Let's get straight to the point: Playing an aggressive deck in a multiplayer game is very different from playing aggro in a duel. You can't simply load up on Kird Apes, River Boas, and Lightning Bolts and expect to plow through four opponents in a chaos multiplayer game - or even just two opponents in a Two-Headed Giant game (although it can work well in Emperor under the right circumstances).

Because of this, plenty of players turn to Control decks to weed out their opponent's threats until their win condition can come online. That's right; you can find five-player chaos games in which three players are packing Wrath of God and another player has four copies of Oblivion Stone. It's as boring as it sounds, and it takes forever.

So how do you play beatdown correctly in the much-slower multiplayer environment?

First, however, I'd like to say that if you feel you know your multiplayer theory good enough to skip the lesson, by all means, please do so and skip down to the deck list.

Creatures
As has been said so many times before, a 2/3 guy for one mana isn't as good in multiplayer as it is in a duel. In order to play aggressively in multiplayer, your creatures must prove to be threatening to all of your opponents. This means that your army must be able to do enough damage in a single swing to make any one of your opponents uncomfortable with their life total, board position, or hand.

Now that leaves us with a couple of options: We can play with bigger creatures to rip bigger chunks out of our opponents' life totals, or force them to chump block, thus giving you some card advantage. Big creatures are easy to find, but if you're looking for card advantage you'll need to use creatures with evasion that also have some type of ability when they deal damage, or possess "comes-into-play" abilities.

As a quick note, creatures with drawbacks are much worse in multiplayer; that Carnophage is much more likely to do more harm to you then any of your opponents in the long run.

The array of options we have require some serious thought. If we are going to play with fatter creatures, we have to cheat on their cost and focus on the mid-range efficient creatures - and if we're going to play with a creature that has an ability, we have to build our deck around that ability in order to get the best use out of it.

Building your deck around your creature abilities is fairly simple: take Hypnotic Specter. It fits very nicely in this option (even if discard is admittedly not as strong in multiplayer as it is in a duel). In order to get the most out of a creature with a disruptive ability like our favorite Hippie, we need to be able to follow up with more of the same type of disruption. Thus, considering Abyssal Specter or Doomsday Specter for your deck while you're in the process of building deserves serious thought.

But I'm wandering; let's get back to discussing bigger creatures. There are a range of classic ways to ignore a creature's casting cost, from Tinker to Quicksilver Amulet to Belbe's Portal. Unfortunately, many players see these gems of cards and feel instantly compelled to play them in combination gigantic with creatures that they don't have a hope of casting normally. Such decks usually don't perform that well, due to their reliance on a single card that an opponent can Disenchant, Naturalize, Shatter, or Counterspell - and that's provided they even draw the card, since the alternative leaves you with a hand full of uncastable creatures.

So you've got to make it a point to play on-color creatures with "reasonable" casting costs. Where "reasonable" is depends entirely on your acceleration, how reliable it is, and what the goal of your deck. For instance, the efficient mid-range creatures that Green gets (ranging from Troll Ascetic to Craw Wurm) tend to work well with Elves and Rampant Growth effects. Meanwhile if you want to play a dragon deck, you shouldn't be stocking up on overcosted Dragon Tyrants, since he'll usually just be dead in your hand, but rather on Dragon Whelps, Shivan Dragons, and Shivan Hellkites to go along with your Seething Songs.

Supporting Permanents
The artifacts, enchantments and lands you play with are critical. Seeing as how you're even more likely to get a creature with an enchantment with it busted up with spot removal, I'd recommend playing with only the best creature enchantments, if any. Ever. Obviously, the recent development of equipment is an exceedingly nice replacement, as you can use Loxodon Warhammer if you really liked Armadillo Cloak.

Your enchantments usually should act to enhance your creatures - cards like Goblin War Drums, Crusade, and Dense Foliage do so, some more subtly than others. Make sure, however, to also consider enchantments to frustrate your opponents and work hand-in-hand with your core strategy - things like Rhystic Study and Oath of Scholars to refill your hand after dropping your army, or Centaur Glade to go with your Gaea's Cradle. (As an aside, I find Rhystic Study particularly annoying in multiplayer because there's always that one jerk not paying the extra mana, ruining everyone else's efforts.)

Your artifacts should play a similar role, though they usually help facilitate you playing your creatures, keeping them alive, or making sure that they get through for damage. Having a Cursed Scroll or a Masticore around to deal with any of your opponents' utility creatures is very beneficial. And be sure to consider whether anyone in your group plays land destruction before deciding you need Cloudpost, the Urzatron, or manlands in your deck.

Supporting Instants And Sorceries
Spot removal is still really good in multiplayer. There really is nothing like having that Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolt ready before your opponent untaps with a Hidetsugu with Spirit Link on it, or that Naturalize for Isochron Scepter with Boomerang on it. I highly recommend that all your spot removal be instants.

Board sweepers are also still at a premium... But then again, we are playing the beatdown. Thus, we want to use some of the more one-sided board sweepers so we can swing for the win in the same turn, or finishers like Dance of Shadows. Cards like Rolling Thunder, Reiver Demon, Hurricane, and Overrun can all prove to be too much to handle if they resolve. The X damage red spells become more playable in chaos games - but still, be careful attention to what your deck is trying to do and whether or not they fit.

Additionally, if you're not playing artifacts, you'll probably want to consider cards like Shatterstorm or Seeds of Innocence; the same goes for enchantments and cards like Tranquility. Another quick note: if you're thinking about playing Armageddon in your White Weenie deck to give you the upper hand after dropping a bunch of guys and Crusading them up, I recommend checking with your play group first that Armageddon won't cause people to leave the table in a huff.

Enough with the lesson! Lets see what fun and exciting multiplayer deck we can built with the tools to win the game I have for you.

Zirilan of the Claw Featured by David Elrod on 2005-09-25 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10499.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 1 Nevinyrral's Disk 2 Ruby Medallion Creatures 4 Dragon Whelp 3 Kilnmouth Dragon 4 Shivan Dragon	Instants 4 Fling 4 Incinerate 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Seething Song Legendary Creatures 1 Nicol Bolas 4 Zirilan of the Claw Sorceries 4 Pyroclasm Basic Lands 21 Mountain	Stats: Average mana: 2.28 Average creature mana cost: 5.56 Average creature power: 3.88 Average creature toughness: 4.38 Deck Composition: Creatures: 18.33% Basic Lands: 35.00% Sorceries: 6.67% Legendary Creatures: 8.33% Instants: 26.67% Artifacts: 5.00%
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Okay, okay; I'm guilty of playing a creature that I cannot possibly cast. However, at most I only ever have one dead draw - and that's provided he isn't pumping Kilnmouth Dragon.

Obviously, the goal of this deck is to drop a fast Zirilan of the Claw and fling twenty-plus points of damage at an opponent's head, thanks to Kilnmouth Dragon and Fling. Now, given that my playgroup realized what this deck does, my first Zirilan of the Claw always manages to get annihilated, I've taken special care to make sure that the other creatures are playable (short of our friend Nicol Bolas). Dragon Whelp and Shivan Dragon can both prove to be frightening, and frequently I find myself swinging with a Shivan Dragon at an opponent with twenty life, and they've wound up dead later that turn thanks to Fling.

Nicol Bolas usually only ever comes out when I have no other dragons in my hand, to take down a players hand before they can stabilize or react to Zirilan of the Claw (especially players using burn as their removal, which prevents them from finding their second Lightning Bolt or Shock).

Pyroclasm is my one-sided sweeper to deal with opponents utility creatures (or their early beats, if they've fallen into the folly of playing with Jackal Pup or Humble Budoka), and Nevinyrral's Disk is randomly in there for various enchantments and artifacts that my playgroup will run time to time.

Fling, however, is the key card. As stated earlier, your goal is to pull Kilnmouth out of your deck and reveal two or three dragons, swing with him, and Fling him to kill an opponent. Unfortunately, life isn't always that easy. However, Fling allows you to have him remove a creature and then a player, and that's well worth having.

Additionally, as I've stated earlier, Fling works really well with Shivan Dragon. Even when the entire board comes to a stalemated position, Fling proves incredibly useful in response to your opponents board sweeper after pumping Shivan Dragon, punishing whoever is going to take advantage most of the cleared board.

Seething Song and Ruby Medallion both obviously help me cheat on the cost of Zirilan of the Claw and his accompanying dragons. The Lightning Bolts are tempting to throw at whatever looks like a problem, but they're best kept back as removal for opponents' flyers to help you force the damage through.

Now you've got to be thinking, "Wait, you're playing with Kilnmouth Dragon and a total of only twelve dragons? This isn't much of a beatdown deck." And admittedly, it's not, but it's still an aggressive deck - albeit one that I've morphed it over the years to my tastes, and my playgroup.

Should you feel the need to add four Shivan Hellkites to the line-up because you need that repeatable damage in your playgroup (and you want more damage out of your Kilnmouth Dragons), then by all means be my guest. In this case, I'd suggest that you take out the unrepeatable damage like Incinerate or Lightning Bolt instead of clipping the Seething Songs, as they're integral to your game plan.

Additionally, you may want to consider if you'll need more Nevinyrral's Disk or Oblivion Stone in case someone plays Circle of Protection: Red, or any number of other problem enchantments. The same goes for Shattering Pulse, Shatterstorm, and Granulate. I've found that my burn spells go further the more I play with the deck. The first couple of times you play, people will be anxious to send in their guys that they don't need on defense at the undeveloped player. Of course, you'll happily respond with burn if you don't want to take the damage from that Dauthi Marauder, or don't want them drawing a card with Ninja of the Deep Hours. Eventually people will recognize the deck that you're playing, and will not attack into you when you have untapped mountains in fear of weakening their own position by doing so. This leaves you with the burn spells still in your hand later on, to take care of problematic situations as they arise.

Seeing as how multiplayer doesn't really have a coherent metagame, I'm going to briefly go over playing in a game that's dominated by one archetype at that moment.

Control:
When you're playing Aggro against a lot of control players (or one Control player has a stranglehold over the rest of the group), it's usually best to go for a fast Dragon Whelp or Shivan Dragon to threaten a fast beating on a player if they don't deal with it. This serves a two-fold purpose: you'll bait out any spot removal, and if you don't you've put someone on a fast clock, hopefully giving you fewer opponents to deal with while the other control players' situation haven't changed much. Learning when the opportune time to drop Zirilan of the Claw is very key in these situations, as he gives us the fastest clock - and potentially at instant speed with Fling.

Aggro:
Here you'll want about as much burn as you can find, and then a Zirilan of the Claw as well. Being able to properly analyze who the biggest threat is and knowing when it's the right time to deal with them is the key to victory here. If one of your opponents has five mid-range creatures out but is content to sit at home because another player has a sizable flying army, there's obviously no need yet to send damage his way just yet - but you should probably be ready to do so in a moment's notice for the turn that their position changes.

Additionally, if someone Tinkers for Darksteel Colossus and you're certain that they'll send it your way because you have Zirilan of the Claw down, you'll want to preemptively send your next load of flying dragon goodness at their head.

Combo:
Seeing as how you don't particularly have great answers to combo decks, your best bet after realizing that an opponent is playing one is to not disrupt your other opponents' creature bases and hope that they're able to put the offending player within burn range for you. If your other opponents don't pick up on this, you can try and signal by burning the combo player, or outright tell them that the mutual threat to all of you is the combo player (if that's something your group is comfortable with, of course).

With all of this said, have fun cheating on your creatures' casting costs, and finding abilities on your creatures to gain you that tempo and card advantage in your multiplayer games. And have fun with Zirilan of the Claw and Fling!