The real Dragon power;)

[the boogie man]

@1, the dragon player with the witness kill can just timewalk into infinity and beat with the little green s|_|_|..... er, cleric, thing

[UR]

Lol, I'd rather use a dragon for that but I guess it doesn't matter. I run an Ambassador as a backup to the Witness, so this problem only comes up against Chalice Oath (Gaea's Blessing... I used to love that card).

[stichadou]

The number of counter on chalice depends of your versions. Fort mine the best one is at 3, because you can't play intuition, necromancy in upkeep and stop 3 kill cards (necromancy).

I think stax player have to think about the next other turns. Turn 1, chalice at 0 is the best trick because stax can lock you quicker than you can win (sometimes). MOre, stax can play chalice at 0 + an other card.

After the turn 1, chalice at 1 is pretty good. Stopping stifle, vampiric, chains of vapors is very good. But chalice at one is more interessant after to play 2 other chalices at 2 and at 3.

Stax player can't know what kill cards you have in hand, so he has to play a chalice at the number of mana you can have.

I think verus 5c, the chalice is better at 2 and versus u/b, the chalice should be better at 3, but more difficult to play, of course.

[Wudil]

I think you're right about chalices but you should not play CotV for 1 after a CotV for 2 has resolved, right? 

[Disburden]

stichadou,

With Life from the Loam coming out, have you tried this card at all. I am rather sad inside that this thread has died out. I have been playing a BUG list recently over 5C and I put a single Loam in the Md. I have found it to be useful in a lot of Intuition piles.

Just curious.

[nataz]

I'm curious to see some people's list with LFTL in it, both 5 color and three color versions.
Anyone willing to share an entire decklist?

[meatloaf161]

I agree someone post a list with Life From The Loam

We don't need multiple posts asking for decklists. - Dante

[Disburden]

I'm curious to see some people's list with LFTL in it, both 5 color and three color versions.
Anyone willing to share an entire decklist?

If you want my decklist I will PM it to you, it doesn't run Loam as a main engine, nor is the list revolved around the green card. I can say here it is BUG colored though. When I asked prior about Loam in this thread I was not working for a revealing of a list, I was simply trying to get the Dragon thread moving again, which I really should've done with more effort and theory into the deck. I apologize for the lack of content in my previous post. Not many people have mentioned Loam in a serious extent or the elimination of force of will, which some people seem to think is a good idea. Dragon is a deck that hasn't changed much through a lot of innovation recently, and I think it's possible to evolve the deck more than people try to do. I was excited this thread exhisted, and I am glad it was created.

[Elinor]

Hi, I am Daniele Gualco and i play dragon.deck since one year in italy.
Italian Metagame consist of Fishes,Wu-tangs, Prison monobrown, Gifts.dec,Dragons,Atogs and fewer 5c-stax.

I have chosen to play three color dragon ( UBr version ), especially because of his mana base ( playing with up to three basic lands is cool ).

I play red for two sideboard's cards: reb and gorilla shaman.
My list misses P9s (unluckily for me, i play sanctioned t1 tourneys here ). On the other hand, I continuously test online with p9:


2 island
1 swamp
4 polluted delta
1 Flooded Strand
3 underground sea
1 volcanic island
1 badland
1 mox jet
1 mox ruby
1 mox saphire
1 mox emerald
1 black lotus
1 mana crypt
3 bazaar of bagdad
3 worldgorger dragon
1 ambassador laquatus(vs blessing i win with deep how the rules of most italian judge)
3 squee, globlin nabob
2 necromancy
3 dance of the dead
4 duress
4 Force of will
4 careful study
2 deep analysis
3 intuition
1 entomb
1 demonic tutor
3 stifle
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk

There are 58 card, 2 free slots are awaiting for:
-4° dragon, to increase the initial hands of 7 cards with this strong sequence: Land, careful and discard dragon.
-4° bazaar. I don't play this becouse there ara a lot of Pithing Needles all around here .
-Read the runes, Flash of Insight or 4°Intuition, for win with only dragon in the graveyard without Bazaar
-4° squee, but i hate them a lot because they are useless by themselves when sitting down in my hand. If play 4th squee, bazaar#4 is a must.
-chain of vapor,
-2° finischer(hellkite,kumano,silver queen,caller of the claw), but in the past, I didn't need a Bouncer in the Main Deck( tormod, seal,planar and another hate are frequent side card) and the second finisher is excessive when i can loop.
- vampiric tutor or LDvault, but i don't wish card disadvantage, i like playing 4° intuition.

I prefer play with 4° dragon and 4°intuition.
I don't play compulsion becouse for me careful+intuition is a good alternative to bazaar, and it is most fast.


My Sideboard for the Italian Metagame is:
3 red elemental blast: the best sideboard card.
2 tormod's cript: versus mirror, gifts, atog
2 gorilla shaman: versus needle, tormod, chalice, gifts,atog
1 necromanzia: side in versus random, planar void,prison.
2 chain of vapor or e.e., i prefer chain becous most fast
1 massacre: versus wu-tang or ww
1 darkblast: versus fish.deck
1 hurkyll's recall: versus prison. I don't fear of chalice at 2, but i fear of sphere of resistance.
2 verdant force: No Sundering titan, because versus gifts i have: 3 reb,2 tormod,2 gorilla. I need a strong card versus prison and fish.deck. Verdant is the card i search.

Life from the loam after my test is a card very slow for a dragon, i prefer red card in the sideboard, only 5c version can test one copy of this card(but i don't like).

Excuse me for my bad english,
Daniele Gualco

[UR]

My testing has also shown LftL to be a little too slow for Dragon. A friend of mine calls this 'win more cards' and I think he is right. It doesn't really add to the core strategy of the deck but rather makes Intuition look sexier because now it is able to provide long-term cardadvantage. Well, here is news for you... you don't want long-term cardadvantage. If the game goes long, you are most likely losing anyway because the deck isn't designed to play long games. This 'engine' may pull you through at times, but in all I think it is worth it.

-4° bazaar. I don't play this becouse there ara a lot of Pithing Needles all around here .

To me that hardly sounds like a reason not to play the fourth bazaar, but it sounds like a reason to start whacking needles.

And can you tell me what a Wu-tang is? Because I doubt Old Dirty Bastard is hanging out in Italy owning the Vintage scene...

[FallenOmnipotent]

If the game goes long, you are most likely losing anyway because the deck isn't designed to play long games.

I disagree.  Dragon is played for it's inevitability.  It has many outs and plays around most things.  Past 3rd turn, one usually does not attempt to go off without being able to back it up (with the exception of when one is forced to b/c he and/or she is about to lose).  This is fairly easy to accomplish though for Bazaars + Squees are fairly efficient.

[UR]

Every long game you play is a 50/50 shot at best. There are just so many cards that will prevent you from being effective in the long game that it is best to seek to avoid it. Like I said, the deck isn't designed to do it.

That doesn't mean that it is completely without any chances late game... the combo is one that forces the opponent to keep in mind that it could be over at any time (after all, you could draw a Necromancy) and force him to make sure that it won't be.

But as the game drags on the chances of seeing;

Mana Drain
Crucible + Strip
Blood Moon (Mountains and a white mox... good times)
Goblin Sharpshooter (seriously, if you go long --> kill this guy somehow)
Humility
Cunning Wish
Mindslaver (i.e. you die)
etc.
etc.

...become much greater and your answers to cards that are in play are only limited (often just one bounce card) and if your opponent is smart, he will put them in play because he knows your answers are very limited.

What is more, your opponent's strategy may start coming together while you are trying to play around problem X. Like I said, you have bounce and maybe a Balance depending on your build but you rely mostly on removing threats before they hit play.

There is the ‘emergency button’ (creating a mandatory loop once they become annoying and end the game in a draw) but there is the issue of using it properly. If you give your opponent too much time he will do something about it and if you play it too early you will throw away an opportunity to win. But just to be safe I like playing it early better than playing it late. Your chances of winning early are better, why not use it?

1 ambassador laquatus(vs blessing i win with deep how the rules of most italian judge)

Does this really work? I would say Deep Anal is a sorcery so you don't get to play it with the Gaea's Blessing trigger on the stack. Could somebody clarify this?

[pyr0ma5ta]

I have a question about infinite loops, and I'm not sure where exactly to put it.  The dragon thread seemed appropriate.  If I have a dragon in my yard and there exists another possible target, say, a welder in my opponent's yard, and I try to draw the game by casting necromancy, am I forced to eventually target the welder, or can I just draw the game by always selecting my dragon?  I know there are specific rules out there for infinite loops, and was wondering if people could help me out a little.

[UR]

Eventually you will have to take the Welder and play will continue.

[FallenOmnipotent]

Every long game you play is a 50/50 shot at best.

Crucible + Strip
Blood Moon (Mountains and a white mox... good times)
Goblin Sharpshooter (seriously, if you go long --> kill this guy somehow)
Humility

I still disagree  .  Dragon is packed with answers.  It's farily easy to play around everything.  I have never lost because they had 1 hate card (except blood moon).  But few people play blood moon + same with humility.  Crucible strip will beat most decks.  I comes down to drawing that sacred ground.  Goblin Sharpshooter...I'll give you that.  But instants like mana drain, FoW, cunning wish, np.  Xantid swarm takes care of most problems.  Pithing needles take care of most the rest.  There's just so many ways to win once the late game comes.  Even if you don't have to protection of all those cards listed above, you still have animate dead+ necormancy, Fow, Duress, and if all they can do is conterspell, then you can always just go animate....animate....animate ...

In the late game, I've rarly ever lost.  One of the few times I've lost is when they drew 5-6/8 SB cards against me.  If he would have drawn one less, I would have won...

[Mark_Story]

I'm pretty sure that wu-tang refers to wu-tang fish.  Jason Zheng (I think that is his name) built it and won a waterbury. It centres around fish carrying big swords and ninja.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22927.0

unfortunately it has nothing to do with ODB.

edit:took me a bit to find that link

[UR]

I still disagree

That is your perogative  . But it is more likely that they will play something that will hurt you than you drawing all the answers. Especially in game one (unless you run them all maindecked ofcourse but I've never found the room for that in Dragon) when you haven't gotten a chance to board yet. Maybe your build is drastically different, but I just don't run a lot of hate vs. permanents.

After boarding it really isn't that different. You will have answers, but they will add threats. Tormod's Crypt, Swords to Plowshares, Seal of Cleansing to name but a few. Ik now what you are going to say... you have answers against those as well but it will never be enough.

So instead of trying to answer their threats, why not try to minimize their chances of drawing them? The only sure way of doing that is making sure the game doesn't go on forever. You've only lost one game that went long... congratulations. But I have loads of games behind me that I've lost because they went on waaaaay to long and my opponent was able to establish control. So I'm kinda trying to avoid it.

[dicemanx]

I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make UR. I agree with you that it has become increasingly more difficult for WGD to survive in the mid-late game, and drawing more cards than the opponent might mean nothing because WGD is very light on answers to opposing threats. However, WGD has always been built with speed in mind, but just not to the degree where you are going "all-in" and trying to combo off within the first 3 turns. If that was the case, we would start seeing cards like the following in WGD builds:

Careful Study
Read the Runes
Dark Ritual
Buried Alive

And cards that might disappear from WGD to make room:

all Squees
most of the disruption except for 4 FoW


Now the interesting thing is that maybe such an approach could actually work, but it never did in the past after Entomb was restricted.

The point I'm trying to make is that WGD is already built with speed in mind (it always has been), but it has engines that gives it a chance well into the mid-late game. The draw engines are strongest when the *threat* of the early combo can be established, and the card drawing is what allows you to crash through eventually. For instance, setting up with Bazaar + WGD in the first 2-3 turns against Gifts might shut off their ability to Thirst or Gifts early because of the ever present threat of Necromancy backed by a possible FoW, pushing things well into the midgame where you hope to outdraw them. But its not just the draw that wins the game, its the threat and the card drawing in combination with each other. This is why its important not to neglect the mid-game, even though theoretically WGD should not be succeeding in that phase of the game solely based on its card drawing capabilities.

[UR]

I think we are trying to say the same thing. Bazaar may draw you enough cards to get you out of it but Dragon isn't built to deal with threats so your odds aren't good in the late game.

I've tried the 'all-in-combo' approach and it fails miserably. If you can't work your way around something it is hopeless to play against any competative deck. I've tried it and went 2-4 (or something) every time.

[MaxxMatt]

1 ambassador laquatus(vs blessing i win with deep how the rules of most italian judge)

Does this really work? I would say Deep Anal is a sorcery so you don't get to play it with the Gaea's Blessing trigger on the stack. Could somebody clarify this?

It isn't simple, but it is intuitive.
Try to follow the logic here.

Blessing would re-shuffle the grave into the deck anytime it triggers from deck to grave.
On the other hand, you could repeat the loop with the Bazaar/WGD/Ambassador infinite times, so you could argue that, in a theoretic game, you would be able to force the Blessing to trigger infinite times.
Statistically speaking, you would draw into that Blessing infinite times and anytime, you would have a different amount of cards in the deck.
If you are following my logic, freezing the game in static photo, if the Dragon's opponent could not interfere at any level with the loop, the Dragon player, can use all the tools at his disposal to optimize that nasty situation.

Always statistically speaking, because of the fact, that the Blessing would have been encountered infinite times, you can argue that, at some time, it would be EXACTLY the last one, in the bottom of the deck.
This is possible ONLY because the opponent is hopeless, ONLY because you have infinite mana and ONLY because you can target the opponent INFINITE TIMES with the Ambassador.

If you followed the logic until here, it would be intuitive now to see HOW a single Deep Analysis could force the opponent to draw the Blessing AND THEN to give the victory to the Dragon player, because he forced the opponent to draw cards when his grimoire is empty.

At now, this gaming situation have been described, accepted and coerently ruled by our best Judges, here in Italy ( lvl 2, 3 and, since not too much weeks, 4).
It wouldn't be difficult to analyze that the game situation that I described, is coerent and well suited to possible game situation involving people all around the world. I don't know why this solution, didn't come out in other countries, but there are a lot of judges that would agree with it, especially because his rational and polite value.


Maxx

[Hi-Val]

Matt, that rationale only seems to work when you have truly infinite mana to work with. That means being able to start the Dragon loop over and over again, which to me means that you need Witness to consistently recur animates. Dragon only allows you to create an arbitrarily large amount of mana, not an infinite one; the probability increases with the amount of mana you have to pump into Ambassador, but with a finite source, it would be erroneous to conclude that, even with arbitrarily huge amounts of mana, one could make Blessing be on the bottom.

[dicemanx]

Matt, that rationale only seems to work when you have truly infinite mana to work with. That means being able to start the Dragon loop over and over again, which to me means that you need Witness to consistently recur animates. Dragon only allows you to create an arbitrarily large amount of mana, not an infinite one; the probability increases with the amount of mana you have to pump into Ambassador, but with a finite source, it would be erroneous to conclude that, even with arbitrarily huge amounts of mana, one could make Blessing be on the bottom.

I agree with this, but what's the other option: to let the WGD player repeatedly go through the iterations (essentially extending the tournament to an indefinite length) to see if Blessing is the last card? If you don't allow that, there is absolutely no good reason why - this is not stalling, because you are working towards a specific goal and there is the prospect of progress being made.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Matt, that rationale only seems to work when you have truly infinite mana to work with. That means being able to start the Dragon loop over and over again, which to me means that you need Witness to consistently recur animates. Dragon only allows you to create an arbitrarily large amount of mana, not an infinite one; the probability increases with the amount of mana you have to pump into Ambassador, but with a finite source, it would be erroneous to conclude that, even with arbitrarily huge amounts of mana, one could make Blessing be on the bottom.

I agree with this, but what's the other option: to let the WGD player repeatedly go through the iterations (essentially extending the tournament to an indefinite length) to see if Blessing is the last card? If you don't allow that, there is absolutely no good reason why - this is not stalling, because you are working towards a specific goal and there is the prospect of progress being made.

There was a thread in the rules forum about this scenario:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=20067.0

It doesn't seem that a satisfactory solution was reached, however.  I don't believe the dragon player should be able to just win, though, because as has been said, an arbitrarily high number simply results in very high probability, but never 100% that the blessing will actually be the last card.  Maybe it could be decided by deciding on an amount of mana and attempts for the dragon player then calculating the probability of sucess and using some random probability model method to check for sucess, ie dice or random number generation to see if 99.99999 % or 0.00001% wins out.

[dicemanx]

A satisfactory solution is impossible, and either ruling is flawed. Either:

1. Rule that 99.999...% = 100%
2. Rule that repeated iterations is stalling and not allowed


There are additional problems here though. For ruling #2, exactly how many iterations would be allowed? For example, if you are playing against Oath and their lone Blessing, you might have to make repeated attempts to mill them and try to snag a Razia or Spirit of the Night if you happen to have a second animate in hand. This actually has happened before.

For ruling #1, here's a possible weird wrinkle. Suppose that your opponent has an Ancestral Recall in hand, AND you can only mill him down to two cards in the library before attempting to use Deep Analysis. Now the problem is that you had to float an arbitrarily large amount of mana to use Laquatus, but after resolving the DA you still have to pass the turn. Normally you would have to mill yourself, but for how much? You could rule that you would mill all the cards away (no other choice it seems), but now the ruling is based on two non-100% events occuring 100%.

[Elinor]

I play with only 3 bazaar because now with carefull the good start is, island-study-discard WGD. Early game i win with study.  Bazaar for me is a very strong card to play at 3° turn, it help for a middle and late game. I hate see two bazaar in my start hand when i play only three squee. Obvius if i see bazaar in early game i can win with the good hand^_^
bazaar#4 is a good choice with squee#4 but i choice 3xbazaar and play 4xcarefull for early game because the presence of nedlee in my mate. I choice to play 3xsquee because i hate topdeck(or see in start hand) squee or another usless card(WGD,winner,animate). I have search to reduce this probability.


Why do you play without 3x or 4x carefull study?I love this card,faster then compulsion and with intuition is a strong winner to close turn#2. With squee is a good card for draw in the middle game. In the late game compulsion is better ok.
I don't see carefull in the list out of italy..

How play a match versus gifts(or atog) without red and shaman? Side in null rod/chalice/sundering/tormod/coffin? is this sufficient for win the second game? I side in reb, shaman and tormod, side 6-7 card. I side out 1-2 mana(basic land), 1 WGD,2-3 blue card and 1 fow. I would see how you confront this match up.(in italy there are very few player of WGD now )

In my meta i don't meet ubazaar or pentastax..how do you play versus this deck? is null rod  in the side for this match up?

Thanks to all,
Daniele Gualco, a little italian player of WGD^_^

[dicemanx]

Careful Study was a popular choice about 2-3 years ago prior to the restriction of Entomb, but even back then I'd question its inclusion in WGD. Careful Study, as you indicate, is primarily for the early game, but for it to allow you to combo off you need 3 other cards, turning it into a *4 card combo* (Study + WGD + Animate + Intuition/kill condition).

I think the card could work in a hybrid build that combines reanimator and WGD (or even better, Cerebral Assassin and WGD)- for instance, cards like Sundering Titan, Verdant Force or WGD kill conditions such as Hellkite and Sliver Queen would complement the card nicely. Alternately, To make the combo more tenable you could increase the number of instant speed win conditions and start dipping into cards like Cunning Wish, Entomb, and Read the Runes. This might or might not work at all, but its not a bad idea to re-examine such things periodically to make sure we haven't missed anything that might be strong in the current meta.

Since the primary issue here is Pithing Needle, Careful Study as an alternate discard routheas some stiff competition from two other cards: Thirst for knowledge and Read the Runes. Both have fairly obvious advantages and drawbacks:

Thirst for Knowledge can make the deck a little top heavy in terms of mana (upping the 3cc spell count beyond Necromancy and Intuition), but is the best "draw spell" out of the three choices as it can actually net a card in the process. It becomes stronger when using artifact creatures as reanimation targets (Titans and possibly Memnarch even), which themselves could be further complemented by Welders - in other words pushing the deck more towards a CA hybrid.

Read the Runes is card disadvantage like Careful Study, but it has some distinct advantages over Study: For one thing, it can be used as part of the 4 card combo, since having RtR + Animate + WGD in the yard (via another RtR or Intuition or Bazaar that has been destroyed) means you win if undisrupted. Secondly, you decide how much you want to draw, and if you want to sacrifice permanents instead of discarding. This could matter if you're mana heavy, or if you cast RtR in response to getting a land wasted or if your Moxes are about to get shut off with Null Rod etc.

Now I'm not suggesting that any of these cards deserve automatic inclusion in the deck. But one things for sure, if you do experiment with them, you must incorporate as many synergistic effects as you can for optimal results. That is, you don't just shove them into existing WGD builds (whether BU, BUG, or 5C) in place of a Bazaar and some Compulsions or whatever else would get taken out and expect instant results.

Who knows, if the draws are improved by TfKs and if DAs are stronger with Bazaar or Intuition, then maybe its time to get rid of Squees completely. As amazing as the Squee Bazaar draw engine has been over the last two years, perhaps the combination of Wasteland *and* Needle, combined with the fact that most control decks have a very fast combo option,  is slowly starting to make that draw engine too slow and clunky. As crazy as it sounds, the deck's primary dirsuption could even be pushed to Null Rod and/or CotV over FoW/Duress/Xantids if the plan is to attack mana bases with Titans and possibly Welders. There are so many possible synergies that deserve exploration - we haven't even begun tapping into the possibilities.
 

[Lunar]

Ive been working on Cerebral Assasin since it was first released way back when and have tested out much of what you just mentioned peter.

Careful Study has prooved less effective in the CA shell than some number of Thirst for Knowledge, this is primarily due to Welder issues and needing card advantage as often as possible (as youve pointed out) Certainly Thirst does up the mana count for CA but in CA we arent using Necromancy (at least ive never seen it used as more than a 1 of ((from a top 8 list I ran last spring at Eudemonia)) so the mana isnt hurt quite so bad as it would with all 3.

Ive been running Entomb as an option for quite sometime...its pretty hot in CA primarily for its mana cost...CA has long suffered from a weak mana base and Entomb (along with some other interesting options) has eased the curve a bit.

Read the Runes has never been something ive looked to due to CA's weaker mana and sometimes low permanent count...I could see it working but the deck would need to be somewhat heavily reworked IMO to fit it...

I know your comment isnt aimed directly at CA, but cutting squee out of CA would mean that your Possessed Portal lock is signifigantly weakend, but ive run CA with a lot of success w/ portal in the SB anyways...

I have been running Deep Analysis for a bit in CA as well, and with Loam now making some appearances in my CA lists DA becomes an even better option as a bit of card advantage...

Null Rod isnt something I had previously considered with Assasin simply due to the deck really really wanting to use its own artifact mana, and triskelion being a popular tinker target....Perhaps in Dragon though it could be pretty solid. CotV has been used often in CA sideboards though, and while I dont really like the card there, it has some good uses against storm combo which CA is somewhat weak against.

I am not 100% sure how work on CA can be adapted into Dragon builds...Ive slowly worked away from dragon like deck choices over the past year in CA, and while the deck still looks very much like an odd dragon deck it doesnt work or feel the same at all. I would love more people to get interested in CA again though, nobody but myself has done anything openly with the deck for so long...The deck does work, and maybe a more dragon like build of CA is what needs to happen to get things working again. (well it never stopped working for me, I still top 8 with it and even win from time to time out here with it even to this day, heh)

Thanks dicemanx for mentioning titans and welders again for bazaar decks, heh.

[UR]

The problem with careful study is that you will need all of your win-condition in your hand (with bazaar you can 'mill' yourself when comboing). The advantage of going around Pithing Needle does not outweigh this point imo. It will make your deck at least a turn slower, trying to get everything in the right place.

To avoid Pithing Needle I've included a single Compulsion in my deck as well as the necessary bounce. This prevents you from auto-losing to the needle (I'm not running Sliver Queen so trying to beat my opponent with an Eternal Witness and/or an Ambassador doesn't really seem like a strong back up plan). I don't like ending games in a draw until the Needle doesn't show up. There are too many things that can go wrong with dragon because everybody knows what to do against the deck... playing more games is sometimes necessary, but if I can avoid it, I will.

As crazy as it sounds, the deck's primary dirsuption could even be pushed to Null Rod and/or CotV over FoW/Duress/Xantids if the plan is to attack mana bases with Titans and possibly Welders.

As crazy as it sounds, I've been thinking about this for a while now.

You are playing the standard 8 mana artifacts but otherwise you aren't bothered by either card. I'm already running Null Rod in the sideboard to counter any Tormod's Crypts/Phyrexian Furnace and it has been pretty good to me so far. Even Chalice for one isn't a disaster on your side, but can be on the other side. This would make it a sideboard card, but why not?

I still have a hard time accepting these cards over Xantid Swarm because it is one of those cards that screams; "COUNTER ME OR DIE!". Null Rod doesn't do that, neither does Chalice. So that is why I haven't seriously tried it yet.

[Elinor]

Hi, last sunday I played WGD.deck unpowered. I have tested WGD UB, following your advice.
There were 55 player.
My list:
3 island
3 swamp
4 polluted delta
4 undeground sea
1 sol ring
1 mana crypt
1 lotus petal
1 ancient tomb
4 bazaar
4 squee
4 WGD
1 laquatus
3 dance of the dead
2 necromancy
4 duress
4 fow
2 stifle
3 intuition
2 deep analysis
3 careful study
1 entomb
1 demonic tutor
1 lim dul's vault
1 compulsion
1 read the runes
1 flash of insight
Side:
3 null rod
2 coffin purge
1 sundering titan
1 verdant force
3 e.e.
1 chain of vapor
2 hurkyll
1 cabal therapy
1 necroplasm (test, before I used darkblast or massacre)

First turn I had a bye, because I was second in the classific of the Liguria (my region) League (this tournament was the final).
I won versus Fish monoU powered thanks to a sixth basic land (my opponent sided back to basic). He played Rootwater Thief, but I saved my laquatus with intuition. 2-0
I won versus 2Land Belcher, thanks to null rod and cabal therapy (I lost game #1). That match was the most difficult.
I won versus welder mud 2-0 thanks to the aforementioned sixth basic land. Very easy match.
ID in the two last matches.
I won versus oath powered in the top8 without any problem. e.e. saved me from two ground seals and one oath during the second game ^_^ 2-0
I lost versus gifts, 1-2, my main mistake was in game#2 with duress (and too much haste to animate sundering titan). During game#3 I lost because I played the wrong lands, and I ended not having the black mana needed for cabal therapy (I drew it during the last useful turn, I didn't think it could have saved me).

I think this deck is very strong. In italy I won a tournament with WDG(http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=24276.0) and I have achieved good results among the unpowered decks. This one was the first tournament where I played WGD UB, and I quite liked this deck.

I plan to tweak the side a bit:

2 null rod
2 coffin purge
2 gorilla shaman/reb(which one is better, in your opinion?)
1 volcanic island
1 sundering titan
1 verdant force(or sundering#2)
2 hurkyll
1 chain of vapor
3 e.e.

but there is the risk to side too much against gifts. Is Red necessary? I lost vs gifts only due to a mistake I made.
I also like cabal as a fifth duress#5. Gorilla Shaman is very strong (mox,tormod and needle), but WGD is a combo. I think Reb is definitely a better red card to side.

The Maindeck is optimal for an unpowered player ^_^
Carefull study is good draw card without bazaar(I have not ancestrall, deep are to risk misdi and drain. I have 6 card for win with WGD in the graveyard. I don't like a chain or another bouncer maindeck and I have not never need a second finisher(laquatus is the best one).

Daniele Gualco

[Quality_Bear]

Read the runes, caller of the claw, careful study, and sliver queen are all bad bad bad. I have no idea what the guy who started this thread was talking about by saying 5c dragon has too many weaknesses, and is the fastest. In my extensive testing i've found ub to be the fastest, and 5c to be the most well rounded and have the least number of weaknesses. I don't run lim-dul's vault anymore, but if you're going to use it I would say 1-2 is the correct number. I run a pernicious deed in my sb, but it's rarely ever done me any good, and remains one of few cards I question in my build. It's power is incredible yes, but it costs 3 mana to cast, and then you have to actually activate it. When playing Dragon you would hope to of won the game no later than turn 3.

Also I strongly advise people to say away from Fow.

1) It requires blue mana
2) You often pitch something you need
3) Duress works much better

Sliver Queen/Caller/Witness are all susceptible to creature hate, and queen/caller don't even win you the game on the turn you go off.

//NAME: Dragon Combo
        3 Glimmervoid
        3 City of Brass
        4 Gemstone Mine
        4 Forbidden Orchard
        4 Bazaar of Baghdad
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Diamond
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Shivan Hellkite
        1 Ambassador Laquatus
        1 Entomb
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Balance
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        2 Compulsion
        2 Necromancy
        2 Xantid Swarm
        3 Worldgorger Dragon
        3 Intuition
        3 Buried Alive
        3 Dance of the Dead
        3 Animate Dead
        4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
SB:  1 Pithing Needle
SB:  1 Pernicious Deed
SB:  2 Sacred Ground
SB:  2 Swords to Plowshares
SB:  2 Ray of Revelation
SB:  2 Duress
SB:  2 Xantid Swarm
SB:  3 Shattering Spree