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 Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 2:10 pm
Jirya Let's debate which style of play is the best and why.
Aggro - Aggressive play with either creatures or spells which take your opponents life down quickly.
Examples: Green Beats, White Weenie and Suicide Black (but aggro decks can really be any colour)
Control - Controlling aspects of your opponents play by controlling their hand, killing their creatures countering their spells or locking them down in some other fashion.
Examples: Mono-Black Control and Mono-Blue Control (but control decks can really be any colour....)
Combo - A deck that is built a round a particular group of cards with good synergy that will win the game for you. This may be a creature combined with an enchantment or equipment, or a series of spells which insight doom.
Examples: ChannelBall (Channel and FireBall), Dragon Combo (Animate Dead+ Worldgorger Dragon) and Neo-Academy (Tolarian Academy + Stroke of Genius)
When I started to play, I quickly Aggro was destroying me x.x Control hasen't really, I have lots of counters, one of my freinds DESTROYS ME though with that, he has counters for all of my counters X.X' I use aggro myself, I use the Time Spiral green monsters and red burn cards, defence in power AND numbers and direct offence. It seems to be working well smile But I have one card for PURE control (as long as no one kills it XD), Xantid Swarm > biggrin It maks it so you can't play spells on your turn, you can only play instants on my turn, but then I make it so that nothing effects it whee Basicly you're screwed 3nodding I also have a stricktly green deck that's about power and numbers. Wish Squirels nest wasn't banned T.T Such a sweet card.
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Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2006 1:47 pm
Heh, I've never been able to get combos to work...just isn't my style.
Suicide Black is just crazy if you go with hand/land control with hymns and sinkholes.
But then there's Burn/Sligh...
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:26 pm
Eye of the Storm! ninja Sry, but I was compelled... EotS rocks, but it loses a lot of weight offline 'cause very few people know what it's about. I pulled out my EotS/Heartbeat deck a while back and everyone got lost when I went critical, so it's collecting dust. Now I just use Myojin of Life's Web and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker to make a flock of Sky Hussars 3nodding
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Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:46 pm
Storm combo decks have a higher chance of winning at tournaments than the other types do. It's hard to argue with a turn 1 or 2 win.
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Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:33 pm
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Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:06 pm
Yay aggrored! YAY PYROSTATIC PILLAR!!!
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Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:48 am
If you went to Wizards.com and took Mark Rosewater's test for Timmy/Johnny/Spike, then that's a good start.
Like most of us, when I first started playing (in the before times, the long, long ago!) I was a Timmy. I had a deck featuring Craw Wurm and Frost Wurm - they were the biggest, nastiest creatures, and they were green! I even had Llanowar Elves and other things to spit them out faster, and cool enchantments to keep them around longer.
However, as anyone with a sibling will tell you, the urge to win will eventually take over. My green fatties were put aside, and I discovered that I like playing with fire (as all men do). I still liked killing with big, splashy effects (fireball, anyone?) as well as overloading on burn, so I was still a Timmy/Spike.
It wasn't long, however, till I discovered the Internet, and the rise of the combo decks became self-evident. Hovering somewhere between Johnny/Spike and Johnny/Timmy, when I wasn't tinkering with random combos, I'd be seen playing with custom theme decks (I still love Thallids).
The most earth-shattering event was to take a long, long time. I finally got my hands on four copies of Wrath of God. And I've never looked back since. I've played White paired with every different colour, several colours at the same time, and even all five at once! I just love to see the look on weenie players' faces when I kill all their creatures for the princely sum of only four mana.
That was when Spike totally dominated my psyche for a time, and although I won quite prolificly, I started to lose my motivation for playing. Several affairs with combo decks have helped, and playing different styles to keep it interesting (and stop people whinging too) have helped.
In this enlightened era of Magic, I'd like to say that I'm a fairly well-balanced Johnny/Spike. But there is a vicious Timmy streak just under the surface, waiting to be unleashed at a moment's notice!
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:40 pm
I'll play anything, but at heart I'm a Timmy. My favorite decks are mid-game creature powerhouses. I don't mind control decks, but I prefer to be more straightforward. I don't really like combo decks at all.
I'm a player who's all about the game itself, rather than building the deck. Combo is no fun for me because after the deck is built the game hinges entirely on luck--finding the right cards at the right time. The gameplay is nothing more than finding ways to stall until that happens. And what happens when the combo gets fried? I like to have outs.
Control never really appealed to me that much, either. It may be the smartest of playing styles, but as far as actual gameplay goes it isn't that creative. This one is about half build, half play, and as a result control decks are reasonably predictable once they get started. It's all a matter of choosing which spells/abilities/permanents to target and when. Half the time they end the game with one of those icky combos, anyways. I can see why this attracts many players (control decks can easily be the most powerful), but I find that a single deck gets quite dull and repetitive after a while, and needs to be continuously revamped to be interesting.
So yeah, I'm a fan of the aggro. Big creature aggro, to be exact. You can see my inner Timmy shining through. As always, deck construction is important, but here the gameplay is the most interactive. It centers around creatures, bolstered with enchantments, instants, and sorceries, while the other two types generally only focus on one or two card types. This deck makes the most use of the main phase, especially the combat subphase (in a control deck, a player's turn is for lands!) It encourages both player and opponent to focus on minute timing details of the game ("I'm reacting after the 'declare blockers' step but before damage goes on the stack, while this ability is on the stack but before that one triggers..."), rather than just "I'm responding to your spell/ability with my spell/ability.' In other words, it's the most social deck.
Nothing is more fun for me than the look on someone's face when they pool their resources to neutralize a fatty, after which I drop an even bigger one. Actually, I take that back. There's one thing more fun.
One of the biggest objections to aggro is that it's for dummies. "Land, creature. Land, creature, attack. Land, creature, attack again. Land, two creatures, attack. Land, burn, attack for the win." While that may be true in some cases, in others, especially mid-game aggro, there's a lot more going on. Playing mid-game allows the opponent to set up barriers to the "ATTACK!" strategy, so many times creativity is required. As I said before, control is smart, but not hugely creative--the same 5 card hand will be used almost the same way every time, with different targets. In combo, there's almost no creativity--"Play cards A, B, C and win."
With the mid-game aggro deck, the right cards and a careful calculation of the cards in play and in hand, the craziest stuff is possible. NOTHING excites me more than telling an opponent at 20 at a tournament, "Damn, I can only get you to 2 this turn!" when it seems I can only inflict minimal damage, and having spectators who can see my hand give me questioning looks. Then, the next turn, I find a way to make up the extra 2, and do something that looks completely futile and pointless that turns up the extra win.
No, this is not Johnny here. Johnny looks for ways to break cards, and builds that into his deck. Control and combo live on this premeditated card interaction. It's the seemingly brainless decks that allow a player to improvise some of the most interesting plays.
And that's why I like aggro.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:02 am
It depends on what mood I'm in, but I tend to be more of a Johnny/Spike. I love thinking up creative, and often impossible combos.
While I like the security of control, there are times when I play aggro. Most of the time I'll take an aggro deck to FNM. I get insecure when I play aggro though. I don't like knowing that someone has more control of the board than I do and I don't like knowing I can't answer to something.
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:13 pm
I'm a Johnny/Spike with no tournaments within a 100 mile radius. crying crying crying crying crying
The best decks I've seen are combo-control. You only have to look at Vintage to see this. Any Long, Stax, or Gifts deck will attest to this.
If Standard would have another good combo besides D'Storm (which I abhor to the core) I would probably play the core of it with black for disruption (Damnation and signets, 11 cards that are SO unhealthy for the format that soon any deck without them will very very rarely win any tournaments, make it all possible.)
For Standard Aggro/control is still good, but overall combo/control takes the cake when looking at all formats (V: combo/control, L: Aggro or aggro/control, Ex: combo or aggro St: combo or aggro/control (poor U/W non-urza control))
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Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 8:27 am
There's other good Type II combos out there...
I can think of at least two off the top of my head.
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Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:09 am
I suppose just Combos work the best for me. My Thallid deck is possibly the best Combo deck I own, and I've won countless games with it.
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Friendly Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:22 pm
Combo deffinitly. Especally Dark Ritual+Songs of the Damned for mana.
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:51 am
i enjoy the control of a lock down deck. Since i don;t understand the lingo you all speak, ill just put out the combos for lockdowns that have worked for me in all of my uber on/off casual player glory.
blue/black - counter/bounce with mist of stagnation/leyline of the void/withered wretch
blue/green - counter/bounce with pemmin's aura/krosan restorer/squirrel nest + Opposition
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