Discussion on Adaption - Dragon

[Hydra]

The following is the topic of discussion completed as requirements for my TMD Promotion Exam:

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Recently a little card went up on the spoiler for Planar Chaos, a card that has had people declaring both Ichorid and Dragon "dead" as competitive decks in the Vintage format.  That card is Extirpate:

Extirpate
B
Instant   - Rare
Split Second
Choose target card in a graveyard other than a basic land. Search its owner's graveyard, hand and library for all cards with the same name and remove them from the game.

There it is, Extirpate in all its spoiled glory from the spoiler list.  The card's effect can be potentially disastrous if one is not properly prepared for it, potentially ripping fetchlands, Brainstorms, counters and other important cards out of your deck, eliminating some of the consistency that your deck may have.  It's also a supposedly "unanswerable" way to deal with Ichorid and Dragon.  After all, what will those decks do once their namesakes are ripped from their deck?

What else can they do?  They'll adapt.

Ichorid has already been moving towards adapting, although it is a bit more inadvertent than people would expect.  Putting Ashen Ghoul and Gigapede/Putrid Imp back into the deck gives Ichorid the ability to still put up some explosive starts even in the face of Extirpate hitting Ichorid.  Hitting a Bazaar that has been Wasted can also be a pain, but if the Ichorid player got at least one good dredge out of that Bazaar it should be fine.

Dragon, on the other hand, hasn't had people publicly dedicated on advancing the deck.  DicemanX (who has been very influential in making suggestions to me on possible ways to take the deck), Scott Limmoges and Rich Shay had been the primary backers of the deck, but all have recently "abandoned" it to test other things, leaving the deck to wallow a bit in the metagame.  People inexperienced in the deck remained unwilling to play it, fearful that the commonly (and quite inaccurate) held belief that Dragon "rolls over" to hate was true.  This has left the deck in a bit of a stagnant position, being probably the strongest deck in the Vintage metagame that no one played because they had been improperly informed on it.

Split second cards such as Trickbind, Wipe Away and now Extirpate can potentially wreck havoc on the deck if played improperly, as Force backup is no longer as strong in the format as it once was, leaving Dragon scrambling to find acceptable answers to these cards.

Duress has been the long favored answer to hate, and will almost certainly continue to be the favored way of dealing with these new hate cards.  A secondary win condition such as Sundering Titan also seems almost necessary as an out, as sometimes you have no choice but to put a Worldgorger Dragon into your graveyard.  Cautious play will also have to play a huge part in how the deck adapts, as there is no longer the option to blindly put a Dragon into your graveyard if you know your opponent has access to black mana.

Another option that is available to a Dragon player lies in making sure that your opponent lacks the ability to cast the split second spells to begin with.  Xantid Swarm has commonly been played in Dragon decks in the past, perhaps its presence is now required in the main, helping to keep your opponent from resolving things like Duress, Extirpate and other removal spells.  Green does also give you the option of using cards that are potentially strong in other matchups, such as Life from the Loam or a "convertible" sideboard to a deck like Oath, which isn't as vulnerable to Extirpate.

There is also the potential to cut green completely as the 3rd color and go with white as the support color.  White gives you access to Abeyance and Orim's Chant, cards that could not only keep an opponent from resolving split second spells but in certain matchups (such as against Grim Long) could be used "offensively" to buy you a turn so you can combo out first.  White also gives you access to Serenity, which can destroy problem hate cards like Leyline of the Void and Planar Void while also being a potentially better "bounce" spell against Stax, wiping the board permanently of lock pieces instead of just returning them to an opponent's hand.  The main issue with white, however, lies in the fact that both Chant and Abeyance are vulnerable to Misdirection, as a well-timed Misdirection can potentially win the game for an opponent, leaving you unable to protect yourself against whatever they had in mind.

The final option that presents itself is the possibility to cut the 3rd color completely and going heavier into black, bringing in cards like Unmask to help protect your spells.  While there aren't a lot of black spells that you'd want to remove to the Unmask the threat of split second cards may be such that desperate measures are required.

There are a lot of potential ways to "fix" the Extirpate problem for a deck like Dragon, but it quickly becomes a question of "is it worth it?"  What does the community think would be the best option with Dragon at this point, to abandon the deck for dead or to try one of the theoretical "answers" listed?  Is there some secret tech that may have been missed?

[dicemanx]

We'll have to wait and see if Extirpate is going to be worthy of being placed in the main deck, or if it's strictly SB material (and even then, if it is stronger than other options like Leyline and Crypt). When that becomes more clarified, WGD will have to make some decisions as far as what strategies are best to fight against the most popular hate cards. Apart from the adaptations that you listed, there are at least a few more that I can think of:

1. Replacing a WGD with Entomb - the issue with Extirpate is that you have to hold onto your WGDs until you find adequate disruption to stop the hate card. This weakens your discard draw engines (RtR and Bazaar), since you'll be potentially forced to pitch business cards ahead of any drawn WGDs. Entomb at least will offer some flexibility as it can fetch a Deep Analysis instead of WGD. With fewer WGDs, this leads to potential adaptation #2:

2. Return to Lim Dul's Vault and the 5C manabase- This card was ideal in terms of "double tutoring", often getting a combo of Bazaar and WGD, of if Bazaar was already in hand, the combo of WGD and Animate. The 5C manabase can better support this card, and can offer the option of running Abeyances/Chants, which also become easier to find and set up with Vault - you're able to tutor for a combo piece and couple it to an Abeyance at the same time. Vaults have proven to be quite viable in WGD, but have been recently eschewed in favor of just brute-force drawing into what you need. A return to Vault would represent a more precision approach to finding key spells.

3. Hybridization strategies(main deck or SB)/alternate kill cards - This too can accompany a return to a 5C manabase. There are at least three hybridization strategies, two of which saw some measure of success in the past:

Masknaught combo (Masks, Dreadnaught, perhaps Survival of the Fittest)
Cerebral Assassin hybrid (ie Welders, Titans, and Memnarch package, along with Tinker and maybe TfKs over the RtRs)
Oath conversion (untested; Simic Sky Swallowers and Bogardan Hellkites or Thunder Dragons; possibly Mishra's Factories as well along with Life from the Loam a la ICBM Oath SB strategy)

The last two options are synergistically superior because they can be exploited with the Bazaar/RtR and Animate package. The WGD-CA option itself doesn't run very many 4-ofs, which weakens Extirpate's potency.

4. Another option is to use alternate win conditions, so that if the WGDs are ever removed there is still something left to win the game. The alternate kill cards can either be actual combo finish cards for WGD, including the following short list:

Shivan Hellkite
Sliver Queen
Memnarch

The first two cards would need a 5C manabase to be most effective, as you could actually hardcast something like a Sliver Queen quite early in the game.

The alternate kill cards could also have nothing to do with the combo itself; if so, they should be highly disruptive if possible, such as Sundering Titan. I don't think I would consider anything else at the moment. Titans can also be combined nicely with CotV out of the SB, which would often be set at either 0 or 1. CotV alone doesn't work vs Extirpate of course, because it will disappear during the WGD cycle - it's better suited with an alternate kill card. CotV does pre-empt the use of Xantids and possibly Duress as well if the plan is to set it to 1.

5. Possibly in combination with some of the cards listed above, Carpet of Flowers can also be considered. Carpet not only allows for more explosive early games where you can get boosts of 2-3 mana in the first 2-3 turns, but it can help in the hardcasting of even the WGDs, let alone any alternate win conditions. This approach can be espeically effective when mixing Masknaught with WGD, since you can slip a WGD under Illusionary Mask with the help of Carpet. Add Survival of the Fittest along with a lone Squee and you can also create a toolbox of utility creatures that can also benefit from your animate spells. Carpet also addresses another weakness of WGD: susceptibility to mana denial at the hands of U-based Fish archetypes.

6. This might be a weak option, but I'll list it for the sake of completion: Reasearch from Research/Development is essentially a counter to Extirpate, while at the same time it offers the option of bringing in SB cards in game 1, or helps correct any faulty SB decisions for game 2 when faced with little info regarding what your opponent will be bringing in against you. Of course you still have to *find* your cards that you researched in, but at least you have some flexibility with that card. Plus, if you're running a transformational SB with, for example, SSS and Bogardan Hellkite in the SB, you can research those in along with a couple of WGDs if all of your your WGDs get removed. That way you are less vulnerable to the next Extirpate.



Again, we'll have to wait to see exactly what sort of adaptations will have to be made, but a lot of the options listed above can be examined at the present time and are not directed specifically at addressing Extirpate itself. I don't even consider the current WGDX as the definitive build; instead, I view the archetype as benefitting most from always changing and surprising; in fact, every time I have played this archetype I don't recall too many occasions where I fielded the exact same build as in a previous event. The "need" for this sort of constant change is also the reason why I think this archetype isn't very popular - a lot of players would prefer to have something more established and definitive for one thing. However, despite this desire, it actually makes the archetype rather boring in the execution when playing the same build over and over - I for instance, can only stand to play the deck to a limited extent before I simply must change gears and play something else. By comparison, I don't experience this playing something like Gifts, which I could play in many events and not get bored. The fun in WGD is certainly coming up with new builds, or see what others are doing with the archetpye and piggyback on their ideas as I did with Limoges' explorations of the Squeeless approach to WGD.

This, coupled with the constant, oft repeated notion that WGD gets "destroyed" by hate (and there is *always* incidental hate in the format - there wasn't really any "right" time for WGD to be played in the past, and the deck had successes rather independently of the hate in the format), makes for an unpopular choice for many. The knee-jerk reaction to Extirpate, for instance, is further testament of this, although I must acknowledge that there were also a few people that actually thought Extirpate might make things a little easier for WGD, surprisingly enough.

[Anusien]

Is Extirpate a significant metagame concern?  I see the risks of Wipe Away since that is gaining maindeck inclusion in various Merchant Scroll decks, but Extirpate really does not seem scary.  Mid-combo it's no more significant than an uncounterable STP (a la Coffin Purge).  I see the real threat of the card in constraining your ability to set up freely the way it does to Gifts decks, especially since you cannot respond to it with Necromancy.  Even so, I really have to question what decks are going to be running it.  As a disruption card, is it any more significant in CS or Gifts than Duress or Tormod's Crypt?  It feels like the current countermeasures to that level of hate: Xantid Swarm, Duress, Orim's Chant.

The other thing is that I feel certain hype will die down.  As a hate card it is best against decks with low level of metagame presence: Ichorid and Dragon.  For the average player, will it really be worth sideboard slots as opposed to something like Crypt or Red Elemental Blast?

By the way, are there reasons why Dragon can't go back to the 5 color manabase?  Adopting Orim's Chant as hate seems solid with Force of Will becoming increasingly untenable.