Archetyping #1: Aggro

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

Let's get straight to the topic:

AGGRO IN EDH

When you're talking to someone who plays a lot of tournament magic, the word "aggro" will most likely make him/her think of card like this:

And while there is definitely a place for Knight of the Reliquary in EDH, the other cards are "MEH" at most. So is aggro bad? God no, it is simply ... different.

The main reasons why the Aggro-Decks we're used to play against in Standrad or Modern are so impossible to port to EDH are that those decks are designed to kill ONE player that sits at 20 life as fast a possible. Well how about double the life and triple the opponents?

Weeeeelll, but here's the thing, being the Aggro-Deck means nothing more than being the most aggressive deck on the table, and since everyone is playing decks that are so slow why not also calm down a little and go with the "slow and steady" approach rather than "bllllllllaaarrrggwwhw in your face... oh you have more than one removal, I die".

There are two things that you will want from a Aggro-Deck in any format:
1) Ways to deal tons of damage
2) Ways to prevent your opponents from getting back once you stumble for a turn or two

In 60-card formats there is sometimes that point where your creatures have brought them down to 6 Life (1) but now they have bigger creatures than you or destroyed yours. That's why Red is the most popular color for Aggro-Decks since you can point Lightning Bolts, etc to their face (2) and win anyway before they kill you or gain some life.
The problem here is that you trade one card for 15% of ALL the lifetotal you have to get rid of while in EDH that would be a misely 2,5% (4 player game). "Slow and steady" remember?

All those cards are a perfect example of cards that you should play in your Aggro-EDH. They prevent lifegain, deal damage to several people rather than only one, scale very well into lategame or are a consistent source of damage without having a power and toughness. The trick is while in Standard or Modern a Aggro-Deck will most likely loose to the 6+ life a Wurmcoil Engine will get them, EDH is a format where you have the time to play cards like Sulfuric Vortex or Havoc Festival to prevent that from happening.

As for generals I recommend something that can either deal a ton of damage themselves, prevent your opponents from doing certain things that might stop you or help you recover.

All those generals either provide consistent damage via effect or attacking or both, cards (= damage), prevent your opponents from handling your stuff (= cards = damage), let you go bigger (= damage) or a combination of those things.

And since slow and steady doesn`t make as much of a splash than bashing face as hard as possible, the political side of things gets way easier. People will of course notice you're dealing them some amount of damage every now and then, "but that other guy has...

... we've got bigger problems" and since you could help them kill the flicker-guy you will be their best buddy. Until the flicker-guy looses his two cards and somebody else becomes the Enemy #1. And as long as you built your deck correctly, once they're all at a low enough life total, you can kill them quick and clean and they won't have enough time to react. Loosing 2 life each turn while not being able to get some of it back can add up incredibly quickly (we've had games where Sulfuric Vortex has dealt over 80 damage total) let me tell you that.

All the things you've ever wanted to play in an aggressive deck you can now play and still be the aggressor like card draw, ramp or very specific punisher effects. As long as you're the one who makes people afraid to attack because they might need that creature to block you're the Aggro-Deck.

Aside from specific cards to support your strategy you also need the mindset of being "the aggro". Don't deploy all your forces at once unless you have ways to protect them really well or know you can reload your board really fast. Measure cards like removal, ramp and card draw in amounts of of damage, e.g. if a removal allows me to connect with a 9/x it was basically dealt 9+ damage. And most importantly pressure people into thinking about survival rather than winning. And as always in Multiplayer-EDH: Think "big".

I think a very good example of a aggro-deck would be my Prossh.dec that tries to utilize the dash-mechanic. It is by no means a hyper-fast-kill-everyone deck, but a really consistent source of damage that can still end the game in a matter of one well-set-up turn. I've even wrote about the possibilty of such a deck before the easter holidays and ended up convincing myself to build it after I finished writing.
Here is the link to my post! If you want a more detailed list of the cards I play leave a comment :)

That's it for today, I hope I helped some of you build a aggro-deck themselves or at least understand the basics of it. As always I tried to stay very general because I feel like building a deck yourself is very important and since EDH offers so much variety in which cards you can play who would I be if I told you "play this" or "play that", so I'm just giving you some examples and ideas.

See y'all 'round!