[Discussion] Where's aggro?

[GreenOne]

Once Legacy was known as the format without pure control decks, but with goblin taking less and less Top8, and Landstill / Lands.dec being quite good in the meta, is pure aggro disappearing?
Was goblin really the only "real" aggro thing? Will there be anymore aggro decks?

I feel like the format is driven by creatures anyway. Many combo decks revolves around a Sutured Ghoul or a bunch of Zombie/Goblin tokens. There's some place for aggro decks. But is Goblins still the right choice for aggro? Is the format becoming more an more vintage-like?

[technogeek5000]

Pure aggro yes, if its slower then gobs it isnt viable. Aggro control i think tho is the most popular of the deck types so far. Goblins is the only real aggro unless you count 9 land stompy and other crap that noone plays. I think once lorwyn comes out gobs will make a comeback because people will be packing less hate due to its lack of DTB status and maindeck answers to alot of hate in both the aunties.

[Cait_Sith]

9 Land Stompy is hardly "crap." It can beat Control like Truffle Shuffle and Trainwreck (even Quinn and Wombat too) into oblivion by its incredibly high threat density combined with extremely low need for extension. Two 9 Land Stompy creatures can have you dead in 5 turns and everyone you kill is immediately replaced.

Against Lands use Rock Aggro and against Landstill use Quinn, Zoo, Solidarity (more Control means more Blue Antics!) and other such nonense.

Aggro may be hurting, but if you know what you are doing it can still win out (Except it really sucks against Lands. Tabernacle, Ith, and possibly Zuran Orb? It sucks.)

[Wallace]

You can Play Skies or Faerie Stompie, I consider those Aggro decks. Like technogeek5000 said " Aggro control i think the is the most popular ". Aggo control is still aggro, not pure aggro, but aggro none the less.

[sammiel]

Goblins isn't an aggro deck. Or rather, it's not purely an aggro deck. It can combo off with early lackey + piledriver shenanigans, it can play control by cheating its mana and denying yours with wasteland and port, and it has inevitability by virtue of ringleader and siege.

One thing that people don't understand is that most aggro decks are faster than goblins. Sure, everyone remembers that piledriver heavy draw that kills you turn 3 or 4, but goblins doesn't swing for much at a time, it wins because it can just keep swinging and swinging.

Most pure aggro decks are actually faster than goblins, and if you look at the results of smaller tournaments, they do place. Boros Deck Wins splashing black split the finals of a 52 man tournament in march of this year with 4c Zoo. Thats two non-goblins aggro decks in the finals.

I think the problem is that people think that because of the cardpool, aggro must be bad or something, because it seems the main problem of aggro is that people just don't have the balls to run it. People think that a hypothetically bad combo match is why people don't run aggro, but combo just isn't very consistent in this format.

I actually think aggro's biggest problem is aggro-control, which is where goblins has an advantage over real aggro.

Honestly, people need to just build a deck that turns men sideways, tune it with either speed, reach, disruption, or some mixture, and play it. Red Death is a prime example that has simply fallen behind the curve, people just need to keep trying stuff like that.

[URABAHN]

I think Thresh shows us that hybrid strategies are the way to go. I'm not confident Pure Aggro will show up again. In Machinus' last article he buries the last pure aggro deck, Goblins. Bardo believes it's all part of a pendulum effect and Goblins will rear it's ugly head sometime in the future.

[DragoFireheart]

It is true that when a pure aggro deck goes up against a combo deck it tends to roll over and die a horrible, horrible death.:confused:

Be it a Belcher deck, a storm deck or Ichorid or some other silly combo death [Kavu Cure anyone], pure aggro lacks both the speed and the control needed to fight some of these decks. It's for this reason that aggro-control decks like Thresh are going to see a lot more success as they have a few answers for those combo-pieces, giving that deck time to beat your face in with it's creature of choice [Negator, Shade, Goyf, etc.]

Something I would like to see more of is aggro/combo decks besides Goblins and Affinity that can be somewhat consistent.

[Iranon]

Meh. Goblins is more of a midgame deck with 8 aggro enablers. Its main attraction is that it consistently has strong plays, but of different natures; the opponent doesn't know in advance whether they want resilent mana, the tools to curb an explosive start (anti-lackey devices especially) or a way of applying a lot of pressure before the swarm engine gets going.

Their goldfish average is poor by aggro standards. Affinity is faster (and less slowed down by blockers), The Cure is faster, disruption-light Zoo builds are faster.
However, Goblins have the potential for enough speed to win against slow but powerful hands, and synergistic effects to overpower most openings that live by the curve (some oversimplification there).



Combo decks are consistent in Legacy. Undisrupted, IGGy Pop will kill 9 out of 10 times before their opponent gets their 4th turn, and I doubt that kind of speed is attainable with an Aggro deck in the format. Moreover, a pure Aggro deck that wants to have decent chance against combo needs to consider not only a pure goldfish contest, but also things like the goblin hordes of Belcher/TES, the free blockers of SI and countermagic/fog+ effects from Cephalid Breakfast.

A few disruption tools go a long way, but you need to draw them in time... in order to have an even chance post-board you'd need to devote a lot of slots (and essentially play aggro/control now).

[SuckerPunch]

Fast combo and Goyf really hurt aggro decks that don't play Goyf themselves.

Goyf is just better than all other creatures. So if your opponent runs it, it suddenly outmans all your nongoyf nonflying creatures.

Pure aggro decks (ie. 90% of the spells are creatures) have to rely on their opponents to fill the yard for Goyf.

More importantly, aggro is slower than fast combo. Fast combo even when disrupted a bit can still win faster than aggro.

That said, Fairie Stompy is very aggro though it runs a lot of nonaggro spells, as is Green Death.

If you ignore fast combo, you could splash any color with green for Goyf and do reasonably well.