[deck]UBR Dra-Gro-Nauts

[Kasuras]

So I was having some fun with my Dra-Gro-Nauts lately, attacking for 30 with just the cards from a Brainstorm, removing Gush, Ancestral Recall and Time Walk for an impressive 2 damage from a creature that makes me die against Oath, and so on. And then something struck me: what the fuck was I doing? Seriously, I was not playing Yawgmoth’s Will, the best card in the format, in a deck that hopes to play as much as spells as possible. After hitting myself, hard, I started looking into an improvement to the deck’s former version.

The next steps were fairly easy to make; removing the Lavamancers, adding Yawgmoth’s Will, adding Demonic Tutor and as a final touch: Duress. I never really liked the Dazes and Misdirections, and Duress makes way more sense in a deck where most spells are played in the first mainphase.

Thus, I now present the UBR version of Dra-Gro-Nauts:

UBR Dra-Gro-Nauts, by Kasuras

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
5 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus

4 Wee Dragonauts

2 Echoing Truth
1 Misdirection
2 Fire/Ice
2 Lava Dart
3 Duress
4 Force of Will

1 Mystical Tutor
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Stitch in Time
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Gush
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Brainstorm


I’ll start with the mandatory link to the previous version, since there are a few important thoughts and ideas there:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=26867.0

A highlight on the most important comments and ideas:

It is an aggro deck running a lot of removal, Force of Will, a way to potentially kill the opponent in 1 turn and has a lot of synergy; I don't see why this deck shouldn't be given a shot. Or do you mean that I should add more colors?

Edit: now that I'm awake, Lava Dart combined with Dragonauts does more damage than Gush in Psychatog: 7 vs 6,5. Eat that you flapless vampire!

It totally lacks synergy with everything you play in your opponents turns, the castingcost is horrible (you can't drop him rregularlyturn 1 like with Quirion Dryad) and it's doesn't get to keep the +2/+0 which makes it quite hard to keep constant pressure.

I’ll leave these comments to what they are for the moment but will comment on them in the various other aspects of this thread.


Indivdual Card Analysis

Creatures

I removed the Lavamancers because I’d much rather draw spells instead; 1 spell does 2 damage anyways, spells find other spells and most spells find counters. They’re also bad against Oath and not synergistic with Yawgmoth’s Will.

I am in doubt on whether I should add a Psychatog or replace a Dragonauts with it, or just not put Psychatog in at all. He seems good, but I have a feeling that Dragonauts are just better in most matchups. Perhaps in the sideboard. Haven’t tested it yet, so I can’t give a final answer on this issue.

Also looking into Dark Confidant as an addition: he seems strong, but I wouldn’t know what to remove for him.

Hate/Counters

I have really looked into the comment by TheAlpha on the fact that playing spells in my opponent’s turn doesn’t really grow the Dragonauts, which was indeed a problem. And since I was already going to play black for Yawgmoth’s Will and Demonic Tutor: Duress only made more sense. I’ve gone down to 3 because in the end: I will often be topdecking or be in control, in either situation I want to draw draw spells; I only really want Duresses in my opening hand and 1 showing up in the rest of the match. This also opens another slot for another cantrip or tutor.

I have chosen Lava Dart over Darkblast because Darkblast is anti-synergic with the deck’s objective and Darkblast is useless against non-creature decks. Darkblast is anti-synergic with the deck’s objective because the deck is not based on cards in the graveyard and wants to draw cards: every draw you dredge could have been another, better, spell. Lava Dart does its job, killing Welders, just fine and together with Fire is sufficient to battle fish. I am currently running 2 Lava Darts because they’re useless against non-creature decks and because I can’t search for them with Merchant Scrolls. Ices can and Fire/Ice is superior to Lava Dart in most cases, unless you need that extra 6 damage for R and a mountain.

Misdirection acts as the 5th Force of Will and is fantastic as a 1-of, just 1 is sufficient because I also run 7 Tutors. No Counterspell or Mana Drain because I’m never holding UU open; this deck is very different from Hulk Smash and traditional GAT because of the Dragonaut’s nature of only being efficient when I play my spells in the first main phase. I felt that I’d much rather have additional draw instead of these cards: they’re often useless and remain in my hand for the entire match.


In General About the Deck

On the Dragonauts

An important issue touched in the UR version was why one would want to play a version of this deck over Gro-A-Tog with Quirion Dryads. The first important reason for that is that Quirion Dryad does not fly, so it can’t fly over the DSC. Neither can a Dryad win in a single turn; granted, Psychatog could, but Psychatog doesn’t fly either. Second, bounce is the most common form of hate against big creatures; and that will hurt Dryad a lot more than the Dragonauts. Of course, someone bouncing it while attacking sucks for both, but getting your 10/10 Dryad bounced sucks a lot more than your 11/3 Dragonauts bounced because you have invested a lot more cards in that big Dryad. Also: I feel that red as a color is superior to green because red offers stronger artifact destruction in the form of Shattering Spree, Gorilla Shaman and Rack and Ruin, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The most important reason why green would be better than red is Berserk, but that requires you to play Cunning Wishes as well and I think that the sideboard Berserk is more fitted for Hulk Smash type decks because it leads to 1 play while I feel that a Gro is more a deck where you want to play the beat stick early and ride it to victory in the course of turns. Compare this to Hulk Smash where the Psychatog is in play when the match has already been won.

The Manacurve

17 Lands
05 x 0
16 x 1
10 x 2
06 x 3
00 x 4
06 x 5

I have really tried to keep the manacurve as varied as possible because of the danger that Chalice of the Void is to Gro-style decks: while there are a lot of things with a casting cost of 1, the 2 Echoing Truths and 6 of the Tutors are 2 and the 5 kill mechanisms are 3. This to achieve that 1 Chalice of the Void set at any number won’t prove to be fatal: if set at 1, I can tutor for answers to it, if at 2: I can still play all my important cantrips and the kill itself. Not to mention that Chalice won’t be a major pain anymore if the Dragonauts already hit play because the Dragonauts don’t really care that much whether a spell resolves or not.

[[supa_t(im)]]

When thinking of adding black to the deck, lim-dul's vault immediately came to mind.  I was thinking that it would be possible to stack the deck to chain a bunch of cantrips to pump the wee men better than just cantriping and hoping to get another cantrip.

Not sure if that helps you at all.  I like the addition of black though.

[Sgt. Pepper]

First of all, props to you for thinking outside the box. This deck really looks like it could be both fun and competitive.

However, I think you're trying to be a little to cute with the Stitch in Time.

- It's a 3 mana sorcery.
- It does nothing 50% of the time.
- When you do win the flip, it's only really effective when you have you Faerie Wizard out AND have been able to significantly boost him this AND the next turn.

So while it could be gamewinning, it will be dead or quite ineffective most of the time. Depending on you metagame, I would either replace it with a Rebuild, Duress or Serum Visions.

[Cross]

How do you play around all the sideboard cards that crush this deck...say red and blue blasts which every deck runs, and swords to plowshares which every aggro-control deck runs?

It seems like having a win condition that dies to tons of stupid cards, in addition to having to attack to win seems like a bad plan.

Also, how fast is this deck? It seems like you need a bit of time to invest in ramping up your manabase to win.

[luke_twigger]

My suggestion would be Frantic Search?

[Kasuras]

When thinking of adding black to the deck, lim-dul's vault immediately came to mind.  I was thinking that it would be possible to stack the deck to chain a bunch of cantrips to pump the wee men better than just cantriping and hoping to get another cantrip.

Not sure if that helps you at all.  I like the addition of black though.

Yeah, it looks like a great setup card but the problem with it is that it is really only a setup card; as where all the other cards replace themelves and set up something, this card just looks. I'll think it over, but the fact that it doesn't replace itself seems like a major setback.

Stitch in Time

Yeah, I'm not too sure about it yet: I was testing 4 of them and went down to 1 eventually. I guess I'm going to replace it with Frantic Search to see how that one works out for me.

How do you play around all the sideboard cards that crush this deck...say red and blue blasts which every deck runs, and swords to plowshares which every aggro-control deck runs?

It seems like having a win condition that dies to tons of stupid cards, in addition to having to attack to win seems like a bad plan.

Also, how fast is this deck? It seems like you need a bit of time to invest in ramping up your manabase to win.

GAT just won waterbury, not to mention that this card actually dies to not as much removal as you say. Sure: REB, BEB and STP hit it. But Lava Dart, Fire/Ice, Darkblast and bounce don't hit it, or at least not as hard as DSC or Akroma.

This deck often wins turn 4:

-Turn 1: set up the win and find the Dragonauts.
-Turn 2: play Dragonauts.
-Turn 3: Swing!
-Turn 4: Swing.. lofor a t.

Ancestral Recall --> Merchant Scroll --> Gush --> 2x Lava Dart, just an example where I deal 14 damage with just 4 mana. Also: how is attacking to win stupid when a lot of decks in the format tries to achieve the same? DSC, Akroma, Welders: you name it.

[Kasuras]

1) The 4 Sleight of Hands got replaced with 4 Dark Confidant. I needed more drawing, Sleight generally sucks, I needed a strong turn 2 drop and Confidant will hopefully help me against staxx and control. He is also synergistic with the deck because he attacks for 2 (=a card) and draws an extra card (=a card), making him a 2 for 1 the turn after you drop him. This makes me more vulnerable to Chalice, but that doesn't weigh up against the advantages of Confidant over Sleight. Now to make up an alteration to the Confidant art, because it currently is really bad.. :<

2) Frantic Search looks good on paper, but is a win more card in practice which is actually not that good at winning more. I'm going back to the Stitch in Time for now but that slot is most likely to change in the near future.

3) I want this thing with the deck's vulnerability to hate settled and I don't think my previous explanation was enough. So, a list of hate cards commonly found:

-Echoing Truth
-Lava Dart
-Darkblast
-Red Elemental Blast
-Blue Elemental Blast
-Pyroclasm
-Pithing Needle
-Tormod's Crypt
-Duress
-Pyrite Spellbomb
-Swords to Plowshares

And the creatures with the number of hatecards they are vulnerable to:

-Akroma, Angel of Wrath: 2
-Darksteel Colossus + Tinker: 4
-Psychatog: 5-6
-Goblin Welder: 7
-Wee Dragonauts: 3

Goblin Welder in particular dies to about every single hate card out there, does that stop people from playing it?

4) I've been advised via other media that this deck could really use some graveyard removal, I've been thinking about that and believe they're right. Whether that will be in the mainboard or sideboard I do not know yet, but I think they're going in the sideboard. Options are:

-Cremate
-Coffin Purge
-Tormod's Crypt

Or a combination of those. They all have their merits, but I'm leaning towards a 3 Purge, 2 Crypt configuration.

[[supa_t(im)]]

Why not furnace for graveyard hate?  The deck likes to draw cards, and at the very worst, furnance can replace itself.

With the addition of Bob LDV becomes much less good.  The way I was playing it was to have a cantrip in hand, then play vault, then cantrip into more cantrips.  Which turned out to be very mana intensive, and didn't always work (sometimes, even going through a lot of the top 5 cards you didn't get more than 2 other cantrips).  So vault didn't work anyway.

I could actually see top being good in the deck.  It helps stack the deck for cantriping chains, and helps a lot with deck manipulation.

[Kasuras]

Final list:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
5 Island

1 Psychatog
3 Wee Dragonauts
4 Dark Confidant

1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Merchant Scroll
2 Echoing Truth
1 Misdirection
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Fire/Ice
2 Lava Dart
3 Duress
4 Brainstorm
1 Gush
4 Force of Will
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Black Lotus
1 Time Walk
1 Cunning Wish

1 Echoing Truth
1 Intuition
1 Fling
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Coffin Purge
3 Rack and Ruin
1 Darkblast
3 Pithing Needle

I feel the mainboard is the right one right now. Sideboard could use some tweaking, no idea how though. It's been a month since I last tested this list or something, so I know I felt it was the right list at the time but it's been a little too long for me to explain all the card choices.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[Harlequin]

Cofin purge is really hot, esp with your wee men.  but you also might just take a peak at Ebony Charm.  Clearly not as much wee pumping but its 3 cards for 1 mana, or a 2 life split, OR you can get your wee men right past Akroma / Razia tag-team and go straight for the win.
I cant check from work, but I think its an instant.  If its not, then just ignore the fact that I said anything.

I got looked it up, EBAY for the win!