Aggro Ideology: A Guide to Spee-DH 

RENAME TO "guide to spee-dh"!!!!!!

People underestimate how fast kenkro mob boss shits out bois.

Love voltron but having to focus a specific person always feels bad, even though it's the optimal thing to do. I end up spreading damage and just losing like I deserve to. Feels so bad.

I'm a big fan of aggro in EDH, it's not easy to build consistently strong aggro lists, so I enjoy the challenge a lot! I recently built a creature-only Breena list I've been really enjoying, and I completely agree that stax can be very useful for aggro decks in making the table play their game. I noticed you talked about the power of reducing opponents' life totals to low amounts, referring to it as "aggro ideology". I like to refer to it as "pressure", as your opponents feel pressured to play in a way that makes sure they don't lose, rather than attempting to set up for a win. I think exerting this pressure is the main goal of any aggro deck in commander. This ties into what I find most difficult about piloting aggro in commander- by being strong early in order to exert my pressure, the other players often feel threatened and respond in kind with their interaction. It can be a delicate balancing act between being the table vigilante (pressuring people so that they don't get too out of hand) while not running afoul of table police (swords to plowshares -> blasphemous act -> pongify for good measure, lmao). The only answer I've found is to try and figure out the respective tolerances each of your groupmates have, and try to play within their lines when you don't have justification to do otherwise. This also helps me to not overextend my resources, a problem I'm not used to facing when I play many of my other decks. I enjoyed this video a lot, thanks for making it!

Wow! I was actually just talking about this with a friend. The fact commander is singleton, 40hp, 4 player game makes it inherently more midrange, so I was having a lot of trouble truly identifying what "aggro" would actually mean. Thanks bro!

Ah yes, another quality video from my favorite MTG rantsona

With the release of Thunder Junction, Obeka Splitter of Seconds does a big cannonball onto the entire venn diagram if you use the builds that use upkeep damage effects like Court of Emberth and Creeping Bloodsucker, since you need to give her a Voltron package to help achieve value

Actually amazed you didn’t mention heartless hidetsugu or manabarbs. Great vid!

I have locked a player with a fairly high power breya deck from interacting and playing spells because we got him low and my ruric Thar stack on the board. Locking someone through low life is a thing in this format. And it is actually really useful. Thank you for bringing attention to it.

I was pleased to find I had already built my deck largely around the same criteria and modes of play outline as "aggro ideology", but something you mentioned (almost as an aside) caught my attention: using treasures to cast instant speed interaction. I've been trying to find the best way to hold open abrade/teferis protection/mana tithe while also efficiently spending my mana, and I absolutely have been doing that with treasures without making the connection! I'm excited to rebuild my deck with this in mind

Disruptive aggro is a great way to describe the burn enchantments/“DoT” Torbran build I have. I see a lot of people build that deck as more traditional aggro with a spellslinger theme and it never works

Ive found two surprising contenders for voltron and pseudo voltron within my collection: My upgraded Kathril deck and my Torgaar, Famine incarnate deck respectively. Kathril is consistently an untouchable 5 mana 3 turn game-ender, and torgaar gets people to 20 health very easily and then pings them to death from there. Two very simple decks that throw people off and kill them even quicker.

In regards to the 'fiddly' meta issue, I found my yurlok punishment deck works wonders, it's not quite aggro as it struggles to get over the line, but it puts huge pressure on life totals and the theme is 'stop hitting yourself'. Using cards like blood artist, mana barbs, spell shock, painful quandary, kederekt parasite and rampaging ferocidon, any time opponents are durdling or making value plays that don't commit to board or actively try and kill me, they are haemorrhaging life. But since they are choosing to make those plays, knowing they are rolling in razorblades by doing so, they don't really have a leg to stand on when it bites them in the ass. Overall it subtly makes those games a lot more fun and interactive by heavily incentivizing people to interact and turn creatures sideways, without actually forcing them to do so (e.g. with goad) which tends to be taken more poorly. ymmv but it's a fun archetype to play and helps avoid those horrible stalled out boring endgames. 15 hp is definitely the breakpoint where everyone starts sweating and starts actually having to play the damn game.

Great video! cEDH tangent; I play Korvold, fae cursed king in cEDH, and have found that a small amount of the time I am at a staxed out table and am forced to go on the beatdown plan. I noticed my deck play patterns become like pseudo Voltron, where I play a lot of removal and stax myself, and kill people sometimes with large bursts from Korvold. I like your ideas and think they hold true for all levels of play. I think edh theory is most sound when it is true for draft chaff tribal all the way to a staxed out cEDH board

My current aggro deck of choice is Blanka/Howling Abomination. There are a couple of ways to build it, but ive built mine as a Gruul spellslinger. Getting set up with a keen sense effect and a Birgi or steam kiln artist allows me to draw through my deck with cheap cantrips targeting my commander and burning my ipponents down. It's a lot of fun.

Love aggro dekcs, red decks are my fave in limited and standard, it's fun to try and recreate this feel in edh despite being hard to do

Some great writing in this script

Gotta listen to this at x2 speed to get the true aggro experience

Voltron can also solve the boardwipe question AND the blockers question in a neat 2 for 1: YOU are the guy that plays the boardwipes, and your commander is protected from them. Maybe it's a bit slower/controlly of a gameplan and not as aggro' at that point though.

I normally don't leave comments, bbbbbbbbbuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttttt I and my playgroup play a lot of aggro so I thought I'd share my experiences with my Mina and Denn landfall aggro deck. This really turned into a bit of an essay but I do love my Mina and Denn deck to absolute pieces, so hopefully I can share some of that love and excitement here. I mention again some concepts that were close to our in the video taking about my own experiences, just fyi. The fundamental philosophy of the deck is to make landfall creatures far more efficient attackers than they would normally be costed for by leveraging multiple landfall triggers in a turn. It's not uncommon for the deck to have multiple turns with a 1 cmc akoum hellhound swinging as a 6/7 from just landfall. I've been very picky with my landfall threats, and I think it's necessary with the mission of the deck. Every threat needs to come down and build pressure quickly, as there gets to be a point where the cards in my opponents decks are just better than mine. By putting on pressure quickly and consistently however, you put your opponents in a situation where they just don't have time to get the value they need from their better cards to actually win. If there's one takeaway that I'd want to give from my experience with the deck, it's the idea of gaining and maintaining velocity. Since it isn't actually possible to go through that 120 health before your opponents can do anything. the goal becomes getting to a point where you're taking big chunks from that 120 every single turn. Once you're there, you want to take steps to keep that pressure and velocity high. You will loose threats and use resources to do that damage, so you need to be prepared to replace them (eg maintain velocity). For my Mina and Denn, this meant leveraging big card draw spells that can refill my hand (hunters insight, rishkar's expertise ), and more consistent draw like Valkut Exploration and Tireless Tracker. Go fast, burn resources, replace resources, repeat. A high velocity helps in the mid to late game when you have lower comparative card quality than your opponents. You just end up with more pieces of cardboard on the table, and your opponents get overwhelmed. Board wipes become less painful with this philosophy as well, since the deck is designed to recoup resources and can go back to deploying them quickly just as it was in the early game. (Some folk find that last bit really frustrating, it can take a couple board wipes to actually start to slow down my Mina and Denn). Just as the video said, forms of evasion to push damage through have been very important for all the aggro decks I've seen. Mina and Denn is able to give creatures trample natively with her ability, which makes all my attackers much more threatening. I've seen finding forms of evasion be a major pain point for similar decks, so its important to think about. I absolutely love my Mina and Denn deck just from the natural synergy that comes from its game plan. I play efficient beaters, I ramp to grow them, the ramp allows me to cast my big draw spells, which gives me more lands and beaters to fuel smacking my opponents. From what I've seen (and this is a VERY small sample size so take it with a pinch of salt) the main trade off between this style of aggro and voltron (I haven't seen disruptive aggro before but I want to try it now!) is a trade off between speed and resiliency. Voltron has consistently out-sped my deck, but to variable success as most decks capable of removing the commander will. When it has been able to protect the commander or players get greedy with mana in the early turns, it has been more than capable of ending games. Comparatively, Mina and Denn has been slower but removal is fundamentally less effective against it, as removing any one threat usually doesn't stop the deck as a whole from doing damage. Nobody wants to path to exile an akoum hellhound. My final point is that reach is just as important of a concept in this deck as it is with traditional aggro, just in edh it comes in the form of what are normally considered finishers. I have two (currently experimenting with one more) pretty standard ones, Avenger of Zendikar and Overwhelming Stampede. They do their jobs, and my opponents rarely have removal left for Avenger when he comes down. Overwhelming Stampede just wins with any reasonable boardstate. I've had opponents hit my board when it was weaker than others just to turn of potential stampede wins. From my experience, generally with enough velocity you can keep the number of finishers lower in the deck and be able to draw into one as the game goes on. Normal part of most decks in hindsight, but it's important in this style of aggro for the same reason its important in normal aggro. If someone wanted to build and play the kind of aggro that I've made with Mina and Denn, here are the things I would keep in mind, in no particular order: 1. You want as efficient beaters as you can, as quickly as you can. These are your bread and butter. 2. You want a plan to keep pressure up through interaction (or just be able to answer the interaction question). 3. You want a plan to enable your creatures to push damage through board states as consistently as possible (eg evasion). 4. You want a plan to convert early and midgame damage into a win (eg finisher/reach) 5. You want a plan to maintain velocity 6. The normal edh stuff, removal, card draw, boardwipe. It's very useful to have a commander that can answer one or a couple of these points! So ya that's what I got. Certainly not the most powerful deck but definitely my favorite. Very nice to hear folk talk about their own experiences and deck building philosophies when it comes to aggro in edh! The aggro ideology is the exact methodology I've developed in piloting my Mina and Denn, so it was a pleasant surprise to see other people coming to the same conclusions for an arctype that doesn't see much play in the wider ecosystem. Good video!

Regarding the archenemy syndrome aggro gets at the start of commander, my way of politicking this is making an alliance with one other member of the table. You can usually find someone who is agreeable with teaming up w/ the initial hotshot, then the other two players will inevitably team up. But 2v2 is way better for you than 1v3

My two aggro decks proved to me that aggro simply does not work. Marchesa the Black Rose needed creatures to be so efficient that I was basically just beating opponents through mismatched power levels. It never once won a game with decks I felt were evenly matched. Varolz the Scar Stripped is by far my favorite deck. Aggressive, disruptive, and pivots onto Varolz Voltron if thr game goes south. Still, it is the easiest thing to politic against and still loses pretty easily to spending the first five turns casting things that don't affect the board. Your hatebears deck is really just a midrange deck tbh, not really an aggro deck. This video is a perfect example of why aggro sucks, too. "Oh, start with aggression. Now add evasion. You'll need removal to disrupt your opponent enough. Now you'll need protection for your board, and don't forget to add reach if things get clogged up." That's infinitely harder than "play ETBs in Yarok, if you aren't winning at least you're drawing 4 cards and putting every land you own into play."

Idk why but the ending of your video reminded me of the time at my local card store i was in a pod and one of the players was using the deck that if one of his commander creatures hits you your life becomes 1, i was playing Ruxa grizzly bears and no ability tribal, one was playing MoM, the problem player was some super cedh bs though. The SUPER cEDH guy had a turn 1 sol ring mana crypt mana vault turn 2 monarch bs. Well on my second turn the cEDH had open mana. I played BALDUVIAN BEARS a 2 mana 2/2. He immediately tapped mana and exiled it under his effect and caused me to get hit to one life and i forfeit as soon as it happened. I looked at the guy and said "really to you the 2 mana 2/2 grizzly bear was worth the mana to get rid of?" He responded with "you arent in the game anymore arent you?" Ive never in my lofe wanted to flip a table more than that day. He lost to MoM and i proceeded to reiterate after sitting for 45 minutes that the spell he literally wasted on me is why he lost and he just left the store

As a late-game enthusiast (The dude with a 30 7+ cost Sorcery deck), this guide is really good and I'd recommend it to anyone who runs aggro. The 15 life rule is so on point. Personally, I restrain from using too many self-life draining and I if not then I make sure to play a card that somehow gains me life to not run into these situations. Even taking this into consideration, a good aggro can kill very fast. Honestly, I live off the high of the aggro player trying to stop me before the value starts and never ends (my decks have no win condition other than me having 30 cards in hand (usually people just surrender(I don't like win conditions they are bricky))). But as more people in my play group learn more about aggro I will have to build more carefully selected cards in my decks. Also, if I play at a full aggro table, I'm 100% switching decks cuz I know the three are coming at me. It's only with more midrange and other controls/mass value that I can bring the deck out.

I have a Hazezon Shaper of Sand deck that uses the sheer amount of tokens to speed up the game, but rely on staying small with cards like Cavalcade of Calamity, Heat Wave and Ghostly Prision to attack relentlessly while also having opponents make the hard blocking choices and attacking choices. A deck that follows the same stategy is Ib Halfheart, where It wants to be attacking all the time AND wants to be blocked. It puts opponents through the pressure of making hard blocking choices (especially If you put effects that really speed up the aggro like Throne of the God Pharaoh)

With a thumbnail like that, i expected this to be a video about playing chaos.

Great analysis! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the experience of playing these kinds of decks. In my experience EDH players are whiny babies who see interactive decks like these not as a challenge to overcome or build around but a social taboo. If I pulled up and said "hey guys here's my new rakdos discard boardwipe deck" I'd face endless bitching and moaning at best and at worst a 3v1 politic game to get me off the board. Lastly, I can't imagine these decks being very fun when they don't work. If someone ramps decently and boardwipes you once, I don't see a way back into the game. I might have 6 turns of gameplay left but might as well scoop immediately. These are just initial thoughts and would love to hear more discussion. Thanks!

Underrated channel

My favourite true aggro EDH deck is Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer. 3WR Legendary Creature - Human Warrior First strike, Metalcraft - Creatures you control get +3/+0 as long as you control three or more artifacts. Turns 1/1s into 4/1s, which gets out of hand pretty fast with double strike anthems, damage doublers, warstorm surge/terror of the peaks etc. Lets you force trades a lot earlier. The equipment sub-theme for early Greaves is often all the stability you need for some effects that create multiple 1/1 tokens to start doing big damage and trading tokens for non-token creatures early. I rate it between 8-8.5, just short of cEDH consistency, but still really fun. Especially with Convoke, or Paradise Mantle+Greaves+Puresteel Paladin to start chaining some token creation. I feel like to hit the 40 life total for each opponent consistently enough to win at EDH level, you have to use infinite combos. Impact Tremors, Cloudstone + 2 Kobolds etc.

So I play an Anim Pakal the Thousandth Moon list... Selfless Spirit is insane - The threat of activation means trading one for one with five 2/2 gnomes is not only a losing proposition, but a laughable one. It also happens to be great for deterring kill spells

I like Pakko decks in cedh. Sometimes they voltron Sometimes divergent transformation into Leveler and Thassa's Oracle

My favorite deck that I have is an Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck. He reads like he was designed to be a grouphug commander & in UG you'd think he was a controlly/ramp commander. The deck plays like 20 evasive 1 & 2 drops, and 10 ways to take extra turns in order to get extra combats. It's a "last game of the night, we need to pack up in 30 minutes," only deck these days because it's not good enough for cEDH & its too good for the average casual table.

Best content here

I feel like you are the only other person on the planet who plays Malfegor. Both of us here one spot thats crazy. Also cool video

I play a Krenko deck, it is inherently aggro. The best turn 1 for me is land into Mana Crypt into Lightning Greaves into Goblin Lackey swing and hit cheat Goblin Wizard, equip Wizard and cheat in Goblin Warchief. Now all my goblins are 1 cheaper, and have haste, I can cast Krenko turn 2 and make a bunch of Goblins

I'd say, simply take turn in beating down everyone equally until you have a sense that, politically, you can get away with taking someone down. The reason I say this is because, in the eye of the others, you will seem "useful", they will not play things that would have otherwise taken you out of the game simply because they feel they can handle you later. but the beauty of aggro is that the best removal in Magic, will always be... player removal.

Very nice explanation. Can I get the sheets?

Aggro shmaggro Purphoros+Ojer-Axonil+Goblins = Menace

I play combo decks because I don't like sitting out on the sidelines for an hour after someone kills me right before a boardwipe. This way, I don't make other people sit on the sidelines doing nothing. I prefer to kill all my opponents at the same time.

Personally I hate when an aggro player guns down one player from 40-0 life at the table, especially when the player losing is me and then the third player who is obviously building to a strong late game wins, meaning I don’t get to play the game so much, but I have a minthara deck that feels like a pretty good balance. It’s clunky asf by the nature of the hoops I have to jump through for my commander, but it generates value enough to keep up with more value based decks longer, and puts on that pressure you’re talking about.

Thoughts on tovolar? Do tribal decks work for aggro decks as easily or do you think they are more midrange than aggro? I was thinking of making tovolar and the general direction i went was to play protection and some single interaction and hopefully draw enough through combat to outlast boardwipes by either having a full grip of new creatures or interaction

Adding politics to The gameplan can create some "nuke diplomacy" situations that are Very rewarding It is important to keep Very restrictive deals with Key players though, and make sure you are able to finish them off

I once had an aggro deck that defeated both opponents in a 3-player EDH game in six turns. It was pretty consistent, too. I stopped playing it because it ended games so fast and was generally not fun.

im surprised fynn the fangbearer wasn't mentioned, but good video

voltron in at a competitive/semicompetitive table is completely fine. voltron at a casual table is a bit rude imo. (it is fun to see it from time to time in casual but not as a main deck)

My favorite deck is Ilharg because it sort of forces players to play a bit more honestly. People think I'm the villain for blowing up mana crypts and rushing the Jodah the Unifier player but I think it's a moral obligation to smack greedy strategies. Whether by damage or removal. It leads to more interesting games with more back and forth and decision making when it isn't just a race to see who can get as many multiplicative triggers as possible. I'm still okay in the playgroup because people see me as kind of the archnemesis but that's fine by me. I've never really understood players that just want to play solitaire but there's quite a few in the Commander community. In my playgroup everyone runs a little more interaction now that's for sure, which also makes games less runaway even outside of one person running Aggro.

as a G/X stompy aggro beatdown player.. you DO have a valid point in using things like aristocrats and extort to essentially deal damage to everyone

What about go-wide decks that win with overrun effects? I'd call those aggro and they're really effective.

My favorite deck rn is Karlach and Hardy Outlander, it just goes too fast for the rest of the table or it holds back until turn 6/7 when it can kill 2+ opponents at once I don’t feel the need for disruption or protection cause I’m either too fast for it to matter or I let other people be the threat until I’m set up

Nothing Commander players hate more than when your turn your creatures to the right every turn.

Turbo proliferate decks that utilize cards like Ichor rats and dedicated Purphuros decks are the only real aggro decks in EDH tbh. The archetype just doesn't work with other strategies due to the things you talked about

"NEAT"

I've always been a fan of Virtus the Veiled. Sure, I might not win the game with Virtus alone, but it's a lot funnier when all my opponents are at 20 or 10 life from turn 5.

Cool vid. Idk how much this is seen outside of high power casual, but I feel like you’re downplaying turboramp Timmy aggro. Commanders like Selvala, Goreclaw, or Imoti. Basically “cast Apex Devastator, Last March of The Ents, or some other BS to cheat like 30 mana into play and draw like 10 cards on turn 5 or 6: the deck.”

This sint msgic the noah is it?

And then there's goblins...

Ain't nobody gonna be telling me Zada is anything other than StormGro.

Just make Márton Stromgald your commander

I quite like playing Aggro. It's especially fun when you do it with a color the opponent doesn't really expect. I have a Minn, Wily Illusionist deck, which is Mono Blue and can take people by suprise when you suddenly swing in for 35 damage and make the Atraxa Poison Prolif player's heart stop. In my Online Group a Henzie Torre deck debuted with the fastest win when I first played it after I had an incredibly explosive start and lethal on everyone by turn 5.

Biden of Thassa

I’m not entirely sure what you consider aggro. It seems by your standards, everything is an aggro deck. It gives me the impression you look at decks as either aggro which win through getting opponents down to 0 or with cmdr dmg vs what, combo that does it in one turn, or midrange that wins through alternative means. What is aggro to you?

Your 15 life total assumption is incorrect. The ONLY thing that matters is the difference between life totals I.E. will I be able to reduce their life total to 0 or less before they reduce mine. If I win at 1 life then it doesnt matter.

infect

I distinction I like to make when talking about Aggro in commander is the following: are you Aggro, or are you *fast* at killing exactly one person? See, a common thread in the circles I play in is some guys(Timmy’s, for preference) who run really good decks at killing exactly one player very quickly before both they(and the first person they murdered) get to sit there for 45+ minutes doing nothing because after their 1-2 turn window of being powerful, their game is over. The aggressive disruption strategy just wouldn’t work in the playgroups and LGSs I run in, and I know it wouldn’t because multiple of us like running lots of those effects in decks. The reasoning is simple, if you build your deck to dump a manabarbs, descent to avernus, and eidolon of the great revel in it, *you spent 2-3 turns playing those cards and ended up Kingmaking Timmy over there instead*. The solution? Why the fuck are you killing people with damage? Blow up their mana rocks, mind rot them, run edicts, etc. the successful aggro decks in my playgroups are aggressively oppressive, not aggressively painful.

I'm gonna be honest when I bust out the Primal Conquerer no one is happy about it at the table. No one likes turn four or earlier Etali time

if you need to make a whole video on why you think you're right then its bullshit.