Drafted the following deck last night in a glimpse draft, in a powered cube that supports green aggro. Was my first attempt at the archetype, and I was reasonably pleased.
The deck performed very well, with the mana denial package being key to it's success. I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
That decklist is great feedback because you can build most of that deck in my Cube, and I do not do not consider myself a "hard" green aggro supporter. This is because I feel that the green aggro decks operate well with mana dorks, equipment, and 5-drop top end instead of 4, and that is exactly what you have demonstrated here. The only card that I feel isn't great here is the Tattermunge Maniac but would have made me happy as a swap to Kessig Prowler.
I had to try the Vinelasher Kudzu. Seems great in those green aggro decks that can curve a little higher than other. How did it perform for you in that particular list?
Hmm, I've actually never put mana elves in an aggro deck. Idk, do you think they fit? How did the elves perform in that deck?
I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
I count 9 lands that provide red mana in your list (and 12 green), I think you could have gone for more red drops without much of a stretch, maybe with one more mountain and one less forest.
Hmm, I've actually never put mana elves in an aggro deck. Idk, do you think they fit? How did the elves perform in that deck?
I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
I count 9 lands that provide red mana in your list (and 12 green), I think you could have gone for more red drops without much of a stretch, maybe with one more mountain and one less forest.
I think they do fit if you have acces to a couple a swords, like this decklist does.
Hmm, I've actually never put mana elves in an aggro deck. Idk, do you think they fit? How did the elves perform in that deck?
I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
I count 9 lands that provide red mana in your list (and 12 green), I think you could have gone for more red drops without much of a stretch, maybe with one more mountain and one less forest.
Elves work fine in aggro decks since they work around Winter Orb and ramp up to Armageddon.
Hmm, I've actually never put mana elves in an aggro deck. Idk, do you think they fit? How did the elves perform in that deck?
I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
I count 9 lands that provide red mana in your list (and 12 green), I think you could have gone for more red drops without much of a stretch, maybe with one more mountain and one less forest.
I liked the elves quite alot with Winter Orb / Tangle Wire / the Swords.
You might be right on including aggro red drops. I'm generally against running aggro decks with 1 drops spread across 2 colors though. It's so important for aggro to get to the board on turn 1, I never want to be in the situation where I can't due to inconsistent mana.
I had to try the Vinelasher Kudzu. Seems great in those green aggro decks that can curve a little higher than other. How did it perform for you in that particular list?
Often just a 2 mana 2/2, but occasionally great when I was able to get down orb / wire. In those games, by the time my opponent was able to get out from under the mana lock the Kudzu was a 4/4 +.
Thinking about green aggro and its place in my cube. Can some people chime in with what often draws them into drafting this archetype? Some examples of what you open within your first few packs or what not that makes you decide to draft green aggro.
The best cards in green-based aggro in my super limited experience are Warden of the First Tree, which plays nicely with two colors you can easily pair with green, and Plow Under, which serves as top-end disruption. Mana elves are actually pretty cool too, since you can play a little bigger than your typical white, red, or black-based aggro decks on the same turn. I also like Garruk Wildspeaker's ultimate as a coffin nail, and that also plays nicely with elves.
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Mana disruption is the best reason to go green aggro IMO. Decks whose 1-drops can both count as lands and apply pressure can most effectively use cards like Winter Orb and Tangle Wire, and a turn 3-4 Plow Under will end the game against alot of decks, especially if you have a Sword on the table.
Company was a much better midrange card than an aggro one. You need a high concentration of 3-drops and utility 2-drops to make Company great. It's not spectacular when it's grabbing Elves and Lions.
For my cube it was the multicolour cards (don't support green aggro atm). Stuff like Bloodbraid, Pridemage, Horizon Canopy, Kird Ape/Loam Lion/Nacatl along with Rancor would be enough.
This discussion is about a month old?
How are people finding Green Aggro? I am personally struggling to make it work personally and still have enough card slots open.
I have:
Green 1 drops Ramp: 5 slots
Green 1 drops Aggro: 4 slots
Green 2 drops Ramp: 5 slots
Green 2 drops Aggro: 5 slots
Green 2 drops utility: 2 slots
That is a total of 21 slots in 1 and 2 drops leaving me with
4: 4 drops
4: 5 drops
2: 5 drops
3: 6 drops+
Note my cube size is 360. I am starting to learn towards the idea that at 360 it's to tight to make green aggro work?
Does any one have experience counter to this? If so,
How many creatures are in each spot?
Besides Rancor and Plow Under there isn't much that draws me into green aggro, but I like the archetype. Experiment One and Warden of the First Tree are great once you're in that boat.
I recently noticed something about green aggro in our cube: it works really well when you get some great non-green aggro cards, like Bonesplitter, Tangle Wire, but also cards from other colors. And then just complete your deck with low cmc aggro dudes, which is easier with green because green aggro is often open. So whenever I played green aggro I ended up with a very high concentration of one drops and an overall really low curve, and those decks played very well because of the increased consistency.
I also tried some elves in green aggro and they were decent there with equipment, but I still prefer 2 power one drops, unless I'm building an aggressive midrange deck.
360 is tight for green aggro, but I'd still try and make it work there. Your numbers look fine, so long as the good multicolor support cards and the powerful aggro cards are still in place. GG/x aggro isn't great, but X/G aggro plays perfectly fine.
I have been playing green aggro in my cube for a little while (360), and wanted to leave what I have discovered so far.
On the average draft I want to support
3 aggro decks
3 mid range decks
3 control decks
(I know, adds up to 9).
This allows for a healthy balanced meta-game
Each aggro deck ideally wants seven or eight 1 drops.
one could argue for more, but for me, 7 or 8 is fine since a starting hand of 7 has about a 75% chance of having a 1 drop and 8 1 drops has an 80% chance of having at least 1 drop to play in a 40 card deck.
for 3 players, that places the number of 1 drops for aggro decks to be about 21-24.
If you don't support green, that means each of the other 3 colors needs 7 to 8 beaters (24/3 = 8 ; 21/3 = 7)
By supporting green aggro, you decrease the number in the other colors down around 5 or 6. (24/4 = 6; 21/4 = 5.25)
This has 2 big benefits,
1) Making aggro a little more diverse in drafting (3 players drafting for 4 colors) vs 3 players drafting 3 colors
which greatly increases aggro deck diversity.
With 3 colors (not accounting for monocolor decks), you can draft WB, WR, RB
with 4 colors,(not accounting for monocolor decks), you can draft WB, WR, WG, RB, RG, BG
2) It also alleviates a few cards in the other cards in W, B, and R which allows for more diverse mid range and control decks in these colors because you can play 2 or so extra cards in each of these colors.
analyzing my current cubes data I have the following 1 drops for 8 players
White - 7.5
Black - 6
Red 6.5
Green 4.5
* I count hybrid cards as a 1/2 card in there color, as well as 1 drops cards which are not pure aggro cards, but can be played in aggro, such as mother of runes
With 3 players drafting 2 color aggro decks, 2 of the colors will be split between 2 players, and 2 of the colors are usually drafted by only 1 player.
Based on this, the fewest 1 drop creates that should be drafted by a player is 5.25 (about 70% chance of having at least one 1 drop in starting hand of 7) in my cube by Drafting black and green, and the other 2 players each drafted one of these colors. As a general worse case scenario, I think this is pretty good.
Most of the time however, I have found the player drafting green usually does not share Green with the other players, and thus the next worse cases scenario is a Rakdos player with 6.25 cards
The best case scenario for the player who is sharing both colors would be WR and would have 7 cards.
For players sharing 1 color, and having 1 color to themselves.
Worst case scenario is Sharing Black and being only player in Green with 7.5 cards
Best case scenario is Sharing Red, and being the only plyer in white at 10.75 cards.
The downfall to this analysis is when looking at drafts with only 2 aggro players.
a Boros player can potentially get 14 1 drop creates! and a worse case scenario in Green Black is still 10.5 creatures!
I would like to point out this only happens when there are 2 aggro players, and they both keep completely out of each others way.
In addition, so for in my experience when this has happened, 1 or 2 things generally happen,
1) the aggro decks do really well and then everyone reminds themselves why they don't play aggro and it balances the draft meta-game out in future drafts.
2) 1 or 2 mid range players will notice there are a lot of lower creatures open, and while there deck will end up as a midrange deck, it will become a slightly faster midrange deck, as they will take more of the 2, 3, and 4 drop creatures and thus the decks will sort of balance themselves out.
Overall, I have been very happy with green aggro. Hopefully wizards will continue to print more interactive and fun 1 green aggro drops for us to keep exploring this area of CUBE
Agreed. Interesting stats BTW. It's really nice to see this list growing and growing. So far, we even have enough to reach the 630 requirements. Between those, ...
... we're slowly getting a pretty awesome green aggro suite. And, like I said, even for bigger cubes. We're still looking for one or two more though. Cards like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Curse of Predation also add to the agressive mix, while cards like Collected Company and Duskwatch Recruiter help the more grindy ones.
At 360 with 2-4 drafters usually, is it a good idea to support green aggro? Not GG/x but maybe to reward players for drafting aggro decks that could even pivot into aggressive midrange in gruul or something? so far control seems to win most often and by a lot, and i'm hoping that green aggro may be a way to encourage faster decks in general
I think it's better to ask, do your players want to draft green aggro? We used to support it, but there were so many Jungle Lions and Pouncing Jaguars going last that eventually we cut it to bolster green's other strengths. We play with a small group and there's usually only one aggro drafter at most during a draft, so it felt bad for us to include it. Granted we are playing a bigger cube, but I think it's always best to run and support what your drafters want. While it is your cube, they are your group, and should be the first consideration after general cube balance.
At 360 with 2-4 drafters usually, is it a good idea to support green aggro? Not GG/x but maybe to reward players for drafting aggro decks that could even pivot into aggressive midrange in gruul or something? so far control seems to win most often and by a lot, and i'm hoping that green aggro may be a way to encourage faster decks in general
I would say yes. Plow Under is great vs. control, as is Thrun, the last Troll. To a lesser extent Troll Ascetic. Toss in some aggressive ones and twos and it sounds like a control killer.
1x Wolfbitten Captive
1x Dryad Militant
1x Tattermunge Maniac
1x Scythe Leopard
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Duskwatch Recruiter
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Vinelasher Kudzu
1x Viridian Shaman
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Bloodbraid Elf
1x Acidic Slime
1x Kalonian Hydra
1x Thundermaw Hellkite
1x Winter Orb
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
1x Tangle Wire
1x Crucible of Worlds
Other Spells
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Dismember
1x Magma Jet
Lands
1x Strip Mine
1x Taiga
1x Stomping Grounds
1x Arid Mesa
1x Karplusan Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Mana Confluence
4x Mountain
6x Forest
The deck performed very well, with the mana denial package being key to it's success. I would have greatly preferred to lower the curve, but I was getting cut a bit on green. I had alot of low-drop creatures in red, but didn't want to stretch the mana to accommodate.
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I count 9 lands that provide red mana in your list (and 12 green), I think you could have gone for more red drops without much of a stretch, maybe with one more mountain and one less forest.
I think they do fit if you have acces to a couple a swords, like this decklist does.
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Elves work fine in aggro decks since they work around Winter Orb and ramp up to Armageddon.
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I liked the elves quite alot with Winter Orb / Tangle Wire / the Swords.
You might be right on including aggro red drops. I'm generally against running aggro decks with 1 drops spread across 2 colors though. It's so important for aggro to get to the board on turn 1, I never want to be in the situation where I can't due to inconsistent mana.
Often just a 2 mana 2/2, but occasionally great when I was able to get down orb / wire. In those games, by the time my opponent was able to get out from under the mana lock the Kudzu was a 4/4 +.
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Company was a much better midrange card than an aggro one. You need a high concentration of 3-drops and utility 2-drops to make Company great. It's not spectacular when it's grabbing Elves and Lions.
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How are people finding Green Aggro? I am personally struggling to make it work personally and still have enough card slots open.
I have:
Green 1 drops Ramp: 5 slots
Green 1 drops Aggro: 4 slots
Green 2 drops Ramp: 5 slots
Green 2 drops Aggro: 5 slots
Green 2 drops utility: 2 slots
That is a total of 21 slots in 1 and 2 drops leaving me with
4: 4 drops
4: 5 drops
2: 5 drops
3: 6 drops+
Note my cube size is 360. I am starting to learn towards the idea that at 360 it's to tight to make green aggro work?
Does any one have experience counter to this? If so,
How many creatures are in each spot?
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
I recently noticed something about green aggro in our cube: it works really well when you get some great non-green aggro cards, like Bonesplitter, Tangle Wire, but also cards from other colors. And then just complete your deck with low cmc aggro dudes, which is easier with green because green aggro is often open. So whenever I played green aggro I ended up with a very high concentration of one drops and an overall really low curve, and those decks played very well because of the increased consistency.
I also tried some elves in green aggro and they were decent there with equipment, but I still prefer 2 power one drops, unless I'm building an aggressive midrange deck.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
On the average draft I want to support
3 aggro decks
3 mid range decks
3 control decks
(I know, adds up to 9).
This allows for a healthy balanced meta-game
Each aggro deck ideally wants seven or eight 1 drops.
one could argue for more, but for me, 7 or 8 is fine since a starting hand of 7 has about a 75% chance of having a 1 drop and 8 1 drops has an 80% chance of having at least 1 drop to play in a 40 card deck.
for 3 players, that places the number of 1 drops for aggro decks to be about 21-24.
If you don't support green, that means each of the other 3 colors needs 7 to 8 beaters (24/3 = 8 ; 21/3 = 7)
By supporting green aggro, you decrease the number in the other colors down around 5 or 6. (24/4 = 6; 21/4 = 5.25)
This has 2 big benefits,
1) Making aggro a little more diverse in drafting (3 players drafting for 4 colors) vs 3 players drafting 3 colors
which greatly increases aggro deck diversity.
With 3 colors (not accounting for monocolor decks), you can draft WB, WR, RB
with 4 colors,(not accounting for monocolor decks), you can draft WB, WR, WG, RB, RG, BG
2) It also alleviates a few cards in the other cards in W, B, and R which allows for more diverse mid range and control decks in these colors because you can play 2 or so extra cards in each of these colors.
analyzing my current cubes data I have the following 1 drops for 8 players
White - 7.5
Black - 6
Red 6.5
Green 4.5
* I count hybrid cards as a 1/2 card in there color, as well as 1 drops cards which are not pure aggro cards, but can be played in aggro, such as mother of runes
With 3 players drafting 2 color aggro decks, 2 of the colors will be split between 2 players, and 2 of the colors are usually drafted by only 1 player.
Based on this, the fewest 1 drop creates that should be drafted by a player is 5.25 (about 70% chance of having at least one 1 drop in starting hand of 7) in my cube by Drafting black and green, and the other 2 players each drafted one of these colors. As a general worse case scenario, I think this is pretty good.
Most of the time however, I have found the player drafting green usually does not share Green with the other players, and thus the next worse cases scenario is a Rakdos player with 6.25 cards
The best case scenario for the player who is sharing both colors would be WR and would have 7 cards.
For players sharing 1 color, and having 1 color to themselves.
Worst case scenario is Sharing Black and being only player in Green with 7.5 cards
Best case scenario is Sharing Red, and being the only plyer in white at 10.75 cards.
The downfall to this analysis is when looking at drafts with only 2 aggro players.
a Boros player can potentially get 14 1 drop creates! and a worse case scenario in Green Black is still 10.5 creatures!
I would like to point out this only happens when there are 2 aggro players, and they both keep completely out of each others way.
In addition, so for in my experience when this has happened, 1 or 2 things generally happen,
1) the aggro decks do really well and then everyone reminds themselves why they don't play aggro and it balances the draft meta-game out in future drafts.
2) 1 or 2 mid range players will notice there are a lot of lower creatures open, and while there deck will end up as a midrange deck, it will become a slightly faster midrange deck, as they will take more of the 2, 3, and 4 drop creatures and thus the decks will sort of balance themselves out.
Overall, I have been very happy with green aggro. Hopefully wizards will continue to print more interactive and fun 1 green aggro drops for us to keep exploring this area of CUBE
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
02 Jungle Lion
03 Kessig Prowler
04 Scythe Leopard
05 Wild Dogs
06 Wolfbitten Captive
07 Tattermunge Maniac
08 Dryad Militant
09 Wild Nacatl
10 Warden of the First Tree
... we're slowly getting a pretty awesome green aggro suite. And, like I said, even for bigger cubes. We're still looking for one or two more though. Cards like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Curse of Predation also add to the agressive mix, while cards like Collected Company and Duskwatch Recruiter help the more grindy ones.
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Zetsu's Ebay MTG Online Store
Zetsu's Poker Draft Method
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I would say yes. Plow Under is great vs. control, as is Thrun, the last Troll. To a lesser extent Troll Ascetic. Toss in some aggressive ones and twos and it sounds like a control killer.
[180 classic cube]