Vaka Nought - A Powerful Brew Abusing Stifle and Dress Down to slam 12/12s and Titans

[Clark Kant]

Vaka Nought is a unique deck built around Dress Down, Stifle, Dreadnought and either Uro (Bant versions) or Dragon's Rage Channeler, Lazav and Kroxa (Grixis versions) to add resiliency. The deck was in development (and played both Lazav and Uro together alongside Dreadnought) before Dress Down was spoiled but post Dress Down, the list diverged into two very different directions that I like to refer to as Dress Nought and Naked Nought (the Dreadnoughts don't have Uros to back them up).

Despite the strength of Dress Down, the fundamental game plan stayed the same, to disrupt your opponents manabase with Stifle and Wasteland, disrupt their win conditions using Daze, FoW or Dress Down, and win using a Dreadnought and either Uro or Dragon's Rage Channeler (alongside Lazav to abuse the Surveil shenanigans) while they are still rebuilding. Instead of creating a new thread, the existing thread where the preMH2 lists were being discussed was updated with the post MH2 changes. However, there were so many different ways to abuse Dress Down that the deck several different directions.

The newest list that is the current focus of development is...

Vaka Nought - Temur (aka. Dress Naughty)

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Tiaga
1 Snow Covered Island

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
2-3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1-2 Brazen Borrower
1-2 Sylvan Library

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3-4 Daze
3-4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation

Sideboard:
1 Abrade
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Wilt
2 Veil of Summer
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Pyroblast
3 Endurance

It's still very early and some of the numbers might need tweaking.

The list looks very similar to Temur Delver but it's a misdirect of sorts. Your opponents will think they are playing vs Delver and will heavily focus on countering or killing DRC/Ragavan asap, and will expect Lightning Bolt and will thus value their life total highly when casting Ad Nauseam or utilizing Sylvan Library. In doing so, your smaller threats really function to draw out removal and counterspells that would have otherwise hit your Dreadnought or Uro. Your smaller threats also all generate pseudo card advantage (DRC's surveil trigger helps you dig for your Dress Downs while filling up your yard for Uro, meanwhile Ragavan makes treasure tokens and lets you cast your opponents cantrips to help dig for combo pieces). They also serve to ping at your opponents life total so that a single swing with either a Dreadnought or a Uro wins the game.

The one weakness with this approach is that the only interaction that you have game one with your opponent's game plan is Daze, Force, Brazen, Stifle, Wasteland and Dress Down (against specific matchups). Postboard, you have quite a bit more interaction with your opponent.

With Dress Down, people seem to miss that you can cast Dress Down at the end of your opponent's turn, and then cast any combination of Dreadnought, or a titan like Uro/Kroxa on your turn in order to get a 12/12 trampler along with a 6/6 titan in one go which means the only way your opponent wins is if they manage to Wrath the board the very next turn (for which you have FoW and Daze and FoN to help protect against). In the Death's Shadow versions of the list, you also abuse the fact that Dress Down turns your lowly 2/2 Death’s Shadow into a game winning 13/13 Shadow for a turn, but Death's Shadow proved to be inferior the Dragon's Rage Channeler + Lazav surveil plan upon further testing, and the current Grixis list looks as below...

Vaka Nought - Grixis (aka. Naked Nought)

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
4 Daze

4 Stifle
3-4 Dress Down

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1-2 Lazav, the Multifarious
0-2 Kroxa (Can play up 2 Urza's Saga along with utility artifacts instead of Kroxa as they serve a similar role)
1-4 Ragavan (Test Slots)

0-2 Urza's Saga
3-4 Wasteland
1-2 Bloodstained Mire
0-1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Badlands
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn

The test slots could instead go to Lighting Bolt or Expressive Iteration or Force of Negation or Flusterstorm or Drown in the Loch or Predordain or Reanimate or Expediate or Temur's Battle Rage or Thud or to a alternative threat such as Death's Shadow or Delver of Secrets or Urza's Saga targets like Soul Guide Lantern or Pithing Needle.

The above lists are the ones that are the current focus of development as both the Bant and Simic versions feel really good where they are right now. BoshNRoll 4-1ed with the Simic list I sent him and I 4-1ed with the Bant list despite running into various mtgo bugs that cost me games. I also sent the list above to BoshNRoll to play the Grixis list through a league as my laptop is no longer allowing me to play mtgo and I wanted to get a video of the Grixis variant up for this thread. I earlier lost a league due to my 10 year old laptop crashing and have run into bugs and lag and connection issues which makes me feel bad about blowing money on MTGO leagues only to lose to technical issues. For now, I have gone back to doing most of my testing in person or in the free mtgo tournament practice rooms for now.

Once the above brews are tested and refined, next on the agenda is put together a BUG (Sultai) list utilzing both Uro and Lazav together alongside maindeck Thoughtseize and Abrupt Decay. It'll be a grindier albeit very powerful list, but I still need to get my hands on some fetches before I can put it together.

Surveil is such an incredibly strong ability and boot strapping it to Channeler and Lazav made it very abusable. Plus the Grixis version is an absolute blast to play.

The Uro version was initially just Simic due to Endurance making the white splash no longer neccesary, but Bant list reemerged due to how rock solid Prismatic Ending ended up being maindeck and how awesome Serenity and Knight of Autumn in the sideboard have been with all the affinity running around post MH2...

Below is the Bant version that I 4-1ed with in spite of technical issues with my computer.

Vaka Nought - Bant (aka. Dress Nought)

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
2 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland (was also pleased by a 1 of Urza's Saga here during testing)

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

3 Prismatic Ending
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Library

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
1 Noble Hierarch (also was pleased with Esper Sentinel and Mother of Runes here in earlier test builds)
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (also tested Teferi3 and a second Sylvan Library here, Library might actually be stronger in this slot but hindsight is 20/20)

Sideboard:
3 Endurance
2 Knight of Autumn
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Serenity
1 Karakas
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Containment Priest
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Mother of Runes
1 Pithing Needle
1 Swords to Plowshares

Below is the Simic List list I sent to BoshNRoll to play due to my laptop's issues with mtgo, when Dress Down was spoiled.

His 4-1 video is here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETm2CazPDq8&t=1734s

Vaka Nought - Simic (aka. Naughty Dress)

3 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Prismatic Vista
3 Tropical Island
3 Snow Covered Island
2 Snow Covered Forest
1 Urza's Saga

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Sylvan Library
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Brazen Borrower

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard:
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
1 Flusterstorm
1 Divert
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Wilt
2 Veil of Summer
2 Carpet of Flowers
3 Endurance

I also briefly toyed around with a Death's Shadow based list due to Dress Down temporarily turning Shadow into a 13/13 but eventually abandoned it to build the Grixis list around Surveil, Channeler and Lazav...

Vaka Nought - Shadow (aka. Death Nought)

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Death’s Shadow
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Street Wraith
1 Dragon's Rage Channeler
1 Lazav
1 Kroxa

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize
4 Daze
3 Ponder
1 Snuff Out/Drown In the Loch/Flusterstorm
1 Force of Negation/Expedite/Thud/Temur’s Battle Rage

4 Wasteland
14 Grixis Lands

All the 1 ofs were being tested, and it quickly became clear how broken surveil is in a deck with Dreadnoughts, Cantrips and Lazavs especially when surveil came bootstrapped to an aggressive 1 drop like Channeler.
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The initial thread when created on May 11 and was built around Dreadnought and Uros alongside Noble Hierarchs, MoM's, Scroll of Fates, Torpor Orbs, Hushbringers or Lazav and became defunct when Dress Down was printed. You can skip to page 2 of this thread for pertinent discussion about the Dress Down based lists.