Aggro, Midrange, Control: The Three Speeds of a Cube Deck

Two colors tell you what your deck is made of. Speed tells you what it is trying to do. A red and white deck can be a race car or a wall, and the picks that help one hurt the other. This lesson gives you the three speeds most Cube decks fall into, so you can choose one early and draft like you mean it.

These are broad families, not rules. Plenty of decks blur the lines. But naming your speed is the step that turns a pile of good cards into a plan.

Aggro: win before they set up

An aggro deck wins by dealing 20 damage fast, ideally by turn five or six, before the opponent’s best cards matter.

What it wants:

• Lots of creatures that cost one and two mana, with power that matters early.
• Cheap removal to clear blockers.
• A few ways to finish: damage spells to the face, or cards that pump the team.
• A low curve. Few cards above three or four mana.

How it plays: curve out, attack every turn the math allows, and spend removal on the creatures that block. Aggro decks often play 16 lands because their spells are cheap.

Its weakness: it runs out of cards. If the game goes long, each of your small creatures is worse than each of their big ones.

Control: survive, then take over

A control deck wins the long game. It answers threats one by one, draws extra cards, and finishes with a few powerful spells once the opponent is out of gas.

What it wants:

• Lots of removal and answers, including some that deal with more than one threat.
• Card advantage: spells that draw cards or trade one card for two of theirs.
• A few big, game-ending threats.
• Enough early defense to reach the late game alive.

How it plays: trade early, hold answers for the threats that matter, and do not attack until attacking is safe. Control decks play 17 lands, sometimes 18 with many expensive spells.

Its weakness: it can be overwhelmed early, and a single threat it cannot answer can beat it. Our piece on card advantage in Cube shows the engines that make control work.

Midrange: the best card on each turn

A midrange deck plays strong creatures and spells from turn two or three onward, each one a little better than what an aggro deck plays at the same cost. It can attack or defend depending on who is across the table.

What it wants:

• Efficient creatures at two, three, and four mana that bring extra value.
• Removal.
• A few powerful four- and five-drops.

How it plays: this is the key skill. Against aggro, midrange plays defense: block, trade, and win late with bigger cards. Against control, midrange is the aggressor: attack early and force answers. Asking “who is the beatdown?” at the start of each game is how midrange wins.

Its weakness: it can end up a turn too slow for aggro and a card too short for control, if it does not choose a role.

Pick your speed early

You do not need to choose on pick one. Your first few picks should be the strongest cards available. But by the end of pack one, look at your pile and ask which speed it points to:

• Several cheap creatures and burn: aggro.
• Lots of removal, card draw, and a big threat or two: control.
• Strong creatures across the curve and some removal: midrange.

Once you know, let the speed break ties. An aggro drafter takes the two-mana attacker over the six-mana dragon. A control drafter takes the removal spell over the cheap attacker. The deckbuilding lesson’s curve table is for a middle-of-the-road deck; shift it lower for aggro and higher for control.

Speed and the Cube

Not every Cube supports every speed equally. Some are built so aggro is a real deck. Others lean slow and powerful. Two habits help:

• Ask the owner. Most owners know which decks their Cube supports, and many write it down in a primer.
• Read the list. Our guide to reading a Cube list shows how to spot how many cheap creatures and removal spells a Cube holds.

For the color pairs most Cubes are built around, see Cube archetypes explained. Each of those archetypes has a speed, and knowing it is half of drafting it.