I played T1 Dragon last week for a tourney and PTW's ...

[Warr]

I played T1 Dragon last week for a tourney and PTW's Spoils list in a 1.5 tournament yesterday and I was amazed at how well Spoils of the Vault and Dark Ritual worked when it came to speeding up the deck.  Spoils was GODLY all day long, putting the exact card I wanted directly in my hand.  The only game I lost to it was losing 18 life to it in game 3 of the semis, but I then again I made a terrible call on what to get.

This was in stark contrast to how the T1 version (similar to IllDawg's) worked for me the week before.  Sure it had the Squee/Bazaar engine and Intuitions and Forces and stuff, but without the Spoils and Forces, it was nowhere near as fast.

So anyway... the purpose of this post is to see if the two concepts can be combined into a new build that keeps the blinding speed of PTW's T1.5 build while incorporating restricted cards into it.  Another way to look at it is to find a way to work 4 Spoils and 4 Dark Rituals into a standard T1 decklist.

Kill:
4 Dragon
2 A Laquatas
--We need 2 kill conditions to avoid forcing draws due to Spoils.

4 Animate Dead
4 Dance of the Dead
1 Necromancy
--I'm using at least 4 Animate + 4 Dance because they are easier to grab with Spoils and the 2CC lets them get cast off a single land + ritual with a black to spare for Duress or Spoils.

Disruption:
4 Duress
--There won't be enough blue cards to run FoW when this is done.  Plus the 2 for 1 you do to yourself is unfavorable when you have Bazaar running.  Vs. Control FoW comes out for Xantid Swarm anyway so I don't think I'll miss them game 1 either.  If this concept does have a major weakness compared to a typical build, it will be the lack of access to FoW.  I am hoping the January restrictions slow the other combo decks down to the point where 4 FoW is no longer necessary in every deck that stands a chance of supporting it.

Restricted Cards:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor

Other Tutors:
3 Intuition
4 Spoils of the Vault
--Intuition replaced Buried Alive as they have a similar function while Bazaar is in play and they can get Bazaars themselves.  Plus its an instant.  Spoils replaced 2 Lim-Dul's Vault and 2 Compulsion.

Card Drawing:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Squee

Mana:
--The manabase robably needs fine tuning as well. The T1 builds run 20 sources but PTW found room for 24.  I got 23 in here, but cut Necromancy #2 and Vamp Tutuor to do it.  I also know that I want to keep the non-black sources to a minimum.  That means no Tropical Island and probably no Crypt or Sol Ring either as the two colorless doesn't do to much for you.  Off-color moxen are still OK, since they produce 1 mana and come down for free, sort of like ESG.

5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual

4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Bayou
--Xantid Swarm is pretty important so I upped the Bayou count to 4.
1 Swamp

SB:
Typical stuff like Xantid Swarm, Deed, Stifle, Coffin Purge all goes in here.

As always, any input from the experts would be greatly appreciated.

Warr

[Crater Hellion]

I don't see why you would make those changes and still run U. Monoblack (or black with a splash for green) is just better-

//Creatures:
4 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Ambassador Laquatus
1 Sliver Queen
2 Verdant Force
//Buriers/Tutors/Engine
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Spoils of the Vault
//Animate Spells
4 Dance of the Dead
3 Animate Dead
2 Necromancy
//Disruption
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy (can be regarded as a potential creature burier- but don't count on it)
//Mana
4 Dark Ritual
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
4 Swamp
SB: 4 Illusionary Mask
SB: 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
SB: 4 Phyrexian Negator
SB: 1 Sutured Ghoul
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
or
SB: 4 Xantid Swarm
SB: 3 Pernicious Deed
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
if you go with the green splash, you're obviously going to have to change the manabase by upping the fetch and well.. using Bayous.

Honestly, I'd rather cut demonic tutor than vamp.

[ScaldMonger]

I have been toying with the idea of putting together a similar build of the deck since I do enjoy killing myself so much with Spoils of the Vault (bad Mask experiences), and since Dragon seems to be a house in just about every Meta right now. I really like the loss of FOW since you can play the deck slightly more aggresive. The Duress over force is a very proactive move, and I like the feeling of it.

I think the main advantage of this build is that the first turn kill rate is upped a ridiculous amount, while you still maintain a mid-late game through the good old bazaar/squee engine.

With the removal of FOW from the deck, is it possible to replace the second Laquatas with something else?...I remember the big keeping factor of him was the pitchability. Since there's no reason to pitch, no reason to keep a second in the deck perhaps?

Good read, hope this deck gets some testing done, would love to see how it fares.

[Crater Hellion]

You need the second laquatus slot more than ever with spoils. However, even with 4 FoW in the maindeck Sliver Queen was probably always better than Laquatus #2.

[Sandster]

It really isn't worth splashing blue just for Ancestral and Time Walk.  As for Intuition, Buried Alive does a better job for a couple reasons:

1) It's black, so it can be used with Dark Ritual.
2) You can fetch for your creatures without needing something to dump them in the grave.  Intuitioning for Bazaar is rather pointless because it means you can Buried Alive for Dragon and Laq and win.

Sure, it's a sorcery, but with the amount of disruption black has it shouldn't be a problem.  That being said, you should run more disruption.

Mana Crypt should be in there for first turn Land, Crypt -> Buried Alive or the rarer Land, Crypt, Ritual, -> Buried Alive, Animate Dead.  Sol Ring is questionable.

If you want to win as fast as possible, drop the Squee engine altogether and add either disruption or tutors.

EDIT: well, WGKid got to it before me.

[Warr]

Great replies.  I do see why Buried > Intuition in speed builds.  2B is far easier to cast than 2U, instant or no.  Plus you can still use it to set up Squees to use with Bazaar.

If the intuitions come out, then the rest of the blue cards can come out as well, and it will have the benefit of stabilizing the mana base.  If this is direction the deck goes to get the best of worlds, then so be it.

Is entomb needed since we are looking at 4x Buried Alive to set up the entire combo and 4x Bazaar to run through the entire deck?  It is considered a tutor, however, so it still merits consideration.

I personally don't like extra animate targets like Verdant Force in the main since I want to kill turn 2 or 3 at the latest.  Any extra room can become more mana or disruption.

I am going to have to disagee on cutting Squee or moving him to the board, however.  While this is the sort of deck where you evaluate each hand by looking at your opening 7, asking yourself "can I kill on turn 2 or turn 3 at the latest with this hand?" and mulliganing accordingly, you still need some sort of card drawing in there just in case.  I've found that the differences in decks that have good drawing and poor card drawing built in are readily apparent.

The last question I'll leave everyone with is going back to the manabase.  I am probably going to have to tinker with it quite a bit before it gets to where I like it, but for now, I have two main questions:

1. How much is the right amount?  The 24 mana sources from the 1.5 version could easily get cut back since I didn't seem to detect a shortage in mana and didn't have a major problem dumping extra mana to Bazaar.  Is 20 mana including dark rituals enough?

2. What sort of mana to use?  All black, or use off-color moxes?  Off-color moxes could make you faster, but also made it kind of difficult to cast multiple black spells in one turn.  There is also the possibility of having to throw back back hands that contained no black mana.  Those really sucked.

This makes our mana base tentatively look like this:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bayou
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt (probable)
? Sol Ring
? Off-color moxen
X Swamps to fill it out.

Warr

[Crater Hellion]

I've really tested basically everything for monoblack Dragon. I don't want to sound like a jackass, but I think the only things that should ever realistically be changed from my list are the Verdants and/or Therapies. I would use Unmask if I didn't use Therapy (which I would not use Verdant without), and if I didn't use Verdant I would probably splash green anyway.
If you are set on splashing green, a good manabase is going to look like

4 Dark Ritual
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
2 Ancient Tomb
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
4 Bayou
1 Swamp
possibly with the inclusion of Mox Emerald. However, I pulled the chrome for a slot, and chrome just may be better than Emerald in virtually every way that a combo deck cares about.