[article] WGDX vs GAT

[Purple Hat]

I think this is right - anyone with some more experience please correct me.

1) Enchant Dragon with an aura. The Dragon CIP removes all permanents you control from the game. As a result, Dragon goes back to your graveyard because it is no longer enchanted. All your permanents come back into play, untapped. The aura looks for a target, and you choose Worldgorger Dragon. The loop repeats. You can now have lots of mana floating in your pool. You  can now either activate Bazaar a lot or cast Read the Runes for a lot. Both methods dump your library into your graveyard.

2) At the point in the loop where the Aura looks for a target, enchant Eternal Witness instead. This stops the loop. With the CIP trigger of Witness, return an Aura to your hand.

3) Play the aura, targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop begins again.

4) Every time Witness comes back into play (after being blinked by the Dragon Comes Into Play/Leaves Play triggers), return a card from your graveyard to your hand. If it's an Instant, you can play it whenever (i.e. Ancestral Recall, Cunning Wish, Stroke of Genuis). You essentially now have all relevant cards in your library in your hand. If you want to play a sorcery, move to step 5.

5) With Aura targeting Worldgorger Dragon on the stack, resolve the Witness CIP trigger and return the targeted Worldgorger Dragon to your hand. The Aura will have no target and will be put into the graveyard. The loop stops. Play any Sorceries you want (i.e. Duress). To start the loop again, go to step 6.

6) Discard the Dragon somehow. Play an Aura (that you had returned with Witness sometime in step 4) targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop starts again with Witness CIP triggers.


So you Ancestral the opponent once. You then stop the loop and Duress 3 times (Forcing any threats). Rinse and repeat until you have milled your opponent. Or, you return Cunning Wish (if you haven't played it already) and go for Stroke of Genius.

this is theoretically how you would do it if you wanted to, but I've always found that holding 4x force of will and 3x necromancy with infinite mana was usually enough to get around anything annoying my opponent might try.  any time that you have to fight a counter war you can always just force them to counter 4 forces and 3 necromancies.

[nineisnoone]

I think this is right - anyone with some more experience please correct me.

1) Enchant Dragon with an aura. The Dragon CIP removes all permanents you control from the game. As a result, Dragon goes back to your graveyard because it is no longer enchanted. All your permanents come back into play, untapped. The aura looks for a target, and you choose Worldgorger Dragon. The loop repeats. You can now have lots of mana floating in your pool. You  can now either activate Bazaar a lot or cast Read the Runes for a lot. Both methods dump your library into your graveyard.

2) At the point in the loop where the Aura looks for a target, enchant Eternal Witness instead. This stops the loop. With the CIP trigger of Witness, return an Aura to your hand.

3) Play the aura, targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop begins again.

4) Every time Witness comes back into play (after being blinked by the Dragon Comes Into Play/Leaves Play triggers), return a card from your graveyard to your hand. If it's an Instant, you can play it whenever (i.e. Ancestral Recall, Cunning Wish, Stroke of Genuis). You essentially now have all relevant cards in your library in your hand. If you want to play a sorcery, move to step 5.

5) With Aura targeting Worldgorger Dragon on the stack, resolve the Witness CIP trigger and return the targeted Worldgorger Dragon to your hand. The Aura will have no target and will be put into the graveyard. The loop stops. Play any Sorceries you want (i.e. Duress). To start the loop again, go to step 6.

6) Discard the Dragon somehow. Play an Aura (that you had returned with Witness sometime in step 4) targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop starts again with Witness CIP triggers.


So you Ancestral the opponent once. You then stop the loop and Duress 3 times (Forcing any threats). Rinse and repeat until you have milled your opponent. Or, you return Cunning Wish (if you haven't played it already) and go for Stroke of Genius.

Ahh. I see how it works.

But wouldn't that strategy lead to time issues? Wouldn't it be better to Recall yourself to draw into one of your instant speed win conditions?

[linsi]

@Jaynel: your 5th point is wrong. when the aura comes into play with no target it doesnt trigger anymore. the aura works that it comes in as an global aura and then it triggers and targets a creature, if there is no creature it doesnt trigger and stays in play.

by the way, when you have the combo succsessfully on the table with that wicked witness recursion you should be able to win without sorceries!!!

@nineisnoone: recall is one of the instant win conditions!!!

[Purple Hat]

I think this is right - anyone with some more experience please correct me.

1) Enchant Dragon with an aura. The Dragon CIP removes all permanents you control from the game. As a result, Dragon goes back to your graveyard because it is no longer enchanted. All your permanents come back into play, untapped. The aura looks for a target, and you choose Worldgorger Dragon. The loop repeats. You can now have lots of mana floating in your pool. You  can now either activate Bazaar a lot or cast Read the Runes for a lot. Both methods dump your library into your graveyard.

2) At the point in the loop where the Aura looks for a target, enchant Eternal Witness instead. This stops the loop. With the CIP trigger of Witness, return an Aura to your hand.

3) Play the aura, targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop begins again.

4) Every time Witness comes back into play (after being blinked by the Dragon Comes Into Play/Leaves Play triggers), return a card from your graveyard to your hand. If it's an Instant, you can play it whenever (i.e. Ancestral Recall, Cunning Wish, Stroke of Genuis). You essentially now have all relevant cards in your library in your hand. If you want to play a sorcery, move to step 5.

5) With Aura targeting Worldgorger Dragon on the stack, resolve the Witness CIP trigger and return the targeted Worldgorger Dragon to your hand. The Aura will have no target and will be put into the graveyard. The loop stops. Play any Sorceries you want (i.e. Duress). To start the loop again, go to step 6.

6) Discard the Dragon somehow. Play an Aura (that you had returned with Witness sometime in step 4) targeting Worldgorger Dragon. The loop starts again with Witness CIP triggers.


So you Ancestral the opponent once. You then stop the loop and Duress 3 times (Forcing any threats). Rinse and repeat until you have milled your opponent. Or, you return Cunning Wish (if you haven't played it already) and go for Stroke of Genius.

Ahh. I see how it works.

But wouldn't that strategy lead to time issues? Wouldn't it be better to Recall yourself to draw into one of your instant speed win conditions?

I don't think the time issue happens because you're inside an infinite loop.  it just happens to be an infinite loop that removes non-land, non-creature spells from your opponents hand.  the infinite loop rules should still apply though.

[linsi]

iam sorry dicemanx, but i have not enough time to write an report and i didnt made notes from that tournament.i try to gather some facts.

my matchups were
goboleyne, 2 stax, hulk flash, and oath

against gobboline the maindeck leyline is pretty hard to fight.
goboleyne
game 1 he had it in his opening hand+ turn 2 kill (amazing)
g2 i won quick with oath plan
g3 i mulled to 4, keeping oath, pearl duress and force. topdecking orchard won me the game.

stax
both matches were easy, cause they borded gryvejard hate in in and oath killed them.

oath
funny thing when the oath player is faced orchards^^. i won.

flash
i dont remember the 2 gamesbut in g 3 we both had alot of backup in hand and only 4 minuites left in the round. so we considere to draw.

the entombe as you said is good to find the 2. win condition or at least something to combo out.
the card is mystical teachings.

the pacts: in testing there were very often the situation that i could combo out but holding only 1 card in hand most time it was Fow. pact allows to combo with backup  holding only  1 card in hand.
another good point is the opponent doesnt expect it. and with an necromancy you can even counter in opp turn and win in your next upkeep.

sorry for posting this "little report" here, but it suits the topic and is not big enough for an own thread

[fury]

But wouldn't that strategy lead to time issues? Wouldn't it be better to Recall yourself to draw into one of your instant speed win conditions?

The kill with witness and ancestral recall that I mentioned is to be used when cunning wish is no more available (already used or pitched on FoW). 4 FoW and 3 necromancy work too.

@Jaynel: your 5th point is wrong. when the aura comes into play with no target it doesnt trigger anymore. the aura works that it comes in as an global aura and then it triggers and targets a creature, if there is no creature it doesnt trigger and stays in play.

No. When an aura enchants nothing, it is put into the owner's graveyard. It's a state-based effect.

I'm not sure this actually works.  How do you get an animate spell back in your hand to restart the dragon loop?  Suppose you only have one dragon in the yard while you're looping with two animate spells and an eternal witness.  Both animates come into play at the same time.  One triggers before the other and brings the worldgorger dragon into play.  Her CIP ability goes on the top of the stack and subsequently causes the whole loop to repeat itself.  This means the second animate spell never gets a chance to realize that it has nothing to animate, which would normally cause it to go to the graveyard as an unattached aura.  Since it never hits the graveyard you can't use the witness' CIP ability to get it back into your hand.  Am I missing something?

Indeed.
In my solution, I used 3 animate spells. One attached to witness, the second is played on WGD, and I pick up back a 3rd animate from the graveyard. On each cyle of CIP of the WGD, we have a starting interlinked loop. When I bring back dragon to make the 2 animate aura fizzle, they go to the graveyard. So I need a 3rd to start the loop again.

To be totally clear :

1) Witness enchanted with animate dead
2) I play another animate dead on WGD
3) All permanents go, I sacrifice the WGD, all permanents return
4) both animate auras target WGD, and I stack the CIP ability of witness on the top of the stack.
5) It starts an interlinked loop with a regrowth effect
6) I bring back Echoing truth, ancestrall, duress, FoW, Read the Runes, everything I need. And finally I return Dragon.
7) When both animate auras come into play, they cannot enchant anything and go to the graveyard.
8) All animate ability fizzle and all interlinked loops stop.
9 I play every sorcery I need. And discard dragon with read the runes to start again.

Note that if Time walk were played in WGDX, we could have another kill by infinite turns. But we don't need it most of the time.

A brief answer to the question - rather using the witness trigger to return the REST of your deck to your hand, once you've got a bunch of Duress in your hand, use the Witness trigger to return the WGD to hand, thus the animates don't have a WGD to target and the loop stops.  Cast your Duresses.  Discard dragon and start again.

The main issue is to discard again the dragon. You can do that by Read the runes or bazaar. But this makes you draw, and you must draw less than your opponent to outdeck him.

EDIT : main correction on the aura rules...

[fury]

5) Kill and reanim

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

4 WGD is an evidence, no more to say on that. 7 reanim is a standard, because some will be countered during a game, and it's very important for the dragon player to reach one as quick as possible. Let us notice that reanim are diversified, to avoid the classic Fish threat on it, meddling mage, and to avoid a devastating Chalice@2 which ruins the combo. Moreover, Necromancy can be used as an instant to an instant kill, during the opponent's turn.

The kill is the witness one. It's the more multi-purpose one, because it allows plenty of tricks to  bounce everything which is embarrasing to win. The build doesn't rely only on it, because WGDX can also win with cunning wish and stroke of genius.

You mentioned Entomb to replace the 4th Deep Analysis, but what about replacing the 4th WGD with Entomb? You want your WGD in your GY anyways so it basically serves the same purpose. The big advantage would be the ability to combo without having a WGD in the yard.

I didn't test, but I cannot imagine playing less than 4 WGD. It's the kill condition, and we should put it into the graveyard as fast as possible. The entomb is quite strong if we want to combo off quickly, but the choice to replace it with a 4th DA is also relevant. After side, if the Oath is chosen, all 4 WGD go out of the deck to put in 4 Bogardan.

Also, if you're worried about meddling mage, why not run 2x animate and 2x dance? Is there some reason why animate is preferred to dance?

Both are equivalent for the combo. I personaly include 2 animate, 2 dance and 3 necromancy. The difference can be effective on the Oath sideboard, when we choose to reanimate Bogardan Hellkite. Dance is more costly to attack with Hellkite.

On the SB, what about Dread instead of Hellkite? It is objectively 1 turn slower than Hellkite, but is subjectively faster in a race against any other creature combination that doesn't win on it's first attack. It is still good against Platinum since nothing will be able to attack you, allowing you to stall to be able to bounce it. It isn't as good against Welder though. It can be reanimated with Necromancy as well.

Dread kills slowly. Hellkite can kill platinum angel, welder, and every nasty creature which prevent from winning. With hellkite, you want to kill your opponent as fast as possible.

Also why 4 Hellkites/Oath targets? Might it be better to run different ones to run against different decks? Maybe Platinum Angels, or Hypnox?

Platinum : why ? I'd rather win that keeping a protector creature. The CIP of Hypnox cannot be useful, as we don't play it.

Also has Merchant Scroll been tested out? Scroll can get Intuitions, FOW, Recall, and Bounce helping win out attrition wars and finding answers. Might be a bit much for main deck, but might better against more all-or-nothing combo decks, where rather than a long attrition war you just need to accelerate to as much disruption as possible.

Merchant can be a solution yes. I didn't test, but perhaps it can find a place.

[neckfire]

Sorry im late coming to this discussion.
Once again great article i just have one question, for the purpose of these questions let's assume that i am using the wgd deck from the article as the base.
1: When you sb for the oath package what do you take out. im wondering if there are better targets to let stay in.

[fury]

It depends on the opponent's deck.

Normally :

-4 WGD
-2 reanim
-1 eternal witness
-1 cunning wish
-1 intuition/duress

+4 Bogardan hellkite
+4 Oath
+1 echoing truth
+1 chain of vapor

[zoidberg]

or if you dont think you will see much graveyard hate you can keep in one dragon and still combo out and if you oath him up a 7/7 flying trampler still gets you there

[zoidberg]

ok so i played dragon at SCG chicago and i will give a mini report of it if people want to hear it but it wont be as detailed as dicemanx or written as good.

[fury]

I'm interested in your report.

[islanderboi10]

i, too, would like to read your report.

[fury]

I would like to draw the point about the side of WGDX.  Its main strength is the surprise effect and its non-dependence to the graveyard. But Dragon became slower when it transforms into Oath. I noticed that the dragon player needs at least 3 turn to kill when Oath is on the table (first Oath activation : -5 damages ; second : -10 ; -15 at 3rd turn)

The idea is to reduce the activation of Oath, so that 1 or 2 activations lead to victory. To reach this goal,
I tested the Oath side with 2 Bogardan Hellkite and 2 Tidespout Tyrant. When Tidespout Tyrant reaches the table, the dragon player may control the opponent's permanents by playing spells. Moreover, he can do infinite mana with 2 moxes on the table. A second Oath activation which brings out Hellkite may end the game if one of the mox is red (or if there is 2 forbidden orchard are in play).

What do you think about that ? What would you choose : 4 hellkite ? 4 tyrant ? 2 of each ? Other ?

[linsi]

as i mentioned, i played 4 tyrants and it was really good. now i try 3. must be enough. i think it is always stronger when tyrant no 2 reaches the table, cause you are not depending on mox ruby. bouncing every permanont you want is stronger than just being lucky by drawing rubi.
2 mox+ 2 tyrant or even m. crypt or sol ring deal the same way as mox are game winning situations.
i think hellkite is a metagame descision. against aggro matchups hitting him first can be stronger than tyrant. in every other case tyrant is the better choice!!!

[EnialisLiadon]

I tried designing my Tyrant Oath build so that the kill took up as little space as possible.  My build uses only a single Tyrant and a single Eternal Witness...and then a Krosan Reclamation for when Oath mills me and/or if I want to mill myself (set up a crazy Will).

A Tyrant and a Witness allow for multiple paths of victory...be it infinite Time Walks, infinite storm, infinite mana, or just beating down with Tyrant while bouncing their permanents.  It usually wins (or effectively wins) the turn you Oath.  I think this plan could also be used in the Oath-plan of Dragon's sb.

So for Dragon, the Oath cards in the sb would have to be...4 oaths, 1 tyrant, 1 brain freeze, and then 1 Krosan Reclamation if you felt you needed it.  This is obv dependent on running the Witness kill in the maindeck and leaving the Cunning Wish in for Brain Freeze.

[linsi]

@EnialisLiadon
i think running one tyrant is is completely wrong.
what do  people sb against dragon i.e. leyline and extirpate, so imagine your opp plays leyline and you have tyrant in hang should be gg and when he plays thoughtseize you are just dead.
brain freeze make only a little sence cause stroke>brain f.
you cant take the oath winning cards and just putting them into another decks sb just hoping it will work, you have to think about all  possible circumstances

[fury]

Linsi, thanks for your comments.

Indeed, the pure Tyrant Oath sideboard version is better to control the table. With 2 Tyrant and 2 hellkite, I sometimes had difficulties to manage the opponent's threats when the 2 hellkite come first. The aggro choice is to be chosen when the opponent's deck is also aggro, in order to kill him quickly.

EnialisLiadon,

The SB oath plan musn't use the graveyard. It seems to be interesting to play Eternal witness with tyrant for infinite things, but most of the time, the opponent will enter mass graveyard hate to kill your dragon deck. Thus, it is better to forsake the use of the graveyard after side.

[neckfire]

here is my deck list that got 5th at the cary nc tournament.
Lands
    4  Forbidden Orchard
    4  Bazaar of Baghdad
    3  Underground Sea
    1  Tropical Island
    2  Polluted Delta
    2  Flooded Strand
    1  Volcanic Island

// Creatures
    3  Worldgorger Dragon
    1  Eternal Witness
    3  Squee, Goblin Nabob
    1  Kumano, Master Yamabushi

// Spells
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Mox Emerald
    3  Intuition
    1  Demonic Tutor
    2  Read the Runes
    1  Ancestral Recall
    4  Force of Will
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    2  Deep Analysis
    1  Mox Ruby
    3  Necromancy
    3  Animate Dead
    1  Dance of the Dead
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Brainstorm
    4  Thoughtseize

// Sideboard
SB: 3  Brainstorm
SB: 4  Oath of Druids
SB: 3  Chalice of the Void
SB: 1  Chain of Vapor
SB: 1  Echoing Truth
SB: 1  Akroma, Angel of Wrath
SB: 1  Razia, Boros Archangel
SB: 1  Platinum Angel

[fury]

A short report of your performance ?

[the boogie man]

wouldn't 1 hellkite and 2 tyrants work the best? No chance of running into too many hellkites, but against fast aggro decks, or perhaps a goyf, dryad, or troublesome confidant would work pretty well, especially if you are strapped for mana and can't chain spells.

[linsi]

why are so many people afraid of fast aggro decks, you are playing w. dragon its speed is comparable to grim long which is indeed very fast, so where is the big deal???

[neckfire]

ok i lost my notes from my tourny
but here is what i remembered
round one i played against mono red burn
i won 2-1 game one i won turn 2 only bc i did not see a way to do it turn one. there was one though. i went infinite and killed him.
game 2 he burned me out with burn and firecats by turn 3.
game 3 turn one win -man that was fun.

round 2 against gush tinker i lost 2-0 both games i got greedy
game one i went off without couinter backup and he bounced the dragon.
g2 i went with oath and it just did not get to the board.

round 3 i went up against a gush infinite life decking land combo deck*weird*
game one i win with artifact mana a bazzar and a black lotus went infinite and finally got lotus into play with witness and other goodies finally i kill him.
g2 he wins i forget how he goes off
g3 we tie with me one turn away from winning.....i mean we draw in time.

round 4 goblins
game one i win on turn 3 with me at 2 life.machine gun to the dome.
game 2 i go oath he starts out with mulligan till he gets to leyline of the void.....oath hoses him i oath turn one and get akroma and razia on board for the win.
i ended up 5th at the tourny dont know what i will do next time though.


i do have some good advice for people who do the trasformational board it hurt me alot bc people could see me sb in alot of cards and they new what i was doing.well do this g2 shuffle yuor sb into your md and then take out the 15 cards you are not planning on running they will not know what version g2 you will bring.
neckfire

[the boogie man]

Dragon is fast, yes, but it is not as fast as grimlong. Not to mention you have to have a bazaar and another viable mana source when you cast the animation spell. The aggro decks have the disruption to slow you down, even post transformation, whether it be 7 duress effects, or a bunch of blue, or both.

[linsi]

sorry boogie man but the old times in w.dragon where you can only win with a bazaar active are over since onslought. in my version an intuition wins and in WGDX read the runes does the job, and by the way you are as fast as grim long, to my mind the only dfferences are that grim has a bigger 1st turn winning rate thats all, so w.dragon is in avarage as fast as grim long.

[the boogie man]

but that means you need either 5 mana, 3 mana and another turn (both of which you still need an animate spell in hand), or really good luck and extra cards in hand. Dragon is fast, and can maintain its game plan very well, cheap disruption like duress and tormods crypt/leyline keeps it from being as fast as it is in gold fishing.

[neckfire]

sorry boogie man i won one game like i said with colorless mana and a black lotus.
also you can win with duress and other threats coming at you....you need to test the deck before knocking it i will gladly play you on mws if you want pm me and set up a game.

[fury]

Dragon only needs 1 black mana to cast the reanim. All other mana can be colorless or blue.

A minimal one turn kill hand : Duress, Black Lotus, WorldGorger Dragon, Read the runes, Island, Intuition, Mox Pearl.

Play Island, play Mox Pearl, play Black Lotus.

Sacrifice Black Lotus for BBB, play Duress. BB are in the mana pool.
Tap Island and Mox Pearl for Read The Runes, draw Animate Dead, discard Dragon.
Reanim Dragon with Animate Dead. I let you conclude on the kill with Intuition (the first who find it will be called "Dragon Player of the Day" ).


Of course, it's an ideal hand, but it shows that WGDX doesn't absolutely need Bazaar to combo off. Grim Long must have a great hand too to chain 10 spells and a lethal Tendrils of Agony. For instance : Mox Jet, Grim Tutor, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Underground Sea, Black Lotus, Lotus Petal.

Normally, in a T1 confrontation, the first turn is to setup the strategy. With WGDX, we use the first turn to :
* develop the mana resources (example : drop land, mox, sol ring, mana vault ; for a winning end-of-turn Read the Runes for instance, or a hardcast Deep Analysis next turn)
* Disrupt the opponent (drop land duress)
* setup a piece of the combo (bazaar activate for a WGD in the graveyard)
* manage an early hate (fetch Tropical Island, Mox Jet, Demonic Tutor for Reverent Silence).

So we cannot judge the quality of a deck only with its goldfish speed.

[nineisnoone]

Dragon only needs 1 black mana to cast the reanim. All other mana can be colorless or blue.

A minimal one turn kill hand : Duress, Black Lotus, WorldGorger Dragon, Read the runes, Island, Intuition, Mox Pearl.

Play Island, play Mox Pearl, play Black Lotus.

Sacrifice Black Lotus for BBB, play Duress. BB are in the mana pool.
Tap Island and Mox Pearl for Read The Runes, draw Animate Dead, discard Dragon.
Reanim Dragon with Animate Dead. I let you conclude on the kill with Intuition (the first who find it will be called "Dragon Player of the Day" ).


Of course, it's an ideal hand, but it shows that WGDX doesn't absolutely need Bazaar to combo off. Grim Long must have a great hand too to chain 10 spells and a lethal Tendrils of Agony. For instance : Mox Jet, Grim Tutor, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Underground Sea, Black Lotus, Lotus Petal.

Normally, in a T1 confrontation, the first turn is to setup the strategy. With WGDX, we use the first turn to :
* develop the mana resources (example : drop land, mox, sol ring, mana vault ; for a winning end-of-turn Read the Runes for instance, or a hardcast Deep Analysis next turn)
* Disrupt the opponent (drop land duress)
* setup a piece of the combo (bazaar activate for a WGD in the graveyard)
* manage an early hate (fetch Tropical Island, Mox Jet, Demonic Tutor for Reverent Silence).

So we cannot judge the quality of a deck only with its goldfish speed.

Wouldn't Runes/Runes/Cunning do it?

[sephorusFR]

Wouldn't Runes/Runes/Cunning do it?

I though about Runes/Witness/Cunnign myself