[Discussion] Defining deck-types.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Moved, on second thought, from the "Does Control Suck?" thread, as I think it's worth it's own topic.

Since a lot of stupid shit is caused by people not agreeing on what words mean, I'm going to go ahead and suggest some definitions here.

- An aggressive card is a card that can win the game. Usually this translates into "creature", but it could also be something like Cursed Scroll or even Millstone. These are the basic offensive elements of the game.

- A control card is a card that can stop an opponent from winning or stop some part of their game plan from taking off. These usually have the words "Counter", "Destroy", or "Remove" on them somewhere, although there are other options- even cards that stop other control cards are themselves control cards, as you're anticipating that part of your opponent's game plan is to come after your cards. These are the basic defensive elements of the game.

- A combination card is a card that, when combined with other cards, either wins the game or puts you in a game-winning position. Usually these are offensive, such as Sutured Ghoul or Brain Freeze, but they can also be defensive- Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top create a powerful new effect together, for instance, that doesn't really exist when the two are separate. Ditto to Armageddon and Ghostly Prison, or Leyline of the Void + Ill-Gotten Gains.

Now, generally, these card types are used to categorize decks. There are cards that don't fit in any of these categories, which are ironically pretty much the most powerful cards in the game. While offensive or defensive cards can actually tip the scales of the game back and forth directly, these are the resources that let you compete at all. Resources fall into two basic categories:

- Mana cards, aka, cards that give you mana.

- Card advantage/quality cards, which give you card quality or quantity.

While fundamental to the game, both of these are only useful when they're supplementing one of the first three (and really, the first two) card types. A deck with twenty Islands and forty Accumulated Knowledges isn't going anywhere (although, with fifteen Black Lotuses and forty-five Ancestral Recalls you could win turn 1 pretty much all of the time. Hm.)

Notice, incidentally, that a card can be part of multiple categories; theoretically, it could be part of all categories, although I don't think any such actually exist at the moment. Terrarion in a March of the Machines/Intruder Alarm deck?

Now, obviously no deck is going to be "pure" control- it has to actually be able to win itself, it can't simply hope the opponent scoops from boredom. Well, technically you could with Gaea's Blessing, but that would be terrible, and Gaea's Blessing would be a borderline aggro card at that point. And almost all serious decks run some element of control, from Wasteland to Swords to Plowshares to Xantid Swarm.

So what does this mean to deck archetypes? I propose the following definition:

- An aggro deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck is to kill your opponent.

- A control deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck is to mess up your opponent's game plan.

- An aggro-control deck is one in which there is a rough equilibrium between the offensive and defensive elements of your gampelan.

- A combo deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck relies upon specific or general interactions between cards, with decks like Flash and Aluren and Replenish-Opalescence being in the former, and decks like Stax or Ichorid or anything storm based in the latter category.

Note that any combo decks has to decide if it's offensive or defensive; while we would normally think of all combo as being the former, the latter would include decks traditionally thought of as "Prison" and things like, yes, Enchantress, where there's something like twenty control elements and two kill conditions, at least one of which also qualifies as another control element.

And, yes, under this definition, I think it's fair to call Goblins Aggro-Combo-Control.

[dre4m]

So what does this mean to deck archetypes? I propose the following definition:

- An aggro deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck is to kill your opponent.

- A control deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck is to mess up your opponent's game plan.

- An aggro-control deck is one in which there is a rough equilibrium between the offensive and defensive elements of your gampelan.

- A combo deck is one in which the dominant gameplan of the deck relies upon specific or general interactions between cards, with decks like Flash and Aluren and Replenish-Opalescence being in the former, and decks like Stax or Ichorid or anything storm based in the latter category.


And, yes, under this definition, I think it's fair to call Goblins Aggro-Combo-Control.

It would be if you hadn't used the phrase "dominant gameplan," but as defined, Goblins is definately aggro, because its dominant gameplan is probably never to mess up your opponent's game plan.

That being said, this is an interesting post, even though it does chip away at deck classification as we know it. Ambiguity, while necessary, is quite a hinderence when it comes to phrases like "dominant gameplan" and "general interactions." I do admire your fortitude in trying to lay down some definitions for this stuff, though.

[hi-val]

Threat Theory, Answer Theory (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/7865.html) and Who's the Beatdown? (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/3692.html) remain the best pieces written on this stuff for my personal understanding. One can transcend aggro or control (or Prison, the other unmentioned one) into just threats or answers. Beatdown vs. Control models can explain decks like Hulk that tenuously controlled until they had a turn where they completely shifted to beatdown or played both roles.

Stephen Menendian wrote about the five-point metagame awhile back, which applied to Vintage at the time. I'll look for that, as it incorporated aggro-control and prison into the architecture.

[greyareabeyond]

I've always liked definitions that describe the interaction strategies. Namely:

Aggro: most cards are aimed at the opponent (burn, creatures) with a minimum amount of ultra-efficient disruption (i.e. wastelands). Emphasizes redundancy and efficiency.

Control: a high allocation of cards are aimed at the opponent's cards (removal, counterspells, discard) and a minimum allocated to the kill. Emphasizes card advantage (to win the long game) and flexability.

Combo: a high allocation of cards are aimed at your own cards (tutors, draw, mana) again with only a minimum of efficient, flexible control elements (to sidestep hate cards) and a small set of synergistic cards that lead to an explosive win.

This made it easier for me to see how Aluren could be categorized as Control/Combo since many of the cards act as removal (walls, Man o' War) until the combo comes online.

I'm not sure how to incorporate this into the definitions given above, but for me, the most defining characteristic of Aggro Control decks is that they play an early threat and try to protect it long enough to win. The control elements protect their threat, rather than emphasizing card advantage before building to some inevitible finisher like Morphling or Darksteel colossus.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Am I the only person that thinks Mike Flores is over-rated? I understand that "Who's The Beatdown?" is dealing with important concepts, but it's not really the exhaustive and all-encompassing exploration of offense vs. defense that it's lauded to be.

Technically speaking, there are really six archetypes. There is aggro, control, or aggro-control, which is to say, aggressive, defensive, and somewhere in between decks, and then the same categories for combo decks, which are alternately called combo, prison, and... I guess we don't really have a name for aggro-combo-control. But decks like Goblins and many Survival builds seem to fit the mold.

One of the things I wanted to squash was the myth of the archetype triangle, where people say that control beats combo, combo beats aggro, and aggro beats control. The game does break down into simply answers and threats, with resources in the background controlling everything from behind the scenes. A good control deck beats anything- anything it's actually designed to beat. There are in fact wrong threats, which are the threats your opponent is prepared for; an offensive deck, whether combo or normal aggro, wins when it's threats are unanswered, and a defensive deck wins when it controls the opponent's gameplan.


It would be if you hadn't used the phrase "dominant gameplan," but as defined, Goblins is definately aggro, because its dominant gameplan is probably never to mess up your opponent's game plan.

Not really true. Against any aggro deck your plan is to go creature-control with Gempalms and Fanatics and just blocking, since you can't straight up race decks like Red Death and 9-Land Stompy most of the time. Against control your plan is to use Wasteland and Rishadan Port to prevent them from getting big spells online. The only decks that you don't usually interact with with Goblins are fast combo decks, which are your worst matchup since you can't answer their threats.

[hi-val]

Considering that Flores, Paskins and others on the Dojo created the terms that we use today to define Magic Theory, I wouldn't say he's overrated as a classical writer. His current stuff isn't the groundbreaking theory that he used to write, but I don't consider him overrated. This is the person who wrote Finding the Tinker Deck, Who's the Beatdown? and Threat Theory, Answer Theory-- he's the most influential writer the game has had. Saying he's overrated brings up the question of who has been historically more essential to Magic writing, and I can't think of anyone.

Also, I found The Five Axis Metagame (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=6811), which seems pertinent to the discussion at hand.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm not really sure that that's an argument. "Over-rated" does not inherently mean "Undeserving of rating"; the Beatles, for instance, were a very, very good band, but they are often rated somewhere in the range of, "Messianic demi-gods who shat wildflowers and used their powers of rhythm and blues/rock fusion to end all racism, hatred and hunger in the World", which is clearly a case of their being over-rated, even were we to agree that they were the best band of the 20th century.

Even if we were to suppose that Flores is/was the best writer Magic has had, that doesn't mean that the current rating he has, which is somewhere in the range of, "Mike Flores smote the ground with a gnarled stick, and up sprung Richard Garfield and Mark Rosewater, fully grown and riding pegasuses. And the three of them, but mostly Flores, went on to create the game of Magic, Magic theory, game theory, all strategy and the concept of winning things", is actually warranted. It's not. Whether or not he's coined popular terms and memes- which he has, but which is a bandwagon fallacy- he's not a great guru of the game or it's greatest theorist. He's simply better able, or more willing, than some to translate fairly advanced concepts for newer players.

Smennen's article just isn't that relevant here. He doesn't fix the mistaken assumptions about RPS metagames, he merely complicates them. The combo or not question isn't really as relevant as people think; a metagame basically comes down to a question of offense versus defense. How fast is your kill, how good are your answers, do your answers hit their threats, do your threats get through their answers.

[kirdape3]

Flores is, for better or worse, the current theoretician par excellence in Magic. If anything, he's underrated because of the difficulty he has in explaining himself such that people without his theoretical grasp will understand it fully.

Cards can be both aggressive and reactive as the gamestate changes. Duress taking out a critical combination piece in the early game is certainly reactive; the quintessential 'pls don't kill me thx'. Duress taking out their defenses so that way your own win conditions can actually, you know, win? That's certainly active. Most of the best cards are able to be used in both an active or reactive role.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That's still not an offensive weapon; that's a defensive weapon. Duress doesn't help kill your opponent. You're merely using it to take out their defensive cards instead of their offensive ones. It's true that the best decks can usually play both offense and defense; it's impossible to win with pure defense, and CRET Belcher is the closest and really only thing like a competitive deck in Legacy that's entirely offensive, give or take a Burning Wish for Shattering Spree or Pyroclasm.

[MattH]

I like this thread; although it's not really covering anything new, it look like it could be a valuable resource.


Notice, incidentally, that a card can be part of multiple categories; theoretically, it could be part of all categories, although I don't think any such actually exist at the moment. Terrarion in a March of the Machines/Intruder Alarm deck?
I think there are many such cards.

In the sense that it attacks for the kill, blocks extremely well (a controlling function), and works well with anything that moves cards to your hand or graveyard, Psychatog can be thought of as all three.

Mishra's Factory gets to play offense, defense, and mana. Same with Eternal Dragon, which gets to play Card Drawing as a fourth role.


One of the things I wanted to squash was the myth of the archetype triangle,
Well, okay. The triangle really hasn't been gospel for like five years (the metagame clock is pretty much a strictly superior framework for understanding archetypes), but okay.

There's something about the Smmenen article I never liked, which was a piece of language abuse: his system only works if you assume "prison" means "Workshop artifact Stax prison" and doesn't really apply to any other kind. You may say that no other kind was viable in Vintage at the time (or since), but it's still sloppy shorthand.

Actually I did learn something from this thread - I always thought Zvi wrote "Who's the beatdown?"! Learn something every day.

[Whit3 Ghost]

It's also possible to break down control cards into assertive and reactive.

Chalice of the Void and Duress are assertive because they attempt to nullify cards before they are on the stack/in play.

Wrath of God and Force are reactive as they attempt to take out cards in play/on the stack.

This line becomes blurred when say Enchantress drops Confinement when Goblins has a full board.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Same with Eternal Dragon, which gets to play Card Drawing as a fourth role.

Eternal Dragon counts, I guess. It also forms some soft combos with Solitary Confinement and to a lesser extent Sensei's Divining Top and Moat.


Well, okay. The triangle really hasn't been gospel for like five years (the metagame clock is pretty much a strictly superior framework for understanding archetypes), but okay.

Plenty of people think this is a gospel. Hell, read the SCG forums. Actually, a better thought would be to not do that, but the point is that many, many people are ignorant on this. I don't expect any very strong players to actually buy into it, but it's still widespread, especially in the Eternal formats where people spend less energy keeping up with strategy and people actually advocate that any deck not running Blue isn't "true" control. Lots of people just mindlessly repeat memes, like, "There are not wrong threats, only wrong answers", or "Misassignment of rule= game loss" and, yes, "Combo > Aggro > Control > Combo", and they don't understand these rules and why they're right, much less bothering to check if they're right at all.


There's something about the Smmenen article I never liked, which was a piece of language abuse: his system only works if you assume "prison" means "Workshop artifact Stax prison" and doesn't really apply to any other kind. You may say that no other kind was viable in Vintage at the time (or since), but it's still sloppy shorthand.

He also assumes all combo is the same, which is clearly not the case- CRET Belcher and Aluren are worlds apart. It's all still a question of speed and power of answers versus the speed and power of threats, underlined by resource management, whether in a combo deck or not.

[hi-val]

I was talking with my friend Will yesterday about how shitty the Beatles were. Both of us, mid-rant, laughed and admitted that the entire genre of music that we listen to was inspired by the Beatles. It's understandable to recognize that you can at the same time pretentiously rant against an entity and realize how beneficial they were to what you like.

At the same time, I don't know anyone who attests that Flores pinches off endangered leatherback turtles when he hits the porcelain.

[Bardo]

I was talking with my friend Will yesterday about how shitty the Beatles were. Both of us, mid-rant, laughed and admitted that the entire genre of music that we listen to was inspired by the Beatles. It's understandable to recognize that you can at the same time pretentiously rant against an entity and realize how beneficial they were to what you like.

Yeah, the Beatles analogy is particularly apt. I don't care for them either* and have been in quite a few of those, "Okay, sure, they were influential, but, whatever" conversations myself. Comparing them to Flores works since he's an easy guy to dump on (some of it justified, some of it not), but it's hard to talk about modern MtG theory and not have Flores a part of the discussion--at least as a tangent; in the same way that it's hard to discuss modern rock and not have the Beatles as a dimension, since most of my favorite bands/musicians cite the Beatles as their top influences, but I just don't see it. Ditto for Zappa.

Anyway, Flores contributions to the understanding of MtG are so deep, it's hard to separate him from most of the rest ("Who's the Beatdown," "Finding the Tinker Deck," etc.)


* Except for "Yesterday," "Across the Universe," "A Day in the Life," maybe a few others that aren't immediately coming to mind. Those songs are fucking brilliant.

[greyareabeyond]

I still would differentiate Duress from Chalice of the Void in that CotV is a permanent in addition to being proactive. Almost every card that identifies a deck as a Prison deck is a control card that is also a permanent: Abyss, CotV, Moat, Propaganda / Ghostly Prison, Smokestack, Sphere of Resistance / Trinisphere, Uba Mask, etc. Tefari is actually a Prison card, come to think of it. Prison cards are controlling, but they act like threats in that the opponent must find an answer or their gameplan won't work. (Which is why T1 stompy had Elvish Lyrist main deck for Keeper's Moats and/or Abyss.)

Even though you play Duress proactively, it still works more like other nonpermanent control cards like counters and removal in that it's effect is temporary. Which brings up something else. When a discard spell is in an aggro deck it's generally referred to as "disruption". Is disruption the same thing as control?

Also, Feldman's article today made me think about how midrange aggro is usually ignored in these discussions. Do these decks fit easily on the Aggro / Control continuum? They generally play a lot more creatures than Aggro Control decks like Thresh and Madness, but they play more like Control decks. (I'm thinking of Rock and RGb Survival in Legacy.)

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

Rather than continuing to derail threads about deck-types and their place in the meta-game, why don't we start a thread just for trying to pinpoint what we mean by "combo", "control", and "aggro"?

I'll start;


But if you have a better definition of combo, perhaps you'd like to share it.

Ignoring that I'd all ready said like five times in that same thread how I didn't think the term was useful or accurate at all, here's the Spat-take on the deck-types;

The first split for deck-types is whether your deck primarily wins via the combat step or some other way. If it wins some other way, then it would be considered combo.

The second step is if you win via the combat step, do you win in the early game or the late game? If it's the early game, it's aggro, if late, then control. Mid is aggro-control.

Now these terms are from a long-gone meta-game, and so they don't account for everything that exists today. There are lots of combo decks that use the attack step(see EtW), "aggro-control" that doesn't really win until the late-game(see Fish), plus confusing anomalies like Ichorid, Burn, Survival and Enchantress.



The question you have to ask is what do the terms tell you about a deck their describing? If they don't accurately describe the deck's strategy, then they're not of much use. If you call Enchantress control, for instance, it might tell you that it's blue based, or that it plays disruption early and draw spells mid to late game, then some kind of slot efficient kill. Traditionally, those are the sorts of strategies you expect from control. But they don't describe the deck. Calling it Prison pretty well means mana-denial, which isn't part of the deck's strategy.

If you call Ichorid combo, you might anticipate the sort of deck that doesn't handle disruption well, but crushes aggro. Instead you find a deck that anhiliates traditional permission and loses to Goblins.

The moral of the story? In Legacy these terms are near obsolete. There are very few decks that fit neatly into one category, and a lot of decks that don't fit into any category at all, at least not in a meaningful sense. What does calling Goblins aggro-control-combo mean? It may be accurate, but it's not helpful.

[Machinus]

In Legacy these terms are near obsolete.(emphasis mine)

I agree. Just like every other fad promulgated by the entertainment writers of magic websites, this vocabulary is near-useless for producing practical knowledge about the format.

But unlike this new age of vapid vocabulary, those terms have been used and modified for so long that I think they retain some meaning as long as you accept a sufficiently generalized differentiation of meaning.

With this condition, there is a model that is at least slighly informative for describing Legacy.

There are four decktypes in this format:

Aggro,
Combo,
Aggro-Control, and
Control,

and the hybrids that come with them. Trying to explain every turn of a decks operation with your shiny words is a dumb objective and it's also impossible. These are strategic terms.

The way I use them generally describes what deckbuilding tools are best suited for supporting that deck's strategy, and how that deck is going to be affected by metagame shifts.

[Happy Gilmore]

This should be a great topic. I'm reserving my judgment on definitions for the time being since I can't accurately designate them myself. Some decks attempt to force interaction which gives me the impression that they are either control or agro-control. However, there are exceptions to this as well.

Goblins would prefer to simply do damage as fast as it can, i.e. be the agro deck. However, in many matchups it is forced to become the control deck (which it can do pretty well). So is it still an agro deck? I would classify it as agro-control. I don't know of any true agro deck in legacy except Ichorid (the standard version). The bridge/Flamekin deck I would classify as combo. Ichorid is a horrible control deck and when forced to do so it folds under the pressure.

Agro will have difficulty existing in a format with fast combo because of it's inability to interact. I think that’s why we actually don't have any in legacy.

Thoughts?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm glad I didn't already start a thread (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6023) for this.

I'd expect that level of perception from someone that describes Solitary Confinement as beatdown.

[shteev]

This thread is doomed to failure. Magic is an extremely complex game, and deck types will always bleed into each other. We all know what is basically meant by 'combo', 'control', and 'aggro', so they are meaningful terms, but the boundaries of concepts like this will always be vague.

Take Burn.... is Burn a combo deck? It doesn't 'go off' in a single turn, but then Aluren and Empty The Warrens don't either, they both need at least 1 attack phase. But if Burn isn't a combo deck, what the hell is it? It doesn't look like aggro or control to me.

What do we want to spend our time doing here, talking about how to define Burn, or talking about how to play it, play against it, or make it better? What will talking about definitions achieve here?

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I didn't want to dirty a real discussion with your terrible attempts at defining the arche-types, since your definitions suck.

Also, I thought the name of that thread was "Why Flores is better than Jack". My bad.

Edit: Shit. I was teleported mid-post.

[Nightmare]

I'm glad I didn't already start a thread (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6023) for this.

I'd expect that level of perception from someone that describes Solitary Confinement as beatdown.I'm not warning you because you are brothers, and if my brother was on this site I would flame the hell out of him. Threads merged.

[Machinus]

Take Burn.... is Burn a combo deck? It doesn't 'go off' in a single turn, but then Aluren and Empty The Warrens don't either, they both need at least 1 attack phase. But if Burn isn't a combo deck, what the hell is it? It doesn't look like aggro or control to me.

So...they're all obviously combo decks. Is this hard for everyone else too?

[Mijorre]

Burn is the little kid everyone bullies in school. Eventually, it turned into a psychopath who tried to kill people with wooden spoons.

Wooden spoons, baby.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If I used wooden spoons, I would always have nightmares everytime I ate pudding that I would get a splinter on my tongue. That would hurt like a mother fucker.

I also note that for sucking, my definitions seem to be the ones that can actually be applied in a consistent and logical manner, you rampaging jackass.

[Tacosnape]

Burn is the little kid everyone bullies in school. Eventually, it turned into a psychopath who tried to kill people with wooden spoons.

Wooden spoons, baby.

I agree. I'd rather stick my cock in an industrial fan twice than face burn. Burn is the most annoying deck ever made because absolutely anyone can pick up wins with it without their being any actual game interaction. It's made top 4 at both our last two local tournaments, losing to Hulk Flash and Landstill in the semifinals. The former of which it was responsible for me not making top 4/8 at a Legacy event for the first time in my entire life.

I call Burn a combo deck because it outraced me without any removal involved when I went first and connected with a Goblin Lackey into a Siege-Gang Commander.

[Mijorre]

I call Burn a combo deck because it outraced me without any removal involved when I went first and connected with a Goblin Lackey into a Siege-Gang Commander.

Well, in theory it probably outraced with removal strategically aimed at your head instead of your creatures, making it some weird-ass control-aggro deck.

@IBA: Actually, unless if you bite down on the spoon real hard, it is a huge feat to get it to splinter if they are well crafted. Besides, it should be a little soggy from both pudding and saliva, thus making it rather safe for eating with.

[Goblin Snowman]

Why are we even trying to define these terms? Most players can look and say, oh, that's Combo even though it attacks with 20 ETW Tokens, and oh, that's Aggro Control even though it wins really late in the game. That being said, I'll post what I've always thought. Whether or not Flores is still a good writer on Magic theory, I'm going to assume everyone has read "Who's the Beatdown".

There are only two things I'm going to write about, aggro and control, as you can make a case for the nebulous "combo" archetype to be either. Aggro is the deck that forces the other deck to react. Control is the deck that trys to stop them, and after stopping them, wins.

You can't just say a deck is an aggro or control deck without mentioning the match they're playing in and the hands each deck get. For example, I can't say Goblins is a Control deck, but I can say that in most aggro matchups, Goblins plays control. Giving a flatout statement about how the deck is wins is almost always wrong. Each deck in each specific matchup with certain hands can play either role. Truffle Shuffle, what we generally think of as a control deck, might be the first deck to play a relevent spell that affects the board against Threshold, depending on each player's hand, making it the aggro deck in this game. Under these definitions, Combo doesn't exist. Generally, the decks we think of as Combo are simply aggressive decks that demand different answers that the normal "aggro" decks. This could be written a little better, but I think I covered my points pretty well. Aggro and Control are specific to each and every game, and we just call a deck by what is role is usually plays.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I think it'd be more useful to describe a deck's attributes when talking about the deck, rather than trying to cram it into a deck-type definition.

For instance, a deck's fundamental turn is relevant information. So is its kill turn. The amount and kind of disruption is relevant. Its threat density is relevant. What kinds of card advantage it has is relevant. If it uses an engine or any obvious synergies is relevant. You don't learn any of these things by arguing about whether it's combo-control or control-combo.

Some decks can be easily classified; Threshold is pretty clearly aggro-control. But a lot of decks fall outside of these definitions.

So if I were describing Enchantress, for instance, I would say that it's an engine-based deck with a fundamental turn of 3, a mid-to-late game kill, depending on whether or Confinement has strategic superiority against the opponent. It doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, but it tells you what it is without being inaccurate or misleading.

[Obfuscate Freely]

The archetype triangle of aggro, combo, and control, along with the slightly more thorough idea of The Metagame Clock (http://web.archive.org/web/20000528022701/thedojo.com/b001/bo.000321lwo.shtml%20) (which adds aggro-control and midgame to the list), are both attempts to describe decks strategically.

Defining a deck's archetype is not the same as assigning it a role, a la Who's the Beatdown (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=3692%20). A deck can be the beatdown or the control deck in a given matchup regardless of whether it is an aggro deck, a combo deck, or a control deck in a general strategic sense.

Aggro decks apply proactive pressure with a critical mass of individual threat cards.

Combo decks apply proactive pressure with cards that synergize with each other. These decks have very few cards that are threats on their own.

Control decks are reactive; they force interaction (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/8895.html) with the opponent in order to leverage a long-game advantage.

Hybrid strategies can adopt different qualities of each of these archetypes. Both combo-control and aggro-control decks blur the line between reactive and proactive by being able to switch roles mid-game. Aggro-combo decks are undoubtedly proactive, but combine cards that are individually strong with cards that increase in value in conjunction with other cards. Most decks are hybridized to some degree, which is why the Metagame Clock definitions can seem outdated or inadequate. After all, The Metagame Clock was originally written to define how decks actually matched up against each other, but the terms are no longer very good at predicting how one deck will fare against another.

However, the terms are still useful because correctly identifying a deck strategically gives you at least some insight into how it functions, and how to beat it with another deck, but you do have to apply them correctly. For example, if you call Enchantress a control deck, and then lose a match against it because you misassign your role, it is because you misapplied the term, not because Jack Elgin needs to redefine it.

Enchantress is a combo deck. It has a proactive, synergy-based game plan and a fundamental turn between 2 and 4, depending on the matchup. When you are playing against Enchantress, unless your deck can goldfish faster than that, you should assume the role of the control deck. What this means is that you have to force the Enchantress player to interact in order to stop him or her from blowing you out of the game.

Goblins attempts to do this with Wasteland and Port. After boarding, Goblins also brings in any Disenchant effects it has access to. Pyrostatic Pillar is another strong option, since it increases Goblins' fundamental turn significantly.

Gro attempts to do this with countermagic. Note that Gro's countermagic has to aim for the Enchantress effects. If the Gro player holds his or her counters for Confinement, and tries to race, Enchantress will get its gameplan online and accelerate to a point at which counters are no longer able to stop it from just winning the game.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Combo decks apply proactive pressure with cards that synergize with each other. These decks have very few cards that are threats on their own.

Like Goblins.

[Goblin Snowman]

Like Goblins.

Every single card in Goblins, in addition to doing something else, is a threat. Each and every Ringleader and Tin Street can kill you if you don't stop them, and they happen to work even better together.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Every single card in Goblins, in addition to doing something else, is a threat. Each and every Ringleader and Tin Street can kill you if you don't stop them, and they happen to work even better together.

Yeah. The only thing better than 1/1's for one mana and two mana 1/2s are the three mana 1/1s and four mana 2/2s. Those threats suck noodles on their own, sorry. Siege-Gang is the only card that's actually impressive by itself.

[DrJones]

No! Not yet another "let's define aggro, control, and combo" thread! I'm awfully tired of these. It has been done to death, and they aren't even remotely useful. This is much like card advantage. A concept so simple that any moron can write about it, and so useless that nobody cares to read.

Aggro, control, and combo aren't even good categories. They overlap like hell (it's very easy to build aggro/control/combo decks), and they aren't even complete (there are many deck types that aren't either of those). What's the purpose of having categories if they don't have bounds?

Finding the Tinker deck (http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=sb20010607a) is a good article because it throws away all the garbage, and tries (albeit faulty) to categorize decks according to their game plan, or "principles of the deck", as stated on the article.

If you are going to devote a thread about deck-types, please use it as a starting reference.

[DrJones]

I think it should be better to define decks according to their characteristics, or a set of principles.

Just to keep the ball rolling in the good direction:

Turbo - The deck is focused on winning on the very first turns of the game, before the opponent even has a chance to respond. So, it don't usually includes ways to avoid disruption. Turbo decks usually kill on turns 0-2.
Engine - The deck is comprised mostly of pieces of a mechanism, which join together to build something. The name comes from car engines, as the first ones start the engine (they help to get the next pieces), and the car accelerates until it reaches an unstoppable speed. There are both fast engines (Prospery/Bloom, Dragonstorm) and slow ones (rebels, Tombstone of Dementia).
Surgeon - The deck actively tries to leave the opponent without a win condition. It works specially well against decks that rely on few key spells to win. It usually wins slowly once the opponent is helpless. (open to suggestions for a better name/generalization)

Note that the same deck can have more than one characteristic/quality/principle.

[Goblin Snowman]

Yeah. The only thing better than 1/1's for one mana and two mana 1/2s are the three mana 1/1s and four mana 2/2s. Those threats suck noodles on their own, sorry. Siege-Gang is the only card that's actually impressive by itself.

Even if they are unimpressive, they beat better than Dark Ritual or LED. The fact remains that in addition to be good utility, they can close a game if not answered. Whether they are able to reliably is irrelevent, the fact that they have the ability to remains.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

It's not irrelevant. Goblins' creatures would be so bad as to be incapable of winning games against opponents that drew land (or non-lands) without those internal synergies. They are reliant upon each other to be anything other than Merfolk of the Pearl Trident/Squire beatdown.

DrJones: Those seem to be pretty much the same as my suggestions. Although I actually kind of like those names.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

It's not irrelevant. Goblins' creatures would be so bad as to be incapable of winning games against opponents that drew land (or non-lands) without those internal synergies. They are reliant upon each other to be anything other than Merfolk of the Pearl Trident/Squire beatdown.

Stompy's creatures would suck without all the pump. Sligh's creatures would suck without burn to clear the way. What, exactly, is your point?

[Nihil Credo]

IMO, people spend too much time discussing decks and too little discussing cards.

[DrJones]

IMO, people spend too much time discussing decks and too little discussing cards.Discussing decks is more useful than discussing cards. You can try to adapt a deck to a specific metagame, but you cannot adapt a card to another, unless you're a Magic designer, not a player building decks.

Of course, you are free to open a thread about single card discussions, as legacy is like the bottom of the sea, lots of hidden treasures waiting to be discovered, but also lots of junk and fish. :laugh:

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Stompy's creatures would suck without all the pump. Sligh's creatures would suck without burn to clear the way. What, exactly, is your point?

No, they wouldn't. Well, not anymore than they already do. Every deck has some degree of synergy, which is why the combo vs. not combo debate is far less useful than the threat vs. answer definition, but Rogue Elephant is only absolutely terrible if you don't have fucking Forests. Goblin Piledriver and Lackey and Matron are absolutely terrible without other Goblins.

[Mad Zur]

Does "on their own" mean "in a deck in which they are completely out of place"? Rogue Elephant is awful on its own unless you have lots of forests and a low mana curve.

[MattH]

They are reliant upon each other to be anything other than Merfolk of the Pearl Trident/Squire beatdown.
So are you saying that terrible cards are neither aggro, control, nor combo cards? A card doesn't have to be good at attacking to be an aggressive card. Just because Gaze of Justice isn't a good card doesn't mean it's not a controlling card; a similar statement should apply to "2/2 haste for 3R."

[DrJones]

A deck composed with 65 Maros and no lands is aggro, control, or combo?
what if it has 65 swords to plowshares?
what if 65 force of wills?

[MattH]

A deck composed with 65 Maros and no lands is aggro, control, or combo?

The first is clearly an aggro deck that isn't running enough land. A deck with 56 Maros and 4 lands is the same.

A more interesting question would have been a deck with 60 Basking Rootwallas.

[Jak]

My questions would be if there is anymore straight aggro? I mean would a deck like stompy that has 20 lands, 32 creatures, and 4 duress and 4 therapybe aggro-control. Aggro is at the point where it won't win without cheap discard or counters. When does aggro turn into aggro-control.

[DrJones]

My questions would be if there is anymore straight aggro? I mean would a deck like stompy that has 20 lands, 32 creatures, and 4 duress and 4 therapybe aggro-control. Aggro is at the point where it won't win without cheap discard or counters. When does aggro turn into aggro-control.

Let me explain this:
The aggro/combo/control definitions as they are now are awful, unless you think that the alignment system of D&D is wonderful.
D&D defines the lawful, good, chaotic and evil alignments as extremes that strictly abide to their definitions, in an alignment square, they would be part of the perimeter. The rest of points in the square (the area) define different degrees of conformity within the alignments, which in R&D all belong to the same category: neutral.
Because the area of the lines conforming the perimeter is zero, you expect all the population to be neutral. That is why D&D's alignment system doesn't work.

Because aggro/combo/control share so many similarities with it (it's a triangle instead of a square), almost every deck will be an hybrid, and that is why the classification is also stupid.

They are not useful for building a deck, and it barely gives you an insight how to play a deck. That is why it should be ditched in its entirety, and look for a better system.

[Nihil Credo]

Because aggro/combo/control share so many similarities with it (it's a triangle instead of a square), almost every deck will be an hybrid, and that is why the classification is also stupid.

They are not useful for building a deck, and it barely gives you an insight how to play a deck. That is why it should be ditched in its entirety, and look for a better system.
Quoted for mother, grandmother, grand-grandmother, and all the way up to Eve-fucking truthery.