or w/o splash), i still think "multicolor aggro" is the signature achievement of RiptideLab, and remember too that MGA from a couple years ago played not zoo-style beaters but a bunch of mana dorks and midrangier doodz
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I couldn't agree more. As I finish up revisions on this latest version of my cube, I have a stack of like 30+ green cards that could all easily get slotted in depending on what I want to push and none are "functional equivalents".
In the other colors? 5-10 tops.
I guess WotC is working overtime making up for the early years of Magic when green didn't do much of anything.
Reading all the hassles with getting Delver to work reminded me of the thought process which eventually led me to cut Aether Vial (albeit extrapolated a bit).
They both place constraints upon the rest of your deck to operate optimally.
They are both at their best when you draw them early.
They both require a solid disruption package to function at their best. (Vial is biased towards Port/Wasteland/Dust Bowl, while Delver is biased towards Daze/FoW/Force Spike/Spell Pierce)
So, in my mind, it comes down to adjuvant disruption and redundancy. Redundancy was obviously not feasible with Vial (even if breaking singleton, Vial is probably not something I would entertain including more of), and land-based disruption is also quite hard to come by (though breaking singleton could definitely help you there). Combined with working best with a clustered creature-CMC (which goes against conventional deck building wisdom), it was an easy choice to cut it.
Delver is a bit better positioned than Vial to have a shot, but the same concerns still apply. Something I think is crucial to how it will play out is how well 3-drops will work in the same role as Delver (Fettergeist, Serendib, etc.).
Also, Phantasmal Dragon?
They both place constraints upon the rest of your deck to operate optimally.
They are both at their best when you draw them early.
They both require a solid disruption package to function at their best. (Vial is biased towards Port/Wasteland/Dust Bowl, while Delver is biased towards Daze/FoW/Force Spike/Spell Pierce)
So, in my mind, it comes down to adjuvant disruption and redundancy. Redundancy was obviously not feasible with Vial (even if breaking singleton, Vial is probably not something I would entertain including more of), and land-based disruption is also quite hard to come by (though breaking singleton could definitely help you there). Combined with working best with a clustered creature-CMC (which goes against conventional deck building wisdom), it was an easy choice to cut it.
Delver is a bit better positioned than Vial to have a shot, but the same concerns still apply. Something I think is crucial to how it will play out is how well 3-drops will work in the same role as Delver (Fettergeist, Serendib, etc.).
Also, Phantasmal Dragon?
My verdict is essentially: Delver works as a component of aggressive blue decks. To pull this off, you need:
a) the fixing to have multicolor attacking decks
b) sufficient supporting tools (aka efficient attackers) in blue
Super threat light doesn't work, but if you want to boost Delver, replace various spells with Brainstorm as needed, and run Terminus / Bonfire as ways of boosting control (as your cube is probably hyper aggressive now).
Part of the problem is that Delver itself is a fairly low demand card at the table, and if you're going to have more than one you need to push the fuck out of the archetype so that they don't go undrafted. Having four Delvers that nobody wants wheeling and wheeling is bad for business.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Hey if I could I'd rename the thread to "Getting Blue Tempo To Work" I would, but I can't do that for some reason
My initial design was to make delver work by changing where he fits: From a threat light deck with lots of disruption into a tokens based deck which relies more on midnight haunting than cloudgoat ranger.
I've kept vial in since it's a favorite and we use it more as just a way to play more dudes, not a way to play dudes while stone raining them
Also, going up to x4 wasteland instead of Strip Mine/Tectonic Edge/Rishadan Port was the best thing for my environment in a long time (Though damn is that expensive if you don't proxy. Dat Judge Foil Price)
My initial design was to make delver work by changing where he fits: From a threat light deck with lots of disruption into a tokens based deck which relies more on midnight haunting than cloudgoat ranger.
Reading all the hassles with getting Delver to work reminded me of the thought process which eventually led me to cut Aether Vial (albeit extrapolated a bit).
They both place constraints upon the rest of your deck to operate optimally.
They are both at their best when you draw them early.
They both require a solid disruption package to function at their best. (Vial is biased towards Port/Wasteland/Dust Bowl, while Delver is biased towards Daze/FoW/Force Spike/Spell Pierce)
So, in my mind, it comes down to adjuvant disruption and redundancy. Redundancy was obviously not feasible with Vial (even if breaking singleton, Vial is probably not something I would entertain including more of), and land-based disruption is also quite hard to come by (though breaking singleton could definitely help you there). Combined with working best with a clustered creature-CMC (which goes against conventional deck building wisdom), it was an easy choice to cut it.
Delver is a bit better positioned than Vial to have a shot, but the same concerns still apply. Something I think is crucial to how it will play out is how well 3-drops will work in the same role as Delver (Fettergeist, Serendib, etc.).
Also, Phantasmal Dragon?
I've kept vial in since it's a favorite and we use it more as just a way to play more dudes, not a way to play dudes while stone raining them
Also, going up to x4 wasteland instead of Strip Mine/Tectonic Edge/Rishadan Port was the best thing for my environment in a long time (Though damn is that expensive if you don't proxy. Dat Judge Foil Price)