Deck Discussion/ Optimizing Dragon

[dicemanx]

Squee or Witness beatdown is OK, as long as they don't have blockers.  There isn't anything in any top-level T1 deck that could block a Worldgorger though .

[Marton]

I am not sure if I got things right. This is the way I understand it:

1-have a compulsion/bazaar either in play, or compulsion in your hand.
2-animate a dragon
3-generate infinite mana / dump library in graveyard
4-stop the recursion by reanimating the eternal witness. getting to this step depends on wether you had a bazaar or compulsion into play or in your hand. if you only had a compulsion in your hand, then now cast it and draw/dump your library.
Note: the eternal witness target doesnt really matters at this point
5-cast ANOTHER animate dead, this time on a dragon
6-each dragon recursion will allow you to re-draw a card from your graveyard, effectively drawing your entire graveyard.
7-*while doing the recursions* you can play instants. I can see here you could ancestral recall your opponent an infinite amount of time. If you do the ancestral kill, the loop ends here. If you don't do the ancestral kill, then ignore this step.

Note: this is the part where I don't understand how you're supposed to cast an infinite amount of time walk (and also if that means each time you keep cards on top of your library). Last time I checked, you can't cast sorceries while were on the stack like at this point. Again, I might have gotten something wrong.


8-find another creature to stop the infinite loop (squee).
9-play all the moxen and lotus
10-at this point you can play out your entire deck. I would start off by a duress, followed by a time walk if I want infinite turn (ill elaborate on the next points).
11-on your next turn (time walk), be sure that there remains a card to draw on your library. Since all your moxen are in play, you can HARD CAST another worldgorger dragon, effectively allowing you to re-draw again your graveyard. re-play the time walk.

Note: this is the other part where I don't understand. The worldgorger dragon has a summoning sickness. I cannot see how you would do a worldgorger dragon beatdown, since in order to do so, you need to have one into play (which must be hardcast, because otherwise you would be stuck in the loop). If you hardcast the dragon, that means you have nothing else into play. That also means you can't redo the time walk loop.

I simply do not see how you can do a worldgorger dragon beatdown WITH an infinite time walk using a eternal witness. Perhaps theres something I got wrong. Dicemanx, I would like to get clarifications, like actually explaining how you play it. I just cannot see how you're supposed to do the worldgorger dragon beatdown.

-marton

[Vegeta2711]

I'll take a random stab at how you win.

1-Do the Dragon Loop w/ Bazaar in play, dump a bunch of your library into grave, make inf. mana.
2-Stop the loop by bringing back Witness
3-Recur another animate spell w/ Witness
4-Play the Animate spell on a Dragon, the loop means you can use Witness to bring something back every turn w/ inf mana, draw everything out of your grave.
5-End the loop by dumping the animate spell on a Squee/Xantid you left.
6-Replay everything you want from your hand and feel free to replay an animate spell and repeat the loop inf. times.

Since a Squee dies from legendary status, everytime you recur more than one, you can put one back to keep stopping and repeating the loop.

7-Eventually just hardcast a WGD and win w/ beatdown from whatever.

All you'd really need to worry about is decking yourself obv.   That correct?

[Glick]

WGD goes beat down by:

Cast Necromancy on a second dragon after the first WGD comes into play ability goes on the stack. Everything is removed by WGD#2 and then the original WGD comes back with no animate effect attached. Choose squees as targets or something and go beatdown.  EDIT: Actually I think this just leaves you with no permanents. oops

[dicemanx]

Marton began well, but Veggies finished things off correctly.

The Squee legendary status is key to casting sorceries an infinite number of times - you need to continually cast Duress if you go the decking route to prevent an accumulation of pitch-counters and removal. With Time Walk, you can kill by beatdown, with WGD if necessary in case they have blockers for Squee/Witness.

Neat stuff, huh?

[Marton]

I can already picture a guy explaining to the scrub judge the rules interaction involved in this lol.

[everythingitouchdies]

yeah its bad enough explaining the combo to someone who doesnt understand. Its worse when you do something tricky like a second animate spell to empty the g-yard. I can only imagine the frustration of the judge when this happens. I love it.

EITD

[h9565]

I can't tell if you all are being serious about this path to victory.  It seems to have the following disadvantages (compared to the more usual Laquatus path):

1) Inability to win on opponent's turn.  Due to APNAP stack rules it is sometimes necessary to animate the dragon on opponent's turn, e.g. with opponent's Planar Void on the table.  Relying on casting sorceries during the combo seems to eliminate this possibility.

2) Difficulty with Chalice for 2.  Using Laquatus, the dragon player may win in the face of Chalice of the Void set at 2 by using Necromancy.  In this path to victory, the dragon player seems to be relying on casting Time Walk.  Perhaps including Stifle in the loop could address this concern.

3) Requires cards in library to draw on dragon beatdown turns.  This path to victory requires at least 3 swings with dragon to actually kill opponent.  Without a method to replenish his library, the dragon player requires three cards left in library after assembling Eternal Witness / Time Walk.  If either of these cards are in the bottom 3 (or 4 with unfavorable Bazaar parody), the dragon player will deck himself before winning.

None of these concerns are really fatal.  They just seem like a lot of baggage to carry around in order to be immune to Dampening Matrix.

If I missed the humor in this path to victory, please forgive me.

[Krizzyn]

If you want to be immune to Dampening Matrix, just run Caller.  Granted, I doubt anyone is seriously going to be running this much more complicated combo over the more traditional.

[dicemanx]

The Witness is a serious win condition, but one cannot say if its better or worse than Ambassador. The Witness has a few advantages:

1) It gets around Blessing (in case people start running them main deck)
2) It's unaffected by MD Damping Matrix
3) It has a more useful ability outside of the combo
4) It avoids problems with certain card combos (Necropotence/Bargain, Welder + Platinum Angel etc).

Keep in mind that the deck does not use Time Walk. It was only suggested as an alternate route to victory. Also, Duress is not essential, which means you can still win at instant speed if you need to contend with something like Planar Void or Ankh of Mishra. Duress is there mainly against Keeper.

[Shock Wave]

I can already picture a guy explaining to the scrub judge the rules interaction involved in this lol.

ROFL LMAO. This is soo true. I think this is the biggest disadvantage to running this win condition. lol.