Page 3 of 41 FirstFirst 123456713 ... LastLast
Results 41 to 60 of 808

Thread: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

  1. #41

  2. #42
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Mishra's Bauble is a key player in bad card syndrome. This syndrome is often preceded by Urza's Saga. What is interesting here is the mismatch of 1x Saga and 3x Bauble, which can't cover up Bauble's flaws with Urza's Saga being a powerful card.

    Delirium is not hard to get with Urza's Saga and Dreadnought. You have 1 mana put artifact + creature in yard and 1-card delirium with Saga search up suicide Dreadnought. Get rid of the Bauble stuff.

    The Ragavan exploit is 4 Ragavan, 4 Daze, and the other 6-7 FoW effects. This exploit [which is going to get Ragavan banned, and Daze too if wotc realizes this is the underlying problem] is its own other deck. The exploit relies on max copies, more free counters, and removal to keep Ragavan triggering - things Dreadnought tech can't give you. Ragavan will underperform - to the point that it will not effectively split removal away from your only wincon [other attackers].

    Uro guarantees Surgical will be boarded in. Manabase flaws are weak to Wasteland Volc -> Surgical it. This simple play would likely win by itself.

    You still have the fundamental problem of choosing to lock yourself into sorcery-speed threats while trying to protect those threats with Daze. The nature of the Uro CA engine continues to expose weakness to Surgical and mana denial.

  3. #43

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Fox, do you think the manabase should have replaced some of the duals/wastelands with misty rainforest and/or a basic island?

  4. #44
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    The manabase is under too much stress from Uro, which has always been the problem. Dreadnought does not play nicely with a 3rd color of mana, on top of 2c + colorless lands. Straight-UG does not have the pieces it needs to be a pure 2c + colorless deck. The closest you can really get is Reclaimer grabbing Cavern for Plague Engi and/or grabbing Lotus Field for Verdict (all done in the background of using Nissa of the 5/5s effectively).

    When you deviate from the 2c plan, you are no longer able to rely on your mana to show up for you. Adding basics is just going to make the color splitting even more unreliable, because at the end of the day you can't trust a dual land to be left alone, and you can't rely on a basic to make the right color of mana when throwing around costs like UUGG and interaction on white. Every time the mana fails you, you lose turns...in a deck that really isn't designed to protect Dreadnoughts. Then you find yourself in a play pattern abyss where you will always need more than the 1 card Ponder can provide...and even when you lose 1-2 draw steps to get the >1 cards you need to go off, it's all just going be traded into a single removal spell.

    On of the lessons of cards like Standstill and Dreadnought is that you don't get away with throwing around FIRE design if you can't trust your mana. You're not playing mono-1-card combos like UWG miracles (a midrange deck) or Delver; if things go wrong with the mana, you have more dead cards to draw through than they do. Your Ponder will always be worse than theirs, and it locks you into an inescapable spiral of doing the same thing, just worse. Ponder allows you to cheat on mana [too few land slots and/or too many color reqs], but it is ultimately not a competitive choice when you're just worse xerox.

    ^This is the simple truth most brews fail to understand as they mindlessly throw quad-laser Ponder into their deck. So, unless you're doing something outrageous (like playing Portent + exploiting Ragavan with the express intent of primarily targeting opponents) or you have inevitability, you need to attack variance hiding in the manabase; meaning you need to be using perfect Fetches [meaning Vista], playing the game on exclusively 2 colors [until turn 3 at the earliest], and not use Ponder crutches to hit land drop #2 [generally meaning play more land slots].

    For your most recent list, you aren't able to cheese Ragavan nor do you have inevitability. Adding a basic or changing a Fetch here or there is an intermediate move, not a solution. The answer is the same as always: get your CA on-color, just play Dreadstill.

  5. #45

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    The answer is the same as always: get your CA on-color, just play Dreadstill.
    Standstill is just not that great as a card imho. As far as 1U enchantments go, Dress Down cantrips and has significant utility beyond enabling Dreadnoughts and Uros.

  6. #46
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Standstill is just not that great as a card imho. As far as 1U enchantments go, Dress Down cantrips and has significant utility beyond enabling Dreadnoughts and Uros.
    If you don't build a deck with Standstill correctly, and also don't play it correctly, then it's never going to look good. When people talk about Standstill being a bad topdeck, what they really mean is that they blew their resources relentlessly 1-for-1'ing without ever building towards any multi-turn plan - they played normal legacy. This is part of the reason decks with Standstill lack pilots - it requires a different skillset, it takes lots of time to learn the system, and people give up too easily. Take your post above; from that starting point all the average legacy player would need is one bad league and they'd be highly likely to shut down and say "see Standstill is bad, and I'm never playing it again."
    ---
    Your lists fall into the normal legacy trap as well, where you try to play [insert normal good card] to get [insert immediate payoff]. Unfortunately you are doing this at the cost of successfully supporting Dreadnought; which like Standstill, requires a different playstyle for success. It is particularly problematic for your lists when an opponent killing your Dreadnought directly threatens your primary/only win condition [the combat step]. You become so fixated on this that you add a card like DRC, in an attempt to overwhelm removal, such that you don't see the long term plan of maintaining consistent pressure over time - you're not understanding how advantageous it is for Dreadnought to sit in a GY basically turning on delirium by itself. Instead you have focused on the feels bad nature of losing your big threats and gone off on this crazed Bauble tangent to "make DRC good" when it's already at home in a Dreadnought shell. This is the normal magic stuff I'm talking about; that Bauble crap is the domain of "if this doesn't work I'm screwed b/c my deck can't play from behind" normal Delver nonsense.

    Thing is that EoT Dress Down into turn 3 big dude doesn't count for much if the opponent has the kill spell or topdecks a PW like JTMS or Teferi. So you can play 4x Dress Down, but all you're consistently doing is walking into a known problem response opponents are known to employ, for which you have no reliable response (and no inevitability against). There's not really anything else going on in the background when this happens to you; there is no other axis your lists pick fights over which meaningfully threaten opponents.

    ^this is why you keep drastically changing your decks, and until you stop letting opponents play easy mode removal-based magic (vs sorcery-speed, summoning sick Noughts you can't protect with Daze), you're going to keep running into these problems. There are other ways to win games with Dreadnoughts in a deck. Back away from the combat step, determine the secondary value plan, and hyper-focus the mana around these.

  7. #47
    Member

    Join Date

    Sep 2011
    Posts

    4,776

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Standstill is a great card in the right deck with the right support. It has a much higher ceiling but also much lower floor than something like Ponder. It's great in Standstill.dec with a dedicated plan to gain advantage through Standstill. It's not good thrown into a random pile of cards.

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Fox, do you think the manabase should have replaced some of the duals/wastelands with misty rainforest and/or a basic island?
    The manabase problems happen because Ragavan doesn't mix well with Uro + Saga. Turn 1 R, into UUGG, with colorless self-sacrificing "lands". How is that supposed to not get wrecked by Wasteland+Surgical, Port, Moons, B2B, Choke...

    The decks want to do different things.
    Notice how Delver cut Uro when it added Ragavan.
    The URW RagaStill list winning online has Ragavan and Saga, but no Uro. The colored mana demands in that deck are very simple (single-colored costs with the rare lategame UU). The deck also plays more than 20 lands.
    Bant runs Uro but no Ragavan.
    Other decks maximize Saga + artifacts without Ragavan or Uro.

    You're trying to run all the hottest cards in the format in one deck, at the expense of your mana stability. Everyone else is just picking a lane and maximizing that one strategy while having better mana.

    Mishra's Bauble is also terrible and unnecessary:
    -3 Bauble
    +1 Bolt
    +1 colored land
    +1 Saga

    That should improve the current list, but doesn't address the underlying problem of trying to cram too many different strategies together without having enough slots to support all of them.

  8. #48

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Boshnroll’s excellent video is up. Lots of fun gameplay. Dragon Rage Channeler, Dress Down and Dreadnought put in a ton of work...

    https://youtu.be/XLuWavPSU28

    I agree with Bosh, the maindeck is pretty much perfect. The sideboard needs some tweaking but otherwise, its a very competitive and well tuned list.

  9. #49
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Watched the VoD by BoshnRoll, with a 3-2 coming off the back of timeout by Emry Cannon with deterministic win on board. Opponents included Zoo (tier 3), high combo representation, low Wasteland use, and no hard matchup [value pile].

    Much of the success came off of exploiting the soon-to-be-banned Ragavan. Did not see any novel benefit to having Ragavan and Nought in same deck, as predicted. Drop the Nought and max Ragavan/Daze exploit if that's the plan.

    Bauble was not needed for delirium, and we kept seeing the need to interact rather than just drawing a card. With susceptibility to Surgical, a single slot is better filled by Relic; and the other 2 Bauble slots need to be cards with text.

    Consistently saw too many Dress Down without proactive plan development. Consistently wanted to make creatures at instant speed [Scroll of Fate]. The ideal split at this time is 3 Stifle, 2 Scroll, 2 Dress Down. Use 5 copies of Nought with 3x actual and 2x Saga.

    Speed problem was evident where deck spins its wheels without forward progress as it needs time to assemble Uro mana (in a league where Zoo iirc was only deck with Wasteland). Need to get this CA game started sooner, and with reliable mana.

    In watching this VoD pay attention to confused plan of assembling mana while rest of cards often fail to work together. Note also the turn 1 forced Ponder plays which undermine theme of mana denial. Also differentiate between Ragavan carrying [in spite of other cards in deck] and what the rest of the deck was offering. This last point is especially important to watch for.

  10. #50

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    The benefit came from Ragavan and DRC eating removal and forces that would have otherwise hit Dreadnought or Uro, as predicted.

    Thats why the list was built the way it was and thats why its effective.

  11. #51
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    The benefit came from Ragavan and DRC eating removal and forces that would have otherwise hit Dreadnought or Uro, as predicted.

    Thats why the list was built the way it was and thats why its effective.
    That is the trap, thinking these game plans are linked and complementary. Ragavan wins games by itself (and it's getting banned), and it's all about Daze exploiting. This is why entire decks are dedicated to the cheese.

    It's very important to look past how Ragavan was good, and recognize it was good in spite of other aspects of the deck, which were holding it back. Yours is a worse presentation of Ragavan, which does not bode well when up against real Ragavan.

    On the flip side the CA in mired in mana uncertainty, where tremendous amounts of resources are being expended to try to get Uro mana online. Here Ragavan is not all-in enough to factor into the mana solution reliably with his Lotus Petals. The Dreadnought stuff is worsening this rift, and the deck was never really assembling it's CA contraption.

    You have to dedicate more slots than 3x Bolts, 3x. Daze, and 1x Abrade towards cheese'ig Ragavan.

  12. #52

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    CARTESIAN 5-0ed with a very fresh take on the deck

    Creature (12)
    4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
    4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    4 Sprite Dragon

    Sorcery (4)
    4 Ponder

    Instant (19)
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Daze
    4 Force of Will
    4 Lightning Bolt
    3 Spell Pierce

    Artifact (2)
    2 Scroll of Fate

    Enchantment (4)
    4 Dress Down

    Land (19)
    3 Island
    1 Mountain
    4 Polluted Delta
    4 Scalding Tarn
    4 Volcanic Island
    3 Wasteland

    Sideboard (15)
    2 Abrade
    2 Counterbalance
    2 Hydroblast
    1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    2 Pyroblast
    2 Pyroclasm
    2 Surgical Extraction
    2 Tormod's Crypt

    Very spicy brew. Its cool that its playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. I suppose Sprite Dragon presents a faster clock.

    I also find the lack of Stifle and the use of Scroll of Fate instead very cool. Cool list CARTESIAN.

  13. #53
    Member

    Join Date

    Sep 2011
    Posts

    4,776

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    2 Scroll of Fate, 0 Bauble, 0 Uro, 4 basics looks like a significant improvement. Seems like there should be 1 Urza's Saga. The manabase can afford it and it improves both DRC and Nought.

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    The benefit came from Ragavan and DRC eating removal and forces that would have otherwise hit Dreadnought or Uro, as predicted.
    Using Ragavan and DRC to eat removal is like using Supreme Verdict to kill Llanowar Elves. You're needlessly blowing a powerful card to get rid of something when you could trade differently and keep your more powerful card.

    Better, just play your turn 1 Ragavan, use spells to eat removal, and win the game. This is what UR Delver and Jeskai RagaSagaStill are doing to dominate the format. (See Legacy Challenge & Showcase results)

    You think you duped the opponent by getting them to "waste" their removal so you can play your 12/12, but the thing they killed was already better than the 12/12.

  14. #54

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    2 Scroll of Fate, 0 Bauble, 0 Uro, 4 basics looks like a significant improvement. Seems like there should be 1 Urza's Saga. The manabase can afford it and it improves both DRC and Nought.



    Using Ragavan and DRC to eat removal is like using Supreme Verdict to kill Llanowar Elves. You're needlessly blowing a powerful card to get rid of something when you could trade differently and keep your more powerful card.

    Better, just play your turn 1 Ragavan, use spells to eat removal, and win the game. This is what UR Delver and Jeskai RagaSagaStill are doing to dominate the format. (See Legacy Challenge & Showcase results)

    You think you duped the opponent by getting them to "waste" their removal so you can play your 12/12, but the thing they killed was already better than the 12/12.
    Lol. Yes Ragavan is overpowered. But saying that you would rather get a hit in with Ragavan than get a hit in with a 12/12 trampler is more than a bit hyperbolic.

  15. #55
    Member

    Join Date

    Sep 2011
    Posts

    4,776

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Lol. Yes Ragavan is overpowered. But saying that you would rather get a hit in with Ragavan than get a hit in with a 12/12 trampler is more than a bit hyperbolic.
    In a vacuum where players have no draw steps or cards in hand, obviously getting the 12/12 attack is better than getting a 2/1 attack.

    But in an interactive magic game where both players have to account for other resources beyond that 1 creature, for a UR shell with FoW + Daze + cantrips + bolts + Wasteland, I would rather get the Ragavan. Ragavan gives you additional mana and cards. The 12/12 requires additional mana and cards to work. When you run a tempo shell like that, you want to trade resources efficiently and maximize Daze+Wasteland. Ragavan lets you do that better than DressNought. Ragavan is a smaller body but makes the rest of the cards in the deck shine better, instead of taxing the rest of the cards to assemble and protect the threat. Proven results already show that.

    The 12/12 trampler can be better, but it requires the right support so you can play it while also advancing in resources and interaction. Fox's decks are designed to do that, but in general random UR decks probably function better with Ragavan.

  16. #56

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    That wasnt the question.

    If I get to choose which card gets Pushed in response to your attack, a Ragavan, or a Dreadnought, I would choose Ragavan pretty much every time.

    If we are talking about Swords, the 12 points of life gain from Dreadnought getting StPed has won me several games, so thats not so cut and dry, but only because Dreadnought is better in this scenario as well.

    Generally 12/12 trampler >>> 2/1 monkey treasure maker.

    Why do you think that 5-0 list above is playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. Because a fast clock wins tempo games.

    Yes Dreadnought only shines in shells that already want to play 4 Dress Down. But in this meta thats not a drawback, Dress Down is an MVP.

  17. #57
    Member

    Join Date

    Sep 2011
    Posts

    4,776

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Why do you think that 5-0 list above is playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. Because a fast clock wins tempo games.
    Ragavan wins even more tempo games.

    Why do you think the top 2 decks in the current meta (UR Delver & Jeskai RagaSagaStill) both play 4x Ragavan?
    https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/legacy#paper

    Ragavan decks have taken a lot of Legacy Challenge/tournament Top 8s, much better proven results than any shade of Vaka-Nought has.

    Dreadnought+DressDown can be very strong in other shells, like Dreadstill and perhaps your other builds. I'm just talking about these recent URx tempo shells you posted and your claim that Dreadnought is better tempo.

    Once you're playing the tempo shell of DRC, Ragavan, Brainstorm, FoW, Daze, Wasteland, Bolt, Ponder... that type of shell does better just pushing T1 monkey than trying to make 12/12s. Just protect Monkey instead of sacrificing it to make way for 12/12s. If the monkey draws removal and you win with the 12/12 after, you probably would have won anyway if Dreadnought+Dress Down were other cards - in those games you're typically way ahead in resources either way, due the tempo disruption or the opponent's deck being bad.

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    If I get to choose which card gets Pushed in response to your attack, a Ragavan, or a Dreadnought, I would choose Ragavan pretty much every time.
    If we are talking about Swords, the 12 points of life gain from Dreadnought getting StPed has won me several games, so thats not so cut and dry, but only because Dreadnought is better in this scenario as well.
    Would you rather attack with a 12/12 trample, 2/1 monkey treasure-maker, or a 15/15 flying annihilator 6 with protection from StP/Push/Decay/Prismatic? Obviously the 15/15. Play UR SneakShow.

    You're still thinking too narrow, a pseudo-vacuum of just 1 removal spell and no other cards or mana for either player, with both creatures already on the board. What about the other cards both players have access to? What about the development required to get those bodies on the board? That all matters in a tempo game.

    The reason URx tempo doesn't play 15/15s is it costs more tempo and resources to deploy the 15/15. The 15/15 is much scarier, but it's not good for a tempo plan with Daze and Wasteland. Tempo would rather have threats that gain positive tempo and cost few resources, even if they're smaller and more fragile. The same applies to comparing 12/12s to 2/1s. Consider the bigger picture, the full game plan.

    You can make the 2/1 monkey treasure-maker card-drawer earlier & using fewer resources, and then it gains you more resources by the time you could have made a 12/12. Ragavan is better tempo. The 12/12 takes more mana and resources (2-card combo for 2U, attacking turn 4). What does that mean? When you attack with the 2/1 Monkey, you can Daze their removal spell, use the Treasure mana to Brainstorm into answers/gas, cast an extra threat from the opponent's deck before the 12/12 ever gets to attack, and can generally spend more cards and mana disrupting the opponent's plan. Better tempo. When you attack with the 12/12 and they Push/StP it, you have fewer mana and cards available to interact with what the opponent did, their removal spell is harder to Daze, and it's harder for you to establish subsequent threats (unless you compensate with Dreadstill-type lategame).

    Against Tier 1 fair decks in attrition wars, Ragavan leaves you ahead with more tempo and more resources to grind past the opponent.

    The 5-0 Cartesian list at least does Dreadnoughts better by running Scroll of Fate and cutting Uro. But it looks like a watered down version of UR Dreadstill that Fox and Rood play. If you like Cartesian's list, at that point I would just look harder at UR Dreadstill and the experts' recommendations for it.

  18. #58
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Cartesian's list has quite a few issues, but at least it has Scroll of Fate.

    The actual cost and mana flaws can't be overlooked - 4x Volc is egregious. It's not just a waste of money, it also makes it super easy to get crushed by Delver b/c you're giving them Wasteland targets. The correct number of Volc is 1x. That said, a suboptimal build (UR Stiflenought) probably runs better on 2x Volc...but it's a waste of $800, as it's being used to play without CA. Better to go with 1x Volc and higher land totals, and have plans for the mana [Standstill, Shark'nado, Saga].

    The theme of rewarding enemy Delver decks is continued by dropping Stifle, adding Pierce, and only having 4x 1-drop threats. The whole reason to begrudgingly play Daze is that Delver decks exist. Dreadnought's UR construction is all about outmaneouvering Delver at all points:
    -Can't Waste us, we can Waste them
    -We have best Stifle in the format, and thus have upper hand in mana denial
    -We have 8x 1-drop threats (manlands count here), which is usually more than them
    -We have better uses for more mana, and are less likely to play into Daze

    Sprite Dragon slots are better used on 2x Lavamancer and 2x TNN if not addressing "just make it UR Dreadstill" CA issue.

  19. #59

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Lets just agree to disagree. I personally think Cartesian's manabase is perfect as is for the way his deck is built.

    I dont get the appeal of slow grindy cards like Lavamanacer or Standstill. But if that works for Dreadstill, good. Thats a different deck built for a different playstyle. I quite like Cartesian's 5-0 list and I think his take on the deck is worth exploring.

  20. #60
    Member

    Join Date

    May 2015
    Location

    PDX
    Posts

    2,477

    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Lets just agree to disagree. I personally think Cartesian's manabase is perfect as is for the way his deck is built.

    I dont get the appeal of slow grindy cards like Lavamanacer or Standstill. But if that works for Dreadstill, good. Thats a different deck built for a different playstyle. I quite like Cartesian's 5-0 list and I think his take on the deck is worth exploring.
    Why are you advocating for sinking $3200 dollars into letting Delver Waste you out of the game in a 2c deck? That's just for the 4 Volc.

    Lavamancer is a much faster card than Uro. I think you've also tried to make this point that somehow Scroll is too slow, still on Uro builds.

    When your wincon is entirely the combat step, it's important to use cards that continually nuke Ice-Fang/Strix and deal direct damage through E-Bridge. Reliable damage puts opponents into Bolt range much more effectively than running into deathtouch flying, cantrip walls...while hoping to not get hit by Surgical.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)