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Phantom
11-12-2007, 09:33 PM
(This post is a collaborative effort between myself and Tacosnape)


"Dragon Stompy"

I. History and Overview

Dragon Stompy was one of the many Mono Colored Aggro lists born out of Faerie Stompy's success as developed by the godfather (some call him Eldariel). These decks generally use a manabase of City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb, and Chrome Mox to power out Chalice of the Void, large creatures, and equipment to go with them. Tacosnape and I began working on versions of these decks in every color, began talking and found the red list the most promising.

Dragon Stompy was originally a deck that used sweepers and disruption to compete with tier one decks like Goblins, Thresh, and Solidarity. With the shift toward more Control, Aggro Control, and fast combo, Dragon Stompy dropped the sweepers, or at least moved them to the sideboard, and added some blood moon effects to take advantage of the weak manabases sprouting up as a result of Goblins decline.


II. Lists
Here's a list that Parcher just placed with:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City Of Traitors
10 Snow-Covered Mountain

4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Gathan Raiders
3 Sulfur Elemental
2 Rakdos Pit-Dragon

4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Seething Song

2 Demonfire

Sideboard

4 Pyrokenisis
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Blood Moon
2 Icefall
1 Trinisphere
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Rakdos Pit-Dragon

and check out his report here (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7560)



Taco's new list:

10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Chrome Mox
4 Seething Song

4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
3 Arc-Slogger
2 Razormane Masticore

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Blood Moon
2 Trinisphere

SB:
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Pyroclasm
4 Pithing Needle
2 Powder Keg
1 Trinisphere


And my personal take:
10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Chrome Mox
4 Seething Song

4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
2 Sulfur Elemental
3 Arc-Slogger
1 Razormane Masticore

4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Blood Moon
2 Trinisphere

Sideboard:
4 Crypt
3 Needle
2 Powder Keg
2 Demonfire
2 Trinisphere
2 Blood Moon


III. Card Choices and Options

1) The mana base - Pretty standard for this type of deck. Seething Song gives us even more of a boost allowing us to drop 5cc bombs early or activating Pit Dragon or Arc Slogger to obscene extents. Simian Spirit Guide is another booster that fills a ton of rolls including accel, equippable beater, hellbent enabler, and mox pitcher.

2) Chalice of the Void - The basis of the stompy decks really needs no explanation. Great against most every archetype, the card is rarely boarded out.

3) Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon - I'll give this one to Taco "7 Blood Moons, however, is format-eating. Seriously. It's as if your deck goes 'DECK HUNGRY! Om nom nom Format.'" There might be a time when so many Blood Moon effects aren't needed, but right now they are gold.

4) Gathan Raiders and Rakdos Pit Dragon - The best creatures in the deck. They are both very good, and hellbent makes them unfair.

5) Razorcore and Arc-Slogger - The 5cc beats. Both can be powered out early. Both can be huge swings. Razormane might get cut soon though. The card was at its best in the deck the day we added it, but changes in the deck (going hellbent) and changes in the meta (Goblins on the decline) have hurt its usefulness slightly. One possible replacement is Tephraderm which is being tested.

6) Sulfur Elemental - Taco and I seem to disagree slightly with the exact usefulness of this guy. We both agree that he is not as good as Raiders or Magus, but I find him to be worth of inclusion while he does not.

7) Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice - Taco and I both agree that Jitte is better than sword here, but some of the lists that have places have run up to three swords, so I'll leave it at that.

8) Trinisphere - That amount of Blood Moons and Trinis you want maindeck is sort of a meta call, but you will want 4 between the main and side to combat Storm Combo.

9) Crypt - Pretty much a must in the board as we have no control over the yard otherwise.

10) Pithing Needle - Very useful. Very versatile. Highly recommended against Control, Survival, Belcher, and other decks.

11) Powder Keg - Also a very versatile answer to a myriad of threats including ETW tokens and Needles naming Jittes.

12) Demonfire - A relatively new idea for removal (which it is sadly mediocre) and a finisher (much better). Great against control, especially slow blue control.

13) Smash, Icefall, Shattering Spree, etc - Other board options against artifacts.

14) Flametongue Kavu - Sigh. I can't believe one of the best creatures in the game isn't viable anymore (thanks mostly to Tarmogoyf). Keep him in mind though if the meta shifts or if your meta is filled with aggro.

15) Rolling Earthquake and Pyroclasm - Once the basis for the deck these are at best sideboard cards. Clasm is still very playable depending on the meta while Rolling Earthquake is probably not worth it anymore.

16) Covetous Dragon - Please don't suggest this guy. He's just awful. Turning Krosan Grips into 2-for-1's and Ancient Grudges into 3-for-1's isn't what this deck wants.

17) Pyrokenisis - Solid removal option, usually for the board that also helps hellbent and can stall ETW swarms.

18) Empty the Warrens - A very similar deck runs ETW, but I never really understood it. I've never tested it, but sorcery speed 1/1 tokens only really seem useful if I can guarantee myself some piece of equipment, which this deck cannot.

19) Defense Grid - Currently testing this in the board. Seems promising against blue decks so we can land our bombs.


IV. Matchups and Tips


vs. Thresh

Moon and Chalice are amazing. Everything else is good. Board out the Jittes for the rest of your Blood Moons and your choice of Crypts or Powder Kegs. Remember that SSG>Daze.

vs. Landstill

Tough. Moons are huge. Chalices, not so much (dropping one at 2 to stop Standstill can be nice) and Trinis are even worse. Board in all the Blood Moons, Needles and Demonfire if you are running it. Be extra wary of Deed.

Belcher

Pretty solid with our disruption and clock. Early Belchers hurt, but we have a lot of disruption and answerers for Belcher and ETW in the board. Board out Equipment and whatever creatures you want (I prefer the five cc ones) for Needles, Trinis and Kegs/Clasm/Pryokenisis.


TES

Even better than Belcher since they are made to fight through counter disruption, not board based, and aren't as lightning fast. Same boarding as Belcher except leave the needles but think about bringing in the Moons, which can be surprisingly relevant.

Enchantress

Bad times. If you go first, you have to mulligan very aggressively for Chalice, then drop it at 1, which can very often leave your opponent in a mana hurt for a few turns. You just then have to take these few turns to clobber your opponent in the face. The few games Dragon Stompy win here are usually on the backs of Chalice and Pit Dragon, or Pyroclasm eating Enchantress.

Goyf Sligh

Very Winnable. Chalice @1 and 2 are solid plays, and an active Jitte is huge trouble for them. Krosan Grip WILL be coming in against you so be careful to use your Jitte counters ASAP and don't count on your Chalices to be there forever. Not sure exactly what to board in.

vs. Survival

Tough if they get a Survival going so lay a Chalice @2 ASAP. Boarding depends heavily on the build. Usually board out a couple Jittes and the Trinispheres for Needle, then Crypt and Clasm mostly based on what you saw in the game one. Feel free to board out all 7 moon guys and leave in Jitte/Trinisphere if they are running a particularly solid manabase.

Loam

Tough to give one strategy to fight all the Loam variants, but Blood Moon is where its at. Also, Chalice @2, Crypt, and Needle are great.

Ichorid

Crypts, Powder Keg, and Pyroclasm are must-boards in this matchup to deal with any zombie tokens or tiny beaters like Imp/Narcomoeba they get out. Jitte comes out here, and Trinisphere if you're fixing to be (someone's from the south -Phantom) on the draw, Blood Moon if you're fixing to be on the play. If you sideboard Flametongue Kavu, for the love of god
bring him in, because you can play him and have him shoot himself or another creature you control to wreck Bridges.

This matchup is one of the most fun to play in Legacy, because it's pretty close to even after Ichorid has the edge game one. If you ever get Chalice in the opening hand, resist the temptation to shut down Lion's Eye Diamond and do it for 1. This
will shut off the more dangerous Breakthrough, as well as Therapy and the like.

Cephalid Breakfast

Very little testing here, but thoughts so far are the following combos win:

A. Any Moon effect + Needle on Vial is huge.
B. Chalice for 2 + Tormod's Crypt is huge (No Abeyance!)
C. Using your damage to keep any tiny critters off the board is huge.

Builds with Tarmogoyf backup plans are more difficult to beat, so if they're running those, you have to board in Keg as well. Board out Razormane and Jitte in this matchup, and possibly some Raiders/Dragons beyond that (Never figured out which is better) just to maximize the disruption we pack.

None of the disruption pieces are strong enough to hold off Cephalid Breakfast on their own, but the fact that the deck runs like 25+ things that cause them minor annoyances is often sufficient to win.

Goblins

You will still see it so here goes. Not as good as it once was you still have a lot of threats. A quick clock. Chalice @1. Jitte. Razorcore. Needles and sweepers or Kenisis in the board. The green splash is actually the worst since Tin Street and Krosan Grip are a bitch. I will actually often lay a Chalice @2 after I have a Jitte down to stop TSH, which will stop it even if they have Vial out.

The new black splash is less of a concern since Discard and yard have are of little concern to us.


V. Food for Thought

Some lingering questions:

- What is the correct split between creatures/equipment/disruption/accel?

- How many 5cc beaters? Which ones are superior? Is Razormanes time up?

- For an unknown metagame, what is the optimum number of Trinis and Blood Moons mainboard?

- Is Sword of Fire and Ice as good or bad as advertised here? 2, 3, or 4 Jitte?

- Does ETW have a place here? Could it be useful in a specific meta? If so, which?

- Who will be the first person to get yelled at for suggesting Covetous Dragon?

- Is Tephraderm as amazing as he looks here?

- Does Defense Grid deserve a spot in the board? If so, in leiu of what?

- Demonfire. Hot or not? Or board only?

- Does the deck need any draw or filtering? Is there any out there that the deck could run?


Thanks for reading , and for all those who have helped with development in one way or another, or have simply piloted the deck.

Silverdragon
11-13-2007, 12:14 AM
So far Winter Orb > Defense Grid against Control but I still need more testing.
The games against Cephalid Breakfast I played so far were lost mostly when the Breakfast player got Vial preboard and went turn 3 combo through Blood Moon and Trinisphere (paying 3 for DReturn) or gumming up the ground with various en-Kor and Goyfs while swinging with Moebas. I'd say if you board out creatures against Breakfast keep the Pit Dragons because they can get flying to stop Narcomoebas. (However this comes from limited testing (10 games) so take it with a grain of salt)
Survival is an interesting matchup. I had games where I got first turn Blood Moon and Survival did nothing until turn 4. On the other hand there were also games where I got owned by reccuring Shriekmaw as soon as turn 3. Definitely a swingy matchup.
One last note: Masticore is out and will stay out. He just does not do enough for me any time I draw him. Now the continuous discard comes from Mindless Automatons which perform better every time I draw them.

Whit3 Ghost
11-13-2007, 12:22 AM
Why not just run Quake effects over Demonfires? It provides the same amount of reach but also gives you answeres to ETW and a maindeck sweeper against Goblins.

Phantom
11-13-2007, 12:29 AM
Why not just run Quake effects over Demonfires? It provides the same amount of reach but also gives you answeres to ETW and a maindeck sweeper against Goblins.

Quakes are counterable. Quakes hurt us, especially off tombs. Quakes kill our guys if we go after a Goyf. Lastly, quakes are counterable. We are often unfavored vs control (especially if they can play around Moon or keep it off the board) but we will get in some damage. Demonfire is all about finishing off those last few points, while control sits there with a hand full of useless answer. In my limited testing, my favorite play is breaking Standstill with it while on hellbent.

Demonfire isn't a sure thing yet, but quakes are definitely out for now (trust me when I say I've tested them here). This meta just sucks for them.

@Silverdragon: I can't really argue with what you've said in my limited testing. My only concern is how little Winter Orb does against Thresh, what with their counters ranging from 0 to a whopping 1 mana. Defense Grid followed by either a Moon or a Chalice is huge. As for Mindless Automaton, dying to burn I guess isn't too scary with his draw ability. Dying to Krosan Grip is scary as shit though. I think I'd go with Tephraderm first, since he doesn't require an entire hand to take down a Goyf. Thanks for the input though, and I'll see if I can find some time to test.

Jak
11-13-2007, 12:33 AM
Why not just run Quake effects over Demonfires? It provides the same amount of reach but also gives you answeres to ETW and a maindeck sweeper against Goblins.

Kills your creatures if you are trying to get rid of goyf. As I said earlier, I hated Demonfire as removal. I cut it for Blood Moons main. I did like it as a finisher and that is the only reason that someone should run it.

I don't think the Breakfast MU should be to hard. Siding in Crypt and Pyroclasm would be good. Chalice at 1 hurts them a ton, shutting them off of their tutors and draw. Then, hopefully back that up with a fast clock.

Tao
11-13-2007, 01:35 AM
- Against Ichorid, play 4 Trinisphere after boarding, even if on the draw.
They will never have 3 lands out so they will be reduced to one spell for the rest of the game and that only if they have the LED. Sure, this can be enough to still win, but it makes it harder for them. Especially if they didn't have a turn 1 Breakthrough or the nuts LED/Analysis start but in these cases Chalice and Moon would also suck. So if they just make Putrid Imp, LED go Trinisphere is your best plan, especially when backed up by Crypt (remember to play the Crypt first :p).
It is the best disruption against them after Crypt because it makes Dread Return and Deep Analysis much harder to cast. It does everything that Chalice and Blood Moon does, it also shuts off their lands (as they will in 80% of the game not have 3 of them), Therapy and Breakthrough but it also makes Ancient Grudge Flashback nearly impossible.

- For the second Fattie slot: Chandra Nalaar seems decent. He takes down at least one Goyf and will usually still be able to ping the opponent the next round and recharge. Against control decks he pings every round, is immune to Swords, Pernicious Deeds and Wrath Effects and they will be forced to attack you quite fast if they don't want to get hit by ability 3.

lukatron2
11-13-2007, 01:39 AM
This deck looks really solid in the current meta and also really fun to play!...@ Taco and Phantom- How come you guys don't run 1-2 Demonfire in the MB? Like you said, it seems really solid as a finisher and mediocre as removal. It just seems like one of those cards that can pull you out of a tight spot and steal games late-game. Anyhow, its pretty sweet that this deck placed in a relatively big tournament. Good work guys! :D

Zork
11-13-2007, 01:58 AM
As for the number of 5cc beats, I played 6 at the same tournment Parcher did. The conclusion we both came to is that the deck really, really wants to be able to play all of the cards in its hand all the time, and playing more than just the set of slogs (I tested Covetous, Tahngarth, and other crap) did clog my hand in a couple of matches. You don't always have the chalice at one for swords and the trini against FoW, and if the big guy gets countered/swordsed and you are stuck at three/four mana, a big guy is worse than sulfur elemental.

I'm not sold on Demonfire, either, since it never clinched a game for Parcher and I never wished that I had had it in any of my matches, but the next time I do landstill testing I'll try a couple.

Also as a note to anyone who thinks Chandra might have a place: she doesn't. I thought it might be cool, but it was just bad.

Tao
11-13-2007, 02:16 AM
Good, Chandra was only an idea, because Tephraderm sounds so bad. Then I'd just go with 3 or 4 Slogger and zero other 5-Mana creatures.

Tacosnape
11-13-2007, 04:03 AM
Good, Chandra was only an idea, because Tephraderm sounds so bad. Then I'd just go with 3 or 4 Slogger and zero other 5-Mana creatures.

Chandra Nalaar is actually a pretty neat idea, but I'd consider her in the slot of Demonfire instead of the slot of Tephraderm/RazorCore/whatever else. Chandra functions more like a removal spell than anything else, and dropping out a Chandra on turn one or two could be absolutely retarded. It shouldn't take up a creature slot due to the immense dissynergy with equipment. I do really like the fact that Chandra somewhat negates the top drawback of Planeswalkers (dying to creature swings) by being able to annihilate whatever would be swinging at her.

If you're hurting for something to take up that slot, Juggernaut's not a terrible fallback idea either, though he doesn't imprint on a Mox. Also worth investigating is Balduvian/Pillaging Horde, due to the synergy with Hellbent (Though Random discard is a heavier drawback, and double red is tough.)

EDIT: Actually, Chandra could take up both slots in a pinch. There's no reason you can't run 3-4 Chandras given that you can always spend more Loyalty than necessary shooting something, and you can imprint them on moxes / flip Gathan Raiders with them. I think I may go test this.


This deck looks really solid in the current meta and also really fun to play!...@ Taco and Phantom- How come you guys don't run 1-2 Demonfire in the MB? Like you said, it seems really solid as a finisher and mediocre as removal.

Demonfire only helps you against blue control with a tendency to stabilize late. Therefore in order to maximize its potential as a finisher, something has to stabilize against you while generally at 6 or less. Chances are they'll either stabilize earlier or die, and even if this is -not- the case, chances are you simply won't draw the Demonfire. Chandra Nalaar might be a lot better option, as it alone could be sufficient to kill some control decks, as while it's essentially an 11-turn clock, it's incredibly hard to remove.

Also, Demonfire is an awful removal spell. Not a mediocre one.


So far Winter Orb > Defense Grid against Control but I still need more testing.

I heavily disagree with this. Orb hurts you as much as it hurts them in this deck. The curve isn't similar enough to Faerie Stompy to make this worthwhile. Defense Grid will allow you to resolve spells that win games, such as Blood Moon, with minimal interference. Grid is also a monster against Threshold, as it will let you drop your threats without fear of Force and Daze, and if they can't counter your stuff, you generally win threat wars, even with their Tarmogoyfs. Grid is also decent against Cephalid Breakfast, allowing you to drop out your vast array of disruption pieces without fear of Force of Will.


Survival is an interesting matchup. I had games where I got first turn Blood Moon and Survival did nothing until turn 4. On the other hand there were also games where I got owned by reccuring Shriekmaw as soon as turn 3. Definitely a swingy matchup.

Agreed. Survival is really bad if their manabase is good, though winning the die roll and getting Chalices or Trinispheres gives you chances. Pithing Needle also owns face here. Survival players have a tendency to say things like "Pithing Needle doesn't hurt us," but this is a complete crock, and Pithing Needle always makes them have more trouble than Not Pithing Needle.


One last note: Masticore is out and will stay out. He just does not do enough for me any time I draw him. Now the continuous discard comes from Mindless Automatons which perform better every time I draw them.

Mindless Automaton seems way too underwhelming for a guy who doesn't imprint on a Chrome Mox and takes multiple cards to get rolling. I think I'd rather just run Juggernaut, as I don't have a problem getting Hellbent as long as I can empty my hand, and I'd rather have the sheer aggression than the ability to draw a card if it dies.


and Trinisphere if you're fixing to be (someone's from the south -Phantom) on the draw,

...Yeah, yeah, shut up. At least I dominate all the other inbred hayseed chewers in the region at Legacy.

largebrandon
11-13-2007, 10:26 AM
I like this deck a lot! Kinda reminds me of 5/3. I played Rakdos Pit Dragon in standard a year or so ago with seething song, and it rocked!! It seems like it would be even awesomer in legacy. I'm thinking that you want to keep your 5cc Creatures/walkers at a minimum. More often than not, you will have it in hand with only 4 potential mana in play.

Tacosnape
11-14-2007, 07:21 PM
Keldon Halberdiers is actually a bizarre and interesting choice for the mystery slot here. Granted, that toughness 1 thing kind of blows, but 4 power with First Strike is nothing to sneeze at, and the suspend gives you a play off :r: which can be incredibly useful on a subpar starting hand.

His suspend delay might be one turn too slow to be playable, though.

largebrandon
11-14-2007, 08:05 PM
That is an interesting idea. . .

However, as you said, the one toughness (Hello fanatic) sucks and so does the high suspend. I'm liking the suspend idea, though. What about Greater Gargadon. A 9/7 isn't anything to pass by quickly. Also, he costs only R.

Zork
11-14-2007, 08:37 PM
I'm gonna say no to both of them. While they both have a very nice initial cost, it is important to realize what makes the best decks the best: consistancy. This deck already has problems with dead draws (Mox, Song, extra jitte, etc.), and topdecking something that you either can't play or that will become relevant in more than three turns is bad, straight up.

This is the same reason that the deck should not play more than four 5cc and only three or four 4cc threats. Otherwise, you can't guarantee that they will be castable, which lowers the consistancy of the deck. If you don't agree with me, just look at Parcher's list: four slogs, and two dragons. We talked about the deck, and he agreed that there should be at least one more dragon MD. The reason for his curve? Consistancy.

Halberdiers, Gargadon, and Chandra all lower consistancy.

Tacosnape
11-15-2007, 12:46 AM
Halberdiers, Gargadon, and Chandra all lower consistancy.

First of all, while I do agree Keldon Halberdiers probably isn't good enough to play, you can't possibly argue that it lowers consistency given that it's easier to cast something that costs :4::r: in this deck than it is to cast something that costs :2::r::r:, and Keldon Halberdiers suspends for a single red mana. I do think Chandra will likely be held out of the deck due to casting difficulties, and Gargadon's just a bad idea if you aren't running Empty the Warrens.

Secondly, if you want consistency, play Threshold. Chalice Aggro decks are the least consistent decks in the format. While consistency -is- important, there's a line you have to draw between consistency and power, which is what the decks thrive on. The deck needs another monster attacker. Razormane's got the slot right now, but he could be better given how important Hellbent is (And sadly I've even tried splashing black for Demon's Jester.) Sadly, Sulfur Elemental, Juggernaut and Flametongue Kavu are looking better all the time.

Lego
11-15-2007, 01:54 AM
Sulfur Elemental

Soooooo random. I had my ass handed to me by this guy when I was playing Cephalid Breakfast last weekend. If you expect any Breakfast, he makes it pretty difficult to win (not as bad as something like Plague, but not easy.)

Tacosnape
11-15-2007, 02:44 AM
Soooooo random. I had my ass handed to me by this guy when I was playing Cephalid Breakfast last weekend. If you expect any Breakfast, he makes it pretty difficult to win (not as bad as something like Plague, but not easy.)

That's a very interesting point I hadn't actually thought of, as I'd already quit playing Sulfur Elemental before I started testing against Cephalid Breakfast. He doesn't stop Shaman En-Kor (Cephalid still runs him as a 1-of, don't they?), but he's havoc on Nomads.

I still don't like the fact that he's completely undersized for the deck, though. The only reason I play Magus of the Shrimp is because he singlehandedly wins games, whereas Sulfur Elemental only does some neat tricks.

largebrandon
11-15-2007, 09:33 AM
I still don't like the fact that he's completely undersized for the deck, though. The only reason I play Magus of the Shrimp is because he singlehandedly wins games, whereas Sulfur Elemental only does some neat tricks.

He maybe undersized, but he is uncounterable, has flash (surprise blocker), and can kill many white things. That AND a 3 power for three mana isn't too shabby.

Illissius
11-15-2007, 10:56 AM
So I searched with Datatog for creatures with a cost of 2R, 3R, or 4R, and the other remotely interesting options I noticed:

Lavaborn Muse
Lightning Elemental
Skizzik
Ancient Hydra
Covetous Dragon (I went there)

Zork
11-15-2007, 12:48 PM
First of all, while I do agree Keldon Halberdiers probably isn't good enough to play, you can't possibly argue that it lowers consistency given that it's easier to cast something that costs :4::r: in this deck than it is to cast something that costs :2::r::r:, and Keldon Halberdiers suspends for a single red mana. I do think Chandra will likely be held out of the deck due to casting difficulties, and Gargadon's just a bad idea if you aren't running Empty the Warrens.

Secondly, if you want consistency, play Threshold. Chalice Aggro decks are the least consistent decks in the format. While consistency -is- important, there's a line you have to draw between consistency and power, which is what the decks thrive on. The deck needs another monster attacker. Razormane's got the slot right now, but he could be better given how important Hellbent is (And sadly I've even tried splashing black for Demon's Jester.) Sadly, Sulfur Elemental, Juggernaut and Flametongue Kavu are looking better all the time.

I understand that Halberdier suspends for R. That's great on turn 1, provided you don't want to play disruption, but my point was that topdecking him on turn 4 is bad. Either you are able to play him (which means he should probably be a better threat), or you have to suspend him, which makes him slow. I would honestly rather have something I know I will be able to play at my leisure in any situation.

How is 4R harder than 2RR? You have 8 sources of double colorless plus 4 seething song (and song to halberd just seems weak), and then 10 red lands, 4 mox, 4 spirit guide, and again 4 song that let you get double red. Thats 12 vs. 22, or discounting song its 8 vs. 18.

As for consistency, chalice aggro decks may be the least consistent in the format, but if you could make them more consistent, how would that be bad? It is possible to take the deck, minimize bad draws and maximize playable draws. Yes, the deck will crap out on you sometimes like when I drew 4 mountains, 4 song, and 3 mox in a row, but if I had the reverse (low land instead of low threats), I would want a threat base with the best chances of being playable.

For reference, this is my threat base currently:

4 Slogger
4 Magus
4 SSG
4 Pit-Dragon
3 Gathan Raiders
3 Sulfur Elemental

And this may change. I'm going to try to work on the conditional probabilities of being able to play each threat/disruption on turn 1, turn 2, and turn 3. I'll let you guys know what I come up with.

Tacosnape
11-15-2007, 01:51 PM
So I searched with Datatog for creatures with a cost of 2R, 3R, or 4R, and the other remotely interesting options I noticed:

Lavaborn Muse
Lightning Elemental
Skizzik
Ancient Hydra
Covetous Dragon (I went there)

Out of all of these, the only one with a lot of potential is Covetous Dragon (Who I'm starting to like in Razormane's slot a little, strangely.) Hydra is awful (I actually tried him once, I'm ashamed to admit,) Lightning Elemental doesn't have first strike to back up his lack of toughness, and Skizzik doesn't seem much better.

Lavaborn Muse's biggest problem is that there's a complete lack of synergy between rack-like abilities and abilities that discourage/prevent opponents from playing spells, such as Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Blood Moon. Ultimately, if you're succeeding with any of those plans, Lavaborn is merely a 3/3 for :3::r:, which could be a lot better.

Covetous Dragon requires you run a playset of Great Furnace or his drawback is too strong. The bright side of this is that even the Moon effects will make Great Furnace an Artifact Land - Mountain, meaning it more or less fits perfectly in the deck. The downside is the fact that you die even more horribly to Pernicious Deed, so Pithing Needle becomes more vital than ever in the board (Beyond that, Blood Moon is your best way to combat Deed.)

technogeek5000
11-16-2007, 08:08 PM
New to DS and i was just wondering what were this decks good and badmatchups. Also is arc slogger realy worth playing in this deck. you can only use his ability a few times and 5 mana is alot.

I also dont like sulfur elemental. Is there another option to put in this guys place.

Jak
11-16-2007, 08:48 PM
Slogger is MVP. The deck can easily cast him with Seething Songs, Chrome Mox, and SSg. His ability is also awesome. You sound like you are saying that using his ability a few times is not amazing. 8 damage plus beating for 4 a turn is amazing. Play 4.

I, personally, do not play sulfur elemental. I play Razormane Masticore because it kicks ass. Losing a card a turn is bad and he is horrible when your main focus in the deck now is to reach hellbent. I have tried Tephraderm and it was pretty good. I am kind of on the fence between the 2.

The deck has a strong fish and Thresh MU from my testing. You really need to get a blood moon down and I play 7 to their 4 Forces. Play around daze with SSG and Chalice at 1 hurts their engine. Tephraderm and Razorcore are about the same in these MUs. Both can take down a Goyf. One lives, but makes you discard every turn which hurts.

Goblins was a cake walk, but moving all the mass removal out of the deck made it not so strong. It is still easy if you can get down a Slogger and some equipment or Razorcore. I play Pyroclasm in my board which helps, but you should probably play Needle because deed owns the deck hard.

Combo is good with Chalice, Trini and the Moons to slow them down. You get beat by their good turn one win hands, but if you can find a disruption piece you should be in good shape.

Control was terrible, but got a ton better with Moons. I play WOrb SB so it is even better. I just try to win fast against Landstill because once they can drop Standstill or get a full hand with lands on the table it is bad for you. Needle helps to shut off their mass removal, so it is a quality SB spot.

Anyways, here is my board, or the one I want to play, for reference.

4 Pithing Needle
2 Powder Keg
1 Trinisphere
4 Winter Orb
4 Pyroclasm

I play 3 Blood Moons main. No Tormod's Crypt because I don't have any GY reliant combos or decks in my meta. Hope this helps.

Tacosnape
11-17-2007, 03:56 AM
New to DS and i was just wondering what were this decks good and badmatchups. Also is arc slogger realy worth playing in this deck. you can only use his ability a few times and 5 mana is alot.

I also dont like sulfur elemental. Is there another option to put in this guys place.

Speaking as the original chief hater of Slogger, yes, he's worth it. But to disagree with Jak, he's not the MVP of the deck. Gathan Raiders is the MVP of the deck, with Rakdos Pit Dragon a very close second.

Slogger's a house and very very strong, but playing 4 isn't absolutely necessary as multiples aren't particularly amazing. This is very similar to Razormane, and having 1 Razormane and 1 Slogger on the board is generally better than having two of either one.

As for the options to replace Sulfur Elemental, that's the main gist of the thread's discussion thus far. Here are the options worth considering.

Tephraderm: Always useful, can swing through anything, but never amazing. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.

Flametongue Kavu: Solid in metagames full of creatures. Blows against a lot of combo and all control.

Juggernaut: An efficiently costed beater whose only drawbacks are not being red and occasionally having to swing into something 3/6 or bigger (Tarmogoyf.) Probably the best choice other than Sulfur Elemental in an equipment-heavy build and very good with Sword of Fire and Ice, as you can often go turn two Juggernaut turn three SOFI-Equip with only one red source.

Razormane Masticore: Insane power, castable off colorless, capable of swinging through literally everything in the format, and ungodly strong against Goblins, Deadguy Ale, and especially zoo-style aggro. He can win the game singlehandedly. However, if he can't win the game singlehandedly, he tends to work badly with a heavy Hellbent theme. He can -grant- Hellbent, but can't survive it since the deck cut Squee. Undiscovered Paradise maindeck is an option currently being tested to help fix this problem, but having your red vulnerable to Wasteland is probably a bad idea. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.

Covetous Dragon: 6/5 Evasive beaters have incredible potential, but the dragon is incredibly fragile. Requires Great Furnaces maindecked to consistently negate the drawback, though again, having your red vulnerable to Wasteland is probably a bad idea. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.

As all of these options are a significant drop from the powers of Gathan/Pit/Slogger/Magus/SSG, this will probably be debated for some time to come.

Jak
11-17-2007, 04:09 AM
Speaking as the original chief hater of Slogger, yes, he's worth it. But to disagree with Jak, he's not the MVP of the deck. Gathan Raiders is the MVP of the deck, with Rakdos Pit Dragon a very close second.

Slogger's a house and very very strong, but playing 4 isn't absolutely necessary as multiples aren't particularly amazing. This is very similar to Razormane, and having 1 Razormane and 1 Slogger on the board is generally better than having two of either one.


Slogger is awesome to clear a path for your dudes. That is why I may cut Razorcore, because slogger is better at doing it. Beats for 4 and kills dumb goblins, so that raiders can swing through. I think 4 is good and should stay at 4 until something better comes along at 5cc.

I really need to test other options for the 2 of in my list. I want something that is either a 3cc or 4cc and not more because it does get clunky at times. It doesn't need to be a big beater either because we have a ton of those. I guess I am off to look on findmagiccards.com.

Tao
11-17-2007, 05:47 AM
Maybe Epochrasite is what you want. It is quick, strong with Equipment and it helps against those Pernicious Deeds. It is also nice that it comes back with haste, when it has died.

Iranon
11-17-2007, 09:09 AM
One of the chief attractions of the deck is the tendency to play a potentially crippling disruption piece turn 1 or 2, and still kill a passive opponent by turn 4. Arc-Slogger does that perfectly by beating for a reasonable 4 and converting your mana into damage effectively on that last turn.
Naturally, he also crushes any weenie strategy.

Magus of the Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, Rakdos Pit Dragon, Arc-Slogger and Gathan Riders are all wonderful enough that I want 4 of them; more creatures are strictly optional and I don't believe any other measures up.

This is my reason for disenchantment (pardon the horrible pun) with equipment in this deck: 12 brutes that don't need it to rock, no fast creatures with evasion/First Strike to properly abuse it and 8 shrimps, 4 of which will often be pitched rather than played.
Throwing in a Razormane Masticore or a few Sulfur Elementals won't change this in a fundamental way.

Another exotic creature that deserves mention is Volcanic Hellion as a painful FTK on steroids, although I'm too much of a wuss to keep playing that.

Joon
11-17-2007, 12:03 PM
Has anybody thought about Balduvian Horde in the random Critter Slot? The horde's big but has no Evasion...On the otherr hand it's not killed by a Disenchant and forces you not to play 4 Artifactlands. Thoughts?

HdH_Cthulhu
11-17-2007, 12:45 PM
In a format where you could cast a 4/5 for 1G i think a 5/5 for 2RR with a drawback isnt the way to go.

What do you guys think about Reckless Wurm? Are there more ways than raiders to support that card? Or is that the danger of cool things?

Tacosnape
11-17-2007, 01:43 PM
Maybe Epochrasite is what you want. It is quick, strong with Equipment and it helps against those Pernicious Deeds. It is also nice that it comes back with haste, when it has died.

Phantom and I actually tried this way back when, but it's come and gone from lists. I personally still like him, especially in heavy control metagames, but control is the only matchup where he's any good. What makes him even worse is that against almost every control deck imaginable, you want to get a Chalice for 2 down, which is going to shut down Epochrasite.


Has anybody thought about Balduvian Horde in the random Critter Slot? The horde's big but has no Evasion...On the otherr hand it's not killed by a Disenchant and forces you not to play 4 Artifactlands. Thoughts?

Have tried it and am still trying it. What's honestly keeping him out at this point is the :r::r: in his mana cost. You'll fairly often get stuck at one red and have to pay your second red with SSG's or Seething Songs, or pitch your :r::r: guys to Gathan Raiders / Chrome Mox. The random discard can hurt you on occasion, but there's no question he's incredibly good with Hellbent and having more 5/5's is never a bad thing.


What do you guys think about Reckless Wurm? Are there more ways than raiders to support that card? Or is that the danger of cool things?

This might be danger of cool things, but sometimes cool things kick a lot of ass. The only other discard outlet you have that would be relevant with Reckless Wurm would be Razormane Masticore, and if we're running that then we have to replace something else. It's distantly possible to try an equipmentless build with Razormane -and- Reckless Wurm (which would probably have a better combo/control matchup also due to a higher threat density), but this might meet with disastrous results.

Jak
11-17-2007, 01:48 PM
We do have Gathan Raiders as a one time discard outlet, so it could be an option.

Silverdragon
11-17-2007, 02:44 PM
So I took this deck to a 32 person tournament today. We played 6 rounds (don't know whether it counts for the LMF because we were only 32 but I hope it does) and I finished 7th. We had no top8 playoffs (meaning less ID's) so a 4-2 record got me there. I played against the following:
Rd1 Burn Lost 1-2
Rd2 GBw Rock Won 2-1
Rd3 Affinity Won 2-0
Rd4 Cephalid Breakfast Lost 0-2
Rd5 TES Won 2-0
Rd6 GBWr Survival Won 2-1

I will write a more detailed report later. My list was as follows:

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
10 Mountain
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Seething Song
4 Chrome Mox
2 Trinisphere
2 Blood Moon
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Mindless Automaton

SB
3 Winter Orb
3 Pithing Needle
3 Powder Keg
2 Trinisphere
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Defense Grid

Tacosnape
11-17-2007, 02:56 PM
That's a pretty interesting list and an incredibly bizarre set of results.

I fail to see how you lose to a match as excellent as burn, which absolutely hates both Chalice and Jitte, and then manage to beat a match as bad as Survival (Though I'm guessing that since it's 4 colors, Moons owned face here.)

I'm also reeeeally curious about your Affinity report because I've only played that match once ever and I lost, though this was waaaay back in the early days of Dragon Stompy.

Congrats on the finish, though!

Nihil Credo
11-17-2007, 03:34 PM
Incidentally, I've tried the Red Madness version of DS, with 4x Reckless Wurm and Fiery Tempers along with the discard outlets (Raiders, Masticore, and a few Hordes), and later on even Seize the Day. It was pretty terrible for two reasons: first, a 4/4 or a Lightning Bolt don't pull their weigh much in todays' meta. Secondly, and more importantly, they added another level of inconsistency to the deck: in addition to the "drawing just enough acceleration" problem, you now have the "drawing just the right ratio of outlets / Madness or flashback spells" one.

Silverdragon
11-17-2007, 06:11 PM
As promised here's my report.

After seeing about 100 Landstill, Thresh and Loamdecks running around at the last tournament I decided that I wanted to run a deck with Blood Moon this time. I ordered the last couple cards I needed for Dragon Stompy at a german online card shop. Only after I confirmed my order did I realize that I forgot to add 1 Blood Moon to the list. Luckily that shop has a campain that they send 1 random rare extra with every order. So of course the random rare I get is the Blood Moon that I forgot to add to my order. Looks like a sign to me :-)

I already posted my decklist before but for the record here it is again

10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Chrome Mox
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Seething Song
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
2 Blood Moon
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Mindless Automaton
SB
3 Winter Orb
3 Pithing Needle
3 Powder Keg
2 Trinisphere
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Defense Grid

The maindeck was ok. Mindless Automaton should've been another Sulfur Elemental but due to not finding my second copy I was able to squeeze in the Automaton...
I didn't miss Razorcore at all. Sword of Fire and Ice would've been ok but I had no problems with 4 Jitte in the deck so for now the 2cc equipment stays.
The sideboard had some randomness namely only 2 Tormod's Crypt. This was again because I only had 2 Crypts at hand and didn't bother trying to find 2 more right before the tournament. In the future I'll maybe cut some combination of Grids and Orbs to fit in more Crypts. Although there were lots of Landstillvariants I didn't get paired against one so Orbs were useless that day.

Now on to the actual report.

Round 1 against Arek with Stupid Red Burn

I win the die roll but have to mulligan. Turn 1 or 2 Slogger resolves but I don't draw any more beats or disruption before Arek's powerdraw of Chain Lightning, Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Fireblast burns me to a crisp.
Game 2 I return the favor, resolving Chalice at 1 and a Magus equipped with Jitte takes it home.
Game 3 my deck decides to hate me. I have a promising start with turn 1 Chalice at 1, turn 2 Chalice at 2 but after that I can't find a single red manasource and die to some Fireblasts, Rift Bolts and a Barbarian Ring with multiple Seething Songs, Sloggers and Magi in my hand. Iirc I even managed to bring him down to 2 life thanks to a Gathan Raiders but even if he had pointed a Blast at the Raiders to stay alive he'd have won as the next few draws were more uncastable red cards. I guess you can't always win.

Round 2 against Timo with Gbw Rock

I win the die roll again and I start with a Magus of the Moon who alone beats Timo to death before he can find his first relevant basic land.
Game 2 I mulligan to 5 and have a mediocre start with some critters that Timo handles with Swords and Vindicate. I eventually resolve a Magus again and again my opponent does not have a removal ready and is screwed badly by it. However this time a lonely basic Forest allows him to play some River Boas (before the tournament started he complained about having to play them instead of more Spectral Lynx XD) and they slowly race my Magus. Eventually I have to chumpblock and I lose shortly after.
Game 3 is another game dominated by Magus. This time I start out again with some critters that get handled by Swords and Vindicate but lacking fetchlands Timo has to use the duals in his hand. This really screws him when I topdeck Magus and ride it to victory before he finds a non-Mountain land.

Round 3 against Peter with Affinity

He wins the die roll but I don't care. He plays excellent and I play like a retard. I don't care. His draws are mediocre and I have Slogger plus Jitte both games on turn 2.
For a more detailed version of the slaughter here goes:
Him: T1: Land Thopter Worker
Me: T1: Land Mox Song Slogger
Him: Land Chromatic Star
Me: Land Jitte Equip Swing
Him: concede
Game2
Him: Land Vial
Me: Land Mox Song Slogger
Him: Land Chromatic Star
Me: Land Jitte equip Swing
Him: add second counter to Vial
Me: attack
Him: Vial in Hearth Kami, block (remember I have Slogger and Jitte active and he still gets to block...), sac to kill Jitte
Me: Magus of the Moon
Him: Ravager, make big
(somewhere here I got in a Powder Keg)
Me: Keg goes to 2 counters, gets activated, he flings Ravager at my Slogger, I put Slogger in the grave without any response, then I draw and play hellbent Rakdos Pit Dragon
Him: play random ground pounder
Me: Seething Song to get Pit Dragon attack for 16-ish
Him: concede

I apologize for my absurd luck and misplays. Later I'm told that he takes these competitions very seriously and I probably made him very angry. Whatever. It's just a game and luck is a part of it.

Round 4 against Patric with Cephalid Breakfast

I win the die roll but I have to mulligan. My first turn is Ancient Tomb into Chalice which gets forced. He plays Nomads en-Kor and passes back to me. I can only play a Simian Spirit Guide (hoping to be able to play and equip Jitte next turn). Patric uses his next turn to summon a 3/4 Goyf. My draw is Mountain so I can play and equip Jitte however if I swing now I lose my only creature and his Goyf becomes a 4/5. I shortly consider swinging anyway to kill his Nomads with a Jitte counter but I'm more afraid of a big Goyf than him finding his second combo piece and a third land to combo that turn. Of course after I do not swing he plays upkeep Worldly Tutor, draw Illusionist, play land, combo and smash with a 22 power Ghoul plus a 5/6 Goyf. Frown.
Game 2 I keep a decent hand that has Needle and a big guy. Needle comes out naming Nomads and he plays Aether Vial. I drop my big guy and his Vial brings in Nomads en-Kor the next turn. I try a topdecked Blood Moon but he Forces, then bounces my Needle. During his turn Cephalid Illusionist arrives and I can only watch helplessly as he comboes out again.

Round 5 against Nico with TES

He wins the die roll and thinks long about keeping his hand. Lucky for me he keeps it and goes Land, Mox, pass. I try Chalice for 1 and in response Nico plays Plunge into Darkness for 5. He doesn't find anything relevant and over the course of 4 turns he only plays Chrome Moxen imprinted with Rite of Flame or Dark Ritual. I simply Song into a Slogger that takes his life in 4 point swings until he concedes.
Game 2 he starts again. This time with a sequence of land, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, Cabal Ritual, LED, Infernal Tutor. After he cracks LED for 3 black mana he has 4 black mana in his pool and a Lotus Petal on board. Stormcount is too low for Tendrils but he's afraid of Pyroclasm and Powder Keg so at first he looks for Ill-Gotten Gains. I'm really scared of IGG because I'll lose all but 3 cards in my hand and he'll get back LED, Cabal Ritual and IT with 3 Mana still on board. Again I'm lucky as he decides using IGG as a Mind Twist is for pussies and instead grabs EtW making 12 Goblins. During my turn I play Mountain, Chrome Mox, Keg + activate so we are both left with only a land. After about 2 turns of topdecking I find my second land and with the help of another Chrome Mox I bring in Trinisphere. Some critters follow and they quickly finish my opponent.

Round 6 against Stefan with GBWr Survival

I win the die roll and start with a Magus of the Moon. Stefan has a Forest and Birds of Paradise. Another basic Forest follows the turn after but I have Jitte and some Gathan Raiders who kill him quickly regardless.
Game 2 I have a Needle for his Survival and he has a Needle for my Arc-Slogger so I try to beat him without any additional tricks until he finds Swords and counterattacks with Tarmogoyf. A combination of Harmonic Sliver, Dark Confidant and 2 Tarmogoyfs bring me down low enough before I find another creature that even after I topdeck another warm body I'm dead on board.
Game 3 I have the Needle for his Survival again so he can do nothing but watch as my Rakdos Pit Dragon flies over his hardcast Squee dealing him 10 then 16 damage. I should add that this game I had Umezawa's Jitte again but it made no big difference as the first 10 damage were done without Jitte and the second swing could've been for 20+.

All in all I really liked the deck when it worked but for bigger events I have a feeling that you might need a bit too much luck to do well.

edit for short props and slops:
props: Stefan C. for actually playing Planeswalkers
Alex (tournament organizer) for running the whole thing and giving out awesome prizes
Me for opening Sliver Queen and Mox Diamond in my prizeboosters
slops: Joachim, Jens, Lukas for not showing up so we were "only" 32 people total

Tacosnape
11-18-2007, 03:59 AM
Rofl @ that Affinity report. That's a pretty sick pair of openings. And anyone who A. Plays Affinity and B. Sideboards Hearth Kami shouldn't be taking things too seriously.

But yeah, solid report.

Personally, I would have swung with the SSG + Jitte into the 3/4 Goyf and Nomads, however. This would kill the Nomad, and give you at least a few turns to draw into a second threat, and your chances of drawing a guy to grab Jitte and fight Goyf are a good deal better than your chances of Cephalid Breakfast not being able to grab a combo piece.

Also, did you ever get any use out of Winter Orb at any point in time? I personally feel it's pretty useless in the deck and that any damage it does to control is partially negated by how much it slows you down, and that Needle/Moon are generally as good as you're going to get.

Silverdragon
11-18-2007, 04:51 AM
Personally, I would have swung with the SSG + Jitte into the 3/4 Goyf and Nomads, however. This would kill the Nomad, and give you at least a few turns to draw into a second threat, and your chances of drawing a guy to grab Jitte and fight Goyf are a good deal better than your chances of Cephalid Breakfast not being able to grab a combo piece.

I agree. Right after the match I was thinking of what I could've done differently and killing Nomads would've been the correct play there.


Also, did you ever get any use out of Winter Orb at any point in time? I personally feel it's pretty useless in the deck and that any damage it does to control is partially negated by how much it slows you down, and that Needle/Moon are generally as good as you're going to get.

As I said I couldn't test it in the tournament so all my impressions come from the limited amount of testing I did. During testing I had some games where it utterly destroyed Landstill and Loam but with further testing now I think these games were exceptions. As for slowing me down I didn't get that impression but I can see how without Mox or a City/Tomb it can be annoying.
One impotant aspect of Orb in my local metagame is that most controlplayers panic when they see it and try to always counter it. As these players get better at playing around Orb it again loses some value.
I think for now my board will be 4 Pithing Needle, 4 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Powder Keg, 2 Trinisphere, 2 Defense Grid.

Waikiki
11-18-2007, 03:16 PM
I've been searching for some creatures that might be good in this deck and the only ones I found are these:

Jeska, Warrior adept
Arc Mage
Blistering firecat
Fumiko, The lowblood
Ghost-lit raider.

From all of those the firecat seems interesting because it can confuse the opponent(What if it's Gathan raider? what if it's not?).

Tacosnape
11-19-2007, 04:07 AM
I've been searching for some creatures that might be good in this deck and the only ones I found are these:

Jeska, Warrior adept
Arc Mage
Blistering firecat
Fumiko, The lowblood
Ghost-lit raider.

From all of those the firecat seems interesting because it can confuse the opponent(What if it's Gathan raider? what if it's not?).

Jeska and Fumiko are just bad. Arc Mage seems completely inferior to Ghost-Lit Stalker.

The cat is interesting, but probably very bad, because one of the most common ways to lose in this deck is to run out of threats due to the deck having insane inherent card disadvantage. Therefore I'd be highly nervous about running any sort of threat that helps get rid of itself.

Ghost-Lit Raider seems like it has the most potential out of that group. It's sort of like Flametongue Kavu at half-size with the ability to not suck completely against control and to take out mid-size jank. His size is somewhat annoying and I dislike the fact that he requires mana to activate in a deck that has a constantly fluctuating manabase, and I have a hard time telling myself he's any better than Sulfur Elemental or Juggernaut, who are the frontrunners for the last slot.

I did some testing with a lone Godo, Bandit Warlord and a bizarre equipment split, and also with a lone Lu-Bu, Master-At-Arms (Rolling Earthquake tech!), but six is likely just too much even with only a single red in the cost slot. I am now pretty sure the last guy has to cost either :2::r:, :4:, or distantly possible, :3::r:.

Waikiki
11-19-2007, 08:36 AM
I'd consider playing the cat just to confuse the opponent or finish him of due to the trample damage it can do. Also the arc mage is able to throw away crap in your hand to maintain the hellbent your pit-dragon/raider likes you to have.

purlqg
11-19-2007, 04:25 PM
This is my first post on the source, but ive been a long time "lurker" on theese boards. I just played Dragon Stompy at the Danish Legacy Nationals, It wasn't the first time ive played the deck, earlier same year I lost in the final at a smaller tournament (23 players).

I played the following deck list at the tournament featuring 97 players if I remember correctly:

Alex Preuss

// Lands
10 Mountain
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
2 Razormane Masticore
2 Arc-Slogger

// Spells
4 Chrome Mox
4 Seething Song
4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Blood Moon

sb:
1x Earthquake
2x Rolling Earthquake
2x Blood Moon
3x Pithing Needle
3x Powder Keg
4x Tormod's Crypt

Last year I piloted Angel Stompy in to the top 4 but this year I felt that the change of the Danish Metagame called for something different so I searched the boards and looked at my old lists and came op with this deck to combat the rising popularity of dual lands and 3 color decks.
My list was very close to the lists on this page so I found the last pieces of tech I needed (mainly blood moon main and the pithing needles on the board).

I won the first three rounds against 4 color Landstill, Cephalid Breakfast and Threshold only to loose to 4 color Landstill (my manabase screwed me game 1 and he drew 5 counters and his 3 sideboard goyfs in game nr. 2). That just shows how you can loose a favorable match-up when your opponent draws everything he needs.
I then lost to Wee Dragonauts deck with alot of red dmg spells (I never drew Chalice in the 2 games we played). Won vs. sligh/burn and got destroyed by my friend playing welder survival, he went on to loose in the semifinals.

Survival is really a difficult match-up especially against the welder list, I had trouble getting both chalice and needles and he had birds + forests everytime to use his survival.

Anyways ill keep playing this deck because it's really fun to play and it kicks ass, it destroys all the strong decks being played here (Landstill, Thresh, Storm Combo and Fish).

- purlqg/Alex

overseer1234
11-22-2007, 04:01 PM
Hi, I'm new here, but I really like this deck, and I'm thinking of building it myself.

But how does it preform against meathooks (countersliver) and angelstaxx?? because they frequently show up in my local meta...

Anyways keep up the good work.

Greetzzz,
Robin.

EDIT: How about Char in this deck? Kills creatures, kills players and pitches to Mox (maybe to riders but every card can do that).
I just thought sins feary stompy is playing psionic blast this might turn out okay...

Tacosnape
11-22-2007, 05:30 PM
But how does it preform against meathooks (countersliver) and angelstaxx?? because they frequently show up in my local meta...


Depends on the builds of both decks in both cases.

Moon is a godsend against Countersliver, especially the 4C versions, as this will not only cause them greater manabase problems but give them a harder time abusing Hibernation Sliver. Chalice for 1 is the better play against builds with Vial, but if you are sure they aren't running it, Chalice for 2. Pyroclasm's pretty good as long as they don't get double pumpers.

However, If you expect a lot of Countersliver, both Rolling Earthquake and Powder Keg are the real monsters in this matchup. Either one can win you a game, so they're worth running in a Sliver-packed metagame. Other than that, try to get your big guys online before they get theirs, equip up, and cruise on.

Angel Stax is a bizarre match, as you both run dead cards. If you play first, Chalice for 0, and get a Moon down at all costs to save you from Wasteland and Factory and crap like that. Your main strategy beyond that is to get a single giant threat down and ride him to victory at all costs. Slogger can rock Magus of the Tabernacle or Exalted Angel once, and Gathan Raiders equipped can outrace Exalted.

The bright side of this matchup is that although nothing in your sideboard hurts them (Unless you run Ingot Chewer, which is a neat little metagame call), they don't generally run anything in sideboard that hurts you much either, sans possibly Suppression Field to hurt your pumpers. Kill Trinisphere and Chalice and bring in Needle for Factory/Wasteland (They'll usually board out Chalices if they have a brain at all).

They will try to Geddon you. Repeatedly. Get a single big threat out and hold back a Tomb or City to pay for Ghostly Prison, and a Mox to pay for Magus helps greatly also.

Originally I theorized Angel Stax to be a bad matchup, but they might be the only deck in existence that's less consistent than you, and you can do awesome things with a fast threat (You'll usually win off a turn one Slogger, though not always) so it's been about even so far. I'm going to test more extensively against my Stax teammate, so I'll let you know more as it goes.

Peter_Rotten
11-22-2007, 05:51 PM
I wanted to hop in quickly and point out to the Dragon Stompy fans a recent top 8 appearance in Germany. (http://www.germagic.de/dc/event.php?event=Legacy+Speyer+-+November)

Jak
11-22-2007, 10:24 PM
I just had the chance to look at Mindless Automaton. Seems really good. Late game, gives hellbent and allows the deck to draw cards. Anyone test this as a 2-4 of?

Tacosnape
11-23-2007, 12:15 AM
I wanted to hop in quickly and point out to the Dragon Stompy fans a recent top 8 appearance in Germany. (http://www.germagic.de/dc/event.php?event=Legacy+Speyer+-+November)

I saw that list. Pretty interesting. I still think Winter Orb's a bad idea in sideboard though.


I just had the chance to look at Mindless Automaton. Seems really good. Late game, gives hellbent and allows the deck to draw cards. Anyone test this as a 2-4 of?

I think 2 would be the max, and I think it's a case of too much for too little. Granted, this thing is capable of getting huge and refilling your hand by at least a single card if he gets nailed, but do you really want this guy over, say, Juggernaut? This guy's a 2/2 with a lot of small cute tricks. Juggernaut beats for 5, no questions asked. And Juggie's slot is arguable.

However, there are times when this guy has a lot of use. He was an absolute behemother in a preboard game I played against UG Thresh, where I got him out just before my manabase got wrecked and pumped enough cards in him over time to make him clobber for 11.

Jak
11-23-2007, 12:24 AM
Well, I doubt your opponent will think he is cute when he is making himself huge and also all those Raiders. Oh yeah, he gives the dragon double strike. I think I will replace the Razorcores with these and test it out.

Silverdragon
11-23-2007, 03:20 AM
I already commented about my 7th place finish in Speyer one page ago (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=179372&postcount=35)
So just a few additional thoughts after more testing. Mindless Automaton is definitely better in this specific deck than Razormane Masticore. However so is Sulfur Elemental. Juggernaut is sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger, always depending on whether you need another fattie or just another threat. Generally Sulfur Elemental and Juggernaut have about the same vulnerability once they are on the board however Elemental also can't be countered and is therefore more reliable. Juggernaut makes up for that with his 5 power but aside from that he does not have any more potential.
Comparing Automaton to them is hard as it fills a completely different role and significantly changes how you play the deck when it enters the board as you have to decide every single turn whether you want to pump it or not.

Oh, and the Winter Orbs are out of the board for now ;)

edit: Would it be possible to run 10 snow-covered Mountains and include Phyrexian Ironfoot? I'm trying to find possible inclusions for an aggro metagame full of Goblins, Elves and Zoo. There are also some WW players. Generally this should not be a problem with Sulfur Elementals but they do run Glorious Anthem etc. Any thoughts on what the best configuration for such a metagame is?

Tacosnape
11-23-2007, 03:46 PM
I already commented about my 7th place finish in Speyer one page ago (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=179372&postcount=35)

Oh right. I didn't realize that was you. I thought that list looked familiar. DurdurTaco.


Would it be possible to run 10 snow-covered Mountains and include Phyrexian Ironfoot? I'm trying to find possible inclusions for an aggro metagame full of Goblins, Elves and Zoo. There are also some WW players. Generally this should not be a problem with Sulfur Elementals but they do run Glorious Anthem etc. Any thoughts on what the best configuration for such a metagame is?

In that metagame, stick Flametongue Kavu back in, for the love of god. FTK would absolutely own in that metagame.

As far as the WW players, Razormane's the best guy to deal with that deck ever if they run Silver Knight (If not, FTK again), but also look into Powder Keg as an alternate Silver Knight / small weenie solution.

I don't like Ironfoot. He hogs mana just to be a 3/4, which isn't worth it. I'd rather have Sulfur Elemental despite the 2 loss in toughness as it's easier on your manabase and imprints on a Mox.

Silverdragon
11-23-2007, 04:34 PM
FTK would absolutely own in that metagame.


Whoops, brainfart on my part. Of course FTK is sick in that meta. Thanks for the reminder. Sometimes I'm trying to think too far out of the box XD

yespuhyren
11-24-2007, 01:28 AM
With all the talk of making sure you discard enough to get to Hellbent, has anyone tried Avatar of Discord? For RRR and double discard you get a 5/3 flyer.

Waikiki
11-24-2007, 01:47 AM
RRR is hard to get :(

Xurcks
11-24-2007, 02:25 PM
I was trying to fit Chandra Naalar in the deck,a first turn seething song+chandra and pinging opponent for 1 first turn and then smashing him and his beasts for 10 next turn was beautiful sometimes,but it's consistency is a problem.
What do you think?Too much "danger of cool things" stuff?

Tacosnape
11-24-2007, 02:46 PM
I was trying to fit Chandra Naalar in the deck,a first turn seething song+chandra and pinging opponent for 1 first turn and then smashing him and his beasts for 10 next turn was beautiful sometimes,but it's consistency is a problem.
What do you think?Too much "danger of cool things" stuff?

I think it's a possibility provided you stick to using Chandra in a removal spell's slot rather than a threat's slot.

I will say this, however. Chandra Nalaar gives you a game against Enchantress you don't have otherwise. That Chandra-Inferno can melt Argothian Enchantress if you get it out fast enough, which gives you a fighting chance if they don't hit too many Presences.

Xurcks
11-24-2007, 03:23 PM
I thought about this too...her board clearing ability may help against some matchups like enchantress and she even kills big goyfs xD,but what could go out so she can get a place in the deck?

Zork
11-24-2007, 08:31 PM
I tested her for about two weeks as both a 2 and 3 of, and honestly she was underwhelming.

She clogs up the 5c slot, so she sat dead in more than a few games, and if you are in a bad position (opponent has threats), she doesn't help at all. She is far too reliant on getting out early and is not a signifigant threat. I'd rather run some real removal.

As for automaton, I'd like to try him, but I have a feeling he might beef up just a little too slowly.

Mental
11-24-2007, 09:14 PM
I've been testing this deck on MWS for about 2 weeks, and I finally went out and bought it. Anyway, I'm putting it together right now, but I discovered I don't have Juggernauts. In their place, I'm running Ingot Chewer. It seems really strong against Stax and Goblins. Goblins give DS some problems, and Stax I would imagine (haven't tested against it) does also. Any thoughts?

Jak
11-24-2007, 09:19 PM
Huh? Who plays Juggernaut?

Sanguine Voyeur
11-24-2007, 09:29 PM
Stax may, or may not be a good match up for Dragon Stompy.

I've played some games from both sides and found that resolved fat can be a problem, Arc-Slogger is the biggest threat. This is especially true for red Stax, whose only sweepers are quakes, Pyroclasms, and maybe Wildfires. White and black Stax have Damn + Wrath to deal with fat people.

Conversely, the mana denial can hurt. Early Wastelands, Wildfires, Smokestacks, and Armageddons combined with Chalice at zero can halt Dragon Stompy in its tracks. Often the mana denial will be just enough for you to not be able to pay for Ghostly Prisons to attack. Even worse, they could be running Ensnaring Bridge, which can easily shut down even the cheapest of your creatures. Arc-Slogger can win though this, making him a valuable asset, assuming you have the mana.

Tao
11-24-2007, 11:20 PM
In their place, I'm running Ingot Chewer.

Don't run maindeck Ingot Chewer. I can't imagine more Anti-Synergy between wanting to cast or evoke it to get hellbent and not wanting to cast it because you would have to destroy your own Jitte.

Sanguine Voyeur
11-24-2007, 11:22 PM
Don't run maindeck Ingot Chewer. I can't imagine more Anti-Synergy between wanting to cast or evoke it to get hellbent and not wanting to cast it because you would have to destroy your own Jitte.Also, it's a 3/3 for five. That's quite underwhelming when compared to the apt Razorcore or Arc-Slogger.

Mental
11-25-2007, 12:29 AM
Also, it's a 3/3 for five. That's quite underwhelming when compared to the apt Razorcore or Arc-Slogger.

My current list:
Lands:
10x Mountains
4x City of Traitors
4x Ancient Tomb
Creatures:
4x Arc-Slogger
4x Gathan Raiders
4x Magus of the Moon
4x Rakdos Pit Dragon
4x Simian Spirit Guide
Spells:
3x Trinisphere
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Chrome Mox
4x Seething Song
4x Umezawa's Jitte
3x Blood Moon

Basically the only thing new in this list is a 4th Slogger and 3rd Trinisphere, and no Nauts or Razormanes. Really, Arc-Slogger is a card I almost always like seeing, and is less red-mana intensive than RPD, which we run 4 of. The 3-Sphere is also ridiculous. I know we don't like seeing it in multiples, but that doesn't mean I don't like seeing one in my opening hand.

Tacosnape
11-25-2007, 04:12 AM
Tao's absolutely right. Maindecking Ingot Chewer is a recipe for disaster. He's probably not even a great sideboard option, merely one I toyed with.


Stax may, or may not be a good match up for Dragon Stompy.


Stax is a good match for Dragon Stompy, but not a fantastic one.

I played 24 games of this tonight against my Stax-wielding teammate and went 16-8. I was 11-1 on the play and 5-7 on the draw. I'm sadly more impressed with the latter stat. Anything that goes 5-7 on the draw against Stax is doing alright in my book.

Chalice for 0 helps both sides greatly (At least 8 games were decided almost strictly because of a turn 1 Chal-0), as does getting any Moon down quickly. Builds with 3-4 maindeck Blood Moons will do better than those with 0-2. Other than that it's a race between your threats and their Geddon stabilizer, though I did win one game post-Geddon by topdecking four straight lands and plowing through a Ghostly Prison.

As Stax vs. Dragon Stompy is very heavily based on who gets the more ridiculous opening, what really makes the difference in this match is that Dragon Stompy has so many more ways to get its ridiculous opening than Stax does. Stax needs a Mox to go broken. Dragon Stompy can do it with a Simian Spirit Guide, and has Seething Song to boot.

Slogger is also completely absurd and retarded in this matchup. Two of my highlight plays included triple-shooting Magus of the Tabernacle and ramping up seven mana to play Slogger and pick off two morphed Angels.

Waikiki
11-25-2007, 06:45 AM
Has anyone tested pyrohemia in the SB vs weenie decks and goblins?

Mental
11-25-2007, 11:49 AM
Tao's absolutely right. Maindecking Ingot Chewer is a recipe for disaster. He's probably not even a great sideboard option, merely one I toyed with.



Stax is a good match for Dragon Stompy, but not a fantastic one.

I played 24 games of this tonight against my Stax-wielding teammate and went 16-8. I was 11-1 on the play and 5-7 on the draw. I'm sadly more impressed with the latter stat. Anything that goes 5-7 on the draw against Stax is doing alright in my book.

Chalice for 0 helps both sides greatly (At least 8 games were decided almost strictly because of a turn 1 Chal-0), as does getting any Moon down quickly. Builds with 3-4 maindeck Blood Moons will do better than those with 0-2. Other than that it's a race between your threats and their Geddon stabilizer, though I did win one game post-Geddon by topdecking four straight lands and plowing through a Ghostly Prison.

As Stax vs. Dragon Stompy is very heavily based on who gets the more ridiculous opening, what really makes the difference in this match is that Dragon Stompy has so many more ways to get its ridiculous opening than Stax does. Stax needs a Mox to go broken. Dragon Stompy can do it with a Simian Spirit Guide, and has Seething Song to boot.

Slogger is also completely absurd and retarded in this matchup. Two of my highlight plays included triple-shooting Magus of the Tabernacle and ramping up seven mana to play Slogger and pick off two morphed Angels.

Hahaha, slogger is insane in every match up. I dropped one on turn two last night, and my opponent just left.
That said, I had a lot of trouble with BG Control. The guy kept deeding for enough to wipe my board, and then he dropped a Spiritmonger, which I couldn't deal with after my mox, jitte, Blood Moon and Rakdos Pit Dragon had all been nuked. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Dragon Stompy forces you to overextend for the deck to work. Against a lot of decks, that's fine, but against really devoted control decks, it sucks.

Joon
11-25-2007, 11:53 AM
Actually, all kind of Chalice-based Stompydecks have Problems with Deed and Controldecks. But you're right, Dragon Stompy overextendeds too often because of hellbent - on the other hand, who the hell plays B/G control? The only thing near to that seems to be The Truffle Shuffle or so :confused:

Mental
11-25-2007, 11:55 AM
Actually, all kind of Chalice-based Stompydecks have Problems with Deed and Controldecks. But you're right, Dragon Stompy overextendeds too often because of hellbent - on the other hand, who the hell plays B/G control? The only thing near to that seems to be The Truffle Shuffle or so :confused:
Ok, BGW Control. UGB Thresh maindecking deed. Basically every deck running BG. There aren't many, but there are more out there than you think.
Guess that's what pithing needle is for.
EDIT: Whoa, I was just picking up some cards and I found one that interested me. Coal Stoker.
Coal Stoker - 3R
Creature - Elemental
3/3
When Coal Stroker comes into play, if you played it from your hand, add RRR to your mana pool.

Seems interesting, as off a seething song you can go Coal Stroker --> Rakdos Pit Dragon, which is more impressive than Rakdos Pit Dragon --> Pump 1. Plus, it makes mana red and seems all around useful, being a 3/3 for 1.

Sims
11-25-2007, 12:43 PM
Actually, all kind of Chalice-based Stompydecks have Problems with Deed and Controldecks. But you're right, Dragon Stompy overextendeds too often because of hellbent - on the other hand, who the hell plays B/G control? The only thing near to that seems to be The Truffle Shuffle or so :confused:


I do.

You'd also have to worry about deeds/sweepers/wrath effects from places other than B/G Control. Landstill is still popular and very capable of winning and doing well at tournaments, as well as the oddball from left field deck that beats you into a pulp because you weren't expecting to be smacked upside the head by deed + ... i dunno, Korlash or something.

Jak
11-25-2007, 02:05 PM
I was testing the MUs against Deed control and you just need to win fast. I was playing the control and the only times I lost was when DS got me down to like 6 life and then dropped Slogger. That is the best way to win, IMO. Also, Blood Moon and then WOrb were a bitch when I was playing Truffle Shuffle. That is the only way he won the last 2 games because of an early WOrb then backed up by Blood Moon.

Tacosnape
11-25-2007, 07:18 PM
That said, I had a lot of trouble with BG Control. The guy kept deeding for enough to wipe my board, and then he dropped a Spiritmonger, which I couldn't deal with after my mox, jitte, Blood Moon and Rakdos Pit Dragon had all been nuked. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Dragon Stompy forces you to overextend for the deck to work. Against a lot of decks, that's fine, but against really devoted control decks, it sucks.

Anything packing Deed is a challenge, which is why the 4 Pithing Needles in sideboard are an absolute must. However, all is not lost. Pithing Needle is solid in every one of these matchups, which is why you run four. Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void for 2 are also the perfect disruption suite to fight most of these decks, as an early Blood Moon can shut a lot of BG Control decks (Like Train Wreck, for instance) off Green and off Deed, and Chalice for 2 shuts off a solid portion of any control deck. If you expect a fair amount of control (And trust me, nobody has more control in his metagame than I do), knock Trinisphere out of your maindeck and go up to four Blood Moons, which is what I've done. Now the only control deck that tends to give me nightmares is MUC, which is still distantly winnable as long as I can get and keep a Needle on Vedalken Shackles.

Dragon Stompy does overextend, but so does any true aggro deck other than Goblins, really. It's supposed to overextend. Either control has the perfect combination of cards to stop you or they don't. Dragon Stompy's disruption suite (Chalice/Moon) still gives it a better edge against a large part of the metagame than the disruption package of most aggro decks.

It's worth noting that Dragon Stompy was never created to beat control decks. It was created to smash aggro, combo, and most aggro-control, and auto-lose to control. During evolution of both DS and the metagame, it has ceded slight powers in all of its good matchups in exchange for being able to randomly win games against a plethora of decks via Blood Moon, and while certain control decks can't deal with Moon, some can, and you have to accept that every deck has a worst matchup, and that's Dragon Stompy's.

Black_Dog
11-26-2007, 08:23 AM
i think Form of the Dragon is missing in this deck...

Joon
11-26-2007, 08:46 AM
WTF? Are you kidding? I don't see how an cc7 enchantment that costs :4::r::r::r: to cast is missing here?

Black_Dog
11-26-2007, 09:05 AM
1: With Cities and Tombs and Moxes and Seethings...it aint so hard.
2: It can royally screw aggro decks that get slowed by chalice and then have nothing to fly over or any direct damage/burn...like Thresh or any Goyf based thing.
3: Without eating many slots in the deck it add's to its versitility VS. other decks.
4: If anything, its definately worth a SB slot as when it works, like Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon, it will disable an opponents deck. If it the match up doesn't merit it, then toss it aside for a Chrome Mox.

Joon
11-26-2007, 09:15 AM
I think that Form of the dragon is one of the worse "Danger of cool cards" cards. If you find playce in your build, well, then you can test it. I think it isn't worth it.

Black_Dog
11-26-2007, 09:19 AM
Tested. And it's tested well enough for me to open my mouth here. Just a curve ball for the deck for when you strike out on other match-ups where you shouldn't

Joon
11-26-2007, 09:26 AM
The decks curve lies around 3,05 - at least my build.
How were your tetstings against decks against that you're aren't winning anyway? Thresh is usually a cake-walk.

Tao
11-26-2007, 09:56 AM
1: With Cities and Tombs and Moxes and Seethings...it aint so hard.


Is it really castable without Song?

In the best scenario you'd have to tap 3 Red Sources and two 2 Manalands.It is rare that I have so many lands.



2: It can royally screw aggro decks that get slowed by chalice and then have nothing to fly over or any direct damage/burn...like Thresh or any Goyf based thing.

What Aggro decks are that?

In the Metagame Forum the only Aggro decks are Goblins and Goyf Sligh. Against Goyf Sligh the card is virtually dead and you also can't put it down if Goblins has a Vial active or they'll chain Leader / Matrons into Siege Gang Commander and kill you.
Faerie Stompy as the third major aggro deck will also not be impressed at all by Form of the Dragon.

Jak
11-26-2007, 10:01 AM
1: With Cities and Tombs and Moxes and Seethings...it aint so hard.
2: It can royally screw aggro decks that get slowed by chalice and then have nothing to fly over or any direct damage/burn...like Thresh or any Goyf based thing.
3: Without eating many slots in the deck it add's to its versitility VS. other decks.
4: If anything, its definately worth a SB slot as when it works, like Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon, it will disable an opponents deck. If it the match up doesn't merit it, then toss it aside for a Chrome Mox.

Stop being so damn condescending and people might actually listen to you.

Where would you put it. In the MD it seems bad. Being dead in a ton of MUs is really bad. Thresh won't let it resolve. Bad against Goyf Sligh. Goblins is already good. Why play the card?

Phantom
11-26-2007, 11:28 AM
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you could show me video of Form of the Dragon winning you twenty games in a row against the best decks in the meta, and I still wouldn't believe it was anything but a coaster. The card is terrible. It's a 7cc(!) enchantment in a super fast meta that doesn't win you the game and will occasionally lose games you would win. Even as a board card I can't imagine what I would board it in against and more importantly what I would drop for it.

Welcome to the Source. Welcome to Legacy.

Tacosnape
11-26-2007, 12:17 PM
Form of the Dragon is actually a powerhouse if you can get it out. And on occasion you probably can. And on the occasions you can't, you can ditch it to Raiders or Mox. I highly doubt it's worth a slot, though.

Also, I don't think you can run it in the same deck as Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon.

It's important to note that dropping a moon shuts off the double mana from your Cities and Tombs. In certain cases this can actually be a benefit, like being able to more consistently cast and pump Rakdos Pit Dragon. However, in terms of hitting :4::r::r::r:, it's extremely detrimental. The best way this deck has to hit that combination of mana is Tomb, City, Mox, Seething Song, which doesn't work with Blood Moons anywhere involved.

QQQ
11-26-2007, 01:14 PM
From the 120 person Dutch Legacy Championship:

Quarter-Finalist: Ivo Koolhaas

Deckname: Red Deck Wins

Maindeck:
2 Tephraderm
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Umezawa?s Jitte
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
10 Mountain
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Seething Song
4 Chrome Mox

Sideboard:
3 Ingot Chewer
3 Pithing Needle
2 Tephraderm
2 Trinisphere
4 Tormod?s Crypt
1 Blood Moon

kabal
11-26-2007, 01:17 PM
From the 120 person Dutch Legacy Championship:


Do you have the decklists from the result of the Top 8?

Waikiki
11-26-2007, 01:35 PM
I will post them in the tournament section :)

scion
11-27-2007, 05:34 PM
How do you guys think about Avarax in the Gathan Raiders slot? I guess he would mean more pressure for the opponent....

Tacosnape
11-27-2007, 06:23 PM
How do you guys think about _____ in the Gathan Raiders slot?

The answer is a definitive no. Gathan Raiders is the single best creature in the deck.

As far as Avarax in place of anything, it's still no. Considering very often you only hit :3::r::r: with Seething Song or SSG or Pre Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon, your odds of chaining into 3/3's are slim. And even if you do, it's kind of an underwhelming goal to try to achieve.

Anarky87
11-27-2007, 08:35 PM
So what are the SB's for this deck looking like? Defense Grids? Crypts and Kegs? Is there anyway Taco or Phantom (or others that are piloting the deck) to post their SB's? Thanks in advance.

Phantom
11-27-2007, 09:29 PM
So what are the SB's for this deck looking like? Defense Grids? Crypts and Kegs? Is there anyway Taco or Phantom (or others that are piloting the deck) to post their SB's? Thanks in advance.

Mine is in the opening post, and hasn't really changed any since I haven't been able to test Defense Grid. I prefer kegs to clasm in the 'goyf era, but certain people may find otherwise. Ingot Chewer is a tough call for me, as he is pretty narrow compared to something like Keg, which may be eating his spot.

Taco, or anyone else have thoughts on Grid? If it's solid I'll squeeze it in for Demonfire (which is really more of a maindeck card if you're going to run it I've found).

Tacosnape
11-27-2007, 10:29 PM
So what are the SB's for this deck looking like? Defense Grids? Crypts and Kegs? Is there anyway Taco or Phantom (or others that are piloting the deck) to post their SB's? Thanks in advance.

At the moment, and when I say "At the moment" I mean "Right as of this second without any complete commitment to keeping it as such because I'm still testing," my sideboard is:

4 Pithing Needle
4 Pyroclasm
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Trinisphere

With Trinisphere having been cut from my maindeck in favor of more threats and a full eight Blood Moons, which has skyrocketed the consistency of my draws and manabase at the cost of, well, not having Trinisphere and all that entails.

Keg isn't finding room. It's good, yes, but its competition is better. With its absence, I'm fully aware the deck has absolutely no way to clear an artifact off the board, and I'm okay with that. Pyroclasm and Pithing Needle deal with most of what Powder Keg deals with.

Defense Grid almost has to be a metagame call. It and Trinisphere don't play together well, as their Grid costs can work towards their Trinisphere costs. Trinisphere isn't anywhere near as good as Defense Grid against heavily blue decks, but that's all Grid is good at, whereas Trinisphere stops Storm Combo and can on occasion randomly win a game against anything when you're on the play. However, if I expected about half blue in a metagame, with high amounts of MUC, Landstill, Solidarity, or Threshold, I'd certainly pick Grid. I value it high enough that I'm currently hunting a set to go in my "Possible Sideboard Options" box.

redmage
11-28-2007, 07:10 AM
First off, props on the deck. It looks quite interesting, and I'm always fond of seeing red decks that are competative.

Second, has anyone tested out Fledgling Dragon? I ask because I see no mention of it anywhere in the thread. With cards like City of Traitors, Seething Song, Razorcore, and the Raiders, it would seem like thresh would be fairly easy to attain, and you wouldn't need to constantly sink RR into the Fledgling every turn to give it flying/evasion. Also, Razorcore seems like a really strong card right now, but it severely lacks synergy when trying to maintain hellbent (which is when RPD really "shines").

Zork
11-28-2007, 07:13 AM
Thresh is actually not as easy to obtain as you would think, and Pit Dragon is so much better than fledgling its not even funny. Doublestrike on Hell-bent usually just wins you the game.

redmage
11-28-2007, 07:46 AM
Thresh is actually not as easy to obtain as you would think

That is pretty surprising. What turn do you reach thresh on avarage? I know Chrome Mox/SSG don't really help, but they seem to be out-numbered by cards that would/do.



Pit Dragon is so much better than fledgling its not even funny.

Have you actually tested it, or are you merely running off theory here?

I guess Fledgling's strength would really depend on the list (I see some running little/no Razorcores/SOFIs at all).

He's got evasion at no added cost, so he carries SOFI/Jitte well. He's still pumpable (with thresh), and he's more synergistic with Razorcore by not necessarily forcing you to over-extend into hellbent.

I guess if your main goal is to over-extend into hellbent, then RPD would be a bit better; however, if you want to take advantage of SOFI & Razorcore then Fledgling would seem to fill the role with a bit more synergy.


Doublestrike on Hell-bent usually just wins you the game.

Add in a bit of pumping, and that doesn't surprise me one bit (if you can pull it off without hindrance).

Tao
11-28-2007, 08:41 AM
This is not the deck to play cards with Threshold. The only card that you can put into the yard by yourself is Seething Song.

If you have drawn 1 Seething Song that means that your opponent has to destroy or counter 6 of your spells and permanents (not Swording them). Usually that won't happen before turn ~10, especially because you try to keep the opponent from playing spells with Moons, Chalices and 3-Spheres.

Zork
11-28-2007, 08:49 AM
Well, the build I run usually gets thresh only if my opponent destroys or counters my permanents. Otherwise, the only cards that beef the yard are Gathan Raiders, Seething Song, and City (unless I moon). Goldfishing I usually hit thresh past turn 10, and against an opponent it depends on him.

The reason I haven't tested Fledgling is just because Hell-bent is easier to get than thresh (and is also not reliant on my opp), and because RPD is better all around than Fledgling. Unthreshed and unbent, Pit Dragon can fly and pump, while Fledgeling just flies. Threshed and Pumped, Pit Dragon hits twice (better with equips) and pumps for 2 off one mana.

If you were thinking about running him in one of the other slots, you'd have to cut either Slogs, Magus, or Gathan Raiders, and I just can't see doing that. He's a great creature, but he isn't better than what we already run.

Bovinious
11-28-2007, 08:49 AM
Like said above other than Seething Song (and the occasional City of Traitors), you never put stuff in the yard unless one of your threats is answered, I dont know how anyone whos ever even goldfished the deck can think thresh would be obtainable at all...

redmage
11-28-2007, 09:24 AM
Like said above other than Seething Song (and the occasional City of Traitors), you never put stuff in the yard unless one of your threats is answered

"Never"? So I take it you don't run Raiders, or Razorcore then?

Again, I'm not saying Fledgling is the optimal choice for any/all lists; I was merely asking if anyone had actually tested it. If you havn't... a simple "no" would suffice.

@Zork
Thanks for putting a bit of thought into your response.

Quick question: I notice that some lists run SOFI; however, if a hellbent RPD, equiped with SOFI, deals its "first strike" damage, does it then lose it's "normal" strike (along with any attacking Raiders' +2/+2s durring their "normal" attacks) due to the card drawn? My gut says yes.

Bovinious
11-28-2007, 09:50 AM
I run Raiders but not Razorcore, and no I havnt tested it but I have tested the deck and know threshold is very hard to get, and by turn 15 I think I could do better with a hellbent RPD.


EDIT:



Quick question: I notice that some lists run SOFI; however, if a hellbent RPD, equiped with SOFI, deals its "first strike" damage, does it then lose it's "normal" strike (along with any attacking Raiders' +2/+2s durring their "normal" attacks) due to the card drawn? My gut says yes.

I think you would lose hellbent yes.

Tacosnape
11-28-2007, 11:02 AM
"Never"? So I take it you don't run Raiders, or Razorcore then?

Again, I'm not saying Fledgling is the optimal choice for any/all lists; I was merely asking if anyone had actually tested it. If you havn't... a simple "no" would suffice.


No.

We haven't tested Roc of Kher Ridges, either, who I think would be strictly better than Fledgling Dragon in this deck.

If you get Threshold in Dragon Stompy, you lost. It's that simple. I've frequently won the game without a single card hitting my graveyard (Although having an enormous RFG Zone.) By the time you get seven in the yard, you failed to hurt your opponent in the first eight to fifteen turns it took you to get it, and you won't recover.

Maëlig
12-01-2007, 01:04 PM
I'm currently testing a "maniac doll" deck to which I have given the same shell as dragon stompy. I don't know if it's worth making a new thread just for it, so I'll post it here.

12 mountains
4 city of traitors
4 ancient tomb
4 stuffy doll
4 simian spirit guide
4 volcano hellion
4 mogg maniac
3 flametongue kavu
4 magus of the moon
3 trinisphere
3 earthquake
4 chalice of the void
4 seething song
3 chrome mox

Basically, the idea of the deck is to get a doll or a maniac out and to play hellion / kavu / earthquake on them (alternatively, they make great blockers). If you don't hit them, then you just play in a normal dragon stompy way (but with worse creatures, admitedly).
I must say that at the very least, this is fun to play. You can make some really broken plays, too. I just did T1 mountain + mox + maniac, T2 attack with maniac, drop a city and a hellion (-19 to both players) --> gg.
The sideboard is similar to the normal dragon stompy ones.
I must say that I'm not a specialist of dragon stompy, and not a very big tournaments player either. I mostly play on local tournaments with budget decks, and this explains some of my choices.

Malhavoc
12-02-2007, 02:45 PM
Has anyone tried Shivan Wumpus? In a decklist running 4 Trinisphere it can be deadly: first turn trini followed by turn-after-turn wumpus tells your opponent "lose all your lands or deal with a 6/6 beast".

The downfall is that sometimes you topdeck it and it's just a stone rain since your opponent can deal with sacrificing a land - maybe a "mountained" one.

Tacosnape
12-02-2007, 02:58 PM
Has anyone tried Shivan Wumpus? In a decklist running 4 Trinisphere it can be deadly: first turn trini followed by turn-after-turn wumpus tells your opponent "lose all your lands or deal with a 6/6 beast".

The downfall is that sometimes you topdeck it and it's just a stone rain since your opponent can deal with sacrificing a land - maybe a "mountained" one.

The downfall is exactly as you say it is.

From someone who ran Green Land Destruction for a long time and to great success in the "Old 1.5", I had a lot of experience with his twin, Argothian Wurm. Argothian Wurm was fantastic if my mana denial had been successful, and lost me the game if it hadn't. He was when I started really learning what "Win More" meant.

In Dragon Stompy, this guy is terrible. Against control, where you need a threat, this guy isn't a threat, he's a Stone Rain. And if you've shut off a dual or two via Blood Moon, that'll be the land that goes. Similarly, if they're holding an STP/Edict, your Wumpus is going to resolve, and they'll kill it.

Any card that gives your opponent the final choice probably doesn't have a place in Legacy. The chief example of this offense is Browbeat. I've had literally close to a hundred different people argue to me how Browbeat was a wonderful card, about how they'd either get to draw three or deal five to the opponent. And it's not. It's a terrible card, because if either one of these choices are one the opponent could deal with, they'll pick that. And if they can't deal with either choice, then any card which either just dealt damage or just drew cards would be equally satisfactory. And any time you cast it, unless your opponent is an idiot, it will always do its weaker effect.

kabal
12-02-2007, 03:00 PM
From recent (12/1) tournament


Here is my dragon stompy list for reference.

10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors

4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

4 Pit Dragon
4 Arc Slogger
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Gathan Raiders
3 Magus of the Moon
4 Seething Song
3 Blood Moon

I ended up 4-0-2ing into the top 8. Beat Angel Stax in the first round then lost to Landstill in the semi's.

Malhavoc
12-02-2007, 03:15 PM
BTW, I've seen in one of the early posts a report of a tournament where the deck lost just to a a burn deck, which puzzled someone. From my experience against burn, I have to say that even if pre side chalice and jitte almost assure a win, post side things go really a different way: chalice, jitte, and even trinisphere are all easy targets of shattering spree (which even under trini can be paid with RRR to target three things.. sometimes even our moxen).

Phantom
12-02-2007, 03:23 PM
Yeah, to even think about Wumpus we would need a much more dedicated mana denial strategy (I would think at least 4 Trinis/Stone Rains/Avalanche Riders). Basically, you need to make sure his drawback is almost never a drawback.

As to what Taco said, I was trying to explain this to a buddy last night (while drunk). It's a principle I really only came to grasp about a year ago (ironically after testing Browbeat in DS and Burn) and I came up with an interesting thought: How useful would Fact or Fiction be if the player who cast it chose the piles and the opponent who decided which pile would be kept? I don't know that the card would be unplayable, but I'm sure it's power level would drop immensely.

@Malhavoc: Yeah the burn matchup is almost an autowin, but he managed to get completely screwed. Happens sometimes.

Bovinious
12-02-2007, 03:39 PM
Yeah, to even think about Wumpus we would need a much more dedicated mana denial strategy (I would think at least 4 Trinis/Stone Rains/Avalanche Riders). Basically, you need to make sure his drawback is almost never a drawback.

As to what Taco said, I was trying to explain this to a buddy last night (while drunk). It's a principle I really only came to grasp about a year ago (ironically after testing Browbeat in DS and Burn) and I came up with an interesting thought: How useful would Fact or Fiction be if the player who cast it chose the piles and the opponent who decided which pile would be kept? I don't know that the card would be unplayable, but I'm sure it's power level would drop immensely.

@Malhavoc: Yeah the burn matchup is almost an autowin, but he managed to get completely screwed. Happens sometimes.

See Truth or Tale. It is exactly the reverse FoF you described, costs 1U and isnt playable.

tsabo_tavoc
12-02-2007, 05:24 PM
See Truth or Tale. It is exactly the reverse FoF you described, costs 1U and isnt playable.

Not exactly. Truth or Tale only gives you 1 card.

For the Burn MU: It is quite even postboard, because of Shattering Spree and Sulfuric Vortex.

Tacosnape
12-03-2007, 02:45 AM
As to what Taco said, I was trying to explain this to a buddy last night (while drunk). It's a principle I really only came to grasp about a year ago (ironically after testing Browbeat in DS and Burn) and I came up with an interesting thought: How useful would Fact or Fiction be if the player who cast it chose the piles and the opponent who decided which pile would be kept? I don't know that the card would be unplayable, but I'm sure it's power level would drop immensely.

It would be unplayable to me in any deck I would otherwise play Fact or Fiction in. I would switch to Gifts Ungiven or Meditate in Landstill.

However I might try it in Solidarity where the chances of me thoroughly outthinking my opponent are great. This doesn't mean I'd approve of the card in principle, as choice cards are only bad if your opponent doesn't make mistakes. However, I'm fairly confident that if said card existed, I could force my opponent into a fair amount of mistakes.


BTW, I've seen in one of the early posts a report of a tournament where the deck lost just to a a burn deck, which puzzled someone. From my experience against burn, I have to say that even if pre side chalice and jitte almost assure a win, post side things go really a different way: chalice, jitte, and even trinisphere are all easy targets of shattering spree (which even under trini can be paid with RRR to target three things.. sometimes even our moxen).


For the Burn MU: It is quite even postboard, because of Shattering Spree and Sulfuric Vortex.

You are both seriously tripping. Or rather, Malhavoc's tripping and Tsabo's only tripping if he's implying the matchup is even rather than that an individual game might be even postboard. In either case, I'd say Burn and DS are about even if and only if Burn is postboard and is going first.

First of all, Chalice of the Void and Jitte aside, Dragon Stompy has about the same goldfish kill time as Burn does. Uninterrupted, Burn kills at turn four on average, with a few more threes than fives. Ditto for Dragon Stompy. Therefore, as long as you're running the appropriate magnitude of threats and deny Burn the chance to try to switch into being a control deck briefly, you're racing without factoring in Chalice and Jitte.

Second of all, Burn doesn't get Shattering Spree and Sulfuric Vortex until game 2. Game 1 is probably about 75-25 or 80-20 Dragon Stompy, which is about as good as a Chalice Aggro deck will ever get due to its ability to randomly lose 15% against a Precon via manabase problems. Then, even when they get said cards, Burn has to draw the Shattering Spree. Last I checked, most Burn builds run no draw, and the few that run Baubles still don't have much. Even then, the turn Burn takes to Shattering Spree your Trinisphere/Chalice/Jitte is a turn they aren't killing you while your threat is eating their face off.

Third of all, goop goo @ Sulfuric Vortex. This is a terrible choice for Burn to board in in this matchup, because most builds of DS aren't running but 2-3 Jittes anyway, and Sulfuric Vortex is a heavily costed spell in a matchup of this speed. The other neat thing? Jitte still rocks with Sulfuric Vortex on the table, just a little less so. It's just an extra four a turn in a damage race. And you get even more benefit from the fact they spent three mana to get a mere 2 damage ahead in said race.

But seriously, Burn isn't a bad matchup if you don't even ever draw a Chalice or a Jitte. Though sometimes it will just be burn and randomly beat anything.

adrieng
12-07-2007, 01:18 PM
Just a thought .Has anyone triyed phyrexian ironfoot ? he is really big a 3/4 with a small drawback which can be cancelled with snow covered mountain.

Anarky87
12-07-2007, 05:04 PM
Just a thought .Has anyone triyed phyrexian ironfoot ? he is really big a 3/4 with a small drawback which can be cancelled with snow covered mountain.


I don't like Ironfoot. He hogs mana just to be a 3/4, which isn't worth it. I'd rather have Sulfur Elemental despite the 2 loss in toughness as it's easier on your manabase and imprints on a Mox.

That's all that has really been said on it.

No_One411
12-07-2007, 11:16 PM
From the 120 person Dutch Legacy Championship:

Quarter-Finalist: Ivo Koolhaas

Deckname: Red Deck Wins

Maindeck:
2 Tephraderm
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Umezawa?s Jitte
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
10 Mountain
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Seething Song
4 Chrome Mox

Sideboard:
3 Ingot Chewer
3 Pithing Needle
2 Tephraderm
2 Trinisphere
4 Tormod?s Crypt
1 Blood Moon

hmmm.... Dragon Stompy seems to be a very interesting deck that I have played around with for a while.

How good is tephraderm? also, what is the gameplan against swords? I guess theres always the chalice for 1 and 3sphere. But I've found that swords ruins creature that we invested much many into.

Also, is winter orb good enough to consider? I've tried it, and with the trinisphere out, its just a brutal beating for most decks.
First turn gathan raiders morph, second turn winter orb, swing, third turn trinisphere = gg pretty much.

And shivan wumpus is horrible, its not a significant threat, they will either laugh at it and sack a land, or let it resolve, laugh again and throw a swords at it. Our threats are only so easy to play, there not really garuntee that we will be able to play them again.

But other than that, I really like the deck and think its really competitive. Guillarme Wafo-Tapa was running it pretty well at worlds.

etrigan
12-07-2007, 11:39 PM
But other than that, I really like the deck and think its really competitive. Guillarme Wafo-Tapa was running it pretty well at worlds.

Wafo-Tapa was also running Rorix Bladewing, according to the feature match coverage.

Mental
12-07-2007, 11:47 PM
Wafo-Tapa was also running Rorix Bladewing, according to the feature match coverage.

Seems sub par, but maybe it's better than it looks on paper. 6 mana is a bummer, though.

TeenieBopper
12-07-2007, 11:50 PM
Seems sub par, but maybe it's better than it looks on paper. 6 mana is a bummer, though.

Yeah, so's RRR.

C.P.
12-08-2007, 02:13 PM
How good would Fire Imp be in the deck? or is FTK just better?

And burning wish?

Tacosnape
12-08-2007, 02:20 PM
How good would Fire Imp be in the deck? or is FTK just better?

And burning wish?

I think Flametongue Kavu is better in this deck (Though Fire Imp might be stronger in a deck like Survival), as FTK hits a lot of different things and is flat-out a bigger threat.

As for Burning Wish, it's a possibility. I haven't really explored the idea much, though it ran across my brain once. It could be dynamite under a Blood Moon. Did you have a wishboard of any sort in mind?

Also it's way cool to see that Waffle G (My utmost respectful nickname for Wafo-Tapa) is stomping face with Sloggers and company at Worlds.

C.P.
12-08-2007, 02:38 PM
I think Flametongue Kavu is better in this deck (Though Fire Imp might be stronger in a deck like Survival), as FTK hits a lot of different things and is flat-out a bigger threat.

As for Burning Wish, it's a possibility. I haven't really explored the idea much, though it ran across my brain once. It could be dynamite under a Blood Moon. Did you have a wishboard of any sort in mind?

Also it's way cool to see that Waffle G (My utmost respectful nickname for Wafo-Tapa) is stomping face with Sloggers and company at Worlds.

My thought on wishboard:

1 Pyroclasm (or Cave-In?)
1 Ruination (or Boom/Bust?)
1 Demonfire or Lightning surge
1 Shattering Spree
1 Empty the Warrens

I have not tested the I dea, I was just tinkering with the thought, so nothing too exiting so far.

EDIT: if Ironfoot is underwhelming, how about The War beast? Or is the drawback too much?
EDIT2: How about Solemn Simulacrum if you are desperate enough to play Mindless Automaton?
EDIT3: Another random Idea - Giant Solifuge?

Tacosnape
12-08-2007, 02:58 PM
My thought on wishboard:

1 Pyroclasm (or Cave-In?)
1 Ruination (or Boom/Bust?)
1 Demonfire or Lightning surge
1 Shattering Spree
1 Empty the Warrens

I have not tested the I dea, I was just tinkering with the thought, so nothing too exiting so far.

I will tinker around with this idea. It might have some sort of potential.

Mental
12-08-2007, 05:00 PM
I like it too. Seems like it could be useful in a variety of situations, and I haven't loved the sideboard as it is (as the SB is pretty much in the MB). However, I'd run 4 Pyroclasms in the SB so that you could still side them in against Gobs. I think the wishboard should look like:

1 Boil
4 Pyroclasm
1 Demonfire
1 Shattering Spree
1 EtW
1 Decree of Annihilation (uncounterable FTW)
1 Overmaster

C.P.
12-08-2007, 05:07 PM
I like it too. Seems like it could be useful in a variety of situations, and I haven't loved the sideboard as it is (as the SB is pretty much in the MB). However, I'd run 4 Pyroclasms in the SB so that you could still side them in against Gobs. I think the wishboard should look like:

1 Boil
4 Pyroclasm
1 Demonfire
1 Shattering Spree
1 EtW
1 Decree of Annihilation (uncounterable FTW)
1 Overmaster

Boil is an instant.

Mordenkain
12-08-2007, 05:10 PM
Boil is an instant.

Boiling Seas would do, seeing it's the same, only sorcery.

How about Rolling Earthquake? Have saved my ass before in tight situations.

Mental
12-08-2007, 05:13 PM
Boiling Seas would do, seeing it's the same, only sorcery.

How about Rolling Earthquake? Have saved my ass before in tight situations.

Seems strong, probably worth it. Plus, set at less than 5 it basically reams them and does nothing to your guys. However, an answer to goyf would be nice...can't think of anything right now.

C.P.
12-08-2007, 05:18 PM
Seems strong, probably worth it. Plus, set at less than 5 it basically reams them and does nothing to your guys. However, an answer to goyf would be nice...can't think of anything right now.

Threaten! or Grab the Reins! [/joke]

Burning wish makes the deck slower, so I'm not sure if slow cards like rolling earthquake will be worth it.

Mental
12-08-2007, 05:21 PM
Threaten! or Grab the Reins! [/joke]

Burning wish makes the deck slower, so I'm not sure if slow cards like rolling earthquake will be worth it.

I disagree. In my experience, you "go off" turns 1 and 2, playing most of your hand. It'd be nice to have Burning Wish as back up after that, but it may only fit in as a 2 of or something.

Phantom
12-08-2007, 06:48 PM
I mildly tested Burning Wish in the pre-Moon days. Didn't work out that great as it made Hellbent harder (is there a sorcery red pitch spell?) to get and gave blue another Spell Snare target. I did like having artifact and land answers mainboard though.

Anyway, I do think it's worth another shot. Let me know any testing results.

C.P.
12-08-2007, 06:52 PM
(is there a sorcery red pitch spell?)

Cave-In?

Phantom
12-08-2007, 06:55 PM
Cave-In?

Anything that doesn't kill our Magus? (interesting though, and probably worth a spot)

Barook
12-08-2007, 07:17 PM
Anything that doesn't kill our Magus?
Fury of the Horde? The other red sorcery pitch cards involve mountains, so they're a no-go.

Aggro_zombies
12-08-2007, 08:32 PM
Fury of the Horde? The other red sorcery pitch cards involve mountains, so they're a no-go.
As I recall, that requires two red cards to be pitched, which makes it poor in a deck that plays out so much of its hand so quickly. You'd have to hold it for a few turns before you could use it.

Phantom
12-09-2007, 02:45 AM
As I recall, that requires two red cards to be pitched, which makes it poor in a deck that plays out so much of its hand so quickly. You'd have to hold it for a few turns before you could use it.

That's the beauty though; with 2 mana and three cards in your hand (one of them Wish, other two red) you can achieve hellbent out of nowhere. Hell, you can attack twice with hellbent (that's 10 Raider damage and god knows how much Pit Dragon pain).

It's too bad both cards have to be red though. Bleh.

Tacosnape
12-09-2007, 03:00 AM
That's the beauty though; with 2 mana and three cards in your hand (one of them Wish, other two red) you can achieve hellbent out of nowhere. Hell, you can attack twice with hellbent (that's 10 Raider damage and god knows how much Pit Dragon pain).

It's too bad both cards have to be red though. Bleh.

It's also worth considering that Red cards are almost exclusively threats or blood moons, meaning to cast Fury of the Horde, you're going to basically commit to winning with whatever you have on the table for a spell that doesn't do a lot. It's probably better to just have playable threats/problems.

Zork
12-09-2007, 04:08 AM
I tried a wishboard out for a while and generally found that it was a slow answer, and that a wishboard often made postboard matchups worse. This deck has too many needs to throw a bunch of slots away on G1 versatility.

But that's just my opinion.

As for Bladewing, I did consider him, but did not test it. I also have recently tested Red Akroma, and found that she can be a surprise bomb out of the board against control decks. Most of the time they will think she is just another Gathan Raiders. I don't think she will make the final cut, but considering how swingy the Landstill matchup can be, more bombs is good.

Tacosnape
12-09-2007, 04:17 AM
I can't advcoate Rorix Bladewing or anything that costs 6+. Maybe in a past Dragon Stompy, as Rorix is a fantastic and underrated creature, but not now.

It's important to remember that the Eight Moons seriously hurt your total mana production (While often smoothing out your red.) Any moon turns your Tombs and Cities into Mountains, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not a good thing. I've had times where I've locked myself out of playing Arc-Slogger (Or even Pit Dragon) because of the Moons.

Akroma might be playable due to her Morphableness, and it's kind of disturbing to realize that it wouldn't be far-fetched to get her flipped and swinging on turn two. But still, I think we can do far better than a creature who's generally going to be a vanilla 2/2 for 3. That excess mana is best spent playing threats to keep Hellbent, equipping things, pumping Dragon, or spitting with Slogdor.

EDIT: Also, Burning Wish nabs Rolling Earthquake (Quake for 1 won't kill Magus, and can be reach and awesome removal), and Goblin Lore/Control of the Court if you need desperately to dig for Moon effects or Needles or threats or whatever.

Maëlig
12-09-2007, 07:17 AM
You also have blazing shoal that can pitch a (red) card and be decent on a pit dragon.
Burning wish is an interesting idea, for sure. It will make you think twice before casting a chalice @ 2, though.

EDIT : My bad, shoal is an instant (duh!). Too bad. :(

Media314r8
12-09-2007, 08:31 AM
@ sorcery answer to goyf:

Shivan Meteor??? lulz (just about the only burn spell big enough)

Mental
12-09-2007, 10:18 AM
Question: If you play Red Akroma face down, can it be countered? I would assume so.

Sanguine Voyeur
12-09-2007, 10:30 AM
Question: If you play Red Akroma face down, can it be countered? I would assume so.
Yes it can. On the stack, it's a 2/2 nameless creature spell with converted mana cost 0 and no rules text. It doesn't have "<this> can't be countered."

Goaswerfraiejen
12-09-2007, 11:47 AM
Question: If you play Red Akroma face down, can it be countered? I would assume so.

Just to expand on Sanguine Voyeur's answer (which is correct): it's morphing it (flipping it back up) that doesn't use the stack.


Congrats on the attention the deck has been getting, by the way. It seems to be all I ever face on MWS now--which sucks, because 8 Blood Moon effects = teh yuckzorz for mezorz. :tongue:

No_One411
12-09-2007, 02:50 PM
Has anyone found that Swords to Plowshares is really annoying when you cast say an arc slogger off gas in your hand? So, I've been trying to mull aggressively into hands with City of Traitors/Ancient Tomb + Chalice of the Void. Besides the obvious hosing of Swords, I've found that many players keep a one land hand hoping to use the brainstorm in their hand to mise into more land. Its a pretty big blow against them. Plus it protects against most hand disruption and combos Rite of Flame/Dark Ritual etc.

Rorix? Well, he is a big fat dragon that can start swinging the turn he comes into play. Even with that though, I'm pretty sure he only belongs at most in the sideboard as a 1-2 of. Akroma is likewise a 1-2 of in the sideboard.

As to the amount of Moon effects? 4-6 has been working wonders for me. Enough to draw into them, but not so often so that they screw over your mana production. I usually drop my fatty before dropping the Moon effect, so that I get to actually play a fatty before locking down my lands.

Fury of the Horde plus Blazing Shoal are great ideas. But they give the deck a All or Nothing characteristic. If they get countered, you've lost the benefit of playing them plus you're left with almost nothing. Dragon Stompy already is kinda all or nothing. If your big threat gets countered or removed you've probably lost a lot of gas, mana, life.

Finally, Burning Wish is a great idea, gives us something to do in the lategame somewhat. But my concern is with Trinisphere, Winter Orb, etc out, how easy is it to play with most of our mana already tied up?

Mental
12-09-2007, 02:55 PM
I hate Blazing Shoal because it's too all or nothing. It basically destroys your hand and it WILL be countered. Maybe in the SB against combo/aggro though, so that you can go for the quick kill.

Also, 4-6 Blood Moon effects is really meh. It seems weak post board, as they'll bring in tons of stuff to blow up your moons. Redundancy is your friend here.

No_One411
12-09-2007, 03:00 PM
I hate Blazing Shoal because it's too all or nothing. It basically destroys your hand and it WILL be countered. Maybe in the SB against combo/aggro though, so that you can go for the quick kill.

Also, 4-6 Blood Moon effects is really meh. It seems weak post board, as they'll bring in tons of stuff to blow up your moons. Redundancy is your friend here.

Well, 4-6 Moons have been working pretty well for me, remember that the Moons tie up your mana as well, redundancy is a good thing, but too much of good thing can be bad.

Hmm...blazing shoal/fury of the horde should warrant some testing. I've found that sometimes I've loved it, other times I've hated it. Its an absolute horrible topdeck when you've spent your resources playing that arc slogger or something. Other times, its allowed as quick as a turn 2 kill off the Rakdos Pit-Dragon.

Tacosnape
12-09-2007, 04:41 PM
Burning Wish probably isn't all that great of a plan.

And Blazing Shoal and Fury of the Horde are both terrible ideas. What's more, Rakdos Pit Dragon can kill turn two without either of those being in the deck.

hi-val
12-09-2007, 06:55 PM
Would something like Phyrexian Processor have a place? Granted, it's 8 mana do make d00d #1, but cranking out 10/10s seems nice if you're not getting to burnt out from Ancient Tombs. Plus, it's an answer to Tarmogoyf lawl and it basically invalidates STP. Oh, and colorless. Thoughts?

Mental
12-09-2007, 10:52 PM
Meh, I don't like it. You can't afford to pay much life and it's activation is hefty. Plus, Pithing Needle > Processor. Also, Artifact Destruction/FoW becomes even more of a pain. So no.

Bovinious
12-09-2007, 10:54 PM
I actually like the idea of Processor, but Im not sure what in the deck it could/would replace.

Tacosnape
12-10-2007, 01:18 AM
Phyrexian Processor has me thinking.

I don't think I like it. It has too many microscopic drawbacks. It's not red, it's bad for Hellbent since you'll spend your mana making dudes, it eats a ton of your life in a deck that runs Tomb, and it leaves you exposed for a turn after you play it, since you won't get the 8 mana right off the bat. And it turns things like Krosan Grip and Deed and Vindicates into giant Blazes to your face.

I concede it's immensely strong should none of those drawbacks arise, however.

Also, um, Hi-Val? Why does your signature have Feist lyrics?

Waikiki
12-10-2007, 06:27 AM
What if we use a pokemon like torchling? He is hard to kill and able to take out irritating creatures like confidant etc.

hi-val
12-10-2007, 01:30 PM
Also, um, Hi-Val? Why does your signature have Feist lyrics?

Because it's silly : )

The 8 mana from Processor is spread out over two turns, much like Intuition/AK. You can also grind out like 4/4s against Goblins and Threshold all day long, which seems nice. I think you'd run it as maybe a 2-of; you definitely don't want to draw multiples, and getting it a little later in the game when the opponent has blown their Vindicates and stuff already seems prime. I guess the calculation is how many activations of it you'd need and at what life to justify paying some life upfront. How many decks will be packing Krosan Grips main? Moreover, how many of them will be casting it through The Bloodening?

I agree that things like Pithing Needle are a problem, but they're a problem against RPD to a lesser extent; furthermore, after reading numerous T8s from all around the world recently, I've come to the conclusion that nobody plays Needle any more : )

Regarding FOW, I don't know how that's relevant. You pay the life when it comes into play, not as an additional cost.

Bovinious
12-10-2007, 01:33 PM
What if we use a pokemon like torchling? He is hard to kill and able to take out irritating creatures like confidant etc.

A POKEMON??? I LOLD. But seriously I dont think Torchling is really worth the slot over RPD/Slogger as a finisher.

Illissius
12-10-2007, 04:49 PM
I've been eyeing Processor for a while now, though hadn't reconsidered the implications in our new era of Goyf. There has to be a good deck which can abuse it, somewhere*. I don't think Dragon Stompy is that deck; Dragon Stompy wants mindless aggression, not churning out tokens turn after turn.

* unfortunately, it probably has Grim Monolith in it

outsideangel
12-10-2007, 06:09 PM
A POKEMON??? I LOLD. But seriously I dont think Torchling is really worth the slot over RPD/Slogger as a finisher.

That's what this deck needs! More POKEMANS!

But seriously, Phyrexian Processor seems sub-par. Making big dudes is only okay. If I were to replace creatures in this deck, I'd replace the remaining vanilla beaters with creatures that beat face but also do stuff. Arc-Slogger, for example, is large, but he's also creature removal and direct damage. Magus is strong because he's disruption on legs. Pit-Dragon has evasion.

If we just wanted to play big vanilla creatures early in the game, I think we'd be looking for a deck with Tarmogoyf.

Tacosnape
12-10-2007, 06:39 PM
Except that the deck doesn't -run- any Vanilla beaters that don't do anything else. Even Gathan Raiders, who's the best creature in the deck, facilitates Hellbent for his fellow Raiders and Pit Dragons.

hi-val
12-10-2007, 07:54 PM
Are there any spots in the deck at the moment that you feel aren't pulling weight, or do you feel your lists are optimally tuned? Is there anything that needs improvement? Is this a deck for Serum Powder? : )

Also, Gathan Raiders is like the best White Weenie card ever.

kabal
12-10-2007, 08:10 PM
Phyrexian Processor seems to = too much life loss. Not to much, many Fish/Threshold type decks along with Landstill are running EE MB.

Phantom
12-10-2007, 08:12 PM
Good question Hi-Val. Let's take a look at the Worlds list:

Main Deck
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
11 Mountain

4 Arc-Slogger
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Simian Spirit Guide

4 Blood Moon
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
3 Seething Song
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Trinisphere
3 Umezawa's Jitte


Sideboard
4 Powder Keg
3 Pyroblast
1 Pyrokinesis
2 Rorix Bladewing
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Trinisphere


Nothing really jumps out mainboard as being filler. I personally like to keep the mainboard a tad more flexible by dropping two moons to the board for beaters (Sulfur Elemental for me). Three Songs is interesting since drawing two can often land you in topdeck mode ASAP. The board is where you have the most room to work. I don't see how he's ever beating Survival, or when you would board in Bladewing.

To answer your question, I don't think anything is begging to be replaced, but 2R casting cost beaters are always nice in Chalice Aggro, as is the Evoke mechanic (too bad Ingot Chewer kinda sucks). If a card was printed that was just too amazing not to run, I would probably replace Trini first (well, board it), but I'm not even 100% about that

Filipinho
12-10-2007, 10:47 PM
I have to say I liked Omar Rohner's list best, despite of Ruel winning the mirror in round 13.
I think it's a cleaner list. In the over-all, I'd go with Omar's list. A prove of that is it's record, while Omar went 4-1, Ruel went 2-1-2.

Parcher
12-11-2007, 12:56 AM
Are there any spots in the deck at the moment that you feel aren't pulling weight, or do you feel your lists are optimally tuned? Is there anything that needs improvement?

I think that it's impossible for one list to ever be optimal with this deck. Even with all the oblivious statements made at Worlds, the one I attuned to was one of the Brits in the podcast stating how it was made as a Hate deck for the majority of the format. I agree completely.

In that vein, I don't see how the list will ever be finished. Some metas will require a full set of Blood Moons main deck. Some will be best served with no 3Spheres main. Like all "anti" decks, it can only do well if metagamed properly. The unfortunate thing is that all of this publicity robbed it's other advantage. Even if a player can recognize the basic gameplan of a Rogue deck, with their having zero experience against it, you will often have a huge advantage.

The only difference of opinion I still see is the equipment content, and more disruption vs. more beaters. I think it simply comes down to preference and meta. The Taco list runs a full set of Moons, Jittes, and no Sulfurs. This makes perfect sense, as they don't work well together.

I still like SoFI and Sulfur, as they compliment each other well. While you would always rather have a Jitte on a Pit-Dragon, SoFI makes Sulfur Elemental not only a genuine threat, but a strategic puzzle for your opponent. They have to deal with SoFI pro-actively since they know that they can't easily stop an Elemental from hitting play. And hitting for 7 while drawing extra threats is more than most decks can recover from in conjunction with all of the other disruption you can land.

Without Sulfur, basically running all fatness and Magus, Jitte has a higher value. It's cheaper, which works in conjunction with the larger creatures, and you don't need the constant pump to protect them as much. And of course, SoFI is far worse on a Dragon. Without the uncounterable threat, you have, and need, more room for Blood Moons against control-types. This also has the advantage of more constant threats against Aggro. Larger threats puts them on the defensive more often, which most Legacy Aggro decks can't really do.

Other than that, the mana base is as good as it possibly can be in a deck like this. And aside from Crypts, I doubt any two sideboards will ever miror. Serum Powder wouldn't be bad if it could fit; The deck is pure redundancy. But outside of scouting mulligans, this deck draws surprisingly well. I have never had the slightest hesitation off going to six, and am most often rewarded for it. And god help your opponent if they have to mull. It's almost like facing Ichorid. You might side in all the right answers, but if you don't cast them by turn 1/2, you'll either be locked out of them, or dead.

And on the Processor thing, I don't think it can work. Casting it should be easy, and paying 5-7 life againsty any non-aggro deck would be fine, and probably be a "deal now or lose" situation. The problem would be losing 2 life to cast it, let's say 6 to pay, and then another 2 life every time you activate it. I think that it is likely to be in the Earthquake category. Where it should absolutely fit in the deck, and work very well, but the unfortunate self-damage already incurred through this deck's normal development cannot afford to be added to without very serious consideration.

Blacktail
12-11-2007, 01:05 AM
I've been testing a list similar to Omar's, and several others. I have to say that I really don't like Razorcore, or any other 5 cc creature that isn't Arc-Slogger or Raiders. Razorcore is easy to play, but I find that more than 4 5cc cards puts too much stress on the manabase, and just isn't synergistic with any of the other creatures. I would be losing games I should have won because of him.

I suggest upping the amount of Sloggers to 4, because it's removal, a huge beater and burn in a pinch. I also like upping the 3Sphere to 3, it's relevant against a surprising number of decks, and I'd like to see more of it.

I think Seething song should definitely be a 4-of, because you definitely want it in your opening hand.

Jak
12-11-2007, 01:14 AM
Lands
4 Tombs
4 Cities
10 Mountain

Creatures
4 Slogger
4 Dragon
4 Magus
4 Raiders
3 Sulfur
4 SSG

Accel
4 Mox
4 Song

Equip
3 Jitte
2 SoFI

Disruption
4 Chalice
3 Blood Moon

SB
4 Trini
1 Blood Moon
4 WOrd (or Crypt. Meta slot)
4 Pyroclasm
2 Powder Keg

I need to cut a card, but I have been liking the more aggro style with more cheaper threats and more equipment. Trinisphere came out of the main because of this. The only MUs I am concerned about is GY combos. Ichorid specifically. I don't have any of that in my meta so WOrd is more important to me. If breakfast keeps on being played, it may be different.

Tacosnape
12-11-2007, 04:58 AM
I also have taken Trinisphere out of the maindeck. I felt it pulled its weight the least and that at the very most I tended to use it as a method of drawing out counters to resolve a Blood Moon. As such I've gone up to 8 Blood Moons. 8 Blood Moons are good. Chalice/Moon is such a great disruption package because so very very few decks aren't completely wrecked by at least one of the two. Trinisphere is versatile, but it only slaughters certain decks. It rounds out my sideboard nicely with Pithing Needle, Tormod's Crypt, and Pyroclasm.

I've also, much to Phantom's delight I'm sure, started running a pair of Sulfur Elementals after Chandra Nalaar is still narrowly proving to be too difficult to cast and all other creatures sucking slightly more compared to the big five. As such, my Equipment split is now alternating between 3/1 Jitte and 2/2 (I think I prefer 3/1, though, as SOFI really does blow on a Pit Dragon.) If Sulfur Elemental becomes anything else, SOFI will probably go back away.

Mental
12-11-2007, 10:28 PM
Seriously Taco? I went up to 4 Trinispheres. I'm not sure what your meta is, but they seem on par with Blood Moon in disruptiveness, being actually useful against goblins. It only slaughters certain decks, sure. Let's name them: Threshold, TES, Goblins, CRET Belcher, Burn, Sligh...isn't that the whole top tier, or close to it?

Phantom
12-12-2007, 04:39 PM
I've also, much to Phantom's delight I'm sure, started running a pair of Sulfur Elementals

Well, as happy as that makes me, I'm not sure I'd get too attached, assuming this spoiler is correct:

Taurean Mauler
Rare - :2::r:

2/2

Creature - Shapeshifter Rare
Changeling (This card is every creature type at all times)
Whenever an opponent plays a spell, you may put a +1/+1 counter on Taurean Mauler.


As much as we LOVE to stop opponents playing spells, I really don't see that as a problem. I mean, have you ever lost a game where the opponent doesn't play a spell? I guess he's kind of a mediocre topdeck, but this deck isn't in the good topdecking business anyway. This would give us 3 scary as hell 3 drops that the opponent has to get rid of ASAP. Seems nice (if only he were a 2/3 and lived through bolt!)

Anarky87
12-12-2007, 06:51 PM
I think he might be alright. He's like you said; even when you set up your usual lock pieces, your opponent will usually have some other plays that will give him counters. Control/Aggro-Control decks will be searching for a way to remove your Chalice/Moons/3Spheres, so if he's down, he'll be getting bigger and bigger as they continue to dig for answers. As always, testing will have to be done.

Tacosnape
12-12-2007, 06:56 PM
This would give us 3 scary as hell 3 drops that the opponent has to get rid of ASAP. Seems nice (if only he were a 2/3 and lived through bolt!)

He lives through Bolt in a deck that maindecks 4 Chalice of the Void.:cool:

I definitely think Mr. Mauler will provide an interesting third option should we fail to shut down the opponent's ability to play spells.

Waikiki
12-13-2007, 05:12 AM
Hi, I'm going to take this deck to a big legacy event in holland and I was wondering about my list. What would be optimal in a thresh/grave dependant enviroment:

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
10 [MM] Mountain (1)
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors

// Creatures
4 [PLC] Simian Spirit Guide
4 [FUT] Magus of the Moon
4 [FUT] Gathan Raiders
4 [DIS] Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 [MR] Arc-Slogger
1 [TSB] Mindless Automaton

// Spells
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
2 [DS] Trinisphere
3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
2 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice
4 [MR] Seething Song
2 [9E] Blood Moon

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 3 open slot
SB: 3 [PLC] Sulfur Elemental
SB: 3 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 [UD] Powder Keg

Parcher
12-13-2007, 10:29 AM
I assume by grave dependant in addition to Thresh, you are referring to Breakfast and Dredge decks.

I would bump up the Jittes to four, as they are good against both the GY decks, and neither it nor SoFI are particularly good against Thresh. These are actually the worst matchups in general for SoFI. I would go 4/3 with Crypt and Keg instead of 3/4. I would also Probably run Pyrokenisis in the sideboard open slot, as it is awsome against Narcoboema, Ichorid, Cephalid and Nomads (if they don't have a 'Goyf out). It also can combine well with Jitte tokens to force favorable trades with 'Goyf against Thresh.

I might lose the maindeck Moons unless you expect Red Thresh. Black and White Thresh, Dredge, and Breakfast all have difficulty removing Magus.

Unless you expect a lot of Breakfast, and Board Control, I might lose the Sulfurs. They are pretty bad against most Threshold builds, and awful against Dredge except for removing Bridges. They excell against fast Aggro, and true Control decks.

The one Automaton looks kind of random. [shrug]

Waikiki
12-13-2007, 10:55 AM
Yes it's kind of random and I dont know what to fill it up with Im still happy to see it most of the time.

I Keep the moon effects cause thresh/deadguy/Loam aggro control are heavily played here.

I agree on upping the crypts to 4 since they are good vs the dredge decks etc.

But I also have 3 open slots so you suggest adding the pyrokinesis to the board and removing the sulfur elementals? Then what should I add in that spot? Goblins tend to show up once in a while aswell so maybe pyroclasm?

Tacosnape
12-13-2007, 01:01 PM
You absolutely need either Pyrokinesis or Pyroclasm in the sideboard. Kinesis, I would dare say, is better against Cephalid Breakfast or against anything where you need to be able to kill a creature at instant speed. Pyroclasm's better most of the time.

Waikiki
12-13-2007, 03:54 PM
any suggestions to change the 1off mindless with? he indeed seems random...
Maybe a 3rd moon or sphere? Im afraid I will be running low on beaters

Phantom
12-13-2007, 04:01 PM
any suggestions to change the 1off mindless with? he indeed seems random...
Maybe a 3rd moon or sphere? Im afraid I will be running low on beaters

If you have any Breakfast in your meta, I would try to squeeze two or three Sulfur Elementals in. Otherwise, 3rd moon sounds good.

Nihil Credo
12-13-2007, 04:16 PM
"Seeming random" isn't a reason for cutting a card. "Being worse than another option" is.

Tacosnape
12-13-2007, 04:22 PM
"Seeming random" isn't a reason for cutting a card. "Being worse than another option" is.

About time somebody said that.

If you feel Mindless Automaton is better than anything else that could be in the slot, run it. I personally would make it the seventh Moon. Your threats go further than you think considering Chalice and Moon go a long way from making them more difficult to remove.

yespuhyren
12-14-2007, 04:16 PM
I guess someone should start the conversation about this, because apparently people want to ignore the fact all together. What was it that made Dragon Stompy a failure in Worlds 2007? 53/358 decks went 4-1-0 and better, and only 1 of those decks was Dragon Stompy. While statistically its not terrible with 11/358 people playing the deck, but clearly if only 1 person out of 11 can win 4/5 matches there is an issue underlying someone that must be targetted in my opinion. Unless the deck was just meant to go with the flow and not actually be a top deck, we should figure out what can be done to raise it up.

VsTheWorld
12-14-2007, 04:44 PM
Part of that could probably be attributed to the overall lackadaisical attitude towards Legacy by the pros at Worlds. Many probably figured they'd ride Standard and draft to good records and just have to make a decent showing in Legacy. It's very likely that little to no testing was done. While Dragon Stompy isn't an incredibly skill-intensive deck like TES or Aluren, knowing when to drop Chalice/3Sphere and when to drop creatures, what to play Chalice at, when to play Magus/Blood Moon over a real threat are all crucial for the deck to succeed. Obviously if you don't know the format, you'll more than likely make incorrect decisions and lose because of them.

Or it's possible that people just got a crapload of bad matchups. It happens. Playing Faerie Stompy in a 30ish person tournament I managed to get paired against Landstill 3 out of 5 rounds and get raped 3 out of 5 rounds. Who knows.

Parcher
12-14-2007, 05:01 PM
I guess someone should start the conversation about this, because apparently people want to ignore the fact all together. What was it that made Dragon Stompy a failure in Worlds 2007? 53/358 decks went 4-1-0 and better, and only 1 of those decks was Dragon Stompy. While statistically its not terrible with 11/358 people playing the deck, but clearly if only 1 person out of 11 can win 4/5 matches there is an issue underlying someone that must be targetted in my opinion. Unless the deck was just meant to go with the flow and not actually be a top deck, we should figure out what can be done to raise it up.

Gee...let's see:

Pattaro: 8 Moons main, 3 Demonfire, 4 Aether Flash. 2 Gaea's Blessing

Pils: Akroma, FTK, Seige-Gang

Ruel, Wafo-Tapa: Rorix Bladewing

Ranque: Wasteland

Almost all of these are pure WTF!!!??? to anyone who knows the deck. The fact is, not only do these guys likely know nothing about Legacy in general, the deck is deceptively difficult to play. Like most Hate decks, it takes intimate knowledge of it's matchups to win against decks that your strategy is generally ineffective against. I guarantee there was little to no testing done, and these guys banked on the raw power of the cards. Even things like Tephraderm are not all that great.

Tacosnape
12-14-2007, 05:52 PM
Gee...let's see:

Pattaro: 8 Moons main, 3 Demonfire, 4 Aether Flash. 2 Gaea's Blessing

Pils: Akroma, FTK, Seige-Gang

Ruel, Wafo-Tapa: Rorix Bladewing

Ranque: Wasteland

Almost all of these are pure WTF!!!??? to anyone who knows the deck. The fact is, not only do these guys likely know nothing about Legacy in general, the deck is deceptively difficult to play. Like most Hate decks, it takes intimate knowledge of it's matchups to win against decks that your strategy is generally ineffective against. I guarantee there was little to no testing done, and these guys banked on the raw power of the cards. Even things like Tephraderm are not all that great.

Yeah, Parcher's pretty much right. While Rorix wasn't enough to stop Ruel and Wafo-Tapa alone (I think they only boarded it, though why is beyond my comprehension), and while I personally like 8 Moons main, the rest of those are awful choices. Gaea's Blessing? Aether Flash? Lack of format knowledge for the lose. This is the worst example of pro-level metagaming since Chris Pikula said he went with Bloodstained Mires over Polluted Deltas in Deadguy Ale because he might Needle Polluted Delta against Tog.

I also think Trinisphere maindeck may have proved to be an awful choice at worlds. (Not that I'm advocating axeing it.) There was virtually no combo that capitulated to Trinisphere (Most combo was Ichorid and Cephalid Breakfast...was there even a single TES?), and while Trinisphere's pretty good against Threshold, so are additional Blood Moons.

I also noted an incredible lack of Pyroclasm in the sideboard. I'd be very very interested to know how often this deck lost to Goblins.

All that and subpar creature choices / pro apathy probably led to the deck's struggles.

Plus, let's not forget this is still Chalice Aggro. This means in any 5 matches you're probably going to lose 1 to your deck being inconsistent and shooting itself in the foot.

Phantom
12-14-2007, 06:03 PM
Plus, let's not forget this is still Chalice Aggro. This means in any 5 matches you're probably going to lose 1 to your deck being inconsistent and shooting itself in the foot.

Everything both of you said is true, especially Trini main, which seems to fluctuate in value by the second (I've never found it all that great against Thresh which is why I board it generally).

This last part is what I've been thinking about lately thanks to the rise of both the blue and red Chalice aggro decks. I am a chalice aggro fanatic but I've been asking myself these two questions:

1) Will a Mono Chalice Aggro deck (in the style of FS) ever be tier 1?
2) If I thought I was the best player at an upcoming event, would I play a Chalice Aggro deck?

Tacosnape
12-15-2007, 01:39 AM
1) Will a Mono Chalice Aggro deck (in the style of FS) ever be tier 1?

Maybe.

Faerie and Dragon are certainly the only two in contention for moving up in that department. Dragon's probably stronger in a high tier metagame, but not by much. And Dragon Stompy is always going to struggle to go Tier 1 because the disruption it has is very conditional. Faerie Stompy made a good move in ditching the 3 Maindeck Chalices for more versatility, and as such I think it's now the stronger deck against a random/more localized/jankier metagame.

A lot will depend on what's printed. Taurean Mauler will be an interesting promotion for this deck, just as Mulldrifter and Pestermite came along for Faerie Stompy.


2) If I thought I was the best player at an upcoming event, would I play a Chalice Aggro deck?

I don't think skill is what I'd base my decision on. Chalice Aggro requires a fair amount of skill to pilot properly, as playing a single land in the wrong order or keeping or mulliganing the wrong 7-card hand can cost you a game immediately. I'd base my decision on the metagame.

However, It's not one of my top choices I'm comfortable playing in a tournament right now (My top decks I play in Tournaments are Landstill, Survival, and Solidarity, with Goblins and Ichorid close behind.) This is in large part due to the heavy amount of basic lands in my metagame, though.

Phantom
12-15-2007, 01:56 AM
Good points, but just to clear up I didn't mean the deck doesn't take skill to pilot, just that if I was the MOST skilled, I wouldn't want a deck that occasionally loses to itself (but also occasionally just wins).

Waikiki
12-15-2007, 04:35 AM
How does the mirrormatch go ? I suspect pyrokinesis is very good here. Also I play 2 sword of fire ice for this :) cause it just wins games

Tacosnape
12-15-2007, 01:36 PM
How does the mirrormatch go ? I suspect pyrokinesis is very good here. Also I play 2 sword of fire ice for this :) cause it just wins games

Uh. I have no idea. I've never played the mirror match. I've never really fathomed the idea that enough people would ever play this deck to think about it.

I suspect you're right, though. Pyrokinesis would be good, as would the equipment for the pro-red. Flametongue Kavu would probably be a huge mirror-breaker, also. If you win the die roll, Chalice-0 is a solid play, as are Trinisphere and Moon. Getting a Slogger down would be an astronomical blow, as well.

enemyofarsenic
12-17-2007, 11:55 PM
how about loxodon warhammer? how would it go with this deck? were there any testings with it? =]

Mental
12-17-2007, 11:57 PM
how about loxodon warhammer? how would it go with this deck? were there any testings with it? =]

Seven mana to play and equip, and it's worse than Jitte anyway? I don't think so.

enemyofarsenic
12-18-2007, 12:03 AM
Seven mana to play and equip, and it's worse than Jitte anyway? I don't think so.

actually it's 6. yah i guess so, SoFI would be better than this huh?

Bovinious
12-18-2007, 12:04 AM
Yeah, in this deck you pretty much want a 3/2 split between SOFI and Jitte, Ive seen it done both ways.

Tacosnape
12-18-2007, 02:13 AM
Loxodon Warhammer isn't all that far-fetched, actually. It's way better on a Pit Dragon, for one thing. And not just because SOFI's card draw on a Pit Dragon is god awful. (This is why I hate SOFI. SOFI + Pit Dragon = Not a combo.) I mean, 6/3 Firebreathing, Double Strike, Trampling, Lifelinked threats? It's hard to automatically dismiss the hammer given that it's got immense potential to be lethal in one swing (and is almost always lethal in 2) when attached to a dragon.

Hammer's about even with SOFI on Slogger and Raiders. Which one is better depends on the circumstances. 8/5 and 7/5 Trample Lifelinks are great, but 5/6 Tarmogoyfs kill them, whereas 5/6 Tarmogoyfs don't kill 6/7 and 7/7 SOFI'd guys.

It's even not all that relevant that Loxodon Warhammer costs the extra mana. Very often you'll be operating under Blood Moon anyway, meaning it's just as easy to tap three and play, then equip next turn as it is to do so with SOFI. And 6 versus 5 isn't that big of a deal considering that Seething Song/SOFI/Equip can't be done the first time you get 3 mana, as you have no threats at this point. Therefore it's very possible you'll have another land drop at this juncture and be able to hit 6 mana with the Song.

That said, in addition to being one mana more, Hammer is way worse on Magus of the Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, and if you run him, Sulfur Elemental. That whole toughness 2 thing isn't going to hold up especially well, meaning you'll have to spend mana to play another threat and re-equip it (6 mana minimum), whereas any of these guys carrying a SOFI = a lot more durable. So probably not on the Hammer, but it might be worth testing.

enemyofarsenic
12-18-2007, 07:39 AM
true, i like the lifelink from warhammer though. we might get lotsa lifeloss from ancient tomb and occasional mana burn...

overseer1234
12-18-2007, 01:25 PM
My friends suggested sword of light and shadow instead of the SoFaI because it helps against the spree's of exalted angels, vindicates and Swords to plowshares wich show up pretty often...

Tacosnape
12-18-2007, 02:31 PM
My friends suggested sword of light and shadow instead of the SoFaI because it helps against the spree's of exalted angels, vindicates and Swords to plowshares wich show up pretty often...

I tried Sword of Light and Shadow. I didn't like it. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either.

It doesn't fix the Hellbent problem unless you choose not to return a creature, and that makes it pretty weak. Swords to Plowshares isn't a problem anyway if you've got a Chalice down, and if you don't, they can Swords things in response to the equip. All it makes Vindicate do is aim at a different permanent, such as the equipment, which isn't horrible.

Exalted Angel is kind of a pointless use for it, because Exalted beats you by flying over your head and not caring if it can block or not. That said, Pit Dragon trades with her in the air already, Slogger can pick her off before she flips, and so forth.

That said, I did manage to get SOFI, SOLS, and Jitte all on a single Sulfur Elemental at one point. That was completely ridiculous.

Maëlig
12-19-2007, 05:16 PM
I just came across an interesting red card I never saw previously, and I would like to know what you guys think about it.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=15652
Might be some nice board tech against tribal decks (goblins mainly, slivers and some random), and even others (targeting human for example), no?

Xurcks
12-20-2007, 03:52 AM
@Maëlig: It depends very much on meta to be good(heavily tribal goblins,elves,slivers and the like).I never saw that card too,but it effect seems too limited among the others sideboard options this deck has and it doesn't help much against most of the top decks in the actual metagame.Style points for finding it though;we can name lhurgoyf with it :p
Let's take Goyf to An-Zerrin Ruins and kick his ass ^^

Tacosnape
12-20-2007, 02:50 PM
I'd tinkered around with An-Zerrin Ruins and dismissed it (Seriously? If there's a red card in magic, I've at least considered it in this deck, I promise.)

However, it's a really interesting point that it can hit Lhurgoyf. I seriously doubt I would actually play it just for that, and Tribal is best solved by Pyroclasm or Rolling Earthquake, but it has interesting potential.

purlqg
12-20-2007, 05:06 PM
I was just wondering has anyone tryed out Grafted Skullcap in this deck? I've been testing them lately and they seem to fit pretty nicely with the decks plan. They let you get more threads on a long term basis against control decks etc, and they achieve hellbent when you have a 5cc critter clogging up your hand or a jitte you cannot play.
They have been pretty sweet so far helping me against landstill (not the 4cc version, they got the hammer without it), and other decks with alot of answers to your creatures.
They have been bad for me at some times when you get two cards you can't play the same turn and then removing hellben,t but the drawbacks I have been experiencing have been close to none.

- purlqg/Alex

Tacosnape
12-20-2007, 05:12 PM
Skullcap is very interesting. I hadn't ever considered it.

I don't think I like the prospect of it giving you Hellbent when you don't need it and possibly interfering with it otherwise, but if you're drawing two and resetting every turn, it won't take long before you're okay in the mana department.

I'm not certain the long game is what this deck wants to focus on improving, but in cases where it can't be avoided I can see where this would have potential. I'll try it out.

Phantom
12-20-2007, 05:12 PM
I was about to launch into a rant about why Grafter Wargear sucks by turning artifact removal into 2 for 1's (one of the things I have against Covetous Dragon) then I realized you said Skullcap.

Huh.

It looks interesting at least. I'm not really sure I can say much else without testing it. I'm usually fairly good at judging these things in advance, but I honestly have no idea here.

pcccp
12-20-2007, 08:34 PM
I have won a small local tournament today with dragon stompy.

My list:

4x Anient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
10x Mountain

4x Seething Song
4x Chrome Mox
4x Simian Spirit Guide

4x Arc-Slogger
4x Gathan Raiders
4x Rakdos Pit-Dragon
4x Magus of the Moon
2x Sulfur Elemental

2x Blood Moon
3x Umezawas Jitte
1x Loxodon Warhammer
4x Chalice of the Void
2x Trinisphere

SB:
2x Boil
1x Blood Moon
3x Power Keg
4x Pyrokinesis
1x Tephraderm
2x Trinisphere
2x Sulfur Elemental
----

First matchup: mono black suicide

He starts with dark ritual + hypnotic specter and second turn hymn to tourach. i can get one or two creature on the table but he makes me sac them.
0:1

He is screwed on one land and i can kill him with dragon and raiders quickly.
1:1

After i played trinisphere there wasn`t much he did. No creatures at all on his site.
2:1

Second matchup: UGR Thresh

He gets Goyf, 2x Nimble + Mystic Enforcer, i have 1 raiders and 1 dragon. I can´t stop him and i give up.
0:1

Sideboarding: +2 boil, + 1 moon, - random stuff

I start with Chalice@1. dragon and raiders hit him a little, then i play boil and its game over.
1:1

I start with boil and 2 magus in my hand. I can get one magus on the table and kill him with my creatures.
2:1

Third matchup: TES

I start with Chalice @ 1 and topdeck chalice no.2. i don´t remember much, but i think he gave up after a while.
1:0

I play chalice @ 1 + 2, trinisphere and magus. game over
2:0

final: Ichorid

I can play first turn magus. He makes some zombies, but my hellbent dragon flys for victory.
1:0

He starts with gemstone mine, breakthru. Trinisphere hits the ground on my side, he didn´t get anything usefull into his yard and the game is over quickly.
2:0

I really liked boil in the UGR matchup. Some people said that its a win more card, but winning is what i want. :smile:

RC Snakle
12-20-2007, 08:47 PM
Main problem I see with Grafted Skullcap is that it turns your RazorCores into Tidal Waves, which isnt very good. And making hellbent difficult to achieve seems awfully counter-productive.

It might have a home in the board against decks youre forced to go long against (probably Loam variants so you can just spam threats), but theres better and less specific cards to use.

Just for fun: I took this to the Saturday Worlds side-event and went 3-2 before dropping. Played against:

Affinity 1-2 (misboarded, and got stomped by Owen Turtenwald, who I think made top 8)
Burn 2-0 (turn 1 3sphere led some guy behind me to start laughing, point to my opponent, and go "You are SO FUCKED." He was.)
4c Landstill 2-0 (got a turn one Blood Moon for a quick concession from him, and he manaflooded game 2 while I beat down with hellbented dudes)
UGr Threshold 2-1 (He ran no basics. Dont have to go into much more detail.)
Faerie Stompy 1-2 (Thats what I get for running Clasm over Kinesis. Turn two Weatherseeds in games 2 and 3 sure sucked for me.)

Tacosnape
12-21-2007, 12:06 AM
@pcccp: That's an incredibly random sideboard. When on earth would you ever board in the Tephraderm and the other Sulfur Elementals with that? Needs Moar Pithing Needle / Tormod's Crypt.

I do agree that Boil isn't really win more, per se, as it'll completely slaughter decks with basic islands that can't counter it (Solidarity, MUC.) I do think it's narrow, though, and mostly a metagame choice. The thing is that generally most of the time you face blue, you're facing nonbasic lands galore to go with it, and thereby the Moon effects tend to get the job done.

I approve of your creature base, largely due to my ego, since your base is identical to mine. How was that 1 Loxodon Warhammer for you?

@RC Snakle (Dude, your name sounds like some perverted cola): I think most of us have ditched Razorcore. He's too hard to cast when you drop 500 Moons (I'm even toying with dropping to 3 Sloggers for this reason) and he sucks with Hellbent unless you run Squee.

Weatherseed Faerie's a bitch. Fortunately, smart builds of FS quit running that thing due to the awesomeness of Pestermite and Mulldrifter. Unfortunately for you, Pestermite completely wrecks your face too. I once had two Gathan Raiders down versus a Sea Drake and watched as my Tomb was locked down for three Pestermites (three turns) in a row, forcing me out of Hellbent and losing the damage race due to Pestermites ganging up on the Raiders. Awful awful awful.

Zork
12-21-2007, 12:25 AM
The sideboard is pretty unfocused, but I do like the idea of boil against landstill because the match always seems swingy even after sideboarding. Plus boil is one of our hoses that doesn't lose to deed.

Also, Grafted Skullcap totally slipped my mind of things to try, but seems like it might be a house against decks that like to push the CA.

Lots of things to try.

pcccp
12-21-2007, 06:55 AM
I choosed Loxodon Warhammer instead of SoFI because it really doesn´t matter if equip costs 2 or 3 mana. Most of the time you don´t pay the casting cost for the equipment and equip in one round. Second argument: I want hellbent and drawing cards with SoFI isn´t helping me to get it. Third argument: raiders have no evasion and a raiders with SoFI isn´t that great. A hellbent raiders with hammer brings you 8 life and isn´t stopped by a 1/1 random blocker. When i played the UGR Thresh guy, i dropped jitte first turn and he answered with a pithing needle on jitte. I think, its good not to play 4 jitte only like some others do.

I like sulfur elemental. He kills mother of runes and you can kill jötun grunt with him. And yes, there are people playing fish and baseruption and don´t have any tarmogoyfs! Its although a tool to get rid of nimble mongoose. Against blue based decks he´s a good start. If your opponent plays blue he really wants a FoW in his opening hand to counter the scary chalice/moon/trinisphere. You drop your split-second buddy first turn and say go.

My sideboard is random, yes. I will play 4 powder kegs in the future and kick the lonly tephraderm. It´s just, i dont own a fourth keg and i had to fill the slot. I don´t like pithing needle in the sideboard, because i want to play chalice@1 as soon as possible.

@Tormod´s crypt. The last 20 tournaments i played i put 4 of them in the sideboard. Crypt didn´t help me in a single match. I would not say that crypt is a bad card. Its a good card of course. But decks that fear graveyard hate have a solution for crypt. Blood Moon and Trinisphere have won me the Ichorid matchup because i could drop it my first turn. I will test Leyline of Singularity in the future against Ichorid, TES and Belcher. A lot of people are playing these decks here and i think combo is up to 50% of the meta now. Leyline of Singularity kills all tokens and ichorid can´t get more then one narcomoeba on the table. Leyline affects you too but i´m unshure if that really matters.

AngryTroll
12-22-2007, 03:52 AM
Volt and I have been testing Dragon Stompy for a few nights now, and the GB Treefolk matchup is horrendous. We tested for two nights, because we could not believe how bad the matchup appeared to be, but Treefolk took home almost 85% of the games.

If you don't believe me, I will gladly play against you or talk about it over PM, because I don't want to clog up this thread. I am sure you will pick up some percent by being more familiar with the deck that Volt, but it is almost unwinnable for Dragon Stompy pre-board. After boarding, it gets closer, but game one is almost impossible to win.

Treefolk's use of mostly basic land, combined with few cards that cost 1, made a large portion of Dragon Stompy dead. How does the deck deal with midrange decks, like the Rock, RGBSA, Angel Stompy, and of course Treefolk?

Jak
12-22-2007, 04:06 AM
Treefolk? List?

Tacosnape
12-22-2007, 04:27 AM
Treefolk? List?

What he said. There's a Treefolk deck in Legacy?

Volt
12-22-2007, 04:46 AM
Lol. Look what you've started, Don. Seriously, though, Don's Treefolk deck pretty much knocks Dragon Stompy down and takes its lunch money. It's kinda funny.

Mental
12-22-2007, 11:03 AM
I assume if you play a treefolk deck you roll over laughing, and scoop. Not that that'll ever happen in a tournament. Volt, let me ask you: Would you ever play that treefolk deck in a real tournament?

Bovinious
12-22-2007, 12:32 PM
Treefolk deck? Are you guys talking that God-awful VAKA DORANZ deck that plagued the N&D a few months back?

Jak
12-22-2007, 02:02 PM
Nah, it is a different one. Looks solid. Don says he will play it in a real touney, so it is not a joke or anything.

Volt
12-22-2007, 08:56 PM
.

Tacosnape
12-23-2007, 03:00 AM
Dragon Stompy has and always has had a problem with tier 6 decks. Life goes on.

Decks like Solidarity and Landstill slaughter random jank, Dragon Stompy slaughters high tier decks and scoops to random jank.

Tao
12-23-2007, 03:30 AM
Dragon Stompy and Faerie Stompy ask the opponent certain questions:

"Do you play a low curve and lose against Chalice or Trinisphere?"
"Will my Turn 1 Fattie and Turn 2 Fattie kill you before you find your solutions?"
(DS): "Do you play many Nonbasics and lose against Moon Effects?
(FS): "Do you play one key spell and lose against Force of Will?"

So if the opponent says "No" to all of these questions, like for example a T2 Mono White or Mono Black control deck with 20+ Basic-lands, a curve starting at 2 (evoke Shriekmaw) and 16+ Removal spells you will just get slaughtered. But on the other hand, decks like ******** or Storm Combo, who answer "Yes" to many of these questions, will have a hard time against DS and FS.

So when playing DS you will have to accept to lose against the worst randomness, if it happens to be immune to your questions.

la loutre
12-24-2007, 08:21 AM
hello it's the first time i post on this site because in my beautiful country (france :laugh: ) we got the same type of site (legacy-france)

but there's no topic on the french site

so i was running the deck at Mol Belgium Championship, a big event with 129 players and 7 rounds

i made top 8, then top 4 with 5/1/1, (intentional draw at 7th round) and loose against the winner, a Gbw aggro Loam,on semi final

here's my list:

4 city of traitors
4 ancient tomb
10 mountains 18 lands

4 arc-slogger
4 SSG
4 magus of moon
4 rakdos pit dragon
4 gathan riders 20 creatures

4 CotV
4 trinisphere :cool:
4 blood moon
4 chrome mox
3 powder keg :cool:
3 seethin song 22 spells

60MD

1 EE
3 tephraderm :frown:
4 pyrokinesis
2 pyroclasm
3 shatering spree
2 anarchy

15 SB



first thing i have too say is i really regret the 3 slot of tephraderm on SB, was such a mistake (included them agains terravore,multiple tarmogoyfs,and multiple blockers), 3 tormod's crypt woul be really better
and certainly i'll put +1 seething song and -1trini to include it on SB instead of EE



know i'v read all this topic and i really don't understand why everyone play the deck as an aggro deck

the deck is named "dragon stompy" so bad name! because it's not an aggro deck but a stax deck, so red stax, or moon stompy should be a better name ^^



well for me the deck is awesome at now on the metagame because , control or aggro/control, running 3+ colors, and so much spells with CC=1 or 2,

so the deck got the clock with CotV,and trinisphere (such a pretty good anti FOW/daze moreover!!!)

the deck got one combo: magus of the moon

text of magus:
"your opponent can't plays any spells,your opponent loses 2 life each of your turns" :laugh:

i would say the deck runs 19 stax cards:

4 3S
4 COTV
8 moon
3 powder keg

-moon are autowin against landstill, and thresh 3 or 4 colors (those decks so played on the metagame)
very good clock against loam (you fear the mox diamond)
-CotV at 1 or 2 is really anti format cards
-trini anti FOW/DAZE, clock for waiting the moon/CotV,MD auto win slot against storm combo deck
-powder keg , is the "coffee engin" of the deck, it's disrupt against the spells of creatures or artifact was played before you plays the CotV/trini (when you don't start, and your opponent mades a moongoose turn one,or tarmo, turn 2)
it's the best disrupt you own against creatures and artifact :multiple moongoose,or tarmo,or teravore,MD slot against ETW tokens,bridge from below tokens, mox diamond,activated man land,crucible,vial,vedalken etc.....


16 keys for turbo stax on first/second turn:

8 double colorless land
4 mox
4 SSG


20 kills

the creatures

creatures are only kills, i think running any equipment is such a mistake, because jitte on board alone is so bad, powder keg or trini on board is a good cloak

as we already know it, rakdos is the best kill, arc-slogger the sweeper effect,SSG could becomes a chump blockers or kill,gathan so strong tricks with helbent



about equipment:

1 mounth ago i was running 2 jitte and 3 sword on the list, the sword are so bad with hellbent, jitte not combo with CotV at 2
so to play jitte before the CotV=2 you need to run 4, and i think it's dead slot against ALL MU unless gobs

WH lox, gives you good tricks (life and evasion with trample) but 6 too play an equip' (a seething is not enough,not like the 5 cost of cast/equip of the sword) and no toughtness boost, moreover no protection (swords do it at well)

so for me the best equip you can run is the Grafted Wargear, 3 only to play, and makes your magus 5/4

but i think it's always a dead cards....

so why running 22 or 23 or more creatures, and jitte??

you loose against all monocolored aggro deck, which are your worst MU
(WW,MBA,gobs,stompy)

the deck can old against MBA,WW,and stompy with 3S and CotV
gobs have a so special mana curve, you'll keep your 8 3S,CotV only if you start at the G2 (it's to say always lol) then sided them out at G3

it's why the deck really need at least 6 cards on SB against gob (4 kynesis,2clasm, or 3/3 as you want)


moreover

you have a bad MU against monocolored aggro, because of the quantity of the creatures, wich will rape you, cause you cant' block all,

so if you got not enough blockers to old, equiped blockers won't be enough too, and powder keg would disrupt more creatures, more fastly than jitte, and all monoC aggro deck runs jitte (not gobs of course) and he will disrupt your jitte on MD with......jitte, and because he got the numbers for him, he'll take the advantage



so i really don't understand why some list doesn't runs any 3S on MD ! so good clock! the aggro deck won't be able to play 2 creatures per turns
and gobs too, because you'll disrupt the vial with keg on MD, and you run SS on SB(or ingot shewer,as you prefer)


i won't make a report in english, too difficult for me, but quickly

R1: aluren

i won 2/0

G1 :3S first turn
G2 magus first turn ^^

R2: 43 lands looool

G1 :magus turn 2, he succefully plays 2 gamble on disk, and play them 2 times, each times i played a magus or a blood moon,, what a skill lol!!
G2: i side in 3 SS, magus turn 1, he go for gamble and disk, but i can plays SS on it the turn after

R3: ichorid

G1: i rape him, 3S, then magus,then slogger =GG
G2: he was unlucky, he plays LED turns one, i plays keg turn one and sak it,i will defeat him with 3S and rakdos after long turn

R4: against high tide instant

a "the source" member

G1: slogger turn one......... skill again!
G2: amazingly unlucky!, he made 4 times remand on 2 different slogger for clock(FOW the first after 2 remand),i made CotC turn 1, so all his BeB are cuts,high tide too,

after the macth i saw his deck and SB, didn't saw any snap on MD, and no Hurkyl's Recall, strange for a wish deck....

R5: dragon stompy

all my rounds i finished on the first people of the room, and take the time to watch the other first tables, i wonder because i never seen my opponent!
i understood why , he plays the same deck,and won more fastly than me LOL

G1: T1:me mountain go,him,city,mox,seething,slogger= no way GG
G2: i have a magus turn one i keep, because i acn cut is double colorless land
i play it, he makes ,land+mox+SSG+seething=slogger again

my god!!!

i had side of the 8 Cotv/3S +2 blood moon and side in the 4 kynesis,3 tephraderm,3SS against his equip

so funny to made the mirror!

R6:bayou aggro

i know the deck of my opponent i spyed him last round!

G1: i start, CotV T1,then moon Turn, he scooped Oo
G2: he start, made a thougtseize one 3S(i had moon too), i make moon turn one,then 3s, he scoop Oo

no macth

i'm at 5/0/1 i've got the best %oop Win of the tournament, so i decided to make draw ,my opponent was at 6/0/0, (the player wich goes to final with thresh) we play it for fun i loose 2/0



top 8 standings:

i'm 6th

the hight tide i beat is 8th
the other DS in 9th after make intentionnal draw against the high tide, i'm sorry for him, but it's so crazy, combo such a good MU, he didn't have to draw i think

top8 : TES

i know is deck, i won the toss

G1: mull at 6 and keep a magus turn 1
3s turn 3

then i'll top deck :
land/land/land/moon/land/moon/land/SSG/magus/SSG

my god!

the magus makes him down to 2 life when:
10 tokens on play when i top decked the first SSG , i keep my blockers, then i finally top decked a slogger, cast him and active GG


G2:mull at 6

3S first turn,then gathab, no way for him i won



top 4: against the aggro loam

i won the toss

G1: i made such a huge mistake, i keep my hand with

city/mox/SSG/magus/mox/land/Cotv

i goes to city+mox=magus , i keep the CotV to play it at 2 at second turn, what a mistake!!!!!!!
at his first turn he played mox,sword the magus,and wast the city

if i played CotV at O on my T1 it was GG for me

G2:i got a tephraderm T1, i play it,he will play mongrel/tarmo/terravore/terravore..... no way i die after trying to rape him with tephraderm,and 2 morphed gathan on play......


belgian people was really friendly, i'll be back next year!






for the deck, i try to find the solution against loam, i'm testing dead/gone on SB (good kisscool card),if morning tide can edit a pillage card with mana cost :2: R it will be include on SB or MD (sack the vial/crucible/mox/the basic land fecthed on resp' of the moons), the actual pillage is bad beacause of the :1: RR cost

Dr. DOOM
12-24-2007, 08:54 AM
Hey man, I saw you play the first top 8 game there, fun to see that deck in action. Congratulations, too!

lesly
12-24-2007, 09:11 AM
hey jeanmarie,glad you found the source finally:tongue:

atm i am testing phyrexian furnace against loam ,why you ask me?well i had this plan in mind

1st turn furnace and you can start removing his gy(mainly lands,though it's the bottom card each time)
the terravore could be less of a threat then(i think)cause we can handle a 4/4terra,but not a 5/5 or not that eazy.

when the loam finally comes we can try to remove it,though it's a hard call cause he can still cycle a land in response,maybe it could be promising and maybe not,it needs some further investment and testing.

Peter_Rotten
12-24-2007, 09:20 AM
We are very pleased to have many new members from many different nations. Since we assume that English is your second language, we make some exceptions for grammar for foreign members. However, we do hope that you can at least use the shift-key to place the appropriate capitals in your post.

- thanks,

The Source

PS - And we're pretty sure that your English is 1000 times better than our French :wink:.

la loutre
12-24-2007, 11:09 AM
We are very pleased to have many new members from many different nations. Since we assume that English is your second language, we make some exceptions for grammar for foreign members. However, we do hope that you can at least use the shift-key to place the appropriate capitals in your post

no problem I'll do so :)

and about the grammar, sorry I do my best!


Hey man, I saw you play the first top 8 game there, fun to see that deck in action

lol you saw the very great first game of the top 8 ,when magus mades alone 9 phases of attack alone? that was funny ^^


atm i am testing phyrexian furnace against loam

hi Lesly,

I already seen this card on some SB of white stax

but I don't understand one thing:


when the loam finally comes we can try to remove it,though it's a hard call cause he can still cycle a land in response,

text of furnace:


T: Remove the BOTTOM card of target player's graveyard from the game.
1, Sacrifice Phyrexian Furnace: Remove target card in a graveyard from the game. Draw a card.


so it means you need, to play it turn 1,to activate the capacity of Furnace everyturn,and the LOAM player musn't have more than one cards trashed each turns,

hmm tell us if your test works good or not, but I'm not sure it should take the slot of tormod on SB

my 2 cents

QQQ
12-24-2007, 11:11 AM
Congrats Otter!

Unfortunately, with the rough writing, I'm not certain what some of your points are.

One theme I see repeated throughout your report that I can't agree with, or stress enough is scouting. This deck benefits more than any I've played by knowing what your opponent is playing. It has a much lower mulligan rate than one would think, and you can decrease it further by taking advantage of the time your blowouts give early. I have had matches where I actually was celebrating the win when pairings went up.

I agree that Keg is generically good, but I would run it in the sideboard. I actually include it in my "anti-Goblins" cards along with Pyrokenisis, though I don't agree that the matchup is anything but favorable for this deck. I would always run a full set of 'Kenisis before metagaming Pyroclasm, it just has way more useful applications in general.

I agree with the name being inappropriate, but so are a lot of them. Since TML III, there has been a set list only changing 4-10 cards though. So the name is a good identifier, which is the most important thing. I also agree that Crypts are needed in the SB, and that Tephraderm is in most cases sub-optimal. With his removal though, you will most likely need to beef up your creature count either in the main deck or SB.

I disagree that Moncolor Aggro is the worst matchups. Mid-range Aggro, and non-Blue Board Control are the worst. Survival, "True" Stax decks, and GB(w) "Trainwreck" types being the most prominent examples. I also disagree that 8 Moons make Landstill a Bye. There are many who still run U/W only, or a possible minor third spash that are very difficult.

It is these matchups that you need equipment in more than any other, in which I disagree with your point the most. I can't comment on what combination might be best, as your meta, and creature package determine that. But cutting it entirely is basically asking to lose to decks like Landstill and Survival. While your threat density is best served by replacing these Equipments with creatures against Combo and most Aggro, you will never have more threats than these decks have removal....and access to it. It also forces a split focus for these decks. Do they use there artifact destruction on the Chalice@2 that has been slowing them down? Or do they blow up the SoFI you have waiting to add four damage to the next swing you get? Since so many of these matchups become attrition wars, you have to make every creature you cast an immediate threat. With Equipment you can do this, and even Elgin decks cannot go 1-for-1 indefinately.

Thank you very much for your report. It is strange to see how popular this deck is in France in comparison to here. So many decks now are various derivitives of Aggro-Tempo Counter/Top that I can't even find test games anymore. Loam decks that you see in Europe are far more challenging matchups, and with that meta I would run 8 Moons as well.

largebrandon
12-24-2007, 11:31 AM
Bienvenue à TheSource!!

Je suis hésitant de l'absence des équipement. Jitte, c'est un must!

Anyway, I wouldn't NOT want a situation in which I couldn't slap a Jitte or a Warhammer on my Hellbented dragon (HAWT).

8 Blood Moons is a lot in one deck, it seems that it is TOO many. I've been running 4x magus and 2x Blood moon in Main, and 2 more in SB.

Any thought about having some sort of burn in the deck? I know Demonfire has been brought up, but what about Fireblast. I wouldn't put in LBolt, because we have CotV set at 1 a lot of times.

nastynate
12-24-2007, 11:41 AM
the deck is named "dragon stompy" so bad name! because it's not an aggro deck but a stax deck, so red stax, or moon stompy should be a better name

Actually, it's not really a "stax deck" either. Dragon Stompy is better described as an aggro-prison deck. It's goal is to drop turn one lock pieces (moon, chalice, or trinisphere) followed by turn two threats. The turn two threats put the opponent on a short clock, giving them only a few turns to find an answer to your lock components or die to your big beaters.

Dragon Stompy doesn't gun for a hard-lock like stax (with smokestack, crucible, and trinisphere), but for a soft-lock that hinders the ability of the opponent to go about their normal game plan while dragons, sloggers, and raiders beat face.

The best deck I can think of to compare Dragon Stompy to would be the old 5/3 workshop aggro decks of vintage. There isn't much in legacy (or any other format for that matter) that really parallels the game-plan of Dragon Stompy quite as well.

lesly
12-24-2007, 03:04 PM
my plan whas to play furnace and crypt,on the otehr hand,boarding in 7cards might be just overkill(what do we get out?i guess seething song could go?probably in my case 3powder keg also?)
dunno,i'll test it a bit and i'll post my results later this week.

Juggs
12-25-2007, 05:29 AM
Felicitation sur T4! Alors ecrire en francais avec du bon grammair ca va? Trop drole, ma faute je sais mon francais ecrit est trop mal! Mais sans blague votre englais est trop bein, je suis vachement surpris que les mondes se plein! S'il vous plait poste ou PM moi le link du site francais, j'aimerais bein le voire.

What was anarchy in your sideboard for?

Sorry, we're an American site and most of us are monolingual. English por favor.

-PR

hcldecalastie
12-26-2007, 06:50 AM
Any thought about having some sort of burn in the deck? I know Demonfire has been brought up, but what about Fireblast. I wouldn't put in LBolt, because we have CotV set at 1 a lot of times.

Rift Bolt seems to be better like LBolt because of CotV sure.
Fireblast ... with moon why not, but whythout, I fear about my mountain :/

What about earth quake, it's burning and make a reset vs gob... ok with tomb we are often "life short", just an idea, not already tested :/

About anarchy in SB, I think is metagame question ...

Sanguine Voyeur
12-26-2007, 09:02 AM
What about earth quake, it's burning and make a reset vs gob... ok with tomb we are often "life short", just an idea, not already tested :/This deck used to run Pyroclasm and Earthquake main deck as a sweeper against little people decks and that final burn to the face with Earthquake.

I assume that neither are run as wildly as before due the the fact that Goblins is less present and both of those are bad at dealing with Thresh creatures, especially Tarmogoyf.

Finn
12-26-2007, 10:02 AM
Hey all, I have been silently following this deck for a long time. But now I have to say that I think the new blood have the direction pegged correctly.

creatures are only kills, i think running any equipment is such a mistake, because jitte on board alone is so bad, powder keg or trini on board is a good cloakI think this guy has it right.


Anyway, I wouldn't NOT want a situation in which I couldn't slap a Jitte or a Warhammer on my Hellbented dragon (HAWT). Hot yes. But I think it is win-more.

Blue Faerie Stompy decks need equipment because the creature selection is slim. And the removal is even slimmer. Red is certainly not in that spot. I have played the deck enough to know that once a Pit Dragon is on the table, the opponent has got trouble. Equipment or no, that thing can kill fast with double strike. Gathans at 5/5, Arc Sloggers, same story really. These are not the kinds of critters that need equipment.

I play good old-fashioned Fireball instead. Plus we pitch Spirit Guides and pin excess Magi under a Chrome Mox. There needs to be a higher density of threats. I have played the games when my opponent allowed my equipment to sit there while countering/destroying a few key creatures. These matches can become easy wins with more important cards.

Just food for thought. Has anyone tried:
Ydwen Efreet
Pyromancy
Shaleskin Plower

nastynate
12-26-2007, 11:44 AM
The only equipment I would run is Umezawa's Jitte, and the reason for it twofold. The first reason is that it turns magus of the moon and excess simian spirit guides into viable threats. The second reason is that jitte is disgusting when equipped to a double striking dragon.

They may seem like "win more" cards in a vacuum, but in effect they speed up your clock by turning your utility/disruption creatures into real monsters. I have no problem with starting hand of ancient tomb, simian spirit guide, seething song, magus of the moon, umezawa's jitte, and two random cards, because I'll be swinging in with a jitte equipped magus on turn two.

Warhammer and sword of fire and ice are nice, but they seem like overkill, and sword of fire and ice in particular has terrible synergy with hellbent. I'd much rather run threats or disruption in those slots.


Just food for thought. Has anyone tried:
Ydwen Efreet
Pyromancy
Shaleskin Plower

Ydwen is OK, but not fantastic. The big drawback is that it only has 3 power, and that it costs RRR. I'd rather have a juggernaut, and I don't play those either.

Pyromancy is the hotness. Hellbent enabling reusable direct damage is pretty awesome. I might consider replacing arc-sloggers with these bad boys.

Shaleskin prowler is pretty bland. It's nice to have a second morph creature (for bluffing purposes), but a 3/2 that destroys a land for 3 mana and then 5 mana more for the morph is pretty bad.

Another card worth considering is Uba Mask. It gives you hellbent for the remainder of the game, and neutralizes counterspells permanently. I'm not really sure if its main deck worthy, but it has very good synergy with deck.

Tacosnape
12-26-2007, 02:51 PM
Jitte isn't win more. Jitte is creature removal with a side of being lifegain and creature pump. Accusing Jitte of being win more is ludicrous and clearly indicative that people are blindly throwing terms around with comprehending their meanings.

If you aren't killing creatures with an equipment piece, it's admittedly probably not worth it, which is why Loxodon Warhammer and Sword of Light and Shadow don't make the cut.


This deck used to run Pyroclasm and Earthquake main deck as a sweeper against little people decks and that final burn to the face with Earthquake.

I assume that neither are run as wildly as before due the the fact that Goblins is less present and both of those are bad at dealing with Thresh creatures, especially Tarmogoyf.

Earthquake was never run in this deck. Rolling Earthquake was. There's a huge difference. And Rolling Earthquake was good at its job, although I admit that it was largely an innovation of Phantom's (I think. Eldariel might have had something to do with Rolling Quake's inclusion. I forget.) and not my own and he had to nag at me awhile before I ran it over Pyroclasm.

However, you're more or less correct as to the reasons it isn't run. Goyf's toughness is ludicrous, and goblins are less common. The third reason, however, is the inclusion of smaller creatures, like Magus of the Moon and Simian Spirit Guide, who tend to get swept away in your own boardsweepers. This is in large part why Pyroclasm/Rolling Earthquake has been relegated to the sideboard.

Alfred
12-26-2007, 08:40 PM
Wow, I really have to commend you on this deck, it's great! I've been playing around with it for a while now, and the ability to plop down a first turn Trinisphere consistantly is just great, and most of the lock peices are very relevant to the metagame and Legacy in general. What I've been wondering about is whether some land destruction could work here?

Something like Detritivore could be pretty interesting as both a win condition as well as a way of keeping them locked down under a Trinisphere. It would also be pretty darn good with Seething Song and the 2 mana lands, negating the fact that it's a little slow. Another great thing about it is that the land destruction effect is uncounterable (other than stifling it) and the lands made into Mountains by the Moon effects are still nonbasic in type.

Detritivore is also pretty badass against dredge and loam decks, because he can get frigging gigantic under the right circumstances. It also kicks Standstill right in the gonads on multiple levels, because not only does it kill all of their manlands that operate underneath it, they don't get to draw the cards until it's finished blowing them up meaning that they might have to discard the cards that they draw off of it due to mana constraints.

TeKo
12-26-2007, 09:00 PM
Sorry I was wrong !

Jak
12-26-2007, 09:03 PM
No. Mountains do not always equal basic lands. See Volcanic Island. "Mooned" mountains would not untap.

Alfred
12-26-2007, 09:03 PM
Aren't "mooned" Nonbasics = Mountains? And Mountains = Basiclands! Imo they untap with B2B, you can't destroy them (with Waste, Detritivore) and so on.

Q: With Blood Moon in play, are the non-basic lands that have been turned into Mountains still non-basic? If I were to target one with Sowing Salt, would I remove all other Mountains in that player's deck?

A: Blood Moon does not change the supertypes of the lands that it affects; specifically, they do not become basic lands. So yes, you can target one of these lands with Sowing Salt. However, Blood Moon does not change the names of these cards, so you will only be able to search the appropriate player's library, hand, and graveyard for those cards with the same name as the targeted land, not Mountains.

Barook
12-26-2007, 09:05 PM
Aren't "mooned" Nonbasics = Mountains? And Mountains = Basiclands! Imo they untap with B2B, you can't destroy them (with Waste, Detritivore) and so on.

Nope, there's a difference.

Normal Mountains of the type "Basic Land - Mountain".

Mooned Lands have the type "Land - Mountain" - and due to this, they're non-basic. For the same reason, Artifact lands are still artifacts because Moon can't screw around with supertypes.

Alfred
12-26-2007, 09:06 PM
Sorry I was wrong !

Haha, it's okay, it's a bit confusing. But I still think Detritivore would be a good card for this deck to include!

danpo
12-26-2007, 10:28 PM
Has anyone tested Ogre Shaman here? He's a 3/3 Stormbind for 3RR, which seems like a reasonable fit for this deck, in that he pitches unwanted Jittes and Chalices and such to facilitate hellbent.

A few posts up some folks were digging Pyromancy, and Shaman seems superior there in that he also carries gear like Jitte, costs less to activate, and turns easily stranded cards like Chrome Mox and Chalice into Shocks.

Granted, if you have a Pit-Dragon down the mana is prolly better spent firebreathing, and Ogre Shaman is no Arc-Slogger when it comes to ruining weenie hoards. Then again, if you have one of those dudes down, aren't you winning regardless?

That the discard is random might be untenably crappy at times, but I expect that's rare.

Anyway, to the extent that a redundant threat is desired, Ogre Shaman seems preferable to, say, Tephraderm.

Yep.

Sanguine Voyeur
12-26-2007, 10:42 PM
It's not as good as Arc-Slogger. It cost the same for a smaller body with an ability that's harder to use.
Earthquake was never run in this deck. Rolling Earthquake was. My mistake. I used Earthquake because Portal cards don't exist.

Alfred
12-26-2007, 11:52 PM
Along with Detritivore, I think this deck should consider using Shard Pheonix over Sulfur Elemental. Sulfur Elemental does beat counterspells, but so does Shard Pheonix. Shard Pheonix is also a pyroclasm, it flies with equipment, can continually chump block late game and is another card that synergizes with Seething Song (good against fast aggro).

Sulfur Elemental is just not powerful enough to warrant inclusion IMO. Sure it comes down quickly and gets through countermagic but I find this deck lacks control. The problem with Sulfur Elemental is that it can outclass exactly 0 creatures in the format. Unless their board is completely gone or attacking, it's going to be difficult to do anything with it. Getting down a first turn lock peice is incredible against aggro, but a lot of the time, you want an answer to the dorks they've already spewed onto the board.

Consider that Shard Pheonix has potentially 4 power against non-flying creatures, and the only card in the deck that it doesn't synergize with is Magus of the Moon. It has evasion, unlike any other creature in the deck, so it works well with equipment and it's swords-proof, so your opponent can never get rid of it without graveyard removal (which they will most likely side out or never side in against this deck).

If you're worried about the curve, there are still 8 3 mana creatures (the equivilant of a one/two drop) and the lock peices usually come down first. The problem that I've noticed is that with equipment, if a deck has a lot of removal you can quickly end up without a threat to equip. That won't be a problem with Shard Pheonix. Eventually you're going to equip him up and win the game.

It's both an anti-control card, as well as an anti-aggro card, and gives you a long game outside of topdecking. I would give it the nod in the sideboard at least.

EDIT: I totally agree with Finn's assessment that this deck lacks threat density. What better way to improve threat density than a threat that doesn't go away? I was also thinking that equipment might be extranious, but it does have the ability to turn things like Magus as well as even Simian Spirit guide into threats. I really encourage people to start playing with Shard Pheonix, because it has been working very well for me in my testing.

Zork
12-27-2007, 01:25 AM
I also thought of shard phoenix, but you can't counter the argument of changing the curve by saying that the curve will still have 3cc creatures. No one argues that, they argue that 8 3cc cratures is too few.

Trust me, as someone who played a list with more 5cc guys at multiple tournaments, when I say that the deck can't consistantly cast 5cc. Most often, the deck will not get perfect mana bases. The way to maximize the deck's potential, then, is to make it as consistant as possible under the restrictions of the manabase. That's why Tahngarth or Ogre Shaman would probably have to replace the 4th Arc-Slogger if they were to be included in the deck (I prefer 4 Sloggers, but if you wanted to replace Slogs with one I would recommend Tahngarth)

In addition, Shard Phoenix beats like my grandmother and recurs for triple red. Triple red is bad in this deck, and I mean really bad (I'm looking at you Ydwen Efreet). I feel that, in the same way, Detritivore is too expensive to suspend on a regular basis, and can too often end up weak and/or a dead card game one. Maybe sideboard potential, but he seems really inconsistant in a deck that needs consistancy.

Although I must agree with your assessment of Sulfur Elemental. He is not a great creature, and is the weakest of the threats, but he is probably the best 3cc creature not already in the deck because his abilities are relevant and control is one of the most swingy matches this deck has. Perhaps once MT is released we will all fall in love with the Taurean reverse-dryad. I know I'm going to be testing it out.

Alfred
12-27-2007, 02:10 AM
I also thought of shard phoenix, but you can't counter the argument of changing the curve by saying that the curve will still have 3cc creatures. No one argues that, they argue that 8 3cc cratures is too few.

Really, I don't think it's too few, because ostensibly, you do not just have those as your first turn drop, you also have lock peices as well. Most of the time I like dropping the lock peices first so I can nullify as much of my opponent's hand as possible. This deck, if anything, has too much acceleration (though I can see why) and it does have more than 8 3cc creatures: it has Simian Spirit Guide as well, which is a relevant threat with equipment. It's not like you're taking a full four 3 drops out of the deck, you're taking out 2 to squeeze in more threat density.


Trust me, as someone who played a list with more 5cc guys at multiple tournaments, when I say that the deck can't consistantly cast 5cc. Most often, the deck will not get perfect mana bases. The way to maximize the deck's potential, then, is to make it as consistant as possible under the restrictions of the manabase. That's why Tahngarth or Ogre Shaman would probably have to replace the 4th Arc-Slogger if they were to be included in the deck (I prefer 4 Sloggers, but if you wanted to replace Slogs with one I would recommend Tahngarth)

I haven't found 5 mana to be a problem at all. This deck runs 26 mana sources, 4 of which are Chrome Mox, 4 of which are Simian Spirit Guide, not to mention that 8 of your lands produce 2 mana each. On top of that, you have 4 Seething Songs, which make getting to 5 mana a breeze. It has never been an issue with me. The issue that I've been having with the deck is having enough creatures to fight through removal that decks throw at me. A lot of the time, especially with Gathan Raiders, the problem is having enough threats to beat decks that 1 for 1 me.

There is a TON of card disadvantage built into this deck that makes going against control decks a pain. The solution is to pack creatures that stick around for a long period of time. Shard Pheonix does that, and none of your other threats do that. Your other threats get smoked by removal, often leaving you in topdeck mode, waiting for you to get killed.


In addition, Shard Phoenix beats like my grandmother and recurs for triple red. Triple red is bad in this deck, and I mean really bad (I'm looking at you Ydwen Efreet). I feel that, in the same way, Detritivore is too expensive to suspend on a regular basis, and can too often end up weak and/or a dead card game one. Maybe sideboard potential, but he seems really inconsistant in a deck that needs consistancy.

I'm running Detritivore in my sideboard currently, and Shard Pheonix in my mainboard. I put both in my deck against control, because you're going to have enough time to use both. Shard is better maindeck because he utilizes the equipment that you have on the board, and gets rid of troublesome weenies. The "slow as your grandmothing" thing is pretty funny, I have to admit I lol'd at that, but he serves a couple of purposes. Against Goblins, Elves, and other low cc Stompy decks, you're going to rush him into play via a Seething Song or multiple acceleration pieces so that you can nuke their board.

Against control and midrange decks, you're going to play equipment, play him when you have the chance, and ride him to victory, ignoring their countermagic. Equipment (especially Sword of F&I) makes the evasion he has invaluable, and makes him a little bit faster than your grandmother on offense :P (he is primarily a defensive creature, and a long-game win condition).

Also, about the triple red problem that you might encounter, the recursion effect is always going to be relevant long-game, when you will probably have the 3 red mana available. 14 permanent red mana sources is definitely enough to rely upon after the first 8 or so turns of the game.


Although I must agree with your assessment of Sulfur Elemental. He is not a great creature, and is the weakest of the threats, but he is probably the best 3cc creature not already in the deck because his abilities are relevant and control is one of the most swingy matches this deck has. Perhaps once MT is released we will all fall in love with the Taurean reverse-dryad. I know I'm going to be testing it out.

The Taurean reverse-dryad sounds promising, but Sulfur Elemental is pretty poor IMO. His 3cc-ness isn't as apealing as it sounds in a vacuum, because he is not only played in such a low quantity, he also has such a weak body in combat. This deck is packing ZERO removal. Squeezing him through in combat is almost impossible, and even with Jitte, where you want the counters, if you don't have another creature to attach it to after the first threat, you're going to be in trouble. You want something with evasion to get past the inevitable blocker they will put on the board, and it's not always going to be blue or red.

@everyone else:
Is anyone else having trouble with Landstill? If they are packing Disk and CoP:Red in the board, I find it's almost impossible to disrupt them enough to pull the win out, even if I'm running a more aggressive version of the deck. Disk is such a beating against this deck. Needle sounds good, but when you have to pick between COP and Disk, eventually countermagic is going to enter the equasion, even past Trinisphere and Chalice.

Dr. DOOM
12-27-2007, 03:35 AM
lol you saw the very great first game of the top 8 ,when magus mades alone 9 phases of attack alone? that was funny ^^



Yes, you had magus, blood moon and trinisphere out. Your opponnent had some non basic mountains :laugh: I was playing Faerie stompy and ended 66th, mostly because of my lack of experience with Faerie stompy.

Tacosnape
12-27-2007, 04:32 AM
Okay, there seems to be some misconceptions floating around that

1. Dragon Stompy lacks threat density.

and

2. Playing incredibly bad cards like Shard Phoenix or anything else that costs five mana fixes this problem.

So let's start with point 1.

My current build of Dragon Stompy runs 22 threats, and any credible build runs at least 20. This is made somewhat thinner by Chrome Mox. However, 22 threats is very sufficient, especially considering several of them can end the game by themselves.

However, in the odd instance that Dragon Stompy is short on threat density, who the holy hell cares? Combo doesn't care about your threat density, and Aggro really doesn't either because most Aggro runs smaller threats than you and capitulates to Chalice, and the few that don't fit into this category don't run more than a small handful of removal cards.

This leaves control. Dragon Stompy wasn't ever intended to beat control. The reason it can do so now is in large part because of Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon. Additionally, Chalice for 1/2 and/or Pithing Needle contribute to taking your opponent off their threat removal capabilities.

So what control decks are you actually worried about that don't roll over to Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, and Pithing Needle?

Secondly, on to point 2.

2A - Shard Phoenix sucks. Seriously, guys, what the hell? Shard Phoenix? Shard Phoenix? 5 mana for a 2/2? The whole concept of Chalice Aggro is to accelerate into big creatures. This is a terrible idea.

2B - If I have learned one thing about this deck, it's that you can't play anything that costs 5 other than Arc-Slogger if you maindeck any Blood Moons at all. Not Chandra, not Tephraderm, not Shard Phoenix, not Razormane Masticore, not anything. This is because you will not hit five mana with a moon effect in play consistently. In fact, you won't hit it any better than one time out of four. And nothing kills your aggressive capabilities like not being able to play a card and keep Hellbent.

As such, you have to play the Moons when you topdeck them to keep Hellbent. And once you do, suddenly you're in a position where topdecking an Arc-Slogger will shut off your Hellbent. The chances of this are remote and Slogger's strong enough to be worthwhile, but if you play the deck long enough, you will lose games because you ripped a Slogger off the top and screwed yourself out of Hellbent at a crucial time. Slogger's going to have to fight to keep his spot when the much more consistent Taurean Mauler comes along and discovers there's only so many Sulfur Elementals he can kick out of the deck.

Therefore, why on earth would you want to play CMC-5 cards five through eight, when they aren't going to be as good as Slogger and increase your chance of Hellbent-screwing yourself into the loss column?


@everyone else:
Is anyone else having trouble with Landstill? If they are packing Disk and CoP:Red in the board, I find it's almost impossible to disrupt them enough to pull the win out, even if I'm running a more aggressive version of the deck. Disk is such a beating against this deck. Needle sounds good, but when you have to pick between COP and Disk, eventually countermagic is going to enter the equasion, even past Trinisphere and Chalice.

I fail to grasp how people in the Landstill thread are bitching about having trouble with Dragon Stompy at the same time people in the Dragon Stompy thread are bitching about having trouble with Landstill.

Unless they are very basic-heavy, resolve a Blood Moon and win. If they can consistently handle your Moon effects, you're going to be slightly unfavored from that point no matter what you do, but there are some things you can do to improve your chances.

When you bring in your Pithing Needles, you name board-sweepers and board-sweepers only. Name Deed if they have it, Disk if they have it, and Explosives only if they have it and you don't have a Moon. Once you lock down their sweepers and get a Blood Moon down, if you're somehow facing one of the 3% of Landstill decks that run Circle of Protection: Red, just kill them with a face-down Gathan Raiders.

Trinisphere, for the record, is crap against Landstill in this deck unless they run a build where Blood Moon makes them completely 100% guaranteed to auto-scoop. Then it can sometimes be worthwhile to attempt to stop them from countering your Blood Moons. Otherwise, you're better off running Needles, Moons, Chalices (for 2), and then Trinispheres if you still have slots leftover after cutting your Equipment for Needles and the maximum number of Moons.

Also, if you face a lot of UW or White enchantment-heavy Landstill, Anarchy's always an option.


My mistake. I used Earthquake because Portal cards don't exist.

I'm still laughing out loud at this. +5 lesbian points.

la loutre
12-27-2007, 05:16 AM
I aggre with tanoscape


-pheonix sux, because it's a 2/2 for 5, if you like the pyroclasm effect,run it onto MD or rolling earthquake (wich are pretty bad too)

-detritivore really sux

text:Detritivore's power and toughness are each equal to the number of nonbasic land cards in your opponents' graveyards.

so if your opponent have terravore on board they should be at least as big as your detritivore, and certainly bigger, if he was able to waste you a city/tomb before you played a moon/magus


-Ydwen Efreet cost RRR and not strong enough to kill the tarmo
-Pyromancy as a really bad cost of 2RR, for a not broken effect
-Shaleskin Plower sux too, it's more expensive than petravark for the same effect
-taurean mauler could be a good card but i think it's not:
no flying,and it's really not combo with the trinisphere and the COTV wich doesn't allows your opponent to play more than one spells each turn, so this creature won't be on MD

if think the 6th man is really the elemental sulfur, because the capacity Split second, gives you a relly strong "surprise blocker" that will kill some moongose,werebaer(without threshold fo course),some gobs attacking alone on turn 2/3,maybe a tarmo 2/3 on the third turn.... it's also really good to play an split second creature if you play some equipement and have one on board

and the 7th one is certainly the Granite Gargoyle if you runs the equipment because have the perfect cost of 2R, flying so able to kill if equiped with jitte and some tokens on it, power of 2 is not a problem because jitte will makes the kill, and the toughtness could have the boost for all untaped mountains, so it could be a good blocker too

i already test all the other creatures : covetous dragon,razomane,masticore,tephraderm, i was always unsatisfied

the deck doesn't need more and more creatures he already got all kills he need,
the deck is looking for some good control cards, a good creature removal against the tarmogoyf and terravore (tormod crypt is the best for the time)

i'm testing dead/gone on SB against terravore and other big one (funny against stalker and exalted, but those creatures are underplayed)
and i'm really dreaming that morningtide would give us a pillage with CC= 2R
because stone rains sucks and can't disrupt the artifact (vedalken,CoW,Mox,vial)

Alfred
12-27-2007, 06:57 AM
Okay, there seems to be some misconceptions floating around that

1. Dragon Stompy lacks threat density.

and

2. Playing incredibly bad cards like Shard Phoenix or anything else that costs five mana fixes this problem.

Threat density is completely important to the deck when 16 of the 22 creatures that you have to have have trouble with decks that have creatures with a power greater than 2. Winning in combat with a hellbent Gathan Raiders or Rakdos Pit Dragon is easy when you have no cards in your hand, but that isn't neccisarily going to be the case on turns 2-4, where a good deal of actual creature based combat occurs. Blocking with the creatures you have in this deck before you reach hellbent is a losing proposition a good deal of the time.

Saying that Shard Pheonix is bad doesn't make it so. This deck rolls over to Goblins (still a metagame threat, even if these boards are underrating it) on the draw a huge portion of the time. Having a creature that has the ability to wrath their side of the board multiple times is something that I think you are underrating. Even on the play, Goblins has enough mana disruption to get their main threats online a good portion of the time even through Trinisphere and Chalice @ 1. The other option you have that combats Goblins decently is Slogger, which usually requires a turn before it starts removing their main threats. Shard Pheonix, with all of it's shortcomings, is able to stop Goblins in it's tracks the moment it's cast, which is turn 1 at the earliest.

Shard Pheonix is a recurring threat against Threshold, which you purport to be a good matchup for sure, but still has the potential to go sideways. Threshold has a very hard time with recurring threats, which Shard Pheonix definitely is, especially with equipment.


So let's start with point 1.

My current build of Dragon Stompy runs 22 threats, and any credible build runs at least 20. This is made somewhat thinner by Chrome Mox. However, 22 threats is very sufficient, especially considering several of them can end the game by themselves.

However, in the odd instance that Dragon Stompy is short on threat density, who the holy hell cares? Combo doesn't care about your threat density, and Aggro really doesn't either because most Aggro runs smaller threats than you and capitulates to Chalice, and the few that don't fit into this category don't run more than a small handful of removal cards.

This leaves control. Dragon Stompy wasn't ever intended to beat control. The reason it can do so now is in large part because of Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon. Additionally, Chalice for 1/2 and/or Pithing Needle contribute to taking your opponent off their threat removal capabilities.

So what control decks are you actually worried about that don't roll over to Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, and Pithing Needle?

Landstill. Landstill is a deck that superficially looks like it rolls to Blood Moon, Chalice and Pithing Needle, that isn't actually the case. They have countermagic that trades 1 for 1 or better with the creatures that you drop, and outside of certain spells, can ignore the lock peices that you put into play due to their strong basic count and fetchers, large manabase and sweepers like Akroma's Vengeance/Disk. Even under a bloodmoon effect, countermagic makes it difficult to resolve your real win conditions.

Goblins is another deck that while on the play has a strong matchup against Dragon Stompy. Blood Moon effects are largely ineffective against Goblins, and can't be classified as lock peices in opening hands, leaving you with a select few preventative stoppers against their horde. Chalice goes a long way when you are on the play, as well as 3 tougness creatures, but beyond that, there isn't much to stop them from running over you. This is where your accelerants coupled with Shard Pheonix/Arc-Slogger would be effective. Shard Pheonix is even better than Slogger in this case, because not only does it recur, it costs exactly 5 mana to wrath their board, something that you should be able to acheive with your plethora of accelerants.

What about Cephalid Breakfast? A resolved Shard Pheonix is another potential lock peice against their deck, preventing them from going off as easily. It either stops Bridge activations, or kills Cephalid Illusionist in response to the targetting creature being played or vialed in. That's a pretty nifty feature that isn't currently available to the deck, and can happen as early as turn 1.

Another reason is that Shard Pheonix stops Aluren from comboing off, because it can wrath all of the Imperial Recruiters that Dreamstalker would otherwise bounce and finish the combo. In that case, it compliments Trinisphere, which isn't a bad thing.

It's also quite goodgainst decks like Suicide Black and Survival, because you can actually deal with the stuff they put on the board that your lock peices can't, or weren't around in time for. It's good against decks with a good amount of countermagic/removal because it allows you to withstand their 1 for 1 removal, which is something that this deck otherwise lacks.

As for your assertion that they aren't large enough to include or accelerate out, I think I've found at least a couple of decks that's it's worthwhile boarding in against. They have synergy with the equipment in the deck, not only in the sticking around part, but also because they have evasion as well.


2B - If I have learned one thing about this deck, it's that you can't play anything that costs 5 other than Arc-Slogger if you maindeck any Blood Moons at all. Not Chandra, not Tephraderm, not Shard Phoenix, not Razormane Masticore, not anything. This is because you will not hit five mana with a moon effect in play consistently. In fact, you won't hit it any better than one time out of four. And nothing kills your aggressive capabilities like not being able to play a card and keep Hellbent.

The decks that you want to play Shard Pheonix early against are not the decks that you are concerned about recurring it, really. The decks that you want to play this early against are either aggro decks or combo decks that are disrupted by it's instant pyroclasm-ness. The decks that you want to recur it against are going to be the ones where you have time to build up to 3 red mana/5 overall mana. Their synergy with equipment can also not be denied, due to their ability to stick around coupled with their evasion.

Also, it's not like you're playing a full set, which would probably be too much. You're playing 2, which should show up long game, when you want it, and not overly clutter your hand otherwise. Six 5 mana creatures is hardly a burden considering the amount of acceleration that this decks runs, especially Seething Song, which is geared around getting that class of creature into play. Shard Pheonix's dissynergy with Magus of the Moon is made up for by it's synergy with Gathan Raiders, allowing you to pitch it early to flip it over, and still "keep it in hand".


As such, you have to play the Moons when you topdeck them to keep Hellbent. And once you do, suddenly you're in a position where topdecking an Arc-Slogger will shut off your Hellbent. The chances of this are remote and Slogger's strong enough to be worthwhile, but if you play the deck long enough, you will lose games because you ripped a Slogger off the top and screwed yourself out of Hellbent at a crucial time. Slogger's going to have to fight to keep his spot when the much more consistent Taurean Mauler comes along and discovers there's only so many Sulfur Elementals he can kick out of the deck.

You mention living off the top of the deck with this deck, which is certainly a fact of life, considering 8 creatures have hellbent, and you want to get there with the deck. However, Shard Pheonix is very synergistic with 4 of these creatures, allowing you to keep them as a resource even after you've discarded them, unlike Arc-Slogger. Getting them into play is also easier due to their 4R mana cost.


Therefore, why on earth would you want to play CMC-5 cards five through eight, when they aren't going to be as good as Slogger and increase your chance of Hellbent-screwing yourself into the loss column?

Five through eight? I'm adding 2 to the deck, and I really think that you are overstating the hellbent screwage with the plethora of mana accelerants that this deck has available to it, as well as with 4 of those hellbent cards having the ability to purge hefty mana cards from your hand. I'm pretty sure that adding two extra five mana cards isn't going to affect the mulligans or topdeck screwage as much as you are letting on. In fact, in a lot of matchups, I'm sure it would actually help.


I fail to grasp how people in the Landstill thread are bitching about having trouble with Dragon Stompy at the same time people in the Dragon Stompy thread are bitching about having trouble with Landstill.

Unless they are very basic-heavy, resolve a Blood Moon and win.

There are a lot of things that need to go right in order for you to win the Landstill matchup. First of all, they can't draw the Akroma's Vengeance before they die, otherwise you lose your ability to lock them under Artifacts, creatures and enchantments. You also have to start attacking them around their countermagic and creature removal. Chalice at 1 stops them from Swordsing your threat, but Trinisphere is the thing that stops them from countering the threat itself. Can you count on having both?

You're suggesting Chalice @ 2, which prevents Counterspells and Standstills, but doing it at that amount opens you up to Swords on your threats, something that you can't afford due to the card-disadvantage nature of this deck. It also might not come down in time to prevent them from drawing 3, or countering the Chalice completely. Wrath, Humility and Moat are all possibilities that can totally wreck you, and get around your disruption suite. You can hope to get lucky and manascrew them if you're on the play with Bloodmoon effects and they have no Force, but that's not going to happen all of the time.

The thing about the Landstill matchup is that you need a very specific arrangement of threats and pre-emptive answers. It either requires you to win very short, or have some sort of threat long-game against them, otherwise you get rolled. I've decided to add things that help out long-game, because I think that this deck isn't fast or disruptive enough (in Landstill's case, not overall) to stop Landstill from doing it's thing. That's where the threat density thing is going to rear it's head, in matchups where they have one or two removal spells for your Chrome Mox/Gathan Raiders hand and they ignore the small threat and stop the big.

That's the problem I've found overall with this matchup. I'd love to test it out with you to see if I've got all the bases covered, but I think that that's how it plays out.

QQQ
12-27-2007, 10:06 AM
Wow. A lot to cover here. I'm also running off a proxy at work, so forgive my lack of quote tags. They won't work.

"I haven't found 5 mana to be a problem at all. This deck runs 26 mana sources, 4 of which are Chrome Mox, 4 of which are Simian Spirit Guide, not to mention that 8 of your lands produce 2 mana each. On top of that, you have 4 Seething Songs, which make getting to 5 mana a breeze. It has never been an issue with me. The issue that I've been having with the deck is having enough creatures to fight through removal that decks throw at me. A lot of the time, especially with Gathan Raiders, the problem is having enough threats to beat decks that 1 for 1 me."

First off, this deck runs thirty mana sources, as with it's mana base the Songs count. Second, "you will not hit five mana with a moon effect in play consistently." I can't stress this point enough. Moon effects are in general the strongest play this deck can make. Unfortunately, they severely curtail your own mana production. The deck runs no draw, no filtering, and can only count on 18 mana sources (City and Mox count as a half each). Even without the amount of experience I have with the deck, the math alone should show how improbable getting five mana reliably while maintaining a Moon effect should be,

"If I have learned one thing about this deck, it's that you can't play anything that costs 5 other than Arc-Slogger if you maindeck any Blood Moons at all. Not Chandra, not Tephraderm, not Shard Phoenix, not Razormane Masticore, not anything. This is because you will not hit five mana with a moon effect in play consistently. In fact, you won't hit it any better than one time out of four. And nothing kills your aggressive capabilities like not being able to play a card and keep Hellbent."

Holy Crap!!! It only took two months for people to finally figure this out!

"This deck rolls over to Goblins"

AHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHA!!!! This must be some kind of joke? I have never lost a match to standard Goblins, and consider it a wash pre-board, and favorable post. The thing is, no one plays standard Goblins anymore. Everyone runs one to two splashes. That's 23 Lands, with an average of four Mountains. This goes to highly favorable, and is what you should expect in tournament play. They can't deal with Slogger, and if they bring in cards to deal with Equipment, their threat density goes below what can handle Raiders. Both 'Clasm and 'Kenisis make it even easier.

"Landstill. Landstill is a deck that superficially looks like it rolls to Blood Moon, Chalice and Pithing Needle, that isn't actually the case. They have countermagic that trades 1 for 1 or better with the creatures that you drop, and outside of certain spells, can ignore the lock peices that you put into play due to their strong basic count and fetchers, large manabase and sweepers like Akroma's Vengeance/Disk. Even under a bloodmoon effect, countermagic makes it difficult to resolve your real win conditions."

I haven't seen Vengance in a while, but otherwise I agree. Once they go up to 4-color, Landstill does roll to Moons, but most don't. Two-color, from whom you might see Vengance, Humility, Moat, is a horrible matchup. The ones that splash a third color sort of even out, as they play as U/W anyway since you will easily cut off their splash color.

"What about Cephalid Breakfast? A resolved Shard Pheonix is another potential lock peice against their deck, preventing them from going off as easily. It either stops Bridge activations, or kills Cephalid Illusionist in response to the targetting creature being played or vialed in. That's a pretty nifty feature that isn't currently available to the deck, and can happen as early as turn 1."

Blah, blah Sulfur Elemental sucks. Wait........Bridge in Breakfast? Anyway, all this talk about he is the worst creature is true, but that doesn't change anything. While Ichorid is about even, Breakfast is highly unfavorable, especially on the draw. Crypts and 'Kenisis make it slightly favorable post board, but the fact is that they have one out to Sulfur in their entire deck and sideboard (Shaman). And to be honest, you will see Angel Stompy/Death and Taxes at some point. Since these decks were tailor made to beat Red, it is kind of nice to have a cheap guy who kills Priest, Mangara, Isamaru, and makes Angel a target all for free. I think his abilities against Control are already well documented.

"The decks that you want to play Shard Pheonix early against are not the decks that you are concerned about recurring it, really. The decks that you want to play this early against are either aggro decks or combo decks that are disrupted by it's instant pyroclasm-ness. The decks that you want to recur it against are going to be the ones where you have time to build up to 3 red mana/5 overall mana. Their synergy with equipment can also not be denied, due to their ability to stick around coupled with their evasion."

This is the most senseless statement I have seen in this arguement. Why would Combo care about a worthless clock, or a 5-mana Pyroclasm? What moron would go for the EtW plan against Dragon Stompy if they can accumulate any Storm? Tendrils absolutely wrecks DS if they can get off before lockdown, even if not lethal. And against Aggro, you will never have time to recur it. This deck is always in a race against Aggro unless it is one of the Sligh varients that can be shut out by Chalice. To be effective, you would have to have a creature that they couldn't kill, especially in response to you already doing two damage to it, and would have to expect a 5-mana Pyroclasm to sweep their board. I can't see it. The evasion holds no relevance either, as for the same mana I can just win the game with an evasive Dragon.

"You mention living off the top of the deck with this deck, which is certainly a fact of life, considering 8 creatures have hellbent, and you want to get there with the deck. However, Shard Pheonix is very synergistic with 4 of these creatures, allowing you to keep them as a resource even after you've discarded them, unlike Arc-Slogger. Getting them into play is also easier due to their 4R mana cost. Five through eight? I'm adding 2 to the deck, and I really think that you are overstating the hellbent screwage with the plethora of mana accelerants that this deck has available to it, as well as with 4 of those hellbent cards having the ability to purge hefty mana cards from your hand. I'm pretty sure that adding two extra five mana cards isn't going to affect the mulligans or topdeck screwage as much as you are letting on. In fact, in a lot of matchups, I'm sure it would actually help."

This again shows a lack of experience with the deck. One, the potential of having an uncastable does affect your chance of getting Hellbent. Two, yes a two-of can significantly affect the entire curve of the deck. I still only run three Dragons, as the deck can't support 8 double-Red spells consistantly. The deck goes Hellbent by trun three-four consistantly. The majority of it's wins are by dropping a lock, then fattie. At that point, you really don't care what else you cast, as you either have a 5/5. a 4/5 machine gun, or the End of Days swinging for the win. Extra lock pieces, creatures, or Equipment are great at that point, but as long as you can empty your hand it really doesn't matter. Your opponent usually has two turns to both find an answer, and resolve it through your disruption, or lose.

"The thing about the Landstill matchup is that you need a very specific arrangement of threats and pre-emptive answers. It either requires you to win very short, or have some sort of threat long-game against them, otherwise you get rolled. I've decided to add things that help out long-game, because I think that this deck isn't fast or disruptive enough (in Landstill's case, not overall) to stop Landstill from doing it's thing. That's where the threat density thing is going to rear it's head, in matchups where they have one or two removal spells for your Chrome Mox/Gathan Raiders hand and they ignore the small threat and stop the big."

I have to agree with Tacosnape here. Stuff like Phoenix, and Demonfire may work well for this, but are non-synergistic with the deck in general. I would much rather shore up the mediocre matches like Survival, and Breakfast, than attempt to add cards to help in such a difficult one. I can accept a loss against U/W(x) Landstill to get rid of cards that are too narrow otherwise.

Zork
12-27-2007, 06:59 PM
OK, instead of just telling people that they are wrong using my own testing in some vague arena, I'm going to present a case for my real-life experience with the deck in documented tournaments, what I learned from those tournaments, and what I learned from decks that have placed. I first played the deck that arguably (I'm not going to debate the origins of this deck) spawned the modern incarnations of Dragon Stompy, Empty the Slogger, at the US Nationals side event where I placed 3rd. Report:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6493&highlight=slogger

Note that I was underwhelmed by Covetous Dragon, and tried playing Tahngarth. I thought maybe dragon was the problem with the slot.

Next, I played the deck with my suggested changes (Pit-Dragon, Quake over ETW, Tahngarth as a 2 of, and Gathan Raiders) at the NoVa Legacy draft, where I lost to Breakfast and Permanent Waves. Link (I am listed as 5/3 with red splash):

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6247&page=9&highlight=fudruckers

I thought I lost to bad luck, which was not true. Earthquake was bad and my curve was too high. One of my matches to breakfast I lost with 3 mana on the board and a Tahngarth + slogs in hand, who would have won me the game if he were Sulfur Elemental.

Next, I played the deck (ignoring local tournaments) at TMLO 3, where Parcher and I discussed the deck at length, and my conclusion from the results and our talk can best be summed up by my earlier statement (+1 douche point for self quote, I know):


I'm gonna say no to both of them. While they both have a very nice initial cost, it is important to realize what makes the best decks the best: consistancy. This deck already has problems with dead draws (Mox, Song, extra jitte, etc.), and topdecking something that you either can't play or that will become relevant in more than three turns is bad, straight up.

This is the same reason that the deck should not play more than four 5cc and only three or four 4cc threats. Otherwise, you can't guarantee that they will be castable, which lowers the consistancy of the deck. If you don't agree with me, just look at Parcher's list: four slogs, and two dragons. We talked about the deck, and he agreed that there should be at least one more dragon MD. The reason for his curve? Consistancy.

Now, enough auto-fellatio about my experience with the deck, and lets look at top placing lists:

Parcher, 1st/2nd Split at TMLO3:

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City Of Traitors
10 Snow-Covered Mountain

4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Gathan Raiders
3 Sulfur Elemental
2 Rakdos Pit-Dragon

4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Seething Song

2 Demonfire

Sideboard

4 Pyrokenisis
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Blood Moon
2 Icefall
1 Trinisphere
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Rakdos Pit-Dragon

Note the 4 slogs, 2 dragons. Parcher has a low curve.

Top 8 in Germany from earlier in this thread: http://www.germagic.de/dc/deck.php?id=12057

Note: 4 slogs, 4 dragons

From the 120 person Dutch Legacy Championship:

Quarter-Finalist: Ivo Koolhaas


Deckname: Red Deck Wins

Maindeck:
2 Tephraderm
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Umezawa?s Jitte
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
10 Mountain
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Seething Song
4 Chrome Mox

Sideboard:
3 Ingot Chewer
3 Pithing Needle
2 Tephraderm
2 Trinisphere
4 Tormod?s Crypt
1 Blood Moon

Here we have a deck with 2 extra Tephraderm. Thats 1 against 2.


Here is my dragon stompy list for reference.

10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors

4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

4 Pit Dragon
4 Arc Slogger
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Gathan Raiders
3 Magus of the Moon
4 Seething Song
3 Blood Moon

I ended up 4-0-2ing into the top 8. Beat Angel Stax in the first round then lost to Landstill in the semi's.

Again, 4 slogs, 4 dragons.

And the Worlds list:

Main Deck
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
11 Mountain

4 Arc-Slogger
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Simian Spirit Guide

4 Blood Moon
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
3 Seething Song
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Trinisphere
3 Umezawa's Jitte


Sideboard
4 Powder Keg
3 Pyroblast
1 Pyrokinesis
2 Rorix Bladewing
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Trinisphere

4 slogs, 4 dragons, and an extra land.

My point in this mass of lists?
-My experience has told me that 5cc is bad when you play more than 4 of them.
-Top placing lists most often play lower curves, 4 5cc guys, and 3-5 4cc guys.
- Of all of the multitudes of Janky cards suggested for this deck, including Keldon Halberdiers, Tephradern, Tahngarth, Covetous Dragon, Petravark, Shard Phoenix, Ingot Chewer, Kris Mage, etc, exactly 2 of them have shown up in results: Mindless Automaton as a 1 of, and Tephraderm as a 2 of.

Tacosnape
12-27-2007, 08:30 PM
I pretty much agree with Zork (At least on the points of mana curves), and I think Taurean Mauler's upcoming presence will narrow the Creatures down to picking and choosing from the Holy Six. Arc-Slogger will be your 5 drop, Pit Dragon will be your 4-Drop. Gathan Raiders is your 3-drop/5-drop flex, and SSG, Magus of the Moon, and Taurean Mauler will all compete for the remaining 3-drop slots. The only other potentially viable guy is Flametongue Kavu, and he's a metagame call.

Slogger should be your only 5-drop, and this may or may not include Sword of Fire and Ice, which is virtually a 5-drop. (You can run one or two and get away with it as you can split the cost under Blood Moon, but it can still become cumbersome.) Your only 4-drops should be Pit Dragon and Jitte.

Every other single card in your deck should cost exactly 3 or 0, excluding sideboard cards like Needle, Pyroclasm, Keg, and whatnot.

Waikiki
12-28-2007, 01:12 AM
Ivo also has decided to stick with only just the 4 sloggers as his 5cc list in the Belgium championships where he placed 9th

technogeek5000
12-29-2007, 04:38 PM
I pretty much agree with Zork (At least on the points of mana curves), and I think Taurean Mauler's upcoming presence will narrow the Creatures down to picking and choosing from the Holy Six. Arc-Slogger will be your 5 drop, Pit Dragon will be your 4-Drop. Gathan Raiders is your 3-drop/5-drop flex, and SSG, Magus of the Moon, and Taurean Mauler will all compete for the remaining 3-drop slots. The only other potentially viable guy is Flametongue Kavu, and he's a metagame call.

Slogger should be your only 5-drop, and this may or may not include Sword of Fire and Ice, which is virtually a 5-drop. (You can run one or two and get away with it as you can split the cost under Blood Moon, but it can still become cumbersome.) Your only 4-drops should be Pit Dragon and Jitte.

Every other single card in your deck should cost exactly 3 or 0, excluding sideboard cards like Needle, Pyroclasm, Keg, and whatnot.

I realy like your list of X-drops. That list has realy made me think that there might not even be room for taurean mauler in the deck. SSG and Magus of the moon are both crucial to the deck and replacing them for Mauler would seem weak. The deck wants to prevent the opponent through playing creatures through Blood/Magus moon, chalice of the void, and Trinisphere so playing are card that gets stronger when they play spells would seem contradictory. Often it will be only a gray ogre so i think it would be better to not play him at all... Oh and would razormane masticore have a shot at being a five slot. It burns creatures like slogger, helps you keep hellbent, and is a 5 power first striker which is realy strong in the current metagame.

Illissius
12-29-2007, 05:03 PM
I pretty much agree with Zork (At least on the points of mana curves), and I think Taurean Mauler's upcoming presence will narrow the Creatures down to picking and choosing from the Holy Six. Arc-Slogger will be your 5 drop, Pit Dragon will be your 4-Drop. Gathan Raiders is your 3-drop/5-drop flex, and SSG, Magus of the Moon, and Taurean Mauler will all compete for the remaining 3-drop slots. The only other potentially viable guy is Flametongue Kavu, and he's a metagame call.

Are you sure that Mauler will be that good? Comparing it to Quirion Dryad...

+ it's a Changeling, but this is irrelevant here
+ 2R for 2/2 is less bad than 1G for 1/1
+ starting at 2/2 makes it somewhat less vulnerable to removal before it can grow

+ big one: you play red, but you don't play green
- and the other big one: your opponent gets to choose when it grows, not you

etrigan
12-30-2007, 12:58 AM
However, in choosing to not let it grow, they sacrificed board position.

I think it's worth testing, but I dont think it will ultimately work out. It has the same problem with Dryad, in that it's awesome early, and awful late, and has huge crosshairs on its back whenever it comes down early.

la loutre
12-30-2007, 07:22 AM
imho, running a 2/2 creatures which grows when your opponent plays spells, not so bad,

BUT

when you play a prison deck with CotV and 3S, it's really not combo......


flammetong kavu, i think isn't good for the time because won't kill a tarmogoyf (you run artifact,and enchant' with moon, so VS disrupt,and counter,the tarmo will easilly grow up to 5/6)

is anybody tested sieg-gang commander? against aggro deck on SB as chump blocker, and many tokens-jitte-equiped killers?

nastynate
12-30-2007, 09:01 AM
Has anyone tested Ogre Shaman here? He's a 3/3 Stormbind for 3RR, which seems like a reasonable fit for this deck, in that he pitches unwanted Jittes and Chalices and such to facilitate hellbent.

A few posts up some folks were digging Pyromancy, and Shaman seems superior there in that he also carries gear like Jitte, costs less to activate, and turns easily stranded cards like Chrome Mox and Chalice into Shocks.

I'm not touching ogre shaman. It's an inferior arc-slogger.

The reason I like Pyromancy (I am one of the few) is because it breaks the mirror match wide open without interfering with your core strategy. Board it in for trinisphere and use it to burn your opponent to the face, or use it in conjunction with slogger and jitte to take out their creatures so you can swing for the win. I'm looking at Pyromancy like a potential replacement for pyrokinesis.

I know people like to pump their dragons (that sounds a little perverted :wink: ), but I prefer killing opposing creatures in the mirror to trading with them in combat.

2 main deck pyromancy and 2 side-board (the same with 3sphere) makes it pretty easy to switch them back and forth as needed.


imho, running a 2/2 creatures which grows when your opponent plays spells, not so bad,

BUT

when you play a prison deck with CotV and 3S, it's really not combo......

You hit the nail on the head with Mauler. Awesome card, wrong deck. Mauler has zero synergy with the core strategy of Dragon Stompy. Lets add the rack to Stax and pyroclasm to Goblins while we're at it.


is anybody tested sieg-gang commander? against aggro deck on SB as chump blocker, and many tokens-jitte-equiped killers?

Chump bockers? Are you serious? Dragon stompy is not a deck that worries about chump blocking. Just kill your opponent.

There are three viable decks that might be able to out-aggro you: goblins, affinity, and goyf sligh. Just bring in board sweepers like pyroclasm and powder keg (you should already be side-boarding these) and you'll be fine. Chalice and blood moon already cut them off from many of their options, trinisphere slows them down significantly, and you already pack arc-slogger and jitte in your main deck.

Siege-Gang Commander is just another 5 casting cost threat that will clutter up your hand preventing you from reaching hellbent. It costs too much mana, isn't big enough to replace any of the beaters you already run (gathan raiders, pit dragon, slogger, and possibly mindless automaton), and will not improve your match-up against the two viable aggro decks (which is already fairly even pre-board and favorable post-board).

Tacosnape
12-30-2007, 03:52 PM
Are you sure that Mauler will be that good? Comparing it to Quirion Dryad...

+ it's a Changeling, but this is irrelevant here
+ 2R for 2/2 is less bad than 1G for 1/1
+ starting at 2/2 makes it somewhat less vulnerable to removal before it can grow

+ big one: you play red, but you don't play green
- and the other big one: your opponent gets to choose when it grows, not you

Actually, the only guy he has to be better than is Sulfur Elemental, which I believe he is, though I reserve the right to change my mind.

As for his credentials alone, for one thing, he costs :2::r:. This is the absolute best mana cost a creature in Dragon Stompy can have. This means he's playable off Any 2-land / Any Red Source and imprints on Chrome Mox.

While I agree that anything that gives your opponent the final choice is bad, this is a slightly different situation. Your opponent generally has to play spells to match the ridiculous onslaught you're throwing at him. If you've rendered him unable to do so via Chalice of the Void and Blood Moon, then oh well, Taurean Mauler won't grow and you'll still win. If your Chalices and Moons don't get the job done, then Mauler's going to be sitting there growing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's going to revolutionize the deck or push it to Tier 1 or anything, but I'm guessing he's going to take Sulfur Elemental's spot in builds running 22-24 creatures, and then we'll see from there. He isn't good enough to take spots from Magus, SSG, Pit Dragon, or Gathan Raiders, and he probably won't be good enough to take Slogger spots, but he might be due to Slogger's casting problems.

Also, Interestingly, the fact that he's a Changeling can be a pro or a drawback based on the situation. It makes him an ungodly drop against Slivers, for example, but not so much against some deck randomly maindecking Engineered Plague.

yurivish
12-31-2007, 05:32 PM
Also, Interestingly, the fact that he's a Changeling can be a pro or a drawback based on the situation. It makes him an ungodly drop against Slivers, for example, but not so much against some deck randomly maindecking Engineered Plague.

In that specific example, though, the Plague would be essentially nullified by the +1/+1 trigger.

zulander
12-31-2007, 05:56 PM
I don't think the mauler will be good. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this deck play chalice and 3sphere? The purpose of these cards is to make sure your opponent doesn't play cheap card soon, which means that mauler on turn 1 will be a 2/2 for a good 3/4 turns. A 2/2 on turn 3/4 != a threat. These are my opinions on why he won't be a good fit for the deck even though he does look pretty sexy.