[Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

I played with Bowmasters tonight and the card performed great. Didn't even play against a fellow cantrip deck, just sniping dnt and gb creatures
Bowmasters were also the only black card in the deck plus two massacre side

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Yes Bowmasters is so good and the black splash also gets you Thoughtseize which is another excellent way to protect Dreadnought and making sure the path is clear of opposing Bowmasters before casting Brainstorm. The format is full of /1 creatures and cantrips.

Even if we dont splash black, Dressnought is still probably the best positioned of all cantrip/xerox lists in this Bowmasters meta. Dreadnought and the threats that typically accompany it (Uro, Deaths Shadow, Kroxa, Endurance, Shelodred, Murktide etc) are resilient to Bowmasters pings.

An even more relevant point is that Dress Down is a strong response to enemy Bowmasters. Stops their trigger, or buys you a window to cast cantrips. Dress Down's draw goes unpunished when other cantrips would fail.

Dress Down is extremely well-positioned against many format titans: Bowmasters, Thassa's Oracle combos, Initiative decks, Yorion ETB value decks. Dressnought maindecks 4 copies anyway, while other decks now cram some Dress Down into the 75 just to not lose to other broken mechanics.

UB also has Drown in the Loch which can either counter Bowmasters (prevent ability) or kill one in play.

I do think there's some tension with Dress Down and Bowmasters, you cast Dress Down, they know it's safe to cast their own cantrips. If you don't, they'll be content to stare. The play might be, and I'm throwing up in my mouth as I type it, Standstill.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

I do think there's some tension with Dress Down and Bowmasters, you cast Dress Down, they know it's safe to cast their own cantrips. If you don't, they'll be content to stare. The play might be, and I'm throwing up in my mouth as I type it, Standstill.

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Standstill got even worse.

1U: Tap out sorcery speed to put Standstill on the stack.
1B: Opponent puts Bowmasters on the stack. Bowmasters resolves. Bowmasters beats down. If opponent even needs to crack Standstill, you get punished.

Meanwhile Dress Down beats ENEMY Bowmasters. They play Bowmasters, you respond with Dress Down. Or you can EOT Dress Down, then untap and freely drop cantrips & Dreadnoughts.

It has tension with your own Bowmasters (which you don't have to play, or you can choose better sequencing with own cards), but it pairs up well vs what the rest of the format is doing. If that's the case... maybe the cut is Bowmasters and not Dress Down? Or just play fewer Bowmasters. Same problem Urza's Saga had.

Standstill is doing just fine. The more people play black, the less they can get under Standstill - remember legacy has never had a playable black 1-drop since the banning of DRS...and it's not like a player can sit there on 4x Delver (only 1 drop) and 4x Bowmaster b/c we know that those cards lose to MurkGoyf...and so we know the next 4 dudes are MurkGoyf (if you can't beat em, join em)...only it's sh*tty MurkGoyf b/c the other player has DRC mills.

If they're DRC + Delver + Bowmaster they are Honda Civic, which is a joke. The only thing that deck was ever able to do was no-skill legalized cheating with cantripping Lotus Petal (Probe) and Therapy...safe from response -> Wasteland due to DRS. Seriously, just Wasteland them and watch what happens when they don't have DRS or DeathriteMonkey.

I care precious little if an opponent has 1B mana up and flashes in a Bowmaster; they have to attack into a larger shark [while Standstill has nothing but time to play the up the land totals]. So team Bowmaster attacks *on their turn* and has to save their dude in combat with an instant [so they've constructed themselves out of EoT crack Standstill]. Standstill really don't care if they can ping a little into -> now I wrath you. The mindset of "I'm going to beat enemy Standstill by forcing myself to crack their Standstill" is misguided. You're not going to get there by making a 4/4 with a 1/1; Standstill is built to deal with 8/8 MurkGoyfs. Otawara is also going to be a massive beating for orc army.

The other thing about Standstill is we got the draw 3 effect on another mulligan-decreasing card name: Lorien Revealed. We don't really give Bowmaster much to trigger on; our mana progression is not tied to cantripping (we don't cut land slots for Ponder)...and that mana progression is increasing in relentlessness: fewer duals (Vista) -> more raw draw (Dress Down, Shark, Currency) -> higher lands totals thanks to spell mode (Otawara) -> all colors find blue (Lorien). None of these changes care about enemy Bowmaster.

I'm curious to see how it plays out in a larger sample of games.

If they flash in Bowmasters in response to Standstill, it may take a few turns (land drops & random draws) to be able to deploy that Shark. If you only deploy Standstill knowing you have Shark, that's weakened the usecases of Standstill. Otherwise maybe you don't find Shark soon enough before taking many Orc hits.

Let's assume you get to the sufficient game state (enough lands in play, Shark in hand) to ambush attacking Bowmasters in combat. You tap out (or close to it) for Shark. The draw triggers Bowmaster (+1 to Army and ping you or add 1 damage to Shark). If that's enough to trade with Shark, maybe opponent allows it and keeps going with the other body. If the Shark is much bigger (tapped out and/or many land drops later), opponent has another line: cast instant removal spell on Shark. Standstill triggers: You draw 3, +3 to attacking Army, 3 pings. You're probably too tapped out to use those extra cards yet, so unless you have an unanswered Force that Shark never gets assigned to block, you take a bunch of unblocked damage + pings, and opponent can make postcombat plays vs your tapped lands.

If the Shark is 4/4 or smaller, opponent doesn't even need removal, any instant will make enough pings to kill the Shark and +4 the unblocked Army. If you rely on making a 5/5 Shark, those Orcs may get a lot of unchallenged attacks first...

I'm not saying that is an unwinnable position for Standstill (eg dig into Verdict after they crack Standstill to answer the Shark), but is that really an advantageous line to lean on to treat Bowmasters as inconsequential?

There are ways to get on board earlier in Black. They involve card disadvantage: Grief + trick, Dark Ritual + Opposition Agent/Bowmaster. Currency Converter/Saga? The meta may eventually adapt to pair Bowmaster with other things.

Example: You're UR Dreadstill. T1 DRC/Lavamancer. T2 Standstill. Seems like a safe play? Opponent flashes Bowmasters, killing your onboard threat and sliding in surprise bodies under Standstill (Murktide/Goyf cannot do that). Bowmasters starts attacking 2 per turn. How many Sharks are in your deck as outs? Saga helps but loses to Wasteland. Otawara on a 1/1 army seems wasteful. Do you break your own Standstill to answer the Orc?

Versus Bowmancer decks in 6-1 or so in matches; constructions include honda civic, Shadow, and Uro/Grief, 5c maverick. Nothing quite like them all running basic Islands they can't use, and Daze they can't capitalize on b/c I have all the time in the world to make land drops. As expected, I'm very happy sitting there doing nothing, forcing the opponent to crack under the pressure of wasted mana, and spam out a 2 mana 2x 1/1s with no ping targets. The only real opponent in in these matchups is the mtgo shuffler, which does not accurately portray how statistics work. The Bowmancer play patterns are anemic, predictable, slow, and highly susceptible to Wasteland. The one that did beat me was the maverick build, and that really comes down to not auto-killing themselves by putting Daze in their deck.

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Originally Posted by Fox

Versus Bowmancer decks in 6-1 or so in matches; constructions include honda civic…

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Not surprised at 6-1, the deck is very well positioned vs Bowmasters, but whats this honda civic deck?

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Originally Posted by Fox

Versus Bowmancer decks in 6-1 or so in matches; constructions include honda civic, Shadow, and Uro/Grief, 5c maverick. Nothing quite like them all running basic Islands they can't use, and Daze they can't capitalize on b/c I have all the time in the world to make land drops. As expected, I'm very happy sitting there doing nothing, forcing the opponent to crack under the pressure of wasted mana, and spam out a 2 mana 2x 1/1s with no ping targets. The only real opponent in in these matchups is the mtgo shuffler, which does not accurately portray how statistics work. The Bowmancer play patterns are anemic, predictable, slow, and highly susceptible to Wasteland. The one that did beat me was the maverick build, and that really comes down to not auto-killing themselves by putting Daze in their deck.

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Nice results.

What's your current build?

I'm not surprised Dress Down/Stifle decks do well against Bowmasters, since both stop the ability. It's Standstill I was unsure of. Otherwise the deck overall is well-positioned to beat Grixis or UB on many axes: punishing their mana, invalidating their Daze, countering the Bowmaster ability, making threats that don't die to Bolt.

Esper Staff Bowmasters seems like a tougher matchup. Have you faced that / did you have any input in Ark4n's Challenge build?

I think players will eventually discover the card makes more sense in draw-go control or midrange creature piles. Tempo decks can't afford to hold up Bowmasters indefinitely without deploying it or using mana. It seems inherently bad with Daze, yet most of the early builds had Daze. Draw-go seems a better fit. No cantrip to ambush? No problem. Develop lands. Cycle Shark Typhoon. Cast instants at EOT. Hold up counters that cost mana. Activate Staff. These are things that make sense to do if you have to pass holding up Bowmasters mana. Drawing Daze and Spell Pierce? No.

Pretty much the same UR Dreadstill, just running some Lorien Revealed in a Brainstorm and land slot. Main change in Standstill is I'd rather have a 1 land + Lorien than a 1 land + Brainstorm. The thing that's so nice about Lorien is that you effectively go up on mana while going down on land totals. The amount of 1-land keeps increases, as a 1-land hand is actually a 2 land hand with Lorien. At 2 copies of Lorien, this accounts for 22.1% of opening hands (and thus 22.1% of 1 land hands).

The only real benefit of Brainstorm is negating a mulligan due to 5/6/7x land hands. Like sure, Brainstorm does some other stuff, but in a land-heavy deck it's mostly there to ensure that [at 4 copies] 39.9% of hands with 5/6/7x lands are reshapeable. So the question is how often are such hands seen. Counting Otawara as a land in opening hand and Spikefield as a spell (due to mana costs of spell modes), the odds at 23 not-Spikefield land slots are: 6.83%. Lorien displacing a land changes our number to 22, which brings the odds of 5+ land hands to: 5.57%.

Going down a land for Lorien changes 1 landers (here Spikefield counts as a land) from 12.1% (24 lands) to 13.8% (23 lands). But again, 22.1% of that 13.8% are actually 2 landers thanks to Lorien. So comparing the two, we have 12.1% 1 landers vs 10.75% with Lorien at 2x. The 0 landers goes from 2.16% to 2.67% with Lorien (approximately 1 in 50 hands seen to 1 in 40).

On the flip side, going back to 5+ land hands we went from 6.83% circumvented by 4x Brainstorm down to 4.1%. Meanwhile the Lorien build with 2x Brainstorm sends 5.57% chance of 5+ lander down to 4.3%. In either case we're ignoring the 5+ land hand that can't make any blue and the 7 land hand that can't have a Brainstorm, which is fairly impossible to roll without thousands of hands being seen. This is also ignoring Currency Converter and Saga find Currency Converter, which is also an out to land-overloaded hands.

Concerning optimal hands [2, 3, or 4 landers, where Spikefield counts as a land], we go from 26.9%/30.9%/19.6% on 24 lands to 28.6%/30.3%/17.8% on 23 lands. Again, we note that 22.1% of exactly 2 land hands have a Lorien by the odds; so it more or less works out to being equivalent, with better clustering at 3 land hands. Of the 28.6% 2 land hands adjusted for Lorien, the percentage of true 2 landers is 22.3%. The 3 landers goes up to 36.6%, adjusted for Lorien.

The tldr is that the mana works out a lot better + mulligans decrease in a Standstill manabase by pushing down Brainstorm copies. This mana/mulligan improvement process randomly craps all over Bowmaster.

How many copies of Standstill are you running? Did you cut back on those as well as cutting Brainstorms? (Otherwise it seems strange to play 4 Standstill 2-3 Brainstorm)

If you're on something like 2 Standstill 2 Brainstorm, no wonder Bowmaster is not an obstacle, especially with Stifle and Dress Down and Spikefield.

I like that Dress Down's cycling is unaffected by Bowmasters or Hullbreacher.

2x BS, 2x Standstill, and Standstill copies 3 & 4 are Lorien.

Im very happy someone is taking the time to post challenge finishes and 5-0s leagues on reddit again this week. All the challenge finishes and 5-0 Dressnought lists this week were UGr/UGrw surprisingly. Every other deck is splashing black for bowmasters and our deck also really benefits from Thoughtseize in clearing the path for a Dreadnought but all of our undefeated streaks this week came from lists that played every color except black!

Garmonzoria(sp?) 5-0ed and placed a challenge with this…

Artifact (2)
1 Mox Diamond
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
Creature (7)
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down
Instant (18)
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
Land (23)
1 Snow-Covered Island
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Urza's Saga
Planeswalker (2)
2 Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes
Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

Sideboard (15)
1 Meltdown
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Life from the Loam
1 Counterbalance
2 Null Rod
1 Hydroblast
3 Pyroblast
1 Veil of Summer
1 Force of Negation
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Haywire Mite

I really love the concept of a 1 of Mox Diamond in a high land Saga list as both acceleration and an occasional Saga target.

With 4 Urza Sagas and 4 Wastelands, I would have expected to see some…

Yavamaya, Cradle of Growth
Mycosynth Gardens
As additional ways to turn colorless mana into Uro mana.
Urzas Saga and Mycosynth Gardens synergize so well together in Dreadnought decks.

Was expecting to see atleast some Dressnought lists playing…
4 Thoughtseize
4 Bowmasters

Thoughtseize to protect Dreadnought has won me so many games over the years. We are sort of a combo deck as landing just a hit or two with either Dreadnought or Uro or Minsc often wins the game. Bowmasters making the black splash even better is welcome.

Also curious if The One Ring makes sense in this deck since this is just about the last Uro deck standing in legacy. Uro negates the lifeloss of The One Ring.

The One Ring negates the card disadvantage of FoW or from stifling a Nought (should rarely be done, Stifle should almost always be saved for Uros/Fetchlands/Wastelands or to disrupt your opponents triggers.)

The 1-of Mox seems like a useful Saga target. Is Chrome Mox better than Mox Diamond though? Seems like you get Mox when you can't afford to lose the land (Saga dies) or need color fixing for Uro or Minsc. When that's true, can you afford to lose a land from hand? Don't you need the mana?

If you're land flooded (have 1 to discard), do you want to tutor for Mox? How will Mox Diamond help mana flood?

If it was Chrome Mox, it helps when you're flooded on colored cards and short on lands, which is exactly when you want to tutor for a Mox.

Otherwise the deck looks pretty standard. 4 Saga 4 Wasteland is very greedy on colorless sources for a Uro deck. Maybe some of those should be Gardens.

The One Ring seems weak here. Can't afford more space for 4s. Deck had Daze, Wasteland and Saga to reduce your land count lol. Uro and Minsc are already a lot of top end. One Ring is better in control decks or Ancient Tomb decks, while this just wants to beat down.

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Originally Posted by Clark Kant

Also curious if The One Ring makes sense in this deck since this is just about the last Uro deck standing in legacy. Uro negates the lifeloss of The One Ring.

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BUG midrange might be playable again. That would be a good Uro + One Ring shell.

Eg
//Creatures: 11
4 Orcish Bowmasters
3 Witherbloom Apprentice
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Spells: 24
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Thoughtseize
2 Cling to Dust
2 Fatal Push
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Chain of Smog
1 Toxic Deluge

//Artifacts: 3
3 The One Ring

//Planeswalker: 2
2 Grist, the Hunger Tide

//Lands: 20
3 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
2 Boseiju, Who Endures

Something like that should be able to profit off Uro and The One Ring.

You could try to squeeze in Dreadnought, but there isn't really space or synergy. Witherbloom's a better fit.

Anyway, that's off topic. BUG Dreadnought could run Uro and Bowmasters, but probably doesn't have space for The One Ring. It's also awkward that Dress Down turns off your own Bowmasters.

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Originally Posted by FTW

The 1-of Mox seems like a useful Saga target. Is Chrome Mox better than Mox Diamond though? Seems like you get Mox when you can't afford to lose the land (Saga dies) or need color fixing for Uro or Minsc. When that's true, can you afford to lose a land from hand? Don't you need the mana?

If you're land flooded (have 1 to discard), do you want to tutor for Mox? How will Mox Diamond help mana flood?

If it was Chrome Mox, it helps when you're flooded on colored cards and short on lands, which is exactly when you want to tutor for a Mox.

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If you play Lorien Revealed then this choice becomes symbolic and not real

At baseline there are 2 ways: to play The "One" Ring. Either you have Sol lands or you have very reliable removal (Plow/Ending). In either case, you're talking about a ton of copies [deck space Dreadnought doesn't have].

Due to terrible design, the play pattern is knowably: draw 1 then lose 1, draw 2 then lose 2, draw 3 and abuse legendary rule to not suffer a free Bolt to the dome each turn. This is not tenable over time (see also why people play uncounterable Chandra +2 ability). The Plow/Ending side also gets to reset with Teferi -3.
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On the Mox stuff, we just need to point out the card FoV exists, as well as multi-artifact kills (the second most common finding in any legacy deck regardless of archetype, after yard hate). Ask your local Parfait player how their god hands of Mox/Land Tax are working out vs FoV. Losing Saga + artifact card that can't replace itself isn't really recoverable; particularly when you're losing a 3rd card (the discard to Diamond or exile to Chrome).

We see this Mox acceleration stuff come up in Standstill quite a bit, and when you do the math you've warped a deck to play game actions...but you're not really going up cards (you draw 3 sure....but you discarded a Standstill and 2 cards to Mox...so???).

Ark4n had a number of streams with these Saga/Nought/Uro/MoxD builds. It works fine when you're ahead and spamming Loam, but quite poor at playing catch-up. There are also consistent problems with "I made constructs and I can't cast Dress Down."

^these problems are locked-in by slot investment. Manipulating a deck harder at the cost of a further -8 slot penalty [cantrips] just means you ram ever harder and more frequently into the deck construction problems. It's not sustainable with the Nought package also competing for slots.

Your next stop is trying again at 80 slot deck, as constructed.
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As for Lorien Revealed, you are not doing the Ponder thing where you have terrible mana security and bloated color pip demands. You need to realistically threaten to cast it and draw 3.

This becomes nore problematic as Lorien cannot find what every [not-combo] Ponder deck relies on: finding and cheese'ing wins off 1-card combos. Things like: SFM, 2 mana Juzam (Goyf/Gurmag/Murk), Shardless, JTMS, Counterbalance, Hymn, Strix/Ice-Fang, Wrenn, Oko, Uro, Ragavan, Minsc, The "One" Ring....pick your era of legacy - I promise you Lorien ain't gonna tutor it.

While it is cool that a Lorien in hand makes the Mox descriptor of Chrome or Diamond equivocal, the Mox is sloppy deck construction that walks you into knowable (i.e. avoidable) blowouts. What you are looking for is cycling + Currency Converter.

Maybe you can use Lorien to put Island Fish Jasconius in hand.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Maybe you can use Lorien to put Island Fish Jasconius in hand.

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Does not work, as you can't fetch fish into play.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Maybe you can use Lorien to put Island Fish Jasconius in hand.

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Jasconius hasn't been an island in over twenty years