Psycho Dragon

[cssamerican]

I was going to put this is casual, but it really isn't casual to most, so I am posting it here.

I have played your standard GOOD Dragon decks for a long time now; however, I have always enjoyed toying with the suicidal or radical side of Dragon decks. While I know the suicidal versions are not the best way for a dragon deck to be built, I sometimes find them the most exciting to play, especially when playing with friends. I guess it’s sort a like the all-in move in Texas Hold’em, if it works you double-up if it doesn’t you are gone. This is my current list:

Psycho Dragon, by cssamerican
 
Creatures 
1   Eternal Witness
4   Shivan Hellkite   
3   Squee, Goblin Nabob   
4   Worldgorger Dragon   

Spells 
4   Buried Alive   
4   Dark Ritual   
1   Demonic Consultation   
3   Spoils of the Vault   

Enchantments 
4   Animate Dead   
4   Dance of the Dead   
4   Necromancy   

Artifacts 
1   Black Lotus   
1   Chrome Mox   
1   Lotus Petal   
1   Mana Crypt   
1   Mox Jet   
1   Mox Ruby   

Lands 
4   Badlands   
4   Bazaar of Baghdad   
4   Bloodstained Mire   
4   Polluted Delta   
2   Swamp

So here are the obligatory comments about my list.

Duress: It’s for pussies! The whole concept of my design is run twelve animate effects if you get caught drop a couple more lands and try again. It just takes up too much time to try to protect the combo if your trying to go off on turns one or two.

Squee, Goblin Nabob: I tried running it without this guy because I am not exactly playing for the long game, but after you get caught a couple times it sure is nice to have a couple of these in graveyard when you rip that Bazaar off your library.

Shivan Hellkite: Using this as a four of for the win condition allows you at times just to discard him via Bazaar and animate him up to beat some face. Simple and straight forward.

Eternal Witness: This lets you go off without having a permanent red mana source. This happens frequently when you get a Black Lotus Bazaar hand. You just run the loop until you get a The Mox Ruby or Chrome Mox in hand then stop the loop play the red mana source, then start the loop back up and go for the kill.

Sideboard: Well, I just play this deck casually so I don't really have a board per se. I would probably run some Engineered Explosives to fight Ground Seal and maybe Powder Kegs to fight Tormod's Crypt. Verdant Force would be a good card to give the decks some added beatdown potential, but that is about all I have ever used.

Like I said the deck probably isn’t going to win a bunch of tournaments, it’s a little too suicidal for that; however, the deck is a blast to play if you enjoy hardcore combo decks. Not to mention, it like a bajilion times easier to play than something like Meandeck Tendrils. So, you can have all the thrills of turn one or two wins without the headaches associated with trying to figure out how to cast 10 spells in one turn.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, just keep in mind the concept, fast and straightfoward. Also, if you have any radical, fast combo decks that are just too suicidal for tournament play I would love to see them. 

[doylehancock]

meandeck tendrils might be something you want to look at.

[jackpot]

You should probably have an Entomb in your deck. It's restricted for a reason ,and this deck is one of them! Also, how do you win besides the fatties? You get infinite mana from animating the Worldgorger and that's it? How about a Drain life? Stroke of genius? Fireball for old times sake?

[Rico Suave]

You should probably have an Entomb in your deck. It's restricted for a reason ,and this deck is one of them! Also, how do you win besides the fatties? You get infinite mana from animating the Worldgorger and that's it? How about a Drain life? Stroke of genius? Fireball for old times sake?

Actually, Entomb was restricted before Dragon decks discovered Bazaar of Baghdad.

The deck wins by getting "infinite" mana via Dragon and then animating Shivan Hellkite to dump all the mana into direct damage to their dome.  This much has been mentioned in the original post where the name Shivan Hellkite is bolded.

[jackpot]

Oh wait a sec. You can just play out a Shivan Hellkite with all that red mana anyways, right? I stand corrected. This IS a good idea! Having an entomb in the deck could only help...

[Slay]

There is no reason why 4 Hellkites should be in here. Either you use Buried Alive to drop Dragons into your yard, in which case you only need one, or you use Bazaar, which means you can just shoot through your deck to find a Hellkite. 1 is all you need, unless you switch to an Intuition build, in which case you need 2. Cut three Hellkites, put in a Squee, an Entomb, and a Vampiric Tutor.
-Slay

[Rico Suave]

I disagree.  Sometimes you just can't find Dragon, and sometimes you really, really don't want to go off with Dragon, and sometimes you have more animate spells than you know what to do with.  Having 4 Hellkite means you can dump Dragon and Hellkite, go off, and not care about Wasteland on Bazaar since you don't need it to find your win condition. 

[Shock Wave]

I've pretty much toyed with as many configurations of Dragon as anyone out there, and I've played something very similiar to this at one point. Seeing as how control is the most difficult matchup, this build may be well suited for the current metagame. With removal running at an all-time low, perhaps it's best to move back towards the Gencon 2002 builds. I had a field day at those events simply because I was casting Animates with almost reckless abandon, and trust me, when you're able to do that, you'll be surprised at how many games you end up winning. You can be your own worst enemy with this deck in the sense that often, you'll pass up an opportunity because you're afraid of removal or bounce when in fact your opponent is totally vulnerable.

[cssamerican]

Shockwave: Yeah, even playing around with friends it is suprising how many times they just have no answer in their hands. It would be funny if a deck like this did win a major tournament, but I think it would need a bit of luck to avoid UW Fish or some variant of Keeper. However, if you thought those type of control decks wouldn't be in high numbers I could see you just raping the entire field with a deck like this.

The nice thing about running 4 Hellkites is against a deck like UW Fish. If you beat down for a couple of turns and then they plow your hellkite that probably means they don't have another Plow or bounce spell in hand, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed you to beat down for two turns and burn two of their men up. So, then you could probably just animate up the Dragon and win right there. Against my friends I have cast Necromancy targeting Worldgorger Dragon in response to the Hellkite getting plowed countless times. This means, odds are they blew their one removal spell on the Hellkite and watched it fizzle while you generate your needed mana, only to see you bring back the Hellkite and throw 20 to the dome. So basically what I am saying is the Hellkite is great bait for removal, because in most cases they have to remove it. All this on top of the fact, it is the best kill condition for Dragon, period.