I'd suggest you go with Cerebral Assassin, but w/ a board with the dragon combo. I've seen at least one tournament report which had a deck like that and it seemed to work well. It can be a real shock to your opponent in game 2 when you combo out.

Read The Friendly Post of course.

That's just the kind of deck I was thinking.

The only question is that is Zombie Infestation actually better than for example Survival of the Fittest?

I have tried blue. Without powers, it's really slow. If you play blue, you want to play Force of Wills and I found that I can't usually even use it because I don't have that-another-blue-card in hand. Blue gives me much better mid-game than mono black, but I don't think Dragon should play games that tend to go post turn 4.

And the advantages of mono black are not great. The biggest advantage is that it has a Wasteland-proof manabase.

Compulsion is great and all, but it just requires too much mana to use.

If this is a budget build, I really don't know what will make dragon a non-budget deck?  :shock:

And I could afford a playset of Bayous. That suggestion about using Vodalian Merchant made me think that I have given a bit of a misleading image of my budget. I can afford a playset of duals. I cannot afford a playset of Bazaars or any Powers.

I have felt that Cabal Therapy is a very versatile card. It can be devastating when played after Duress. It can fetch out the possible FoW's first turn from your opponents hand and if you really can't find anything else, you can use it to discard your Dragon(s) or your win condition.

I'm going to make this a BG deck. I was thinking about maindecking xantid swarms, but then it would mean that Cabal Therapys would have to go. I really can't see any other card it could replace. Then there are of course ESG's and possibly even Survival of the Fittest.

What I really need right now is some ideas how to make this deck BG and how to make this deck more control resilient.

I completely forgot to list one of the best green cards: Pernicious Deed. It would be great in the board.

I realize that there are dozens of threads that deal with dragon, but I couldn't find any that would deal with builds that have no power or/and no bazaars. Is this kind of build viable at all (in a non-powered meta)?

Mana:
13* Swamp
4* Polluted Delta
1* Lotus Petal
1* Chrome Mox
1* Mox Diamond
1* Mana Crypt
4* Dark Ritual
--
25

Combo:
3* Worldgorger Dragon
2* Ambassador Laquatus
1* Caller of the Claw
4* Necromancy
4* Animate Dead
--
14

Tutors:
4* Spoils of the Vault
1* Demonic Tutor
1* Vampiric Tutor
4* Buried Alive
1* Entomb
--
10

Disruption:
4* Cabal Therapy
4* Duress
--
8

Yes, it has only 58 cards. I need to fill those two slots...

As I suggested earlier, I have no access to bazaars or power. I would like to make this deck BG, which means including 4 Bayou (the only reason why this deck isn't atm BG), 4 ESG, 4 Xantid Swarm and possibly Survival.

I've also thought about including blue. That would mean FoW's, Compulsions, Lim-Dul's Vaults, Frantic Search, Brainstorm etc. Problems with blue are that I usually don't have that another card that I would need with FoW and that non-powered deck can't seem to have enough mana to make Compulsion that good.

It's really hard to say anything about my meta because the vintage group is just getting started here and sanctioned tournaments are starting. I'm guessing control will be somewhat played.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

[EDIT] Sideboard is completely open to suggestions, I was thinking using Sundering Titans and/or Verdant Force and some artifact hate in form of Naturalize.