So Mike Flores recently top4ed a RPTQ playing this mono blue dragons deck that splashes every color to play nearly ever Dragonlord in the format (via 4 Crucible and 4 Haven of the Spirit Dragon).
After taking this deck for a test spin recently I've come to the conclusion that he may have just created the best deck in the format. It crushes Esper Dragons and basically any control matchup due to the overwhelming density of threats, the ability to recur threats with the 4 Havens, and Dragonlord's Prerogative nearly always being uncounterable. It crushes the mid-range decks due to all of the powerful finishers it plays. It is mediocre vs. the fast red decks in G1 but has a pretty solid sideboard plan (4 Master of Waves and 4 Omenspeakers and 4 Encase in Ice) for that deck.
Why are more people not talking about / playing this deck? It's absolutely amazing in the format right now. It feels like it's only a matter of time before everyone just acknowledges that the Tier 1 deck of this Standard format plays 4 Havens and 4 Crucibles...
Here's an article where he discussess the deck and his results with it:
I might actually just go up to 4 Encase in Ice in the maindeck (cutting Voyage's End and Disdainful Stroke). Almost every deck in Standard right now plays red or green creatures. Also, I'd probably cut Atarka for another Icefall Regent.
I piloted this deck to a 3-1 finish at FNM and it's about as powerful as I expected it to be. There was not one Atarka Red in the field so I didn't get to test that matchup very well. My loss was to a GW devotion list splashing blue for Stratus Dancer and Negate. Game 1 was lost to Fleecemane Lion and game 3 was lost to sideboard Plummet. I did make some changes to the list:
-2 Anticipate +2 Voyage's End: Anticipate is so bad. Most of the time we're countering their turn two play with Nullify or Scorn. 3 Voyage's End gives us game against the Heroic decks.
+1 Dig Through Time (going to 61 cards): I think 27 land is too much. I added a 61st card to make it feel like 26.5 lands and it hit the sweet spot. I feel this was a mistake (4 DTT is too much) and should be a third Perilous Vault. You're going to fall behind in the midrange matchup and need to generally reset before dropping dragons.
Sideboard> -4 Master of Waves +4 Ætherspouts: Mostly a meta call but I think this is a valid choice. Surviving to 5 mana isn't terribly difficult with so much countermagic in the deck, and the goal against aggro is to just get a Dromoka on the table and let her get you out of burn range.
Encase in Ice is a TERRIBLE card against Abzan and GW in game 1. Their Dromoka's Commands are dead except against that card. It's good after boards because they'll likely take it out, but we're a pretty big dog against turn 3 Siege Rhino or turn 2 Fleecemane Lion on the draw. If they hit 5 mana, the only way we have to deal with Fleecemane Lion is Perilous Vault, which is extremely slow.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A mere ten days after the Mending, a young knight of Valeron and a young ranger of Eos made a discovery that would change Alara forever.
I'll start worrying about that when people actually start using the card, and as that seems unlikely, I'm not going to start worrying.
I did not ask if you cared how to beat hydra. I asked how does this deck beat Hydra as the people around here jam as many cant be countered green creatures in their side board as possible
I don't think it's possible in such a warped environment. There is very little you can do to a resolves Hydra other than leaning on Vault and attempting to get to your non blue Dragons. Hydra is a rough card to face, the reason I dismiss it is because it's a pretty awful card against the field.
Honestly if multiple people jump on the Hydra plan in my LGS, I'd just play something else entirely.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Brilliant ideas are stupid ideas that worked - Patrick Chapin
I thought about making this deck blue / black to give it more game against Heroic and those green creatures. gives some nice sideboard cards in black like plague and price
I thought about making this deck blue / black to give it more game against Heroic and those green creatures. gives some nice sideboard cards in black like plague and price
Makes the mana too difficult IMO. This is a deck that needs to ALWAYS have UU untapped for Scorn on turn two, and the deck is really dependent on scrying away excess threats with land drops. You want things like Ultimate Price early, but it's very difficult since having UU early is so important. I'd love to have better creature answers than Voyage's End, but I don't think it's worth losing four scrylands over it. If Underground River was in the format, I think it'd be okay.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A mere ten days after the Mending, a young knight of Valeron and a young ranger of Eos made a discovery that would change Alara forever.
adding the black temples for the green temples and putting some of the sultai tri lands wasnt that difficult. You dont need ult price early to deal with the things that cant be countered
So Mike Flores recently top4ed a RPTQ playing this mono blue dragons deck that splashes every color to play nearly ever Dragonlord in the format (via 4 Crucible and 4 Haven of the Spirit Dragon).
After taking this deck for a test spin recently I've come to the conclusion that he may have just created the best deck in the format. It crushes Esper Dragons and basically any control matchup due to the overwhelming density of threats, the ability to recur threats with the 4 Havens, and Dragonlord's Prerogative nearly always being uncounterable. It crushes the mid-range decks due to all of the powerful finishers it plays. It is mediocre vs. the fast red decks in G1 but has a pretty solid sideboard plan (4 Master of Waves and 4 Omenspeakers and 4 Encase in Ice) for that deck.
Why are more people not talking about / playing this deck? It's absolutely amazing in the format right now. It feels like it's only a matter of time before everyone just acknowledges that the Tier 1 deck of this Standard format plays 4 Havens and 4 Crucibles...
Here's an article where he discussess the deck and his results with it:
Sigh.. The notion of contributing to this board is unsettling, but I cannot deny this board seems to be the most popular medium and I think Mike Flores should be aware of the adaption I've made since he's the progenitor(I'm unsure which forum he frequents).
Okay so I don't really play standard. I got sucked in merely out of curiosity. Other than playing a couple of games with Esper dragons from the Pro Tour on cockatrice, I had 0 experience in this format. Then I stumbled across Mike Flore's concoction and lol'ed at how much of a durdlefest standard must be for a deck full of bad counters and expensive dragons could ever hope to be successful after reviewing his list. So I proceeded to check first hand the merit of my assumption and that's how I got involved. I think the majority here understand how a control deck can get away with clunky disruption in this format so I'll skip that part.
A couple of things stood out right away as I was accumulating experience with 5c dragons. This deck seems to naturally have the edge late game against everyone else, because Dromoka just laughs at your opponent's counter magic and forces them to have a counter war THEIR turn for their removal which you'll have mana up for thanks to Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. I think everyone understands why this deck rocks late game so I won't elaborate further.
So if this deck has the edge late game, it should try to focus on ensuring it's survival until then, right? The problem with the original iteration is that it's overly reliant on counter magic to accomplish this goal and whenever 5c dragon gets behind, the only way it comes back is through expensive dragons. That approach is flawed, because you can die beforehand or the opponent just answers your expensive threat with cheap removal and continue the beats. The deck certainly has potential, and I noted to myself several times how much better the deck could be if it just dropped the emphasis on blue and splash another color for removal. The idea kept egging me despite having no real reason to attach myself to this format. Crux of Fate is so synergistic in a deck revolving around dragons and gaining 4 life off a removal spell against aggro is OP; how can you not at least splash black? So last weekend in a extremely sleep deprived state (I suffer through periods of insomnia), I threw together a rough sketch to play with and kept winning against the streamlined decks in spite of severe play error. So the next day after having rested, I wanted to refine the build a bit and procure more test results. I'm surprised that though even at a half-wake state I was in, I'm still adequate at constructing mana-bases in at least fulfilling the mana requirements.
Originally, the idea was to just splash black and white removal since those were the secondary colors I wanted to splash anyways so I can cast the MD dragons I envisioned more consistently. I glossed through both Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Reid Duke decks in their channel Fireball videos to use as guideposts as to what removal I want. After reviewing Reid Duke's list and noting to myself just how bad the white removal is, I easily decided the only "white" removal I would even bother testing is Utter End. Given that trying to run Bile Blight was probably too greedy, I ran a mini-experiment to determine whether Hero's Downfall (since this was the primary card that was pushing me to heavily splash black) or Utter End would be more suitable in my deck. Turns out even in standard, 4 cmc is clunky for a removal spell. Given my extremely limited perspective in standard, I was unsure what were the appropriate mix of removal spells and there is even more uncertainty involving the SB. So originally my removal suite and SB was a near carbon copy of Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa's Esper Dragons deck and I made adjustment along the way. The sideboard definitely needs more tuning and to be fleshed out, but I'm extremely unfamiliar with the card choices available here. For example, Utter End is primarily SB'ed as enchantment removal and I originally included Adarkar Wastes to the land base thinking it was legal. Perplexing the situation is I'm unsure how to SB against the more obscure decks and even against the mainstream decks I just go with intuition each game.
Dragonlord Dromoka is the main reason for a esper control deck to even bother with dragons outside of it's colors. She's undisputedly your single best card against Artaka Red and UB control, the extreme polar opposite decks of the format. I'm sure someone else here covered her.
Those are 2 best overall dragons in the format, so ofc they're 3-ofs.
Dragonlord Kolaghan is probably the most peculiar choice, but it was no mistake she's the only other dragon that I currently main deck. I believe this dragonlord is the most underrated of the dragonlords as even I underestimated her. I only realized her potential by chance as the Mike Flore's 5c dragon deck I copied had 1 in the SB for purposes of sniping planeswalkers and I happened to test against a deck with quite a few planeswalkers. Until then I only saw her as a Rorix Bladewing with fringe, situational benefits, which to be fair she is during the early and into mid game stage fulfilling the niche role of sniping planeswalkers. That's very underwhelming, but it turns out those fringe or situational benefits become very relevant when you reach the later stages of the game. Late game she is single handedly the most dangerous of all the threats I've come across in this format, out classing even Ugin because of the all shenanigans she creates. This deck wants to be stalling its opponents anyhow.
Typically you reach the late game by grinding out your opponents and when you're grinding out opponents, their GY tend to get stockpiled with all sorts of different threats. Dragonlord Kolaghan essentially lock your opponents out from ever playing those threats again, because if said opponent cannot answer your Kolaghan, I don't believe their life total can afford a 10 life loss. Lock pieces are traditionally valuable in control decks and one that doubles as a threat even more so. Kolaghan has produce me several victories just through sheer ignorance of the opponent regarding this ability.
The haste to all creatures is the other reason why this dragon is so potent. When summoning 2 big dragons same turn is child's play, haste to all is priceless as it produces a 1 turn clock at least, and kill opponents out of nowhere. The haste seems to have a profound effect on the other dragons like instant anticipate or 5 life gain, and Kolaghan combos hard with Dromoka(i'll go into this later). When you have multiple dragons out, it is almost always correct for the opponent to kill Kolaghan before dealing with the others as they risk death otherwise. You can very well possess another threat in your hand, especially if the game has dragged on, or just top deck one. Haven of the Spirit Dragon means your opponent is screwed unless he/she can exile your threats. Its not like summoning more than 1 dragon same turn leaves you exposed either, because Crucible of the Spirit Dragon allows you to make such plays AND leave mana up for counter spells. Furthermore, Dragonlord Kolaghan's other ability conveniently prevent blow outs from Ugin or Elspeth if you've already dealt with them. Yet even still, it is not necessary at all to grind through your opponent's removal.
When I said "1 turn at least", I'm implying that death can result the SAME turn Kolaghan resolve and the best part is that it bypasses ALL SPELLS your opponents can possibly play with the Dragonlord Kolaghan + Dragonlord Dromoka "Ripper Cyclotron" combo (I get to name it coz I'm the first one to realize that combo into a competitive deck). Dromoka is essentially an un-counterable Silence on a giant stick so you're guaranteed to do ANYTHING you could possibly want no questions asked on your turn. Kolaghan is a giant, evasive version of Flame-Kin Zealot and that creature enabled kills in Legacy Dredge the same turn it combo'ed with Bridge from Below to make massive amounts of zombies. By playing Dromoka and Kolaghan together in the same turn, you get 1 free attack no question asked. Do not underestimate this free attack, because it's not just limited to just those 2 attacking.. Any other threat you play can jump in on the action and its trivial to dump your hand of dragons with charged up Crucible of the Spirit Dragons mid-late game; Dromoka and Kolaghan are both conveniently dragons. Admittedly it's slow, but selling point to this combo is not its speed BUT the RESILIENCY. It is by far the most resilient combo I've ever played. You can play against a deck with 10 Force of Wills, 10 Swords to Plowshares, and 10 Rout, and just ignore it all... with creatures! Not even instant speed miracle'd Terminus prevents this attack.
An eloquently vivid analogy of this all would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P_QTnyvG7k. Pretend the noob ape is a skeptical U/B control player and the weapons in his hands removal + counter spells. Each time Phinks winds up his arm is like each time this deck charges up Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. Don't underestimate the free attack.
Currently main deck wise, 16 is the magic number. It's a death sentence if you're life is 16 or below and you're playing the waiting game against this deck. 16 represents the total attack power of Dromoka, Kologhan, and Ojutai, damage that is GUARANTEED. I'm pretty sure along the way you can drop you're opponent's life total below this threshold and if not it's pretty trivial to get in another attack on your next turn. This deck runs multiple of Kolaghans and Dromokas with Haven of the Spirit Dragon besides to resurrect them. It is impossible to be naturally milled by an opposing control deck, 0 excuses. You can fall behind in CA or let your opponent stock up in as much removal and counter spells they could possibly want, and you'll still win as long as they're not actually killing you. So do not take any unnecessary risks and prioritize your survival above all else. You have supreme inevitability in this standard format I believe. Your game plan can't be disrupted and this deck operates under a control shell, so it shouldn't be difficult for this deck to dismantle any of other wonky, vulnerable combos they present.
So there, that's what Dragonlord Kolaghan provides the deck, inevitability. I chose to roll with only 8 dragons, because I do not want my hand to be overburdened with clunky bombs. I tried out all the dragons Mike Flore toyed with and found Dragonlord Atarka, Dragonlord Silumgar, and Icefall Regent to be all very situational. The early game plan is to just kill any threat until you can safely cast your own threats and by then usually the board's empty because the opponent ran out gas or the opponent's just holding onto their most valuable threats until you tap out. So it's hard to generate any extra value of out them unless you intentionally let your opponent keep some of their threats just to generate some value out of them. Additionally, Icefall Regent dies to every single removal spell, Dragonlord Silumgar is asking for a huge blow out, and Atarka is prohibitively expensive to serve essentially as a removal on a stick. Also tried out Silumgar, Drifting Death and found him to be extremely lack luster.
I did plan on writing more, but it's taking too much time and nobody appreciates my work.
Hey I really like the list you posted. I'd been tinkering with something similar (read - stop trying to play mono blue for no good reason), and came to similar conclusions. Basically, Crucible is the real tech here, the rest of it is sort of hokey. Having to play a card like Encase in Ice when you have Invocation available is just bad.
I couldn't quite get it to the point where I was comfortable with it and I still have some reservations with your list, but DTT is much much better in this shell and generally it just feels a lot less clunky except when you run into mana issues which does happen with 6 colorless lands. Still, I think it's an upgrade and very very very close to being astonishingly good.
EDIT: Totally agree on Dragonlord Silumgar. When it's good, it's awesome, but you have so much game already against the kind of decks it's good against (read - devotion) that I just don't think you need it at all. Atarka is one that I simply never felt was any good, if you're casting it there's usually nothing to kill as when you make it to seven mana most of the time they have no board and basically no hand.
I was mistaken, there was one corner left apparently I wanted to explore before ceasing this project. Just as the above poster pointed out, I found Dragonlord Atarka to be very underwhelming against light creature build, particularly the blue control mirror hence why I moved away from that dragonlord MD. However, upon further reflection, the body itself is HUGE and maybe even in a empty field a 8/8 trampler itself might be worth it.. if it had haste. So pretty much all last night I was toying around with this build to check whether this premise had any merit. I cut a Crux of Fate, because the MUs where I want Crux the most is also where Atarka mostly shines in.
It seems 14 damage straight to the dome is nothing to scoff at, so yes Dragonlord Kolaghan definitely provides enough support for Atarka to piggyback on in the MUs where she's a dud. I picked up a victory against B/U control as a direct result this huge damage spike where I was otherwise losing because I fell so far behind in CA and 2 Dromokas were already in the bin. But that only occurred, because my opponent completely tapped out just to bring me down to 9 life with his Ugin before losing it to a Hero's Downfall. Then I top decked a Dragonlord Kolaghan and won 2 turns later. This interaction was only successful as a result of my opponent likely being unfamiliar with my deck. When you add in Dromoka, that's 19 guaranteed damage, so there's something to say about that.
Other data of note; it seems 8 is the optimal number of dragons to run as you always want 1 in hand and to draw into multiples when the game gets dragged out. Too often with 9 dragons my hand gets clogged with them in the early game when I just want to draw spells, which is a bummer since I don't think a singleton Atarka is that bad. I don't want to cut a Kologhan though, because I'm finding this dragon to be crucial in the grindy MUs and in particular the blue control mirror. Kologhan seems to be the only threat late game that can brutally punish a blue control deck for tapping out. None of the other threats seem to cut it when they still have cards in their hand. Ashiok and Ojutai only work in the early stage of the game and that ploy is only successful if you caught your opponent with their pants down. I also don't want to have to hold in reservation a Haven of the Spirit Dragon just to bring back a Kologhan so I can preserve the combo kill end game. On the other hand, I nearly always sideboard out Kologhan against the aggro decks, because the game will never reach the stage where she shines and there doesn't exist the need to deliver huge spikes of damage. I might keep 1 if I suspect a planeswalker transition plan.
On another note, the dubious nature of the mana base reared its ugly head this time around. Several times I've had to mull away hands containing only Haven of The Spirit Dragon and Crucible of The Spirit Dragon as the land base. I lost a game, because I didn't have a 2nd blue source when I made my 6th land drop. Who would figure a deck with 18 blue sources would have difficulty retrieving 2 blue sources? There's more blue sources in this deck than the total land count of some legacy decks. I don't know if this was a long string of bad luck or I have to realign my own assessment of mana bases, but gathering 2 blues is paramount of with all double UU spells this deck is packing. So I believe Cave of Koilos cutting for Opulant Palace may be appropriate despite how vexing it is the scenario of drawing nothing but tapped lands.
Maybe 6 colorless sources is greedy, but I exchanging Bile Blight for Dromoka against hyper aggro is a more than acceptable trade off. So is having access to Dromoka and Kolaghan vs being able to cast all your blue spells in the blue control mirror. Late game, you can just bypass the counter and removal war altogether. I wonder though if its possible to cut 1 or 2 of those colorless lands and still be able to consistently cast Dromoka and Kologhan. In regards to color requirement, esper already meets the requirement halfway.
Nice update. I'd been playing with a couple of Opulent Palaces since last night and enjoying them very much. I cut one Caves and I believe one U/W Temple, also cutting Utter End out of the board. This makes the U/W mana less critical as you are just casting Ojutai and Dromoka, and most of the time those are off the dragon lands anyways.
I'm also trying out only 2 haven and 4 crucible at the moment because ultimately haven has a little less utility when you have so MANY dragons. You frequently can just let one die and cast another. Crucible also gives you at least a slim percentage against red as you can use it to cast a turn 4 Ojutai or Dromoka if you have a draw that doesn't do much else.
I think going to 2 Crux is probably right, as they definitely clog your hand in a lot of matchups, but my first inclination would be to try either the 4th dissolve, 4th FTI main deck, or a single situational 2cc counter in the main (probably nullify?).
I love the second Urborg out of the side when you bring in Drown. Most of my losses are to Atarka Red just because you need to hit mana in sequence to have much of a chance and trying to play 6 colorless lands bites you in the ass at times when you're trying to get both UU and BB available by turn 3.
Overall I think I'm something like 7-1 against Mardu, very close to that good against Abzan, and probably under 40% against Mono Red. Frustrating, but I hope with some tweaks to the mana that can be improved.
Also, this is not necessarily a great reason to play it but two or three times now I've had an opponent essentially kill themselves by casting a spell that costs them 10 life with Kolaghan, which is pretty sweet.
I thought about pointing out that in the blue control mirror, the recursion is really helpful because you may have to expend dragons, particularly Dromoka (to make your draw and kill spells un-counterable), in the event you fall behind. But really, you want to get a Crucible online as soon as possible in this MU.
I only played Dragonlord Atarka as an experiment to see whether Dragonlord Kolaghan can carry that fat whore of a dragon in the MUs where she's mostly a dud, not because I believed it was a definite improvement. But ya, I came to the conclusion 8 dragons is where I would I want to be at. I was debating whether I wanted to replace the MD Atarka with either a removal spell or counter, but I couldn't decide in time to participate in this event..
Took it down in spite of being half-awake and making a ton of play mistakes left and right towards the end.
Anyways tyvm for appreciating my creation, I'm probably better at brewing than at playing and as a result I probably misrepresent my ideas terribly.
As for the latest idea I have, I stumbled across Atarka, World Render yesterday and was immediately excited at the prospect of instant KO with Dragonlord Kolaghan. Gaining 10 life off of Dragonlord Dromoka or double anticipate with Dragonlord Ojutai were the next things to come to mind. After a minute of careful consideration though, those wonderful possibilities only occur in conjunction WITH the other dragons and the lordless Atarka is without doubt pathetic on its own. Furthermore, said possibilities all appear to be very winmore.
The only interaction that seemed useful was the instant KO. Thing is the only scenario I can imagine where this can be applied are the blue control mirrors to make them fear tapping out against you and guaranteeing your Ripper Cyclotron attack is lethal. However that's very conditional and outside of that, Atarka is just a expensive beatstick. It's not necessary for your Ripper Cyclotron to be lethal as you aren't limited to performing it once and you probably don't even need to perform it again to win. Furthermore, wouldn't it be just better to SB Dragonlord Perogative instead for this MU? And finally, do I really want to SB a card specifically for a MU I'm already very favored against? I may be looking at it the wrong way so that's why I'm putting it out there.
Getting victories off of Kolaghan's punishment ability is good reason in terms of satisfaction, because an ensuing rage quit is extremely high. Based on my experience, the pattern that emerged from my matches against Atarka Red is that you're favored if you're on the play and they're favored if not. I only played like 5-6 set of games in total though so the results can be skewed.
Well, even though I think the deck's awesome, I'm done refurbishing the deck. There's no tangible rewards in doing so because I'm under house arrest. =(
I know it isn't the same thing as a 6/5 flier that gives everything haste, but if you find that any more than 8 dragons clogs your hand, how about a single copy of Temporal Trespass cast after you cast dromoka (basically you get to swing with dromoka at least once and get to untap and draw a card and be ready to counter your opponent's inevitable removal spell)? Or if you're finding that Dig through time takes up all of your delve resources, maybe one or two Living Lore targeting a dig or perogitive in your graveyard as a cheapish late game beater (which can give you more CA if it connects) that you can cast the same turn crucible brings in Kolaghan?
The neat thing about living lore's last ability is that it triggers upon combat damage, so you could simply be using it as a big blocker against aggro, have it kill one of their smaller creatures in combat and then sac it to increase your card advantage.
I know it isn't the same thing as a 6/5 flier that gives everything haste, but if you find that any more than 8 dragons clogs your hand, how about a single copy of Temporal Trespass cast after you cast dromoka (basically you get to swing with dromoka at least once and get to untap and draw a card and be ready to counter your opponent's inevitable removal spell)? Or if you're finding that Dig through time takes up all of your delve resources, maybe one or two Living Lore targeting a dig or perogitive in your graveyard as a cheapish late game beater (which can give you more CA if it connects) that you can cast the same turn crucible brings in Kolaghan?
The neat thing about living lore's last ability is that it triggers upon combat damage, so you could simply be using it as a big blocker against aggro, have it kill one of their smaller creatures in combat and then sac it to increase your card advantage.
Honestly I have a hard time imagining a situation in which Trespass would be preferable to just having another dragon. If you can afford to cast Dromoka and you have that many cards in the GY you can probably cast 2 dragons instead which is almost certainly preferable.
Actually I am going to post here 1 more time. I was curious if opting to run multiple Opulent Palaces in lieu of Temple of Enlightenment might actually make it feasible to play Bile Blight. So I went counting the black sources ordinary Esper Dragons operate under to verify the number they're comfortable with. That number seems to be 17-18, easily achievable. I can't remember now why I initially believed it to be greedy to use Bile Blight. I think it was because I wanted to test Utter End coupled with me being unaware of Opulent Palace at the time? I was probably also thinking I wanted to consistently cast Ojutai as soon as possible and be able to play Dromoka off of Haven of the Spirit Dragon as well.
Has anyone tried out bases besides the blue one? I'm testing a green base now, and i know some people have been toying with the full on black base as opposed to a U/B or a U base.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I might actually just go up to 4 Encase in Ice in the maindeck (cutting Voyage's End and Disdainful Stroke). Almost every deck in Standard right now plays red or green creatures. Also, I'd probably cut Atarka for another Icefall Regent.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
-2 Anticipate +2 Voyage's End: Anticipate is so bad. Most of the time we're countering their turn two play with Nullify or Scorn. 3 Voyage's End gives us game against the Heroic decks.
+1 Dig Through Time (going to 61 cards): I think 27 land is too much. I added a 61st card to make it feel like 26.5 lands and it hit the sweet spot. I feel this was a mistake (4 DTT is too much) and should be a third Perilous Vault. You're going to fall behind in the midrange matchup and need to generally reset before dropping dragons.
Sideboard> -4 Master of Waves +4 Ætherspouts: Mostly a meta call but I think this is a valid choice. Surviving to 5 mana isn't terribly difficult with so much countermagic in the deck, and the goal against aggro is to just get a Dromoka on the table and let her get you out of burn range.
Encase in Ice is a TERRIBLE card against Abzan and GW in game 1. Their Dromoka's Commands are dead except against that card. It's good after boards because they'll likely take it out, but we're a pretty big dog against turn 3 Siege Rhino or turn 2 Fleecemane Lion on the draw. If they hit 5 mana, the only way we have to deal with Fleecemane Lion is Perilous Vault, which is extremely slow.
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
I did not ask if you cared how to beat hydra. I asked how does this deck beat Hydra as the people around here jam as many cant be countered green creatures in their side board as possible
Cruel Control
Niv-Mizzet EDH
Cruel Tezz
Honestly if multiple people jump on the Hydra plan in my LGS, I'd just play something else entirely.
Cruel Control
Niv-Mizzet EDH
Cruel Tezz
Makes the mana too difficult IMO. This is a deck that needs to ALWAYS have UU untapped for Scorn on turn two, and the deck is really dependent on scrying away excess threats with land drops. You want things like Ultimate Price early, but it's very difficult since having UU early is so important. I'd love to have better creature answers than Voyage's End, but I don't think it's worth losing four scrylands over it. If Underground River was in the format, I think it'd be okay.
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
Cruel Control
Niv-Mizzet EDH
Cruel Tezz
I would like for you to test this out:
- 2 Temple of Enlightenment
- 2 Temple of Mystery
+ 4 Islands
The deck needs to be ready to react faster.
Only thing saving mono blue from pro-blue is Tyrant's Machine.
4 Dismal Backwater
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Enlightenment
3 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
3 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
2 Island
3 Crux of Fate
4 Silumgar's Scorn
3 Dissolve
1 Ultimate Price
3 Foul-Tongue Invocation
2 Anticipate
2 Thoughtseize
3 Hero's Downfall
3 Dragonlord Ojutai
1 Dragonlord's Prerogative
3 Dragonlord Dromoka
2 Dragonlord Kolaghan
3 Dig Through Time
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Thoughtseize
4 Drown in Sorrow
1 Dragonlord's Prerogative
3 Ultimate Price
1 Foul-Tongue Invocation
1 Negate
2 Utter End
1 Dragonlord Atarka
Okay so I don't really play standard. I got sucked in merely out of curiosity. Other than playing a couple of games with Esper dragons from the Pro Tour on cockatrice, I had 0 experience in this format. Then I stumbled across Mike Flore's concoction and lol'ed at how much of a durdlefest standard must be for a deck full of bad counters and expensive dragons could ever hope to be successful after reviewing his list. So I proceeded to check first hand the merit of my assumption and that's how I got involved. I think the majority here understand how a control deck can get away with clunky disruption in this format so I'll skip that part.
A couple of things stood out right away as I was accumulating experience with 5c dragons. This deck seems to naturally have the edge late game against everyone else, because Dromoka just laughs at your opponent's counter magic and forces them to have a counter war THEIR turn for their removal which you'll have mana up for thanks to Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. I think everyone understands why this deck rocks late game so I won't elaborate further.
So if this deck has the edge late game, it should try to focus on ensuring it's survival until then, right? The problem with the original iteration is that it's overly reliant on counter magic to accomplish this goal and whenever 5c dragon gets behind, the only way it comes back is through expensive dragons. That approach is flawed, because you can die beforehand or the opponent just answers your expensive threat with cheap removal and continue the beats. The deck certainly has potential, and I noted to myself several times how much better the deck could be if it just dropped the emphasis on blue and splash another color for removal. The idea kept egging me despite having no real reason to attach myself to this format. Crux of Fate is so synergistic in a deck revolving around dragons and gaining 4 life off a removal spell against aggro is OP; how can you not at least splash black? So last weekend in a extremely sleep deprived state (I suffer through periods of insomnia), I threw together a rough sketch to play with and kept winning against the streamlined decks in spite of severe play error. So the next day after having rested, I wanted to refine the build a bit and procure more test results. I'm surprised that though even at a half-wake state I was in, I'm still adequate at constructing mana-bases in at least fulfilling the mana requirements.
Originally, the idea was to just splash black and white removal since those were the secondary colors I wanted to splash anyways so I can cast the MD dragons I envisioned more consistently. I glossed through both Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and Reid Duke decks in their channel Fireball videos to use as guideposts as to what removal I want. After reviewing Reid Duke's list and noting to myself just how bad the white removal is, I easily decided the only "white" removal I would even bother testing is Utter End. Given that trying to run Bile Blight was probably too greedy, I ran a mini-experiment to determine whether Hero's Downfall (since this was the primary card that was pushing me to heavily splash black) or Utter End would be more suitable in my deck. Turns out even in standard, 4 cmc is clunky for a removal spell. Given my extremely limited perspective in standard, I was unsure what were the appropriate mix of removal spells and there is even more uncertainty involving the SB. So originally my removal suite and SB was a near carbon copy of Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa's Esper Dragons deck and I made adjustment along the way. The sideboard definitely needs more tuning and to be fleshed out, but I'm extremely unfamiliar with the card choices available here. For example, Utter End is primarily SB'ed as enchantment removal and I originally included Adarkar Wastes to the land base thinking it was legal. Perplexing the situation is I'm unsure how to SB against the more obscure decks and even against the mainstream decks I just go with intuition each game.
On to dragons.
Dragonlord Ojutai I don't believe needs a explanation.
Dragonlord Dromoka is the main reason for a esper control deck to even bother with dragons outside of it's colors. She's undisputedly your single best card against Artaka Red and UB control, the extreme polar opposite decks of the format. I'm sure someone else here covered her.
Those are 2 best overall dragons in the format, so ofc they're 3-ofs.
Dragonlord Kolaghan is probably the most peculiar choice, but it was no mistake she's the only other dragon that I currently main deck. I believe this dragonlord is the most underrated of the dragonlords as even I underestimated her. I only realized her potential by chance as the Mike Flore's 5c dragon deck I copied had 1 in the SB for purposes of sniping planeswalkers and I happened to test against a deck with quite a few planeswalkers. Until then I only saw her as a Rorix Bladewing with fringe, situational benefits, which to be fair she is during the early and into mid game stage fulfilling the niche role of sniping planeswalkers. That's very underwhelming, but it turns out those fringe or situational benefits become very relevant when you reach the later stages of the game. Late game she is single handedly the most dangerous of all the threats I've come across in this format, out classing even Ugin because of the all shenanigans she creates. This deck wants to be stalling its opponents anyhow.
Typically you reach the late game by grinding out your opponents and when you're grinding out opponents, their GY tend to get stockpiled with all sorts of different threats. Dragonlord Kolaghan essentially lock your opponents out from ever playing those threats again, because if said opponent cannot answer your Kolaghan, I don't believe their life total can afford a 10 life loss. Lock pieces are traditionally valuable in control decks and one that doubles as a threat even more so. Kolaghan has produce me several victories just through sheer ignorance of the opponent regarding this ability.
The haste to all creatures is the other reason why this dragon is so potent. When summoning 2 big dragons same turn is child's play, haste to all is priceless as it produces a 1 turn clock at least, and kill opponents out of nowhere. The haste seems to have a profound effect on the other dragons like instant anticipate or 5 life gain, and Kolaghan combos hard with Dromoka(i'll go into this later). When you have multiple dragons out, it is almost always correct for the opponent to kill Kolaghan before dealing with the others as they risk death otherwise. You can very well possess another threat in your hand, especially if the game has dragged on, or just top deck one. Haven of the Spirit Dragon means your opponent is screwed unless he/she can exile your threats. Its not like summoning more than 1 dragon same turn leaves you exposed either, because Crucible of the Spirit Dragon allows you to make such plays AND leave mana up for counter spells. Furthermore, Dragonlord Kolaghan's other ability conveniently prevent blow outs from Ugin or Elspeth if you've already dealt with them. Yet even still, it is not necessary at all to grind through your opponent's removal.
When I said "1 turn at least", I'm implying that death can result the SAME turn Kolaghan resolve and the best part is that it bypasses ALL SPELLS your opponents can possibly play with the Dragonlord Kolaghan + Dragonlord Dromoka "Ripper Cyclotron" combo (I get to name it coz I'm the first one to realize that combo into a competitive deck). Dromoka is essentially an un-counterable Silence on a giant stick so you're guaranteed to do ANYTHING you could possibly want no questions asked on your turn. Kolaghan is a giant, evasive version of Flame-Kin Zealot and that creature enabled kills in Legacy Dredge the same turn it combo'ed with Bridge from Below to make massive amounts of zombies. By playing Dromoka and Kolaghan together in the same turn, you get 1 free attack no question asked. Do not underestimate this free attack, because it's not just limited to just those 2 attacking.. Any other threat you play can jump in on the action and its trivial to dump your hand of dragons with charged up Crucible of the Spirit Dragons mid-late game; Dromoka and Kolaghan are both conveniently dragons. Admittedly it's slow, but selling point to this combo is not its speed BUT the RESILIENCY. It is by far the most resilient combo I've ever played. You can play against a deck with 10 Force of Wills, 10 Swords to Plowshares, and 10 Rout, and just ignore it all... with creatures! Not even instant speed miracle'd Terminus prevents this attack.
An eloquently vivid analogy of this all would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P_QTnyvG7k. Pretend the noob ape is a skeptical U/B control player and the weapons in his hands removal + counter spells. Each time Phinks winds up his arm is like each time this deck charges up Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. Don't underestimate the free attack.
Currently main deck wise, 16 is the magic number. It's a death sentence if you're life is 16 or below and you're playing the waiting game against this deck. 16 represents the total attack power of Dromoka, Kologhan, and Ojutai, damage that is GUARANTEED. I'm pretty sure along the way you can drop you're opponent's life total below this threshold and if not it's pretty trivial to get in another attack on your next turn. This deck runs multiple of Kolaghans and Dromokas with Haven of the Spirit Dragon besides to resurrect them. It is impossible to be naturally milled by an opposing control deck, 0 excuses. You can fall behind in CA or let your opponent stock up in as much removal and counter spells they could possibly want, and you'll still win as long as they're not actually killing you. So do not take any unnecessary risks and prioritize your survival above all else. You have supreme inevitability in this standard format I believe. Your game plan can't be disrupted and this deck operates under a control shell, so it shouldn't be difficult for this deck to dismantle any of other wonky, vulnerable combos they present.
So there, that's what Dragonlord Kolaghan provides the deck, inevitability. I chose to roll with only 8 dragons, because I do not want my hand to be overburdened with clunky bombs. I tried out all the dragons Mike Flore toyed with and found Dragonlord Atarka, Dragonlord Silumgar, and Icefall Regent to be all very situational. The early game plan is to just kill any threat until you can safely cast your own threats and by then usually the board's empty because the opponent ran out gas or the opponent's just holding onto their most valuable threats until you tap out. So it's hard to generate any extra value of out them unless you intentionally let your opponent keep some of their threats just to generate some value out of them. Additionally, Icefall Regent dies to every single removal spell, Dragonlord Silumgar is asking for a huge blow out, and Atarka is prohibitively expensive to serve essentially as a removal on a stick. Also tried out Silumgar, Drifting Death and found him to be extremely lack luster.
I did plan on writing more, but it's taking too much time and nobody appreciates my work.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29452-Deck-Abzan-Midrange-w-Bitterblossom&s=861f1c9458a56004d1e730a624998fd2 was my previous work.
My curiosity ran out and there's no reward in it for me whatsoever to fine tune the deck. I'm just posting for the credit.
I couldn't quite get it to the point where I was comfortable with it and I still have some reservations with your list, but DTT is much much better in this shell and generally it just feels a lot less clunky except when you run into mana issues which does happen with 6 colorless lands. Still, I think it's an upgrade and very very very close to being astonishingly good.
EDIT: Totally agree on Dragonlord Silumgar. When it's good, it's awesome, but you have so much game already against the kind of decks it's good against (read - devotion) that I just don't think you need it at all. Atarka is one that I simply never felt was any good, if you're casting it there's usually nothing to kill as when you make it to seven mana most of the time they have no board and basically no hand.
4 Dismal Backwater
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
3 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon
2 Island
2 Crux of Fate
4 Silumgar's Scorn
3 Dissolve
1 Ultimate Price
3 Foul-Tongue Invocation
2 Anticipate
2 Thoughtseize
3 Hero's Downfall
3 Dragonlord Ojutai
1 Dragonlord's Prerogative
3 Dragonlord Dromoka
2 Dragonlord Kolaghan
3 Dig Through Time
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Thoughtseize
4 Drown in Sorrow
1 Dragonlord's Prerogative
3 Ultimate Price
1 Foul-Tongue Invocation
1 Negate
1 Utter End
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Perilous Vault
I was mistaken, there was one corner left apparently I wanted to explore before ceasing this project. Just as the above poster pointed out, I found Dragonlord Atarka to be very underwhelming against light creature build, particularly the blue control mirror hence why I moved away from that dragonlord MD. However, upon further reflection, the body itself is HUGE and maybe even in a empty field a 8/8 trampler itself might be worth it.. if it had haste. So pretty much all last night I was toying around with this build to check whether this premise had any merit. I cut a Crux of Fate, because the MUs where I want Crux the most is also where Atarka mostly shines in.
It seems 14 damage straight to the dome is nothing to scoff at, so yes Dragonlord Kolaghan definitely provides enough support for Atarka to piggyback on in the MUs where she's a dud. I picked up a victory against B/U control as a direct result this huge damage spike where I was otherwise losing because I fell so far behind in CA and 2 Dromokas were already in the bin. But that only occurred, because my opponent completely tapped out just to bring me down to 9 life with his Ugin before losing it to a Hero's Downfall. Then I top decked a Dragonlord Kolaghan and won 2 turns later. This interaction was only successful as a result of my opponent likely being unfamiliar with my deck. When you add in Dromoka, that's 19 guaranteed damage, so there's something to say about that.
Other data of note; it seems 8 is the optimal number of dragons to run as you always want 1 in hand and to draw into multiples when the game gets dragged out. Too often with 9 dragons my hand gets clogged with them in the early game when I just want to draw spells, which is a bummer since I don't think a singleton Atarka is that bad. I don't want to cut a Kologhan though, because I'm finding this dragon to be crucial in the grindy MUs and in particular the blue control mirror. Kologhan seems to be the only threat late game that can brutally punish a blue control deck for tapping out. None of the other threats seem to cut it when they still have cards in their hand. Ashiok and Ojutai only work in the early stage of the game and that ploy is only successful if you caught your opponent with their pants down. I also don't want to have to hold in reservation a Haven of the Spirit Dragon just to bring back a Kologhan so I can preserve the combo kill end game. On the other hand, I nearly always sideboard out Kologhan against the aggro decks, because the game will never reach the stage where she shines and there doesn't exist the need to deliver huge spikes of damage. I might keep 1 if I suspect a planeswalker transition plan.
On another note, the dubious nature of the mana base reared its ugly head this time around. Several times I've had to mull away hands containing only Haven of The Spirit Dragon and Crucible of The Spirit Dragon as the land base. I lost a game, because I didn't have a 2nd blue source when I made my 6th land drop. Who would figure a deck with 18 blue sources would have difficulty retrieving 2 blue sources? There's more blue sources in this deck than the total land count of some legacy decks. I don't know if this was a long string of bad luck or I have to realign my own assessment of mana bases, but gathering 2 blues is paramount of with all double UU spells this deck is packing. So I believe Cave of Koilos cutting for Opulant Palace may be appropriate despite how vexing it is the scenario of drawing nothing but tapped lands.
Maybe 6 colorless sources is greedy, but I exchanging Bile Blight for Dromoka against hyper aggro is a more than acceptable trade off. So is having access to Dromoka and Kolaghan vs being able to cast all your blue spells in the blue control mirror. Late game, you can just bypass the counter and removal war altogether. I wonder though if its possible to cut 1 or 2 of those colorless lands and still be able to consistently cast Dromoka and Kologhan. In regards to color requirement, esper already meets the requirement halfway.
I'm also trying out only 2 haven and 4 crucible at the moment because ultimately haven has a little less utility when you have so MANY dragons. You frequently can just let one die and cast another. Crucible also gives you at least a slim percentage against red as you can use it to cast a turn 4 Ojutai or Dromoka if you have a draw that doesn't do much else.
I think going to 2 Crux is probably right, as they definitely clog your hand in a lot of matchups, but my first inclination would be to try either the 4th dissolve, 4th FTI main deck, or a single situational 2cc counter in the main (probably nullify?).
I love the second Urborg out of the side when you bring in Drown. Most of my losses are to Atarka Red just because you need to hit mana in sequence to have much of a chance and trying to play 6 colorless lands bites you in the ass at times when you're trying to get both UU and BB available by turn 3.
Overall I think I'm something like 7-1 against Mardu, very close to that good against Abzan, and probably under 40% against Mono Red. Frustrating, but I hope with some tweaks to the mana that can be improved.
Also, this is not necessarily a great reason to play it but two or three times now I've had an opponent essentially kill themselves by casting a spell that costs them 10 life with Kolaghan, which is pretty sweet.
I only played Dragonlord Atarka as an experiment to see whether Dragonlord Kolaghan can carry that fat whore of a dragon in the MUs where she's mostly a dud, not because I believed it was a definite improvement. But ya, I came to the conclusion 8 dragons is where I would I want to be at. I was debating whether I wanted to replace the MD Atarka with either a removal spell or counter, but I couldn't decide in time to participate in this event..
http://www.magic-league.com/deck/87058/khans_standard_t2.html#5c
Took it down in spite of being half-awake and making a ton of play mistakes left and right towards the end.
Anyways tyvm for appreciating my creation, I'm probably better at brewing than at playing and as a result I probably misrepresent my ideas terribly.
As for the latest idea I have, I stumbled across Atarka, World Render yesterday and was immediately excited at the prospect of instant KO with Dragonlord Kolaghan. Gaining 10 life off of Dragonlord Dromoka or double anticipate with Dragonlord Ojutai were the next things to come to mind. After a minute of careful consideration though, those wonderful possibilities only occur in conjunction WITH the other dragons and the lordless Atarka is without doubt pathetic on its own. Furthermore, said possibilities all appear to be very winmore.
The only interaction that seemed useful was the instant KO. Thing is the only scenario I can imagine where this can be applied are the blue control mirrors to make them fear tapping out against you and guaranteeing your Ripper Cyclotron attack is lethal. However that's very conditional and outside of that, Atarka is just a expensive beatstick. It's not necessary for your Ripper Cyclotron to be lethal as you aren't limited to performing it once and you probably don't even need to perform it again to win. Furthermore, wouldn't it be just better to SB Dragonlord Perogative instead for this MU? And finally, do I really want to SB a card specifically for a MU I'm already very favored against? I may be looking at it the wrong way so that's why I'm putting it out there.
Getting victories off of Kolaghan's punishment ability is good reason in terms of satisfaction, because an ensuing rage quit is extremely high. Based on my experience, the pattern that emerged from my matches against Atarka Red is that you're favored if you're on the play and they're favored if not. I only played like 5-6 set of games in total though so the results can be skewed.
Well, even though I think the deck's awesome, I'm done refurbishing the deck. There's no tangible rewards in doing so because I'm under house arrest. =(
GL to you though!
The neat thing about living lore's last ability is that it triggers upon combat damage, so you could simply be using it as a big blocker against aggro, have it kill one of their smaller creatures in combat and then sac it to increase your card advantage.
Honestly I have a hard time imagining a situation in which Trespass would be preferable to just having another dragon. If you can afford to cast Dromoka and you have that many cards in the GY you can probably cast 2 dragons instead which is almost certainly preferable.
let me know what you think.
4 Satyr Wayfinder
3 Deathmist Raptor
4 Den Protector
2 Hidden Dragonslayer
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Soulflayer
4 Chromanticore
2 Silumgar, the Drifting Death
1 Dragonlord Kolaghan
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
2 Dragonlord Ojutai
Spells 6
3 Commune with the Gods
1 Foul-Tongue Invocation
2 Murderous Cut
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Mana Confluence
3 Sandsteppe Citadel
3 Opulent Palace
1 Frontier Bivouac
3 Llanowar Wastes
3 Windswept Heath
3 Forrest
1 Plains
2 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
2 Dragonlord Silumgar
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
2 Sagu Mauler
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
1 Xenagos, God of Revels
2 Drown in Sorrow
1 Murderous Cut
2 Foul-Tongue Invocation
2 Crux of Fate
1 Aetherspouts