WGDX - 3 t8s at SCGP9 Rochester

[dicemanx]

To start things off, here’s the decklist:

WGDX

4 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Eternal Witness
3 Necromancy
3 Animate Dead
1 Dance of the Dead

4 Bazaar of Baghdad

4 Intuition
3 Read the Runes
2 Cunning Wish
3 Deep Analysis

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric tutor
1 Entomb

4 Force of Will
3 Duress

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp

SB day 1

1 Stroke of Genius
1 Misdirection
1 Read the Runes
2 Echoing truth
1 Rebuild
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island
3 Null rod
2 Sundering titan


Changes for day 2:

-1 Cunning Wish
-1 Island

+1 Sundering Titan
+1 Tropical Island

SB:

1 Stroke of Genius
2 Echoing truth
1 Repeal
4 Xantid Swarm
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Sundering Titan

History:

I had stayed away from WGD for the past year, shifting primarily to Gifts, because I felt that WGD could not be competitive in light of the clunky maindeck cards that had high dependencies on other cards to work effectively, and also because of the power of Pithing Needle that could almost single-handedly shut down the archetype. Getting a single activation off a Bazaar and having it Wastelanded is one thing, but not even getting a single activation was back-breaking. The alternate discard route of Compulsion, and the draw engine of Squee and Bazaar were just too slow, especially since control decks upgraded to combo-control and could conceivably out combo and outrace WGD itself, so there seemed little reason to pursue the archetype. Some TMD threads arose periodically in the past year and I echoed these comments there, suggesting that perhaps it was time to lose the Squees entirely and focus on the more explosive card drawing from Deep Analyses. I never followed through on those suggestions, mainly because of my interest in GiftsX which brought me so much success, and because I was actually working on two Time vault based decks for Rochester.

But then, two things happened that set the wheels in motion for this build finding its way to both Rochester events: Time Vault was neutered, but more importantly, I received a PM from Scott Limoges who indicated to me that he was already generating a lot of success with a Squeeless WGD build that used the power of Careful Study to make WGD much faster and less dependent on Bazaar. After some further discussion with Scott, and having this great verification that Squee-Bazaar was not indispensable, I decided to give WGD another examination. I got excited by the idea that Read the Runes might be a powerful option if Careful Study was already proving its value in Scott’s deck. I felt that while Scott’s use of Careful Sudies made for faster goldfishes, Read the runes gave more powerful mid game options:

1. Instead of limiting the drawing to 2 and discarding 2, you could generate significantly larger card drawing.

2. The instant speed of Read the Runes made for better end of turn plays and let it function as a bait spell.

3. The Read the Runes could be used as a win condition if Bazaar couldn’t be relied upon. Careful Study could of course not do this, and it’s also the reason why something like TfK wasn’t selected as an alternate discard option. The fact that you can go off with some combination of Animate on WGD and Intuition/Read the Runes/Cunning Wish/Entomb made the deck much more resilient to Bazaar hate, Pithing Needle included.

4. The ability to sacrifice permanents instead of discarding made Read the Runes much more flexible and powerful. There is actually a subtlety to previous WGD builds that was sometime missed by less experienced WGD pilots  - the deck rarely wants to put more than 2 mana on the table, because cards always have to be held in reserve in hand to potentially pitch to Bazaar. This iteration, however, wants to build the mana base and not hold anything back (to make for bigger Read the Runes, to cast Deep Analyses without having to discard them for maximum card advantage, to set up multiple Animate spells per turn etc) and yet it can still operate on very few mana sources. This method of play is now synergistic with Read the Runes, which can eat those superfluous mana sources in play instead of discarding. This was a major selling point of the card.

I’m not quite sure if Read the Runes is superior to Careful Study to this day (we never got a chance to test Careful Study extensively), but I just intuitively felt that a slight increase in goldfish speed was trumped by the flexibility and mid-game strength of Read the Runes. The results seemed to confirm this, but perhaps Scott’s initial version might be better suited to specific metas, as he’s been really tearing it up in the Colorado meta.

Apart from the Read the Runes (and the win conditions), the deck is very similar to Scott’s version – it uses a more solid two color mana base, and focuses on flexible disruption that can function both pro-actively and reactively. That is, you can either push through your threats or stop your opponent’s. Xantid Swarm is a powerful choice, but it’s better to place it in the SB, because game 1 you’re unlikely to face serious hate cards and you can easily overpower countermagic. Scott was successful running a Tropical Island in the SB along with Xantids, and we mimicked that plan. Here are the explanations of the remainder of the deck:

4 Intuitions – 4 are an absolute must, because this card is the heart and soul of the archetype. As a tutor for almost any card in the deck, it can double as a combo piece, as disruption, or form part of the draw engine. I find myself tutoring for a wide variety of things, although the most frequent pile is WGD and 2 DA even if I don’t have a discard effect in hand.

3 Deep Analysis – This card is incredible in this iteration of WGD. It’s far more explosive than using Squee, and is actually more useful outside of Bazaar which Squee so desperately relies on. The trick with Deep Analysis is to milk it for as much card advantage as you can which sometimes means that it shouldn’t be discarded to Bazaar or Read the Runes if it can be hardcast instead. Deep Analysis also raises the blue card count, making FoW much more effective as a reactive disruption component.

2 Cunning Wish – Aside from a creature kill card (which is imperative to allow for Bazaar driven kills), the best kill condition is definitely Cunning Wish. Although it eats up a SB slot in Stroke of Genius, Cunning Wish has very important flexibility, because it can fetch card drawing, disruption (Misdirection) and most importantly, bounce spells for maindeck hate cards like Crypts or Leylines. We actually ended up cutting one Cunning Wish in favor of another kill condition – Sundering Titan – because we felt that the hate count day 2 of Rochester might go up, and Titan is a good bait card in the graveyard for the seven animate spells. I wouldn’t hesitate, however, to continue with the 2 Wish plan.

1 Eternal Witness – There is no ideal kill condition, as every one of them has some weakness. My primary choice was Ambassador Laquatus, but given that the threat of ICBM Oath was looming over this event, 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. 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. There was another weakness that exposed itself this past week-end – Laquatus is superior against decks packing Rule of Law/Arcane Lab. I faced two such decks, and while I don’t fear those cards (I can always draw the game with them in play), Laquatus could have turned those draws into wins. Despite this, Witness would still be my number 1 kill card of choice at this time.

1 Entomb – I personally dislike this card, and would probably not run it were it not for some convincing from Noah Long (my teammate for this event). Entomb can be a really weak spell in situations where you’re fighting to break parity and generate some advantage or where your opponent has disruption holding off your combo, but it does give the deck monstrous early game potential and improves goldfish speed. I think it’s a must game 1 in retrospect, and I also feel it should be SBed out game 2 unless the opposing deck is a faster combo deck like Grimlong.

7 Animate Spells – This is Rich Mattiuzzo’s influence. He is very right when claiming that you want to try to maximize the number of animate spells game 1 so that you can win wars of attrition against countermagic or simply locate an animate spell in time. The redundancy of this combo piece needs to be as high as it can, although I think that 7 is the upper limit. This is another combo piece that makes less sense to run in this quantity post SB where you will likely be *unable* to bait with Animates due to the hate, and indeed I always SBed out at least 1 after every game 1.

The mana base is mostly self explanatory, except for my inclusion of the very powerful Mana Vault. Vault is a huge card in this build due to Read the Runes and Deep Analysis, and also for its ability to generate mana explosiveness against CotVs for 0.

The SB:

The SB uses a combination of instants to feed the Cunning Wishes, Xantids to bring in strong weapons against instant speed hate and countermagic, and Null Rods as a way to stop Tormod’s Crypt and fast combo such as Grimlong. 2 Titans also present possibilities of attacking the mana bases of decks like Gifts in combination with Nul Rod, but truth be told the SB wasn’t effectively tested for this event.  It was evident that the Xantids were quite good, further confirmed by Scott’s feedback about his experiences with them, but the strength or necessity of everything else wasn’t so easy to establish. We opted for the more flexible CotVs day 2 in case we wanted to be setting them for 1 against certain decks, and we also added Explosives and Deed to hedge against scary archetypes like the Rodless Fish decks that were floating around that were armed to the teeth with WGD “incidental” hate. The Sullivan Solution was a perfect example of such a deck that we feared. While I still cannot say what the optimal SB is, I can say that the most relevant cards are the two Echoing truths and the Xantids. The rest might or might not have any impact, especially in light of the fact that you should not be SBing so heavily with this deck in fear of diluting your main strength – goldfish speed. A lot of times I SBed in the minimum – 2 Echoing Truths – because I had little idea what crazy things a given deck was bringing in against me. I would normally wait until game three to “fine tune” the SBing, were it not for the fact that I 2-0’ed so many times.


Some notes on playing the deck:

This deck is fairly straightforward to play, and as a result it can be an excellent choice for a combo deck in a long event in order to win matches quickly and get some much needed rest. However, it doesn’t mean that precision isn’t required – as with any deck, even 1 seemingly small error can be very costly, and WGD can be extremely unforgiving if you miss your windows of opportunity. To illustrate, here are some points about playing the archetype:

1. This deck doesn’t just "lose to hate" – that is a misconception. In fact, this Rochester event had the highest concentration of WGD incidental hate cards both in the main deck and in the SB compared to any event I have played in previously with this archetype. And yet, despite the hate, I actually had an easier time both days. The reason for this is two-fold:

a) People oversideboard and dilute their game plans. Hate cards stop the combo, but if you are not applying pressure and developing your game plan, WGD card just focus on drawing cards, accumulating its disruption, and eventually going off. For example, in my mid-game against Bomberman, I was facing 2 Phyrexian Furnaces and a Tormod’s Crypt in play, with 2 Swords to Plowshares, an Abeyance, and a 2x FoW in hand. However, my opponent was relatively helpless, because he couldn’t stop my card drawing and eventual overwhelming disruption. People keep forgetting that it’s not about how many disruption cards you run in your deck, its how many you actually see it the course of a game, and whether they are of higher importance than focusing on your deck’s game plan instead and bring in minimal disruption. In fact, of the few matches that I lost, I lost to mimimal hate that stalled me and backed the decks’ primary strategy.

b) People make bad mulliganing decisions because they buy into the notion that WGD supposedly keels over to any form of hate. You can actually keep some mediocre hands game 2, because people are so tempted to mull down to meek opening starts like Mox, Crypt, go. I caught a few people in both Rochster events simply because they opted to start with a powerful disruptive hand that only impacted my ability to win, but not my ability to develop my mana base and draw cards. This is equivalent to using Stifles to deal with Grimlong - they might stop the actual kill, but they don’t actually do much to hinder Grimlong’s development.  And since this version of WGD uses so few conditional cards, it actually made this sort of plan even less potent (and is a testament to this deck’s inherent strength). 

2. Xantids are not always automatic, even against counterspell based archetypes. For example, I had to face two Blood Moon CS decks, and Xantids would be a mistake. My fetchlands could not be wasted in getting a Tropical, since a basic Island was top priority and a second fetch would have to get a Swamp. Furthermore, some started to anticipate the addition of Xantids and SBed in Darkblasts or Lava Darts. Lastly, bringing in Xantids usually meant the removal of other disruption components – FoWs specifically (it doesn’t make much sense to bring in Xantids to ensure that you combo off quickly and then remove combo pieces for them). However, SBing out FoWs leaves you with diminished defensive capabilities, which means that it isn’t necessarily the best choice against decks that use counterspells but are also very fast in terms of their primary strategies.

3. This deck shouldn’t aggressively Bazaar if it doesn’t have to. Along the same lines, I’ve reduced the number of card disadvantage tutors like Lim Dul’d Vault to the bare minimum (Vampiric Tutor). The deck now focuses on building a hand with the aid of Deep Analysis (often hardcast instead of discarded) and the conversion of permanents in play to cards in hand with Read the Runes. Instead of tutoring for its needs, the deck wants to draw into them by brute force without whittling down its hand.

4. Making proper mulliganing decisions and bluffing is essential to maintain the paranoia and have your opponent think you have the quick combo potential. So long as there’s a WGD in the yard, the opponent is more than likely to suspect that you have an animate in hand and attempt to play around it (and perhaps even try to counterbluff you into thinking that he has solutions). You can for instance draw a card then check your graveyard to “see” if a WGD is there. However, the actual reason for mentioning this is that you actually DON’T have to mulligan aggressively, and should often be content with an average hand, especially post SB and if your opponent knows what you’re playing. This is because you want to be exploiting the often overly aggressive, paranoia-induced mulliganing (or lack of mulliganing when fanning open a slow but disruption heavy hand in the opening seven) by your opponent.
 
5. Against an opponent who is not aware of what you’re piloting, its often advisable to not reveal telling WGD combo pieces, even if there is a cost in doing so. For instance, I’ve won games with WGD in the past where I didn’t discard WGDs into the grave even though I had an opportunity to do so, or didn’t play Bazaar as the opening play even though it would be apparently advantageous to do so.  For example, one of my Fish opponents that played a Wretch but tapped out on turn 3 because he only saw an Island, Lotus, Mox Sapphire, and Duress from my side, allowing me to suddenly reveal my combo pieces and win on my turn. 

So there you have it. This deck was tested by three individuals apart from myself: Jeremy (ICBM’s The spooky kid), Noah Long (my teammate for the Rochester event) and Jason Chau (who likewise would have piloted the deck if he could come with us to the event). Noah and Jason already had some significant achievements with the deck prior to Rochester: both reached the finals in two separate local events, and both made t8 at one of our strongest T1 local events in recent memory, collecting some major scalps along the way. Testing and their performances indicated that this deck was certainly competitive, and I felt that it should have very good match-ups against the majority of the field save for any faster combo decks (Grimlong) and any disruption heavy Fish decks (SS or wrB Fish would be a good example). We expected to be winning a LOT of game 1s, and games 2-3 would be unpredictable but I expected that the odds would be in our favor to take 1 out of those 2 games.

Here’s how we finished:

Day 1

DicemanX
6-1 swiss, lost in the quarterfinals 1-2 to Jim (LordHomerCat) with Grimlong
Finish: 5th

Noah Long
5-0-2 swiss, lost in the quarterfinals 1-2 to his Montreal opponent with Bomberman
Finish: 6th

Scott Limoges (playing his Careful Study version)
5-2 swiss
Finish: unknown

Day 2

DicemanX
5-0-2 swiss, won vs Ugo Rivard’s CS in the QFs (2-0), lost to Eli Cassis with Gifts Confidant (1-2)
Finish: 3rd

Noah Long
3-3-1 swiss (the draw was intentional because we were paired in the first round, and then Noah got a GAME LOSS as he was going off for the win in round 4; this put him in the wrong bracket facing decks that WGD didn’t want to face)
Finish: unknown

Scott Limoges
Not sure how he finished, but he had a similar situation to Noah: as he was about to win a match, he too was assessed a game loss. It seems that this was the turning point for both Noah and Scott for day 2, and they likely would have done better were it not for these demoralizing reversals.


My specific matches:

DAY 1

Round 1:
Rich Shay (The Atog Lord), Control Slaver L0-2

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

Round 3:
Dana (master tap), BWR Fish W2-0

Round 4:
Martin (Chiz), Bomberman W2-0

Round 5:
Jeremy Seroogy (The Spooky Kid) ICBM Oath W2-0

Round 6:
Elias (SonataoftheCathedral), GAT W2-0

Round 7:
Ian DeGraff (I@n), Sullivan Solution W2-0

QF:
Jim (LordHomerCat) Grimlong L1-2

 
DAY 2

Round 1:
Noah Long, teammate, identical WGD deck D1-1-1 (ID)

Round 2:
Phil, UW Erayo Fish W2-0

Round 3:
Simon, Blood Moon Control Slaver W2-1

Round 4:
Alana, Gifts Oath W2-0

Round 5:
Adam (Mr Nightmare), Grimlong W2-0

Round 6:
Ray Robillard (IamFishman), Staxless Stax D1-1-1 (not intentional!)

Round 7:
Zach, WUG Madness W2-0
 
QF:
Ugo Rivard, Control Slaver W2-1

SF:
Eli Cassis, Gifts Confidant L1-2


Everyone was a pleasure to play against, and there were some hard fought matches. It was also nice to finally meet some of the TMDers, including Scott Limoges, Paul Mastriano, the members of team ICBM (Matt, Jeremy, Ian, and Chris), who are all a bunch of great individuals. Also, full props to both Tommy and Jeremy of team ICBM on their victories – they played some great games and had some intense matches. Congrats to you both!

[Smmenen]

Fantastic showing Peter.  I love the new Dragon list. 

Regarding Careful Study v. Read the Ruins.  I think that Careful Study, in theory, looks stronger.  But in reality, I think Read the Ruins is just a more powerful spell.  My testing of both cards is from Ichorid, which, as you know, relies on Bazaar.  Careful Study should be far more powerful than it is - it is a one mana spell that draws two cards straight up.  It's probably in the top 10 best 1cc blue spells of all time.  Yet, it rarely performs as it is supposed to perform.

This may seem stupid or foolish, but I think you should consider running Imperial Seal and Brainstorms - or at least test it out.  Seal may give you enough shuffle effects to make the Brianstorms better.  I think you may actually be at the design point where you should re-evaluate Brainstorm.  I'm not saying it will make the cut, but you should consider it once more. 

Again, well done.

Stephen

[Shock Wave]

Wow, that's pretty damn impressive. It's hard to believe you recovered from a Round 1 loss Day 1 and went on T8 in both that event and the next. I don't have much to add, except that I think you're underestimating how difficult it is to play this deck properly. Do recall that this deck makes T8s very seldom, and while it is underplayed, those who play it generally play it very poorly.

[goobafish]

Congrats on the double T8 Peter,
At local tourneys it was doing very well. I think the reason the deck did so well was the ability of the pilots rather than the build itself. The three players I can recall playing it (You, JayC and Noah) are good players. I kinda think the build is slightly irrelevant because it achieves almost the same goal and plays as a more traditional dragon.

One of the things I really like about your list when I tested it (right after the Double Tree tourney 2-3 months ago), was the fact that it always had cards to pitch to force, unlike older builds. I am however suprized you didnt end up with Squees in the board to generate card advatage against drain based decks, which gain a huge advantage off your DAs, but I guess it worked out for the best. I really like the sideboard. Deeds and Xantids are extremelly strong to combat hate, the obvious ones such as counters, but also the deeds are usefull against random hate like Leylines, Planar Void, and Ground Seal.

In terms of the Careful Study v. Read the Runes debate, one of the advatages of running Study over the Runes is the fact that you can cut artifact sources like Crypt and Vault in favor of a more stable manabase. When Dragon is facing a hate deck, a stable manabase is so important. This also minimizes the pain taken from siding in Null Rods. But at the same time, Read the Runes lets you dig deeper and find the essential cards, while allowing you to combo off without a Bazaar in play, allowing you to combat the gaining in popularity pithing needle.

Good work on the list.

Cappy

[Purple Hat]

Good list, congrats on the finishes.  I have a coupple questions about the board though.

1) chalice can be annoying from time to time and if anyone lives long enough it's gonna be set at 2 wouldn't you be better served by chain of vapor as #1 you rarely have to bounce something while in the loop, and #2 it costs less to wish for game 1, and #3 it doesn't get countered by the best chalice against you.

2) were you concerned that on day 2 not having null rod in your board hurt would your CS matchup post board much?  This is the pimary reason I go for my null rods when playing dragon, well...that and not losing to faster combo.

I was gonna ask about brain freeze over stroke, but then I answered my own question while writing it so....never mind about that.

did you find lim-dul's vault to be redundant or under powered in some way in this build?

Great list,
Hale

[Bulls on Parade]

No man, you have to be kidding. This is almost exactly the list I was playing sooo long ago. Given, Witness wasn't even printed yet when I started advocating Read the Runes, Deep Analysis, and Cunning Wish. Other than that, this is the list pretty much exactly. Don't you remember us arguing for like 20 pages and you absolutely refusing to admit that Compulsion was terrible? I'm sure it's all there somewhere still, I'll go find it and post links.

[dicemanx]

Regarding Careful Study v. Read the Ruins.  I think that Careful Study, in theory, looks stronger.  But in reality, I think Read the Ruins is just a more powerful spell.  My testing of both cards is from Ichorid, which, as you know, relies on Bazaar.  Careful Study should be far more powerful than it is - it is a one mana spell that draws two cards straight up.  It's probably in the top 10 best 1cc blue spells of all time.  Yet, it rarely performs as it is supposed to perform.

Agreed. Furthermore, due to the relatively high incidence of Needles, Read the Runes was critical in many games where I needed an instant speed card to combo off because my Bazaar was shut off (or Wasted). Now that the instant speed combo piece count is at 10 (4 Intuition/3 RtR/2Cunning Wish/1 Entomb), it makes it a lot easier to combo off without resorting to drawing the game.

This may seem stupid or foolish, but I think you should consider running Imperial Seal and Brainstorms - or at least test it out.  Seal may give you enough shuffle effects to make the Brianstorms better.  I think you may actually be at the design point where you should re-evaluate Brainstorm.  I'm not saying it will make the cut, but you should consider it once more. 

Imperial Seal (and Vampiric + Demonic) are in competition with Lim Duls Vault, which serves as a double tutor due to Bazaar and even feeds FoW. I'm still not sure about my tutor base, because it's easy enough to cite anecdotal evidence how certain tutors were amazing in certain games and in certain numbers. For this event, I decided that I would stick to 2 tutors only, exactly following Limoges' build in that respect.

Regarding Brainstorm - this card is always on my radar, but it's difficult to fit in. There's a delicate balance between combo pieces, tutoring, disruption, and mana sources in this deck, and Brainstorm would throw off the numbers. It might be possible to incorporate them, but this would take quite a bit of work to strike an acceptable balance. On top of it all, Brainstorm competes with Careful Study - sometimes you want the discard effect and the loss of card advantage, and sometimes you want to dig deeper and retain parity. The card is always on my radar, but I haven't gotten around to looking at it more seriously due to the fact that WGD has a ridiculously huge amount of options for the main deck that *continuously* need examination. 

At local tourneys it was doing very well. I think the reason the deck did so well was the ability of the pilots rather than the build itself. The three players I can recall playing it (You, JayC and Noah) are good players. I kinda think the build is slightly irrelevant because it achieves almost the same goal and plays as a more traditional dragon.

This might be true to some extent, but I think that the specific build here contributed very significantly to the success. In fact, I think Noah and I were mere spectators at times while our decks "did its thing", so playskill took a back seat to the importance of proper deck construction for this event. I honestly doubt that if I took a previous iteration that I would be this successful, because the bazaar dependency and the slowness of Compulsion and the draw engines would have keeled over to the hate cards and fast tempo in this meta.

In terms of the Careful Study v. Read the Runes debate, one of the advatages of running Study over the Runes is the fact that you can cut artifact sources like Crypt and Vault in favor of a more stable manabase. When Dragon is facing a hate deck, a stable manabase is so important.

Even with Careful Study I wouldn't cut Crypt, but Vault would become another basic land or fetchland most likely. However, Vault still allows for the hard casting of Deep Analysis and provides one shot acceleration for Intuition/Necromancy on occasion, and accelerates in the face of a 1st turn CotV for 0 (allowing for turn 1 land, Vault, turn 2 Bazaar Animate plays). I'm not too bothered by Null Rod though, and I've even had opponents side them out against me so that they could bring in Crypts. Whether this decision is correct is another matter of course.

Wow, that's pretty damn impressive. It's hard to believe you recovered from a Round 1 loss Day 1 and went on T8 in both that event and the next. I don't have much to add, except that I think you're underestimating how difficult it is to play this deck properly. Do recall that this deck makes T8s very seldom, and while it is underplayed, those who play it generally play it very poorly.

I call it the swiss gambit - lose early to make the matches easier down the line . Well, I wish it actually worked this way - I think WGD wants to avoid losing early to get into the brackets where the weird stuff appears, including those decks whose pilots thought it would be appropriate to run much maindeck hate. WGD wants to be playing vs top tier archetypes (Oath, CS, Gifts, Stax) with the exception of Grimlong. It doesn't want to get stuck trying to struggle past certain Fish archetypes  or 4 Leyline.dec. This is a bit of a generalization of course, but it does hold true to some extent.

I agree also that WGD pilots generally play the archetype poorly, and they tend to misbuild the deck by my estimation which limits their ability to succeed even further. The deck can accumulate some very easy wins (especially with a balls to the wall "I don't care if you might have removal I'll go for it anyways" approach), but its certainly true that there are many subtleties involved in winning when the games are not slanted heavily in your favor.

1) chalice can be annoying from time to time and if anyone lives long enough it's gonna be set at 2 wouldn't you be better served by chain of vapor as #1 you rarely have to bounce something while in the loop, and #2 it costs less to wish for game 1, and #3 it doesn't get countered by the best chalice against you.

Chalice was put into the SB primarily against Grimlong. We also thought about adding it to either stop Crypts, or stop removal/bounce and go for the Titan plan. I ended up not siding them in in any match except my solitary match against Grimlong in the swiss, which is indicative that perhaps they don't belong. I still need to talk to Noah about that, because he was more aggressive with the siding in of either the Null Rods or CotVs.

I also disagree that CotV for 2 is the most effective against this particular WGD build, so having a 1cc bounce spell isn't as critical anymore. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that CotV does very little against WGD and should probably be SBed out unless the deck using them is on the play and can play one early for 0. We ran one Chain of Vapor day 1, but it was largely inconsequential in comparison to the Echoing Truths and the Repeal, which is probably stronger than the CoV. I would actually give some consideration to running 3 Repeals in the SB and perhaps 1 Truth.

2) were you concerned that on day 2 not having null rod in your board hurt would your CS matchup post board much?  This is the pimary reason I go for my null rods when playing dragon, well...that and not losing to faster combo.

I don't like SBing in Null Rods against CS, although Noah favors that SB plan. I just don't like the possibility of slowing my mana base up just to stop a possibly non existent early Slaver activation or stop 1-2 Tormod's Crypts. The fact that Welders might also impose a limit as to what you can discard if you want to maintain a Rod in play bothers me as well. I sided in Rods game 2 against Shay's CS, but I'll likely never do that again. The other problem is that you simply cannot know ahead of time what a random CS player will be main decking or SBing in. For instance, I was facing Slavers that ran Leylines, Blood Moons, and Platinum Angels. You cannot afford to guess wrong and bring in Rods and Xantids and also expect to make room for bounce to handle the random post SB threats. 

did you find lim-dul's vault to be redundant or under powered in some way in this build?

The card remains an option, but I decided to limit the tutor base to just 2 non-Intuition tutors that can be cast turn 1. LDVaults might appear in future iterations though, but I think I made the right call for this event. The deck isn't as reliant anymore on setting up consecutive cards, and can just draw into what it needs.

Don't you remember us arguing for like 20 pages and you absolutely refusing to admit that Compulsion was terrible?

Compulsion wasn't terrible when the format was slower - it was a good choice and won or t8ed for the select few that decided to play WGD at the high profile events. The Read the Runes and Cunning Wish combination is no stranger to me though, and I didn't just rediscover the wheel here - I ran that combination in my builds when Entomb was still unrestricted, but it got weaker when WGD shifted to Squee + Compulsion/Bazaar. If this build is similar to your old builds, I'd like to see that - link(s)?

[Bulls on Parade]

I tried searching and the posts only go back to 2004. I absolutely refuse to believe you don't remember the huge discussions we had about it, though, when I still posted. This is basically my list.

You should check the archive forums.
-Jacob

[Cross]

Why did you leave dredge cards, like darkblast, out of your list? Dredge and dragon seem to be made for each other, and though most are useless the utility of darkblast in a format ruled by slaver, and a tournament won by a fish deck, seem like it would be an auto-include.

[dicemanx]

I tried searching and the posts only go back to 2004. I absolutely refuse to believe you don't remember the huge discussions we had about it, though, when I still posted. This is basically my list.

I remember defending Compulsion and felt that Read the Runes was suboptimal. I still stand by those statements. The format has changed drastically, and what was once "best" now isn't good enough, and what was mediocre is now archetype defining. The trick is to determine what's best suited to the current meta, which is a very difficult thing to do when constructing WGD given the number of options available to it.

Why did you leave dredge cards, like darkblast, out of your list? Dredge and dragon seem to be made for each other, and though most are useless the utility of darkblast in a format ruled by slaver, and a tournament won by a fish deck, seem like it would be an auto-include.

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. There is a lot of competition for SB space. Maybe if I had to play more matches against some of the Fish decks I would change my mind, but I can say that I didn't really miss having such a removal spell on either day.

[vartemis]

Congrats and good show on the innovation.  I havent been using Squee's since january after posting this, but the deck I play is drastically different now.  The Squee engine really only works in CA because it pulls double duty with the portal.

j

[Dante]

So everyone can see some of the transitions from the 5c builds, this SCG Dragon is the deck I played in October at the last SCG Chicago.  I had tested a mono-blue version with Gifts and Thirst and Peter suggested I try the version he was testing, which ended up being only 1-2 maindeck cards different from what I ran.  I ended up 4-2-1, but one loss should have been a draw (I got a game loss in the last turn of extra turns for not revealing to Uba Mask) and one draw should have been the win (my opponents proxies). 

But even then, the Squees ended up being relatively useless and got sided out just about every game.  It was after this tournament that I decided that the environment was too fast and there were too many Wastelands and Needles for Squee recursion anymore.  I tried a version with more reanimation targets, but it wasn't fast enough.

This part was just a tangent.

The ability to sacrifice permanents instead of discarding made Read the Runes much more flexible and powerful. There is actually a subtlety to previous WGD builds that was sometime missed by less experienced WGD pilots  - the deck rarely wants to put more than 2 mana on the table, because cards always have to be held in reserve in hand to potentially pitch to Bazaar. This iteration, however, wants to build the mana base and not hold anything back (to make for bigger Read the Runes, to cast Deep Analyses without having to discard them for maximum card advantage, to set up multiple Animate spells per turn etc) and yet it can still operate on very few mana sources. This method of play is now synergistic with Read the Runes, which can eat those superfluous mana sources in play instead of discarding. This was a major selling point of the card.

Read Peter's quote about the mana base again - now with RtR, you get both - to play and use your mana and THEN "discard" it (i.e. sac it when you don't need it).  Like he mentioned, I found a constant stress on playing earlier versions was the desire to drop enough mana to be able to double-animate or bounce/duress + animate, but still have enough cards to discard to bazaar.  I think with the extra card drawing (Deep A, RtR), it allows you to more often go for an "unprotected" win, because even if they have the bounce and you lose your board, you've drawn enough cards to rebuild to 2 mana quickly.

As to questions about the mana base - when every business spell and and important tutor (other than vamp) has colorless (animates, intuition, demonic), Crypt is always a no brainer - permanent mana sources that allow you to have enough mana for Intuition/Animate and still lay Bazaar by turn two are auto-includes.

[Scott_Limoges]

To be successful with WGD, the pilot must know timing rules, have a good understanding of the opponents deck, and have an "innate" sense of when to combo off.  There is no mistake that the creator of WGD was sucessful both days in Rochester - congrats Peter.

[Dante]

To be successful with WGD, the pilot must know timing rules, have a good understanding of the opponents deck, and have an "innate" sense of when to combo off.  There is no mistake that the creator of WGD was sucessful both days in Rochester - congrats Peter.

It seems odd that you and Noah were both assessed game losses while combo'ing out.  Was it for the same thing?  What happened there?

[JayC]

Why did you leave dredge cards, like darkblast, out of your list? Dredge and dragon seem to be made for each other, and though most are useless the utility of darkblast in a format ruled by slaver, and a tournament won by a fish deck, seem like it would be an auto-include.

Jason Chau here. I tested out Darkblast in a 41 man tournament here in Toronto. I only ended up Wishing for it once against Confidant Control. Killing doods usually isn't your priority most of the time and every time I would reach for my sideboard with the intention of getting a Darkblast, a much better card would be staring back at me.

[Razvan]

My favorite part of magic, ever, was when some idiot in Toronto started lecturing diceman on why dragon sucks, and is dead.

Good to see that diceman survived THAT one. In all seriousness, congratulations to you (and Scott) on revamping a great deck.

I definately agree on cutting down the terrible maindeck cards for cards that actually do something on their own. I love that Sundering Titan is finally making it's way to be more than a 1-deck card. There's really not much else I can add that you didn't think of already, Peter.

[arj]

That is one well written article with some very good argumentation. I enjoyed it very much.

The build seems very well thought out if the alternative win conditions and answers to hate. Thanks for bringing dragon back

[rureddy31]

Keep in mind, I like this list Peter, and I think what you guys did was amazing. However, I have one simple question, why play this deck over Grim Long or IT Tendrills? I think we can agree that Grim Long is the fastest Tier 1 Combo deck available, and IT is perhaps the most resilient. That being said, what would lead some one to pick Dragon, which is victim of some of the most common hate available (Crypt, bounce, creature removal). The surprise factor perhaps?

[Hi-Val]

Did you like Titan? Would you prefer it or Petradon?

Also, I see no LDVs. Interesting. This is a fascinating list.

[Bulls on Parade]

I tried searching and the posts only go back to 2004. I absolutely refuse to believe you don't remember the huge discussions we had about it, though, when I still posted. This is basically my list.

I remember defending Compulsion and felt that Read the Runes was suboptimal. I still stand by those statements. The format has changed drastically, and what was once "best" now isn't good enough, and what was mediocre is now archetype defining. The trick is to determine what's best suited to the current meta, which is a very difficult thing to do when constructing WGD given the number of options available to it.

Did I in any way dispute this? I'm not saying I knew what the fuck I was talking about then, I'm saying this was my list.

[Scott_Limoges]

To be successful with WGD, the pilot must know timing rules, have a good understanding of the opponents deck, and have an "innate" sense of when to combo off.  There is no mistake that the creator of WGD was sucessful both days in Rochester - congrats Peter.

It seems odd that you and Noah were both assessed game losses while combo'ing out.  Was it for the same thing?  What happened there?

I don't want to post off-topic from the thread but will discribe my issue.  Both Noah and myself recieved game losses for having to many cards in-hand; however, our issues were different. 

My situation arose in Game 3 of extra turns where I was playing against mono-blue.  I intentially drew the first game, won the second game, and needed to only survive turn 4 of the third game (the mono-U player only had three lands in play).  On turn three I accidently played an extra land (it was a bazaar) activated it drawing an extra card and received the game loss.

[JayC]

Keep in mind, I like this list Peter, and I think what you guys did was amazing. However, I have one simple question, why play this deck over Grim Long or IT Tendrills? I think we can agree that Grim Long is the fastest Tier 1 Combo deck available, and IT is perhaps the most resilient. That being said, what would lead some one to pick Dragon, which is victim of some of the most common hate available (Crypt, bounce, creature removal). The surprise factor perhaps?

It's probably a better idea to play this Dragon deck over GrimLong and IT in a longer tournament where fatigue definitely starts playing a big factor. GL and IT require a fair amount of planning and experience (especially GL) to pilot correctly. With this deck, it kind of feels like I'm able to just let the deck do it's thing and if I won or lost, chances are it only took me 20 minutes to finish the match.

Also, somehow this deck doesn't lose very much to hate. I had a hard time figuring it out at first, as a lot of the conversations about the deck with Peter were something like

J:"But what if--"
P: "Don't worry about it, just board in 3 bounce spells and you'll be fine"
J: "But I probably need some x in the board"
P: "Don't bother with that. You're better off just winning"

etc etc.

and that went on for a few tournaments until I just gave up and accepted it's resiliance against hate and so far it's worked out rather well. I've fought through double Crypt/Echoing Truth in one match and double Leyline/Crypt in another. It just sort of works out if you just wait until you're about to go off and get rid of whatever is troubling you or just work around it.

[BreathWeapon]

@DiceManX

Was Scrivener considered as a possible win condition over Eternal Witness, he pitches to Force of Will, can be hard cast and is less of a rules nightmare?

Interesting design, it makes a lot of sense. Tho' I'd be tempted to remove Entomb for the 4th Read the Runes MD, replace the Read the Runes with Vampiric Tutor in the SB and use an Imperial Seal MD.

[Jacob Orlove]

Scrivener has a couple of flaws that the Witness kill does not. First of all, it can only get back one spell; if you use Witness to get back a second animate, you can loop again and cast everything in your deck as often as necessary. Second, Witness lets you go off without a blue source. Most turn 1 kills only work because Witness can grab an animate and then a sapphire.

[dicemanx]

Keep in mind, I like this list Peter, and I think what you guys did was amazing. However, I have one simple question, why play this deck over Grim Long or IT Tendrills? I think we can agree that Grim Long is the fastest Tier 1 Combo deck available, and IT is perhaps the most resilient. That being said, what would lead some one to pick Dragon, which is victim of some of the most common hate available (Crypt, bounce, creature removal). The surprise factor perhaps?

JayC already mentioned the fatigue factor, but I will also add another point. The Dragon hate and Grimlong hate are of a different nature. Dragon hate typically stops the combo, but doesn't stop the development of your mana and card drawing. Grimlong hate aims not to stop the kill, but to stop the mana development and card drawing. This is an oversimplification, but does apply to a certain extent. Grimlong hate can also have considerable impact when Grimlong has those "all-in" hands that can practically lose to FoW if you are forced to make it. WGD is rarely faced with all-in situations unless you are feeling lucky or if you are under considerable pressure.

Did you like Titan? Would you prefer it or Petradon?

Also, I see no LDVs. Interesting. This is a fascinating lis

Titan did factor in three critical games - in one game it got hardcast (to circumvent the two Furnaces and a Crypt in play, and in two other games it was animated to bait removal and Armageddoning the opponent's board in the process).

Both scenarios flag why Titan is better than Petradon - you cannot kill lands with Petradon if you're baiting removal with animates, and he cannot be hardcast (odd case, yes). Titan is also a turn faster.

Did I in any way dispute this? I'm not saying I knew what the fuck I was talking about then, I'm saying this was my list.

OK, it might be "your list". I was inspired by Scott Limoges' build and tweaked it slightly for myself, so I got it from him. Maybe he got it from you, maybe he came up with it independently. If its important to you, ask him, not me. I honestly don't recall what "your list" looked like 3 years ago, since I tend to not pay careful attention to lists that I feel might be sub-optimal for their time.

Was Scrivener considered as a possible win condition over Eternal Witness, he pitches to Force of Will, can be hard cast and is less of a rules nightmare?

Scrivener is a very interesting thought (I didn't think about it as a possibility), but there's a potentially slight problem with it. If I cannot go off with Cunning Wish (because I used it up for something like a bounce spell), then I must go off with Ancestral. This means that I must recur the Recall, and to do that I need for my Witness to get back an animate spell first when comboing off.

With 2 Cunning Wishes this is less of an issue, but with 1 Cunning Wish and 1 Titan Scrivener is not as good. I think you might be onto something though with the 2 Cunning Wish version, since you're likely not going to burn both Wishes in a game (and if you do, you can still go off with 2 animate spells in hand). I will definitely keep Scrivener in mind, especially since it both adds to the FoW count *and* it's actually castable. That's great.

EDIT: Jacob is also correct about requiring a blue source, so that will have to factor in when we look at this card as a potential kill.

Interesting design, it makes a lot of sense. Tho' I'd be tempted to remove Entomb for the 4th Read the Runes MD, replace the Read the Runes with Vampiric Tutor in the SB and use an Imperial Seal MD.

I was totally running 4 RtR without Entomb in testing, but Noah did convince me to make the change of RtR for Entomb. I trusted his judgement, and it did not disappoint. Moving the vamp to the SB is a thought, but I'd rather keep it main and add a LDVault to the SB if the idea is to have a Wishable tutor there.

[BreathWeapon]

I'm not certain the rare turn 1 instances where WGD wins with Witness is a sufficient enough argument against Scrivener, when he is a blue card and hard castable, statistically speaking. Not being able to cast the entire deck doesn't seem to be an issue, atleast in my experience, in what situations would this be problematic?

One of the points I didn't raise before, is Scrivener is better in Intuition piles than Witness. It makes 2xInstant and 1xScrivener an additional option, which could be relevant in some instance.

@Peter, I'm not certain I would use the list with one Cunning Wish. It would make the card too inconsistant, atleast for me. I do think RtR is superior to Entomb, if for no other reason it's blue and can provide card advantage. LDV in the SB is a thought, but Vampiric is less expensive and the difference between Vampiric and Imperial in the MD is minimal

Some other random points, is the 2nd Island better than including the Tropical Island in the MD? I think I'd rather run the risk of a Wasteland for an additional SB slot. I can see the argument for Mana Vault, but I think I'd rather have the 4th Duress; this deck wants a full set more than any other previous incarnation of the deck, given its draw engine.

The deck is rather customizable, so I imagine these are minor points.

[Dakkon]

replace the Read the Runes with Vampiric Tutor in the SB and use an Imperial Seal MD.

I'm just making sure, but vamp is going in the sb so it can be cunning wished in right? because since vamp is strictly better than imperial seal I see no other reason to not put it in md.

[dicemanx]

I'm not certain the rare turn 1 instances where WGD wins with Witness is a sufficient enough argument against Scrivener, when he is a blue card and hard castable, statistically speaking. Not being able to cast the entire deck doesn't seem to be an issue, atleast in my experience, in what situations would this be problematic?

Yes, this isn't a major obstacle. It's just the situations where you're cut off from blue mana and where you've burned the Wishes that might be a slight issue, but the benefis of Scrivener are evident.

@Peter, I'm not certain I would use the list with one Cunning Wish. It would make the card too inconsistant, atleast for me.

I agree that 2 Cunning Wish is probably better. The reason we made the swap for day 2 is because we thought that some people would beef up the removal in their main decks after our good day 1 showing, so we wanted to have the one bait card in the deck. I think for a random event I'd stick to the 2 Wisjes and leave both Titans in the SB.

Some other random points, is the 2nd Island better than including the Tropical Island in the MD?

This was strictly a meta call based on how few wastelands we saw day 1 and how inconsequential having 2 Islands was in most of our games. i'd probably keep to 2 Islands in an unknown meta.

I can see the argument for Mana Vault, but I think I'd rather have the 4th Duress; this deck wants a full set more than any other previous incarnation of the deck, given its draw engine.

Jason Chau also expressed the desire to run a full set of Duresses, although we'd have to cut something else other than a mana source to make room. The deck seems to run best on 21 mana sources, and Vault is too huge with RtR and DAs. I'd probably cut 1 of the 2 Cunning Wishes for the 4th Duress ahead of anything else. the deck is just so tight its hard to suggest changes. For instance, the deck would also like to run a 4th DA, but there's just no room.

I'm just making sure, but vamp is going in the sb so it can be cunning wished in right? because since vamp is strictly better than imperial seal I see no other reason to not put it in md.

That's how I interpreted it, yes.

[JayC]

I'm not sure why you would ever want to make an Intuition pile 2 instants and a Scriviner if you have the 5 mana to cast him, I'm sure there's a much better and easier way to win. The minor benefits that Scriviner provides probably don't outweigh the benefits that Witness provides (holding your deck in your hand and being able to play artifact mana, getting another animate to have the Witness in the loop).

In regards to RtR being better than Entomb, this version of Dragon can be surprisingly balls to the wall. Sometimes your draws lend itself to a period of setup time and slow-rolling your pieces, but there are others that just tell you to go for it as fast as you can and don't look back, and those times often involve Entomb in your opening grip. Really simple opening hands with Entomb and Animate Dead  (accompanied by a RtR/Intuition/Cunning Wish) can mean very fast kills that can win through cards like Wasteland, which your opponent might play on the first turn in hopes of blowing up a Bazaar. I've never been disappointed with Entomb sitting in my opening 7, as it completely speeds up goldfish kills.

Having cards to pitch to Force of Will isn't as big a deal as you might expect, as I've often pitched them to Bazaar on more than several occasions. Sometimes the hate card is sitting on the table and you're much better off finding a Wish or bounce to deal with it.

[BreathWeapon]

I'm not sure why you would ever want to make an Intuition pile 2 instants and a Scriviner if you have the 5 mana to cast him, I'm sure there's a much better and easier way to win. The minor benefits that Scriviner provides probably don't outweigh the benefits that Witness provides (holding your deck in your hand and being able to play artifact mana, getting another animate to have the Witness in the loop).

In regards to RtR being better than Entomb, this version of Dragon can be surprisingly balls to the wall. Sometimes your draws lend itself to a period of setup time and slow-rolling your pieces, but there are others that just tell you to go for it as fast as you can and don't look back, and those times often involve Entomb in your opening grip. Really simple opening hands with Entomb and Animate Dead  (accompanied by a RtR/Intuition/Cunning Wish) can mean very fast kills that can win through cards like Wasteland, which your opponent might play on the first turn in hopes of blowing up a Bazaar. I've never been disappointed with Entomb sitting in my opening 7, as it completely speeds up goldfish kills.

Having cards to pitch to Force of Will isn't as big a deal as you might expect, as I've often pitched them to Bazaar on more than several occasions. Sometimes the hate card is sitting on the table and you're much better off finding a Wish or bounce to deal with it.

I understand that Eternal Witness is the "stronger" win condition, however, I'm not certain that putting the deck in hand is actually necessary, while being blue and hard castable will be useful. It's just something that needs to be tested, and it can arguably come down to preference. Honestly I prefer the card for being less of a god damn head ache than anything else, lol.

I can understand why Entomb is in the list, but I think I'm more inclined to include Vampiric/Imperial in its place. I'm just not impressed with the card if it isn't in the First 7, and it's awful with out a ReAnimate spell.

@Peter,

I'll give the Vault more time, I don't want to dismiss it in the same fashion people dismissed Crypt in Tog. Duress is still functional as a 3 of, so I can live with the 4th not being in the deck list as a product of shaving.