Dwarven Aggro - Legacy

[waffles]

For a long time i have wanted to try doing dwarven aggro for the challenge of making dwarven tribal work. But over the course of the years there has been a distinct lack of a lord for dwarves. M12 has brought Adaptive Automaton, a very effective lord for an underpowered and forgotten tribe. I would like it to be able to compete with goblins, i know its asking quite abit. But here is what i have so far, it will be mono red.

Creatures
4x Bloodfire Dwarf
4x Dwarven Berserker
3x Dwarven Bloodboiler
2x Duergar Mine-Captain
4x Dwarven Recruiter


Spells
4x Brute Force
4x Fury of the Horde
4x Lighting Bolt

Enchantments
2x Aggravated Assault
2x Mass Hysteria

Artifacts
4x Adaptive Automaton

Lands
14x Mountains
4x Wasteland

Card Count (55)

Of the 38 dwarves that have been printed 1 of them is blue and the other 2 are black. that leaves me with 35 dwarves to choose from, not couting the 4 red changelings. The curve for this deck so far is between 1-3. I am not counting the cost for Fury of the horde because i intend to cast it throught the alt casting cost. I havent decided which equipments would grant me the greatest impact.

[MaximumCDawg]

Now is not the time for Dwarves.  They will eventually get some tribal support, but they don't have it now.  There's nothing dwarves do that other tribes cannot do better.  Tis the way it is.

That said, if you want to maximize a deck with Dwarves just so you can say you did it, the list you posted is not even competitive enough to be fun.  You said you were aiming for Legacy, not Vintage, so you need game against: Zoo, Merfolk, Storm (ANT, High Tide, etc), Belcher, Reanimator, RUG, Elf combo, Goblins, SnT combo, and various other decks.  Lots of diversity, but really this all breaks down to:

(1) Having a way to stop someone from casting 1,000 cards in a single turn;
(2) Having a way to deal with decks using faster, bigger aggro;
(3) Yard hate;
(4) Having a way to get past a control deck with lots of permission;
(5) Having a plan to disrupt a deck trying to cheat Emrakul or Progenitus into play;
(6) Having the ability to deal with all kinds of permanents.

So lets see what we can do.

Bloodfire Dwarf -- I agree.  This is a useful effect on a cheap Dwarf.  Kills Bridge from Below in a pinch.  Very good against gobbos and elves.  Very bad against Merfolk and Zoo, however, and useless against combo.  The downside is that he kills most of your dwarves, too.

Duergar Hedge-Mage -- I agree.  Very generally useful.  However, this pushes you into WR so you can run plains and mountains to support his abilities.

Dwarven Blastminter // Miner -- The ability to kill nonbasics repeatedly is very strong, and he fits your curve.  Miner might be a tad better than Blastminer, since he survives Bloodfire.

Dwarven Grunt -- Not necessarily terrible.  Alot of the time, this Dwarf will be unblockable.  He also fits nicely into the bottom of your curve with Bloodfire.

Dwarven Patrol -- A 4/2 for 3 is about as efficient as Dwarves come.  It requires you to be heavy into another color, but it might have combo possibilities since it untaps repeatedly.

Dwarven Recruiter - Now we're talking.  This combos hard with Goblin Charbelcher; that alone is worth a look.

The rest of the Dwarves are terribad.  Berserker is awful.  Bloodboiler really wants to be a Piledriver, but he's not even close. 

Okay, so where does this get us?

(1) We want to play Bloodfire, Hedge-Mage, and Recruiter.  Beyond that, Dwarves get sketchy really fast. 
(2) We want to be in White to turn on Hedge-Mage.
(3) We want to have Charbelcher in our deck as another win con.  This means we want at least 20 or so Dwarves to usually guarantee a kill.
(4) Your deck is slow and expensive.  Not even enough 2 drops for Vial.  So, a Dragon Stompy disruption package is probably called for.

Considering that, I'd suggest the following:

Creatures (16)
4x Bloodfire Dwarf
2x Tauren Mauler
4x Duregar Hedge-Mage
2x Mirror Entity
4x Dwarven Recruiter

Disruption (8)
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Blood Moon

Removal (10)
4x Crib Swap (it's a dwarf for belcher, getting you to the critical 20)
3x Lightning Bolt
2x Lightning Helix
3x Swords to Plowshares

Search (3)
3x Enlightened Tutor

Combo (2)
1x Goblin Charbelcher
1x Isochron Scepter

Planeswalkers  (2)
2x Elspeth, Knight Errant

Mana (20)
4x UR Fetchland
4x Plateau
4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
2x Mountain
2x Plains

[Norm4eva]

To be fair, a Dwarf deck that uses Recruiter + Charbelcher probably doesn't need to throw in 'filler' Dwarves to obtain 20 Dwarves for Belcher, since Mountains give Goblin Charbelcher 2x the damages.  I guess if you fear basic Plains that bad you might want to run like 1 Plains and X Sacred Foundry instead?  But yeah, I don't reckon Crib Swap is as necessary as it seems.  Could probably toss the Tombs/Cities for red rituals; as long as we're playing lots of Dwarves they may as well jump out of our hand real fast.

Besides, the best Dwarf is clearly Chameleon Colossus.  :( :( :(  There are more fairly costed Green Changelings than white, even if Crib Swap is removal, at least Colossus can beast and is sort of a bad combo with Dwarven Bloodboiler.  Play CC, tap some Dwarves to give him +6, swing for 20? :(  Can I frown more?

[MaximumCDawg]

Stop frown'n at the poor non-optimal deck!

You could definitively switch to a RG shell and run more of a classic RG beats with sub-par creatures and a Belcher kill.  If you do that, though, you lose white's awesome removal, enlightened tutor, and half of Hedge-Mage.  I guess I tend to always prefer aggro-control builds over pure aggro, so I think you're better off with white as a second color.  I guess you could go into Naya, and dump a recruiter and some Swaps for Chameleon if you wanted...

[waffles]

To be fair, a Dwarf deck that uses Recruiter + Charbelcher probably doesn't need to throw in 'filler' Dwarves to obtain 20 Dwarves for Belcher, since Mountains give Goblin Charbelcher 2x the damages.  I guess if you fear basic Plains that bad you might want to run like 1 Plains and X Sacred Foundry instead?  But yeah, I don't reckon Crib Swap is as necessary as it seems.  Could probably toss the Tombs/Cities for red rituals; as long as we're playing lots of Dwarves they may as well jump out of our hand real fast.

Besides, the best Dwarf is clearly Chameleon Colossus.    There are more fairly costed Green Changelings than white, even if Crib Swap is removal, at least Colossus can beast and is sort of a bad combo with Dwarven Bloodboiler.  Play CC, tap some Dwarves to give him +6, swing for 20?   Can I frown more?

Meh, yes you can make a boring WRG belcher combo deck by the use of tutors and the recruiter and do what goblins cant do anymore, yay for goblin recruiter being banned in legacy. I was thinking for the pure aggro plan, that with extra combat steps the dwarfs would be able hit hard enough to put the pressure on most decks given the low curve of the deck. Vial even may have use here as well. Looking into equipment option, the swords stand out as a massive boost for this tribe, there is even huge synergy for sword of feast/famine and Aggravated Assault; nigh infinte combat steps provided i have the  mana to tap. the other swords fire/ice, light and shadow are very synergistic for the aggro plan.

Now is not the time for Dwarves.  They will eventually get some tribal support, but they don't have it now.  There's nothing dwarves do that other tribes cannot do better.  Tis the way it is.

That said, if you want to maximize a deck with Dwarves just so you can say you did it, the list you posted is not even competitive enough to be fun.  You said you were aiming for Legacy, not Vintage, so you need game against: Zoo, Merfolk, Storm (ANT, High Tide, etc), Belcher, Reanimator, RUG, Elf combo, Goblins, SnT combo, and various other decks.  Lots of diversity, but really this all breaks down to:

(1) Having a way to stop someone from casting 1,000 cards in a single turn;
(2) Having a way to deal with decks using faster, bigger aggro;
(3) Yard hate;
(4) Having a way to get past a control deck with lots of permission;
(5) Having a plan to disrupt a deck trying to cheat Emrakul or Progenitus into play;
(6) Having the ability to deal with all kinds of permanents.

They do have the support, not directly through the tribe though. I chose those creatures because they gave me the best ablities, for dwarves, for their cost. Your list does show me a glimpse into the potental of what the dwarven war machine can offer. I think we can take it even further.

[MaximumCDawg]

Meh, yes you can make a boring WRG belcher combo deck by the use of tutors and the recruiter and do what goblins cant do anymore, yay for goblin recruiter being banned in legacy. I was thinking for the pure aggro plan, that with extra combat steps the dwarfs would be able hit hard enough to put the pressure on most decks given the low curve of the deck. Vial even may have use here as well. Looking into equipment option, the swords stand out as a massive boost for this tribe, there is even huge synergy for sword of feast/famine and Aggravated Assault; nigh infinte combat steps provided i have the  mana to tap. the other swords fire/ice, light and shadow are very synergistic for the aggro plan.

My goal in making suggestions was to start with the given restriction that the deck cared about Dwarves, and then trying to make the best performing deck that I think you can make using that model.  What you're describing is not really a Dwarf deck, except in the most banal sense.  If you just want beaters plus multiple attack steps, Legacy offers choices far superior to Dwarves.

[waffles]

Meh, yes you can make a boring WRG belcher combo deck by the use of tutors and the recruiter and do what goblins cant do anymore, yay for goblin recruiter being banned in legacy. I was thinking for the pure aggro plan, that with extra combat steps the dwarfs would be able hit hard enough to put the pressure on most decks given the low curve of the deck. Vial even may have use here as well. Looking into equipment option, the swords stand out as a massive boost for this tribe, there is even huge synergy for sword of feast/famine and Aggravated Assault; nigh infinte combat steps provided i have the  mana to tap. the other swords fire/ice, light and shadow are very synergistic for the aggro plan.

My goal in making suggestions was to start with the given restriction that the deck cared about Dwarves, and then trying to make the best performing deck that I think you can make using that model.  What you're describing is not really a Dwarf deck, except in the most banal sense.  If you just want beaters plus multiple attack steps, Legacy offers choices far superior to Dwarves.

I know there are better options out there,  I could play one of the many tiered decks instead, but that isnt the point. I chose the dwarfs because they are underpowered thus making it truely challenging to win with them. Yes, the pure aggro/multi combat step path is very basic but it doesnt need to be fancy just "get there." I am not discounting your list, it was intriguing i am going to proxy it out to see how it preforms.