[Article]Eternal Europe: Enter The Dragon

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Our latest unbanning might hold a lot more potential than most of us originally envisioned. This is my take on it:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...he-Dragon.html

[Svknoe]

I'll have to try this right away!

And time out on modo, I suppose.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

I'll have to try this right away!

And time out on modo, I suppose.

Hehe, yeah, I suspect the deck is probably hell on the clock on modo given that your kill takes roughly infinite triggers/Loothouse activations and you're planning to play a lot of 10+ turn games. Let me know how it does in those games you don't run afoul of not being able to just declare loop repititions online. ;)

[Svknoe]

I was reduced to winning with hardcast Oona in the first preboard game I played. It was pretty hilarious. As a control deck I like it a lot better with a relevant out to getting locked out of using the graveyard. The clock has not been too much of an issue so far, but I have not had to loot through the deck during the combo yet. I hope my opponents will keep conceding after I show them Stroke and arbitrarily much mana.

I like playing control a lot so a combo control deck rather than straight combo has a lot of appeal.

[sdematt]

Why you no Wu Spy?

-Matt

[Aggro_zombies]

I feel like the issue with this deck is that it's trying to be a control deck in an inferior color combination for control (Grixis versus Esper or BUG). Looking at the list, you're in red only for Bolts (much worse than Swords or Abrupt Decay since you don't care about their life total most of the time), REB (admittedly quite good), and Loothouse. Given that, the strength of being in Grixis hinges more or less entirely on whether Loothouse is better for enabling a combo-control deck than Swords to Plowshares or Pernicious Deed and Abrupt Decay.

I'm...not convinced. Four mana to loot once is very, very intense. On the combo end of things, you're already running Brainstorm, Ponder, Wish, and Dig, so you're not hurting for ways to quickly find one specific card. On the control end of things, Sensei's Divining Top does 95% of the card quality function that Loothouse has in a long, grindy game, but it does it without hoovering up all your spare mana every turn. Actually, thinking about it, the only real upside to Loothouse over Top is that you can use Loothouse to dig to, and then inter, Oona when comboing out with Dragon, which puts the card in effectively the same space as Drownyard except that it commits you to a third color.

The counterargument to this is that Drownyard is specifically a win condition, whereas Loothouse is mediocre at doing a lot of things. I think the correct answer to that is that this is Legacy; being mediocre at a lot of different things is no excuse for being mediocre. If you want to play a control deck with a smooth combo finish then putting yourself into superior control colors is the way to go. If you want to dedicate yourself to the combo then you still want Drownyard since it is better at digging you to a Dragon or Griselly Bear. I don't think building a deck that can switch roles is necessarily a good idea if only because you're asking to get dismantled by decks that are very, very good at being one thing (i.e., every top-tier deck in this format) since flexibility necessarily requires you to give up some of the power that comes with specialization.

I guess time will tell. There are a lot of things in Magic that look bad on paper but work out in practice.

[Jizz]

Great article !

I love the idea of a control deck relying on a combo to kill. But unlike Tinker for instance in Vintage that takes only 2 slots, this combo takes 4 + 6 = 10 slots (not counting entomb). A regular legacy control deck has fewer cards dedicated to that purpose (3 jace 2 entreat for instance). I feel like these decks are more consistent in a way. What would make this deck superior to those ?

PS : another idea is a grixis Omnishow deck on the same idea but entomb + snap + dig is very sexy indeed :)

[amalek0]

the most disappointing thing about this article was the lack of a decklist including multiple copies of gifts ungiven. Other than that, it was, as usual, the best magic content on the web for the day.

[Echelon]

@Carsten: Wonderful article, I enjoyed reading it quite a bit. Have you considered running Faithless Lootings over the Ponders? Sure it digs through less cards, but does help fuel Dig Through Time, perhaps even allowing you to run 4, and lets you discard your fatties when you happen to draw them. Also, the flashback is always nice in the late game.

Edit: Switching Ponders for Lootings also eats away at the number of cards you can pitch to FoW, dropping the count from 20 to 16. Might be a bit too few blue cards to support a set of FoWs, I don't know.

[phazonmutant]

This article was awesome and the deck is even more so. I played it (with slight changes) in a 40-person local tonight and went 3-1. Report is here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post865695

[Svknoe]

The deck is pretty great. I played a daily with the deck, losing the finals. Beat Sneak and show, storm, miracles and lost to a misplay versus storm in the last round. Loothouse was fantastic. It was surprisingly even good versus storm. Against Sneak and Show they can hardly cast show and tell with it in play. Much of the time I could simply loot away dragon and drop a reanimation spell to the show, killing instantly.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

I was reduced to winning with hardcast Oona in the first preboard game I played. It was pretty hilarious. As a control deck I like it a lot better with a relevant out to getting locked out of using the graveyard. The clock has not been too much of an issue so far, but I have not had to loot through the deck during the combo yet. I hope my opponents will keep conceding after I show them Stroke and arbitrarily much mana.

I like playing control a lot so a combo control deck rather than straight combo has a lot of appeal.

Lol, sweet introductory match!

@Matt: Wu Spy seems terrible on its own. Even if its a cheap way to sometimes help bin a Dragon and finish your opponent, I don't think I'd want that kind of thing in my deck.

@Aggro_Zombies: StP and Abrupt Decay are terrible at enabling combo control decks. A combo control deck is defined by the fact that it can play control well enough to grind when necessary but also has the ability to win fast combo style against opponents dedicated to trying to win by beating down (which would otherwise necessitate a lot of slots spent on removal to take full control). This in turn allows you to cut all (well, most of) those shitty removal spells for actual good cards, cards that you're happy to draw against any kind of opponent, not just those that rely on a creature-based gameplan (carddraw, disruption and ways to get your opponent dead before they can kill you). Removal options can define a control or midrange deck, what defines a combo control deck is the power and size of its draw engine (the more the better) and the size, speed and clunkiness of its combo finish (the smaller, faster and easier/more incidental to set up the better).

What all of that boils down to is this: Being able to switch roles is a huge boon, not a disadvantage. There's a reason combo-control has been the dominant strategy in Vintage blue control decks for a long time now. It's fundamentally a strictly superior way to play the game compared to an actual control deck (assuming the combo finish doesn't require too much dedication and is fast enough) because it means a much larger percentage of your deck is active against the whole field instead of just certain strategies and your opponent won't ever topdeck out of your finisher because they're just dead once you pull the trigger. Heck, the whole reason Miracles is so very good is that it successfully emulates a combo control game with CounterTop, Jace and Entreat against a lot of decks. The reason Legacy decks usually don't play that way isn't because they don't want to, it's because we generally don't have the tools necessary to make it work because they're banned for being freaking overpowered. Dragon might be just bad enough to have slipped through the cracks now.

So yes, you're splashing red for Loothouse. That's because it's literally the perfect role player to allow the deck to do all the things it needs to do with an acceptable amount of consistency to make it work at an extremely low cost (land slots). Something like Top isn't even remotely comparable to Loothouse in that function because it's neither a land nor a way to make the loop lethal. I wasn't joking when I called the card the secret key to the deck. It's what allows you to run a critical mass of loop abuse and lategame library manipulation without sacrificing too much of your ability to interact.

@Jizz: What might make something like this superior to true control decks is that combo control is a much stronger macro archetype than actual control or midrange. Instead of always having to play for the long game, you get to win games early with the combo when given the chance and still have the tools to grind out other interactive decks in the long game easily because your strategy is so focused on creating card advantage. Comparing the finisher slots of control decks like Miracles straight up to this deck's combo finish is a red herring to a certain degree because the slots for the combo don't come out of your budget of actual good cards (aka carddrawing and disruption) but from those slots an actual control deck usually fills with narrow answers (aka removal - which you can cut because you can kill fast enough to race when pressed a lot of the time).

@amalek0: Hehe, thanks. Gifts will feature likely two weeks from now after our next Vintage FNM.

@Echelon: Remember, this is a control deck, not a combo deck. Faithless Looting is a pretty bad card (because of the card disadvantage - which is why we don't see it in many Legacy decks) while Ponder is an awesome card. The deck fuels DTT easily enough anyway. Just remember how easy getting Cruise discounted was, that hasn't changed for Dig.

@phazonmutant: Sweet, thanks for sharing! Enjoyed the report and was happy to see Loothouse was doing the work for you just like it has been for me.

@Svknoe: That anti Sneak plan is a pretty neat find, hadn't thought about it yet. Also, thanks for sharing, and I'm quite happy to see yet someone else share my love for the Loothouse after playing with it :D

[nodahero]

This idea is probably terrible, however if people have a gripe about red is it possible that adding Mikokorro, Center of the Sea is a passable alternative? It CAN double as a kill condition if we have more cards left than our opponent also.

[Jizz]

Thank you for your great explanation of the control combo archetype. I shall work on this :)

[L-Luck]

After goldfishing (and not even playing a single real game) I came to the following conclusions:
-Oona needs to be Tasigur
-14 Blue sources is not enough
-more blue cards would be nice
-6 reanimation spells seem to be a lot

Which led to the following changes:
-Oona, 1 Desolate Lighthouse, 1 Necromancy
+Tasigur, Baleful Strix, Fetchland

I would really like to have the option to board out Cunning Wishes in matchups which are about efficiency, being versatile is nothing you really need games 2 and 3 after you know what your opponent plays. I'll maybe edit a new sideboard in if i get some testmatches.

[CabalTherapy]

-Oona needs to be Tasigur

LoL
Are you referring to the ongoing twitch joke about how Tasigur breaks the format?

[L-Luck]

LoL
Are you referring to the ongoin twitch joke about how Tasigur breaks the format?

I'm referring to the fact that Tasigur has the same upsides as Oona without the downside of being close to uncastable outside your combo.

Edit: There is an ongoing twitch joke about Tasigoyf :>?

[CabalTherapy]

I'm referring to the fact that Tasigur has the same upsides as Oona without the downside of being close to uncastable outside your combo.

Edit: There is an ongoing twitch joke about Tasigoyf :>?

Excuse my ignorace but I don't see any combo with Tasigur here...

Yes, I assume it is some kind of running gag because of people asking things about how many Tasigurs were cast/ are in the featured deck and stuff like that.

[death]

Tasigur mills your deck and bounces non-lands from your graveyard to hand. You can play Bolt, opponent bounces it back with every Tasigur activation. Repeat.

[Cire]

Tasigur mills your deck and bounces non-lands from your graveyard to hand. You can play Bolt, opponent bounces it back with every Tasigur activation. Repeat.

As a Tasigur advocate - this makes me unreasonably happy and giddy.