This seems like a challenging and fun deck to play. Thanks for sharing it along with your evolution, Steven! While a lot of valid points have been brought up about what the deck sort of "rolls over" to, I think that this deck has a lot of potential if someone can find a way to give it a little more "oomph" by adding either disruption or resilience to hate. I personally like the concept (and style) of the deck, so I might very well try piloting the deck and seeing if I can overcome the hate that's out there with some innovations of my own.

Forget proxies, power needs to be reprinted, and here's why:

1) It won't "undermine" the confidence of the players (at least not enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things). Sure, there will be some collectors upset, but most of those people play Vintage and I would like to think that they'd want their format to grow and be more accessable and popular. More importantly, I don't think it'll devalue the cost of power much if at all (and IMO, it's inflated quite a bit right now by the look of a glance on eBay...) because many people (myself included) are willing to pay more to have "pimped" out decks with black borders, foil, foreign, etc.

2) It won't screw up other formats if you simply ban them in all but Vintage at release.

3) It could increase the value of other cards. If power becomes reasonable to purchace and play Vintage, there will be more demand for cards that are mostly Vintage specific.

4) WotC would make more money, so it's beneficial to them. After all, they don't make money off the secondary market and a reprint would actually make Vintage players buy new cards and get new Vintage players. I don't know about you guys, but the people I know who play Vintage almost exclusively don't buy packs of anything and just get singles (once again, less money for WotC and more for the secondary market).

Anyway, that's just my thoughts on the subject.

That was hilarious JP. :lol:

Can you post the unedited one with even more CoK jokes? Also, I love all the references to Japanese that I didn't need the notes at the bottom to get.

Anyway, to get on topic, I think that's a pretty accurate view of the set from a Type 1 perspective. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can use Gifts Ungiven effectively, though I almost want to play a prison-style deck because of Uba Mask.

Out of curiousity, why can't basic users post to the Humor Section? That seems like something that should be open to all.

I was thinking about making a samurai deck myself. (Maybe ninjas would be in the next set. That would rock.)

The only land I could think of off the top of my head with that might fit would be Kjeldoran Outpost from Alliances. Not sure if you'd consider soldiers to be close enough to samurai for the purpose of this deck.

And though it's not a land, you could also use Castle.

Around my area, local T1 tournaments aren't that abundant, much less ones with 5 proxy rules. I guess it all depends on your area.

Plus, I'm of the opinion that budget builds should be built with cards that cost no more than $20 each (with maybe a small exception here and there), making them easy to get individually for those people without jobs or much income. I guess it all depends on your idea of budget, though.

Hello, everyone!

My name is C. L. Nolen and I've been playing Magic for over ten years now. I've always liked to be able to use all my cards I've collected over the years, so Type 1 is the only format for me.

I typically like to play combo decks, right now it's Dragon.

I'm a budget player, as the only P9 I own is Timetwister (which is rarely used anyway). Once I get a job, I'll work on getting powered up!

Don't really get much time to go to tournaments, so most of the time I'm just working on theoretic stuff in my head. Kind of hard to playtest without a group of people, or at least it's not as fun to playtest by yourself.

You can reach me on AIM (and when I'm rarely on IRC at #themanadrain) as Tychoides, but I have people blocked except for those on my buddy list, so if you want to chat drop me a PM here.

I just had to point this out, but I don't think any deck with 4 Bazaars of Baghdad would be considered budget (unfortunately for us budget players!).

Great, great article. Not only does it help guys like me who don't get to play much have an idea what's out there, it also serves as a nice way for people to see decklists for all the popular archetypes. Keep up the great work.

Looking forward to seeing that Budget version soon, too!

I think that you're going to need to at least give a description of what kind of metagame you're going against before anyone can recommend a budget build for you to take.

You're going to have a problem when you come up with a selective membership process. It comes with the territory. The problem is that even if people do post well in the Open Type 1 Forums or the Newbie Forums, it seems like those sections aren't read very often by any of the elite and without knowing who the committee is (and that is perfectly acceptable, since they'd get hounded) and what they're reading, it's hard to know what's going on.

I think that maybe there needs to be some sort of annoucement when (and maybe why) people get promoted. That way, people can actually have a better sense of good posting (and I don't think that'll stifle individual writing style) and see that there are, in fact, people moving up because of good performance. I think it's a big moral booster to those who want to become full members to see that some of the people around them are making it and that it is possible without having to know someone or be a part of an elite group. I don't speak for everyone else, certainly, but it does come across that way. If you know Zherbus or any of the Paragons, you get in because of favortism, even if you don't post often. That may or may not be the case, I'm not one to know, but that's how it seems to me and I get the impression it is that way with others.

Defense Grid leaves play during the combo, thus opening a window of opportunity for the opponent to play StP, Stifle, etc., in case anyone (like me) missed it.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this card will slow the early game down some (for the non-Workshop players, anyway) and possibly be a real beast against combo if it gets out fast enough.

On the other hand, it's not a bad card for budget players, since those Moxes and Lotus cost instead of now.

Damn, I completely forgot Defense Grids go out with the combo. I don't know how I missed that one. I feel all stupid now.

Thanks for the input Diceman, I figured you'd have the most experience here on the matter. I guess that puts my theory out of comission!

Wouldn't increasing defensive anti-control spells make up, at least somewhat, for the loss of the Bazaar/Squee engine? More importantly, with most control decks running non-basic hate, isn't that engine hard to get going anyway?

After reading the Dragon 2004 thread at the temporary forums (it can be found here), I got thinking that some of the problems Dragon has in the current metagame could be solved by taking a step backwards in the design of the deck.

Before I go into this too much, a few disclaimers:

1) I'm certainly no Type 1 expert or "Paragon of Vintage"

2) This is all based on theory and I haven't done any actual testing. I would, however, love to hear your opinions and any testing you may have done that could support the theory. I personally don't have access to a playtest group or the cards necessary to do a full metagame test.

3) I would love for this to be a healthy discussion of where to go next with Dragon.

With that having been said, on with the theory.

The first thing I think would help is going back to using cards the prevent or slow down the opponent from doing anything on your turn. Xantid Swarm is currently in place for this, but I think using additional cards that saw play in the past (like Defense Grid and Abeyance) could further protect the combo. This doesn't hurt the Dragon player much, since Force of Will isn't needed to stop opposing combo as much anymore in the current metagame and, if it is still run in the deck, could be used to protect against anything that does manage to get through on your own turn.

Secondly, if people are using anti-Ambassador strategies like Gaea's Blessing, and Welder/Platinum Angel, why not step back and use Aerial Caravan to draw your own deck to get Stroke of Genius (or get it via Cunning Wish)? Granted, Aerial Caravan requires blue mana, but I still believe blue is a viable color in this build so that isn't really an issue here.

Finally, if non-basic hate (Wasteland, Back to Basics, Blood Moon) is becoming more prevalent in the metagame, why not eliminate the Bazaar of Baghdad/Squee engine and return to focusing on getting the Dragon straight to the graveyard with Buried Alive and Entomb again?

What do you all think? Is this viable at all?

Why is the non-Magic section restricted? I wouldn't think that post quality there is as much of a concern as it would be in the T1 sections.

A couple of questions came to mind when looking at that decklist.

Why do you need four Worldgorger Dragons? You typically only want that many if you plan on drawing them (like in Bazaar builds) and I don't think 3 Compulsions warrants that, really. I think that a budget build is better off with 2 or 3 Dragons and running Intuition with the Buried Alive and Entomb.

Where is Cunning Wish? I think that it's a great addition and opens up some more options in the sideboard. I guess that is more of a metagame call, though.

If you do lower the Dragon count, add Intuition, and add Cunning Wish, you can then probably support Force of Will.

That sounds pretty cool. What kind of build was he running? Mono-B? B/G? B/U/G? Or is it still secret teammate tech?