DragonBall, by cssamerican
I would suggest trying out variants where you are merging reanimator with WGD. For instance, instead of running 4 Hellkite and 1 Witness (the Witness is probably too weak here), you could try:
2 Hellkite
1 Sliver Queen
1 Sundering Titan
That way when you cast Buried Alive, you can get WGD, Hellkite/Queen, and Titan, and have Titan available for alternate reanimation. This might be relevant against control decks that have the removal; if they have counter-magic and something like StP, Echoing Truth or Chain of Vapor in hand, or Stp etc, they still probably cannot let the animate spell resolve.
I'd even consider trimming 1-2 Animate effects and add more creatures to make sure that the one Bazaar activation will allow you to put on the pressure right away, but maybe all 12 is the way to go. The deck also seems a tad mana heavy at 24 sources; the Chrome Mox and Petal seem especially weak too, and lose their point if you dump Witness.
Maybe the deck won't work at all, but stuff like this needs constant re-examination to see if the meta has changed enough to make it viable. For instance, you can expect FAR less instant speed removal game 1 from any archetype save Fish, which means you can probably keep hammering away with Animate spells without fear game 1.
There's also other ways to build a WGD deck that doesn't use Bazaar at all; the primer might be several years old, but it lists some interesting possibilites as not many new toys have been added to WGD's arsenal since then. For instance, consider this unbelievably rock solid mana base and the flexible instants/card drawing. It's an experimental build and its viability is still questionable, but showcases some of the radically different options for the archetype:
4 FoW
3 Duress
4 Intuition
3 TfK
3 Read the Runes
3 Deep Analysis
3 Compulsion
3 WGD
2 Necromancy
2 Dance of the Dead
2 Animate Dead
3 Cunning Wish
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Entomb
1 Black Lotus
5 Mox
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
6 Island
3 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
SB:
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Read the Runes/TfK
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
4 Null Rod
5 other meta slots
This deck can be sped up considerably by removing some of the disruption and card drawing (Compulsion for instance) and adding Ritual/Buried Alive along with one kill creature (probably Aerial Caravan to go with the Cunning Wishes).
For instance, you can alter the above list in the following manner:
+4 Buried Alive
+1 Aerial Caravan
+4 Dark Rituals
+2 Animate Dead
-3 Compulsion
-3 Duress
-3 TfK
-2 mana sources (off color Moxes for example)
Other things to consider would be things like:
Splashing G (ie converting 1-2 of the Islands to Tropical Islands) and adding Life from the Loam and 1 Bazaar, along with a Vampiric Tutor. This way you have 1 uncounterable discard option and many tutors to find it. You also shed the dependency on Bazaar compared to the current 4 Bazaar 3-4 Squee builds, which means that Wastelands and Pithing Needle are no longer that scary. Splashing green also allows for Xantids and SB Deeds.
And finally, there's a third option which I think is terribly underexplored: adding Welders, TfK, and Titans to WGD and turning it into a CA-WGD hybrid. This combination was used as a SB option by the inventor of the archetype and future proponents of CA; however, I have only seen the hybridization in the main deck on two occasions - I ran one in an event a long time ago (there's a report buried in the TMD forums somewhere), and I read about Shane Stoots running such a deck at one of the bigger US events. Here's a sample list so people have an idea what I'm talking about:
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Pithing Needle
4 Intuition
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
3 Squee
3 Goblin Welder
3 Sundering Titan (or 2 with 1 Memnarch)
3 WGD
1 Shivan Hellkite
3 Necromancy
3 Animate Dead
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Lotus
5 Mox
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Glimmerviod
Since Welder is just *so strong* these days, it might make a lot of sense to push WGD into such a hybridization. Like UbaStax, the combination of Welder and Bazaar also puts tremendous pressure on control decks, because you might only need to resolve a single Welder or Animate spell to win. This means that casting a 1st turn Welder and not having it countered could be it right there. I added the Needles more recently - when I played this deck I used other disruption since Needle wasn't in print yet.
The SB can be a standard SB, but when I ran this deck I went totally crazy and opted for something aggressive. I did this so I could circumvent the graveyard hate:
4 Illusionary Mask
3 Phyrexian Dreadnaught
3 Carpet of Flowers
2 Survival of the Fittest
3 Chalice of the Void
Masknaught can be a decent option if you don't have the patience to work around graveyard hate or instant speed removal. I added Carpets because they greatly improve the mana base against Fish, and I thought Survivals might be a good idea to add to the tutoring. This kind of SB might not be as good anymore because of the Null Rods increasing in popularity, but its just something to consider for WGD - keep your SB aggressive instead of being forced on the defensive games 2 and 3.
In any case, some options to chew on. I won't be able to devote much time to developing WGD (or play much T1 for that matter) in the coming 4-5 months, so I figured I might disclose a few of my thoughts on the archetype.
