A Guide to Aggro in EDH | How to Build a Aggro Commander Deck

#mtg #spoilers #thetrinketmage #trinketmage
Should I build a budget deck for an aggro deck like I did with the Voltron one? Let me know in the comments below!
Channel Art by Cassus Lynn:
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[@h2ojr1]

7:39 This bit about target prioritizing is what I preach at every table. So often I see the aggro/beatdown decks rolling dice to decide who to attack next as if the blue/black player who is trying to set up his late game board stall is going to roll dice to decide who to shutdown.

[@Jwhiz24]

If you're playing Aggro you want cards that scale up into multiplayer. You're right, WOTC will never print a 12/12 for 1 mana with no downside (if they have any sense). So what do you do? Group Slug. These are cards that hit everyone. Cards with myriad or drain effects like the new mishra in my isshin deck are good examples. Also you're right, you definitely need protection from board wipes. Selfless spirit and Akroma's Will are MVPs as they both provide additional utility outside just protecting your board.

[@zacdredge3859]

There's also more value to Double Strike combos and stacking multiple AOE buffs with go-wide builds. In other formats these kinds of combos have a higher ceiling than standard aggression but that doesn't matter when you are aiming to deal 20. Killing your opponent consistently on turn 4 is preferable to overkilling them on turn 5 but in EDH those more ambitious plays are going to see their potential realised more than in the limiting context of modern. Stuff that is win-more becomes proportionate to the format in other words.

[@Luckie_7]

They did print amphibian downpour which feels like a 4 player version of frogify. It’s 3 cmc instead of 2 but it has flash and storm in addition to turning a creature into a 1/1 frog. It’s sorta a pet card for me I kinda love it in anything with blue control. It’s not a buff to agro but it’s an example of making a card more usable in 4 player without breaking the shit out of it. Storm is great in edh in general. As is overload

[@z3ntropy]

Groundbreaker is a 6/1 trample haste for 3 Sacs end of turn but Lumbering Megasloth can be an 8/8 on turn 2 with dark depths and yavimaya

[@themultimagic1347]

One tip I got from one of the more skilled members of my play group was that you might not want to play every creature you gave in your hand as soon as you can play it all the time. Holding on to a card or two can help you rebuild faster after a board wipe. Recursion can help here, too.

[@sero271]

love the building tips for aggro here ! i would love to see a budget aggro list like the one for voltron one for sure !!

[@thetrinketmage]

Ok might come a bit later tbh but I’ll probably do it eventually

[@NicksLotus]

ANOTHER BANGER! This was a fun watch !

[@Arthur-ux9ez]

Creatures like Selfless Spirit and Boromid, Warden of the tower and such a good fit for agro decks since they can attack while protecting you against board wipes

[@towelguy]

also that type of rattlesnake card (well in this case is more like a known get out of jail card) really makes for fun politics/hard decisions for opponents there are also mass reanimation spells (storm of souls for example can be very good if you have lord effects or other pumping source) if you are creature card based

[@beheeyum9269]

My favorite aggro deck has to be Henzie, Toolbox Torre. His ability makes every creature into card advantage and removal awful against him, since it's normally just him on your side of the board and maybe a mana dork. I personally play him with Umori as creatures-only deck, and TCC just put out a great game showing off what he can do with the other card types.

[@Torsav]

You're definitely hitting the nail on the head. I love going sideways. My lord high artificer deck wants to make constructs. My favorite was probably Karazikar The Eye Tyrant. Which was just rakdos goblins. Card draw kept the wheels going. Goad kept things open while also softening up my opponents.

[@palatonian9618]

This was really helpful for an aggressive jetmir deck I am trying to make

[@smegmalasagna]

I’ll show this video to my father, he’ll appreciate it :)

[@thetrinketmage]

I hope he does!

[@Ox7moron]

loved the video!

[@colinlibra7968]

The target priorities bit is a big key part to winning. Idc if you arent presenting a threat, if i have a board of tokens and you have a lot of board wipes in the deck im hitting you.

[@simonnice9030]

Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben are such key pieces in my Shanid, Sleeper's Scourge deck. They help me get ahead while keeping the way clear for my aggressive legendaries! I also run Flawless Maneuver and Boromir, Warden of the Tower to avoid getting blown out.

[@smegmalasagna]

I also recommend the monarch and initiative mechanics for aggressive lists. You say that white does not have a lot of carddraw but White-Plume Adventurer, Seasoned Dungeoneer and Court of Grace have been pretty nice for me :p

[@thetrinketmage]

Personally I’m actually not a huge fan of those mechanics. I made a video about it a while back but basically in practice I’ve found those to not be very good. But I’m glad it worked for you!

[@chummer2060]

Ive been having fun with Gut, Truesoul Zealot/Inspiring Leader. Spits out 6/3 menace creatures pretty early and often

[@thetrinketmage]

Gut is one of the most underrated legends of all time! Every game I see that card it puts in so much work!

[@jmanwild87]

My favorite aggro deck is probably one helmed by samut vizier of naktamun AKA Gruul oops all haste where i get to use cards that make attacking tokens along with stuff like ogre battledriver or a primal forcemage to punch shockingly hard surprisingly quickly and the constant stream of cards from my commander and similar effects means i can eat a board wipe and keep going

[@origaminosferatu3357]

Some great advice. I generally play janky decks that win by beatdown but often get taken out of a game for being too explosive. More draw, more pro, and correct prioritisation, got it. Thanks.

[@thetrinketmage]

Good luck in your next game!

[@abisadeonasanwo2789]

10 months late, but i feel my Samut,Vizier of Naktamun and how I play it really exemplifies some of these examples of playing aggro in EDH. Im always gunning early for the player with the strongest late game and refilling my hand in the process

[@0rcd0c]

3:20 is probably the most important tip even for budget brews and lower power builds. If your deck is focused on beatdown and combat, slowing down all other players will give you a lot of room until the combo and value decks start to pop off.

[@valladaresRey]

I’ve used Iroas, god of Victory as my commander, pretty aggressive and it makes your creatures pretty difficult to deal with on attacks. Kinda slow not necessarily high power but pretty fun

[@austinpotts7346]

I recently built an alexios demecios of kosmos aggro deck and i was very happy with its performance. I hate the jodah/ur dragon 5 color if it hits turn 7 you cant come back spells and it definetly put them on a clock.

[@kelmirosue3251]

For aggro burn, damage doublers and damage every player/every creature kind of cards are very valuable. Because those kind of cards bypass commanders 120 HP problem and makes it a 40 HP problem. Then damage doublers can eventually turn into board wipes with certain damage all creature cards

[@VultureXV]

Currently my main aggro deck (mind you I prefer midrange power level) is Ria Ivor. The replacement damage effect feels almost counter intuitive to aggro, until im swinging in regularly with a 6~8 something or other and defenders have to decide whether they want all damage to go through (leading to toxic buildup and even more tokens) to try and counterattack (which usually leads to me choosing a nuclear option with sacrifice and pings), to take the toxic mites and prevent the big creature from making more mites (thus losing a blocker or creature or spending resources to remove the beater while taking toxic buildup), or to block as much as they can of the toxic and suffer me making a mess of sacrifice fodder. There's a lot of tactics how i can approach because i can effectively lose anything and make others hurt more, my tokens cant block so they all just join the commander in offense as I pump my board with anthem effects. Its the "soldier" deck that forces opponent's hands.

[@el_fritter]

I love my Caesar, legions Emperor tokens deck so much. It´s fast and deadly, even for commander.

[@iryanmadayana1904]

Been thinking about making a Red Terror deck (because I got the tyranid precon and him, along with the Kelermorph and the Deathleaper, serve really no purpose in the deck and would be much better at the head of their own deck)... but most of the good punisher cards or mass-ping payoff cards are surprisingly pricey. Which sucks because I generally build only on a tight budget...

[@Jerhevon]

I very much like mixing up my threats. Got a couple creatures and a commander out? Now add an artifact or enchantment. On the flip side, this is also why when picking board wipes I'll often include one that just slams as many different permanent types as possible. Oh especially one sided board wipes, like Winds of Abandon, are great for punching through as well.

[@BingeThinker1814]

Jor Kadeen the Prevailer is extremely underrated in EDH imo. Just shy of cEDH. Jor Kadeen's anthem, Double strike, damage doubling, or warstorm surge/terror of the peaks make generating a bunch of 1/1s tokens really threatening. The white equipment sub-theme is extremely underrated, too. Steelshaper's Gift/Open the Armory/Stoneforge mystic/Kellan the Fae Blooded to get out early Greaves for stability.

[@mgmed0368]

Hello i was wondering how you feel about this take i saw another youtuber have on how too play aggro where he said you just roll dice or somthing so people dont feel targeted by you and you feel like less of a threat so in the early game your not being heavly targeted or having your beaters removed?

[@thetrinketmage]

Here’s the problem with that approach. It only works if everyone’s deck has the same level of late game power. But if the dice roll in a way that the deck with the most late game power isn’t attacked early Then you will probably lose that game as an aggro player. And since a situation where everyone is playing the same type of deck is very unlikely to occur I would not recommend using dice

[@Suhrvivor]

Rolling the dice is the smartest option most of the time. If you focus on one, that player will use all their answers on you and both will be out of resources compared to the others players, if you attack randomly everybody most likely will leave you alone unless you become a huge threat (the worst thing you could do).

[@alaraplatt8104]

never tried it myself but i have seen slicer do some crazy things on commander clash. maybe thats technically voltron

[@thetrinketmage]

I consider him as Voltron so that’s why slicer wasn’t in this video but he is really good and even put up some results in cEDH

[@Gusta_Gustav]

I'm glad I have a few choices in my arsenal for aggro Marchesa (soon to be Cesar): token generators with value generators that end up winning the game too fast with absurd buffs Edric: drawing too many cards and spewing out creatures for more cards Subira: mono red gate bears And if I feel like I want to be a scary target I can also bring out skullbriar when I want to

[@darkmatter32x]

Mono black Kalitas, traitor of Ghet is my go to aggro deck. My removals gets tons of value. Kill everything that is in your way and swing big. One of the way I close the game is turning lands into creature using kormus bell and Urborg, then using a boardwipe with kalitas on the field their lands becomes zombies.

[@CivisMilitarum]

Tovolar is good 1v1. Tons of removal in Gruul and tribal synergies are strong.

[@shayneweyker]

I think you missed talking about aggressive engine commanders who generate a lot of power on the board every turn without you needing to commit a lot of cards from hand to make that happen. Like the better token creature generating commanders. There's a lot of that in (R)GW and famously Edgar Markov but plenty of other color combinations have ways to do it from the command zone in the last few years. Or commanders that let you draw or play cards off the top of the library, making you ready to rebuild quickly after a wipe. All of this works better at lower power levels where you don't lose to combo while rebuilding.

[@thetrinketmage]

I picked those 3 because I think they are fun and overlooked these days. Like when was the last time you saw god of the forge? I didn’t mention Edgar cause I just think it’s not interesting for me to point out that he is powerful

[@Luckie_7]

Mine is mowu. It combos out pretty fast and ramps really consistently. It’s a very fun commander to run it’s my cedh deck, it’s my pet deck it’s rlly just a lot of fun to stomp in green

[@20x20]

I don't know if these count, but I'm having a lot of fun with Kutzil and Faldorn lately.

[@jayjaynator2911]

I am building an Adriana deck. I play many token generator and turn my 1/1 into 3/3 or 4/4 easily. It is surprisingly strong and I very often get targeted early game because I am too scary.

[@DarkDealer666]

As a dedicated control player, I played against a sweet Vehicles decks a few weeks ago helmed by Greasefang (and another commander because it was the pride event). That is a very annoying deck because vehicles dodge most boardwipes and tend to be over-statted since they need to be crewed. Even without the second commander, I think Greasefang is a great aggro deck.

[@Kjos_jax]

To me aggro is the only strategy and using something like insurrection where you gain control of your opponent's creatures to kill them with, is still aggro.

[@obsidiousmarical3498]

Could punisher style decks be considered aggro?

[@thetrinketmage]

I’d say probably what commander do you play?

[@obsidiousmarical3498]

@thetrinketmage Kediss and Esior, it allows your commander and punisher creatures to draw cards with curiosity effects while partners allow you to run the good backgrounds for extra advantage.

[@Jerhevon]

Heh, my original Pheldagrif deck I was still calling aggro in 2014 even after playing a few years. Mainly in a Who's the Beatdown kind of way. 4 mana 4/4, highly evasive, a little bit of pumps, and people die fast to commander damage compared to their slow durdling buildup.

[@PraiseChika]

The "problem" with aggro is that it is still slower than combo. Mana is really fast and loose in edh. Turn 1 slicer is good enough, but even his deck needs to run stax pieces. Again, there's way too much mana access in edh so if you don't count midrange as aggro then of course there's no aggro because when you can accelerate your mana that hard there's no reason to just jam 1 drops.

[@ry7hym]

I'm working on making my Kaseto, Orochi Archmage more aggro

[@ducetaker8123]

Yuriko is on board for the best aggro deck

[@ErasMcras]

They could print cards that have big stats for a decent cost but give them undaunted. Or go like gev and say enters with x counters for each opponent or something like that. I hope we see a deck like the Saskia one again that’s simply “beat em up deck”

[@kelmirosue3251]

What's undaunted?

[@ErasMcras]

a mechanic from commander 2016, it simply makes the card with undaunted cost one less for each opponent you have.

[@kelmirosue3251]

oh that's interesting, yeah I can see that working for bigger monsters

[@okgut2033]

i also like infect/poison, fling, walls/butt as aggro decks.

[@ufoturtle08]

So OP’s advice is if you want to play aggro in EDH, just play midrange and call it aggro. If are using a lot of deck slots for card draw and protection, then you aren’t playing aggro, you’re playing midrange.

[@Snipfragueur]

Assemble the legion is soooooooooo sloooow. Unless I'm skullclamping all those 1/1, I think I'd rather play Outlaws Merriment.

[@MaxNewberg-r4l]

mana cost is a consideration when playing these decks

[@granite_4576]

Agreed with everything except the idea that white doesn't draw cards. That hasn't been true for years. Especially for go-wide and aggro strategies. And if you're wanting a big burst at once pack in Pursuit of Knowledge and watch everyone be baffled at you playing mono white and having 10 cards in hamd. Dice rolling for targeting is the cowards way.

[@HyenaITG]

Just play Bedlam eheh, problem solved

[@Suhrvivor]

Your opponents attack each other too, you don't have to deal 120 damage to win in commander.

[@thetrinketmage]

True but not always. If I’m playing a combo deck then I might never attack to win. Or if I’m playing some control shell I might not attack for a while. I think overall it’s still more difficult for aggro decks

[@damo9961]

Aggro? Edh? So you play 4/10? :P

[@thetrinketmage]

Yea basically lol

[@Kjos_jax]

Stax pieces shouldn't even exist imo

[@konradlivinggood816]

mtg isn't for you

[@Kjos_jax]

@konradlivinggood816 oh no!... A stranger on the internet says the game I've been playing for 30 years and own a store around isn't for me. Guess I'll just stop 😂

[@shyumby]

agro is about killin one dude who will have to wait 30min that the agro player lose then wait 20 more minutes for the game to end, agro is cancer, + agro just want to inval!idate funny decks but agro player can rant on your deck for 10minutes straight to say of unfun cycling is as a strat, craterhoof your way with "no" combo in your deck agro players i bait of rage but to me killing of one guy that have to wait and play is the thing that agro get away with doing, socialy it's realy bad, what if you only have time to play 2-3 games and one of those become, wait until people finish playing withou you

[@shyumby]

8:27 , yeah that is the problem agro always kill one people at a time realy to me every single commander deck you be able to kill everyone at one time, not doing so can happen but if your plan is to say , hey you wait us all or go grab us some drinks cause you have no buisness being in the game, agro is just here and didn't blow up a land nor countered anyspells so he's not the bad guy

[@schwarzertee7586]

Not pure aggro but my Alesha Aristocrats deck is pretty agressive. I naturally play a lot of creatures that have low power, this usually comes with low cmc. Leading to me beating people's faces in early game with Alesha and Buddies while transitioning into aristocrats once the board gets so full or the creatures too big for me to handle. And from there on out it's one of the grindiest decks I've ever build. It can come back from 1 hp no problem. It can win out of nowhere (even without combos, a stipulation I build the deck under) and it generates interesting quandaries like: my board is extremely full and dense with aristocrats so a boardwipe will kill you. but my engines churn out sacrifice fodder every turn which will kill you in time and it doesn't get any better.