[Deck] Dread Golem

[netherspirit]

Having read the title you may be wondering which Golem I'm referring to; Karn? Bosh?

No, the answer is far less glamorous - Composite Golem.

This deck uses Composite Golem to generate 10 mana and then combo off insanely; sound fun? It is.

Here's the list:

Mana Base:
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Bayou
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Polluted Delta
2 Windswept Heath

Creatures:
4 Hermit Druid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Street Wraith
1 Composite Golem

Disruption:
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy

Card Draw/Tutor:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
3 Night's Whisper

Essential Cards:
2 Dread Return
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Recoup
3 Bridge from Below

The Win Condition:
2 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard:
4 Seal of Primordium
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Massacre
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Oxidize

The deck works by activating Hermit Druid and getting your entire library into your graveyard, bringing your Narcomoebas into play. From there you should be able to use Cabal Therapy on your opponent to protect your win or on yourself to put Composite Golem, Dread Return or Bridge from Below into your graveyard. Your Narcomoebas and zombie tokens should be enough to allow you to cast Dread Return on Composite Golem for its flashback cost, sacrifice Composite Golem (getting you three more tokens and a lot of mana) and repeat with Dread Return number two.

You then simply cast or flashback Recoup on Yawgmoth's Will, play a load of spells and cast Tendrils of Agony.

If you think your opponent may be sideboarding in answers to Tendrils in game two, you can sideboard out your Tendrils for Flame-Kin Zealot and one other card, allowing you to beat your opponent down instead.

The decks worst matchup is possibly Ichorid, so the sideboard is packed with ways to stop the Ichorid player; if you can get in a Leyline or Crypt they will find it very difficult to win. The Seals are in the sideboard to stop Null Rod, Pithing Needle, Root Maze and Leyline of the Void; Tormod's Crypt is still quite a threat, but I haven't faced it yet so I'm not worrying about it much.

Well that's it. Comments and criticism of the deck would be appreciated! Thanks.

netherspirit

[andrewpate]

I put this into MWS and goldfished a few games.  Some thoughts:

The combo itself is very consistent:  that is, if you get to activate Hermit Druid, you will almost certainly have a kill.  It is cute that one mana of every color is exactly sufficient to Recoup Yawgmoth's Will.  However, the activation is not so terribly easy to get, given the deck's very large number of dead draws.  You essentially have to mulligan into Druid or turn 1 tutor for Druid.  However, this is not as simple as Ichorid's single-minded mulligan strategy:  you need not only Druid but also the necessary mana to play it.

The deck appears to goldfish around turn 3.  It's been a slow turn 3, closer to turn 4 on average, in my testing, but I feel that with better mulligans and more familiarity I might force it down a half-turn or so.  This is fairly fast, but no faster than a lot of other decks out there.

Like Witness Oath, this deck has a permanent which fills up the graveyard and allows a storm kill on the turn after it is played.  Witness Oath has not proven to be a strong contender in general, even though it has the ability to execute a TPS kill without Oath of Druids quite easily.  I don't see a lot here to recommend your deck even over that, let alone over conventional Long decks or Ichorid.  It has basically no game against Leyline, which is seeing more and more maindeck use.  All in all, this seems like bad timing for a rickety, graveyard-based combo to really be effective.

Of course, I love Composite Golem, and the deck is a blast.  When I first saw Composite Golem in your list, I was expecting the old Mycosynth Golem/Rush of Knowledge combo, which is hilarious but not really Vintage material.  This combo, on the other hand, is fresh and interesting.

[wethepeople]

Isn't this just Angry Hermit, or "Woodstock" as a previous poster called it, with a slightly worse win-condition? Rather than using unnecessary cards like Composite Golem, Tendrils of Agony, and Recoup, you can just recur Flame-kin Zealot and swing with lethal Zombie tokens.

[netherspirit]

It's been a slow turn 3, closer to turn 4 on average, in my testing, but I feel that with better mulligans and more familiarity I might force it down a half-turn or so.

Yeah I found it took me a while to get used to playing the deck actually. The reliance on Hermit Druid is quite a weakness, and I spent a while learning when I should or shouldn't mulligan, but generally I'm pulling off turn three wins now and occasionally turn two.

I need more ways to get Hermit Druid I think; I'm considering either Worldly Tutor or Serum Powder. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for the feedback by the way! And andrewpate, thanks for trying the deck on MWS I'm glad you like it!

netherspirit

[Sarah Angel]

My first thought upon seeing this post, though I didnt say it, was "Add Worldy Tutor".

I just recently ditched a deck that had about as much reliance on a 4x Creature X as yours does on Druid.  It could win without it, but it certainly didnt want to.  It just seems like the typical case of "If things go well, they go really well, but if not, they go horribly."  And I even had Demonic/Vamp/Imperial in the deck but it still didnt seem like enough.

I mean, you GOTTA get the druid, pretty much, and more than that, gotta get him early since he has the very inconvenient problem of summoning sickness.

Kind of like in my other thread with Tinker>DSC, I could envision, after your opponent figures out that druid is the key card, bouncing/killing him after you expend the effort to get him on the table. 

With Summoner's pact, you get the card in hand (very, very important).  Plus, for reasons just stated, you still have the mana now to play the card right then, and perhaps mana left for disruption (duress/therapy).  If only the stupid druid had haste....

  is pretty annoying though, next upkeep, plus you already have to spend  to use the hermit.

So maybe worldly tutor is the better bet.  Whatever you do, I would definitely consider 1-2 more ways to find druid.

[netherspirit]

So maybe worldly tutor is the better bet.  Whatever you do, I would definitely consider 1-2 more ways to find druid.

How about if I cut one Bridge and one Tendrils? The additional Tendrils is pretty much overkill in here and I can still win easily enough with only two Bridges, though I'd probably have to have one Bridge in my sideboard so I can still use the Flame-Kin Zealot route effectively.

[andrewpate]

Wouldn't that cause you to scoop to Extract on Tendrils?  Also, cutting a Bridge means that drawing a Bridge leaves you only one left in the deck when you go off.  Granted, it won't happen that often, but you could occassionally lose all win conditions that way.  For example, an opening hand of Narcomoeba, Narcomoeba, Bridge From Below, Hermit Druid, Bayou, Black Lotus, Duress would be amazing with the current build, a forced mulligan with the changes you suggest.

Then again, the additional odds of getting an early Hermit Druid may outweigh those Bridge-related considerations, but I would still be nervous about going down to a single-card kill mechanism.

[netherspirit]

Yes that would make Extract a problem, but how many decks actually play that now? Tog in the sideboard? I could always put an extra Tendrils in my sideboard so that I can side it in if I think Extract's coming.

My way around the Bridge issue is Cabal Therapy. It says "target player", not opponent, so I can always use one Therapy to check my oppnent's hand and one to put my Bridge into my graveyard. Yes I'd get two tokens less this way, but I would still have enough to pull the combo off.

I was thinking about adding Elvish Spirit Guide last night, how does that sound?