[Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

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Originally Posted by Fox

I'm not really worried about life loss so much as Thoughtseize being terrible vs Ragavan, and especially bad vs Uro.

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That's traditional mode of turn 1 Seize to 1-for-1 with a spell and +1 their graveyard size, at the expense of 1 mana and a turn's tempo. Yeah, that's bad vs both those decks. But if you go EOT Dress Down -> untap -> discard their answer -> Dreadnought, it seems significantly better.

vs Bant discarding StP/Prismatic to clear the way for a wincon really doesn't seem like a bad play even if they are playing towards lategame Uro fuel. Removing that white card at the right time is worth much more (tempo over late game development) when you are Loses-to-Plains.dec.

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Originally Posted by Fox

Really important to reiterate that 4x Saga + 4x Dress Down does not work like you want it to. If making constructs, every Dress Down in your hand is a -1 card penalty. You cut Dress Down before Stifle.

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Why not cut Sagas instead? 4 Saga in 3-color seems suicidal unless you're doing Ark4n's Ragavan thing. Dress Down makes more sense in the deck.

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Originally Posted by Fox

Exile exile exile, immediate slashing Ponder slots to move in 2x Cling to Dust; 3c is sketchy af (and colorless lands makes this 3+1c), but at least this allows each color to help find the others.

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I know you hate Ponder in general, but you also build 2 color decks. For the 3 + 1c manabase with no relevant turn 1 plays, Ponder does a lot to fix mana. 8 fetch + 6 blue + 4 Ponder at least has similar mana stability to 3-color Delver (nonblue lands are taking the colorless/spell slots), while cutting Ponder makes it worse mana than Delver. Cling doesn't color fix when you start on Swamp. Abundant Harvest can fix from Forest.

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Originally Posted by Fox

Fatal Push out, maxing out Trophy is better, and excess slots go to Bloodchief's Thirst (b/c Push is an auto-loss to Bant midrange). You're dead to Ragavan anyways, so just wait for the ban. Your best bet there was casting Reclaimer and blocking.

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Is Thirst just for Jace and Narset? Trophy kills those. Push kills Endurance for 1 mana instead of 4 (crack fetch, cycle Dress Down, cycle Uro, stage III Saga, sacrifice Thopter... Revolt is easy-mode here).

Push's instant speed is very relevant vs things like Dashed Ragavan, flash deathtouch Coatl blockers, flash Hullbreacher tricks, Vial decks, Scroll tricks, manlands, and other things. Push fails vs walkers and big things, but you've already got Trophy for that.

A lot of the issue is opening play problems. The cards say lands 1 and 2 need to find blue and black. You run into issues when something like Thoughtseize is in an opening hand with Forest, so you Fetch the Usea and promptly get hit by Wasteland. This kind of sequence is highly avoidable by proper deck construction...but the problem is Uro's effect on the manabase, the basic Forests tell the deck to play black as the tertiary color [the color you never open with, and don't seek out until 3rd land drop].

If you're using a green cantrip, Abundant Growth is more reliable than Abundant Harvest. It also doesn't tell the opponent exactly what you're playing, and how they can best play against you.

On Endurance, I feel like you let it resolve and let them block b/c you have 6/6 and 12/12. With a deck like this you know you're already losing to Bant midrange and Push isn't going to make this situation better. Much more likely to get cards out of opponents by sending random black card after a PW rather than a cantripping ETB scummer. In the same way, you're more likely to force action out of an opponent by exiling a card from their yard (like Uro, or even as a gain 3 vs Delver) rather than casting Ponder. Same thing again with choosing Trophy over Decay - more likely to incite a trade (also you randomly pick up win % vs local enchantments opponents try to put on lands, i.e. Abundant Growth and Enchantress).

What should be more and more apparent here is that if we change all these cards to things that pick meaningful fights, it really doesn't matter what they are called since they all do the same thing. What use is Ponder's selection vs just digging by drawing raw drawing here? Go the step further and turn off profitable interaction [enemy Wasteland] and again Ponder becomes less necessary. Continue the trend and add 4x Vista. Stop taking unnecessary risks and you don't need Ponder to cover these bets (in a deck with worse access to blue than Delver).

The 4-4-2 split is going to work better with the mana base (4x Bstorm, 4x Harvest, 2x Cling). Also it gives you raw CA options with Cling.

The opening play is probably a cantrip (Ponder off Island) or hold up uncracked fetch for possible interaction (Stifle, Push). Arguably with 2 Forest in the deck you may want a mix of green and blue cantrips. Abundant Growth could fix some mana issues.

You can dodge some early black demand if you use the 3-of Thoughtseize/Duress as a "Daze" effect (clear way for Dreadnought on turn 3) instead of turn 1 disruption. That will be the more effective mode vs fair decks anyway, since you are not winning by 1-for-1ing their hand. If the opponent is on combo then you can T1 discard off USea and not worry about Wasteland, but the rest of the time you don't need to.

Fetching Swamp -> Island -> Forest isn't the worst thing in the world either. That still lets you do most things the deck wants to do on curve. It won't escape Uro on turn 4, but you can build towards that by the 5th land.

Re Fatal Push on Endurance: yeah that's not a relevant fight to pick. The point is it's not a dead card. Push still has targets against Bant. Killing flash Coatl to protect your attacker is even more relevant. Of course postboard you board out Push vs Bant, but it still does things in game 1. Why play Push if it's being boarded out? Decks other than Bant. Ragavan isn't banned yet. Lackey into Muxus is a thing. You need some 1-mana removal. Instant speed is relevant vs other decks. Spending 1 vs 4 mana to kill a 3-4 cmc creature is relevant vs some decks.

What use is Ponder's selection? Color-fixing and tempo (you dig deeper to get the card you want sooner). Raw drawing is slower and more suited to control lategames. But this deck isn't going to win control lategames. It's not on the Standstill plan. Its only hope is to out-tempo the opponent in the mid-game with a quick protected Dreadnought/Uro kill. Ponder helps set that up, while slower card advantage engines don't.

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The 4-4-2 split is going to work better with the mana base (4x Bstorm, 4x Harvest, 2x Cling). Also it gives you raw CA options with Cling.

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Cling doesn't help set up those mid-game tempo wins. It's much slower to get CA online and only profits in the phase of the game where this deck isn't going to win anyway. Even worse, Cling doesn't provide CA. If you escape it for +1 card, you get -1 escape for Uro (-1 card). Cling gets better postboard when you know you need GY hate (Uro, Reanimator, Loam, etc) or opponent brings in Surgicals vs your Uro, but preboard it's competing for resources with Uro.

What about a 4-3-3 split of 4x Brainstorm 3x Ponder 3x Harvest?

The thing about Cling to Dust is that it just kills a large swath of combo by itself. These are mtgo leagues where the only limit on amount of magic is speed of games, which heavily skews leagues towards combo. Know your audience and farm it.

Another league by BoshnRoll is up, this one on a poorly constructed BUG list. Too many lands for too little late game, and playing really bad Shardless (Goyf full of Strix). Huge liabilities vs Surgical and the classic wtf is Null Rod doing in a list with Scroll of Fate...play Karn and stop losing to Surgical at the same time. The deck farms 2 wins off DDFT which is somewhere around 80% odds to win (even through really bad sorcery speed 2 drop threats), and goes on to lose to three decks which are somewhere between tier 2-2.5 (UW Omni, Food Chain Muxus, and BW Dead Guy Ale).

Bosh is usually pretty good about making correct game actions, but in this league he never quite gets how to use Scroll. Casting Goyf when he could dump it into play uncounterably at instant speed [baiting a Liliana of the Fail +1], failing to Daze to protect Scroll from Thoughtseize, boarding out Scroll vs SnT, and boarding out Scroll vs Cratermaker....such that Cratermaker would always get a clean shot at Dreadnought (whereas waste your Cratermaker on Scroll, response Dreadnought is infinitely better). Lots of misunderstanding the concepts of getting above 6 perms vs annihilator, confusing spot removal, and overwhelming removal going on.

I think a lot of this was tilt with the misconstructed mana base (like 3x Misty in a deck with UG basics levels of misbuilt), and in response he seemed to tunnel on playing crappy Shardless...which doesn't really work with mono 2-drops while chucking Wastelands and Daze time walking lands. Just a really bad situation where Daze/Wasteland is very good vs the deck, and it's own Daze/Wasteland is kinda self-defeating (too much delaying with no late game inevitability).

Tilt seemed to increase when he realized he was trying to play crappy Shardless style without 4 Ponder. The list was really bad, but salvage mode means ripping out Goyf and Lazav as the first 6 cuts every postboard game. Misbuilt as it was, ramping up power on 3cmc while playing more on 1cmc and extending Stifle/Wasteland/Daze's subgame was the only reasonable decision. Also way too many lands to be boarding out Scroll vs not-DDFT; this was the only way to repurpose those lands.

Whoever made that donation deck needs to realize that Goyf + Nought is some Firespouts + EE is the premier removal spell in legacy era nonsense [like 2007 +/- 4 years]. The only thing that ever made Shardless slightly playable was Hymn, and more importantly Shardless trigger couldn't be hit by Counterbalance as it dug for Decay target Counterbalance.

Poorly built deck, but a great example of what happens when you play legacy normally with a not-normal deck. It's a worthwhile exercise in whether or not you can see what cards mean in the overall context of a match.

The main lesson here is make sure there's a playset of Ponder in your blue Legacy deck.

Just watched the vid. For reference, this is the deck. (at least there isn't actual Shardless Agent cascade into Dreadnought)


//Creatures: 16
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Baleful Strix
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Lazav, the Multifarious
2 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Enablers: 8
4 Stifle
1 Dress Down
3 Scroll of Fate

//Other Spells: 15
3 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Fatal Push
4 Daze
2 Abrupt Decay

//Lands: 21
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

//Sideboard: 15
1 Force of Will
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Thoughtseize
2 Plague Engineer
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Liliana's Triumph
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Dress Down
1 Hydroblast
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle


Ok, I see what you mean about just cramming in "value" cards from FIRE design / shoving Dreadnought into a Shardless shell. I wouldn't even call this Shardless, because Shardless was built on incremental card advantage (cascade, Hymn to Tourach, Ancestral Vision) and this doesn't even have that other than random Strixes. At least Shardless could attempt to bury the opponent in 2-for-1 value.

Unfortunately that also comes at the expense of interaction. With 3 FoW, 0 Thoughtseize, 2 Decay, 0 Trophy, 1 Push this has very little maindeck interaction with the opponent's deck beyond Daze (which you can't force them to play into). You can play all the Strixes and Goyfs, but can't disrupt much if their deck doesn't lose to Stifle on Thassa. No wonder it struggled vs Tier 2 combo decks and creature swarms.

Also, the card Goblin Lackey (and Ragavan, and some other creatures) exist to punish players for trying to play fair decks with 1x 1cmc removal or 3x removal total. That's why I wouldn't cut Push from the other build either.

Scroll is probably unintuitive to learn. Most players probably see it as a linear Dreadnought enabler. They may not think about all the other instant speed tricks.

Edit: I'm surprised he cut Dreadnoughts so often against unfair decks, keeping in Strix and Lazav. The 1/xs make terrible clocks while at least Dreadnought can close out a game quickly. In the BW match vs Voidwalker shutting off Uro and Lazav, he Brainstorms into Stifle... and gets rid of Nought and Uro. Stifle was kept for disruption reasons, but then he had no board presence beyond 1/xs, after getting rid of the 2 clocks in hand. The deck probably could have performed better in that league, but he was sequencing and boarding into a configuration such that the deck couldn't really win games aside from Goyf beatdown or opponent decking themselves. A lot of turning 1/1s sideways.

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Originally Posted by Tobitzki

The main lesson here is make sure there's a playset of Ponder in your blue Legacy deck.

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And that's not the lesson. This deck had a dearth of 1 cmc plays, crammed itself chock-full of 2 drops, and tried to play Daze. This doesn't end well, especially if you get hit by Wasteland [which he dodged in 4 of 5 matches].

Let's March these turns out with more Ponders and we'll even say opponents have zero Wastelands: turn 1 Ponder, turn 2 Strix...wtf is going on here? Why is Stifle in sorcery speed tapout and jam? Gonna keep the opponent off their 3 or 4th mana are you?

Now assume Wasteland is there: gonna keep predictably throwing duals around and tapping out of Stifle to protect them? Gonna move to more Thoughtseize openers [which by definition have to come off a dual]?

Getting Wasted to oblivion or not, Ponder is not progress. There are fundamental issues that need to be fixed. When actual Shardless plays Ponder and 21x lands +/- 1 land [to say nothing of DRS], they're just kill spells and discard to build towards what used to count as inevitability (Jace, Lilly). That many lands and Ponder without a plan to hang in the late game is a deck build error.

Just adding 4x Ponder just locks in the deck identity and play patterns as inescapable crappy Shardless. Not sure what exactly the plan is when Ice-Fang outclasses Strix...and Goyf not only loses to Uro/Ice-Fang/sometimes Endurance, but is also a straight-up a worse smaller Goyf than Murktide. The main value of Ponder would be to learn just how outclassed you are consistently???
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@FTW a lot of the reason Shardless became irrelevant is b/c nothing the deck did was good enough without Counterbalance choking the life out of the format. Cascade into Hymn is just crappy Snap-Hymn...and Hymn loses to FIRE on board. The sin of all Shardless players is thinking drawing 3 cards off Ancestral could override drawing into a strategy that was hopelessly obsolete. Without Counterbalance in the format, all that Shardless consists of is Goyf [outclassed], anti-Goyf Strix [outclassed], and Uro [anti-Hymn which completely outclassed Hymn].

Shardless is hardly alone in thinking what their deck did mattered enough to ignore the need to address what is going on in legacy. This mindset is all over R&D and "brews" which never had a good enough path to gain ownership of relevant decisions in a game - and right now Prismatic Ending is really exposing this.

Even UWR Ragavan is not immune to the simple fact that if the [soon to be banned] Ragavan/Daze gambit doesn't pay off...suddenly they actually need stop pretending that what their deck does matters, back off of Saga and bad mana, and stop rewarding Bant midrange for maindecking the nuclear option vs Thassa [Dress Down without any offensive application except Uro vs Leyline or RiP]. Nothing looks worse than a 4x Saga into wipe your board on your turn, draw a card, Ending target Retrofitter (all immune to Daze at 3 mana).

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Originally Posted by Fox

Just adding 4x Ponder

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I'm not saying this is the only change needed to turn this into a flawless deck. I actually agree with many of your points here (bad mana, bad Lazav, bad use of Scroll, etc.). But you seem to confuse Ponder for some kind of Abundant Harvest, and I don't think I should need to explain xerox theory from scratch here. The league consistently showed that you're unnecessarily handicapping yourself into relying on mulligans and topdecks when you cut Ponder from a deck. You might be able to come up with a very peculiar combination of deckbuilding decisions that add up to justify running jank like Spikefield Hazard over what's long established as the 3rd best spell in the format, but your heuristics don't apply willy nilly to every deck running Dreadnought.

For the record, I thought that Cartesian's UR version came closest to a cohesive Tempo Dreadnought build in 2021 (give or take a couple adjustments like Stifle over Pierce).

It's well established that Ponder both reduces variance and increases velocity in tempo decks. Xerox theory is not new.

Fox is probably right that it falls short in Standstill decks, because those are much closer to pure control than tempo, even when they run 1-mana 12/12s. Ponder does not give late game card advantage or build towards late game inevitability. Ponder gives limited control over decisions to find precise answers or assemble precise pieces. These are things control players want to do. Also Standstill rewards you for higher land counts, which is the antithesis of Xerox theory (using cantrips to reduce land counts to have statistically better random topdecks). Once you're on Standstill + more lands, Ponder doesn't help. You can't fully exploit Xerox theory with that higher land count. Ponder lets you dig frantically but doesn't give many opportunities to use decisions to outplay the opponent or build inevitability. It's variance reduction over decision-opening, where you're still at the mercy of the topdeck cards except you get to see a little bit deeper (better odds). So I'll concede that Ponder is probably wrong for Standstill decks. Fox and others have the experience with Dreadstill and are probably right about this.

But this isn't a Standstill deck. Its cards overlap with Dreadstill, but it uses them differently in a tempo plan. It has to, because it can't hope to build towards the same lategame inevitability. It lacks those tools, but it has some tools to tempo them out in the mid-game.

Is this just a worse tempo deck than Delver, a worse Dreadnought deck than Dreadstill, and a worse Uro deck than Bant? Probably, at least in terms of win%s. But tempo Dressnought is what the OP and these streamers want to play, and it's still good enough to win games. Even if it's a "worse version". So we might as well assume that archetype is a given and then stick to discussing how to make the most of it as a Tier 2 deck.

On a tempo plan with unstable multi-color mana, Ponder helps. To me the bigger mistakes are Strixes, Lazav, and Goyf. Strix and Lazav did nothing in most of those games. 1/xs don't advance the tempo plan. Remove the clog at 2-mana. The other version from the Legacy Challenge looked better, with more focus and more interaction.

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Originally Posted by Tobitzki

but your heuristics don't apply willy nilly to every deck running Dreadnought.

For the record, I thought that Cartesian's UR version came closest to a cohesive Tempo Dreadnought build in 2021 (give or take a couple adjustments like Stifle over Pierce).

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Unfortunately for those "brewing" with Dreadnought, my heuristics do apply. I have thousands more hours on the archetype, and I need only look at your list to instinctively know how it plays and is played against. Rood has even more hours on Dreadnought than I do, we routinely discuss the archetype, and come to the same conclusions. We have two very differing styles, yet we always agree on Ponder's unplayability with Dreadnought.

Cartesian's list you're talking about has fewer one drop threats than UR Dreadstill, it is less likely to deny mana, Daze opponents, and not be Dazed. UR Dreadstill is a better tempo deck than Stiflenought, and it is more cohesive. In addition to being a superior tempo Dreadnought deck, it plays superior aggro and control roles. The only thing Stiflenought decks can do is combo harder...which doesn't count for much vs removal. If heroic cards like Dig Through Time or Underworld Breach aren't choking removal-based magic completely out of the format, the Stiflenought stuff isn't going to work. In simplest of terms: if Lotus Petal -> turbo-Bob isn't well positioned, Stiflenought isn't well positioned.

Here is a video showcasing the lack of relevance of Stiflenought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQR0oftZm70

In this game you will see Cartesian's new "brew" with bloated cmcs + Daze. He is using Thing in the Ice, which was thoroughly tested and discussed extensively in the Dreadstill forum 5 years ago by myself. The glaring flaws of mass-TITI are already well established, have not changed, and are not worth testing further based on current card pool. Maybe seeing everything I talk about in action will help solidify these concepts.

If you are trying to genuinely compete with Dreadnought, there are very harsh heuristics you must abide by. Does that mean you won't ever get a 5-0 in a combo-boosted online environment when flagrantly ignoring the heuristics? No, you can still get lucky. It's just not solvent in the long term; it will skew towards not paying for itself [winrates under 50%]. Dreadstill is as old as the legacy format; Dreadnought decks do not maintain competitiveness by Ponder-derping out 12/12s.

Thanks for posting these Fox.

Although you've got thousands of hours of games in, it's hard for viewers to draw conclusions based on only one match (a Loss, due to misplays). Cards can underperform in some situations and overperform in others. It should help when you post the 5-0 league too.

After the Cursed Scroll punt in game 2, why did you still wait to Scroll the Borrower at EOT instead of before combat damage? It wasn't guaranteed to hit (50% chance due to the punt), but when it did you took 3 damage for no reason. That avoidable 3 damage caused you to end up in Bolt range, which then cornered you into that very slow sequence with Mastery of the Unseen just to gain life and play around Bolt. If you didn't take that 3 extra damage, you could have ignored Bolt and just gone for the faster kill. Below 10 life Vs UR, bolting yourself for no reason seems bad.

Then, once the clock was below 2:00 and you knew the server was lagging all match, why keep spamming 1/1 Mainfests instead of shifting to 7/7 Hall beatdown? (after you had enough to gain to 4 life) Was there a strategic reason for that? Something you were playing around by not dumping your mana and turn into the manland? If there was, can you explain the line? Because I don't see what Cartesian's deck could have done to punish you for spending resources on Hall beatdown. Unholy Heat + Bolt for 8 mana?? I get the logic behind lifegain to insulate against Bolt topdecks, but -7ing them to 0 also prevents Bolt topdecks.

Looking at that match, I wonder if Dreadstill sees so little play online partly because of the clock. Paper Magic treats 1-0 and 1-1-1 timeouts favorably, even if your durdly deck used up much more of the clock (e.g. CounterTop). MTGO makes them match losses. That's a significant impact on win % for decks that may go to time, especially with newer pilots. I remember from the old Landstill days that Standstill matches vs fair decks can be notoriously slow and grindy. But all you had to do was win game 1 and not lose game 2. Online you have to actually complete 2 wins on your own clock. When you add that Leagues fire continuously, the whole ecosystem drives players to decks that can complete 2 wins quickly over decks that risk running down the clock.

It's clear why Daze is bad in his deck, especially vs a deck like UW Dreadstill can "land go" towards a winning state (not all decks can do this as effectively).

I can see why Ponder is bad in Dreadstill and Landstill, which are not built around Xerox theory.

It's not yet clear (from that video, at least) that Ponder is bad in Stiflenought against most matchups.

I can see why Ponder would be bad lategame vs fair control. Ponder can't dig for both pieces at once (unless you would have lucked into them anyway). Digging for only Dreadnought doesn't accomplish anything if you don't have Scroll, and vice versa. If you find one piece, do you keep it without knowing if you'll see an enabler later, or do you keep something castable instead? I saw those issues come up in Bosh N Roll's videos vs Bant. He often had to Ponder digging for help, then kept non-Dreadnought cards because he needed something of immediate value instead of gambling on A+B. He regularly had to bury Dreadnoughts, only to find Stifle the next turn. But you can't plan for that. Keeping Dreadnought and then not lucksacking the Stifle would lose the game. Cartesian would have the same issues vs your UW Dreadstill. Ponder won't help him in the lategame and you can pull ahead to win the pseudo-mirror. He also should not need Ponder to mana-fix in UR.

But what about other matchups? Does Ponder add value to the early game or mid game development of Stiflenought vs other decks? Can't tell from your game, even if it's bad vs Dreadstill. And what about these Dressnought-Uro piles? Ponder helps the 3c mana. Ponder helps develop Uro (escape fuel, hit 3 lands and colors on curve). Ponder gives them an early play that they otherwise lack. Ponder doesn't provide card advantage like Standstill does, but Uro and Sylvan fill that role, and Ponder supports that engine. Does Ponder still have the same fails there?

On the missed Cursed Scroll play, it was a communication issue vs muscle memory saving time by fast clicking. In terms of missing the optimal timing window, we were discussing the face-down implications and the plan for next turn. While we could have gone for the pre-combat salvage line to shock Brazen, it was probably better to advertise interaction in hand paying for Daze [iirc Scroll activation would have left us at 1 mana only].

In terms of why Mastery vs Storm Giants attack, the emphasis was on seeing and pursuing the deterministic lockout. There was time pressure and multi-turn math vs possible Bolt topdecks being run. Neither of us saw the Storm Giants play until after we fixed the life total issue. While it may have won the game, it could just as easily lose to topdeck Pyroblast. Plays like these, which allow opponents top find a relevant, uncompensated trade are not something the deck engages in; at a baseline this play isn't consciously considered. Note that if Mastery hits a creature off the top of deck, we likely have mana to flip that same turn (rather than using the Karn wish Nought through Scroll once FoW is online sequence). In short Mastery is the lower risk, higher reward play.

In Dreadstill and Landstill, we don't expose manlands to removal unless we absolutely have to. We take this to an extreme no other legacy decks do. So for Hall of Storm Giants, you don't really start considering animation until an opponent dips to 4 mana and below.

The clock isn't really an issue in paper when it comes to getting in 3 games. The mtgo UI is a lot slower than paper, but there is still time for 3 games. These leagues we play are geared towards shortcutting the learning curve this deck has, and getting Piproberts up to master level without investing hundreds upon hundreds of hours. A good amount of time is invested in discussing key plays in real time, which if made incorrectly lose the entire game.

In terms of Ponder in a Stifle deck; not really a card I'd want to cast until my 3rd land drop [problematic when Ponder decks can't reliably do this without casting Ponder]. No interest in tapping down for Ponder and killing my Stifle on the opponent's Daze. When this happens I have modified exactly none of my opponent's available play patterns to my benefit.

We will be making another video soon that shows the "combo" of Kroxa + Dress Down and how this is not a real legacy play. This is also true of Uro and Dress Down - horrible play unless opponent discarded a RiP or Leyline to the battlefield. Again a Stiflenought kills itself with Ponder.

Ah. I didn't realize you were discussing during the game too, not just during the recap. It must be hard to hit all timing windows while discussing strategy during real-time games with a ticking clock. The odd misplay is understandable while guiding someone through the deck.

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Originally Posted by Fox

While we could have gone for the pre-combat salvage line to shock Brazen, it was probably better to advertise interaction in hand paying for Daze [iirc Scroll activation would have left us at 1 mana only]/

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Interesting to hear the rationale. Would you still take this line if he hadn't missed the window?

Vs some other decks I see the merits, especially if there's some game-changing business spell they care about protecting.

Vs UR lategame with opponent's hand size at ~1 card, I don't see it. Allowing (and clicking quickly through) Petty Theft on Humility advertised lack of interaction. They also know you can't have Force up (2 cards in hand, 1 known to be white). The edge you get by bluffing other interaction through Daze seems very minor. On the other hand giving UR a free 3 damage at this stage of the game is even better than giving them +2 cards.

Cartesian's deck was already forced into a endgame where all it could do was make vanilla 1/1s or Bolt your dome. If he had Daze, it was probably the 1/1 Manifest attacking you and not still in hand vs 7+ lands. Giving him a free Bolt is better than anything he would likely draw or protect with Daze... In general, it seems like a bad idea to give the Bolt player free Bolts at that stage of the game. That's all the UR player wants to draw anyway.

Maybe I'm missing some deeper Dreadstill strategy here where you want to bluff them out of resolving some dangerous card that could tilt the matchup. But as a UR player I'd be happy to see an opponent take extra damage for that.

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Originally Posted by Fox

While it may have won the game, it could just as easily lose to topdeck Pyroblast.... Note that if Mastery hits a creature off the top of deck, we likely have mana to flip that same turn

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Interesting line. But statistically unlikely. You're hoping for a rare topdeck, while playing around a line that depends on an opponent's rare topdeck. The odds favor the reverse happening. (no creature for you & no Pyroblast for them)

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Originally Posted by Fox

In short Mastery is the lower risk, higher reward play.
In Dreadstill and Landstill, we don't expose manlands to removal unless we absolutely have to. We take this to an extreme no other legacy decks do. So for Hall of Storm Giants, you don't really start considering animation until an opponent dips to 4 mana and below.

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Ok, interesting. In a vacuum I see where you're coming from. You're playing towards lategame inevitability and want to avoid exposing the few wincons or giving opponent free outs if you have a safer way to get there. But on MTGO the clock is part of the game, not just a technical inconvenience. Stalling at 1-0 is a match loss, even with win on board.

That's why I asked "once the clock was below 2:00". Initially, I see your line of wanting to salvage life and develop board state safely. But as that clock ticks down, is there a point where you reevaluate course? Does the clock factor into your decision process with Dreadstill? Your Mastery line avoids losing but is also very slow to win. On MTGO, not winning = losing (fundamentally different from Paper), making Mastery a very high risk play. It's gambling the 1/1s will get there in time (easy for the opponent to stall a few costing you turns & time) vs forcing the opponent to find the unanswered Pyroblast in a topdeck war. At some time, I would be tempted to bail on the Manifest strategy and switch to faster 7/7 beatdown to beat the clock. You're the expert here... but are there not time factors that cause you to shift gears?

Of course in Paper this is a different story. You can take the slow Mastery line and ride 1-0 to a match win, without risking losses to Pyroblast or Bolts. MTGO is a slightly different game.

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Originally Posted by Fox

In terms of Ponder in a Stifle deck; not really a card I'd want to cast until my 3rd land drop [problematic when Ponder decks can't reliably do this without casting Ponder]. No interest in tapping down for Ponder and killing my Stifle on the opponent's Daze. When this happens I have modified exactly none of my opponent's available play patterns to my benefit.

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Ok, that makes sense. You don't tap down sorcery speed on turn 1 to fix development when you can profit by forcing them to respect Stifle just by doing nothing, as long as you can rely on your land drops. For UR Tempo Stiflenought I see what you mean.

But the Uro version can't really exploit early mana denial either way. That is not a deck that can afford to waste early land drops on Daze or Wasteland, so even if you do Stifle a fetch you can't really back that up with further manabase pressure while developing your own plan. In that case, does tapping down for Ponder hurt? Arguably that means this Uro + DressNought thing should be on 0 Daze + 3 Wasteland + 3 Stifle (cut back a bit on mana denial). Then 2-4 Dress Down + 2 Scroll + 1-2 Saga.

Kroxa is a bad card. I'd be interested in seeing the Uro version evaluated. It's getting enough 5-0s, YouTube brew play and Legacy Challenge showing that it appears to have the makings of a decent Tier 2 deck, with some card choices adjusted. VakaNought OP has been strongly in favor of it for a while. If you strongly disagree, that seems like the one to debunk first (before worse ones like Kroxa).

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Interesting to hear the rationale. Would you still take this line if he hadn't missed the window?

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With Petty Theft trapped on stack targeting Humility, Cursed Scroll would have been activated b/c there is no way for the face-down manifest to trick the 2 dmg. Missing the window makes it fairly pointless to invest 3 mana to shock a 12/12 or 7/8. Also missing the window meant Cursed Scroll only had a 50% chance of assigning 2 dmg.

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Vs UR lategame with opponent's hand size at ~1 card, I don't see it. Allowing (and clicking quickly through) Petty Theft on Humility advertised lack of interaction. They also know you can't have Force up (2 cards in hand, 1 known to be white). The edge you get by bluffing other interaction through Daze seems very minor. On the other hand giving UR a free 3 damage at this stage of the game is even better than giving them +2 cards.

Cartesian's deck was already forced into a endgame where all it could do was make vanilla 1/1s or Bolt your dome. If he had Daze, it was probably the 1/1 Manifest attacking you and not still in hand vs 7+ lands. Giving him a free Bolt is better than anything he would likely draw or protect with Daze... In general, it seems like a bad idea to give the Bolt player free Bolts at that stage of the game. That's all the UR player wants to draw anyway.


Interesting line. But statistically unlikely. You're hoping for a rare topdeck, while playing around a line that depends on an opponent's rare topdeck. The odds favor the reverse happening. (no creature for you & no Pyroblast for them)

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The thing is we had interaction w/ Cursed Scroll, but once the Humility window was missed there's nothing stopping that face-down 2/2 from being a Thing in the Ice and the card in their hand from being Stifle. Activate Scroll with Humility in hand and that flips the 0/4 to 7/8 and you lose in combat. The only card we care about in combat is the manifest. If their card in hand is Bolt, maybe we lose...but then again if it's Bolt, the opponent is less likely to go all-in by flipping a manifest into 4 mana open mana [important if that was a face-down 12/12]. If the card is Pyroblast, animating Storm Giant is incorrect. If it is any other card in their list, it has no text.

It isn't about rare topdecks, so much as knowing everything their deck could do and invalidating all of it. After we survive that Humility vs Brazen punt and re-establish Humility, the next goal is to keep Daze, Stifle, creatures, lands, other countermagic, and Pyroblast all dead. The only thing we have to care about is running Lightning Bolts or a specific sequence of Bolt in hand draws Pyroblast [or vice versa] into 2nd Bolt. All other combinations of cards they could have would lose. When an opponent's deck is full of dead cards and you play around the remaining perfect running topdecks, the opponent's skill [the last source of variance] is removed from the game. This is the heart of the problem with Stiflenought w/ Ponder; it is so easy to delete the opposing player as a variable in the game. Delver decks suffer from this problem too, collapse the ceiling and all you're playing against is the floor.

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Ok, interesting. In a vacuum I see where you're coming from. You're playing towards lategame inevitability and want to avoid exposing the few wincons or giving opponent free outs if you have a safer way to get there. But on MTGO the clock is part of the game, not just a technical inconvenience. Stalling at 1-0 is a match loss, even with win on board.

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These games are about teaching the system, which is more important than a timeout here or there. The emphasis is more on identifying opponent's deck, knowing how it breaks, and pursuing a complete deck kill. After a successful midgame, an opponent should be able to stack their deck and still lose. Playing aggro lines, like animating Storm Giant there, are not lines that should actively be sought out until the deck is played at a master level. Aggro plays correlate very highly with game losses. I imagine there will be a good deal of comedy on twitch if the list is published in the next 5-0 dump; always fun to watch netdeckers fail.

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Ok, that makes sense. You don't tap down sorcery speed on turn 1 to fix development when you can profit by forcing them to respect Stifle just by doing nothing, as long as you can rely on your land drops. For UR Tempo Stiflenought I see what you mean.

But the Uro version can't really exploit early mana denial either way. That is not a deck that can afford to waste early land drops on Daze or Wasteland, so even if you do Stifle a fetch you can't really back that up with further manabase pressure while developing your own plan. In that case, does tapping down for Ponder hurt? Arguably that means this Uro + DressNought thing should be on 0 Daze + 3 Wasteland + 3 Stifle (cut back a bit on mana denial). Then 2-4 Dress Down + 2 Scroll + 1-2 Saga.

Kroxa is a bad card. I'd be interested in seeing the Uro version evaluated. It's getting enough 5-0s, YouTube brew play and Legacy Challenge showing that it appears to have the makings of a decent Tier 2 deck, with some card choices adjusted. VakaNought OP has been strongly in favor of it for a while. If you strongly disagree, that seems like the one to debunk first (before worse ones like Kroxa).

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This is why Stifle is suspect in a 3c deck. Condense the colors, advance the mana reliably, and then have a plan for the mana (Uro by itself is not that plan...unless your plan is to lose to Surgical). If there is a UG deck, it only has 2x Uro, a handful of GSZ + Reclaimer, higher land counts + Karn and Nissa of the 5/5s + things to Stifle [Dreadnought and Lotus Field]. The problem ofc is removal, but Ice-Fang is okay-ish and Reclaimer can tutor lands. If you want to bolster the tutoring add 1x Saga + 1x Map. Verdict is easy to pitch or cast off a Lotus Field, or maybe you want to have 1x Cavern on Phyrexian for Plague Engi [this one seems way worse]. Either way, not playing >2 Dress Down; I already know how this story ends.

On Kroxa, yes it's horrid...but it's actually the same card as Uro when you "cheat" it into play with Dress Down and get Plow'd. The legacy community keeps telling itself Dress Down is so good and keeps citing this ability to get their 2-for-1 payoff killed in a 1-for-1 trade. If this nonsense didn't spike the price of cards that belong only to Dreadnought, it would merely be comical to see in decks like Bant midrange. The mental gymnastics they do running Torpor Orb analogues is fascinating, and they won't even admit that the only reason they're doing it is that they're scared to death of Thassa enough to sinkhole 2-3 slots of their 75. Always with the "it cleans up Saga tokens" excuse, and I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I feel like I told all of you that Saga is not a trustworthy 4x card, and is only meant for 2x play in Dreadstill as it adds a basic where the third Factory used to reside. Kinda mind-boggling how the legacy community wants to play with our toys, but not actually use them correctly, as they are unwilling to run 12/12s.

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Originally Posted by Fox

With Petty Theft trapped on stack targeting Humility, Cursed Scroll would have been activated b/c there is no way for the face-down manifest to trick the 2 dmg. Missing the window makes it fairly pointless to invest 3 mana to shock a 12/12 or 7/8. Also missing the window meant Cursed Scroll only had a 50% chance of assigning 2 dmg.

The thing is we had interaction w/ Cursed Scroll, but once the Humility window was missed there's nothing stopping that face-down 2/2 from being a Thing in the Ice and the card in their hand from being Stifle. Activate Scroll with Humility in hand and that flips the 0/4 to 7/8 and you lose in combat. The only card we care about in combat is the manifest. If their card in hand is Bolt, maybe we lose...but then again if it's Bolt, the opponent is less likely to go all-in by flipping a manifest into 4 mana open mana [important if that was a face-down 12/12]. If the card is Pyroblast, animating Storm Giant is incorrect. If it is any other card in their list, it has no text.

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Obviously the ideal play was to shock the Manifest with Theft on the stack, killing it with 100% and preventing any lethal flips.

Once that was missed though, what about the timing window to Scroll before damage vs EOT? If he had the 7/8 or 12/12, you had no answer. But if it was a dud (Daze, fetch, etc) then shooting the 3/1 Borrower before damage (+3 life at 50% chance) improves that line by reducing Cartesian's outs in a Bolt + 1/1 endgame.

It sounds like you were focused on trying to salvage the line where the Manifest could be lethal. Perhaps this is part of Dreadstill strategy, trying to invalidate the opponent's deck. A 7/8 or 12/12 there is the biggest threat and you wanted to address it. You could no longer stop it directly, but maybe you could bluff the opponent out of it by leaving 4 mana open.

The thing is, I question if this is an effective bluff. In the UR seat, I don't think it matters whether you had 4 mana open, 1 mana open, or 10 mana open. If Cartesian has lethal there, he probably jams and gambles you don't have an answer. Slowrolling around interaction doesn't help. The game gets worse for him the longer it goes. He's the aggro, you're the control. You replay Humility next turn, making that Manifest useless, and eventually Scroll away all his bodies. This is his best window. It doesn't get better for him. Actually, in his shoes, I would definitely manifest a dead card to bluff a 12/12 hoping the opponent alters their play around it while I'm just trying to push damage and count to 20. So then it comes down to whether you bother with an ineffective bluff vs a play that could actually matter in other lines.

This brings me to a deeper strategy question beyond this game. When Dreadstill makes a mistake or misclick, how do you adapt? Do you still try to play to invalidate everything, even when you no longer can, or do you just gamble they don't have it and try to win the other lines? My instincts are to take the gamble, but perhaps that is just tempo player thinking and not how controlling Dreadstill thinks about the game. Just a question.

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Originally Posted by Fox

On Kroxa, yes it's horrid...but it's actually the same card as Uro when you "cheat" it into play with Dress Down and get Plow'd. The legacy community keeps telling itself Dress Down is so good and keeps citing this ability to get their 2-for-1 payoff killed in a 1-for-1 trade. If this nonsense didn't spike the price of cards that belong only to Dreadnought, it would merely be comical to see in decks like Bant midrange. The mental gymnastics they do running Torpor Orb analogues is fascinating, and they won't even admit that the only reason they're doing it is that they're scared to death of Thassa enough to sinkhole 2-3 slots of their 75. Always with the "it cleans up Saga tokens" excuse, and I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I feel like I told all of you that Saga is not a trustworthy 4x card, and is only meant for 2x play in Dreadstill as it adds a basic where the third Factory used to reside. Kinda mind-boggling how the legacy community wants to play with our toys, but not actually use them correctly, as they are unwilling to run 12/12s.

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When running Uro + Dress Down in the same deck, you don't have to actually sequence Dress Down -> Uro just because both cards are in the list. Uro doesn't require an enabler. Most of the time you can just use Uro normally (or Stifle the sacrifice off the extra land drop). Dress Down can be saved for Dreadnought or cycled as a disruptive cantrip (vs Thassa, Constructs, Coatls, SFM, Goblins, etc). Bosh n Roll was good at doing this in his videos. But then if opponent does have grave hate, you do have the option to Dress Down -> Uro around it.

Like you said, blind jamming Dress Down -> Uro is a terrible play walking into removal. But it's not a forced line. It's just a thing you can do if you need to.

Kroxa is different. The payoff is worse. Kroxa is not worth playing on its own, so then the deck is forced into bad "combo Kroxa" lines that walk into Swords.

Fundamentally, this is a combo deck. A 12/12 that kills in two turns if it’s protected for 2 turns. It should be built just like infect or Death's Shadow.

The goal should be to protect the combo with either Thoughtseize or Mother of Runes and the blue free counterspells.

4 Thoughtseize/MoM
3 Daze
4 FoW
1 FoN
4 Stifle or in combination with Scroll of Fate
4 Dress Down
4 Dreadnought
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder or Expressive Iteration if splashing red
18 Lands

Is the core.

That leaves 10 flex slots.

I am a fan of the red splash for 4 Ragavan (until its banned), 4 Dragon's Rage Channeler as they are the best cards in legacy at the moment and will draw removal. Plus Ragavan protected for a couple of turns puts you very far ahead.

The 2 remaining slots could go to just about anything. Options include...
Murktide Regent (costs atleast 2 mana and needs 3-4 turns to kill the opponent)
Wasteland
Urza's Saga
Assault Probe
Misdirection
Boros Charm if playing Mother of Runes instead of Thoughtseize
Lightning Bolt

This deck will shine whenever Ragavan gets banned and lowers the power of the format a bit, and decreases removal a bit as well.

The printing of Prismatic Ending would indicate that this is a singularly poor time to go all-in on a sorcery speed, summoning sick creature - particularly if your protection is Daze.

It would however be the correct read to recognize that the card Standstill is quite good at punishing small-minded removal mages. If you want to win with Dreadnought, you play Dreadstill.

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Originally Posted by Fox

The printing of Prismatic Ending would indicate that this is a singularly poor time to go all-in on a sorcery speed, summoning sick creature - particularly if your protection is Daze.

It would however be the correct read to recognize that the card Standstill is quite good at punishing small-minded removal mages. If you want to win with Dreadnought, you play Dreadstill.

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How do you figure standstill is any good currently? The flash in threats like Endurance, Ice Fang, Hullbreacher etc and the prevalence of Urza’s Saga make this a singularly poor time to go all-in on Standstill.

Dreadnought is still a not well known and underplayed deck but the rare few occasions that I run into it on MTGO, its always one of the Dressnought lists.

Im having good results with Sultai Dressnought on MTGO having replaced the Urza’s Sagas and Urza’s Saga targets from the list in the OP with Dark Confidants, Endurance, Strix and Borrowers to good effect. Thoughtseize is a must play in Dressnought for the reasons outlined above and Confidant, Endurance and Strix and Uro are all great at drawing removal or taking over the game if not removed. Im pretty regularly running into mirror matchups on MTGO these days.

My list is…

4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Force of Negation

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Dark Confidant
1 Endurance
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Baleful Strix

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Witherbloom Command

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Island

Sideboard
2 Veil of Summer
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Dauthi Voidwalker
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Endurance
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Fatal Push
1 Force of Vigor
1 Witherbloom Command

What's your record like on MTGO?

Stiflenought is very prone to 2-for-1s by 1-mana removals like Swords to Plowshares and Fatal Push, where the opponent spent both fewer cards and less mana. Daze fails at defending against that (because their removal costs less). It does not help that any deck splashing white is now running 7x 1-mana removals (Prismatic Ending). It also doesn't help that the most popular 2-card fatty is a 20/20 flying indestructible that can both ambush Dreadnought and just race over the top. Overall, a big chunk of fair decks have an easier time answering Dreadnought than you do making one, so trying to get there with sorcery-speed 12/12s is an uphill battle.

Fox is convinced this is futile and the correct way to play Dreadnought is in a non-linear plan picking efficient fights on multiple fronts towards a favorable endgame instead of just jamming fast 12/12s into answers. Standstill builds towards that endgame in multiple ways. UW Dreadstill has Teferi, Time Raveler to protect against flash tricks. It also has multiple ways to generate new threats under Standstill (and keeps getting new tools to abuse!). Standstill is a difficult card to play well and relies on coherent deck construction. Fox can explain that whole strategy much better.

Is that the ONLY competitive way to play Dreadnought? Fox thinks so, and he does have a ton of Dreadnought and Standstill experience to back that up. Many others have tried Dressnought. It solves the 2-for-1 issue while Dress Down has general utility against many decks. DressNought's seen a lot of YouTube & Twitch play inspiring players to try it in Leagues (meme factor), but I haven't seen that translate to much showing in tournaments/Challenges. It seems good at using fatties to out-tempo bad brews, but can it crack "the winner's meta"? And the VakaNought OP, who once posted all over Reddit and TheSource that this was the next greatest thing, has gone quiet. Did it not win as much as he'd hoped? Are there just not enough players playing it?

One thing in your favor is UR struggles to interact with Dreadnought. As long as the metagame has much larger share of UR than Bant and URW Sagavan then 12/12s have a better chance of getting there.

For Sultai Dressnought, there's been some discussion above about a few points:

1) Daze is suboptimal when you're making 3-mana threats (Uro, Dressnought). You don't really want to pick up lands before you've made a threat, and by the time you've made a threat they can pay for Daze. There might be the odd "gotcha" where they just don't expect an Uro deck to have Daze and play into it, but it's also dead many times. 4th FoW seems much much better than 1st Daze.

2) Card draw is important. Converting life to cards works well with Uro. Sylvan Library seems strong here. Bob's interesting. He draws out removal, making Dreadnought more likely to get there. But the curve also has some painful flips...

3) Playing only CMC-conditioned removal seems risky. There are a lot of things Decay can't hit (Murktide, Karn, that 5/5 equipment, Saga, Field of the Dead, Jace). Assassin's Trophy seems good, even if it works against the mana denial plan. Sudden Edict is also a card.

A 2nd Endurance seems good too.