Dragon creature choices

[the boogie man]

Over the past few weeks, I have seen many decklists for dragon, and manay different choices of the creatures to reanimate. I am not too familiar with the deck, but I would like to learn more of it.

     The first thing is the number of world gorger dragons in the deck. Some have run 3, some have run 4. I know that you want to see one early enough to go off, but how many is the optimal number?

     And here is a list of all the creatures that I have seen to reanimate:

Sundering Titan
Verdant Force
Ambassador Laquatus
Eternal Witness
Caller of the Claw
Sliver Queen
Memnarch
?Plated Slagwurm?
?phantom nishoba?

     I know that you sideboard the titans and the forces, and they usually come in against control, but what else?
     
     The meat of this post comes from the desire to know which maindeck win condition is better: Laquatus vs. Eternal witness. The laquatus allows for a win on their turn, and the witness wins now, but it also involves recalling them 100,00 times, effectively them having their decks in their hands. Or you can time walk a billion times, as someone said, but I don't understand how that works.

     And in decks that run laquatus, Sliver Queen is occasionally found accompanying him, to prevent losing to gaeas blessing and in case laquatus is the last card of a deck with an odd amount of cards left. With infinite mana, you are able to create infinite 1/1 creatures, and win on the next turn, as well as be left with a rather large creature to beat with.

     Eternal witness is less straight-forward, have you have to reanimate dragon, float a bunch of mana, then recur the witness when you find her, then use that ability to return another animate spell to your hand, then play it with floating mana( which requires you to have a black source out at the time of the reanimation), then re-target the dragon, then that will recur a bunch of eternal witness effects, and then you can simply draw out their deck with recall. This also allows you to win through ank of mishra, but you will prretty much lose to pyrostatic pillar, unless you find a cunning wish or a bounce spell before you have played 7 recalls(-damage, - fetches).

     And with caller of the claw, you just allow the dragon to die a million times and then reanimte this guy, making an arbitrarilly large number of bear tokens, and this way allows you to not lose to mana burn, because you wouldn't have to float infinite mana, so you could have another chance to set up just in case they coffin purge your target after.

     Memnarch, of course is used to steal all your permanents and everyhting, making platinum angel moot.

   The reason that I put plated slagwurm down was because he seems that he would be a really good target, being untargettable and a huge body, but I don't know about being better than either of the others.

     The las creature is phantom nishoba, possibly being good against aggro control and aggrro, but are those problem matches? and it creates a huge tempo swing, at first usually it creates a 14 life swing, and if it is not blocked, doesn't lose any counters, and vintage is the format with the least creatures anyway.

     The question is, what is the uses of the creatures (if I'm mistaken or missed anything) and what is the best combination?

[Mixing Mike]

Wittness is a lot better as you can get you whole deck in your hand. and only requires one card slot to win that's not totally dead unless you're going off (like Queen, Memenarch, Laquatus, Caller)

As for Platinum Angel, I was always worried about it too.  But think about it, you can Amimate one of their Welders and then weld out their Angel and win whenever they get it out.  Now think about how many Slaver decks you'll play, then think about how often they will get Angel out.

[BigDCool247]

Eternal witness is less straight-forward, have you have to reanimate dragon, float a bunch of mana, then recur the witness when you find her, then use that ability to return another animate spell to your hand, then play it with floating mana( which requires you to have a black source out at the time of the reanimation), then re-target the dragon, then that will recur a bunch of eternal witness effects, and then you can simply draw out their deck with recall. This also allows you to win through ank of mishra, but you will prretty much lose to pyrostatic pillar, unless you find a cunning wish or a bounce spell before you have played 7 recalls(-damage, - fetches).

This is not quite accurate you would still lose with the anhk in play because your lands still return to play.  The only way to win with ankh in play is to
A.) get rid of it.
B.) win before it hits play.
C.) go reanimator on your sliver queen if you run it.
D.) Have no lands using caller of the claw.

However this is kind of a mute point because almost noone uses anhk anymore and piller should never be a problem for dragon.  If you are using eternal wittness I would rather win with highway robbers instead of trying for the infinite ancestral loop.

As dragon builds go I am fond of Spoils builds that are black green and can run very efficiently on 5 proxy.

Im not sure about side board creature plans because the can be meta game slots, some people don't even run an alternate plan in the side anymore using those slots for more utility like deed, engineered explosives, chalices, null rods and the like.



[/quote]

[Mixing Mike]

You lie, you stack the damage from Ankh and win with Necromany.

[the boogie man]

I like the idea about highway robber, but is its instant win worth inclusions over eternal witness, because with witness you can have an infinite amount of force back up?

[Purple Hat]

The witness kill is superior.  It has a useful ability when you aren't going off and can be used to go off under unfavorable conditions where as the other kill conditions cannot.  Also it doesn't have the problem that ambassador decks do where you can't win if they have a welder and an artifact in play.  Additionally witness decks can blow deed for 1x10^2000 to get rid of a platinum angel.  Caller of the claw allows you to win with a root maze or other similar effect in play which the other kills do not.  Shivan Helkite might be an option if you want to run 5 color like Dicemanxx did at Waterbury but you need a red source to win this way.  Sliver queen is good cus she pitches to force of will and is a 7/7 that makes tokens if you hard cast her in 5 color or a 6/7 if you animate dead her.

As far as the number of dragons goes you want to play at least 3, but obviously you'll see it more with 4.  The correct number depends on what the other cards you use are.

To do the infinite timewalk thing you return your deck to your hand with the witness, switch the animate targets to squees which come into play an kill eachother.  then you cast timewalk and animate the dragon again and repeat the process.  you can then win by beating down.

You bring in verdant force against stax because it gives you a huge # of tokens if you animate it.  I generally take out my xantids for them cus xantid isn't as good against stax.

Hale

[Hyperion]

There are a couple disadvantages to the Witness kill (relative to Laquatus) that haven't been mentioned yet that I thought should be brought up.

1. It's more vulnerable to graveyard hate after boarding. You pretty much need to run Time Walk if with Eternal Witness as your kill because if Ancestral Recall gets RFG from the graveyard before you go off, you'll want another way out for the combo kill. This isn't that big a deal because it's not like Time Walk is a bad card to run in Dragon anyway, but it does impose an additional design constraint and it means that the Witness kill is reliable on having access to AR or TW.

2. Unless you already have the requisite cards in your graveyard when you go off, you need access to AR or a discard outlet when you go off with Witness, whereas with Laquatus you can just mill them on the spot if it's in the graveyard. Again, not necessarily something that's hard to accomplish, but it means its going to be harder to set up sometimes.

There's also the obvious point that Laquatus gives you another FoW-pitchable card.

Plated Slagwurm seems worse than Titans/Verdants in pretty much every matchup other than Keeper or monoblue.

The only matchup where I can think of Nishoba as being decent is 5/3, since the lifegain would actually be relevant and they can't get a massive Duplicant off it.

Also it doesn't have the problem that ambassador decks do where you can't win if they have a welder and an artifact in play.

This isn't 100% true is it? As Mixing Mike noted, If you go off with Compulsion you can cycle into an animate spell and then reanimate one of their Welders, and then just Weld out Platz after that.

[the boogie man]

@ the deal with running 5 colors: I doubt that this is viable, since mana bases are strict as possible, so it may be really hard to keep a red source out. not to mention, the eternal witness win condition wins at instant speed.

     i see that with sliver queen you get a huge reanimated creature, but do you run this in concordance with ambassador/witness? and has everyone agreed on the superior main win condition?

     And does anyone have any way on the second win condition? I like to run two, because if the main win condition is the last card off a deck with an odd number of cards left. So... Would it be better if I ran two witnesses? or would a sliver queen profit more. I believe that I will run a witness over ambassador. But does caller of the claw have priority over the queen, because you can hardcast it just in case. And you don't have to have any mana floating to win, and that may supercede sliver queen in the fact that you won't die to mana burn (unless your an idiot) when you animate it.

     And does when do you side in memnarch? I know that you can swipe all their crap, but when do you actually need it?

[Phoenix]

I've seen some players splashing red and using kumano as a win condition. He can take care of platinum angel, win with an ankh on the table and at worst he can be reanimated to kill welders.

[dicemanx]

As Mixing Mike noted, If you go off with Compulsion you can cycle into an animate spell and then reanimate one of their Welders, and then just Weld out Platz after that.

If you don't use Ambassador, don't count on Animating any Welders to save you versus Platinum Angel, as there won't be any in the graveyard. You'll have to opt for the draw instead unless your win condition can deal with the Platz.

Highway Robber is absolutely terrible with Witness. Why use an awful kill condition when you can use good cards to do the job (AR, Time Walk etc).

[Hyperion]

@ the deal with running 5 colors: I doubt that this is viable, since mana bases are strict as possible, so it may be really hard to keep a red source out.

In a metagame like the last Waterbury, which had lots of Control Slaver and TPS and little Workshop decks, it can stand a chance since these decks put little to no pressure on the mana base. See dicemanx's report in the Open forum for more details.

Two big advantages of the 5-color strategy are that it can support Xantids much easier and can run superior win conditions. I've found Xantids to be tougher to support in the UBg builds because you don't have a lot of ways to get early G mana and it sometimes conflicts with the need to get B or U. And with 12+ 5-color lands the odds of having a R source when you go off are pretty good.

I don't have a lot of experience with his 5-color build yet but there are metagames where it has its advantages and should be considered.

i see that with sliver queen you get a huge reanimated creature, but do you run this in concordance with ambassador/witness? and has everyone agreed on the superior main win condition?

In conjunction with Laquatus, yes,  because in general it's beneficial to have a reanimate target that's imposing enough that your opponent needs to use their hate to deal with it, thereby (hopefully) clearing the way for the combo kill. And the nice thing about Sliver Queen is that it can serve both roles, as well as complement the Laquatus' weaknesses nicely. This is why I think Sliver Queen is better than Caller. In conjunction with Eternal Witness, I don't think you necessarily need Sliver Queen but you do want another way to win outside of the combo kill.

Witness is arguably better maindeck (as long as you have a maindeck way of dealing with Platz) but I think it's weaknesses are more apparent after boarding. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

And does when do you side in memnarch? I know that you can swipe all their crap, but when do you actually need it?

I only use it against Control Slaver and Workshop Aggro, or any other deck I suspect is running Platinum Angel.  Other than that it probably isn't worth it because its stealing ability is often too slow to be an issue when you're using it outside the combo kill.

If you don't use Ambassador, don't count on Animating any Welders to save you versus Platinum Angel, as there won't be any in the graveyard. You'll have to opt for the draw instead unless your win condition can deal with the Platz.

Right, I know - I was responding specifically to the claim that the Ambassador kill couldn't deal with Platz, not making the claim that you could always do this.

[the boogie man]

So I'm going to throw a decklist out there, and if you don't like it you can send it right back.

4 worldgorger dragon
4 squee, goblin nabob
3 xantid swarm
1 eternal witness
1 ((other win condition) Probably sliver queen, as she pitches and makes infinite creatures, and is really, really big. bad things are that she dies to both elemental blasts, and needs the mana. The reason that I included her over caller of the claw is because cotc dies to stfle. And i know that infinite mana will kill you, but a good player will remove the dragon before the animate hits, so i think it warrants more of an inclusion.)

1 time walk
1 ancestral recall
4 brainstorm
1 crop rotation
1 demonic tutor
(1 vamp tutor)
(1 mystical tutor)
(2-3 cunning wish)

1 ?pernicious deed?(allows a mickey mouse(tm) to angels)

3 animate dead
3 necromancy
2 dance of the dead

4 force of will
2 stifle

(insert mana base)
4 bazaar of baghdad

side:
2 sundering titan
2 verdent force
1 memnarch
1 xantid swarm
1 pernicious deed
1 caller of the claw(against decks with rootmaze)
(1 phantom nishoba(I don't know why I like him so much;someone talk me out of it)
1 stifle

     So I need help on the mana base. What else am I missing? Thanks a lot for your input, I really want to see whats up wit di b*otch. And with the red, Is it safe enough to run the.... red...? I like the idea of kumano(?) as a win condition, but the mana base may hurt a lot.

[BigDCool247]

I am sorry for my lack of knowlege of the stack in my earlier post.  I truely need to work on my card interaction and stack rules.

@ dicemanx, I do know that highway robber is not as good as the time walk and ancestral kills, I was suggesting it for the dragon decks that are perhaps not using blue and do not have access to those to superior win conditions in conjunction with eternal witness or should those decks avoid the use of the eternal witness win?

[Bulls on Parade]

@ dicemanx, I do know that highway robber is not as good as the time walk and ancestral kills, I was suggesting it for the dragon decks that are perhaps not using blue and do not have access to those to superior win conditions in conjunction with eternal witness or should those decks avoid the use of the eternal witness win?

If you're not using blue, it is a total waste to use Witness. If you do use it in a Spoils build, the best you can possibly do is recur Buried Alive to get Laquatus/ Sliver Queen, making it a totally wasted slot unless you really think you can hardcast it.

[gothcracker]

-here are 3 different kill conditions that i run in my dragon deck.

       1. Shivan Hellkite --> takes care of platinum angels. (i run gemstone
          mines to produce the red mana.)

       2. Aerial Caravan --> use him to  to remove your library to cast
          everything in your deck to build a storm count to cast a fatal
          tendrils

      3. Laquatus --> mills the player. use him as the back up just in
          case i dont get the right mana when i go off with the combo.

[Freelancer]

@gothcracker how do you manage to get 1232314 red mana from a gemstone mine when each time you tap it for mana you have to remove a counter from it?

[cssamerican]

@gothcracker how do you manage to get 1232314 red mana from a gemstone mine when each time you tap it for mana you have to remove a counter from it?

Because during Dragon loop if Gemstone Mine is in that loop it comes back into play with three counters every cycle during the loop. So you then have an endless supply of whatever color mana you want.

My kill configuration as of late has been Eternal Witness and Memnarch as the combo kill in conjuction with Ancestral Recall. But I also run a single Verdant Force as an additional reanimation target. This configuration has been working great for me.

[dicemanx]

-here are 3 different kill conditions that i run in my dragon deck.

       1. Shivan Hellkite --> takes care of platinum angels. (i run gemstone
          mines to produce the red mana.)

       2. Aerial Caravan --> use him to  to remove your library to cast
          everything in your deck to build a storm count to cast a fatal
          tendrils

      3. Laquatus --> mills the player. use him as the back up just in
          case i dont get the right mana when i go off with the combo.

You are devoting too many slots for your kill (4!). You should devote ONE slot to the kill, UNLESS any additional kill cards can serve in other capacities. Examples of this are AR and TW in Witness-based kills, Cunning Wishes that go along with Caravan, or fat creatures such as Sliver Queen, Hellkite, or Memnarch which are reasonable reanimate targets outside of the combo (Queen being arguably the best of the bunch, although the Hellkite is of course the principal kill card in 5C builds).


 

4 brainstorm

No. Just no.

[Rastadon]

What about Master of the Hunt? While it's not pitchable to a FoW, the Bands ability makes it more resistant to a simple Pyroclasm.

[Hyperion]

Honestly, if someone sides in Pyroclasm against Dragon they'll lose regardless of what kill you're running.

[Rastadon]

While Pyroclasm isn't THE card to use against Dragon, it certainly is a card that kills the Bear and Sliver tokens. My playgroup SUCKS. It's a bunch of really sucky rogue decks, which do use pyroclasm. So chances are they'll use it against me.

I play the Buried Alive dragon and my usual Buried choices are Dragon, Kumano, and Glory. While going off Glory gives my Dragons, Kumano, (insert other kill creature here) immunity.

[ELD]

Master Kumano is tremendous.  He can be cast realistically, unlike the similar Shivan Hellkite.  Removing the creatures from the game is also quite good.  Here are a couple examples

Killing welders and making sure they don't come back with Will.  
Pinging a creature that would normally be welded back in later ie plats, petavus, titan etc...
Pinging a dragon in the mirror match.  

Those are just off the top of my head.  Kumano is a beat stick that is an excellent animate target as well.  He gets the nod from me if you want another way of winning besides eternal witness/ancestral.  (I'll go on the record as saying I'm not sure that dragon really needs a big body to reanimate though)

[gothcracker]

the reason i run 3 different kills is just incase the remove my first graveyard from the game. so i have main deck back ups.  But im looking in play testing with the Memnarch some.

[dicemanx]

the reason i run 3 different kills is just incase the remove my first graveyard from the game. so i have main deck back ups.  But im looking in play testing with the Memnarch some.

You're running 4 slots devoted to the kill, because Caravan and Tendrils count as two. If you're worried about graveyard removal game 1 then you are playing the wrong deck in the meta. If you still choose to play Dragon regardless, then you should try to play around the removal and don't drop your win condition in the graveyard so hastily. 4 slots really is overkill.

Master Kumano is tremendous. He can be cast realistically, unlike the similar Shivan Hellkite. Removing the creatures from the game is also quite good.

In my opinion, evasion and a slightly bigger body (4/5 or 5/5 with Necromancy) outweighs the castability of Kumano. Kumano's other ability (removal of creatures from the game), could possibly be useful in theory, but I suspect it would very rarely play a factor. In fact, I cannot recall a single game to date where I wished I could remove creatures from the game while applying damage from my win condition.

(I'll go on the record as saying I'm not sure that dragon really needs a big body to reanimate though)

This is certainly true. However, the problem we have right now is that there isn't a single win condition that doesn't have some sort of inherent drawback. These drawbacks all have some level of significance too, so it's often a very good idea to match two kill conditions so that they mask each other's weaknesses. This will also increase the likelihood of winning against some rarely seen but possible scenarios such as having a win condition removed (via graveyard hate or via Extract) or having your Worldgorgers Cranially Extracted. The idea of using a "beefy" creature as one of the kill conditions isn't to merely give us a reanimate target outside of the combo - that is actually a pleasant bonus.

For those that checked out Kowal's SGC Dragon build, you might have noticed a Verdant Force in the deck. Here is the other comment I wanted to make: a big, threatening creature might be important in matches where your opponent is running targeted removal, *especially* if it is permanent-based (particularly Seal of Cleansing). Without a reanimatable creature outside of the combo, sometimes you might find yourself in a position where you must test the waters and go off without the appropriate back-up (FoW, Xantid, or multiple Animates vs Seal etc), and you'll step right into a game loss if you try animating WGD and they do have the answer.

[ELD]

In fact, I cannot recall a single game to date where I wished I could remove creatures from the game while applying damage from my win condition.

With Kumano and some mana, an opposing dragon player cannot combo off.  Casting Kumano is not a desperation play like Hellkite would be vs the mirror.  

Rector is another creature that you'd rather not hit the yard.  Another less common uses would be to counter skullcamp.  

I'm not sure what kind of meta game the people on this thread play in, but a 5/5 dragon is not really a huge a deal in type 1 in most competitive metas.  Many creature based decks have creatures with flying.  Then again, you should certainly be beating creature based decks.  I've listed several reasons that removing creatures from the game is a good thing.  These reasons are also vs combo, a match that dragon can lose.  I ask anyone out there to give me a reason that flying would matter vs a deck that dragon can lose to.

[the boogie man]

My dragon list looks like this:

4 worldgorger dragon
4 squee, goblin nabob
3 xantid swarm
1 eternal witness
1 sliver queen

4 force of will

4 animate dead
3 necromancy

1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 demonic tutor
3 intuition
3 compusion
3 lim-dul's vault

4 polluted delta
1 flooded strand
3 underground sea
3 tropical island
1 swamp
1 island
4 bazaar of baghdad

1 black lotus
1 mox saphire
1 mox jet
1 mox ruby
1 mox pearl
1 mox emerald
1 mana crypt

Side:
4 chalice of the void
3 pernicious deed
2 suncering titan
2 verdent force
3 stifle
1 memnarch

     I know that this is almost an exact list of kowal played, but I tested it and found that this is probably the best build.  I tried the other win conditions, but this is the best one I think. plus, the chalice for 1 post board is super tech. I chose sliver queen over verdent force because it pitches to force and it serves as a second infinite win condition and a real big beater. I'm calling the deck lucky dragon, cause it has 3 7/7's  in the deck total, plus a 7/10.