Draqon Idea

[BrokenNut]

The recent problem with dragon is the sheer amount of hate that is being thrown at it. From simple graveyard to creature and enchantment hate, there are too many cards that can ruin the Dragon players plans. My thoughts on this are to simply stop your opponent from doing nastyness while you go off. While duress and force of will are helpful at this, often times they are not nearly enough.

My plan to fix this problem is to change the dragon deck dramatically. Cut the blue entirely, and switch to white as the disruption color. I know what you're thinking, white?!? are you insane, what can that offer. And here is what it offers, Abeyance and Orim's Chant. Both of these stop ALL thier hate cards that they have stored up in thier hand. No more, duressing to see stifle and swords, neither of which you can off with safely. Chant stops both. And abeyance is the seriously good card. Stopping all those, as well as the nasty new pernicous deed and Tormod's crypt.

In addition to these 2 cards, going to shrink the black down to just the essentials, animate effects and tutors. And then increase the green part to include Survival of the Fittest since we can no longer run compulsion. Along with the green comes Xantid Swarms and Pernicous Deed, yet more antihate cards for the dragon player. Then maindeck 2 Verdant Forces, and on the off chance, you can now hardcast them because of the heavy green component in the deck. And finally Regrowth to get back any wasted bazaars we made need to.

The board can be overloaded with disruption/protection, because now we are running a total of 4 different disruption spells, not all of which make the maindeck cut, so some can go in the board. As well as any hate cards we may need to.

I think, all these changes should help stem the tide of the dragon player hate. I have yet to see if the loss of blue drawing seriously affects the deck in a negative way, since we gain the tutoring of Survival, and then Im diversifying the deck by adding the Verdant's as alternative win conditions. If anyone has thoughts or suggestions on this, perhaps a possible mana base since I am absolutely horrible with such things, that would be great, thank you.

P.S. Just thought people should know if they don't. Caller of the Claw can help get around Root Maze. Either tap 5 mana when you go off, leaving 2G floating, or just have the caller in the graveyard. Then reanimate dragon, and let the combo loop a few hundred times, and stop it being animating caller if you can, or something else and then hardcasting caller. And now when he comes into play, he will make a 2/2 bear token for each time the dragon went to the graveyard because the animate effect left play.

[TheFram]

Xantid Swarm accomplishes the same effect without forcing you to drop blue. I could see md Swarm since green is just purely better for the deck than white, and swarm can be animated if countered.

Also, Caller of the Claw was tech I discovered w/ MuzzunoAMI and posted about 2 weeks ago.

[Sytupal]

Xantid Swarm? Leaving me with a B/G/U build with counters still available, duals i already have and access to stifle, pernicious deed, and other goodness.  I must say i don't think white is necessary. however, if you build and playtest extensively with much success i will completely shut up and praise you for your idea.  I just simply think that the hate i run in my B/G/U build is far better then orim's chant/abeyance  on a stick could ever offer me.

Edit:  oops, someone posted before me.

[Ghost]

Intresting idea. Can we see a potential deck list?

[RoadTrippin]

Honestly, I've tried what you are thinking with white/black. The Rhode Island crew will remember    I also incorporated Rectors into the deck. A lot of the other ideas you are talking about have been explored.. a ton. Have you seen my deck?

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5558

Finally, although B/G is better imo, Survival is not worth using. It's slow, and you already have 12 potential burial cards, in the form of 3 Therapy, 4 Buried Alive, 4 Bazaar of Baghdad, 1 Entomb.

[glenchuy]

if you cut blue, we'll also lose ambassador, bear tokens are nice, but then you'll have to protect it twice, this turn, and next turn when you're going to attack.

[RoadTrippin]

You don't need to lose Ambassador at all- the ability costs only colorless. "Protecting" tokens for one turn is generally easier than going off with Root Maze or killing an opponent via Laquatus when they have a Blessing in their deck.

[TheFram]

You can go off at EOT to avoid the protection complication w/ Caller of the Claw. However, the only things you should have to protect yourself from are Balance, Keg, Deed, and Disk. Though there has been a resurgence of all of these lately (except keg) , it still isn't that hard to know when and when not to take the risk of going of with Caller of the Claw.

For instance, Keeper has only 1 MD answer, so it is worth the risk of going off on your turn more often than not. Land Still, if they dont have the disk on the table, you know your safe. Deed is the only card that is really worrisome in this respect, since decks run more than 1 of it, and it can be activated the same turn it is dropped. Against neo-tog, PT Funk, BG Void, etc. it is often safer to go off eot with Necromancy just to make sure they do not have an active Deed.

-Thefram