Mad Dragon?

[TheHuff]

In the past few weeks a new "hybrid" of two decks has been doing quite well.  Mad Dragon as it has become to be known combines the madness creatures with the dragon combo, theses two have great synergy together as they both rely on discarding cards.  With my current meta being mostly artifact prison; and a lot of slaver, is it better to play Dragon.dec (just the combo) or would I be better of playing Mad Dragon?

Here is a smaple deck list for Mad Dragon:

Mana
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
2 Bayou
2 Badlands
1 Forest
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus

Creatures
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
3 Arrogant Wurm
2 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Shivan Hellkite
1 Anger
1 Caller of the Claw

Other
3 Animate Dead
2 Necromancy
4 Duress
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Demonic Tutor

Sideboard
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Artifact Mutation
3 Null Rod
2 Verdant Force
2 Necromancy


Also with the meta i mentioned what would be the best sideboard choices?

[raziel]

Several people here at C&J have been testing this deck. The general consensus has been that one would probably want to play one or the other. No matter how you look at it you're not playing an optimal build of either. Sideboard against slaver or any artifact deck running chalice, Rack and Ruin and Null rod are very good. 2 and 3 casting cost helps you work around their Chalices. Keep their Welders off the table.

[jazzykat]

The idea seems nuts. A beatdown deck that is a combo deck? Hmm.... I have always liked the melding of roles but since I do not play either I can not comment further. I would personally not play straight dragon as there is too much hate running around (at least in good metas, especially at least the crypts that everyone has for tog, not to mention the dreaded coffin purge which is dragon specific, and the uber funny groundseal which stops welders dead in their tracks).

[BreathWeapon]

The deck is better than most people give it credit for. I highly suggest you keep the Dragon components to a minimum tho'. I look at the deck like O-Stompy with 4xAnimates in the place of threats and only use 1 Gorger and 1 Hellkite. Its fun and silly to play.

[Toad]

So you would maindeck 5 bad cards for a potential combo with an hypothetic 6th one? That just doesn't make sense.

[RoadTrippin]

I actually found my list to be better in the combo department- running an additional 2 animate spells and the 4th dragon, as well as a caller of the claw and SB riftstone portal and blood moon action. Of course, you already knew that because we talked about it yesterday    You might enjoy the deck, but there's just a lot of stuff out there that beats it.

[LizardKING]

The MadDragon concept is at least quite original, but in any case, I do not see it as strong as the "straight" UGB-Dragon build for two main reasons :

1) The nature of the combo
WGD decks are not as safe for you as Tendril based decks. You cannot fully develop both an aggro strategy and a combo strategy with this deck, because the Dragon combo really needs to be protected : have ever been Stifled in response of the Leave-Play ability of the WGD ? If so, you really do not want to go off without protection (4 Duress is really not enough, at least replace them with 4 Xantid Swarm), that is why Combo-control will always be the best option for WGD decks.

2) Speed
If you reduce the number of key cards for the Dragon combo, you loose both speed and consistency. I really do not see the point in half-playing a combo deck : combo is a game of speed, so if you do not optimize it, you loose the main advantage of playing it.

Séb.

[RoadTrippin]

Oh jeez I didn't even see the 4 Duress, they'd almost definitely be better off as Xantids.

edit:
@ Arthur Queen: yeah everyone knows, thanks for clarifying. Maybe that's something you can go without saying in the future?

[ArthurKing]

You should call it "Angry Dragon"
(For those of you who don’t know, the "Angry Dragon" is a sexual manuver. It's when a girl is giving you head and as you're giving her the juice, you hit her in the head and shove your dick down her throat. If done properly, everything should come out her nose, giving the image of an angry dragon breathing out of its nose...)

[Xhad]

1) The nature of the combo
WGD decks are not as safe for you as Tendril based decks. You cannot fully develop both an aggro strategy and a combo strategy with this deck, because the Dragon combo really needs to be protected : have ever been Stifled in response of the Leave-Play ability of the WGD ?

I thought the whole point of playing this deck was so that in matchups where someone might actually be able to disrupt your combo, you play like an aggro deck that just happens to have a combo panic button.

[Lord of the Goats]

well, i've actually played a madness/dragon hybrid. my conclusion is that it does really well against hulk... but that's about it. most of the wins i got were   because of the suprise factor and them not knowing which part of my deck to sb for.

anyway, against slaver it's much better to go with straight dragon. dragon is faster and has disruption.

[sniper_1]

i like this deck, but i think it(but really all the wgd deck)would be better with 3/4 xantid maindeck.they are too strong:in this way stifle (and all the other istants that give problems ) would not be a problem.

the red is so important?

bye.sniper_1

[DEA]

If done properly

i'm waiting for the newspaper headline to read "man performs self-bobbitization with aid of woman"

[FreddieNDB]

I've seen the mad-dragon builds in my area. And all of them are doing exceptionally well. It may be slight changes in the build. I'm not exactly sure what all I know is that most of them run 4 animate dead, no necromancy, and more gorgers. I'll come back with the deck list.
   
After discussing it the deck is actually very powerful when played correctly. I think many of you play the deck by trying to do what seems to be the best option with cards you got in ur hand. Either going aggro, or trying to combo. However, the deck runs best when you focus on the aggro. The combo is relly like a back-up plan when ur aggro starts slowing down or gets controlled.
     
Usually, you drop your aggro creatures and start doing beatdown. This will usually result in attracting cards such as swords (sometimes even stifle for ur arrogant wurms), and boardsweepers against your aggro element. Most of the time, this leaves your opponent wide open for the gorger combo and you win.
     
If the opponent knows you're running the combo and decides to keep cards for your dragon. Then you just go aggro beatdown. I've found it very difficult to play aginst this deck because it plays like this.
     
Mad-Dragon is a house against control. and the hybrid deck offers it more  options which evens out its mathcup againts many decks. I think this deck deserves some attention as it is rather powerful and I have seen it do well in my Metagame.

[DEA]

yup, that's right
i managed to stall out a madness deck with trinisphere and he eot survivalled for dragon and hellkite
one animate later and i'm dead
it's not as fast as dragon, nor as explosive as madness, but i find it to be less susceptible to hate (perish? crypts?)
it's really rare to find someone who can screw up both portions of the deck at the same time

[colebert]

Hey guys. I am new to TMD and just wanted to say whats up? I saw a Mad Dragon decklist that used madness and flashback burn. Can someone post it here for disscussion or direct me to it? This deck looks pretty decent and I hope we can get more discussion on it going!

You should call it "Angry Dragon"
(For those of you who don’t know, the "Angry Dragon" is a sexual manuver. It's when a girl is giving you head and as you're giving her the juice, you hit her in the head and shove your dick down her throat. If done properly, everything should come out her nose, giving the image of an angry dragon breathing out of its nose...)

This is great man! Good stuff ArthurKing!

[Fishhead]

well, i've actually played a madness/dragon hybrid. my conclusion is that it does really well against hulk... but that's about it. most of the wins i got were because of the suprise factor and them not knowing which part of my deck to sb for.

Yeah, my impression was that this is a one-trick pony and as soon as the surprise wears off you suddenly face some unpleasant choices.  It was fun to play though; especially against Aggro.

How are people SB'ing this deck against control?  I personally removed the combo, which is 7 cards.  The problem here is that there aren't 7 good cards in the SB for the control matchup.  

I chatted with some other Mad Dragon players last week; some of them felt that you might want to keep some number of Animates in and one or two Dragons; just minimizing the Combo rather than removing it.  The problem here is that Animate is fundamentally mediocre unless you are combo'ing with it.  You can hope to Animate an Arrogant Wurm or maybe a Mongrel (though a 1/2 Mongrel is suddenly less threatening).  In the Control matchup you will not have anything to Animate from your opponents 'yard.  So, given that Animate is weak, how many can you afford to keep in for game 2?  And once you start removing Animates, then how many Dragons will you play?

From another angle: is Mad Dragon good against Hulk because 1) Madness is good against Hulk, 2) because Hulk often lacks good SB like Naturalize or 3) because random Dragon combos surprise Hulk players.  

I suspect it's more about (1) & (2) than about (3).

[ArthurKing]

Welcome colebert, and thanks for enjoying my little tidbit.
 :lol:  :lol:

[Xhad]

What kind of psychological disorder would make you need physical abuse to make (edit: receiving) a blowjob fun?