New Worldgorger Dragon Combo -- Still Viable?

[swawagon]

I thought there were fewer Leylines than ever and that a 4 Null Rod SB might be enough to scratch out a few wins the the current meta. Here's what I played at the ICBM Open in Cedarburg, WI Sunday Feb 1, 2009.

DRAGON

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Bazaar of Baghdad

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Crypt

4 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Mulldrifter

3 Necromancy
3 Animate Dead
1 Dance of the Dead
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duresss
1 Vampiric Tutor

4 Deep Analysis
1 Careful Study
3 Read the Runes
4 Intuition
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall

SB
4 Null Rod
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Thoughtseize
1 Rebuild
1 Swamp
1 Island

>>Jimmy McCarthy
I lose the die roll and get Thoughtseized and a questionable look turn one.
He takes nothing significant and I draw Duress and cast it on my turn. I see 4 lands, Tez, Time Walk, and Voltaic Key. I see enough lands to think Tez was the right pull.
He Time Walks and largely just passes his two turns
I Bazaar on my turn and put Deep Analysis in the grave play a Sapphire and Flashback Deep Analysis. He Drains it.
Then his turn Tinker with no cards in hand and Colossus gets there.

game two I bring in 4 Null Rods, 2 Chains, and a Thoughtseize, - a Deep, -Animate, and stuff
Through the game I see Tormod's, Relic of Progenitus, Annul, Krosan Grip, Pithing on Bazaar and a Force of Will on another Null Rod. Tinker for Vault with Key down wins shortly thereafter. Wow - there are a lot of cards I don't want to see pop their heads in this match.

>>Matt Friewald.
Turn two he drops an Aether Spellbomb and my plan becomes hardcast Oona. I do by turn 6 with Ancient Tomb help. He bounces it and I plan to cast it next turn. However he drops a Salvager and brings back Spellbomb and my outs are limited to taking a 2/4 up the ass.

I thought about Tormod's but bring in Null Rods instead.
I never see a Null rod, but plenty of Matts Tormod's and Pithing. He combos out early with me feebly casting Read the Runes for nil.

>>Stax
turn 3 I won both games. No contest. Chain of Vapor on Chalice for 2 and one Force of Will on 'something' was all I needed to do.

>>James King Oath
I Bazaar a few times, but find nothing. Oath early does me in.

since he runs Null Rods himself I decide that Thoughtseize and Chain of Vapors are better to bring in than Null Rods.
game 2 I learn after a Duress that he has 3 creatures in hand and isn't doing much. But I have all 4 Dragons in hand or grave by turn 2 myself. My Bazaar is Pithinged off and Read the Runes is not finding anything. I also Duress a Wipe Away (man so many cards I don't want to see!) I have Mulldrifter and Dragon in the grave but no win and decide to bring Mulldrifter back from the dead and hope to get some gas or beats. 3 Orchard Tokens and a 1/2 Mulldrifter beat a few turns. He finally drops Oath and may hae manage to Brainstorm away one critter stuck in his hand. I decide I better do something. He has a Tormod's Crypt. I cast Animate Dead he Negates, I force the Negate, he Crypt's my grave, I Necromancy in response with Ancient Tomb mana for Dragon and get the spell off. But I have no win, we draw and we go to a game 3.

Pithing again on Bazaar stinks. I hardcast Oona midgame and honestly can't remember how he dealt with her, but he kills me in the time called turns.

>>I fail to have a 5th round drinking bracket opponent.

Dragon has so many splash damage hate cards and for whatever reason the speed it sometimes has wasn't there for me. Overall a very disappointing performance. I won't be playing it again soon.

[Purple Hat]

Sorry to hear about the rough tournament.  It seems like your matchups weren't all that bad, but I feel like you may have overboarded for many of those matchups.  In addition engineered explosives or deed out of the board works wonders in a field heavy with perminant hate.  Also Tinker-->large man isnt' a bad plan.  Or just reanimating large men.

I don't understand your draw in round 4.  From your report it looks like you had mull drifter in play.  You had no way of winning with your deck in your hand and infinite mana?

Other than that your list looks fine, the only change I might make is splashing green for life from the loam and the option of xantids, but UB is a strong option as well so it's all a matter of preference.

[dicemanx]

I'm curious about the logic of Null Rods in the SB - was the plan to bring them in to stop Time Vault? They don't actually stop Tormod's Crypt or Relic unless you plan on animating something other than WGD. Plus, Null Rods really cripple the mana base and are a double edged sword. They were used a while ago as a way of dealing with fast combo, but fast combo isn't a worry in this meta.

Since the meta consists of annoying permanent hate cards, it might be worthwhile to look at Engineered Explosives or Pernicious Deed, or going with a wholesale SB change into either Oath or Marknaught.

[swawagon]

All good points and show I apparently really wasn't ready to play Dragon, despite a lot of positive testing...

For round 4 I had attacked with my swarm (3 Orchard Tokens and Mulldrifter) into an Akroma as his life was low enough I thought I might get there with damage. That's how I lost Mulldrifter but had I thought about it, the chance of my drawing Necromancy (with my Animate) was better than racing Akroma. So I ought to have sat back instead.

Engineered Explosives is a good option for all the Pithings, Relics, and Crypts.

Null Rod was certainly for Time Vaults (8 TEZ decks of the 28 decks in the event) and Tendrils combo. I cut one Mox and had 2 Ancient Tombs (which I really liked) so Null Rods didn't really cut off my own build that much. Ancient Tomb in testing was awesome against Stax and most anything really. Bigger Read the Runes and earlier Intuitions.

Tinker and a big guy is also a good SB option, I saw it enough from the other side.

[dicemanx]

Null Rod was certainly for Time Vaults

You are playing the faster and more dangerous deck, so the defensive posturing works against you. Sure they might sometimes succeed in assembling the Vault combo ahead of your combo, but you must always posture your deck to play the beatdown role, and either use mass sweepers (Xantids, Abeyance, Deed/EE) to clear the path or use an alternate post SB strategy. If you become too defensively oriented it is easy to lose certain attrition wars or get outcomboed.

Oh, and even the more seasoned WGDX players will occasionally get completely shut down, so I wouldn't worry about this little setback!

[swawagon]

Except Time Vault TEZ decks really aren't that slow. Plus TEZ have Tops and lots of Artifact mana (5 Moxen, Crypt, Vault, Lotus) that Null Rod also shuts down. And Null Rod was also supposed to be a surprise in games 2-3. Tinker/Colossus or Vault/Key can be and are online actually really quickly even through Dragon's Duress and Forces. Perhaps another reason Dragon may not be the right deck is that even though Dragon can be fast, even control-ish Mana Drain decks have sped up too.

Plan was to win game 1 and then defensively play game 2 and then keep them guessing game 3 if needed. It was fun blowing out Stax, but otherwise Pithing, Crypts, and Aether Spellbomb seemed too prevalent. I wouldn't go Xantid or Abeyance, but EE seems really good. And or some kind of 'man plan' independent of the Graveyard, independent of Artifacts, and independent of Enchantments. (4 Phrexian Negators would have actually been pretty good out of the board!) Oath was too slow and clunky in the Dragon shell out of the board in my testing.

I was really happy with the main and fully expected to win a lot of game ones and was most worried about the board. Then my winning game one plans failed. And the SB that I worried about didn't improve anything. Total meltdown. To go first match 2, rolling a 1 on a 20 sider was a clue that luck was NOT in the cards for Shawn or the Cardinals, Superbowl Sunday.

[Purple Hat]

I liken the tez matchup to the old gifts matchup.  You should goldfish somwhere between half a turn and a full turn faster, you should simply be able to out combo a drain combo deck, perhaps you need to mulligan more aggressively?

WGDX doesn't lead itself to defensive play the way that previous versions of dragon have, which is appropriate to the current crop of drain decks.  with squee you can go into a defensive shell and play for he late game, Life from the Loam allows this as well.  splashing green also gives the option of tarmogoyf out of the side, which hadn't really occured to me before and seems good.

if you're boarding into tinker-->large man remember to go with something you can reanimate, so not DSC.  either ink shrouder or Sundering titan are going to be the weapons of choice for the tinker/dood plan.

[fury]

if you're boarding into tinker-->large man remember to go with something you can reanimate, so not DSC.  either ink shrouder or Sundering titan are going to be the weapons of choice for the tinker/dood plan.

May you argument on this ? I don't really agree with that assumption. With a lot of hate, the reanimation of a large man other than DSC will be difficult to achieve. If the hate is very present, bringing a quick way to win aggressively without using the graveyard seems to me to be a better strategy. DSC may be reshuffle in the library if it is in hand, and thus provides a "free" discard card. The only argument that will make me chose Inkwell Leviathan is its Shroud ability.

To come back to the swawagon's report : if the hate is very present, Dragon should keep a proper answer to it. The dragon player may use the opponent's loss of tempo to go through another strategy (Masknought/Oath/Tarmogoyf/Tinker), or to set up enough resources to cast a spell of protection which will allow him to combo off (Xantid, Abeyance, Deed, EE). But we should not forget that it is before all a combo deck, so the main strategy is still to race to the combo, and the sideboard should be thought to open a narrow window which allow to combo off safely.

I was also surprised by the fact that you was totally blocked by a Pithing Needle on Bazaar of Baghdad. Of course, this is annoying, but WGDX has plenty of ways to discard/dig the library for the win. Did you play Bazaar too early ? I understand that you are disappointed by your performance, but this is a good experience to learn from our mistakes. Sometimes, Dragon doesn't want to win in your hands ! It is a build which doesn't forgive mistakes, and which needs a lot of concentration.

[Purple Hat]

if you're boarding into tinker-->large man remember to go with something you can reanimate, so not DSC.  either ink shrouder or Sundering titan are going to be the weapons of choice for the tinker/dood plan.

May you argument on this ? I don't really agree with that assumption. With a lot of hate, the reanimation of a large man other than DSC will be difficult to achieve. If the hate is very present, bringing a quick way to win aggressively without using the graveyard seems to me to be a better strategy. DSC may be reshuffle in the library if it is in hand, and thus provides a "free" discard card. The only argument that will make me chose Inkwell Leviathan is its Shroud ability.

The reason I would choose a non DSC target is that you aren't going to board out enough cards to fundimentally change the way your deck works.  You're packing 6-8 animates and a bunch of draw/discard spells.  Since you're not boarding all of them out you should board in a way that allows you to use them effectively, that means that you go with Sundering titan, which is an effective tinker target in its own right in addition to being a useful alternate animate target.  If your opponent brings in bounce or creature kill instead of graveyard hate then animate or tinker makes no difference.  If your opponent brings in graveyard hate then you may be able to force them to make a choice between crypting your titan or saving it for a dragon, making your opponent's decisions more complicated than having DSC in your deck does.

Inkwell Leviathan, which was what I meant to write, actually won't work because you can't animate it due to shroud.  In that case you might as well go with DSC.  I haven't played much in a while so I make mistakes when they keep changing the rules/wordings on things.

[Harlequin]

Inkwell Leviathan, which was what I meant to write, actually won't work because you can't animate it due to shroud.  In that case you might as well go with DSC.  I haven't played much in a while so I make mistakes when they keep changing the rules/wordings on things.

I don't think animate dead, or Necromancy prevents you from animating a dude with shroud.  Pro-Black is not Shroud.  The part of Pro-Black that doesn't work is the "Enchant" part, protection prevents it from being enchanted at all, which causes the enchant to 'fall off' under the current wording. 

Shroud is not active in the grave yard, so Inkwell is a legal "Target creature card in a graveyard" Animate dead comes in play, attached to the Inkwell in the graveyard as an Enchant creature card in a graveyard.  The trigger happens:

When Animate Dead comes into play, if it's in play, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put into play with Animate Dead." Return enchanted creature card to play under your control and attach Animate Dead to it.   

None of that trigger targets, so that trigger should not be interupted by shroud at all.


Note:  However, this doesn't give you full immunity to removal.  If they brought in Naturalize, or tutuored up E-truth, they could still use this targeted spell to remove Inkwell by targeting the Animate Dead.

[fury]

The reason I would choose a non DSC target is that you aren't going to board out enough cards to fundimentally change the way your deck works.  You're packing 6-8 animates and a bunch of draw/discard spells.  Since you're not boarding all of them out you should board in a way that allows you to use them effectively, that means that you go with Sundering titan, which is an effective tinker target in its own right in addition to being a useful alternate animate target.  If your opponent brings in bounce or creature kill instead of graveyard hate then animate or tinker makes no difference.  If your opponent brings in graveyard hate then you may be able to force them to make a choice between crypting your titan or saving it for a dragon, making your opponent's decisions more complicated than having DSC in your deck does.

Inkwell Leviathan, which was what I meant to write, actually won't work because you can't animate it due to shroud.  In that case you might as well go with DSC.  I haven't played much in a while so I make mistakes when they keep changing the rules/wordings on things.

Inkwell Leviathan may be reanimated, indeed. But it is anyway a weak strategy, it is maybe better to play it in Oath.

EDIT : but it can also be used with Tinker, instead of DSC.

@Purple Hat :
To return to the DSC argument, I understand what you mean. You want to have a creature card which has synergy with the rest of the deck, when I would rather include a Tinker strategy which is independent of the graveyard.

Any other suggestion about this ?

[swawagon]

Well Pithing Needle on Bazaar was pretty bad. I didn't yet have the combo set up so and with Bazaar shut off I was using Read the Runes to sculpt my hand, over keeping them as ways to 'win' without Bazaar. I run 3 Read the Runes and even used a Careful Study in a slot that some might use for Merchant Scroll. I don't know how you'all would play it, but especially game one I play pretty aggressively. If I have Bazaar in my opening hand, unless I can Duress turn one, I'll play the Bazaar and dig on the spot near every time. Although after a Dragon is in the yard and I have a hand I'm satisfied with (after more and more testing I started noticing) I started to Bazaar a little less in favor of just gaining cards the old fashioned way, over trying to find more Deep Analysis. I wasn't finding Deep Analysis all day though regardless.

And as far beginners picking up the deck, a big tip to play the deck well (that many of you know, but I don't remember it ever being actually discussed) was how good Necromancy is, Here:
You are set up with Bazaar, a Dragon in the yard, and Necromancy in hand. When they have untapped mana and you think they have an EOT play (Thirst for Knowledge or something). At this point pass the turn. When they EOT their spell, you Necromancy in response. This way they have used mana they may have needed for a Mana Drain if they had it. And they will not get to Thirst in response to Necromancy and help dig for a Force had you gone for it on your second main phase. Plus - if you feel sausy - you could always go for it in their upkeep if they had no EOTs anyway.

[Purple Hat]

The reason I would choose a non DSC target is that you aren't going to board out enough cards to fundimentally change the way your deck works.  You're packing 6-8 animates and a bunch of draw/discard spells.  Since you're not boarding all of them out you should board in a way that allows you to use them effectively, that means that you go with Sundering titan, which is an effective tinker target in its own right in addition to being a useful alternate animate target.  If your opponent brings in bounce or creature kill instead of graveyard hate then animate or tinker makes no difference.  If your opponent brings in graveyard hate then you may be able to force them to make a choice between crypting your titan or saving it for a dragon, making your opponent's decisions more complicated than having DSC in your deck does.

Inkwell Leviathan, which was what I meant to write, actually won't work because you can't animate it due to shroud.  In that case you might as well go with DSC.  I haven't played much in a while so I make mistakes when they keep changing the rules/wordings on things.

Inkwell Leviathan may be reanimated, indeed. But it is anyway a weak strategy, it is maybe better to play it in Oath.

EDIT : but it can also be used with Tinker, instead of DSC.

@Purple Hat :
To return to the DSC argument, I understand what you mean. You want to have a creature card which has synergy with the rest of the deck, when I would rather include a Tinker strategy which is independent of the graveyard.

Any other suggestion about this ?

why are these mutually exclusive?  tinker is 1 card.  were I planning to board in the tinker plan I would board in 2x fatty+tinker.  For that reason I'd use something I can reanimate so I can do either one.  If my opening hand is intuition and an animate spell game two and I had reason to board in creatures I might intuition for 2x creature, dragon.  depending on what they give me it tells me something about their hate and what they're expecting me to do.  then I can select my animate target accordingly.

[neotrophy]

One interesting thing from that report is that I see no mention of Intuition, other than having 4 in the deck.  In my limited experience of playing Dragon, I found Intuition to be the pivotal card of the deck; more so than Bazaar, and probably even the dragon itself.  It gives you the tools to protect yourself until you're confident that you can go off, and then it gives you the tools to do that.  It's strange that it's not mentioned once.

Also, no maindeck bounce of any description strikes me as being a complete misbuild.  You were wrecked by Colossus, Crypt, Spellbomb and Pithing Needle.  All of these are bouncable in most circumstances, but it's difficult when the cards to do it are sitting in your sideboard.

[swawagon]

There really wasn't much to bounce in any game ones and rarely is. Now an early Darksteel Colossus can still be raced and Comboing out is usually going to be easier than using valuable Tutors (if you got them) on digging out and casting a Bounce spell. Facing Aether Spellbomb on turn 2 was just an unlucky matchup. I don't expect to face Bomberman too often and I hardcast Oona in the match anyway and if I could have countered his Salvager that kept bringing back the Spellbomb I'd a been OK. DicemanX also has said bounce in the main is usually not necessary. I brought in 2 or 3 Chain of Vapor each game 2 and 3 for these and other things.

Intuition honestly is most often pitched to Force. Or to get 2 Dragons and Deep Analysis with no Bazaar. 1 Dragon 2 Deep Analysis with an untapped Bazaar. 3 Bazaars when got no Bazaars. 3 Animate spells when Dragon is in grave. I love Intuition! I Intuitioned against Oath for 3 Animate Spells once to draw a game. One problem with Intuition is 3 mana is a lot more than 2. Ancient Tomb I do think, is the way to go. I added 2 of them late in testing (for one off color mox and at the time one Tropical Island) and it right away made Intuition much better (and the Stax matchup in general too). Nothing in the deck (save Force of Will) has more than one specific colored mana in it's casting cost which makes Ancient Tomb, I think, the right call.

I would replace the 4 Null Rods and 2 Basics from the side board for some mix of Engineered Explosives and perhaps Phrexian Negator. I don't know perhaps the sideboard needs an even larger overhaul. 3 Chain of Vapor and 12 I don't know? But the maindeck had been testing really well for me. I did like Careful Study, but don't love it. I once wished it was Misdirection. And once wished it was Stifle. And once was glad it was Careful Study.

I didn't address enough the many Krosans, Annuls, Tormod's, Relics and more around in sideboards, with my own sideboard. And I think that is the key and I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps Oath isn't that bad a sideboard route?

[dicemanx]

I would normally only bring in bounce post SB, but if you have some foreknowledge of people running maindeck permanents that serve as WGD hosers then maindeck bounce is likely a good idea. Since most of the hosers are 0-cc and 1-cc, this would present an excellent opportunity to actually run Repeals main (upwards of 3 Repeals perhaps), so they are never dead against any match-up.

[Purple Hat]

I think a board like:
3 chain of vapor
3 engineered explosives
1 sundering titan
1 inkwell leviathan
1 tinker
3 thoughtsieze (with 6 duress effects you're not doing well enough against grip?)
3 tormod's crypt


sould be reasonably solid against what's out there right now.  You've got lots of options in catchall protection in EE, Chain and the extra duresses.  one thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to put in ALL of it.  You just want to bring in what's best against the matchup.  Usually 3-4 cards is sufficient. You can answer faster combo with additional duresses and crypt, as well as slow down ichorid with EE or crypt, and you have a viable alternative strategy in tinker/reanimator in the event of graveyard hate.

If you splashed green in the main for life from the loam you could play xantids and goyfs and maybe deed in the side.  but I'm not sure if that's really necessary.  

[playkenny]

silly question, but is there a reason your not running mox ruby and sol ring? As stated a few times, intuition is extremely important - is running full accell not a good idea?

[GNU]

just curious of what you guys normally board out. Sideboarding has always been my worst skill in the game.

[Purple Hat]

usually I take out an animate if I'm playing 7, which I usually am, a duress if I'm playing 4 forces and 4 duress, then whatever is filling the 60th slot, in the list earlier in this thread it's careful study, I usually play time walk or entomb in that slot.

that's 3...if I need more than that it'd be pretty match up dependent.

PRE-EDIT: I take out a protection spell because the three cards I'm bringing in are probably protection for my combo so I'm net+2 even when I take out the duress.

[AshThaReaper804]

Gorger = Dead to leyline of the void, stop trying...

A little more discussion, and a little less inflammatory spam would be greatly appreciated in future. Full Warning.
-Godder

[the boogie man]

Gorger = Dead to leyline of the void, stop trying...

But oath and masknaught aren't.

[Purple Hat]

guys please don't respond to ash tha reaper, he's clearly a troll.  He posted 1 line XXXX = Dead to YYYYY comments in 4 different threads within 3 minutes.

[Purple Hat]

I actually got to play today....which was crazy.  Played about 15 games against Tezz starting with a list pretty similar to the one posted at the top of this thread.  One interesting thing that came up was that playing Squee actually made the match up much better for dragon since you could just bury them under an avalanche of card advantage.  In light of that I'm thinking of cutting back on the accelerants.  It might make sense to keep DA in the side though against things that attack bazaar.

[islanderboi10]

Sweet, so how did the results come up? (win to loss ratio)
And you said your list is like the one above, but I assume -4 DA +4 Squee? How has that been?
What is your answer to Leylines, and Tormod's Crypts?

[Purple Hat]

Leyline isn't being heavily played these days so I don't have an answer to them maindeck.  I'm playing bounce in the side.  I started with 4 DA, but I changed them to Squee and ended up feeling slightly positive after the change, I won more than I lost, but we didn't take down the win/loss numbers. There were several games where I just overwhelmed his defenses with my ancestral every turn, something I couldn't do with the DA's.  You're still just gonna lose some games where he has too many ways to go off, but getting the inevitability of squee back left my opponent frequently trying to race me leaving him open to duress/force of will.

[the boogie man]

having a squee will also let you win with sorceries, in case that is relevant.

[swawagon]

I have almost no experience with Squee. But 4 Deep Analysis sure seems necessary and why the deck can compete. It not only draws cards, it is blue and Dragon already has a pretty low blue count for it's Force of Will. Perhaps a lone Squee in the slot I used for Careful Study?

As mentioned Ruby (I'd cut Pearl obviously instead if some amount of Squee were fit in) was cut for Ancient Tomb and Sol Ring was never really in the list. 2 Ancient Tomb is how I cast Intuition. I guess in testing was seeing more Chalices and Null Rods than Wastelands and preferred Ancient Tomb over more artifact mana. And at the time I was planning on playing my own Null Rods from the board and wanted to rely on less artifact mana. I probably would not run Null Rod again though. Full Moxen and Sol Ring are fine I just didn't fit them in in my list.

I've thought a lot more about it and, with very few Leylines around, 3-4 Tombstalker might be sideboard worthy. DicemanX I think has tried to stress the importance of not oversideboarding. Try to remember Dragon is one of the faster and more consistent combo decks out there. There just also seems to be lots of splash hate for it. But a 3-of board with some diversity can push Dragon sideboarding into where it probably ought to be - which is supplementing the Worldgorger Dragon combo, over complete transformational board... Of course this is speculation, go different or the same, but in the middle road (kind of like I did in my tournament report) is probably the worst option.

SB
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Thoughtseize
3 Tombstalker
3 Yixlid Jailer
3 Engineered Explosives

[[supa_t(im)]]

I'm just throwing out ideas, so if this is stupid, I apologize.

Have we ever considered siding out bazaars?  Maybe put careful study in the SB to side in.  This would allow you to still dump stuff in the gy, but avoid needle.  Its also more blue. My thinking here is that people will be gunning for you after game one, so it would help to have more FoW fodder.

Just a thought.

[Vintar]

Comboing without bazaar is always possible, but you need to either :
- already have Oona in the graveyard
- have an instant way to find Oona and discard it, or a way to break the loop and then find Oona and discard it (ie Read the Runes or a non-dragon creature in the yard and a lucky careful study)

And you already have these options when they play needle naming bazaar. Careful study doesn't help much here IMO.
Going the bounce way is often better against needle, because unlike careful study it allows you to both discard dragon and use it during the loop to get your kill.