[Article] WGDX vs Flash/Ichorid/Stax

[fury]

If you like the Redcap kill, you should just switch to Sparkmage Apprentice. It costs less, so it is easier to hardcast if you have to (unless you aren't running a 5-color manabase with Gemstone Mine or Forbidden Orchard).

I wanted to try a UB version, so I prefer the Redcap, which can be cast with black only to manage some creatures. I plan to use this kill during a next event, and I will post my results here.

As far as the Flash match-up goes, patience wins those match-ups. Only go off if you have stripped their hand in advance or in response to them trying to go off. Strategically speaking, that match-up is a ton of fun.

I totally agree. The matchup against Flash is still difficult, but with caution we may win.

[CHOZO]

Hmm, is there any combination of cards Dragon Combo can search for with Gifts Ungiven to win that or the next turn? I feel like that Gifts may be an interesting card to include, if it works..

[Purple Hat]

Hmm, is there any combination of cards Dragon Combo can search for with Gifts Ungiven to win that or the next turn? I feel like that Gifts may be an interesting card to include, if it works..

not really, it ends up being a really bad entomb or intuition.  if you get any combination of more than 2 cards including a dragon they'll put the dragon in your hand.  If you get dragon, discard, discard, animate they just put the animate in the yard and you still can't win.

[meadbert]

If you already have one of your three combo pieces then you can get:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Eternal Witness
1 Combo Piece

It is clunky and ends up taking two turns usually.

[CHOZO]

Shame it doesn't work... are there any cards that could be added to the deck to make it work?

[fury]

Gifts may help finding some combo pieces, yes. But, it's not lethal, because we need 2 conditions to win : having a WGD in the graveyard and a reanim spell in hand. If we choose a 2x2 gifts (like WGD,Entomb, reanim, reanim), the opponent will give us what we want in hand in the graveyard and vice-versa. If we choose a 3x1 gifts, we will lack one part of the combination.

By the way, what do you think about the place of WGDX in the metagame, given the new B&R list ?

(I'll post some new analyses soon here)

[Shock Wave]

I think this deck has the potential to be very strong in the new metagame. It has a very powerful draw engine and the potential for an excellent disruption package. There are excellent sideboard options, both in solutions and transformations, making it consistently threatening throughout the match. I will certainly give it some consideration in the near future.

[c dizzle]

Guys, don't be too quick to dismiss Gifts. You can fail to find four cards and choose two which will go to your graveyard (i.e. Dragon and Oona/Eternal Witness). That makes it a decent Entomb that is blue and gets two card instead of one. If you have an animate enchantment, you can get everything you need to win, even if you don't have a Bazaar. My biggest concern with Gifts is that in costs four in a deck that often has trouble getting there. It didn't test well for me (meaning that I had trouble scrounging up the mana to cast it consistently), so I discarded it, but it's not without value.

[fury]

Guys, don't be too quick to dismiss Gifts. You can fail to find four cards and choose two which will go to your graveyard (i.e. Dragon and Oona/Eternal Witness). That makes it a decent Entomb that is blue and gets two card instead of one. If you have an animate enchantment, you can get everything you need to win, even if you don't have a Bazaar. My biggest concern with Gifts is that in costs four in a deck that often has trouble getting there. It didn't test well for me (meaning that I had trouble scrounging up the mana to cast it consistently), so I discarded it, but it's not without value.

You're right. And note that you can choose only two cards with Gifts, that the opponent will put into our graveyard. So we can do a WGD/Deep Analysis pair. Or take 3 different reanimation spells.

[nineisnoone]

A card that I'm looking to explore with Dragon is Mulldrifter.  -3 Deep Analysis, -1 Read the Runes.

2U is cheaper than 3U (Deep Analysis) and while you can't flash it back for two you can reanimate it for Draw 2 and a 2/2 flying. One card less than DA, but you get the 2/2 flier.  Random beats win it sometimes. 

Plus DA is only good off a Bazaar or Intuition anyways.  You'll actually be willing to pay 2U more often than 3U.  It also works better under Leyline (though obviously not as good as without) and ignores Thorn.

Also if you reanimated it earlier (or hard cast it for that matter) and go into your WGD loop it lets you draw you're entire deck grabbing Wish->Stroke.

Edit.... OR it could kill you by drawing more than your deck.  However, drawing into Read the Runes or Wish would save you.  Hmm...

Edit... Is it possible to chain the triggers so that you can you can selectively stop returning the Mulldrifter?  Remove the enchant first, drifter dies and isn't removed (isn't returned)... Both enchants target Dragon?  That sounds right...

[fury]

Interesting card. This had to be tested, but I wonder if using a reanim spell to target mulldrifter is not a waste of time. It's better to reanimate a WGD no ?

For your question :

If you have drifter with a reanimation on it, and if you reanimate Dragon, you will remove both reanimation in the same time from the game. You have two triggers : "sacrifice Dragon" and "sacrifice drifter", but Drifter is no more in play. So you won't prevent its next come into play ability. Without a ReadThe runes or the win condition, you cannot make drifter return to the graveyard.

[nineisnoone]

Well, the two plays aren't mutually exclusive. Obviously if you have a reanimation spell in hand and WGD in your graveyard and a win condition, you reanimate WGD.  The fact is there are plenty of times that you'll have a reanimation spell (one of your seven) and those conditions won't be in play. Turning Animate Dead into draw 2 for 2 mana is better than "discard to Bazaar."  Personally, sometimes I find Deep Analysis to be clunky, it only works really well off an Intuition or with Bazaar in play. I rarely want to pay 3U to draw 2, though the flashback 1U to draw 2 is excellent. 2U to draw 2 is literally the average between the two, and it does have a "flashback" cost of 1B/2B if you draw a spare reanimation spell. Plus, given that you run at least 3x out of the combination of Read the Runes and Cunning Wish, it serves as a win condition post reanimation.  (Yeah, I see how it works now.)

Of course, you're right it does need to be tested.  I think my main concern is without DA what is the staple Intuition play (normally I'd go 3x DA for long term CA).  3x Bazaar would seem like the best replacement, but is a bit more risky.

[Harlequin]

If you have a dragon in the yard with no bazaar or other cards in hand - you can draw your deck off a single mulldrifter + necromancy (you actually don't even need the necromancy in hand if you draw it off the trigger).  Evoke, Draw Two then you can respond to the Sac trigger with instant-speed necromancy targeting dragon.  This will kick off the loop with Mull Drifter in play.  This gives you your "infinite" mana and draw and assuming you have a few read the runes left in your deck you should have no problem drawing your entire deck and winning.

Nice find.

[c dizzle]

Evoke, Draw Two then you can respond to the Sac trigger with instant-speed necromancy targeting dragon.  This will kick off the loop with Mull Drifter in play.  This gives you your "infinite" mana and draw and assuming you have a few read the runes left in your deck you should have no problem drawing your entire deck and winning.

Nice find.

Fantastic idea, but the real practical question is this: when will Dragon have six mana available? From my experience with the deck not very often, and that makes the combo just too conditional to play.

As yet another Dragon aside, we may want to look at the Bazaar-Squee engine again. Post 6-20 (a.k.a. The Death of Tempo), long-term card advantage may become relevant enough to go back to this old school engine. It also might generate enough card advantage that you can force an Extirpate from your opponent (while holding Dragon in hand) and then safely combo out after. It might be worth a second look?

[Dante]

Well, when evaluating Bazaar/Squee, look at the matchups we expect in terms of how effective Bazaar Squee will be, remembering that it takes multiple turns for Squee to pay back, compared to something like Deep Analysis.  Also remember when the original build made use of Squee, Compulsion was used as the secondary discard outlet, which also took advantage of squee.  Unless something like that comes back in, Squee is only useful with Bazaar.

- Workshop decks - packing 5 strips possibly crucible as well, means getting 2-3 uses out of a Bazaar is highly unlikely.
- Fish - see above
- Flash - you won't (or shouldn't) have time game 1 for Squee to play into anything.  Either they get you or you get them, if it turns into anything of a stall, you should win regardless.
- Slaver - Squee can could be good here.
- Combo - it used to be that the Squees were sided out against fast combo like Belcher or the Long Variants, but losing Brainstorm may slow these decks down enough to test.

I am somewhat skeptical of Squee being good enough without a secondary non-Bazaar discard outlet like Compulsion being involved.

Back in the day, Serge Metz top 8'd a bunch of Dulmens (I think it was dUlmen) with a Madness/Dragon hybrid.  With mongrel and bazaar, possibly squee might be worth it.

Dante

[nineisnoone]

Fantastic idea, but the real practical question is this: when will Dragon have six mana available? From my experience with the deck not very often, and that makes the combo just too conditional to play.

Just want to say, you don't have to do it in that manner.  Two separate animates on mull and dragon "win" the game assuming you have enough mana to Wish-Stoke them to death after drawing almost your whole deck.   And it's not like you won't see like 3-4 animates during the course of a normal game. Or Read the Runes to put Ooona into your Graveyard to stop putting Mulldrifter into play.  Plenty of ways to win.

Particularly since this list only has 3 Bazaar's I don't see Squee as an option.  I like Squee in those Duress/Thoughtseize the hell out of the opponent decks that have tons of early strong plays (8 Duress) and are mana light.  I don't see why it needs to be a 4x or nothing card though.  Space-willing, running 1 seems like good choice.  Maybe 2 if you go up to 4 Bazaars.

[dicemanx]

A card that I'm looking to explore with Dragon is Mulldrifter.

This is actually a very interesting suggestion. Thanks for proposing it!

I'm envisioning the following approach:

Cut 4 Duress and 1 DA (down to 3 DAs)
Ramp to 9 animate spells
Add 3 Mulldrifters
Add an Entomb over Cunning Wish
Swap the Witness for Oona
Add 2 Ancient Tombs for 2 other mana sources (this is a side suggestion)

The idea is to still go with the card drawing of DA, but really lower the dependency on Bazaar. The extra animates are there to hammer away at counterspells/Duresses until one punches through, or alternately use them on Mulldrifters to keep cycling through cards.

I wouldn't hesitate to ditch the Duresses if the format goes light on removal/graveyard hate. Even so there are 4 FoWs for back-up, and 4 FoWs will seem like 8 FoWs with all of the card drawing. I would simply focus on racing every deck out there by beefing up the card drawing and combo pieces and lowering the disruption counts. I must say though, this looks like the saddest combination of card drawing engines in the history of T1:

RtR + Bazaar + DA + Mulldrifter + Animate spells

I love it .

Of course, there are so many other combinations to consider at this stage, including returning to LDVs as c dizzle suggested in another thread. It should make testing the archetype quite exciting.

[nineisnoone]

A card that I'm looking to explore with Dragon is Mulldrifter.

This is actually a very interesting suggestion. Thanks for proposing it!

I'm envisioning the following approach:

Cut 4 Duress and 1 DA (down to 3 DAs)
Ramp to 9 animate spells
Add 3 Mulldrifters
Add an Entomb over Cunning Wish
Swap the Witness for Oona
Add 2 Entombs for 2 other mana sources (this is a side suggestion)

The idea is to still go with the card drawing of DA, but really lower the dependency on Bazaar. The extra animates are there to hammer away at counterspells/Duresses until one punches through, or alternately use them on Mulldrifters to keep cycling through cards.

I wouldn't hesitate to ditch the Duresses if the format goes light on removal/graveyard hate. Even so there are 4 FoWs for back-up, and 4 FoWs will seem like 8 FoWs with all of the card drawing. I would simply focus on racing every deck out there by beefing up the card drawing and combo pieces and lowering the disruption counts. I must say though, this looks like the saddest combination of card drawing engines in the history of T1:

RtR + Bazaar + DA + Mulldrifter + Animate spells

I love it .

Of course, there are so many other combinations to consider at this stage, including returning to LDVs as c dizzle suggested in another thread. It should make testing the archetype quite exciting.

Glad to contribute. 

I think Entomb is restricted.  If it wasn't, I would be running 4x of them. 

Dragon definitely has more versatility than most decks.  I'm going in a completely different direction, going away from Intuition, Force of Will, and Bazaar and going for 8 Duress, Cunning Wish, and Read the Runes.  Still working on the details.

[dicemanx]

Add 2 Entombs for 2 other mana sources

I accidentally wrote Entomb instead of Ancient Tomb. I fixed the original post.