Adapting Dragon

[zack]

first post, be gentle.

I've been playing dragon for a couple months now.  I haven't done well at a tournament yet, and I haven't seen many other people giving the deck a try, so I figured it was time to try to adapt the deck and make improvements.

Here's a link to an old decklist of mine:
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=20821
It's more or less a netdeck of wgdx with maybe a tweak here or there.

Now I'm going to go over the changes that I've been trying in this deck.  I'll talk about the philosophical reasons behind my changes, and then delve into more detail on a card-by-card basis where appropriate.

Meta-disruption theory.
Dragon's a fast deck.  Ideally you should be able to ignore all the little dorks trying to kill you and just concentrate on getting your combo off before you hit 0 life.  However there's a LOT of ways to throw a monkey wrench into the dragon combo.  Therefore I think the maindeck disruption shouldn't be aimed at stopping your opponent's win condition.  Instead your disruption should be aimed at nullifying their disruption...meta-disruption, if you will.

So what screws my deck?
Instant based hate (swords, bounce, counterspells, etc).

Xantid swarms should be able to protect me from all that stuff.
+3 xantid swarm

Permanent based hate (leyline, true believer, chalice).

Pernicious deed gets the nod here.
+2 pernicious deed

I think devoting more than 8 cards to disruption is a mistake for this deck, so now we have to trim some fat.

-1 duress
-4 force of will

About force of will.  I'm not necessarily saying this card doesn't belong in dragon, but I haven't been in love with it lately, so I wanted to try playing dragon sans FoW.  Most of the blue cards in my deck are my win conditions (cunning wish, read the runes, intuition).   It's very easy to imagine a scenario where I attempt to go off, but then have to FoW something, and the fact that I have to pitch a blue spells turns my win into a draw.

Tutors instead of mass card drawing.
This change is harder for me to justify.  IMO, for a combo deck, card advantage is less important than getting the right cards at the right time.  Quality over quantity.

Deep analysis is a great card, but its mana cost is too high, and occasionally the life cost to flash it back is unacceptable.  So far through my testing I've been in love with Lim-Dul's Vault.  It's synergy with bazaar (either in play or in your deck) is unmistakable.

-3 deep analysis, +3 lim-dul's vault

The printing of extirpate hurts the value of intuition a little.  It's a much more risky proposition to intuition early in the game and dump a worldgorger in the graveyard.  But the card still is a tutor for any 3-of, so I'm not about to do anything crazy like cut it entirely.

Regrowth is fun, cheap, multi-purpose card.  As a bonus, it makes your opponent think harder when you include it in an intuition pile.  I'm not completely sold on this card, but it's been good to me so far.

-1 intuition, +1 regrowth

Versatility of win condition
I can count on one hand the number of times that I've cunning wished for an answer that actually helped me out of a predicament.  It just costs too much mana to wish for an answer and then be able to cast it.  This, and the fact that an unanswered misdirection can turn a win into a loss, was my motivation for coming up with a different win condition.  At first I considered Sliver Queen.  The main reason why I shyed away from her is that you don't win until the following turn.  Plus with the ascendence of Empty the Warrens many more decks are going to have answers to a swarm of token creatures.

I racked my brain thinking of another big body that could win the game for me on the spot, and I came up with it: Bogardan Hellkite.  This guy is amazing.  He's a primary win condition, an alternate win condition, and creature control all at once.  If that isn't enough, he also has flash.  So if you have a ruby or a lotus you can go into the dragon loop, build up enough mana, and hard cast him at instant speed ftw.  True believer doesn't stop him either.  Granted he's not the biggest reanimator target in the world, but I'm still very happy with this find.

-2 cunning wish
+2 bogardan hellkite

Cards that I considered but ultimately didn't make the cut:
entomb: too narrow.  this deck can afford to sacrifice a little goldfish speed for a lot more versatility imo.
gifts ungiven: too expensive to cast
tolarian academy: horrible synergy with pernicious deed
yawgmoth's bargain: too expensive for this deck to support
necropotence: would be great if it wasn't for the discard clause
yawgmoth's will: can't win in the same turn that I cast it, so no good

so here's the deck I played at myriad games vintage this past saturday:

21 mana:
7 solomox
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
4 polluted delta
2 bloodstained mire
3 underground sea
1 bayou
1 tropical island
1 swamp

7 animation targets:
4 worldgorger dragon
2 bogardan hellkite
1 eternal witness

7 animate spells:
3 animate dead
1 dance of the dead
3 necromancy

10 cards that turn draws into wins:
4 bazaar of baghdad
3 read the runes
3 intuition
0 cunning wish

7 other draw/tutor spells:
1 ancestral recall
1 vampiric tutor
1 demonic tutor
1 regrowth
3 lim-dul's vault
0 deep analysis

8 disruption:
3 duress
3 xantid swarm
2 pernicious deed
0 force of will

SB:
4 tormod's crypt
2 living wish
2 pernicious deed
1 xantid swarm
3 chain of vapor
3 extirpate

results: went 2-2-0 before I dropped to play in the ridiculously-fun vintage draft.

matches I lost:
Mono u standstill: martyr of frost and waterfront bouncer circumvented my xantid swarm defense.  Standstill and ninja of deep hours kept my opponent's hand full of answers.

Mono r welder stax?  Don't know what to call this deck   These games were closer.  The turn before I was gonna go off he played an orb of dreams.  Game two he played a blood moon.  I tried to float mana and bounce it, but he had reb of will (simian spirit guide).  I scooped to clockwork hydra.  In retrospect I should have hoped to topdeck a worldgorger or hellkite and hardcast it.

matches I won:
Nether stax.  His mana denial wasn't fast enough to stop me. Chain of vapor + pernicious deed do their job.
Workshop aggro w/ welders: game 1 I duress away his only mox and take him out with a quick hellkite.  game two I ignore the juggernaut clock and combo out in short order.

changes I would make:
Xantid swarm is too slow for my tastes.  Summoning sickness is the suck.  If your opponent has a blocker he's only good for one use, and there's tons of commonly run cards that can handle a 0/1 dork.  He seems to act as a suboptimal duress, eating up one answer from my opponent's hand that would otherwise be used on my worldgorger.  Plus, as I learned in my game against standstill, his inability to stop your opponent from using abilities can be a significant problem.

Instead of Xantid Swarm I'm going to experiment with City of Solitude.  Yes its symettrical, but since I'm not running force of will I'm not really missing out on much.  The only thing I can think of that city of solitude stops me from doing is blowing up manlands with pernicious deed.

-3/-1 Xantid Swarm
+3/+1 City of Solitude

Tormod's crypt in the SB was completely useless.  I'll run Leyline of the Void instead next time, as they seem to work better against ichorid, bomberman, and yawgwill decks.
-4 tormod's crypt
+4 leyline of the void

It was fun testing out Extirpate, but it doesn't seem that hot in a deck with no Wastelands.  We'll put in Chalice of the Void instead to give me a better matchup against faster combo.
-3 extirpate
+3 chalice of the void

Questions, comment, suggestions are very welcome.

[meadbert]

First of all 21 mana sources is probably a bit high for most Dragon lists.  Dragon can usually operate with only 2 mana out and Bazaar takes up a land drop so running so many mana sources is somewhat questionable.  You are not way off but I think you could get away with a few less.  Maybe 18 or 19 would be optimal.  Incidently, optimizing any deck with Bazaars can be incredibly hard.  The reason is that you tend to throw away bad cards anyway so even if you run too much mana or too little mana Bazaar will actually fix it for you.  For instance if you want to have 2 mana sources after you Bazaar on your oppening hand then you can actually have anywhere from 2-5 mana sources after drawing for Bazaar and let the discards fix it for you.

Dropping Force of Will is an interesting move.  In my opinion Duress has pretty much always been better since Force cannot protect you from Swords if you Bazaar your hand into oblivion.  In the same case you could have grabbed Swords with an early Duress.  Force of Will does help you with stuff like Orb of Dreams which Stax hit you with.  I always thought Force of Will is too good not to play.  I mean if you are trying to win on turn 2 or 3 then Force of Will is great.  The main draw back is that it forces you to play with so many blue cards.

I also have a bit of an issue with you not running bounce.  I have run Dragon with no maindeck bounce, but that was probably a mistake.  Normally Cunning Wish can find bounce but you have cut those.  I am actually fine with that because Cunning Wish was just bad for me so often.

Dragon has been a casualty of Ichorid.  Because of Ichorid decks, players are packing more graveyard hate and this makes life much harder for a Dragon player. It used to be that Dragon's chief threats to its graveyard were Tormod's Crypt and Planar Void.  Tormod's Crypt was annoying to be sure.  That is why Pernicious Deed and Null Rod showed up in sideboards.  Still, Dragon had the option of playing Necromany in response to a Crypt activation.  Planar Void was effective at shutting off the Squee and Deep Analysis draw engines but it did very little for the actual combo since you could again cast Necromany in response to the Planar Void trigger.

Dragon has a new enemy and that is Leyline of the Void.  Leyline is more annoying than previous hate.  It cannot be Forced.  It cannot be Duressed.  It doesn't care about Xantid Swarm.  It shuts off your draw engine and your combo.

Some traditional solutions are Pernicious Deed and Chain of Vapor.  Pernicious Deed would require a total of 7 mana to hit Leyline of the Void, but you would be blowing up everything else at the same time.  Chain of Vapor is very cheap and in my opinion it is better than ever in Dragon right now.

There are of course other options.  One possibility is to play with Trygon Predator.  Trygon Predator can remove Tormod's Crypt, Planar Void and Leyline of the Void.

Another card that might deserve more consideration is Abeyance.  Abeyance is nice because it is not hit by Seal of Cleansing, Disenchant, Swords, bounce or Stifle.  This is important because Swords takes out Xantid Swarm and Seal of Cleansing dodges Duress and Xantid Swarm.

If you are going to drop Deep Analysis then I suggest you play a full set of Merchant Scrolls.  They can find bounce if you need it.   They can find Intuition if you are ready to win.  Mostly they find Ancestral Recall.  In a 2-3 turn game Merchant Scroll->Ancestral is pretty much the best draw engine there is.

If you drop Force of Will and Deep Analysis then a 5 color mana base becomes more appealing.  You no longer have to run so many blue cards.  If you play a 5 color base then Sliver Queen becomes pretty good all of a sudden.  She generates infinite creatures with infinite mana.  If you fear Swords you can annimate her directly for beats.  She can even be hard cast if your graveyard is hated out.  Also a 5 color mana base makes Eternal Witness much easier to hardcast.  This becomes very important if you are running a full set of Merchant Scrolls because there is a good chance you can play Witness to get an Ancestral Recall back.  The 5 color mana base makes Abeyance playable.

I hope some of this helps.  Good luck!

[dicemanx]

This build is pulling away from the synergies and advantages that are present in WGDX. You still run RtR, but this card is weakened by the diminished number of instant speed win conditions (WGD has an additional 4 instant speed win cards: +1 Intuition, +2 Cunning Wish, and +1 Entomb). If you're going to do this, go with Compulsion instead, because your RtR plays will probably be quite underwhelming.

I would entirely support the use of Lim Dul's Vaults if you plan on using Xantid Swarms, but I would not cut card drawing from WGD - the DAs or Squees are very important in this archetype. WGD is a very redundant archetype in terms of its combo pieces, and is well served by card drawing.

Your "primary kill card" puzzles me - Bogardan Hellkite is not a good win condition, because it requires other cards (aside from WGD and Animate) for the card to actually kill your opponent. Your actual primary kill card is Witness; Hellkite is just an alternate means by which Witness can kill (aside from the traditional Ancestral Recall kill), but is very much inferior in a deck that aims to exploit Read the Runes, which Hellkite cannot do. Hellkite might be a decent SB card to bring in versus Fish (or as pre-SB if you face a lot of Fish in your meta) for alternate animation or as part of an Oath conversion, but maindeck I'd stick to Cunning Wishes.

The Regrowth is weak. What are you Regrowing that's so important in such a redundant archetype? You might as well consider running Yawgmoth's Will instead.

The Pernicious Deeds are weak - you are worried phantom threats. Deed is a fantastic SB card, but most main decks will have 0-1 permanent based hate cards to worry about, and even then WGDX addresses this potential possibility via the 2 Cunning Wish. If you feel that your meta features a number of decks that run main deck Leyline of the Void (the only "serious" permanent-based threat against WGD), play some other archetype in the short run to try to push it out of main decks - Leyline isn't that strong pre-SB against the field, and the Ichorid hype has passed.

Running only 3 of your strongest card - Intuition? Are you really afraid of Extirpate?

I disagree with Meadbert about 21 mana sources being too high - it is actually on the low side in a RtR based WGD. In the older Compulsion/Squee based builds it seemed that 19 was the bare minimum.


My suggestion, if you haven't already done so, is to start by playing WGDX first, and see how synergistic the build actually is and what resources are available to you when combatting "hate". It is likewise important not to succumb to "the fear" and have it dictate how you construct the deck. WGDX can be pulled in many different directions, and you touch upon some of these - using Xantids and Lim Duls Vaults, for example, is a relatively unexplored avenue for this iteration. Just make sure you're not sacrificing those things that made WGDX successful in the first place, unless what you are bringing to the table can very strongly offset the losses.

[Shock Wave]

Never would I play this deck with anything less than 4 Force of Will. Xantid Swarm is a rather weak choice right now, considering that there is very little instant speed removal in the format. Sure it shuts off permission, but Dragon can often fight through control match-ups via overwhelming card advantage (of which this deck has very litte) or winning in response to an opponent's spell.

[zack]

The last two responses I received alternately said that there's no permanent based hate, and no instant based hate for me to worry about.  Someone should tell that to my opponents.

But seriously, there's a lot of instant based hate to worry about:
bounce, stp, stifle, trickbind, wipe away, extirpate.  Not to mention the lethal damage that red mages are sometimes able to muster.

In short, there's lots of instant based hate to worry about.  The WGD combo is very easy to disrupt with instants if you know your timing rules.

This build is pulling away from the synergies and advantages that are present in WGDX. You still run RtR, but this card is weakened by the diminished number of instant speed win conditions (WGD has an additional 4 instant speed win cards: +1 Intuition, +2 Cunning Wish, and +1 Entomb). If you're going to do this, go with Compulsion instead, because your RtR plays will probably be quite underwhelming.

I don't understand how running less instant-speed win cards makes RtR weaker.  Are you saying I should be afraid to cast RtR because I need to hold onto it as a win condition?  I've still got the big artifact mana and plenty of cards to dump in the graveyard.  To me, those are the factors that make RtR strong in dragon.

I would entirely support the use of Lim Dul's Vaults if you plan on using Xantid Swarms, but I would not cut card drawing from WGD - the DAs or Squees are very important in this archetype. WGD is a very redundant archetype in terms of its combo pieces, and is well served by card drawing.

I don't want to include Squee.  It's a dead card w/o bazaar.  To me the big success of WGDX is making the deck less reliant on bazaar to win.  Yes the deck has lots of redundancies because it needs specific cards to win.

DA is good, but are the odds really that good for drawing what you need off a flashed back DA?  Maybe the sting of defeat is clouding my judgment, but DA seems to disappoint a lot.  Scenarios where I NEED to draw something specific (say, an animate spell) and flashing back the DA misses, while at the same time speeding up my opponent's clock against me.

Your "primary kill card" puzzles me - Bogardan Hellkite is not a good win condition, because it requires other cards (aside from WGD and Animate) for the card to actually kill your opponent. Your actual primary kill card is Witness; Hellkite is just an alternate means by which Witness can kill (aside from the traditional Ancestral Recall kill), but is very much inferior in a deck that aims to exploit Read the Runes, which Hellkite cannot do. Hellkite might be a decent SB card to bring in versus Fish (or as pre-SB if you face a lot of Fish in your meta) for alternate animation or as part of an Oath conversion, but maindeck I'd stick to Cunning Wishes.

Maybe I test against stax too much, but wishing for answers was always too slow for me.  Hence it's "just" a win card, sitting in my hand the whole game until I can safely animate a worldgorger.  I'm interested in filling this deck with lots of versatile cards and less situational cards like squee and entomb.

But you're absolutely right, using bogardan hellkite to win requires more than just an animated worldgorger.  You need to an extra animate spell in hand, or a ruby/lotus in play, or a bazaar in play, or a rtr/intuition in hand.  Maybe I've been lucky so far, but I haven't run into the situation where I'm ready to go off but I don't have a way to get the hellkite into play from my graveyard.  Since I do require an extra animate spell it might be a good idea to fit the fourth necromancy into the deck.

Worst case scenario you could start the dragon loop, generate enough mana to cast all the spells in your hand, and then end the loop by animating the hellkite.  It doesn't win right away but it definitely improves your board position while simultaneously whittling away at your opponent's life total and/or creatures in play.

The Regrowth is weak. What are you Regrowing that's so important in such a redundant archetype? You might as well consider running Yawgmoth's Will instead.

Like I said previously, it allows me to do much more interesting things with intuition.  It's also useful to get a spent ancestral back, or to duress one last time before going off, or to get a win condition back after a painful bazaar session.  I don't like the idea of Yawgmoth's Will because it acts like Leyline of the Void against you for a turn.  This precludes you from going off on the same turn that you cast yawgwill.

The Pernicious Deeds are weak - you are worried phantom threats. Deed is a fantastic SB card, but most main decks will have 0-1 permanent based hate cards to worry about, and even then WGDX addresses this potential possibility via the 2 Cunning Wish. If you feel that your meta features a number of decks that run main deck Leyline of the Void (the only "serious" permanent-based threat against WGD), play some other archetype in the short run to try to push it out of main decks - Leyline isn't that strong pre-SB against the field, and the Ichorid hype has passed.

Deed is also good against stax's lock components, keeping your opponent from getting too far ahead of you via confidant, keeping grunt from digging up your gorgers, buying yourself another turn or two against aggro, etc.  Again, I feel like I play/test against a different set of decks than you or something.  But I do value your advice.  Perhaps I'll try running 2x Chain of Vapor maindeck and relegate all four deeds to the SB.

Running only 3 of your strongest card - Intuition? Are you really afraid of Extirpate?

I'm not so sure about intuition being the backbone of this deck.  It's good, no doubt, but Lim-Dul's vault might be stealing intuition's place in my heart.  That card has done nothing but good things for me since I started playing with it.

Maybe I haven't been playing with intuition correctly, but when I played it in WGDX it always did one of two thing for me:
*allowed me to tutor for a 3-of (animate, RtR, bazaar)
or more frequently:
*acted as a more expensive entomb: (show a pile consisting of WGD, WGD, DA)

There's other cards that mess with your graveyard besides extirpate.  It doesn't make sense to cast intuition early in the game for WGD, WGD, DA if you know your opponent has four jotun grunts maindeck.

Keep in mind that I designed this build for myriad game's tournament this past weekend.  This was the first vintage event that I know of where planar chaos would be legal.  If there was ever going to be a time when lots of people would be running extirpate, I figured it would be this tournament.  This mostly happened as a side-effect, but I discovered tat my deck is fairly resilient to extirpate.  Take my gorgers, I beat you to death with the hellkite.  Take my hellkite I recur ancestral with the witness.  Take my witness I animate the kite, then animate the gorger for the win.  A single extirpate vs WGDX could put you in "beat down with witness" mode

I disagree with Meadbert about 21 mana sources being too high - it is actually on the low side in a RtR based WGD. In the older Compulsion/Squee based builds it seemed that 19 was the bare minimum.

I don't think I could afford to cut any mana sources, especially considering how often I blow up my own artifacts with deed or RtR.  The five color mana base is a possibility.  That would make it much more likely that I could hardcast bogardan hellkite at instant speed ftw during a dragon loop.  I would miss the deck-thinning effect of fetches however.

My suggestion, if you haven't already done so, is to start by playing WGDX first, and see how synergistic the build actually is and what resources are available to you when combatting "hate". It is likewise important not to succumb to "the fear" and have it dictate how you construct the deck. WGDX can be pulled in many different directions, and you touch upon some of these - using Xantids and Lim Duls Vaults, for example, is a relatively unexplored avenue for this iteration. Just make sure you're not sacrificing those things that made WGDX successful in the first place, unless what you are bringing to the table can very strongly offset the losses.

I've played WGDX quite a bit, and it was a desire to make the deck more resilient to "incidental hate" that led me to make changes.  The fact that hardly anyone plays this archetype, and the few people who do seem to scrub out consistently, leads me to believe that something new has to be attempted.

I agree about not succumbing to "the fear", but it's also very important to establish a board position where you can safely combo off.  Going "all in", so to speak, often times results in you staring at an empty board.  Be careful, but don't be paranoid.

Never would I play this deck with anything less than 4 Force of Will. Xantid Swarm is a rather weak choice right now, considering that there is very little instant speed removal in the format. Sure it shuts off permission, but Dragon can often fight through control match-ups via overwhelming card advantage (of which this deck has very litte) or winning in response to an opponent's spell.

FoW is good, but often times it's very painful to select a card to pitch.

I agree that xantid swarm is weak.  It's slow (summoning sickness), it only stops spells (not abilities), and you can only take advantage of it once if your opponent has ANY blocker in play.  Hence why I will start experimenting with City of Solitude in its place.

I don't think a dragon deck should have more than eight disruption pieces maindeck.  More than that and you're going down the road of control, which is not a role that this deck can successfully play IMO.

[dicemanx]

I don't understand how running less instant-speed win cards makes RtR weaker.  Are you saying I should be afraid to cast RtR because I need to hold onto it as a win condition?  I've still got the big artifact mana and plenty of cards to dump in the graveyard.  To me, those are the factors that make RtR strong in dragon.

Aside from RtR's ability to put cards into the graveyard, RtR's justification (over a repeatable effect like Compulsion) comes from running plenty of instant speed win conditions. If you use RtR to put a WGD into the graveyard, for example, that will not be sufficient to win unless you have another instant speed card that can find the kill (Intuition, Cunning Wish, Entomb, other RtR).

Since you cut 4 instant speed win effects, it would make less sense to run RtR.

The last two responses I received alternately said that there's no permanent based hate, and no instant based hate for me to worry about.  Someone should tell that to my opponents.

There is very little permanent-based hate, and the instant speed hate varies. Except for Fish archetypes and Bomberman, most competitive archetypes do not feature pre-SB instant speed hate. However, if you're finding the opposite locally, then Xantids can be a fine choice. Abeyance and Chants are other options, but remain untested as far as I know.

I don't want to include Squee.  It's a dead card w/o bazaar.  To me the big success of WGDX is making the deck less reliant on bazaar to win.  Yes the deck has lots of redundancies because it needs specific cards to win.

I would agree with this statement, but the idea was more to stress the importance of some form of card drawing - if not DA, then Squee is the next best option to exploit certain cards/effects in WGD.

DA is good, but are the odds really that good for drawing what you need off a flashed back DA?  Maybe the sting of defeat is clouding my judgment, but DA seems to disappoint a lot.  Scenarios where I NEED to draw something specific (say, an animate spell) and flashing back the DA misses, while at the same time speeding up my opponent's clock against me.

It sounds like you're still trying to compare DA to precision tutoring (via LDVault for instance). I would look at other potential cards to cut for LDVs, like Regrowth, and the preponderance of disruption - you're playing too much in my opinion. You can certainly cite scenarios where DAs will be weak, but based on the few times that WGDX has been played at major events, DA seemed to be a powerful addition to the archetype. It also makes Intuition more flexible, because it can be used as part of a draw engine - I'd say that a frequent choice for Intuition piles is 2xDA and a WGD.

There's also a more general way of addressing your question - most combo/control decks use some sort of card draw/card advantage engines, even though you can likewise cite examples of situations where such combo/control decks would prefer to get something specific rather than hope to draw into what they need. Quite often you're not even sure what it is that you need, but drawing more cards than your opponent will at least dictate what specific course of action you must undertake. Think of DA (or any draw engine) as permitting you to see more cards and give you more opportunities for potential plays rather than be locked in for one course of action because you don't have sufficient cards to do anything else. WGD can especially fall victim to that when it starts using a lot of card disadvantage effects like Bazaar and LDV, not to mention the fact that its redundancy also puts at times a limit on the number of useful cards that you see (drawing multiple Animates, creatures etc).

Maybe I test against stax too much, but wishing for answers was always too slow for me.  Hence it's "just" a win card, sitting in my hand the whole game until I can safely animate a worldgorger.  I'm interested in filling this deck with lots of versatile cards and less situational cards like squee and entomb.

Unfortunately, WGD must resign itself to playing with "bad" cards in favor of generating as much synergy, redundancy, and speed as it can, and Cunning Wishes add exactly to that even if they are not actually used for anything else very frequently. The idea behind Cunning Wish is to first and foremost add to the potency of RtR; if your build doesn't try to support that card as much as possible, you lose the strength behind WGDX over other versions and become even more dependent on Bazaar, which you seem to want to get away from. It is therefore not just a "win" card - aside from the fact that you will use it on occasion to fetch important SB answers, it makes your other cards and your strategy that much better.

By comparison, before using RtR, I did not like to include Cunning Wish in WGD, exactly because of what you just said - the card is just not used outside of being a kill card often enough. Cunning Wish's appearance in WGDX coincided specifically with the addition of RtR.

Like I said previously, it allows me to do much more interesting things with intuition.  It's also useful to get a spent ancestral back, or to duress one last time before going off, or to get a win condition back after a painful bazaar session.  I don't like the idea of Yawgmoth's Will because it acts like Leyline of the Void against you for a turn.  This precludes you from going off on the same turn that you cast yawgwill.

Regrowth can obviously do cool things for you, but you're basically at the mercy of your board position/what cards you've deposited into your graveyard. As I asked, what exactly is your plan with this card? Your answer suggests that there is no particular plan - you're hoping to get lucky and have a relevant target. regrowth is aslo a pretty big time investment. Tying up 2 mana for WGD = investing 1 full turn quite often.

Deed is also good against stax's lock components, keeping your opponent from getting too far ahead of you via confidant, keeping grunt from digging up your gorgers, buying yourself another turn or two against aggro, etc.  Again, I feel like I play/test against a different set of decks than you or something.  But I do value your advice.  Perhaps I'll try running 2x Chain of Vapor maindeck and relegate all four deeds to the SB.

You need to be absolutely sure that what you are using Deed against has some relevance in preventing WGD from winning. I don't doubt that Deed has some impact on decks that play a lot of permanents (Stax, Fish), but whether it is necessary to win is another matter that can often be very difficult to assess properly (not easy to measure in game effects, AND also cover things like opportunity costs). For example, I don't think we have experience against radically different Stax lists, but Stax typically has very few relevant lock pieces/hate against you game 1 - their best hope is to focus on mana denial, but if they suceed in that, chances are that the Deed is not going to see play anyways. I'm usually not concerned too much with cards like CotV, Grunt, Meddling Mage/True Believer, Dark Confidant etc. WGD has plenty of resources to fight against such things.

I'm not so sure about intuition being the backbone of this deck.  It's good, no doubt, but Lim-Dul's vault might be stealing intuition's place in my heart.  That card has done nothing but good things for me since I started playing with it.

Well, I won't argue about what constitues the "true" backbone of the archetype; for me it doesn't take away from the power of Intuition and the necessity, in my opinion, of playing with all 4 copies. Perhaps you miss out on some of the synergy because you don't run DA, which factors in significantly into how Intuition is played in builds that use DA. I do agree as well that LDV can be a very powerful addition to this archetype since its "double tutor" effect is well suited for a Bazaar-based archetype - I just want to make sure that one LDV and one Intuition are not competing for the same slots here.

I agree about not succumbing to "the fear", but it's also very important to establish a board position where you can safely combo off.  Going "all in", so to speak, often times results in you staring at an empty board.  Be careful, but don't be paranoid.

I meant more in terms of deck construction, and letting hate dictate how the main deck is constructed. I wouldn't be so aggressive as to walk into potential hate blindly, unless the situation dictated that I should make such a play. That isn't throwing caution into the wind or showing bravado in the face of "the fear", that's just taking a well calculated risk.

I will say something about Bogardan Hellkite though - it too would be my choice, in addition to Sundering Titan, if I wanted to include alternate reanimation strategies to combat Extirpate. However, I would only consider such a plan if I knew how heavily Extirpate (or any graveyard hate/instant speed hate card) was going to be played. Since PC has become legal only recently, it will probably appear enough times for WGD to worry about it initially, but probably not enough to necessitate a complete overhaul. There are some other pretty decent strategies to fight Extirpate - Xantids are the natural, obvious choice, and alternate animate targets are another. A third would be to use 1 (maybe 2) Abeyance main deck to go with 3 LDVs and set up the Abeyance play when going off. Abeyance is a nice "catch-all" card as it also takes care of things like Tormod's Crypt, nevermind the random Bouncer, Ronom Unicorn, Seal of Cleansing, or whatever other suboptimal incidental permanent-based hate card you might unfortunately run into.

[zack]

About the number of instant wins

I want to make sure I understand your point about RtR's synergy with instant speed win conditions (instant-wins).

Here's an example about why this is important:

hand: WGD, necromancy, RtR, instant-win
in play: 5 mana, no bazaar
it's my opponents turn, and he puts "I win" on the stack.  In response I RtR for one, ditching the dragon and casting the win.  Or, if I don't have instant-win in hand, I have a chance of top-decking it from RtR and turning a draw into a win.

Note that if I have a hellkite in my hand or in the graveyard then necromancy is also an instant-speed win condition in my build.  If its already in play then animating the dragon wins without further assistance.

IMO, an even more important reason to bulk up on the number of instant-wins is intuition.  Intuition only counts as a win if you can search out three other instant-win cards from your deck.  In my current build this is very fragile.  If I've already cast RtR, then I may not be able to intuition for the win.  I can't add the fourth intuition to solve this problem, because intuition -> intuition is not a win, whereas RtR -> RtR is.

So if I'm going to add another instant-win card, which one should it be?  Chord of Calling would be hilarious, but it's too narrow to take seriously.

Realistic options as far as I can see them:
put in the 4th RtR
put entomb back in

Both of these cards dump stuff into the yard, so extirpate fears should be set aside.  I'm gonna give entomb another chance.  The fact that I use hellkite to win makes entomb less of a one-trick pony.

+1 entomb

Disruption package

Dicemanx has an interesting point about pernicious deed.  I cast it.  I use it.  It feels good.  But could I have possibly won without it?  Sometimes it's obviously a savior, but maybe other times it's unnecessary.  I don't analyze my testing games that closely.  Maybe I should.  Anyway, I'll try putting them all in the sideboard and see if I miss them.

-2 pernicious deed

City of solitude
This card protects me in many ways.  Therefore I feel that it is an appropriate substitute for Force of Will, which I've been looking for an excuse to cut.  This card has a much smaller footprint in my deck than FoW.  Other than destroying the implicit FoW bluff it doesn't really have any downside to me.  It also benefits from being an enchantment, the hardest type of permanent to destroy in vintage currently.  I can't see why I'd want to draw this card in multiples, so we'll try only running two maindeck.

-1 city of solitude

Duress
It's hard to say anything bad about this card.  I would like to run four, but this card isn't always necessary or useful.  Therefore I don't feel bad about leaving the duress count at 3.

Draw/Tutor

regrowth
Without intuition it's hit-or-miss.  I love how it opens up a ton more possibilities with intuition, but it's probably too situational.  For now I'll cut it, but I'm going to keep this card in the back of my mind as long as I'm playing green.

-1 regrowth

I agree that tutor and draw shouldn't have to compete for deck space.  Now that I think about it, Deep Analysis and Lim-Dul's Vault would work very well together.  Since one way or another I'm going to end up with a bazaar after the vault, DA lets me dig through 4 out of the 5 cards that I put on top.

Merchant scroll is like brainstorm.  A great card that's just hard to fit in this crowded deck.  The reason it doesn't get the nod from me is that it doesn't synergize with intuition as well as DA.  Intuition -> merchant scroll -> ancestral recall isn't the most exciting play.  So, we'll restore two deep analyses how much they speed the deck up.

+2 Deep Analysis.

The win condition

I'm still a big fan of Bogardan Hellkite.  There's definitely something good about flexible win conditions, especially in a diverse meta-game.  It's good for the same reason that RtR is good: they both remove vulnerabilities.  RtR makes bazaar less crucial, bogardan hellkite makes WGD less crucial.  Maybe once the extirpate craze dies down I'll cut one hellkite and make it a cunning wish for even more flexibility.

For everyone keeping track at home, here's the updated decklist:

21 mana:
7 solomox
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
4 polluted delta
2 bloodstained mire
3 underground sea
1 bayou
1 tropical island
1 swamp

7 animation targets:
4 worldgorger dragon
2 bogardan hellkite
1 eternal witness

7 animate spells:
3 animate dead
1 dance of the dead
3 necromancy

12 cards that turn draws into wins:
4 bazaar of baghdad
3 read the runes
4 intuition
1 cunning wish

8 other draw/tutor spells:
1 ancestral recall
1 vampiric tutor
1 demonic tutor
3 lim-dul's vault
2 deep analysis

5 disruption:
3 duress
2 city of solitude

SB:
4 leyline of the void
3 pernicious deed
3 chain of vapor
3 chalice of the void
1 city of solitude
1 living wish

_{edit: realized I was advocating a 59 card deck.  +1 intuition (running all 4 now)}

[dicemanx]

IMO, an even more important reason to bulk up on the number of instant-wins is intuition.  Intuition only counts as a win if you can search out three other instant-win cards from your deck.  In my current build this is very fragile.  If I've already cast RtR, then I may not be able to intuition for the win.  I can't add the fourth intuition to solve this problem, because intuition -> intuition is not a win, whereas RtR -> RtR is.

So if I'm going to add another instant-win card, which one should it be?  Chord of Calling would be hilarious, but it's too narrow to take seriously.

WGDX was built in a specific way to address this exact dilemma - it takes advantage of Eternal Witness, Entomb and Cunning Wish to permit an Intuition to function as a kill card. For instance, after using RtR to put WGD into the grave, you can cast animate and now use Intuition to fetch any combination of Wish/Entomb/RtR. You don't even have to run 2 Cunning Wish or Entomb for this - for instance, if you only had 2 RtR and 1 Cunning Wish remaining in your deck, you could Intuition for all three, and use the RtR that they give you to draw your deck and fetch a Witness.  Of course adding a 2nd Wish and an Entomb creates more of a safety net for this sort of play (nevermind adding to the instant speed count), in case you had to burn an early Wish or RtR.

I think the better question you might have to ask is not what instant speed win conditions might complement RtR in your build, but whether you should be playing RtR in the first place over something like Compulsion which doesn't require the support needed by RtR. Compulsion is a strong card in its own right, but the only question is if its fast enough for today's format (the answer might still be yes).


Incidentally, I have another suggestion for those looking for potential Extirpate/other MD hate solutions. I mentioned in the closed forum that perhaps Research (of Research/Development) might merit some consideration. Not only can it counter an Extirpate, it can also flood your library with answers to cards that might otherwise give you a lot of trouble game 1. For instance, it might permit you to add up to 4 bounce spells to your deck, or add alternate reanimate targets.

I'm not sure how amazing it is, but it might be worth keeping on the radar.

[Imsomniac101]

If you are that worried about Extirpate, I don't see how replacing the 4th WGD with Entomb is not a natural move. Also, adding alternate reanimate targets like Titan is a very strong move right now. Also, I don't see how Bogardan is better than Shivan Hellkite.

[Elinor]

Hi, i am italian player of dragon, sorry for my bad english.

I played wgd with squee and wgdx to many time. With TS and PC i would like to test a less graveyard based deck.
I cut rtr for brainstorm and i add Mystical Teachings as tutor for c.wish .

4 u.sea
2 island
1 swamp
5 fetch
5 mox
1 b.loto
1 s. ring
1 m.crypt
4 bazaar
3 wgd
1 witness
6 animate
2 c.wish
4 fow
3 duress
4 brainstorm
4 intuition
2 deep
1 mystical teachings
1 d.tutor
1 v.tutor
1 ancestral
1 t.walk
1 entomb

If extirpate will become a problem i would like to test a second finisher main deck: -1 wgd +1 tidespout tyrant (for win with 2 mox)

side:
wish target:
1 stroke (win)
1 extirpate/misdirection (protection)
1 fof or rtr (draw)
1 chain
1 hurkyll
1 rebuild
2 e. truth

4 chalice of the void
1 tinker
2 sundering titan (or 1 + 1 memnarch or other big artefact)

[zeus-online]

I'd honestly just take a WGDX list and add in 2 sundering titans and a tinker, probably cutting: 1 Animate spell (Either necromancy or dance of the dead), 1 cunning wish (I hate wish...honestly, so i might be biased against it) and maybe a dragon...These changes makes the deck slower, which is why i haven't done so already...it gets around extirpate though, but then again - I'm not worried about extirpate.

/Zeus

[theChinkees]

Hello, im new to this forum, but Ive been playing Dragon for some time now.
Im just looking for comments from other dragon players. Do you think a build such as this one can compete?
Im thinking about making in BG But im very unsure about the mana base and the deck as a whole.
Its a very suicidal dragon build, its kill or get killed (fast) I havnt taken this to a tournament yet, as its just an Idea so far.

The thing with Bogardan Hellkite here is because the list runs Spoils of the Vault, and it can go random beatdown.
Im looking for improvements etc. I really want to try and work this out. If it could work take out the Lotus and Mox Jet and add something else. As those two cards are proxy, the rest of the deck I got. I only got the blue and sapphire as power right now

(sorry if im interrupting your ongoing discussion about the above build. Hope its ok with you guys)

// Mana: 21
    4  Dark Ritual
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Sol Ring

    12  Swamp
    1  City of Traitors

// Combo: 18
    4  Bogardan Hellkite
    4  Worldgorger Dragon
    2  Eternal Witness

    4  Dance of the Dead (or) Animate Dead
    4  Necromancy

// Disruption / Tutor / Search: 21
    4  Duress
    3  Cabal Therapy (?? Xantid Swarms or something else)

    4  Spoils of the Vault
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Vampiric Tutor

    4  Bazaar of Baghdad
    3  Buried Alive
    1  Entomb

It rolls over to Leyline of the Void (Im aware of that) but thats just something I chose to ignore for now. I have other decks if the field gets swarmed by Leyline of the Voids. But Im very tempted to try transforming it into B/g or 5c (but need a little help with that) If Mono Black can`t do the job on its own.

What alternate kill/creatures should I use in the SB? (currently 1x Ambassador Laquatus is there)

[zack]

Bogardan Hellkite versus Shivan Hellkite

Reasons to run bogardan:
don't need red mana
faster clock when going for beatdown

Reasons to run shivan:
only need one animate spell to win in the dragon loop

Maybe the shivan is slightly better, but I don't know if its good enough to warrant going to the 5c manabase.  If borgardan starts to disappoint then maybe I'll give it a shot.

Bogardan Hellkite versus Sundering Titan

Reasons to run bogardan:
synergy with WGD for instantaneous win

Reasons to run titan:
land destruction
tinkerable
more plausible to hardcast (but still not easy)

Both of these critters offer the same clock: 3-4 turns, depending on how you get them into play.

I was really looking for a big animatable body that would also win me the game if I could start the dragon loop.  Titan doesn't do this, so I think I'll stick with the bogardan hellkite.  If you do like the idea of adding additional bodies to swing with, I would advise against cutting the number of animate spells in your deck.  I understand that you can tinker in the titan, but I would still worry about spreading yourself too thin in this regard.

Tidespout Tyrant

This is a cute idea.  I would be worried about animating him if you don't have any zero casting cost artifacts, since then his ability could be slightly annoying.  If you're going this route, you might want more cards to take advantage of this infinite mana / infinite storm that you can build up.  I guess the easiest thing to do would be to bulk up your cunning wish count some more.  You could also throw in something like brain freeze or tendrils of agony, but they seem too narrow and situational for a dragon deck.

Research/Development

Not a bad idea, but I think I like living wish a little bit better, mostly because it puts a card back in your hand.  That being said, these cards aren't exactly the same.  Research can shuffle in your bounce game one, whereas living wish can tutor up a gorger or a bazaar game two.  Despite the fact that these cards don't serve the same roles, they're similar enough that I would only want to run one or the other.

[Hydra]

I'd honestly just take a WGDX list and add in 2 sundering titans and a tinker, probably cutting: 1 Animate spell (Either necromancy or dance of the dead), 1 cunning wish (I hate wish...honestly, so i might be biased against it) and maybe a dragon...These changes makes the deck slower, which is why i haven't done so already...it gets around extirpate though, but then again - I'm not worried about extirpate.

/Zeus

Maindeck Titans were somewhat tested with some success pre-Extirpate (Peter had them maindeck day two at Rochester and took 3rd/4th).  Titan has always been my preferred "alternate win" of choice because of the land destruction ability.  While he may not kill in the loop the ability to armageddon your opponent's board is usually enough to put you ahead to be able to win on the back of Titan swinging, as Titan can take out anywhere from 1-3 (possible more) lands when it hits play.  The fact that he does the same thing while leaving play makes it even better, as even if they find a suitable answer to Titan they've probably damaged their own mana base enough that you shouldn't have too much problem forcing through the Dragon win at that point.

Another advantage that Titan provides over Hellkite and the like is Tinker.  Tinker is an excellent way of getting around the graveyard hate post-board, and again Titan's leaves play ability means that if your opponent does have an answer to Titan they will usually set themselves back quite a bit in doing so, giving youn (usually) ample time to find answers of your own.  Tinker also allows for the use of other artifact creatures, such as Triskelion, if you expect a metagame that would be more vulnerable to a specific target.  Having a 3rd way (aside from hardcasting and Animating) of getting out a win condition is deginitely not something to sneeze at, especially for those situations where hardcasting something just isn't feasable and gravet\yeard hate is keeping you from reanimating something.

In terms of Cunning Wish, I think it's the best "main" win condition available for the RtR-based builds as it doesn't force you to have lots of mana of an "off" color (like red) nor does it force you to expose your win condition to possible graveyard hate (like reanimate targets).  Multiple Cunning Wishes also allow you to fetch bounce game one if your opponent has something unexpected such as maindeck Leylines, something other win conditions can't account for.  It's quality declines if you remove its supporting base (cutting RtR and Eternal Witness would make it inferior to other win conditions in the deck), but with the "instant" focus that WGDX has I'm a firm believer that an "instant speed" kill card is important.

One last thing, for cutting Animate spells, I'd cut an Animate Dead before I'd cut either Necromancy or Dance of the Dead.  Necromancy is there so you can force through the win whenever the opportunity presents itself (which again makes instant speed wins like Cunning Wish more attractive), and Dance of the Dead is there in case of things such as Meddling Mage.  Dance of the Dead will almost certainly never get named off a Mage, where as Animate Dead and Necromancy will.  Have 3-4 animate spells left as opposed to 2-3 after a Mage hits can be the difference between winning and losing against decks like Fish, which have enough hate as is to annoy the Dragon player, let alone making changes to the deck to make the hate they have stronger.  Doesn't seem acceptable in my view.

[Luecifer]

Im not going to sit here and claim to be a dragon expert, but i have run dragon variaints in testing, and usually the dragon loop happens first, than the win, therefore i feel that running hellkite is not optimal for the deck. i think that if i were to run it tomorrow my win conditions would be wintess + wish combo and titan maindeck, with the possibility of shivian hellkite or sliver queen side. in previous testing, witness + wish for stroke was very reliable, especially with multipe duresses. i dont extirpate is a card to fear in dragon, not as much as leyline, since extirpate will only stop the loop combo, not stop you from winning. if extirpate becomes a true monster tool in t1, i would suggest converting your sb to take out the dragons and add in a few different reanimate targets. maybe 1 akroma, 1 SSS, and 1-2 other big fat. i think dragon is very viable in todays vintage and i know it can survive through hate. i hope my little bit of insight and thought helps in your building.

[zeus-online]

To hydra:

About the animate spells:
My primary thoughts was how they interacted with Sundering titan, its alot better to use animate dead then either of the others, its nice to have an animate spell that never gets named with meddling mage though, although that guy isn't all that good against dragon in the first place, too many things to name
I haven't really used the instant speed of necromancy yet, but that's probably 'cause i haven't tested enough against drains and fishies.

Haven't tested with the titans MD yet, so i'm sure you and dicemanx know alot more about this then me.

I currently play 2 cunning wish's so the idea was to remove 1 for a titan or tinker, and still be able to intuition ftw. (although its a bit harder, since you'd have to go for 3 RtR instead of being able to do a RtR, RtR, wish)

I really don't get peoples obsession about bogarden hellkite, against alot of decks it does nothing, while sundering titan is good against almost any deck in Type 1.

/Zeus

Fix: Added /Zeus

[meadbert]

Tinker would be a good addition because it dodges a lot of hate.  I wonder if Tinker->DSC might be better than Tinker->Titan simply because DSC dodges cards like Disenchant and Seal of Cleansing.

Regarding Necromany, I use it's instant speed ability all of the time.  I would run a full set of Necromancies if it were not for Meddling Mage.

[Hydra]

Tinker would be a good addition because it dodges a lot of hate.  I wonder if Tinker->DSC might be better than Tinker->Titan simply because DSC dodges cards like Disenchant and Seal of Cleansing.

Regarding Necromany, I use it's instant speed ability all of the time.  I would run a full set of Necromancies if it were not for Meddling Mage.

Even if you maindeck Tinker I feel Titan would be superior because you can still animate him and (although improbable) hardcast him, where as you cannot animate DSC and if you get the time to hardcast DSC the game has gone horribly wrong for both players.  DSC is a faster clock, but the ability to be dropped onto the table in a multitude of ways as opposed to just the one makes DSC superior in my book.

Disenchant and Seal don't scare me when it comes to hitting Titan because your opponent is quite likely to have armageddon'ed himself a second time in the process.  Recovering from the Titan once is difficult enough, doing it twice is enough to throw a wrench in most any deck's gameplan, and should buy you enough time to go for the combo win.

[BreathWeapon]

Have people considered SBing in ETW instead of additional animate targets? It's immune to counter spells, discard pile hate, instant speed removal, bounce etc. and the opponent wont be expecting it.

[meadbert]

[
Disenchant and Seal don't scare me when it comes to hitting Titan because your opponent is quite likely to have armageddon'ed himself a second time in the process.  Recovering from the Titan once is difficult enough, doing it twice is enough to throw a wrench in most any deck's gameplan, and should buy you enough time to go for the combo win.

Actually I have had the opposite experience where on the way in Titan took out my opponent's lands but on the way out he hit mine.

As an example if I am playing U/W fish and I Animate Titan on turn 2 with Underground Sea and Basic Island out and my opponent has Tunndra and Island.

My opponent taps for UW in response and then loses both of his lands while I lose Underground Sea.  Then he disenchants Titan and I lose my basic Island.

Of course a five color mana base would fix this but I have found this annoying.

Also in the same situation I could not have animated Darksteel Colosus at all so this does not imply that DSC is better, but I do worry about what he does to my own mana base on his way out.

[Hydra]

Have people considered SBing in ETW instead of additional animate targets? It's immune to counter spells, discard pile hate, instant speed removal, bounce etc. and the opponent wont be expecting it.

That is a possibility, but Dragon isn't a deck that's designed to cast a lot of spells per turn, as most builds lack cheap spells other than Moxes to really power storm.  You'd essentially need to retool the whole deck to make it feasable.

As an example if I am playing U/W fish and I Animate Titan on turn 2 with Underground Sea and Basic Island out and my opponent has Tunndra and Island.

My opponent taps for UW in response and then loses both of his lands while I lose Underground Sea. Then he disenchants Titan and I lose my basic Island.

Of course a five color mana base would fix this but I have found this annoying.

Also in the same situation I could not have animated Darksteel Colosus at all so this does not imply that DSC is better, but I do worry about what he does to my own mana base on his way out.

While it's true he can sometimes wreck your mana base on the way out, in most situations your deck is going to be the deck that's better designed to handle functioning on less mana.  Fish is a matchup where Titan is a liability, but in most cases they're more likely to be packing STP or bounce, meaning you're losing your guy either way.  I think the damage Titan wrecks on Drain decks and being much easier to actually get into play makes Titan superior to Colossus overall.  Being slightly harder to kill and being a faster clock while not actually effecting board position really doesn't do it for me as an alternate win condition in a deck that's not as geared as CS or Gifts towards protecting that win.  If you're running Drains/MisDs/REBs/etc then I could see considering DSC, but there's just no way to fit all of those cards into one deck while still keeping a Dragon shell.

[Hi-Val]

I just want to toss in that when you cut DAs, you're severely weaking your Bazaars. Without Squee or DA, Dragon can't generate card advantage outside of AR. That's not so good.

The reason to play Dragon isn't its speed as much as its inevitability for a combo deck. WGDX combines both nicely. Trying to make Dragon wicked fast just turns the deck into bad Grimlong. Dragon is a sharp combo deck because it can disrupt plenty and has a really strong engine in Bazaar. When you weaken that engine, you give up inevitability.

Necromancy is why you beat Stax, in all seriousness.

[Elinor]

Have people considered SBing in ETW instead of additional animate targets? It's immune to counter spells, discard pile hate, instant speed removal, bounce etc. and the opponent wont be expecting it.

I would like to test ETW, but it request a red-non-basic-land. If possible i want remain UB with 3/4 basic land (t. tyrant is a trial, if maindeck sundering i want again wgd#3).
red-non-basic-land give gorilla shaman and reb to side.

without rtr i can tutor c.wish with m.teachings, i can do intuition(wgd,wgd,mt) for win with animate. Unfortunately MT is dead card (i can tutor ancestral o fow a cc4. When do R&D add flash to necromancy??) instead rtr is good card to develop our game. But if i play brainstorm+mt i can develop my hand and board with BS, resolve duress and win with only one intuition  and animate
Without rtr mono dark ritual without rtr become interesting (entomb come back now).

DC can play only with tinker, if tinker comes discard DC become dead card, sundering can reanimate.
@meadbert: you could wait to reanimate sundering? If need second big artefact vs aggro control i prefer razormane masticore

[dicemanx]

Although I did run a Sundering Titan in one of the SGC events, I don't think I'd repeat that little experiment, unless I decided to get fancy with Tinker. However, that to me is starting to pull away from WGD's strengths game 1 - I'd save such tricks for the SB.

EtW - definitely not.

If I wanted to dodge heavy graveyard hate/Extirpate post SB, I'd be very willing to try and run 4 Oaths and a mix of 2 SSS, 1 Bogardan Hellkite, and 1 Thunder Dragon/Sundering Titan. Otherwise, I really think I'd opt for UBW or 5C mana base and run some number of Abeyances. That card is already better than Xantids versus Long/Tendrils combo, where it can double as a defensive card (stopping your opponent's combo instead of only focusing on furthering your own).

[zack]

I've played around with sundering titan in dragon before.  It's pretty good, but it can bite you in the ass if you're not playing against another B/U deck.  The titan's land destruction gets less lopsided when you splash in a third color like I do.  Of course all these problems go away if you adopt the 5C mana base.

For these reasons it seems more like a sideboard card as opposed to something you want maindeck in an unknown metagame.  As far as main deck alternate animate targets, bogardan hellkite is great.  Its CIP ability is like haste but better.  It can pick off a pesky creature or two if need be, and it also guarantees a win if you can get the dragon loop started with it in play.

To Dicemanx:
Abeyance is intriguing.  I'm very much in favor of the idea of effective disruption that doesn't make as big an impact to the maindeck as FoW does.  How'd you come to the decision that this serves your purposes better than Orim's Chant?  I realize that it forces your opponent's hand as far as Tormod's Crypt and other annoying abilities are concerned.  Is that plus the card draw worth the extra mana cost?  In my experiences one mana can easily make the difference between a win and a loss for dragon.

[dicemanx]

Abeyance is a better "catch-all" card since it can stop activated abilities - this is important not only when facing Tormod's Crypt, but also more "sub-optimal" choices that might pop up occasionally. The fact that it replaces itself is a very nice bonus. It also combos nicely with LDV - you can Vault for an Abeyance and a second card which the Abeyance will fetch for you. I've run this combination before in an older build, and although I don't have that much tourney experience with it, but I'd certainly look at it more closely now.

[Dante]

I played a 5c Build (posted below) at SCG Chicago 10/29/2005 based on some ideas and decklists from Peter.  I was REALLY satisfied with it.  My record only ended up as 4-2-1, but one of the losses should have been a draw (I lost in the last extra turn with a game loss for not revealing to Uba) and the draw should have been a win (my opponent had all 10 badly written proxies and I misread one of them in extra turns).

this version went 3-0 (6-1 in games) vs Meandeck Gifts at that tournament.

I don't post this as a version to play card for card now, but to see a framework that was reasonably successful (were I a better player) and has some alternate ideas.

4 Dragon
4 Bazaar
3 Squee
1 Shivan Hellkite
1 Sliver Queen
1 Life from the Loam

3 Animate Dead
3 Necromancy

1 Ancestral
3 LDV
4 Intuition
1 Demonic
1 Vamp

3 Pithing Needle
3 Abeyance
3 Xantid Swarm

21 Mana sources (5 mox, 1 lotus, 1 mana crypt, 4 COB, 4 Gemstone, 4 Orchard, 1 other 5cland, 1 sol ring)

SB:

2 Sacred Ground
3 Ray of rev
2 Oxidize
1 Abeyance
3 Chalice
2 Titan
1 EE
1 Deed


Obviously there was less UW Fish in the environment and less combo, so no Dance (also because I was animating fat bodies and attacking, particularly Titan) and no FoW.  My comments at the time from my report were:

•   the Oxidizes saved my ass in multiple games where no other spell could (maybe naturalize, but rack and ruin would have been too expensive).  Even though it’s only 1-for-1, I was so glad I added these to the SB.
•   Life came through in two games when I NEEDED it to. 
•   This configuration put a lot of pressue on Gifts, Titan helps wreck them.

Gifts decks have come a long way speed-wise, so it would be interesting to see how a list like this would fare now.  Obviously Leyline wasn't around.

Again, this post is to show some ideas since it worked well against Gifts at the time and some of the other options like Abeyance, etc are being discussed.

EDIT - in term's of Abeyance vs Orim's Chant, the ability to stop them from using a Welder for the rest of the turn or especially a Wasteland during your loop [since you could hold a land back, Abeyance, then go off, even in the face of multiple wastes] was very flexible and like you mentioned, Tormod's Crypt protection as well.  You can also use Abeyance defensively if another Dragon player is going off (if they need Bazaar or are going to kill with Hellkite, Sliver queen, or laquatas).

[zack]

I have a question about the 5c mana base.  What lands do you use?

One big benefit of the 5c mana base is that it allows you to use Shivan Hellkite for the win.  However if you have less life than your important, then you can't rely on City of Brass to generate the red mana to fuel this engine.

Gemstone Mine works if you can keep one around until you start the dragon loop up.  But at least in my experiences, this card always quits out on you when you need it most.  Seeing one in an opening hand is very unwelcome, especially if you don't have many other mana sources.

Forbidden Orchard facilitates the oath conversion if you're interested in that sort of thing.  It doesn't stop you from winning with Shivan Hellkite if your life is low.  But the token generation could beat you down faster than City of Brass if you're having trouble getting the combo off quickly.

How about Glimmervoid?  I haven't tested this card personally.  Does running moxen/sol ring/crypt provide enough artifacts to rely on this one?  Is the fact that Glimmervoid makes you more vulnerable to artifact destruction worth worrying about?

So those of you that have more experience with this sort of thing, which of these lands would you run, and in what quantities?

[meadbert]

I would not run Glimmervoid.  You will autolose too many games to Chalice.

I think City of Brass and Gemstone Mine would work just fine.  They have their drawbacks, so the question you will have to answer is do the advantages of having access to all 5 colors make up for their draw backs.

Forbidden Orchard is very scary.  In theory you should be able to combo out before the tokens matter, but ever since I had some fish player throw Curiosity on a token and and draw of it on turn one I have disliked Orchards.  After the Cities, Gemstone Mines and Orchard you are probably better off just adding in Underground Sea or whatever dual makes the most sense.  Sometimes you will have color screw, but you can always pitch off color spells to Bazaar.

[BoRoG]

I think City of Brass and Gemstone Mine would work just fine.  They have their drawbacks, so the question you will have to answer is do the advantages of having access to all 5 colors make up for their draw backs.

How exactly does city of brass work from inside the loop?  City of Brass will still do 2 damage per 1 with the Shivan Hellkite.  It worn't work when wishing up a stroke for the win.  Recurring Ancestral on someone who has 45 cards left in their deck will cost you at least 16 life.  If they then have all their FOWs in hand you can't kill them.  Are you always assuming you have a mox to produce the mana you need for the kill condition?

Edit: Removed incorrect comment about gemstone mine