Aggro sucks, work on decks that aren't fish

[Vegeta2711]

Aggro is terrible, because the majority of aggro decks are still a bunch of terrible cards based around Null Rod, FoW (Sometimes) and/or Meddling Mage.

In all seriousness, if your set on playing a bunch of bleh cards and some dorks, why not at least get more creative than Null Rod? I'd dare say 4 Tormod's Crypt are simply more useful and less damaging to your curve in the current metagame than Rod. Duress is great disruption that only a few aggressive decks are even in the colors to play and does almost as much damage as FoW without the nasty side-effect of having to run so many blue cards. Cabal Therapy is only played in friggorid and it's arguably better than Duress against Drains.

I mean you have aggressive decks like GAT which can easily fit 10-14 GOOD disruption cards into the deck and still run better threats than almost any other aggro deck. Yet the work on decks like these are so minimal it's disturbing, especially in a metagame that's supposedly turned towards Drains and Rituals.

MWS Aggro hasn't been given serious consideration for some time. Yeah it's not as hawt or comboish or disruptive as other decks, but it's still one of the only decks that can put down signficant pressure turn 1 and then play a lot of hard-hitting disruption to follow it up. Blood Moon, Jester's Cap, Chalice, etc. the possibilites are all there. Metalworker out Sundering Titan even! Or drop turn 1 Welder, turn 2 Bazaar as a back-up plan to straight Juggernaut and Su-Chi beats instead of just trying to weld in lock components.

*shrug* Just something I noted.

[Juggernaut GO]

Whenever I would cast a metalworker or juggernaut, it would get mana drained and then the next turn the person would play time vault and flame fusilade and kill me turn 2.

Perhaps there is a workshop aggro deck back in the mix now that I don't need to worry about being combo'd on turn 2.

[TopSecret]

     In general, I would have to agree. There are some individuals that do work on making aggro decks competitive, though.
Team Ball and Chain has done extensive work on The Mountains Win Again, and despite what many people say,
the deck is very effective in the New England Metagame.

     I think that a lot of the time, it comes down to choosing between brokeness and creatures.
I guess that most Type 1 players prefer the brokeness. Building a truly effective aggro deck takes more work,
generally speaking, than building most other type 1 decks.
The deck must be balanced enough to answer broken threats consistently.
But, since most broken threats require a specific kind of answer, this is hard to do.

     Broken decks can answer threats with other threats. One example, in the past, has been the Flame Vault Combo.

[Hillboy]

Well I'll agree with you. I built this deck because everyone and his grandmother plays fish in my meta. with a few variations but this kind of works because oath is dead and with 8 turn one moxen eaters I have a good shot against more expensive decks, also genju and factory help against control.
RBS (Real Bad Sligh)

4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
8 Mountain

Creatures
4 Hearth Kami
4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Goblin Vandal

Other
1 Mox Ruby
3 Genju of the Spires
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Pyroblast
4 Magma Jet
3 Pyrokinesis
3 Tormod's Crypt

4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Lava Dart
1 Pyrokinesis
3 Umezawa's Jitte

Whether or not this is even close to what your looking for I really don't know, but its different

Unless you compare it to TMWA then its only like 10-12 cards off i think.
 

[Smmenen]

Aggro is terrible, because the majority of aggro decks are still a bunch of terrible cards based around Null Rod, FoW (Sometimes) and/or Meddling Mage.

In all seriousness, if your set on playing a bunch of bleh cards and some dorks, why not at least get more creative than Null Rod? I'd dare say 4 Tormod's Crypt are simply more useful and less damaging to your curve in the current metagame than Rod. Duress is great disruption that only a few aggressive decks are even in the colors to play and does almost as much damage as FoW without the nasty side-effect of having to run so many blue cards. Cabal Therapy is only played in friggorid and it's arguably better than Duress against Drains.

I mean you have aggressive decks like GAT which can easily fit 10-14 GOOD disruption cards into the deck and still run better threats than almost any other aggro deck. Yet the work on decks like these are so minimal it's disturbing, especially in a metagame that's supposedly turned towards Drains and Rituals.

MWS Aggro hasn't been given serious consideration for some time. Yeah it's not as hawt or comboish or disruptive as other decks, but it's still one of the only decks that can put down signficant pressure turn 1 and then play a lot of hard-hitting disruption to follow it up. Blood Moon, Jester's Cap, Chalice, etc. the possibilites are all there. Metalworker out Sundering Titan even! Or drop turn 1 Welder, turn 2 Bazaar as a back-up plan to straight Juggernaut and Su-Chi beats instead of just trying to weld in lock components.

*shrug* Just something I noted.

Ichorid is amazing right now.  You should not lose to Gifts, Stax, or Fish and your Slaver matchup is 50-50 pre board.  It's important to note that Therpaies are card advantage for Ichorid becuase its like extra cards in your hand. THe Therapies come out of your deck and go onto the stack like some unglued card. 

[orgcandman]

Aggro is terrible, because the majority of aggro decks are still a bunch of terrible cards based around Null Rod, FoW (Sometimes) and/or Meddling Mage.

In all seriousness, if your set on playing a bunch of bleh cards and some dorks, why not at least get more creative than Null Rod? I'd dare say 4 Tormod's Crypt are simply more useful and less damaging to your curve in the current metagame than Rod. Duress is great disruption that only a few aggressive decks are even in the colors to play and does almost as much damage as FoW without the nasty side-effect of having to run so many blue cards. Cabal Therapy is only played in friggorid and it's arguably better than Duress against Drains.

Eh...TMWA is still winning in New England. And last I checked going 11th @ SCG wasn't too bad either. I don't know of many other successes but that's because not too many people actually play it. I don't see why, as it DOES run Tormod's Crypt, and DOES run very creative cards.

Ichorid is amazing right now.  You should not lose to Gifts, Stax, or Fish and your Slaver matchup is 50-50 pre board.  It's important to note that Therpaies are card advantage for Ichorid becuase its like extra cards in your hand. THe Therapies come out of your deck and go onto the stack like some unglued card. 

Again, TMWA has a great matchup against this, we've tested it fairly extensively.

I'll say this not to be offensive, but T1 players are largely scrubs who absolutely refuse to play a deck that doesn't sport blue, or rituals, or workshops, regardless of how well it can, and has performed.

It's the same reason that Ichorid won't get respected, or played very much. "It's only got bazaars, so it can't be made good" rather than "Wow, this puts major pressure early. Can we slow it down slightly to trade off for more resiliancy?"

[Disburden]

But you don't need to slow it down to build up resiliency. The deck has good match ups all over the place the way it is now. Why does everyone want to trash the list and make it worse than it already is? The only match to be 50-50 is Control slaver. The deck totally makes Stax cry for its mommy.

[Pitlord]

Ichorid is a top aggro deck in the format. It is extremely powerful, and not too difficult to build, especially with a full 10 proxies available. You don't need to slow down the deck, it is resilient enough as it is. Trying for more resiliancy is wrong, because ochorid needs to focus on dealing 20 points first, disrupting if it is convienient.

As for aggro in general, it doesn't work in a lot of metas. Combo makes almost all aggro cry as it is, and removing disruption just makes that match suck even harder. Aggro needs some sort of control element, otherwise it just gets raced all day. Elements include null rod, chalice, and 1sphere.

Shop Aggro declined greatly with everyone focusing on new stax builds, plus it's weakness against drain decks. With Flame vault, gifts could drain 1 card, get exactly 2.4 shit-tons of mana, and combo kill you before swinging with juggs more than once or twice. Now that drain has been slowed a teensy bit, Shop might have a chance.

My team is working on multiple builds of shop aggro, going in many different directions. With drain being a little slower, and fish and stax being present in our meta, shop aggro stands a fighting chance. That is really the only direction left to go with aggro, is with a re-usable lotus.

Goblins suck. If you are playing goblins, drop the power and go play legacy.

[Vegeta2711]

Aggro is terrible, because the majority of aggro decks are still a bunch of terrible cards based around Null Rod, FoW (Sometimes) and/or Meddling Mage.

In all seriousness, if your set on playing a bunch of bleh cards and some dorks, why not at least get more creative than Null Rod? I'd dare say 4 Tormod's Crypt are simply more useful and less damaging to your curve in the current metagame than Rod. Duress is great disruption that only a few aggressive decks are even in the colors to play and does almost as much damage as FoW without the nasty side-effect of having to run so many blue cards. Cabal Therapy is only played in friggorid and it's arguably better than Duress against Drains.

Eh...TMWA is still winning in New England. And last I checked going 11th @ SCG wasn't too bad either. I don't know of many other successes but that's because not too many people actually play it. I don't see why, as it DOES run Tormod's Crypt, and DOES run very creative cards.

Probably because TMWA is basically what I'm referring too in my mini-rant.  You run a bunch of 'eh' disruption cards, with dorks and 4 Crypt (which is the great disruption). So in reality the deck is just like Fish including a bunch of it's weaknesses, but it uses different sets of cards. You run a bunch of burn which is only really useful at killing Welder, you run plow which is crap unless you happened to draw it vs. DSC, we have a bunch of cute creatures that have decent abilites if you draw them in certain matches. Basically the deck runs hate against everybody, but the only hate card that's truly useful in every match is going to be Tormod's Crypt. 

And yeah, 11th at SCG is pretty bad, considering that's was it's only good performance at a major tourney in the last 3 months. Otherwise we have the 5 people who played it at Waterbury which the best performance is 50th and on the 2nd day of Richmond the same guy ended up 70th.

So is the deck not completely terrible? Sure.
Could it potentially win in some metagames and even do well in  a larger tourney? Yeah
Does it fall into many of the same flaws as Fish and similar aggro that I refer too? Very yes.

And if Vintage players are scrubs for playing very powerful cards over a fundementally weak deck.... well that's pretty much the oppositie of all deck choosing theory ever. The main reason I like aggro and work on the decks is because sometimes you can exploit flaws in the metagame, but I wouldn't call anybody a scrub for not wanting to play a very underpowered deck.

[Whatever Works]

If people spent as much time perfecting combo decks as type 1 players spend perfecting drain decks down to argueing the last card slot of decks for hundreds of posts (Exp. CS) Aggro decks wouldn't suck.

Affective creatures mixed with disruption should be good. Madness COULD be good. Goblins really SHOULD be good. However, nobody has put in the work, and dont plan on it because players dont like attack phases.

[AngryPheldagrif]

Ichorid is a top aggro deck in the format. It is extremely powerful, and not too difficult to build, especially with a full 10 proxies available. You don't need to slow down the deck, it is resilient enough as it is. Trying for more resiliancy is wrong, because ochorid needs to focus on dealing 20 points first, disrupting if it is convienient.

As for aggro in general, it doesn't work in a lot of metas. Combo makes almost all aggro cry as it is, and removing disruption just makes that match suck even harder. Aggro needs some sort of control element, otherwise it just gets raced all day. Elements include null rod, chalice, and 1sphere.

Shop Aggro declined greatly with everyone focusing on new stax builds, plus it's weakness against drain decks. With Flame vault, gifts could drain 1 card, get exactly 2.4 shit-tons of mana, and combo kill you before swinging with juggs more than once or twice. Now that drain has been slowed a teensy bit, Shop might have a chance.

My team is working on multiple builds of shop aggro, going in many different directions. With drain being a little slower, and fish and stax being present in our meta, shop aggro stands a fighting chance. That is really the only direction left to go with aggro, is with a re-usable lotus.

Goblins suck. If you are playing goblins, drop the power and go play legacy.

Actually Shop Aggro was at it's best when people were focusing on new Stax decks. Now that the meta is fragmenting more and more, Stax is rapidly disappearing, robbing Shop Aggro of it's bye matchup.

Shop Aggro as a deck is fairly weak right now (thus the reason I am not currently playing it) and Gifts' losing FlameVault does not give anything back to Shop Aggro. Shop Aggro is weak because the top decks are Drain times infinity and they still sideboard (and even maindeck now) a painfully high number of Rack and Ruins, Rebuilds, etc. The fact that Oath has taken the place of combo as the dark horse of the meta doesn't help either.

If people spent as much time perfecting combo decks as type 1 players spend perfecting drain decks down to argueing the last card slot of decks for hundreds of posts (Exp. CS) Aggro decks wouldn't suck.

Affective creatures mixed with disruption should be good. Madness COULD be good. Goblins really SHOULD be good. However, nobody has put in the work, and dont plan on it because players dont like attack phases.

Those decks aren't viable because all they end up being are hate decks with varied win conditions. The T1 metagame has not been rock/paper/scissors in many years. Combo beats aggro the same way it always has, and control has adopted a variety of combo-esque win conditions that simply allow it to goldfish aggro while using its counters for the particular hate cards that may appear.

And really, what's the point of playing Madness or Goblins over Workshop Aggro? I still maintain that if any aggro becomes mainstream competitive in the near future it will be Workshop-based. Tapping your lands for a 2/2 it pretty useless when you can have a 5/3 instead. Shop Aggro can seemlessly incorporate the prison pieces necessary to be competitive, while Goblins and Madness are forced to waste slots on clunky things like Chalice (which they have trouble setting at anything above 0) and Null Rod (which is hardly ideal for them anyways).

[SonataOfTheCathedral]

And really, what's the point of playing Madness or Goblins over Workshop Aggro? I still maintain that if any aggro becomes mainstream competitive in the near future it will be Workshop-based. Tapping your lands for a 2/2 it pretty useless when you can have a 5/3 instead. Shop Aggro can seemlessly incorporate the prison pieces necessary to be competitive, while Goblins and Madness are forced to waste slots on clunky things like Chalice (which they have trouble setting at anything above 0) and Null Rod (which is hardly ideal for them anyways).

I really think you are underestimating the power of Wild Mongrel. Mongrel enables a whole archetype. From dumping out Rootwallas and Arrogant Wurms to DA's. Also when your opponent goes EOT Brainstorm dumping a 4/4 at instant speed while he only has one blue up is pretty effective.

I played Bazaar Madness at SCG Richmond and didn't even bother with Null Rod or Chalice maindeck. Granted I didn't do that hot in the main event, I did win a pair of side tournaments with my final record of the day being 10-2. It was also the first time I played aggro in Vintage and the last time I wielded Madness in my hands was right before PT New Orleans. I ended up losing to a pair of combo decks after a very nice start. I metagamed incorrectly thats all.

Heres the list I ran.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=16760


I also know Ben Kowal has been very successful in the past with very similar lists. The deck is certainly fast and can rev up a mongrel to a 12/12 off a Wheel Of Fortune for example. I can see some advantages over Juggernaut in that situation.

They both have their advantages over the other one way or the other. But if I were to choose which to wield I'd probably take a Wild Mongrel anyday.

I think for aggro to be viable it needs a clock. Fish doesn't have that and neither does that R/W thing. I think by turn three you need to bring them down in the red zone. Thats why I think Madness, Ichorid, Workshop Aggro, and Goblins are all pretty good. They carry disruption with a clock. Ichorid has Cabal Therapy is one of the best black disruption cards in the game next to Duress. Goblins has Wasteland and Incinerator, even Goblin Welder to Matron for if it needs. Workshop Aggro can be molded to fit Chalice, Sphere, and a bunch of other cards. And Madness can run Artifact Mutation and Pyro Pillar which all can pummel the damage, worst comes to worst they get dumped to Bazaar or a Mongrel. And like Vegeta said Tormod's Crypt can easily slide into any of these decks.

On a final note I think you can all agree with, most players wielding aggro are the worst players in this format. I have seen oh so few competent Goblins players in general make infy play errors combo'ing off. Madness players that are on a budget and people playing just plain dumb cards in their workshop decks.

I think if you want to work on better aggro decks people need to slow down and look at other formats and limited to see the fundamental strength in aggro. Fish certainly doesn't have that.

[orgcandman]

And if Vintage players are scrubs for playing very powerful cards over a fundementally weak deck.... well that's pretty much the oppositie of all deck choosing theory ever. The main reason I like aggro and work on the decks is because sometimes you can exploit flaws in the metagame, but I wouldn't call anybody a scrub for not wanting to play a very underpowered deck.

I wasn't referring to playing powerful cards over a fundamentally weak deck. I was referring to the constant looking at decks/cards with blinders on. I know of at least 3 people around here who have said, openly, they won't play with cards other than drains because drains are what they like. Sure drains are strong, but if your only reasons are "It's what I like, and what I've always liked, so that's what I'll keep doing" that doesn't make you a good tournament player. That makes you a scrub (again, not a bad thing) for having some preconceived hangup limiting your play options.

[LotusHead]

And if Vintage players are scrubs for playing very powerful cards over a fundementally weak deck.... well that's pretty much the oppositie of all deck choosing theory ever. The main reason I like aggro and work on the decks is because sometimes you can exploit flaws in the metagame, but I wouldn't call anybody a scrub for not wanting to play a very underpowered deck.

I wasn't referring to playing powerful cards over a fundamentally weak deck. I was referring to the constant looking at decks/cards with blinders on. I know of at least 3 people around here who have said, openly, they won't play with cards other than drains because drains are what they like. Sure drains are strong, but if your only reasons are "It's what I like, and what I've always liked, so that's what I'll keep doing" that doesn't make you a good tournament player. That makes you a scrub (again, not a bad thing) for having some preconceived hangup limiting your play options.

I have been a Drain player from Day 1 of my Vintage Tourney career (Drain Salvagers at that...) and been successfull enough out here in my meta.

Now I play "The Gilded Claw"- Workshop Aggro/Prison for fun because it pwns people randomly, and it's fun.

in the last 5 tournies I have been to (10=12 proxy, quality players), I missed top 8 (or top 6 in one case) due to playing against Scrubby McSuck round 1 and haveing shit ass tiebreakers, placing 9th (or 7th) for that reason. (Such is life...)

for the other 3 tournies, I have been undefeated in the Swiss Rounds, only to be knocked out of  contention by "combo" gawd hands.

Certain aggro decks (albeit Aggro Prison decks) can be competetive, but you have to know your metagame well.

In my case, I know what decks exists, being TMD literate and all, but being suprized by the actual choices of decks that do show up. (I was pretty sure Bob would be there as a 4 of, a lot, with his butt buddie Tendrils of Agony, but I was shocked to find me as one of 2 players playing Shops one tourney.

"Fish" is a concept, which equals "hate" against the best/most expected decks out there.

But not all aggro decks are Fish/Goblins.

Last point: I hate Null Rod. I don't auto-lose to it, but it hurst real real bad.

[Kieranwolf]

Personally I really can't defend against the idea of Null Rod being an uncreative choice in an aggro build. The reason I run it is because most of the time I need to in order to beat a mana drain deck reliably. Additional disruption is more than necessary, but Rods are the reason I win against CS and even Gifts most of the time.

Or drawing Black Lotus. =P

Folks like to talk about choosing which decks to play based on their ability to win games, but technically isn't adapting to the metagame more important when one wants to win a tournament? That being said, anyone can make an aggro deck that takes advantage of the metagame that currently applies. If it has the correct disruption and hate, it can and will do well with a good pilot.

I personally don't have a problem with winning using 'bad' cards in this way. The part I enjoy the least is being told that I won because my opponent didn't draw tinker, or couldn't find their bounce spell for null rod fast enough, or top-decked horribly in general.

Is it fair to say all those things just because of a loss to one deck with 'bad' cards in it?


As far as which hate to run, I've found Crypt to be less useful in the early game except against Dragon. Crypt doesn't slow down Tinker at all, and a Tinker spells doom for Aggro when backed up by just one counterspell.

Null Rod is also better on the first turn, but I'm totally not saying it wins alone. The rest of the Aggro deck has to be made up of fast threats, disruption and more mana denial. When Tinker and a FOW can spell game loss when held early on, can random cards thrown in with Null Rod and Mage really win?

Yes, there are Aggro players out there who put lots of work into their decklists.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Depending on how you define "Fish," aggro cannot be anything but fish and stand a chance in type 1. 

Thought experiment: Wizards R&D is hit by a bus and they print a 3/3 vanilla creature for 1 colorless and it randomly counts as a black creature (not an artifact).  Ok, the card is insta-banned in block, extended, and t2.  At the same time, it's barely playable in t1.  It puts your opponent on a clock...they have to kill you by turn 7.  We have an expression for that, it's called goldfishing.  Even with such an amazing 1 drop, they'd be forced to run cards to protect it, cards to disrupt you, and additional threats.  In other words, they're running 56 cards just like they had before, and 4 cards that speed up their clock by about a turn (beyond the fishy standard).  Those 4 slots could instead be disruption on a stick.  They could be cards that slow down the opponent's clock by a turn. 

The difference?  Those disruption creatures have to be killed, they can't be ignored via a fast draw.

If fish means disruption on a stick, it's the only aggro that *can* exist in t1.  Well...unless you make that a 5/5 or 6/6 for 1.  It *might* get restricted at 7/7, but even at 6/6 combo would just dominate the evironment. (3 turn clock versus 4 turn clock, huge difference)

[Vegeta2711]

You missed everything I was saying. Try again.

[G-A-T 177]

I mean you have aggressive decks like GAT which can easily fit 10-14 GOOD disruption cards into the deck and still run better threats than almost any other aggro deck. Yet the work on decks like these are so minimal it's disturbing, especially in a metagame that's supposedly turned towards Drains and Rituals.

Well, there are still some people working on GAT.  I took it to day 1 at richmond and was still in t8 contention until round 7, when i lost to Rich, who won the whole thing.  For whatever reason, everyone still refuses to give the deck any credit, and I can't quite understand why.  As Vegeta put it, this deck runs very powerful threats, and runs enough disruption that they're fairly easy to protect.  If this archetype was played as much as some of the others, we would probably start seeing some serious results.

[AngryPheldagrif]

I mean you have aggressive decks like GAT which can easily fit 10-14 GOOD disruption cards into the deck and still run better threats than almost any other aggro deck. Yet the work on decks like these are so minimal it's disturbing, especially in a metagame that's supposedly turned towards Drains and Rituals.

Well, there are still some people working on GAT.  I took it to day 1 at richmond and was still in t8 contention until round 7, when i lost to Rich, who won the whole thing.  For whatever reason, everyone still refuses to give the deck any credit, and I can't quite understand why.  As Vegeta put it, this deck runs very powerful threats, and runs enough disruption that they're fairly easy to protect.  If this archetype was played as much as some of the others, we would probably start seeing some serious results.

GAT as a deck has tons of problems of its own. The 'very powerful threats' tend to be less powerful than other decks' threats and the disruption less severe than the disruption packed by other builds. I have yet to hear any sort of answer as to why the deck is conceptually better than Oath.

[Pitlord]

For once, I actually agree with Angrypheldagrif. Oath is about as the best aggro-control deck in the enviroment. All it is is fish with a decent kill clock and the ability to actually go broken.

Fish has many flaws as an aggro deck. It kills slower than oath, slower than workshop aggro, has less disruption than GAT, etc. Fish has to take a lot of time to build and meta-game correctly or it won't win a whole lot.

As for GAT, it is a good deck, but fails because of the same reasons other aggro-control decks tend to fail. It controls well, but it needs tons of mana and a pretty fragile combo to really win. Again, GAT has to meta-gamed a lot in order to really compete. Otherwise, it can tend to just get goldfished agaisnt combo, and run chopped apart by stax.


Also, Angry, I think you misunderstood my analysis of the decline of shop aggro. I meant that no one was really building it or piloting it, because everyone was focusing on tuning stax. It does have a great match, and if I had been able to play it in the meta, I would have.

[Harlequin]

I think Shop Agro right now is probably one of the worst meta choices you could make.  every deck on the market has some form of board clearing artifact hate.  Be it Rebuild, Flux, Kataki, or Shattering Spree.   Shop aggro has the same weaknesses as stacks, but at the same time, lacks the fundamental ability to prevent the spells above from being played.  Your game1 is probably amazing, but game 2 and 3 you just get hated out with no way to stop them.

[Pitlord]

I think workshop aggro could work decently, but not as a main deck. I have been playing stax lately, and have been considering a workshop aggro sideboard. It seems useful in lots of matches, but don't think it is worth it overall.

Other than that, I agree that pure workshop aggro doens't seem like a good meta call. However, I think that playing it with heavy elements of stax for control, may be viable. Goblin welders, crucibles, spheres, chalice, crucible, and possibly smokestack even. Backed up with juggernauts, trisk, karn, 7/10, etc. You can't however, simply try to race a deck with something like a lone juggs or trisk.

Workshop aggro, just like any other aggro deck, needs to hybridize and meta-game to win. If you want to play shop aggro in a combo heavy enviroment, mainboard 4 1spheres. Against fish, tangle wires. The same meta-gaming principles apply to any deck that needs to actually swing with men, because getting goldfished by faster, more broken decks is bad.

[Moxlotus]

I think if there is a Shop aggro deck out there that's viable, it includes Metalworker.  You need some way to go Broken and Metalworker lets you do that.  That said, I'm not sure there is a viable Shop deck out there right now.

[dicemanx]

I think Shop Agro right now is probably one of the worst meta choices you could make.  every deck on the market has some form of board clearing artifact hate.  Be it Rebuild, Flux, Kataki, or Shattering Spree.   Shop aggro has the same weaknesses as stacks, but at the same time, lacks the fundamental ability to prevent the spells above from being played.  Your game1 is probably amazing, but game 2 and 3 you just get hated out with no way to stop them.

I think this analysis is way too harsh and distortive. In fact, I think you highlighted the issues with Stax decks, issues which Shop Aggro decks should attempt to overcome. The problem with Stax as I see it isn't the hate out of the SB - its the adaptations made by certain archetypes via improving their mana base and having some sort of main deck bounce. Stax decks don't exploit their temporary advantages very well - cards like Null Rod and CotV can create good temporary soft locks, but unless there is pressure to back up the lock cards, the strategy won't be very successful. Shop Aggro attempts to change that - one of the better ways to exploit your disruption cards is to try to kill the opponent instead of turning that soft lock into a hard lock many turns later. This is also a much better way of attempting to defeat the hate cards that might be coming out of the SB - for example, instead of worrying about dying to hate coming out on turn 6, you aim to kill them on turn 5.

In fact, I'd say that Shop Aggro is everything that Fish decks want to be, but don't have the explosive mana to achieve. Shop aggro has bigger beaters, more powerful disruption that can come down turns earlier, and can run instant win cards against certain archetypes (Jester's Cap, Mindslaver), cards that are inaccessible to non-Shop archetypes. This does come at a price of course - potential vulnerability to Null rods, and vulnerability to artifact hate. However, as things stand now I think the price is well worth it.

I think if there is a Shop aggro deck out there that's viable, it includes Metalworker.  You need some way to go Broken and Metalworker lets you do that.  That said, I'm not sure there is a viable Shop deck out there right now.

If the Null rod counts stay down (as Fish seems to have been pushed out of a lot of metas, and UbaStax isn't very popular), then Metalworker will be huge in my opinion.

[AmbivalentDuck]

You missed everything I was saying. Try again.

What you *said* was that someone should be able to build an "aggro" deck that drops something fat enough to kill on its own, on a relevant time frame, with sufficient disruption from other deck components  that you can actually get away with running dedicated fat.

Oath of Druids, Juggernaut, Psychatog, and Quirion Dryad are all dedicated fat.  They exist to do nothing but smash your opponent's face in with 20 damage, highly undercosted damage at that.

My thought experiment proposed "ultra fat."  I said that even if you magically had a 4/4 for 1, your deck would still suck because disruption is the key.  Oath, Workshop, 'Tog, and Gro (and its variants) are all tier 2 decks.  Why?  Because you can't afford to waste a turn dropping something that doesn't disrupt your opponent or kill him *very* quickly.  Look at TT Confidant: they could tutor into turn 2 tinkers with great consistency, but they don't.  Why?  Because Tinker is the finisher, not quick beats.  If they do choose to play the aggro game, it's because they're holding critical amounts of disruption.

That's why Fish (tier 1.5) is better than other aggro decks (except Oath...Oath is about 1.5, too).  Useful builds drop quick disruption that *PREVENTS THE OPPONENT FROM WINNING.*  You can win on any time frame you want if the opponent can't win.

The counter-argument to my position is Ichorid.  Ichorid runs "minimal" disruption and focuses instead on being ridiculously hard to disrupt (game 1 at least).  Since Stax and Gifts have such a hard to disrupting it, the Ichorid player is free to "goldfish" as long as he can stop the opponent from winning first.  Since he doesn't need critical disruption because the opponent probably can't interact with him without "winning," he's free to dedicate spots to pure fat.

[zeus-online]

For me, as a drain player, there is no scarier creature to stare down turn 1 then metalworker! Metalworker allows its controller to drop a ton of threats, and its near-impossible to deal with all of them.....People just tend to build their metalworker decks, so that they can't win without resolving metalworker.....Any deck containing metalworker, should be able to work without it, or it wont be viable...at least thats what i think.

/Zeus

[Disburden]

If the Null rod counts stay down (as Fish seems to have been pushed out of a lot of metas, and UbaStax isn't very popular), then Metalworker will be huge in my opinion.

This is one thing that baffles me. Just like the Tormod's Crypts not seeing tons of play in maindecks, why doesn't anyone play Null Rods anymore? Uba Stax was awesome with 3 Null Rods main, and now it's not even used in the deck. The deck just rolls to Null Rod now. Hmph.

[dicemanx]

If the Null rod counts stay down (as Fish seems to have been pushed out of a lot of metas, and UbaStax isn't very popular), then Metalworker will be huge in my opinion.

This is one thing that baffles me. Just like the Tormod's Crypts not seeing tons of play in maindecks, why doesn't anyone play Null Rods anymore? Uba Stax was awesome with 3 Null Rods main, and now it's not even used in the deck. The deck just rolls to Null Rod now. Hmph.

It's not that Null Rod doesn't see play per se, it's that UbaStax was never that popular to begin with (or at least the old builds are declining in popularity), and Fish decks are getting squeezed out by the more explosive control/combo decks.

Shop decks can adapt to the surging popularity of decks like IT and Confidant based Tendrils builds, along with the "resurrection" of CS,  by ditching Rod in favor of instant win cards, with Cap leading the way. Rod is still amazing, but seems to fall short compared to the options such as Metalworker, Cap, Crypt, etc.

[Vegeta2711]

I mean you have aggressive decks like GAT which can easily fit 10-14 GOOD disruption cards into the deck and still run better threats than almost any other aggro deck. Yet the work on decks like these are so minimal it's disturbing, especially in a metagame that's supposedly turned towards Drains and Rituals.

Well, there are still some people working on GAT.  I took it to day 1 at richmond and was still in t8 contention until round 7, when i lost to Rich, who won the whole thing.  For whatever reason, everyone still refuses to give the deck any credit, and I can't quite understand why.  As Vegeta put it, this deck runs very powerful threats, and runs enough disruption that they're fairly easy to protect.  If this archetype was played as much as some of the others, we would probably start seeing some serious results.

GAT as a deck has tons of problems of its own. The 'very powerful threats' tend to be less powerful than other decks' threats and the disruption less severe than the disruption packed by other builds. I have yet to hear any sort of answer as to why the deck is conceptually better than Oath.

It doesn't rely on Orchard and doesn't scoop it up to combo? Though I admit if everyone played the Oath builds with like 8-10 counters Chalice and Null Rod, then I concede the combo argument wouldn't hold, since comob needs to work 10x harder then.

Generally the logic I've alwyas used to say 'GAT is still alright' is that it basically ruined Drains, didn't auto-scoop to combo and completely dominating any other aggro-control deck. Stax was obviously a terrible match, but I accepted that since it's dwindling in popularity and a lot of Stax players still lose to turn 1 guy and Force of Will.

My thought experiment proposed "ultra fat."  I said that even if you magically had a 4/4 for 1, your deck would still suck because disruption is the key.  Oath, Workshop, 'Tog, and Gro (and its variants) are all tier 2 decks.  Why?  Because you can't afford to waste a turn dropping something that doesn't disrupt your opponent or kill him *very* quickly.  Look at TT Confidant: they could tutor into turn 2 tinkers with great consistency, but they don't.  Why?  Because Tinker is the finisher, not quick beats.  If they do choose to play the aggro game, it's because they're holding critical amounts of disruption.

No shit. Why do you think the first half of my post was 'run better disruption cards instead of the ones every single person has adapted too'. Secondly, if you choose to ONLY use utility dorks, you leave the flaw in your deck of length of game. You need to strike a balance. Yeah disruption usually wins the game, but I've seen Fish lose plenty of times, because it couldn't kold the opponent before they worked around the disruption.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The simple counter point is that better disruption doesn't really exist.  And where it does exist (Ie. Jester's Cap, Extract, etc) all that matters is resolving (and activating) that card.   Why drop a Juggernaut turn 1 when the Cap can end the game by itself anyways?

Strong hate is fairly limited at present and most of it sees play...unless you see something big that I'm missing.
General
Duress, Cabal Therapy, Hymn to Tourach, Mana Drain, Force of Will

Graveyard
Withered Wretch, Tormod's Crypt, Leyline of the Void

Low Mana Curve
Chalice of the Void, 3sphere, Sphere of Resistance

Few Win Conditions
Jester's Cap, Meddling Mage, Extract, Hide//Seek

Reactive Disruption
Xantid Swarm

Small Creatures
Pyroclasm, Mogg Fanatic, Shadow Guildmage, Lava Dart, Trike

Creature accel-based kill
StP, Bounce (in general)

Storm
Pyrostatic Pillar

Artifact Mana
Chalice, Null Rod

Artifacts
Too many solid options to bother listing