Dragon and the Con season.

[BreathWeapon]

The metagame seems to be highly focused for the Con season, including; Shop Slaver, Drain Slaver, HULK, Germbus, FCG, U/g Madness and Fish as the favorites. Undoubtably, Combo will show up in capable hands via Belcher and Draw 7, but the Combo deck I'm the most interested in is Dragon.

After taking the time to read the rather long and arduous thread in the T1 Forum, which experienced a rather sudden and unfortunate death, I went about playtesting the various ideas and opinions represented by; Smmenen, DicemanX, Shockwave and Eastman. Here is what I ended up with:

B/U/G Dragon

Blue (19)
4xForce of Will
4xIntuition
4xCompulsion
3xDeep Analysis
1xTime Walk
1xAncestral Recall
1xAmbassador Laquatos
1xSliver Queen

Black (8)
3xNecromancey
3xAnimate Dead
2xDance of the Dead

Green (4)
4xXantid Swarm

Other (8)
4xWorldgorger Dragon
4xBazaar of Baghdad

Mana (21)
7xSoLoMoxen
1xManacrypt
4xPolluted Delta
3xUnderground Sea
2xTropical Island
1xIsland
1xSwamp
2xGemstone Mine

Sideboard
4xChalice of the Void
3xVerdant Force
1xCaller of the Claw
4xStifle
3xPernicious Deed

After about 70 games, I decided to put my faith in numbers and drop the Tutors for the full set of Compulsions. I've had better card quality and consistancey over the long haul with them. The 1/1 Win Condition set up has worked like a charm, and the Sliver Queen has proven useful in numerous situations. MD Swarms seem like the most appropriate disruption slot for the environment, and I love them more than life itself. Combined with the Animates, the Swarms create a wall vs Control. IMO, a couple extra Basic Land  isn't worth removing Green. The only deck I have missed Duress against is Slavery and Draw 7, where Xantid Swarm can be sub optimal.

Deep Analysis requires the most explanation. Simply put, I wanted a rock solid FoW count and decided to cut Squee for 3 Analysis. So far, it has worked out really well. Intuition becomes significantly stronger when it can dump 3 Anals in the yard and independantly set up your draw engine. You can pitch them to FoW and Hard Cast them individualy. Combined with Bazaar and Complusion, it allows you to dig 1-2 cards deeper than Squee. Ofcouse the card isn't perfect, vs Control you may be forced to take a "Time Out" and spend the turn drawing a new hand after turn 3. This also encourages you to walk right into Manadrain, which is a problem. The saving grace for Anal however is backing them with Swarms MD vs Control. The Swarms let you cover the Anals from Manadrain and optimize your cards more efficently, Animate/Swarm synergy, reducing the need to "draw" more with Squee.

Anyway, I just wanted to get the ball rolling and strike up some conversation on Dragon for the Con season. Right now the deck seems to be relatively ignored by most of the field, and any Turn 3 Combo deck that can pack 8 slots worth of Disruption is worth keeping an eye on. The way I see things; 4 Compulsions are golden, Green is worth its salt, Force of Will is absolutely necessary and Swarms are MD material. Deep Analysis and the high FoW count is a personal touch, but it's working for me and I'm throwing FoWs like mad.

[Tempe]

Even though Compulsion may be more consistant or give you better draws, Demonic Tutor will just let you win. Its the 5th card for every one of your 4 ofs, and is in almost all cases necessary in any deck sporting black; especially a black one.

You have really kind of destroyed some of the decks inevitability, one of the reasons to play the deck over other decks. Squee was necessary because in the midgame it would allow you to be gaining card advantage from Bazaar and Compulsion. I really don't see much of a reason to be replacing a strong inevitability card with a slow "jumpstart" card. Intuitioning for 3 Squee is just as good, because you are likely to have either a Bazaar or Compulsion in hand or out.

I'm curious about what your goldfish speed is? With all of the slow drawing and control elements, it seems you have significantly slowed down the deck. Its looking more and more like combo-control.

--Tempe

[defector]

That looks nice, my dragon is just a list currently but doesn't look too different except that I don't have bazaar so that I run the Buried Alive X4, Intuition X2 build.  Without squee, are you sure of running bazaar?  I'd rather see the swarms in the baord and run squee maindeck, changing them up for the control match.  Also, you can't go off faster than belcher consistenlt, is chalice enough to shore up that match up?
good work
defector

[BreathWeapon]

The deck has roughly the same Gold Fishing speed as every other Dragon deck, turn 3 being the average with the occasional turn 2 win. I haven't felt the loss of a Middle Game with the deck, because Swarm is a total wrecking ball vs Control and is the only match up where a Draw Engine actually matters. Besides, accumulating Squee is only "great" when you can keep an active Bazaar on the board. However, your right when you say the deck plays like Combo-Control. Thats why I dig it in the most.

[TheDeadMan]

I can't help but notice no crop rotation, is a 5th bazaar a bad thing?

[dicemanx]

I'm not sure why you cut Squees for DAs. Squees are superior in situations where the long-game matters, as they will draw you more cards via Bazaar or Compulsion in the long run than DAs. Running enough blue spells to support FoW is a weak argument in my opnion, and the reasons why were already expressed by Shock Wave and me (yes, that's gramatically correct) in the open forum thread. I think that you shouldn't start doubting the power of the Squee-Bazaar engine because of the fear of Wastelands.

Without squee, are you sure of running bazaar?

Lol, first the Squees go, then the Bazaars? Perhaps we should consider swapping the Compulsions for AKs as they have more synergy with the Intuitions, and perhaps we can simplify our kill by swapping the Animates and Dragons with Psychatogs and Cunning Wishes (for the SB Berserk). Then we can replace Xantids with the more powerful Mana Drains for disruption...

Sorry, couldn't resist

[defector]

Dicemanx why you gotta go give a bazaarless brother a bad time(gramatically incorrect).  I brought it up because I run dragon without bazaar or squee, IntuitionX2, Buried Alive X4, Demonic Tutor, Entomb, Vampiric Tutor.  Powercount 4/9, slower average around turn 4, but quite inevitable.  In respect reading that quote of mine, it is pretty funny.   Dragon has great budget popssibilities, but I fear that woudl be straying off topic.
defector

[BreathWeapon]

I'm not knocking the Squee Draw Engine, it's some definate good. My goal was to see if Dragon can get away with Deep Analysis instead of Squee, and it can. I'm not advocating that every Dragon player cut Squee for Deep Analysis, but, for Dragon players that really value Force of Will, it's an option. It changes the way the deck plays vs Control for sure, but all of your other match ups are roughly the same.

At the very least give it a try, Deep Analysis does have some serious synergy with the deck.

[Kowal]

I really, REALLY don't like the idea of paying for card draw that can be hit by counters and REB.  And hell, Chains too.  It also makes you much weaker against a Mind Twist.

In addition, if you keep track of how many cards Squee ends up drawing you, it'll be more than 2 for any game that lasts beyond the first three turns.  I cannot get behind this idea.

[Razvan]

Lol, first the Squees go, then perhaps the Bazaars? Perhaps we should consider swapping the Compulsions for AKs as they have more synergy with the Intuitions, and perhaps simplify our kill by swapping the Animates and Dragons with Psychatogs and Cunning Wishes (for the SB Berserk) Then we can replace Xantids with the more powerful Mana Drains for disruption...

Will I have to add this to the growing list of diceman's axioms of magic? With minor changes, every deck is the same .

[dicemanx]

Will I have to add this to the growing list of diceman's axioms of magic? With minor changes, every deck is the same

Yeah, stay tuned as I reveal a series of blockbuster decks in the coming weeks. DragonTog has now been revealed, but wait until you see my version of DragonSlaver, or the amazing FCDragon, where I use Food Chain and Squees (made cheaper by the Warchiefs) to ramp up to a HARDCAST WGD as an alternate kill mechanism to the regular WGD + Animate + Sharpshooter + Warchief combo! OMG the synergy!! I must say though, SuiDragon is *the* deck that will always have a special place in my heart. I'm not sure if I'll release that one though - I can't divulge all my secrets! It gives Sui two much needed things: a card drawing engine and a combo kill, *finally* making Sui a respectable aggro-control-combo deck. The problem is that there is much temptation to upgrade SuiDragon to the much feared MaskNaughtDragon (MND), featuring the A-MAZING synergy between Masks and WGD. Uncounterable Flying, trampling 7/7 beats for six generic mana 4L, and get this - you don't_even_lose_your_permanents!

[Razvan]

Okay... It will be catalogued then...

Actually, the reason why I said this is simple, and it might ring true to those of us in the computer programming industry.

There's a lot of people that can program amazing apps, however, they can never start a program. They have to have an existing one, strip it to almost nothing, and modify it to the new one. Such as making Windows from Tetris.

Applying to magic, it might hold true. A lot of decks, even if they are different as day and night, they still can be traced to the same common core.

Tog and 4c Control are a good example. They have what... 30-40 cards in common? (most land, FoW, Drain, Brainstorm, some more draw, some more control, Cunning Wish...).

It might actually be a good axiom.

[dicemanx]

It might actually be a good axiom.

I agree. I've made the claim in a couple of other threads that the currect decks consist of "units" that have the possibility of being combined in various ways to create various synergistic effects. Since we have identified the majority of the most powerful "units", the only thing left is to try various combinations to see what works best.

As a consequence, decks like DragonSlaver and SuiDragon might have a chance indeed, as they use some of the most powerful combo, disruption, and aggro components .

[kill doug]

I am the dragon player of my meta.  That's all I've been playing there for about 6 months and I've tested just about every type of dragon comprehensible.  I have to say that taking out Squee and Bazaars are two of the worst ideas that I've heard.
A draw engine is needed for every deck in type one whether it be Brainstorms, Ancestral, Wheel of Fortune, or Bazaar.  Every good type one deck has their draw.  The difference with combo is that it needs even more.
Out of the dragon builds that I tested, two showed the most promise.  The first being a black based, more aggro version with Dark Ritual and Buried Alive, running Duress and Bazaar/Squee.  With this version, as a secondary kill to get around those little things called Platinum Angel I threw in some Badlands for a Shivan Hellkite which grants infinite ping.
The other version was the normal black/blue control, but your version proportions are all off.  This is the correct way in my opinion.

Blue 16
4x Force of Will
2x Intuition
3x Compulsion
2x Deep Analysis
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Ambassador Laquatus
2x Lim-Dul's Vault
1x Caller of the Claw
 
Black 12
3x Necromancy
4x Animate Dead
1x Dance of the Dead
4x Duress

4x Squee, Goblin Nabob

Other 12
3x Worldgorger Dragon
4x Bazaar of Baghdad

Mana 20
5x SoLoMoxen
1x Mana Crypt
4x Polluted Delta
4x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
1x Island
1x Swamp
2x Bayou
1x Black Lotus

Sideboard
4x Xantid swarm
3x Tormod's Crypt (I know, but in the mirror they're God)
4x Stifle
4x Pernicious Deed

Highly edited for clarity purposes.  I suggest this.

Best of luck.

- Kowal[/color]

[Kowal]

Who worries about Platinum Angel?  That's why things like Deed and Necromancy and Stifle exist.

And yes, advocating the removal of Bazaar/Squee in dragon warrants moving to newbie.  That's a terrible idea.

Free!  Free!  Welcome to your new home!  Moved.[/color]

[BreathWeapon]

WTF? I never advocated that Bazaar be removed. The thread was to discuss the viability of Deep Analysis as a substitute draw engine for Squee to up the FoW count. It isn't Newbie, it's viable. The Draw Engine plays significantly different, and IMO it's better than Squee in 2 out of 3 match ups. Your Draw Engine only matters vs Control and that's is why the Deck has 4 MD Swarms to cover its faults. Vs Aggro, Deep Analysis is BETTER because you can dig farther into your deck with it than Squee, the life loss being irrelevant. Vs Combo, you have the higher FoW count, which is important because Dragon has to fight Draw 7 and Belcher tooth and nail ... and Squee doesn't help.

I really resent that this thread got kicked to the Newbie Forum, you let a High Lander Keeper deck float in the Open Forum but you kick my thread? WTF

[Kowal]

The highlander keeper deck was a report.  He won.  Let him have his day in the sun.

You on the other hand are advocating an idea that's clearly weaker than the standard norm, and you demonstrate a poor knowledge on how the deck functions in tournament play.  Therefore, this thread belongs here until either it gets pushed in to open material, or it gets so bad I have to lock it.

I'll be happy to answer anything else you have via PM.