You got Tezzeret in my Dragon! You got Dragon in my Tezzeret! ...together, they taste great!I split in the top 4 of BatterUp Games in Tewksbury, MA with an old favorite and a new favorite that I decided to try out together the night before the event. For reference, here's the list:
4x Force of Will
4x Duress
4x Dark Confidant
3x Worldgorger Dragon
2x Animate Dead
2x Necromancy
1x Dance of the Dead
2x Intuition
1x Oona, Queen of the Fae
2x Read the Runes
1x Echoing Truth
1x Sensei’s Divining Top
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Merchant Scroll
1x Brainstorm
1x Thirst for Knowledge
4x Bazaar of Baghdad
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
4x Underground Sea
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Black Lotus
Sideboard
4x Mana Drain
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x Voltaic Key
1x Volcanic Island
1x Fire//Ice
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1x Ponder
1x Tinker
1x Time Vault
1x Gifts Ungiven
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Tolarian Academy
And ReportObviously, it's a Dragon deck that sideboards into Tezzeret. I think the first reasonable question is, why play Dragon? I have a couple of reasons:
One, Dragon is traditionally a pretty fast, threat-dense deck. This is important because the format as a whole has slowed down. The dominant deck, Tezzeret, has become more of a long-game deck with Dark Confidant as its draw engine. Using an early-game offense, you stand a good chance of just overwhelming a good number of Tezzeret players before they're able to get fully online.
Two, Bazaar of Baghdad has gotten a lot better as a draw engine. There's no Brainstorm. No Thirst. No Scroll. On the whole, there's very little left in the format in the way of unrestricted draw engines. However, Bazaar is plodding along, available as a 4-of, doing what it's always done. This gives Dragon another structural advantage.
Three, Dragon gets around most of the hate in the current metagame. In New England, and elsewhere, everyone's gunning for Tezzeret. Null Rods, Ancient Grudges, and Mox Monkeys are commonplace. These cards do very little to Dragon. In fact, even splash hate for Ichorid is less of an issue. On the whole, players have been less-prepared for Ichorid for a while, and Yixlid Jailer accounts for a good portion of the Ichorid hate the format does still have. This presents some better opportunities for Dragon than the deck has seen for a while, and if the opponent does bring in back-breakers like Leyline or Extirpate, you've got your SB plan to fall back on.
Now, the other question. Why play Tezzeret in the SB?
First, the post-board conversion into Tez leaves the deck very similar to Eastman & Co.'s build of the deck. If you've followed the New England metagame at all recently, that version's success speaks for itself. So you're left with an effective, proven tool in your hands.
Second, after playing and testing the Tezzeret mirror to death over the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that it's random and swingy enough that you're never guaranteed to have an advantage, even with a superior "tweak," or even as the superior player. I, like everyone else, have faced down openings that have ended with Vault/Key or Tezzeret in play on turn 1 or 2 with protection. I, like everyone else, have obtained dominant hand and board position against an opponent only for them to rip the other half of the Vault/Key combo. I'm always left wondering if my opponent is going to just blow me out with one of Those Draws.
The conversion plan, at least in a vacuum, guarantees you a significant incremental advantage that I call "Virtual Mulligans." Your opponent will be boarding in cards for Dragon. Relic of Progenitus, Leyline, Extirpate, etc. do basically nothing to Tez, and your opponent will probably mulligan for one of them if they think you're Dragon. If they go to 6 to find Leyline, they've effectively mulliganed to five. If they drop Needle on Bazaar, that's a completely dead card. Starting that far ahead should be enough to give you the game, and if you got game one with the Dragon build, you'll have gotten the match before your opponent has figured out what you're doing.
As for how the deck plays, there are a couple of good strategies and synergies I want to point out:
First, try to look like Tezzeret as long as possible. Obviously if your opponent has Duress this won't work, but if you can avoid playing Bazaar/Read the Runes/etc. in favor of playing fetches, duals, Bob, Duress, etc., do that. People aren't expecting Dragon and they'll assume you're playing the standard long-game controlling Tezzeret build that relies on Bob and react accordingly.
Because the Dragon win is so compact and cheaply-costed, you can put it all together fairly quickly and throw everything out at once for the win. This line of offense can come as a huge surprise, and from a board position that doesn't at all suggest an endgame lunge.
Second, Bob and Animate effects are extremely strong. Turn one Bob often draws a Force, and if you can reanimate him the following turn, your opponent will be in big trouble. Similarly, you can offer a "trade" that actually results in your opponent losing their main draw engine but you getting yours back the next turn.
Third, Bob really helps your manabase to work. Dragon runs fewer sources than almost any deck I can think of, and sometimes gets itself into trouble against a mana-denial strategy. Thankfully, there aren't many of those in the current meta (at least in Massachusetts) and you've got Bob to pull you out of difficult situations with mana-shorting.
Lastly, Read the Runes serves a double purpose. It digs into Dragon combo pieces, but it's always an emergency off-switch for Bob if he's killing you.
Finally, a note on how the deck sideboards:
When you're boarding, shuffle all 15 cards from your SB into your deck and pull out the ones you don't want afterwards. This is a good practice to follow with any deck, because it prevents your opponent from knowing how much you're bringing in against them. Obviously that's all the more important here, because you don't want to tip your opponent off about a transformational SB.
My conversion plan was this:
-4 Bazaar
-5 Animate
-3 Dragon
-2 Intuition
-1 Oona
But you can mix and match as your needs require. Read the Runes isn't the best card to have in Tez, but it won't walk into graveyard hate as badly as Intuition will, and if your opponent has you on Dragon, you're likely to see some.
The other sideboarding note is this. The default should be a switch to Tezzeret, especially early in the tournament. Your opponents won't see it coming and they'll make the wrong plays, which is a big advantage. Later on, however, keep your opponents guessing, especially if you think they're onto you. Bring in your 15 SB cards and then pull them all back out, staying Dragon. Try some (
friendly) table talk while sideboarding if you think you can throw them off.
The main point here is, this deck creates a torturous, high-stakes guessing game for your opponent. Do they bring in GY hate and dilute their deck if you're going Tez? Or do they bring in Tez hate which could be virtually dead if you're Dragon? Especially if you win game one, this uncertainty will work in your favor postboard.
And finally, a note on a tournament experience with this deck: It's a blast to play. The older Vintage mainstays will, I'm sure, appreciate the chance to play with Dragon. It's an offensive beast that puts a lot of pressure on slower decks, and it can intimidate many an opponent into making the wrong calls. It has the option to switch into the dominant deck in the format and play an interactive control game instead of the offensive blitzkrieg of Dragon.
I want to acknowledge ShockWave of Team R & D for putting me on the path that led to this design. He suggested a very similar build that got me thinking. I also want to thank JR of Team Reflection for throwing out another similar, but less-related idea some years ago, which first put the notion of Bob in Dragon in my head.
