Pattern Recognition #285 - Aristocrats

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

8 June 2023

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Good day everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's longest running article series. I am something of an Old Fogey and a definite Smart Ass, and I have been around the block quite a few times. My experience is quite broad and deep, and so I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. Be it deck design, card construction, mechanics or in-universe characters and the history of the game. Or whatever happens to catch my attention each week. Which happens far more often than I care to admit. Please, feel free to talk about my subject matter in the comments at the bottom of the page, add suggestions or just plain correct me.

And welcome back! How is everyone doing today? Well, I hope. Anyways, it's time for the show, and today I'm going to talk about an archetype of deck that's been around for a very long time, got formalized about a decade ago as an archetype, and is popular enough that even now cards are printed for it, specifically to make it work out in different ways.

This style of deck, if you can't tell by the title of the article, really began with Fallen Angel, a card from Legends that was something of a middle-of-the-road card at the time, or at least it was in the decks I made back in the 1900's. It wasn't Lord of the Pit or anything like that! And it fact, it was so ubiquitous and defining as a card that it got a Time Spiral reference with Fallen Ideal

Anyways though, Fallen Angel was an interesting creature in that it has an activated ability that required simply the cost of sacrificing a creature to make it bigger. And it already had evasion thanks to Flying, so it was something of a good way to end the game when you're flush with creatures that can be blocked. Or Thrulls. Those were good too.

But sacrificing something for a gain was and still is part of 's colour pie, and while most of the time, it's paying life for an advantage, or something sacrificing itself to your advantage is also quite normal. But something sacrificing something else? That happened, but it wasn't really a big thing for the most part, and jsut stayed as a minor, but relevant aspect to the colour.

Then, we fast forward to Dark Ascension, the middle set of the first Innistrad Block. And into that set was printed Falkenrath Aristocrat, a Mythic Rare that didn't seem like it was worth that in the first place (and got demoted to Rare with the next printing, 5 years later).

But this card really gave people ideas, as Humans were an important part of that block, there were a lot of the little buggers around to feed to their Vampire overlords. So... why not do that? Stuff this Aristocrat full of yummy humans, make it big, and evasive and Indestructible and just keep doing it? And in that flash of insight as people still think being Mythic Rare means something, and not just a pretty color, they go , "Hey, this is supposed to be a powerful card! Let's build a deck around it!"

So lo-and-behold, they created the Aristocrats deck. Named so after the card that set off this particular deck building spree, this deck saw quite a bit of attention directed to it, and naturally, this whole new generation of players discovered previously existing cards that benefited from similar play styles - Fallen Angel again, as well as Vampire Aristocrat. In fact, it was the addition of that second card that really gave this deck archetype it's name.

The core component of the Aristocrats deck is the notion of sacrifice for value. You have cards that benefit yourself - and more importantly harm your foes whenever you sacrifice cards on your side of the table. Often, due to the colours involved, these are creatures you are sacrificing, though sometimes Artifacts get mixed into the mix as well. Cards like Indulgent Aristocrat, Dockside Chef, and Viscera Seer are all examples of cards that do just that.

However, that is only half of the equation, and the other half is probably even more vital. You need to be able to punish your opponents for your stuff dying. And that is where this deck really comes into its own. In the same block as the initial card that caused the craze, but in the next set of Avacyn Restored, we got Blood Artist. This card took creatures dying and turned it into a smidgen of life-loss and gain. But it was repeatable. And scaleable. Then we also got Zulaport Cutthroat a few years later, and, well, redundancy is a key part of life. 8 of a card in a 60 card deck is far better than 4! And then move up one more MV into Bastion of Remembrance which provides you with the same effect, as well as another creature to throw into the fire for your glory and benefit!

Aristocrats is a primarily deck style, and can work in just that colour, but it often goes into and/or for additional benefits. gives it the classic flavor to it, and adds in cards like Mayhem Devil to the mix to encourage more scarifice effects. But I think the real draw (heh) of adding this colour to an Aristocrats styled deck is in cards like Act of Treason and Claim the Firstborn. These cards allow you to temporarily steal someone else's creature, give them haste so they can attack, then you can sacrifice them to one of your other cards for a benefit as well as denying your opponent their own creature back.

On the other hand, and I think this is the stronger version of the deck, the addition of to the deck allows you to benefit while you are coming and going with your creatures. Namely when you combine 's ability to gain life with 's ability to lose it. Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim for example, is exactly this combination of Soul's Attendant or better yet - Daxos, Blessed by the Sun and Blood Artist that really gets this pain-and-gain engine going. Creatures entering the battlefield add to your life total and have their own effects, then you punish the opponents when they leave.

Of course, this style of deck also punishes removal spells. Looking at a half-way developed boards state and realizing that trying to fire off a Damnation against it will only result in you losing puts a damper on the whole counter-play. And there's plenty of redundant triggers across all card types, including artifacts - because, oh hey, Relic Vial is a card that exists too. There's no easy way to remove key pieces, except by taking the hits and hope for the best.

Of course, this is not to say that Aristocrats is an impervious archetype. Far from it. It's particularly vulnerable to decks that lean on control, as Counterspell to prevent key pieces from hitting the table, in addition to mass-bounce spells, like Consuming Tide can clear the board without sending things to the graveyard. A precision Unsummon can break down a whole turn for an Aristocrats deck as they lose out a key piece and need to recast it.

In addition, Aristocrats tends to lack, let's call it "Burst" damage, as it deals its harm in smaller, but more consistent increments. Now, while you can lunge over the finish line with one of these decks, they can be raced by more conventional aggro decks that swing their creatures sideways. When facing one of these, the Aristocrats deck is the one that has to choose was resources to lose to minimize harm being done to them, and a wrong move means that they lose their last point of life before their opponent.

They also have issues with more dedicated lifegian decks, and those that look more towards the positive side of things rather than tying it to a drain effect. I've been on both ends of that matchup, and I know that it's a balancing act to fire off faster than the other.

Aristocrats is a combo deck in that the pieces used are greater than the whole of the parts. And unlike quite a few other Combo decks, there is a lot more redundancy in this style. You make creatures, and creatures die, and it doesn't matter which creatures bite the bucket!

If you haven't given it a try, I do recommend it. You can built a decent-ish version on Arena without much difficulty, and there's always the free online play areas where you can roll up with a deck you don't want to buy and look for a pickup game just for a taste of it.

And the nice thing is, it's pretty much all-formats! It's one of those deck styles that never really goes out of style, and stays relevant no matter the rotation or eternal card pool you're working with. You can find this style from Limited (occasionally) through to Legacy and Commander, and they all share the same commonality of punishing your opponent when your stuff dies.

What are your experiences with Aristocrats? Love it? Hate it? Comment below! Discussion makes the author happy!

Thanks for reading, and join me next week when I talk about something else. What, I don't know yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Until then please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!