Horror Dragon

[meadbert]

So the Bazaar/Squee engine would be powerful since they have super synergy.  The troube is you only get to run 4 of each and this leads to terrible hands with Squees, but no Bazaars or a Bazaar but you find no Squee till turn 3.  Ideally you would want to run maybe 8 Squees and 8 Bazaars.  Okay, lets do that:

8 Bazaars:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Magus of the Bazaar

8 Squees:
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Krovikan Horror

14 combo:
3 Necromancy
1 Dance of the Dead
4 Animate Dead
4 Worldgorger Dragon
2 Oona, Queen of the Fae

8 Disruption:
4 Duress
4 Thoughtseize

2 Broken:
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

20 Mana:
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
4 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Crypt
Krovikan Horror is basically Squees 5-8 since you run 18 creatures so you can pretty much always put another creature on top and get back Horror.
Magus of the Bazaar is actually a stronger turn 1 play than even Bazaar of Baghdad.  The reason is that if you open with Mox, Land, Magus then turn 2 you can activate Magus and either play Bazaar of Baghdad and win or even drop another mana land, Duress/Thoughtseize and then win.

At this point I should point out that when comboing with Dragon Magus does not function as Bazaar of Baghdad because he will come back into play with summoning sickness.  To win you need one of these three situations:
1)  Animate on Dragon with Bazaar of Baghdad and a permanent blue or black mana source out.  In this case mill to Oona, generate infinte Mana and deck away.
2)  Animate on Dragon with Oona in yard and a permanent mana source out.  Generate infinite mana, get Oona and deck away.
3)  Animate on Dragon with Krovikan Horror in yard and a second Animate in hand and a black mana source out.

Case 3 is non obvious so I will explain.  You animate Dragon and generate some mana and then eventually have Animate target Horror.  You then use the second animate on the Dragon.  This will cause both animates and Horror to leave play.  Dragon then leaves play bringing back both Animates, Horror and your black mana source.  In response to the Animate triggers you sacrifice Horror to himself.  Then the first animate brings back Dragon and both animates leave again.
Next time through the loop Dragon leaves play and brings back both animates.  The first gets Horror and then next Dragon and from here everything starts again.

The result with the main deck is that you have a sweet Draw engine, a fast combo and fast disruption.  Obviously graveyard hate is brutal.  Preliminary testing which consists of around 50 games reveals the main deck does well to anything without maindeck graveyard hate and is top tier.  Note that running 8 Duress effects means you have resiliency to maindeck bounce.  This is not the first Dragon deck to claim this and in fact any Dragon deck must do amazing in game 1 due to hate post board.  How might we deal with that?  Unfortunately I have answers, but no good ones.

I only thought of this deck in the past few days so we are definitely in Improvement land.  I am not sure what to do with the board and I am already suspecting that this will be its undoing.
One option I have used in the past is to go Oath.  If we were to do that here 1 of (Squee, Horror, Dragon, Magus) would have to go since there are 16 of those and they all need to be boarded out.
Here is what I tried:
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Oath of Druids
3 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Progenitus
(I replaced Magus#4 with Demonic)
There are issues here.  The 3 Tyrants + Progenitus are needed along with 2 Oonas because of Jesters Cap effects.  Basically you hope to flip Oona and Tyrant so you can combo out turn 2, but sometimes you have to wait.  Extirpate on Tyrant is okay, but Extirpate on either Orchard or Oath can be problematic.  Even finding
Orchard is a huge problem since you have no tutors, although Demonic could be added in the main to replace the 16th creature that needs to be boarded out.
Another issue is that you must always board into Tormod's Crypt.  These could become tutors instead which means you roll to Dredge.  Either way I do not like this plan post board.

Another option is to keep the Dragon combo but add a bunch of bounce post board like Chain of Vapor and maybe Echoing Truth.  In the past I never quite got that to work, but it seemed slightly better this time though still not good enough.  One issue is that the main does not run Tutors making finding answers tough.  You have to hope to draw into what you need so you really need 7-8 bounce.  The good part is this actually leaves room for a real sideboard so you can run some Dredge hate and some Stax hate along with possible Xantid Swarm and Bayou (Bayou could go to main if needed) I "tried" this:
4 Chain of Vapor
4 Echoing Truth
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Bayou
3 Yixlid Jailer

I was mostly testing against Control so I never actually brought in the Jailers.  This was too hit or miss.  I still found that Leyline was a huge hoser.  Basically it shut off my Draw engine.  Then I had to either bounce and Duress the Leyline which is card disadvantage or I had to bounce it, activate Bazaar and then win.  This might work against decks with like 4 graveyard hate, but in a world where 8 graveyard hate is not uncommon this is just a disaster.

Another option is the Show and Tell option perhaps in conjunction with Tinker where we run Tyrants, Titan and Platz (we want animatable creatures) post board along with a full set of Show and Tells and Tinker.  Force may also make sense so the extra blue giants can be pitched if stuck in hand.  This provides a slower win, but one that is less disruptable with graveyard hate.

Board out 6 Dragon/Oona + 5 Animates.  (Leave in 3 Animates!)

2 Demonic/Tinker
4 Show+Tell
3 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Platinum Angel
1 Sundering Titan
4 Yixlid Jailer (Dredge only)

Duress and Thoughtseize are ideal here since you can clear your opponents hand of threats if need be, but this is still risky in Today's meta.  Brief testing reveals that this leaves you with a deck whose Draw engine is still vulnerable to graveyard hate and a slightly slow clock of your own.  Still you do have resiliency to a lot of hate and while your card advantage engine is shut off your "draw" is not technically so basically you drop one Bazaar and then start filtering through dead cards like Squee, other Bazaars, Animates and extra fatties.

A final option is to take a page out of DA's book and try to board into something resembling Tez.  This list cannot get as close to Tez because it starts further apart, but a card like Magus of the Bazaar is not terrible.  The board could consist of Tutors, Key/Vault, some removal and Yawg.  Then, rather than Force and Drain you would have Duress and Thoughtseize.  The idea would be to run something like this.  This idea is totally untested.
5 Vault/Key (Extra Keys can be pitched to either of the 8 Bazaars so no harm here)
6 Demonic/Imp/Vamp/Mystical/Tinker/Scroll
1 Titan
1 Platz
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Chain of Vapor

 You would board out 6 Oonas and Dragons along with 4 Krovikan Horror and 5 Animates (leaving 3)
I will probably start testing this version soon.

Are there any other sideboarding ideas out there?  DA's Tez idea seems obvious in hindsight, but I had never thought about it and I think about Dragon a lot.  Are there any other ideas for Dragon boards out there?

[Shax]

I find it rare to post on the forums, but as it may Meadbeart have you ever thought of running Vampire Hexmage for the SB or MD? For one, it still gets hit by Needle, but doesn't lose to grave-hate. Because the issue's mainly in games 2 and 3 with Dragon anyways, I could see boarding in a more compact combo like Tezz or Hexmage very relevant. Hexmage also helps by being able to remove Ichorid bridges.

 But I'll test some with the Hexmage Idea and see where it could go. Running stuff like Chain hinders you more than when they find grave-hate usually, because like you said your forced to have to find your win-now button after chaining. I think you should try and play around the hate brought in with other less vunerable combo so then the other player is forced to breakdown in game two, or is distraught to have their hate split between compact combo and dragon for a game three showdown.


Don't have much to say about Magus as I haven't tested that in a Dragon list though.

[AmbivalentDuck]

A few points:

1) Cabal Therapy assists significantly when "going off."  Perhaps considerably more than Duress.  This might be rendered moot by later points.
2) Iona is much better than Oona as a reanimation target.  1 Iona, 1 Oona seems better than 2x Oona.
3) You can't win off Magus of the Bazaar: no haste.  You ultimately need a "real" Bazaar.
4) Crop Rotation to run "8" Bazaar?  If so, Hexmage/Dark Depths seems like a nice backup combo.

[meadbert]

1)  Therapy is better when going off if you have Magus of the Bazaar out, but is not better when not going off.  I could see perhaps adding some Therapies to get to 10 discard, but I am not sure I would get rid of Duress.

2)  Excellent Point.  I will give that a try.

3)  I think I mentioned this in my opening post.  Magus does not function as a Bazaar of Baghdad when going off so you either need to have Oona in the yard already or you need a second Animate in hand and Krovikan Horror.

4)  Crop Rotation is actually what headed me in this direction, but it is just about impossible to make it work with Dragon's Mana base.  In a deck with 25-30 mana sources like Stax that has mana to lose Cropper can work, but when you rely on hands with only fetch and a mox as your starting mana sources Crop Rotation is just asking to lose.  I actually decided Crop Rotation would be worth it if I did not lose the land when it was countered.  That is where the Magus of the Bazaar idea came from.

Regarding Vampire Hexmage and Dark Depths:  Basically I do not see this as a good combo in type 1.  I certainly see it as worse than Oath.  The primary advantage it has over Oath here is that I would not have to drop 1 of the 16 non Oath creatures, but that is not the end of the world.  Going -1 Magus of the Bazaar and +1 Demonic Tutor or Cabal Therapy hardly makes the deck worse and might make it better anyway.  The main reason not to run Oath would be if Ray of Revelation where a significant part of Dragon hate these days.  It is not, although Qasali Pridemage is a tremendous pain.

The current meta is fairly terrible for Dragon so trying to adjust for this meta might not be the correct strategy.  Instead this deck may just have to wait for a future meta game that is less hateful.

Issues with Current meta are:
1)  Dredge is faster.
2)  Thanks to all the Dredge hate and Oath hate Dragon hate is abundant.
3)  ANT runs 4 Chain of Vapors maindeck and is about as fast.
4)  Fish runs Strip/Waste, Pridemage and Stifle along with its other countermage.

[Relwarbeht]

Aside from whether the deck is competetive or not, wouldn't oath creatures that shuffle back into your library work better?  I'm thinking that since you run bazaar, you could use that to filter out guys that you draw.  That way you are protected from sad sac even if you draw a big man or two (also you wouldn't have to run 5).

[Portalis]

would Bitter Ordeal work well as nice win con too? with dragon going back into the gy and back in play over and over i bet you can build a nice gravestorm to wipe them out too?

[AmbivalentDuck]

@Bitter Ordeal: No.  Sorcery speed is an issue since you have to reanimate a non-dragon creature to break the loop...at which point you should have already won.

[meadbert]

The post about Oath creatures that shuffle and Bitter Ordeal makes no sense to me.  A creature that does not shuffle seems safer since it can safely sit in the yard to be reanimated, while a creature that shuffles back can be removed by Bitter Ordeal.

Regarding Sadistic Sacrament:  This actually seems really strong.  With the ridiculously high number of creatures you will basically always have a non Dragon creature in your yard when you are going off so stopping the loop should not be a problem.
Also, even if you are not going off with 8xBazaars and 7 fetches it should be pretty easy to build up gravestorm to win.
If nothing else Sadistic Sacrement is an amazing card out of the board and would be very strong even against Planar Void, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Ray of Revelation and a buch of similar Dragon hate.  Where it would be weak again is Leyline of the Void and that may be its crucial undoing although I am suddenly having visions of a board with 7-8 bounce and Sadistic Sacrements.

[shroomy2dope]

sideboard
1 lake of the dead
1 echoing truth
2 chain of vapor
1 stroke of genius
3 pithing needle
1 pact of negation
4 leyline of the void
1 hurkyll's recall
1 tormods crypt

this is the sideboard for my wgd build that i've had eccelent results with.
i've found that stax is the largest threat pre or post board. mono red stax inparticular.

i've played many versions of dragon including squee. i didn't use horror maybe that would have helped. i ended up running more green and little blue i cut down the number of dragons, played living wish to fight through extirpate, survival ofthe fittest to pitch, xantid swarm to protect(usually i wished this was a city of solitude), and crop rotation to find bazaar and lake of the dead.
the deck ended up being slow and worthless. great for casual play at cardshops but horrible for competative vintage.
 when i tried squee i never saw a hand i wanted to keep and mulligans were a killer. the only reason i initally wanted squee was for survival an bazaar. survival turned out to be slow crap and i cut bazzar for study.
now that i.ve re-introduced bazaar into my build sque could be a possibility. however i think i circumvent the need for squee in playing multiples of essential cards. this way i can activate bazaar pitch my cards and still have the cars to win.
i understand in doing this i really can't utilize bazaar as a draw engine, but does dragon really need that? i usually see 2 out of 3 win components in my first hand and a lot of times i don't even win with bazaar. i like magus he's cool . but he's another guy that i wouldn't want to see in my first hand.
i guess i have 3 questions.
1- what turn do you typically see a win on game1?
2-what turn do you see a win with castable disruption?
3-how is your match up against stax, pre and post board?

[meadbert]

sideboard
1 lake of the dead
1 echoing truth
2 chain of vapor
1 stroke of genius
3 pithing needle
1 pact of negation
4 leyline of the void
1 hurkyll's recall
1 tormods crypt

this is the sideboard for my wgd build that i've had eccelent results with.
i've found that stax is the largest threat pre or post board. mono red stax inparticular.

i've played many versions of dragon including squee. i didn't use horror maybe that would have helped. i ended up running more green and little blue i cut down the number of dragons, played living wish to fight through extirpate, survival ofthe fittest to pitch, xantid swarm to protect(usually i wished this was a city of solitude), and crop rotation to find bazaar and lake of the dead.
the deck ended up being slow and worthless. great for casual play at cardshops but horrible for competative vintage.
 when i tried squee i never saw a hand i wanted to keep and mulligans were a killer. the only reason i initally wanted squee was for survival an bazaar. survival turned out to be slow crap and i cut bazzar for study.
now that i.ve re-introduced bazaar into my build sque could be a possibility. however i think i circumvent the need for squee in playing multiples of essential cards. this way i can activate bazaar pitch my cards and still have the cars to win.
i understand in doing this i really can't utilize bazaar as a draw engine, but does dragon really need that? i usually see 2 out of 3 win components in my first hand and a lot of times i don't even win with bazaar. i like magus he's cool . but he's another guy that i wouldn't want to see in my first hand.
i guess i have 3 questions.
1- what turn do you typically see a win on game1?
2-what turn do you see a win with castable disruption?
3-how is your match up against stax, pre and post board?

I am going to interpret win as finding Dragon.  Oona can easily win without Dragon, but if you are goldfishing you will inevitably find the Dragon before Oona beats can win anyway.  Without any tutors you rely on drawing into Dragon.  You will usually (>50%) find Dragon by turn 2, but it can take longer.  It will never take much longer since this deck usually draws itself out by turn 7.  Disruption usually happens on turn 2.  Typically you play games like this:
Turn 1 Play Bazaar of Baghdad or Magus of the Bazaar.
Turn 2 Activate Bazaar.  If you used Magus you can ideally Duress and then Animate for the win.  If you do not have Dragon you should Duress or Thoughtseize this turn.
Turn 3 More reliably you can win here with Duress or Thoughtseize protection.

The Stax matchup is very strong.  Basically Tez and Stax are the two main reasons to play this deck.  You will massively outdraw Stax and the longer the game goes the more you will be outdrawing them.  Duress and Thoughtseize are not the best disruption against Stax, but then again mana Denial is fairly weak against a Dragon deck with 17 lands and a 2cc win condition.  Your draw engine is "free" in the sense that there are no mana requirements so if you get Bazaar of Baghdad or Magus of the Bazaar up you can just massively outdraw.  Stax does have Wastelands for Bazaar of Baghdad, but a first activation should help you find the next Bazaar of Baghdad or Magus of the Bazaar.  Thorn of Amethyst (if they run it) does not effect Magus of the Bazaar.  Chalice@0 is not particularly painful since your mana requirements are low and you can always pitch Moxes to Bazaar.  Chalice@1 shuts off Duress and Thoughtseize, but nothing else.

Tez is another strong matchup because you have the faster combo, better draw engine and faster disruption in game 1.  Post board is tougher.

TPS is a strong matchup because you have comparable speed and disruption early, but the better draw enginie if the matchup goes long.  Tinker is easily raced leaving a lot of pressure for the Yawg Win.

Dredge is a problem because of its speed.

ANT is a huge problem because it can race you or you any of its 4 Chain of Vapors to RFG all of your permanents.

Noble Fish is tough because you have to deal with Qasali Pridemage (which cannot be Duresses and which there is no bounce for.)  Also Stifle can potentially RFG all permanents while Spell Snare, Daze and Force are a solid set of counter magic.  Pridemage can be dealt with by Animating either Oona or Krovikan Horror.
It is actually shocking how often Horror functions as an animate Target.  It turns out that sacking Magus of the Bazaar or Horror himself to remove Welders, Bobs and Pridemage among others is frequently valuable.

[nataz]

While I appreciate your testing, is ANT even a consideration in most vintage events right now?

[meadbert]

While I appreciate your testing, is ANT even a consideration in most vintage events right now?

Rituals have been supplanted by Dredge as the combo deck to beat right now and are not performing in general.  If you look at which Ritual decks are top 8ing you have TPS and ANT.  Although TPS is making more top 8s, ANT is actually doing better in the top 8.  So maybe ANT and those nasty Chain of Vapors are not that much of a problem right now, but I was not ready to ignore Rituals all together.

[shroomy2dope]

i put together your list and played 12 games last night. 4 against SCV, 4 against tezz, and 4 against mono red stax. all pre board. tezz won1, SCV won0, stax won3, dragon won8.

 this is about what i expected. where do your results against stax differ from mine? every dragon build i play has bad stax matches. am i just doing something wrong?
with a first turn chalice@0 and sphere, followed by a turn 2 sphere, how do you get on? how do you fight through a turn 1 chalice@0 followed by a tangle wire? with 5 waste effects and you having a low permanent count for smoke stax, how can you even get the animate out? sure you can out draw stax but that doesn't help for anything but pitching WGD. a hand full of cards you can't cast is of very little value. you just slowly watch your life dwindle to barbarian ring.
am i making crucial play mistakes? or do stax builds just very by our respective metagames. i tend to have good match ups against B/R stax with dragon.

and as for noble fish, ive had amazing results with bounce in the board and caller of the claw in traditional dragon builds.

[meadbert]

i put together your list and played 12 games last night. 4 against SCV, 4 against tezz, and 4 against mono red stax. all pre board. tezz won1, SCV won0, stax won3, dragon won8.

 this is about what i expected. where do your results against stax differ from mine? every dragon build i play has bad stax matches. am i just doing something wrong?
with a first turn chalice@0 and sphere, followed by a turn 2 sphere, how do you get on? how do you fight through a turn 1 chalice@0 followed by a tangle wire? with 5 waste effects and you having a low permanent count for smoke stax, how can you even get the animate out? sure you can out draw stax but that doesn't help for anything but pitching WGD. a hand full of cards you can't cast is of very little value. you just slowly watch your life dwindle to barbarian ring.
am i making crucial play mistakes? or do stax builds just very by our respective metagames. i tend to have good match ups against B/R stax with dragon.

and as for noble fish, ive had amazing results with bounce in the board and caller of the claw in traditional dragon builds.

3-1 pre board is surprising, but it is a small data size.  For instance I would not expect to go 7-1 against Tez/SCV.  That was Dragon just getting lucky.  I suspect Stax got lucky in the Stax/Dragon matchup.

Although some Dragon decks have struggled against Stax they generally have certain characteristics that Stax can exploit.  In the case of DicemanX's Dragon lists with Intuition, Deep Analysy and Read the Runes, Dragon's draw and Tutoring engine was fairly mana intensive and this gave Stax an avenue to slow Dragon down.

In the case of Hale Simon's 5 Color Squee lists from 2005ish the 5 color mana base was full of Rainbow lands leaving Dragon somewhat vulnerable to Wasteland.  Still, this list actually performed well against Stax despite the 5 color mana base.

This deck suffers neither drawback, but does have its own problem.  Crucially it lacks Force of Will which both Hale and DicemanX played and which is superior against Stax when compared to Thoughtseize.  While significant, the loss of Force is made up for by the free draw engine and the Fetch base with basics.

[nataz]

as far as Dragon v. Stax in general, Dragon only needs to resolve a single 1B spell to win which gives Dragon a significant advantage. Its the same reason that tog used to be so huge in the old Hulk Smash v. Stax, it was a 1 card win. You don't need to chain spells for draw/storm. You don't need a lot of tutors, etc.  Keep in mind the Dragon player can force a draw if the game state looks like you can't dig out from lock pieces.

[shroomy2dope]

as far as Dragon v. Stax in general, Dragon only needs to resolve a single 1B spell to win which gives Dragon a significant advantage. Its the same reason that tog used to be so huge in the old Hulk Smash v. Stax, it was a 1 card win. You don't need to chain spells for draw/storm. You don't need a lot of tutors, etc.  Keep in mind the Dragon player can force a draw if the game state looks like you can't dig out from lock pieces.

it is a very rare occurance to have to call a draw once you cast an animate. the problem in this match for me was casting the animate. with no rituals, no ring, and no vault a chalice at zero locks out all acceleration. with one land drop needing to be bazaar before you cast animate that means i have to go three turns atleast without seeing 1 of 9 spere effects or a tangle wire, (if chalice is in play.), befor i can cast animate for the win and atleast 2 turns with an alternate way to pitch wgd on turn 1. thats a lot for a forceless wgd build to struggle against.
i don't play force in my dragon build either and currently i'm running 6 duress effects. my best wepon against stax is a turn 1 win and i didn't happen to net any of those in the 12 games i played but i plan on playing another 12 with a slightly modified version of this build tomorrow. 

[meadbert]

it is a very rare occurance to have to call a draw once you cast an animate. the problem in this match for me was casting the animate. with no rituals, no ring, and no vault a chalice at zero locks out all acceleration. with one land drop needing to be bazaar before you cast animate that means i have to go three turns atleast without seeing 1 of 9 spere effects or a tangle wire, (if chalice is in play.), befor i can cast animate for the win and atleast 2 turns with an alternate way to pitch wgd on turn 1. thats a lot for a forceless wgd build to struggle against.
i don't play force in my dragon build either and currently i'm running 6 duress effects. my best wepon against stax is a turn 1 win and i didn't happen to net any of those in the 12 games i played but i plan on playing another 12 with a slightly modified version of this build tomorrow. 

It turns out that waiting till turn 3 to beat Stax is fine.
Look at it this way:  What is going on on turn 6?  By then Dragon will have have hit 6 land drops.  If 5 of those are mana, then how is Stax supposed to stop the animate plan?  4xSphere of Resistance? 3 Resistors would not be enough.  Trinisphere would not be anough.  Tangle Wire does not work since Necromancy can can be played at instant speed.  Basically Stax needs Chalice@0 to be followed up with either a quick Smokestack or the Crucible/Strip combo.  In either case Stax had a great hand.

[shroomy2dope]

this is all very true. i must just have bad luck against stax. they always seem to get god draws when i'm on the other side of the table. they always seem to weld into stax via bazaar pretty quick.
i played 18 games(preboard 3 rounds) with this build replacing the off color moxen with dark rituals. here were the results:
wgd  8 wins 10 losses
dredge 5 wins 1 loss
scv 2 wins 4 losses
stax 3 wins 3 losses
my tezz player was mia, so no further testing there.

i found my self playing poorly at first i was trying to mull past the draw engine and find the animate plus bazaar or bazaar plus dragon. i remember passing a first turn magus cast, with an animate in hand. in retrospect that was a poor decision.
i really didn't utilize magus at all besides 2 matches against stax. when do you go with the magus plan? i used him the other day against tezz and liked him. he kind of strikes me as a board slot against the drain or stax match.
was he the reason you opted for moxen over rituals? rituals allowed me my win over dredge.
they strike me as quite powerful here.

[meadbert]

Magus becomes terrible if you board out Moxen.  The idea is to open with turn 1 Magus off a mox and then start Bazaaring turn 2.  This can open up turn 2 wins with Duress backup or you might win later.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I remain unconvinced on Magus.  Could you please explain why Demonic Tutor (get bazaar in hand, play it, it's available as "soon" as magus), Careful Study, and  Strategic Planning are not superior choices?  Demonic seems strictly better than 1x Magus, but I'm interested in arguments against the other two.

[madmanmike25]

I'll have to agree that Demonic Tutor seems like an auto-include in a combo deck.

It seems you are more interested in the draw engine than finding the combo and winning.  Why no Vamp Tutor?  Why no Entomb? Seems like those cards would make the deck much faster. 

Looks cool though.  Have Horrors been pretty reliable?

[Beralt]

I remember the old 5 color lists using Death Spark, but maybe that was more in Cerebral Assasin. 

I guess that I am very impressed by a better draw engine, which in turn makes longer games more winnable.  But the advanatge of playing Dragon (at least in this Dragon unfriendly meta) is the speed at which Dragon can execute it's plan - you don't want to play longer games.  The Magus plan is fine but Darkblast/Grim Lavamancer/Triskelion (these are all usauble multiple times) can keep a summoning sick Magi off your plan for awhile.  I would rather just Vamp or Tutor into a Bazaar and then go off, rather then hope a 1/1 critter can survive the turn.  I guess that Fatesticher from the graveyard would give you more activations of Bazaar, it has haste, is Therapy fodder, but it requires a Bazaar and is one use.  Furthermore the Magi does not allow you access to your entire deck in your graveyard like Bazaar, it is a card drawing engine not a winning engine.

I guess if you are set on the Magus of the Bazaar then you might have to do the unthinkable and expand to 3 colors, Fastbond, Crop Rotation and Concordant Crossroads - but I don't much like Crossroads for just that purpose.

[shroomy2dope]

So far in testing i have not found a reason to run this build over traditional WGD.
yes the draw engine is supperior, however i beleive that relevance to be questionable.
3 points
1. traditional wgd sees it's pieces just as fast as this build.
2.you're not drawing ino a force or any other counter for that matter.
3. without petal or ritual you're really not even drawing into the mana to disrupt.

DicemanX's wgdx played a superior draw engine to it's contemporaries, intuition/deep analysis, this was relevant only due to the presence of F.O.W.
you draw more cards, you counter more spells, you win with more surety.

-by playing the advanced bazaar engineyou make yourself less prone to disruption and more prone to wate/lock effects.
-by running disruption over counters you slow your clock on averageand make yourself more prone to being countered.
you may be able to draw 3duress, but you can't cast them all, or even most of them if one of your land drops is bazaar. this is emphasized by the limited(2) black accelerants.
your acceleration seems to be geared for magus(a long game card or a good card on a good draw.), and animate dead, (the final spell you will play.)
insted i beleive the accelerants should be allocated to accomodate your protection, which in this case, is all black.
-I't's not good principle to cast your disruption until you think you can win before you know your oppnent can draw.
-A force in the hand counters a force on the stack. A duress in the hand doesn't do much.
-I beleive the inclusion of 8 force/pact/pierce over the 8 duress effects, would increase the deck's efficiency on many levels.

additional blue could be included to increase F.O.W. yeilds, however i doubt it's neccessary to include the typically requisite 20 blue spells when you playsuch a massive draw engine.

my testing will steer this way.


what are your current side board thoughts? what have you found this builds hardest match ups to be ?

EDIT_ on magus.
magus is an exceptional card that i'm surprised hasn't found it's way to dragon builds before now.
it takes pressure off protecting bazaar. magus is un-wastable and not the first card to get named to needle. it can also absorb bounce spells that would target your dragon under normal circumstances. but i do beleive it to be better utilized as a board card. no one would board in creature removal if they did not see magus game 1, and it serve well as an answer finder under bazaar lock pressure. game 1 i would play careful study. if, as you state, magus relevacy steers towards the turn 2 win off a mox then study fufills the same roll. it's not as stable late gme but it adds for good hate circumvention game 2-3.
dragon should maximize speed game 1 and this change does not divert that course. it even enables you to take an additional turn to find your mox.

[meadbert]

Magus vs Demonic:
Demonic might be better.  I mentioned earlier in the thread swapping out Magus#4 for Demonic.
Never the less I will give Magus its fair defense.

Situation #1: You have Dragon.
Demonic allows for Demonic for Bazaar and then activate Bazaar on turn 2 and play Animate without Duress backup.
Magus allows for turn 1 Magus followed by turn 2 Duress, Animate for the win.

Situation #2:  You do not have Dragon, but you do have some number of Squees/Horrors.
Careful Study draws 2 cards and you get back your Squee/Horror, but it is a one time shot.
Magus of the Bazaar does nothing on turn 1, but starting on turn 2 it draws 2 cards a turn so you are way ahead on turn 3.


Shroomy mentioned the other advantages of Magus including dodging Wasteland, Pithing Needle, Spell Pierce and Duress.

There is the slight advantage of being another creature to put on top of Horror.

The main advantages to Demonic are acting as a 5th Dragon, providing some flexibility and also that is going to be solid post board anyway.  Depending on the sideboard one of the first changes I will probably make is drop Magus of the Bazaar#4 for Demonic Tutor, but it is not obvious that Magus is not superior.

Vampiric Tutor is worse than Demonic and Demonic is already questionable.  The comparisons are similar with Vamp having the ability to fetch Bazaar even if you have no Mox.  This deck mitigates such hands by having 8 Duress effects.  Basically if you have no acceleration or Bazaar then opening with turn 1 Duress is acceptible.  You could Vamp for Bazaar instead, but I am not sure that plan is much better than simply Duress on turn 1.

Entomb might be interesting.  Basically if Demonic is primarily used to find Dragon then all of a sudden Entomb starts to simply look like a broken version of Demonic Tutor.  I have not tested Entomb in this list and perhaps that is something I should do.  Entombs instead of Magus of the Bazaars perhaps?

Horrors are very reliable.  They have a number of advantages.  With 8xBazaar effects they help with card advantage.  They can remove Welder and Bob.  While comboing off they function as an alternate win condition and can even kill Platz.  They are better than Squee when facing Tangle Wire because Squee only comes back every other turn thanks to APNAP while you always get Horror back EOT (assuming you have that creature on top.)


Regarding Force/Pact/Pierce vs Duress/Thoughtseize.

So there are already 8 blue cards in this deck.  One could swap out the Duresses and Thoughtseizes and 8 blue spells to barely support Force.
In general I love Force, particularly in a combo deck.  Here are the issues:

Chain of Vapor, Repeal, Echoing Truth and Stifle can be problematc.  In all of these cases your opponent can let Animate resolve, let you mill yourself (and discard your counter magic) and then use any of these to RFG all of your perments.  The result is you have no hand and no permanents and thus you lose.  Those cards all show up in main decks fairly regularly.  If your opponent merely Mysticals for Chain of Vapor on turn 1 then you are in a terrible position where you must get both Dragon and Oona into the yard and get a counter spell and hope he has none before you go off.  If your counter Spell were Duress or Thoughtseize then you could Duress away the Chain of Vapor and go off without Oona, or if Duress itself were Forced you could wait till you draw more Duress or Thoughtseize.

The second class of cards that are more relevant post board are the likes of Ravenous Trap and Extirpate.  Extirpate cannot be countered at all and Ravenous Trap can again be used once your hand is emptied.  These cards do leave you with your permanents, but you will still have no hand.

Regarding Petal and Dark Ritual:
I realize the goal here is to accelerate out Duress effects, but before I add Petal I would add Unmask.  Since there are already 22 Black Cards, Unmask is easily supported and Unmask + any of 22 black card is better than Petal + Duress or Petal + Thoughtseize and with only 8 Duress/Thoughtseize you are more likely to have Petal with no disruption than Unmask with no black card.

EDIT:  So I have been testing Entomb/Demonic/Magus of the Bazaar.  Basically I start with that Wild Card and then a hand of 6 more and I determine which I want it to be.  I usually want it to be Magus or Entomb, but then Demonic is usually in second place.  Anyway, what occurred to me is that what I really want are Dragons 5, 6 and possibly 7.  What this suggests is that I may need some better animate targets or possibly more of them.  Oona pitches to Force and is sort of hardcastable, but I wonder if Hellkite Overlord, Tidespout Tyrant or Iona would be better.  If I run Badlands then Overlord just wins since I can create infinite red mana, and pump him to be huge and swing with haste.  Tyrant is good against everything but Inkwell and this deck should be able to race Inky.  Then there is Iona which is a beating and if nothing else can protect a win later on by negating any counters, bounce or Stifle effects.
I am considering dropping an Island, a fetch and both Oonas to add Badlands, Overlord, Iona and Tyrant.

[shroomy2dope]

well spoken.
  on demonic vs. magus i beleive you may be making the wrong comparison. I play 4 blak tutors in my dragon build. the mvp is not demonic tutor, but demonic consultation.
  Magus of the bazaar is good. it allows the horror to be more effective, which i failed to address in my post, i was merely trying to elaborate on the neccessity of speed over heavy draw to wrap up game 1 quickly. you need game 1.
 magus is great pre or post, but should probably only show up post for tempo reasons.
because as you said:
Situation #1: You have Dragon.
Magus allows for turn 1 Magus followed by turn 2 Duress, Animate for the win.
 this does not win. it only draws the game un less you amazingly have an Oona in the yard or hand.
Had that magus been an entomb/study, you would have accomplished the same thing without mana acceleration needed. wich makes it more likely to occur.
this alone shows the drop in tempo you receive from magus. you are now dependant on turn 1 acceleration to get your quick win which turns a 3 card plan into a 4 card plan.
however this does not mean these cards are better choices than magus. there are many other contributing factors. this was only a look at tempo.

on force/durres
this is a hard decision for any combo player. i myself play the durres effects because i like the abillity to thoughtseize my wgd and i like maximizing ritual efficiency.
i understand the dire need to eradicate bounce from the equation, and god forbid, extirpate.
bounce isn't as much of a problem for some wgd but i imagine it would be for this deck.
tezz did it to me twice in testing but luckily i had not burned through most of my deck yet on those occasions. once i was able to get back online. bouce is not game over for dragon. especially if you run heavy black ritual/entomb. those builds frequently win off 1 land anyways.

i was advocating, and am currently testing, the force plan on the assumption that i will draw more cards than my opponent and thereby, make my counters more relevant than disruption, due to the sheer number i can cast if need be. if my opponent has bounce i can force instead of using crucial mana for the pre-emptive durres. you can not cast durres mid combo either if they bounce while you're balls deep in a triggered ability chain. however you can force here.
this is a main reason why i run a cunning wish in my ritual build. i can durres or thought seize off ritual mana all day or wish for a counter mid combo.

it should also be noted, because it is sometimes relevant, that if you are comboing for mana off orchard, than a player may hesitate to cast their control spell. this is the same with drain.

as far as a secondary re-animation target goes, i highly recomend it. i play them myself sometimes. however if it isn't iona it must be shroud because the whole reason to go that route is to circumvent bounce, because you certainly are not dodging yard hate this way. i actually played 1 reanimate before as  something i could demonic for and cast off the same ritual.
the flaw i found in this plan was it does not win instantly and allows me a chance to still lose.
i would rather just cast the animate here and call a draw.