In terms of it's strengths and weaknesses I believe Slaver compares almost precisely to Jin Kazama from Tekken. Tekken players familiar with Jin will understand why.

This post conveys exactly zero information to people who don't play Tekken. Unfortunately for you, this is a Magic board, not a Tekken board. Warning for spam.
-Jacob

Would there be any advantages in running a u/r version of slaver? Clearly you would lose card quality without tutor/s, and miss out on darkblast, but you would on the other hand have a more stable manabase, and perhaps be able to open up other doors. Thoughts?

Squee is too good to be true in this deck, there is no reason for anybody to run less than 4.

I've come to my own observational conclusions that fows are more of a metagame choice, rather than an intrinsic defense advantage. Dragon being forced to lose early game tempo, as well as card quality quite often spells it's own grizzly demise. Also, if you're having to deal with Gifts or Slaver in the infamous worldgorger defensive stance, it's quite likely they will have double the countermagic you boarded in, making it very difficult to ice a bomb or lock component. Many of the upper tier decks have both their own countermagic backup, and many others have a very high redundancy of lock pieces that you must contend with. This does not look good for the mighty Dragon... Dragon no...

While a good portion of it does pertain to the number of Dragons you have boarded in, in most desired scenarios I wouldn't really want to resolve an intuition. As an unquestionably useful utility, the card can sometimes cause you to stall out, as well as deter your quality of cards. Deciding between a 3rd or 4th intuition could easily be perceived as a metagame call, mainly for when you have to balance out the needs for both speed and consistency.

Eh yo, straight up you really don't need a third ldv, seriously man 2 is enough. You gotta expand your mind man, goodnight Dragon.

Whenever I can't combo out I almost always wind up animating a hellkite. That being said having a 5/5 flying dragon would in more cases be better than a 4/4 with a slightly superior burn ability.

Kumano is fine though, but as I've already stated for the love of god don't go anywhere near Sliver Queen or Caller of the claw. I don't even find Witness to be very special. Just stick with Laquatus/Hellkite or Kumano.

On a more random note I would like to state that I used to run 2 Lim Dul's vaults, but cut both of them. I've found that I've rarely ever needed the tutoring...

Ok that wasn't very productive for the thread now was it? Sorry I haven't slept in 3 days. But in the end we'll all be playing my build, or a version very close to it. I need some sleep and pizza.

Read the runes, caller of the claw, careful study, and sliver queen are all bad bad bad. I have no idea what the guy who started this thread was talking about by saying 5c dragon has too many weaknesses, and is the fastest. In my extensive testing i've found ub to be the fastest, and 5c to be the most well rounded and have the least number of weaknesses. I don't run lim-dul's vault anymore, but if you're going to use it I would say 1-2 is the correct number. I run a pernicious deed in my sb, but it's rarely ever done me any good, and remains one of few cards I question in my build. It's power is incredible yes, but it costs 3 mana to cast, and then you have to actually activate it. When playing Dragon you would hope to of won the game no later than turn 3.

Also I strongly advise people to say away from Fow.

1) It requires blue mana
2) You often pitch something you need
3) Duress works much better

Sliver Queen/Caller/Witness are all susceptible to creature hate, and queen/caller don't even win you the game on the turn you go off.

//NAME: Dragon Combo
        3 Glimmervoid
        3 City of Brass
        4 Gemstone Mine
        4 Forbidden Orchard
        4 Bazaar of Baghdad
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Diamond
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Shivan Hellkite
        1 Ambassador Laquatus
        1 Entomb
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Balance
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        2 Compulsion
        2 Necromancy
        2 Xantid Swarm
        3 Worldgorger Dragon
        3 Intuition
        3 Buried Alive
        3 Dance of the Dead
        3 Animate Dead
        4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
SB:  1 Pithing Needle
SB:  1 Pernicious Deed
SB:  2 Sacred Ground
SB:  2 Swords to Plowshares
SB:  2 Ray of Revelation
SB:  2 Duress
SB:  2 Xantid Swarm
SB:  3 Shattering Spree