Dies to Removal

I posted over in the clan thread, but it should have been here.

My impression was that Ratchet Bomb, CoDH, Tragic Slip, Bonfire and Golgari Charm were hating the archetype out of the meta (even Brad Nelson was crying its death knell); are you finding otherwise?

If you really feel that we can still be viable in this meta, what would your recommendations be for tweaking for an unknown meta but with expectation of a heavy UWR presence?

As an aside, I love Sam Black's Threaten-heavy version of the deck against creature decks (it is so fun to see people afraid to play their bombs), but it seems ill-suited for playing against Flash and is soft to Hexproof and I think too narrow to really be competitive.

I've found that the hate isn't that bad. Ratchet bomb if it's just being used to kill tokens can be played around(though verdict into popped bomb makes xathrid sad) and tragic slip is just 1 for 1 removal. The hardest hate available is curse of deaths hold which is generally only a 1-of in the Jund sideboard and this deck being aggressive plus having blood arists can mitigate the affects of it. The easiest way to trump those hate strategies is with dragons. Boarding in thundermaws is always a valid solution.

Intangible virtue out of the board similarly helps. The fact that xatrhid necromancer in play makes your deck broken is enough incentive for me to not care about most of this stuff.

The card I didn't mention is bonfire because no matter what deck you play, bonfire will probably be somewhat of a problem but this deck has 16 creatures with bonfire resistance(both aristocrats, necromancer, blood artist), so as long
as you stay aggressive, you should be fine.

Also agree with 100% of everything you said RE Black's deck. It likely destroys anything midrangy, but doesn't interact well with flash and hexproof.

LK, have you tried Battledriver in this deck? The synergies are INSANE, but I can't figure out what to drop. He can just destroy UWR, especially if they have no Verdict to fall back upon; he makes the 1-drops into potent late-game threats, and any Human dying with Battledriver and Necromancer on the board comes back as a hasty 4/4 monster.

There are just too many cards that are good in this deck right now...it's mind-bending.

Also, I realized that Rakdos Charm can be absurd tech in the mirror for someone who's dedicating SB slots for GY hate...on a clogged board, sac your field with Artist on the field for life swing, then drop charm and ping them for all their creatures. Obviously just a very narrow situational closer, but yet another interesting sideline with this deck.

Battledriver just seems win more. The danger with synergestic decks is that you can overload on cards that aren't good on there own for the sake of synergy. I've drawn the line at blood artist and skirsdag high priest. Every other card in the deck is fine on it's own(when played on or near curve) and gets better with the moving pieces in the deck. Ogre battledriver is bad on it's own and requires that you keep playing cards for it to be awesome. I think batteldriver is a very gruul card in nature and while it does lots of cool things, isn't good enough on it's own to find a place in my deck.

Battledriver just seems win more. The danger with synergestic decks is that you can overload on cards that aren't good on there own for the sake of synergy. I've drawn the line at blood artist and skirsdag high priest. Every other card in the deck is fine on it's own(when played on or near curve) and gets better with the moving pieces in the deck. Ogre battledriver is bad on it's own and requires that you keep playing cards for it to be awesome. I think batteldriver is a very gruul card in nature and while it does lots of cool things, isn't good enough on it's own to find a place in my deck.

Very cogent analysis, LK; thanks!

I'd also add that I'm going more towards the sideboard plan from the ORIGINAL aristocrat deck against Jund decks where you board out some amount of the human/synergy cards package for lingering souls and sorin to just outgrind people in the grindy matchups. If there's one thing I've learned this season, it's that if you aren't a blitz deck, you need some CA elements real or virtual to combat lots of the top dogs in this format unless you have a trump(like domri against every blue deck ever) so I like the lingering souls>Sorin emblem against jund since it's aggressive and still gives you resilience to something like bonfire while have a lingering affect(this pun works on so many levels) on the whole game allowing you to keep the initiative and have some staying power against thragtusk 2-4.

Basically, In your seventy five, I'd want access to 4 lingering souls and 2 sorins. This pushes you more towards wanting
something like intangible virtue since you're weaker to curse of deaths hold and virtue is good anyways with 8/16 token makers(counting lingering souls part 2 and doomed travler. Necromancer and skirsdag are more oops I win cards).

If you want to force the aggressive stance, build your deck to reflect that so that you can instead make superior use of threaten affects like mark and conscripts. Just make sure you have a plan. If I opted for option number 2, my board plan against jund style decks would likely involve my postboard deck having 4/5 threatens between conscripts and mark, and bringing in war priest of thune while taking out some blood artists and skirsdags. That deck probably wants some dragons in it as well since your concerned more with taking large chunks of there life out and overloading there very live removal.

My personal preferred boarding plan going forward has the aforementioned sorins and lingering souls probably backed with sin collector and/or appetitie for brains style
disruption. I also think I want to bring orhoz charm back because dismember with upside seems like a good card and you can't go wrong with more ways to kill Olivia.

I keep running onto articles about the meta that cry the death of the archetype, yet I keep seeing Dega Aristocrats lists in top 8's on MTGO. Interestingly enough, the past few days of posted results have had Act 2 drivers performing a bit better than those running the necromancer variant. One Act 2 list featured a couple of Hellkites and another was a more controllish build with a couple of Slayers' Stronghold in a 25-land mana base. I'm glad to see people still making he flexible deck perform as a complex weapon.

Here's a rather risky build that Eric Lindgren piloted to 7th at the SCG IQ St. Louis this past weekend:

[deck]
Creatures
4 Cartel Aristocrat
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Doomed Traveler
2 Falkenrath Aristocrat
1 Imposing Sovereign
1 Lightning Mauler
3 Ogre Battledriver
4 Xathrid Necromancer

Other Spells
2 Intangible Virtue
3 Tragic Slip
3 Dreadbore
4 Thatcher Revolt
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Lands
2 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Blood Crypt
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Dragonskull Summit
2 Godless Shrine
4 Sacred Foundry

Sideboard:
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Witchbane Orb
2 Boros Reckoner
2 Fiendslayer Paladin
2 Lifebane Zombie
2 Mindsparker
2 Renounce the Guilds
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Slaughter Games
[/deck]

I like pulling off the Thatcher Revolt tricks with FA, Battledriver and Necromancer, but this is really all-in on the concept as there are no defensive token generators. High variance I'
m guessing; blow-out wins and miserable losses. Still, a nice change to see in the leaderboards.

While not for me...SO SWEET. The board maybe has too many three drops, though. I do really like all the tricks thatcher pulls off though. You will just blow a lot of people out that let you untap with batteldriver.

I also played some games playing my Young Pyromancer Deck wins against my buddy Alfred playing my list that I've talked about in this thread and the matchup while unfavorable for the crats player isn't terrible. Unfortunately for him, I'm an expert at both archetypes meaning he never got value out of skirsdag(expected) and he get much less value out of cartel than one should expect, but any game where he had multiple blood artist's early and could play a relevant card or two was usually enough to generate the equivalent of like 6 cards of value which is insane(essentially artist triggers would buy him 2/3 draw steps, which was enough to make my attacks unprofitable at a point in the game and the life loss from
the artist adds up to where Souls+any aristocrat goes from a 3 and a half turn clock to a 1 turn clock or just killing me if he finds falkenrath).

That and Aristocrats will never die until Post-rotation. Where late enough in the set where even if 1 or 2 "new decks" get discovered(like LSV playing UB control), by the time something would get pushed out of the format, we'll hit rotation. At least that's what I'm betting on. May the doomed traveler serve you well.

I've no idea what his exact matchups were, but you could see weaknesses in his deck relative to the 6 above him; 2 were Jund running Bonfire and CoDH, 2 were Mutilate decks (though neither ran green), one was Kibler Hellkitty, and one was a Naya deck running a full set of Sovereigns to cancel out his whole hasty token plan. That Naya Aggro deck looked like it could be damn scary, but of course it was relatively soft to all the sweepers in the top half of the leader board.