WGDX - 3 t8s at SCGP9 Rochester

[Hi-Val]

Am I missing something completely or do you actually need 2 Animates to go off with Scrivner? You have to get the Dragon loop going with him in play, which seems to imply that you usually have to animate him. The necessity of needing another Animate or enough Animates in your deck to Intuition for them makes me think that Witness is actually absurdly better, especially because with Witness, you can do all sorts of other tricks too.

I also prefer Vamp over DT in my list, but that's a choice based on what I was running. I'd rather give up a draw and have a turn 1 play than tap out to get something and not lose a draw. The advantage of being able to Vamp for that Lotus or Bazaar on turn 1 instead of DTing for it on turn 2 is clutch.

[dicemanx]

Am I missing something completely or do you actually need 2 Animates to go off with Scrivner? You have to get the Dragon loop going with him in play, which seems to imply that you usually have to animate him. The necessity of needing another Animate or enough Animates in your deck to Intuition for them makes me think that Witness is actually absurdly better, especially because with Witness, you can do all sorts of other tricks too.

You don't need a second animate if you still have 1 of the 2 Cunning Wishes left in the deck/graveyard. Animate WGD, float a billion blue mana, Bazaar into Scrivener, shift animate onto Scrivener to get Wish, Wish for Stroke. The downside is that U mana is required, which Witness doesn't depend on. The other downside is that Scrivener doesn't work if you burn both Wishes.

I must say though, that I typically went off without the need for Bazaar in most of the games. I did, however, require Witness specifically in about 2-3 games, where Scrivener wouldn't cut it.

I also prefer Vamp over DT in my list, but that's a choice based on what I was running. I'd rather give up a draw and have a turn 1 play than tap out to get something and not lose a draw. The advantage of being able to Vamp for that Lotus or Bazaar on turn 1 instead of DTing for it on turn 2 is clutch.

I prefer running both at this time, although in previous versions I ran VT or DT almost interchangeably. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and its hard to say exactly which is superior.

[Hi-Val]

Ah, having not played with Wishes in forever, I forgot that : )

And to note, I do feel that DT is better than Seal, even though Seal is a mana cheaper. I can't fully explain it other than to say that sorcery speed, I'd rather pay one more and have it in hand. VT is fine because it lets me react to immediate changes in gamestate and get the card I need at that point to go off. If that makes sense.

[Imsomniac101]

and given that my pre-emptive question to the head judge about Laquatus versus Blessing before the event confirmed that they would *not* allow me to do library stacking, I dumped the Ambassador in favor of Eternal Witness.

I wish that there would be an official ruling on this.

The downside to Witness is that it’s not blue, and that there are some situations where Witness will not work as a kill card – for instance, you cannot combo off with a Witness and Worldgorger Dragon in the graveyard if you burned a Read the runes to put them there or if your Bazaar got Wastelanded.

I'm confused. Can't you animate the Dragon, pool enough blue and black mana, then bring back Witness targetting Read the Runes; play RtR for as many cards as you need (ie whole library), sac witness and any other superflous permanents, discarding anything you don't need, keeping an animate spell + protection. Then proceed to get infinite mana and kill.

[Moxlotus]

I have a question that is probably newbish--but do you actually need the cunning wishes?  Can't you just Ancestral Recall them to death?  Wasn't that the thing for a while in Dragon?  This would free up space in the maindeck--or are the Wishes actually good to have?  Note, I have not played this deck so I'm just asking.

[dicemanx]

I have a question that is probably newbish--but do you actually need the cunning wishes?  Can't you just Ancestral Recall them to death?  Wasn't that the thing for a while in Dragon?  This would free up space in the maindeck--or are the Wishes actually good to have?  Note, I have not played this deck so I'm just asking.

The Wishes are required for non-Bazaar kills, and to also have access to SB cards (disruption, bounce, and card drawing).

I'm confused. Can't you animate the Dragon, pool enough blue and black mana, then bring back Witness targetting Read the Runes; play RtR for as many cards as you need (ie whole library), sac witness and any other superflous permanents, discarding anything you don't need, keeping an animate spell + protection. Then proceed to get infinite mana and kill.

That was my bad. You can still combo off the RtR, just not if the U source is cut off.

[MichaelPower]

EDIT - Welcome to TMD!  We do have a PM function for sending messages to one player, please use it!
Dante

[Lydonius]

Congratulations for your performance and for the fine tuning of the deck.
I have just one question : You said that the field was less filled with Wastelands than on the previous P9 Tourneys, but what about Workshop Decks?
The higher count of instant-speed win cards was helpful in the Dragon/Prison Deck matchup ?

[Purple Hat]

the dragon vs prison matchup is insanely strong....they need to prevent you from EVER resolving a single 2 CC spell.  Prison can be nasty in the late game, but in the early and mid game you're so strong that they probably can't make it to the late game without doing something like turn 1 3sphere, turn 2 crucible/strip or land smokestack on the play, but barring the early game hard lock dragon can win just on the strength of only needing to play 1 spell to win, and being able to easily win the game by playing 1 spell each turn for the first 4 or 5 turns and then generating infinite mana.

[dicemanx]

The curioust thing is that we had a collectively miserable showing against Stax. I know that Noah and Scott both succumbed to ICBM's Stax versions day 2 (against Jeremy and Tommy respectively), and I barely drew my match against Ray Robillard. Theoretically we should have the upper hand, but sometimes Stax will get the right combination of cards in the early game making you a spectator. Here are the bizarro things that happened against Ray:

Game 1: Ray mulls and he only gets 1 relevant mana source: Barbarian Ring. I only see an Underground and Bazaar, which both get wasted. After about 10+ turns, we *both* don't see anything in terms of relevant mana, but he was actually able to cast an early Shaman and a later Welder. They go ALL the way. Wow.

Game 2, I find myself in the same predicament - I only see 1 land within about 10 turns, which is wasted, and a couple of Moxes. Ray proceeds to have a mana explosion, but even with an active Divining Top, he produces very few relevant business spells. I FoW his Shaman and he manages to resolve Welder, Top, CotV for 2 (not so good anymore vs WGD) and Tangle Wire over many turns, along with the annoying Rule of Law. I topdeck a Lotus, and end up having to cast Necromancy on WGD. Ray thinks we're drawing, but I point out that he still has Shaman in the yard. That's OK though, my plan was to generate enough mana, switch to Shaman, and eat his entire board minus the Rule of Law. I still have a Necromancy in hand, but decide to use it to draw instead of playing this dangerous top-decking game. I still had bounce and removal for that Rule of Law, but it was too risky with only 3 mana sources total in play and a Welder on his side of the board.

Game 3 was yet ANOTHER weird game for both of us, as he had an artifact intensive draw and so did I, but I blew everything up with Pernicious Deed, mana screwing us both severely (he also burned a Waste on my land, so we were down to 1 mana each). I couldn't believe that it was happening for the third time for me, twice for Ray! I eventually drew into a Lotus, and with my solitary Swamp was able to combo off while holding Necromancy and Demonic Tutor with a WGD in my grave and a Shaman in his. I used the Swamp and Lotus to cast Necromancy floating U, generated 1 billion black mana before switching to the Shaman, Tutored for Read the Runes, then cast RtR for my entire library and kept the relevant spells while sacrificing the rest.

We ran out of time for game 4 - time was called as we were shuffling.

That draw put me at 4-0-2 - not great, but marginally better than a loss. I proceded to get paired with Zach sporting a UGW Madness deck, which I won in 2 despite my opponent having ridiculous SB cards against me.   

[TK]

i was also surprised to see how well stax was doing against dragon. When i used to play dragon a lot it was in the day of for trinis and stax being everywhere and i still loved plating against stax.

I think one of the reasons me and jeremy had success against dragon was that we both have been testing dragon a lot over the past few months. Also a sideboards were prepaired with some hate for dragon.

game one against scott i hadnt known what he was playing but he led off with lotus land into deep analysis. i already knew that game i would lose just by looking at my hand. Games 2 and 3 are stax decks were mutch better prepaired bringing in 2 crypts, 2 ray of revelation, and one jesters cap.

Like i always say anytime you have played a deck for a long time it seems to become infanately easier to play against it. Thats the same reason i did so well against stax with the ss.

I really do love the new build you guys came up with though

[UR]

Congrats on the finish! I always like seeing Dragon do well...

The dredge mechanic does surprisingly little for WGD, even though I agree that it seems like they were "made" for each other. Perhaps Darkblast has some SB merit, but I generally dislike parity cards and there are few creatures that I want to kill.

I'll save you some time in testing... Darkblast is yank. I've tried it in tournaments on several ocasions and they didn't help me half as much as most disruption cards. Like somebody already mentioned, creatures usually aren't what you should be worried about (although Waterfront Bouncer can be irritating*).

*Tip: Abeyance.

I have a question about your sideboard. There are three Null Rods in there... against what exactly? Tormod's Crypt seems to have been replaced with Leylines and they don't really improve matches enough to suffer shutting down your moxen. Am I missing something?

and given that my pre-emptive question to the head judge about Laquatus versus Blessing before the event confirmed that they would *not* allow me to do library stacking, I dumped the Ambassador in favor of Eternal Witness.

I wish that there would be an official ruling on this.

There is, if you are playing Ancestral Recall. Gaea's Blessing Reads;

When Gaea’s Blessing is put into your graveyard from your library, shuffle your graveyard into your library.

That means it is a triggered effect. Once Blessing goes on the stack, you can just hit them with an Ancestral Recall and they die.

[dicemanx]

I have a question about your sideboard. There are three Null Rods in there... against what exactly? Tormod's Crypt seems to have been replaced with Leylines and they don't really improve matches enough to suffer shutting down your moxen. Am I missing something?

After day 1 I wasn't happy with the Null Rods. We put them in the SB against two things: Grimlong, and against Crypts (which I wasn't sure would be replaced by Leyline - we had a lot of players use Leylines at the event, but it seems like the card is inferior to Crypt in my opinion). Noah I believe used them to good effect against CS as well, while I stopped SBing them in vs CS after losing to Rich Shay. You might also ask Scott about his experiences with the card, because I think he favors them as well. I can see how they could be good, although whenever I ran Rods it was always primarily to stop the faster combo decks. Note also that we switched to CotV for day 2.

There is, if you are playing Ancestral Recall. Gaea's Blessing Reads;

That's not the ruling in question though. If you have Recall in hand, then there's no problem. The problem arises when you must go off with a Bazaar and lose your entire hand in the process. If Laquatus lets you stack the library, then you can win with Deep Analysis.

[Scott_Limoges]

After day 1 I wasn't happy with the Null Rods. We put them in the SB against two things: Grimlong, and against Crypts (which I wasn't sure would be replaced by Leyline - we had a lot of players use Leylines at the event, but it seems like the card is inferior to Crypt in my opinion). Noah I believe used them to good effect against CS as well, while I stopped SBing them in vs CS after losing to Rich Shay. You might also ask Scott about his experiences with the card, because I think he favors them as well. I can see how they could be good, although whenever I ran Rods it was always primarily to stop the faster combo decks. Note also that we switched to CotV for day 2.

I prefer null rod to chalice in my particular build (which may be obselete) because of Careful Study.  CS relies less on moxen compared to RTR (which null rod shuts down), digs faster and makes discarding a dragon easier.  This becomes important if a tormod's crypt is in play and needs to be stopped to combo off quickly (which is becoming increasingly important due to the speed of the format).  The liability of Null Rod against Grim Long is also reduced due to the increased comboing speed Careful Study adds to dragon, giving WGD another egde against Long.  Null Rod is certainly a metagame card and its inclusion depends on the build of WGD.

[dicemanx]

Speaking of SB cards, I'm curious Scott how you found the Xantids. I actually refrained from SBing them in against a few control/aggro-control decks for two reasons:

1) Many were anticipating the Xantid plan by the time day 2 rolled around and brought in X/1 removal post SB.

2) The control decks were packing bombs that needed to be stopped, and it just made SBing so difficult in the process. I didn't like removing FoWs for Xantids, and other spells already had to make way for some bounce against the permanent based hate that would get sided in against me. The QF match vs Ugo exemplified this: since he was using Blood Moons I didn't want to bring in Xantids, and he happened to actually SB in Lava Darts as well. 

I have a pretty small sample size to work with here, so I'm wondering about your experiences with the Swarms at this event. If I could cut them I could start entertaining notions of the Null Rod/CotV plan vs the fast combo decks - Grimlong specifically.

[AngryPheldagrif]

A question on the Oath matchup: Generally you will win game 1 pretty easily, so sideboarding is pretty important. Do you bring in Xantid Swarms for counters? Also, are Echoing Truth/Explosives/Chalice brought in or do you prefer not to mess with Dragon's natural advantage?

Congrats on your victories and such.

[dicemanx]

A question on the Oath matchup: Generally you will win game 1 pretty easily, so sideboarding is pretty important. Do you bring in Xantid Swarms for counters? Also, are Echoing Truth/Explosives/Chalice brought in or do you prefer not to mess with Dragon's natural advantage?

Congrats on your victories and such.

I think against Jeremy (playing ICBM Oath day 1) I brought in only the bounce spells - I didn't have Explosives/Deed day 1, or I would consider those as well. Xantid might be OK, but I don't want to get knocked out by either a quick Oath/Crypt combination or have CotV for 1 be meaningful. I think I'd stick to 3 bounce spells game 2, and modify my SBing strategy based on what I'd see for game 3. But yeah, I have to focus on being the beatdown deck in this matchup and try to exploit the fact that Oath will have some "dead" early game cards (the oath and creatures) by not diluting the combo kill.

[Sean Ryan]

Does anyone have any matchup analysis against SS?  I've been two fisting the matchup and it seems bad for Dragon unless it gets the nutz.

Thoughts on the matchup?  Maybe TK and Dicemax can offer their skillz.

Thanks
Sean

[UR]

There is, if you are playing Ancestral Recall. Gaea's Blessing Reads;

That's not the ruling in question though. If you have Recall in hand, then there's no problem. The problem arises when you must go off with a Bazaar and lose your entire hand in the process. If Laquatus lets you stack the library, then you can win with Deep Analysis.

Okay, I've just asked this question over on another site where I know a lot of high-level judges come. Richard (level 3 judge) gave me the following answer (sorry if anything is lost in translation);

The problem in this situation is the 'INFINITE MANA'.
What do you mean infinite?
In Magic: the Gathering there is no such thing as infinite.
You will need to chose a number or have a way to restart your mana engine once you are running low on mana.

In the first situation it is statistically possible that the desired outcome will not occur.
- In these cases you CAN'T advance the game to the desired state.

In the second situation you will eventually get the desired result. It would probably take a very long time but there is no doubt that you would eventually get there.
- You guessed it; in these cases you CAN advance the game to the desired state.

DISCLAIMER: Unfortunately my vision isn't a guideline for this situation. It is possible that another judge chooses to interpret rule Nr. 421 differently.

I've asked if it would be possible to get a DCI ruling on this from the level 5s but there hasn't been a response yet. Should they give a response, I'll keep you updated.

[Moxlotus]

The biggest problem when saying you have a ton of mana so you should be able to stack your opponent's deck using the laquatus kill is the mana burn that you may or may not be taking.

[dicemanx]

The biggest problem when saying you have a ton of mana so you should be able to stack your opponent's deck using the laquatus kill is the mana burn that you may or may not be taking.

You never manaburn with this deck provided you have U mana available and at least one DA (and enough life). Upon stacking your opponent's deck, you use the remaining mana to mill yourself and win on the spot with Deep Analysis.

I've asked if it would be possible to get a DCI ruling on this from the level 5s but there hasn't been a response yet. Should they give a response, I'll keep you updated.

There's also a thread on this subject in the rules forum. As I understand it, there is no clear ruling on this situation, and each judge makes his own arbitrary ruling for the time being. They should just make a decision either way and stick to it.

Does anyone have any matchup analysis against SS?  I've been two fisting the matchup and it seems bad for Dragon unless it gets the nutz.

My sample size is a rather paltry 1 match (against Ian, 2-0, but that tells us very little). Ian claims a significant edge against WGD, and I have no reason to doubt him. Even theoretically SS looks like quite the nightmare matchup because the pressure cards directly feed into the disruption/hate. It might be possible to swing the matchup to WGDs favor through EE/Pernicious Deeds - one of the reasons why we added them for day 2 - but this requires testing.

[UR]

Unless there is 100% certainty of an occurrence you cannot shortcut --
even if given infinite time you would have near 100% probability.
Shortcut is, I will do something X-times resulting in [foo]. X cannot
equal infinity and [foo] must be 100% certain to occur.

If a player chooses to repeat the action attempting to get the result
they wish, they are not advancing the game-state and should be warned
that their actions may be considered stalling should they continue.

A player is obligated to advance the gamestate whenever possible.

This comes from Jaap, a level 5 judge. He said this the current DCI policy and this is as official as it will get.

Source: http://www.kvdeckmasters.nl/Forum/index.php?topic=7273.msg121528;topicseen#msg121528

[cssamerican]

If I were a judge (Which I am not) I would rule against shortcutting the stacking DA kill. Games are timed and that time is an integral part of the match, this kill could take a considerable amount of time to accomplish. However, I think I would allow someone to physically attempt to do it by actually playing it out. Some people might consider that a stall tactic, but I see little difference between that and a Stax deck getting a hard lock and burning up 30 min of the match to kill the opponent. If the opponent doesn’t want to risk a long drawn out game that could end in a loss or at the very least a draw they have the ability to scoop and go to the next game. That is the same option you have versus any other deck that has you beat but could go to time before it could win (UBAStax is a good example of this).

[b-tings]

I find it very strange that milling your opponent repeatedly looking for the desired stacking of their deck could be considered stalling. It seems fairly obvious that putting three cards in your opponent's graveyard, and using up three mana in your mana pool, is advancing the game state. If the order of the library is relevant, which it is with blessing, milling their library into their graveyard over and over in an attempt to reset blessing as the bottom card would be an attempt to advance the game state.

[dicemanx]

Odd or not, the ruling either way is arbitrary, but the bottom line is that at least something more official has been put forth that we can actually follow and accept. I guess that Witness becomes the prime choice as a kill card in the deck then.

[cssamerican]

Dicemanx, did you or your teammates ever consider Abeyance instead of Xantid Swarm? You lose the ability to animate your disruption, which I realize could be a pretty big thing; however, you gain a bigger catchall piece of disruption that can be used to prevent your opponent from winning. It might also gain you some benefits in improper sideboarding from you opponents in those match-ups where it is likely they would be bring in Darkbast or Lava Darts as a way to combat your expected Xantids. I suppose the wishable factor could come up every now and then, though i admit that isn't very likely.

Do you feel that one actual plain isn't enough to support Abeyance? In other words, is there any deck that runs Wastelands in which Xantid Swarms is a key component in your strategy for victory in games two and three? Or do you feel that Abeyance is just inferior to Xantid Swarm for what you want to use it for?

[The Atog Lord]

First, this is a great list. I won the 4xworkshop with a slightly modified list.

My one matchloss all day was against Travis playing Stax. Choke and Null Rod and Needle and Tanglewire were too much for me. So, maybe there is something to this issue of Stax being strong against this build of Dragon.

As for the maindeck, my change was to cut the Entomb for Timewalk. I have a difficult time not playing Timewalk in any deck that resonabley can, as it is at worst a free cantrip. It also accelerates the beatdown plan should it come to that, and it is good for playing around control decks.

Now, onto the sideboard. Xantid Swarm was quite strong. I also had a Tinker in the board as a secondary win condition. This worked pretty well, since it dodges hate and catches people off guard. And although it didn't come up, the fact that their Leyline prevents them from Welding out the creature you Tinker for is nice too. Or maybe I just don't want to stop playing with Tinker.

My concern, however, is the Dragon deck's answer to hate. Tormod's Crypt isn't stopped by Null Rod or Pithing Needle, since your opponent can just wait until the Null Rod or Needle flickers out and then get you. Null Rod only stops people from Crypting you when they forget how Dragon works, and I'd certainly want something better than that.

Peter and Scott, I'd be interested in how you play around Crypt.

[Revvik]

Round 2:
???, (sorry!) IntuitionAK/Tendrils W2-1

I feel slightly better knowing that I was the only one who could take a game from you in the swiss 

[UR]

My concern, however, is the Dragon deck's answer to hate. Tormod's Crypt isn't stopped by Null Rod or Pithing Needle, since your opponent can just wait until the Null Rod or Needle flickers out and then get you. Null Rod only stops people from Crypting you when they forget how Dragon works, and I'd certainly want something better than that.

There are two ways of playing against a Crypt, one is good and one is bad. The first way to do it is like you said... they forget and you'll help them forget by bluffing. The problem is that it only works against people who don't know the rules as well as they should. The second way to do it is to just hit somebody with Abeyance...

[cssamerican]

My concern, however, is the Dragon deck's answer to hate. Tormod's Crypt isn't stopped by Null Rod or Pithing Needle, since your opponent can just wait until the Null Rod or Needle flickers out and then get you. Null Rod only stops people from Crypting you when they forget how Dragon works, and I'd certainly want something better than that.

Peter and Scott, I'd be interested in how you play around Crypt.

I would think they either bounce it or bait it. By baiting it I mean drop a Dragon in the grave and attempt to reanimate it. Your opponent should activate crypt in response to your attempt to animate it, then in reponse to their crypt you cast Necromancy. If for some reason they plan on just crypting your win condition when you mill it in your yard then they are pretty stupid. Because you have tutors and Read the Runes to put a Wish in your hand, if it isn't there already.