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

  1. #61

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    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.
    On MTGO, Volcs are $5 each. With covid bringing paper down, lots of people are playing via MTGO.

    I really want to try Blood Moon in that 5-0 list. So I could increase the basic island count and cut a Volc.

    Perhaps...

    Creature (12)
    3 Ragavan
    4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
    4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    1 Grim Lavamancer
    1 Sprite Dragon

    Sorcery (4)
    4 Ponder

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

    Artifact (2)
    2 Scroll of Fate

    Enchantment (4)
    4 Dress Down
    2 Blood Moon

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

    Is that better? I cut Bolt to test a Lavamancer, cut Sprite Dragon to try Ragavan and cut Spell Pierce to try Blood Moon. I feel like I should have Brazen Borrower as an out to Chalice but not sure what to cut.

  2. #62
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    For a basic-heavy manabase, use Vistas before Deltas. Then you have 8 fetches (Tarn + Vista) that get either color of basic, instead of having Deltas that can only get duals or Island.


    //19 Lands:
    4 Scalding Tarn
    4 Prismatic Vista
    1 Polluted Delta
    1 Volcanic Island
    3 Island
    2 Mountain
    4 Wasteland

    There's easily room for the 4th Wasteland or 1st Saga.

    If you really like playing duals, you can cut another land for the 2nd Volc without a meaningful increase in manabase weakness.

    As Fox said, you probably want to capitalize on Stifles main (cut Spell Pierce) since you now have a manabase that lets you play aggressive mana denial without risking mana attacks back or hurting your mana development, so you can aggressively use your Stifles + Waste + Daze to oppress opponent's mana. The Uro version couldn't be as aggressive with mana denial because it needed to worry about its own greedy mana development too. Going to UR and basics you can play your mana denial cards more aggressively.

    Jace and Counterbalance don't belong in a deck with Wasteland and Daze, so that frees up sideboard space. You could move the Moons there (better SB than main, since they hurt your fetches and Wastelands and you won't need them in all matchups).

    I don't know about that mix of creatures... will leave that to others to comment.
    Edit: 3 Volc looks good when you're running Ragavan (protect T1 Ragavan with Daze, which basics cannot do), but it may not be correct to run Ragavan + DRC + Dreadnought + Lavamancer all together. UR Dreadstill just plays Dreadnought + DRC + Lavaman. UR Delver just plays Ragavan + DRC (+ Delver).

  3. #63

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

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    For a basic-heavy manabase, use Vistas before Deltas. Then you have 8 fetches (Tarn + Vista) that get either color of basic, instead of having Deltas that can only get duals or Island.


    //19 Lands:
    4 Scalding Tarn
    4 Prismatic Vista
    1 Polluted Delta
    1 Volcanic Island
    3 Island
    2 Mountain
    4 Wasteland

    There's easily room for the 4th Wasteland or 1st Saga.

    If you really like playing duals, you can cut another land for the 2nd Volc without a meaningful increase in manabase weakness.

    As Fox said, you probably want to capitalize on Stifles main (cut Spell Pierce) since you now have a manabase that lets you play aggressive mana denial without risking mana attacks back or hurting your mana development, so you can aggressively use your Stifles + Waste + Daze to oppress opponent's mana. The Uro version couldn't be as aggressive with mana denial because it needed to worry about its own greedy mana development too. Going to UR and basics you can play your mana denial cards more aggressively.

    Jace and Counterbalance don't belong in a deck with Wasteland and Daze, so that frees up sideboard space. You could move the Moons there (better SB than main, since they hurt your fetches and Wastelands and you won't need them in all matchups).

    I don't know about that mix of creatures... will leave that to others to comment.
    Edit: 3 Volc looks good when you're running Ragavan (protect T1 Ragavan with Daze, which basics cannot do), but it may not be correct to run Ragavan + DRC + Dreadnought + Lavamancer all together. UR Dreadstill just plays Dreadnought + DRC + Lavaman. UR Delver just plays Ragavan + DRC (+ Delver).
    Those are good suggestions. Thank you. I would cut the Delta for the 2nd Volc but otherwise that manabase definitely looks better.

    Adding a Stifle or two to the maindeck is fine, as long as people remember to use it as Sinkhole or to stop an Oracle trigger or something important like that rather than utilizing it to cast Dreadnought. Many pilots consistently misplay the deck by treating Stifle as a bad combo piece rather than as an efficient mana denial piece or combo counter piece, the way that card is actually meant to be used 90% of the time, and then wonder why they lost games they would have otherwise won. ThrabenU for example makes this misplay frequently on video anytime he plays a Dreadnought list.

  4. #64
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Adding a Stifle or two to the maindeck is fine, as long as people remember to use it as Sinkhole or to stop an Oracle trigger or something important like that rather than utilizing it to cast Dreadnought. Many pilots consistently misplay the deck by treating Stifle as a bad combo piece rather than as an efficient mana denial piece or combo counter piece, the way that card is actually meant to be used 90% of the time, and then wonder why they lost games they would have otherwise won. ThrabenU for example makes this misplay frequently on video anytime he plays a Dreadnought list.
    It depends on the rest of the deck. When you're playing multiple copies of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath then the mana demands are greedy and you can't afford to play such aggressive mana denial. Watching the videos, I found players like Bosh and ThrabenU often chose not to use Daze or mana denial when they could. It was not because they were too focused on Stiflenought, but because they recognized they were running a deck that was greedier with mana than the opponent. They couldn't afford to really attack the opponent's mana when it was more important to develop their own (or protect against attacks on their mana).

    But now that you've cut down to 2 colors, cut the slow mana-intensive stuff (Uro, Jace), and gone heavy on basics, the mana roles have changed. Instead of having greedier mana than the opponent, you have more stable mana, which means you can start 1-for-1ing cards with their lands (Stifle, Wasteland) and have that actually advance your game plan instead of just stall you both. Players will interpret that Stifle in hand differently now that the overall context of the deck has changed.

  5. #65

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

    Actually, Ive found that Bosh consistently plays Dreadnought lists well. He does make occasional play mistakes but overall plays the deck the way a player that understands the deck and its internal synergies well plays the deck.

  6. #66
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    If we're not fixing the main problem [i.e. not turning this into UWR Ragavan or UR Dreadstill], this is the mana:
    4x Tarn
    4x Vista
    4x Island
    2x Volc (waste of $800)
    1x Mountain
    3x Wasteland

    ^This manabase above is for a flawed deck, and as a flawed deck it is not allowed to play ideal mana:
    4x Tarn
    4x Vista
    5x Island
    2x Mountain
    1x Volc
    3x Wasteland
    2x Saga
    1x Spikefield

    On the creatures, again if we're not addressing the main problem:
    -1 Nought, +1 Karn
    -3 Ragavan (does not play nicely with Dreadnought), +1 Lavamancer, +2 TNN
    -1 Sprite Dragon, +1 Bolt
    -2 Pierce, +2 Stifle
    -2 Moon, +1 Stifle (#3), +1 Karn (#2)
    -2 Dress Down, +2 FoN
    Alternatively you can gamble on 2x Saga and 1x Relic in last 3 slots.

    Blood Moon is always incorrect. Alpine Moon is the 2x, and it goes in the SB.

  7. #67
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    If we're not fixing the main problem [i.e. not turning this into UWR Ragavan or UR Dreadstill], this is the mana:
    4x Tarn
    4x Vista
    4x Island
    2x Volc (waste of $800)
    1x Mountain
    3x Wasteland
    OP indicated the deck is for online only, so monetary argument for duals should be ignored.

    Why not the 4th colorless land (Wasteland or Saga)?

    Also why 4-1 split of basics instead of 3-2 (assuming not turning to Dreadstill, where of course you would have higher land count for both). Without 2nd Mountain, it's harder to have lines like cast DRC holding up Bolt. Is this just because red cannot fix to blue mana, so 2x Mountain hands (or Mountain + Waste) are unplayable? Ragavan does fix that, by giving red color-fixing.

  8. #68
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Why not the 4th colorless land (Wasteland or Saga)?

    Also why 4-1 split of basics instead of 3-2 (assuming not turning to Dreadstill, where of course you would have higher land count for both). Without 2nd Mountain, it's harder to have lines like cast DRC holding up Bolt. Is this just because red cannot fix to blue mana, so 2x Mountain hands (or Mountain + Waste) are unplayable? Ragavan does fix that, by giving red color-fixing.
    8 Fetch + 6 blue sources is the deckbuilding rule. Unless you have something like Timeless Dragon or the Astrolabe/E Tutor in the mix allowing 2 off-basics to find the main color, stay away from 2x off-basics unless you've already met the 8+6 rule. You're not really allowed to play >18 lands in Stiflenought without losing to flood, and 18 lands is a little suspect to try and power out constructs reliably (and then there's the whole too many Dress Down issue with this).

    Ragavan is a poor choice in Dreadnought decks, b/c you can't afford to sit there with a creature in play doing nothing [Ragavan that can't attack profitably], which also jams up your hand with redundant copies you can't cast. This is too much variance to draw through in a deck with Dreadnoughts, regardless of CA. Decks exploiting Ragavan require more focus on slots for removal and a Karakas, which have to come out of the Dreadnought fraction. Ragavan also has significant problems with stopping a Delver when added to DRC; this is another reason Lavamancer is preferred.

  9. #69
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1102953542
    ^This is a link to @anzidmtg playing @Cartesian's list. Anzi played at adept level, but made four large mistakes. One mistake cost him a game (manifesting Daze instead of any a textless Spell Pierce). A second mistake may have lost him the game (there was a game vs UR Delver where opponent was at 16, and Anzi had Sprite Dragon in hand and Nought coming in off the Scroll + Bolt. Instead of going for a chance to present 16 dmg in hand he Bolted a textless 3/3 attacker). A third mistake was unlikely to change the outcome (last game vs UR Delver he pretty much locked himself out by making a Waste the Fetch to play Daze vs Brazen). A fourth mistake which was unpunished due to Bolt in hand (incorrect trample math vs Shadow).

    Anzi is a skilled player of normal legacy, and we saw the good normal plays paired with the four misplays above at the "lose the entire game" level. In each of these instances the deck required the pilot to understand what cards mean, comparatively, to navigate a not-normal legacy scenario optimally. Another thing you will see in the VoD is multiple people continuously asking why Ragavan isn't in the list. This too is an example of not knowing how to assess cards and understand what they mean comparatively. A Ragavan in play you can't attack with successfully + 3 Ragavan in hand + 4 Dreadnought in hand does exactly nothing. It really is that simple - no testing required.

    Let's go ahead and suppose Anzi played at a master level, making no mistakes. There's not a lot of ceiling to work with, but in the case of this league he would have gotten a 4-1. The most important factor in this final record projection is probably more tied to an opponent's far below average topdeck luck [particularly the Humans deck]. This low ceiling for Dreadnought pilot skill mattering is a recurrent theme in Stiflenought decks.

    You can see the problems I've been talking about in the past few posts in action:
    -consistently won games b/c Scroll of Fate does *not* make Dreadnoughts at sorcery speed and then pass the turn (particularly vs Teferi and Skyclave).
    -Spell Pierce consistently sucked, and should have been Stifle.
    -consistenly unable to get under the Delver deck (the list has 4 1-drops vs Dreadstill's 8, again counting manlands).
    -manabase and non-Tarn Fetches consistently provided enemy Delver decks effortless angles of attack without adequate compensation.
    -consistently could not use creatures to trade enemy Delvers off the table.
    -consistently would have been better off with a mix of Lavamancers and TNN in the Sprite Dragon slot.

    The highest quality way to win with Dreadnought is Scroll. The highest power possible for UR comes from 2x Dress Down, 2x Saga, 3x Stifle. Having Standstill, rather than Ponder, is what allows you to pick fights on a vastly different axis (CA)...and when you massacre their blue cards with Standstill or just drown them in cards, enemy decks falter and ultimately fall to damage - and it doesn't matter what that damage source is called.

  10. #70
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    Another thing you will see in the VoD is multiple people continuously asking why Ragavan isn't in the list. This too is an example of not knowing how to assess cards and understand what they mean comparatively. A Ragavan in play you can't attack with successfully + 3 Ragavan in hand + 4 Dreadnought in hand does exactly nothing. It really is that simple - no testing required.
    So what you're saying is that because Dreadnought (unlike fair 1-card threats) presents higher variance draws because it needs to be unlocked by another card, you don't want to pair it with other high variance draws. You're trying to reduce the possible dead hands you can draw into to minimize the deck losing to itself (where no amount of player skill could help). Extra Ragavan + Dreadnought is useless. But DRC's floor still lets you surveil and you can use Dreadnought for +2 delirium, so they are less bad to draw together?

    Dreadstill is certainly a better DRC deck than UR Delver, able to bin artifacts and enchantments through its normal game plan, without having to add filler.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    This low ceiling for Dreadnought pilot skill mattering is a recurrent theme in Stiflenought decks.
    Does UR Dreadstill then aim to increase ceiling for pilot skill over UR Dressnought by being able to fight over CA and have manabase superiority (to allow greed with mana denial attacks)?


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    -manabase and non-Tarn Fetches consistently provided enemy Delver decks effortless angles of attack without adequate compensation.
    I never understood why a UR deck would play 4x Polluted Delta.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    The highest power possible for UR comes from 2x Dress Down, 2x Saga, 3x Stifle.
    Why did you cut the 4th Stifle? No other good cuts to make room for Dress Down? Risk of drawing too many enablers and not enough Noughts? It must have some impact on ability to pressure turn 1 fetches.

  11. #71

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

    Dreadnought lists are more skill intensive than delver lists if anything. Mulligan decisions, knowing when to just play land and pass holding up a stifle and knowing when to jam Dreadnought and when youre oppenent is likely to have removal to hold it, bait removal with another threat and play more disruptively makes a huge difference.

    BoshNRoll is an excellent player who consistently 3-2s or 4-1s anytime he plays Dreadnought but in every video he lost atleast one match due to misreading the opponent and making a playmistake. anzidmtg played well for someone that never played the deck before and admitted to not knowing how some of the cards worked but he made plenty of play mistakes, not because he is a bad player but because he was unfamiliar with the list and its a very skill intensive deck.

    Both Dress Down and Scroll of Fate are incredible cards.

    In any 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought list, I would want to play 4 Dress Down and 0-2 Scroll of Fate before playing a playset of Stifle.

    In Uro builds, I would consider 4 Dress Down and 2-3 Scroll of Fate alongside some Stifles.

    I agree that DRC is better than Ragavan and any red list should play 4 DRC before playing even a single Ragavan.

  12. #72
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    So what you're saying is that because Dreadnought (unlike fair 1-card threats) presents higher variance draws because it needs to be unlocked by another card, you don't want to pair it with other high variance draws. You're trying to reduce the possible dead hands you can draw into to minimize the deck losing to itself (where no amount of player skill could help). Extra Ragavan + Dreadnought is useless. But DRC's floor still lets you surveil and you can use Dreadnought for +2 delirium, so they are less bad to draw together?
    There is also turn 1 DRC -> turn 2 Standstill, milling towards a land topdeck. Unlike Delver, DRC is good at all points of the game. Previously Delver was consistently problematic b/c it was increasingly a garbage card at 4x copies in Dreadstill; too hard to flip, and playing 2-3 copies meant you rarely had it in opening hands. The fact that Saga find Nought is 2-card delerium, freeing up DRC to aggromill Lavamancer food is just icing on the cake. More icing to be had by having part of the manabase [Spikefield] being able to mill lands away from reaching the hand; lots of anti-flood insurance going on.

    There's nothing to disrupt here, DRC just combos off in every direction - and the count to 20 macroscopic-combo is not affected by not having a DRC in play or having it removed. It represents relentless progress/resource trading and ruthless efficiency without dependence. This pattern of piece A + A + A + so many As is the key to success in a Dreadnought deck, whereas Stiflenought decks continue gift opponents piece A + B trades [2-for-1s].
    Dreadstill is certainly a better DRC deck than UR Delver, able to bin artifacts and enchantments through its normal game plan, without having to add filler.
    Correct, Delver decks fail to use DRC effectively. Lucky for them gross misuse of an ideal Dreadstill card leaves them with a threat that is still good.

    Does UR Dreadstill then aim to increase ceiling for pilot skill over UR Dressnought by being able to fight over CA and have manabase superiority (to allow greed with mana denial attacks)?
    This comes back to piece A + A + A construction. A Dreadstill pilot does not care which piece kills the opponent, we identify the opponent's greatest weakness and attack it. While we're doing this we generate progress on other fronts the opponent can't fight on. A normal pattern is detonating opponent mana [Stifle/Wasteland/Daze] -> making them protect lifetotal -> making them fight Standstill -> keeping them locked in this spiral with FoW -> take away their ability to play on our turn & trade removal for nonland cards [Scroll] -> take them to Bolt range and decimate any blue cards they still have in hand with Bolt.

    Contrast this to Stiflenought-types: I will make a sorcery speed Nought, pass the turn, and my opponent will kill it, or worse, they will bounce/kill it while developing a PW -> then I will have to do this over and over again in the futile hope that they will run out of kill spells...Also please don't have Ensnaring Bridge-type cards opponent.

    From the not-combo opponent's side vs Stiflenought-types: don't be a moron - Fetch around Stifle, make land drops, and don't trade into Daze. Wait for them to make a big dude and kill it, and you literally can't die. This is all the opponent has to do. With minimal effort such an opponent will completely remove the Stiflenought player's skill from situations where skill/decisions can be made and matter. Contrast this to the same non-combo opponent sitting there making land drops and passing vs a deck with Standstill - this sort of thing tends to backfire badly. Even if that opponent waits to crack the Standstill when Dreadstill has a full grip, they're likely to get their face melted by Bolt and advance our gameplan [we'll probably also have delirium granted by this opposing play pattern as well].

    I never understood why a UR deck would play 4x Polluted Delta.
    It takes hundreds of hours on decks with cards like Standstill to realize if the crappy Fetch was just a Vista, your winrate goes up by 5-10% for absolutely free. The confounder in realizing this with a deck like Stiflenought is that you will routinely get locked-out of any decisions that matter/have no inevitability, so it's harder to separate that source of losing from "if I *just* had my mana/didn't play into Wasteland, nothing my opponent's decklist does could realistically could get them a win." Too much cross-contamination of unavoidable vs avoidable losses confounds many decks in legacy, and prevents root cause analysis of how it was ultimately their mana base which is to blame. On of the best decks to play to clearly link dual lands in opening hand with causing auto-losses [b/c it's a nonbasic] is UW Landstill - this crap was infuriating before Vista, and that was on just 2x Tundra. As much as people want to think Vial is the natural enemy of Standstill decks, the truth is that our own duals (and the crappy Fetches that made you tutor them b/c Vista didn't exist yet) are the real enemy, and we have to play against our manabase in every match.

    Why did you cut the 4th Stifle? No other good cuts to make room for Dress Down? Risk of drawing too many enablers and not enough Noughts? It must have some impact on ability to pressure turn 1 fetches.
    You have no idea how much I wish they actually fixed the format and banned fast Fetchlands & reprinting duals [leaving legacy with things like Evolving Wilds, Mirage Fetches, Fabled Passage, Land Grant]. I would drop Stifle so unbelievably fast for Vision Charm. If you think Scroll of Fate is obnoxious, just wait till it can be protected by phasing. Until they do fix the format [which they won't], Stifle is only selected b/c it can hit Fetchlands - and that's all very unfortunate b/c milling Doomsday for 4 with Vision Charm & turning Islands into not-Islands in response to High Tide is the sport of kings.
    Every other Dreadnought enabler is thus weighed against Stifle, and I look at how a different enabler attacks the opponent when I assess it. The second copy of Dress Down is more likely to inflict critical damage/pick a fight vs an opposing strategy than a 4th copy of Stifle. Like DRC, Dress Down picks completely non-committal fights while advancing my plans. Play too many Dress Down and you interfere with your own ability to play the Saga construct subgame; play too few Dress Down and you can't reliably terrorize opponents and sinkhole their Force effects by casting Dress Down with Saga's age 3 trigger on stack.

    In terms of crippling opponents, I am at 5x slots of anti-Thassa+Cavern. Lavamancer/Bolt-range is granted vs Goyf, KotR, Reclaimer, enemy DRC, Hexdrinker, etc by Dress Down. Deathtouch is stripped, constructs are wiped, Grisel draw 7s are sundered from main phases, and the list goes on and on. The main point though is that I am the one in control of correctly identifying the most damaging use vs my opponent's strategy; I can attack, defend, or attack while defending...and the opponent gets to sit there helplessly while I make the relevant decisions.

  13. #73
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    BoshNRoll is an excellent player who consistently 3-2s or 4-1s anytime he plays Dreadnought but in every video he lost atleast one match due to misreading the opponent and making a playmistake. anzidmtg played well for someone that never played the deck before and admitted to not knowing how some of the cards worked but he made plenty of play mistakes, not because he is a bad player but because he was unfamiliar with the list and its a very skill intensive deck.[
    75% of Anzi's major misplays were tactics. BoshnRoll very rarely makes tactical mistakes. Both of them however make strategic misplays, and both struggle to see the big picture. To BoshnRolls credit you can see his spider senses tingling at the end of his VoDs when he is talking over the decklist broadly. He is right that something is off, but he can't quite put his finger on bashing people to death with sorcery speed, summoning sick dudes + passing turn with Daze in the deck being the core.

    His analysis is still just as corrupted by Ponder & normal legacy play patterns as Anzi's however. The rules of legacy change for 2c decks with cards like Dreadnought and Standstill which use a vastly different consistency engine of having mana we can always trust - even if it's colorless. Ponder is for mana quality (colors) & skimping on land quantity, whereas Dreadnought & Standstill are designed to operate on land quantity above all else. For us color quality is solved at the point of deck construction, such that we don't need to cobble it together every game with Ponder.

    These are competing systems, and when you cross-contaminate the quantity model with Ponder, you end up with a worse deck than the pure quality model. You end up playing the same type of magic, just worse - the cost of those Ponder slots is loss of ability to interact on an axis Ponder decks can't react to effectively. The only time you should come close to breaking the Ponder rule is demonstrated well by the history of UW Landstill: 4x Portent for 3x Terminus [pre-Wrenn tactic] -> 2x Ponder for 2x Verdict [done to absorb 3cmc Teferi and Shark'nado]. Note that in the slot-saving Verdict model, that 1WWU is greedy AF on the colors; this is one of the two indications for appropriate Ponder use. This Verdict/Ponder slot-saving hybrid is now outdated with the printing of Timeless Dragon, and Ponders are again unacceptable. Interestingly, the Timeless Dragon inclusion allows UW back to UWR without loss of mana security, which justifies playing Ending and Spikefield in the main.

    @Clark Kant: Your lists are following the FIRE payoff, rather than the realities of the mana quantity model. The more you run to Ponder, the more naked your Noughts become. Highly suspect mana held together by Ponder, done to cast as much FIRE as possible, is normal legacy. This is what the overwhelming majority of legacy decks do, and how they are built. Dreadnought is built by a different set of rules. The thing about FIRE cards is that no matter how stupid the cards are, they have to cast them. Thus begins the all-out attack on the fatal flaw they can't escape...raze their mana, punish FIRE-casting with Standstill, and teach them the meaning of efficiency: 1 mana for a 12/12.

    In any 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought list, I would want to play 4 Dress Down and 0-2 Scroll of Fate before playing a playset of Stifle.
    You will not play a 4x Dreadnought deck and hand out free wins to Surgical Extraction. Take that 4th copy out and add a Karn. There are bigger problems in the list if it came to this, but this is the second most important quick fix to salvage the decklist. The most important is still to drive down dual use and add 4x Vista.

  14. #74
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    There is also turn 1 DRC -> turn 2 Standstill, milling towards a land topdeck. Unlike Delver, DRC is good at all points of the game. Previously Delver was consistently problematic b/c it was increasingly a garbage card at 4x copies in Dreadstill; too hard to flip, and playing 2-3 copies meant you rarely had it in opening hands. The fact that Saga find Nought is 2-card delerium, freeing up DRC to aggromill Lavamancer food is just icing on the cake. More icing to be had by having part of the manabase [Spikefield] being able to mill lands away from reaching the hand; lots of anti-flood insurance going on.
    Interesting. DRC combos with Standstill (surveil into land to help hit more land drops than opponent), but combos with spells to prevent flood when you need gas. DRC combos with Lavamancer (GY fuel). DRC combos with Saga and Dreadnought (cheap Delirium enablers). It works well with most of the deck so it's a consistently a good draw, while Delver or Ragavan would be bad draws more often. Even if it dies, the free Bolts (attacks) help the deck, the milled cards help other DRCs and Lavamans, and at worst you're trading 1 mana + 1 card with the opponent's card(s) for efficiency in the mana denial plan.

    I now see why Lavamancer is preferred. It's another payoff for the Delirium fuel (that lets you selectively keep Delirium). It kills faster threats like Delver and Ragavan, as well as hatebears like Thalia and Ouphe. It kills some big things with Dress Down. It counts to 20 better than a 2/x aggro attacker would. You can even kill X/4s for "free" through combat with 2/2 manifested land -> exiling land & other card from GY. It does quite a lot for 1 mana + 1 card, and it combos with much of the deck.

    Extreme mana efficiency seems integral to your gameplan. This is interesting, and quite different from how Landstill plays out. You also play towards that mana quantity and lategame inevitability, but the early mana-efficiency is pushed more.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    Correct, Delver decks fail to use DRC effectively. Lucky for them gross misuse of an ideal Dreadstill card leaves them with a threat that is still good.
    I don't even know if this is true, rather than just a product of small netdeck metas. After 4 Delver + 4 Ragavan + 3 Murkfiend, the deck has enough efficient threats that arguably the next creatures should be Brazen Bois before DRCs. Some winning builds have already shifted to this (finally). DRC walks into the same cards UR already loses to, while Borrower shores up those exact weaknesses. Running 0 Bauble is also tech.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    From the not-combo opponent's side vs Stiflenought-types: don't be a moron - Fetch around Stifle, make land drops, and don't trade into Daze. Wait for them to make a big dude and kill it, and you literally can't die. This is all the opponent has to do.
    This is a lot to ask of newer Legacy opponents on MTGO, skewing results you see in YouTube/Twitch videos. I'd guess most players who entered Legacy during Delver's dominance and missed the older days (where Stifle saw more play in Canadian Thresh, Team America, Nought, etc) don't realize they can just pass 6 turns and play lands and win the game while the opponent skips multiple draw steps.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    It takes hundreds of hours on decks with cards like Standstill to realize if the crappy Fetch was just a Vista, your winrate goes up by 5-10% for absolutely free.
    One of the best decks to play to clearly link dual lands in opening hand with causing auto-losses [b/c it's a nonbasic] is UW Landstill - this crap was infuriating before Vista, and that was on just 2x Tundra.
    Interesting. I played a lot of old UW & UWr Landstill, and played other UWx shells (where you basically always fetch basics and only get a dual if you need to sequence colored costs that cannot be paid any other way). Maybe that's why that manabase bothers me so much.

    Even if you don't see the immediate payoff in win%, there's no reason to play 4 Delta in any UR, UW, or UG deck. Maybe 1 Delta as a 9th fetch. But then the 10th fetch is Flooded Strand or Misty Rainforest, not 2nd Delta (avoid needless losses to Surgical and Spyglass when any old blue fetch would do). You'd need even more fetches before considering the 2nd Delta, let alone the 4th...

    Perhaps one exception to this is Ragavan decks, where you really want turn 1 Volcanic to represent Ragavan + Daze. If they Waste Volcanic instead of playing land + blocker/removal, that seems losing for them anyway, so you can get a bit greedy even bluffing Daze.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    You have no idea how much I wish they actually fixed the format and banned fast Fetchlands & reprinting duals [leaving legacy with things like Evolving Wilds, Mirage Fetches, Fabled Passage, Land Grant]. I would drop Stifle so unbelievably fast for Vision Charm. If you think Scroll of Fate is obnoxious, just wait till it can be protected by phasing. Until they do fix the format [which they won't], Stifle is only selected b/c it can hit Fetchlands
    Haha, I remember playing Vision Charm in some old Dreadnought deck (>10 years ago when there was no other 2nd enabler) and watching opponents RTFC at the uses for the seemingly-innocuous modes. Good tech.

    Given that this is the format though, are 3 Stifles worse than 4?

    That T1 Stifle on their fetch makes every subsequent Daze, Wasteland and Stifle drawn much better (at least that logic applied to older Stifle decks like Canadian Thresh). Once opponent is playing from manascrew, you can keep pressuring mana. But if you don't have that early Stifle and they hit smooth mana, each Stifle (and Daze) drawn later has less value as you lose the ability to make them stumble on mana. Cutting down to 2-3 Stifle seems to make each Stifle worse, while running 4 seems to make each better. Seems like a classic 4-of or 0-of card. For late game floods, you already have the plan to convert Stifles into Dreadnought fuel or 2/2s. You can also Stifle a variety of relevant triggers and activations to avoid opponent getting free cards, pitch to Force, or filter past with Brainstorm and surveil.

    If you commit to picking a wider range of (non-mana) fights via Dress Downs over aggressively pressuring mana with Stifle, is that a reason to cut down on other mana denial slots? (fewer Daze?)

  15. #75
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Daze is a bad card, but you have to run it b/c Delver exists and runs it too. Not really interested in keeping Stifle at 4x to prop up a card that is bad vs like 3 out of 4 decks.

    Much more important to drag Goyf down to ping range or strip deathtouch cantripper trades with that 4th slot as Dress Down. When an EoT Standstill is cracked and I have >7 cards, I prefer to turn off their dudes for their next turn in exchange for discarding. It's fine to dump into play off SnT. Not that it really matters with Scroll, but Saga trigger + Dress Down beats Chalice where Stifle would fail. In general Dress Down is more likely to pick a favorable fight than Stifle [less commitment].

    More importantly, we don't need to protect 3x dual lands that would otherwise singlehandedly lose the game when in an opening hand. Since Saga finally freed up another slot for basic, the deck is down to 1x Volc. It's been very hard for the mana to betray, so Stifle insurance can be taken down a bit.

  16. #76
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    If you're only playing Daze for Delver and not playing aggressive mana denial in many matchups, do you really need 4 Daze? Why not play fewer?

  17. #77

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

    The 8/1 legacy challenge list was quite nice looking and looks pretty close to the Sultai Dressnought list in the OP.

    Planeswalker (1)
    1 Grist, the Hunger Tide

    Creature (8)
    4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

    Sorcery (7)
    4 Ponder
    3 Thoughtseize

    Instant (17)
    2 Abrupt Decay
    1 Assassin's Trophy
    4 Brainstorm
    2 Fatal Push
    4 Force of Will
    4 Stifle

    Artifact (2)
    1 Nihil Spellbomb
    1 Retrofitter Foundry

    Enchantment (5)
    4 Dress Down
    1 Sylvan Library

    Land (20)
    2 Bayou
    1 Forest
    1 Island
    4 Misty Rainforest
    4 Polluted Delta
    2 Tropical Island
    2 Underground Sea
    4 Urza's Saga

    Sideboard (15)
    2 Brazen Borrower
    2 Darkblast
    3 Endurance
    1 Flusterstorm
    3 Force of Vigor
    1 Narset, Parter of Veils
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Plague Engineer
    1 Torpor Orb

    The only thing I would want to try is to replace a Stifle or the Grist or a Push or some other card with either a Scroll of Fate or a Lazav because why the hell not, the deck is playing 4 Uro and 4 Dreadnought. But then again, Scroll of Fate may not be worth it since Scroll of Fate doesnt enable Dreadnoughts that you grab with Saga (but Lazav does and its a nice Ragavan blocker as well).

    I probably would have found room for the 4th Thoughtseize atleast because that card is so useful in making sure you slam Nought at the correct time. Thoughtseize is the single best reason to go with a black splash. But those are nitpicks. Its a very cool brew.

  18. #78
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    Gotta hard disagree on Thoughtseize being the best reason for black. While it is great vs combo, it is pretty horrific vs Uro and Delver. It is however, better than Daze in a list making sorcery speed dudes and passing. EoT Dress Down -> Thoughtseize then Nought offers some protection where Daze offered nothing.

    The best black spells are Cling to Dust, Drown, and in the value department Kaya. The thing black used to offer was castable wraths vs Port/Thalia-types [Toxic Deluge/Dead of Winter are hard to Port off one color pip and only 3cmc]; the advantage here has gone back to white which simply nukes Vial with Prismatic Ending to depower Port. This allows them to cast their more expensive, more color-requiring Wraths. Verdict has always been the most trustworthy wrath, and Ending fixed the whole getting there on the mana.

    Whether or not you can trust a card is among the more important things to evaluate in legacy:
    -While I trust Seize to protect nakes Noughts more than Daze, I also trust it to be worse vs two tier 1 decks.
    -I trust Stifle b/c it can be used regardless of what the opponent is up to.
    -I trust Abrupt Decay and Fatal Push to clog up the hand and never be able to help make a Nought.
    -I do not trust worse mana than Delver (8x Fetch, 5x U source); particularly when this is the color responsible for mana fixing [Ponder/Brainstorm].
    -I do not trust Grist to not flip over Nought or Uro vs Surgical as it uptick.
    -I do not trust Dress Down to be castable whenever I want in a deck with 4x Saga.
    -I do trust Trophy to kill Karakas, and I trust that this is way more important than Decay's uncounterability as this is an Uro deck without Wasteland.

    -Lazav is one of the least trustworthy cards, playing into both Surgical and Karakas.
    -While Scroll is highly trustworthy, 4x Saga + 2x trinkets eats a little too much into slots...and this is a deck that is only giving 1x slot to Library with enemy Plow at an all time high.

    On cutting Stifle, you're not allowed to in a deck like this @Clark Kant. That is quad laser Saga with heavy slot commitment to doing the slow construct thing - this is not a deck that can afford to abandon making constructs by slamming Dress Down to tutor up a Nought. There will be large chunks of the game where Dress Down will be far more dangerous to this deck's own boardstate; if there is a card to trim here it's actually Dress Down.
    ---
    @FTW I would rather have a card like Soul-Guide or Phyrexian Furnace in the main for Saga over a 4th Daze...but they need to either ban Daze or ban Ragavan before this change. This meta is about one thing sadly: beating Ragavan/Daze. Hopefully wotc wakes up and does something in weeks rather than months.

  19. #79
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    If you want to stick with Sultai, you can improve on this. It did OK but barely made top 32. It probably mopped up bad decks then struggled to beat tier 1 decks.

    -1 Grist (doesn't fit with the game plan & risks milling the combo piece you needed)
    -2 Urza's Saga (too many colorless lands are bad in 3-color deck with UUGG, also risks making Dress Downs bad)

    +1 Fatal Push (need answers to T1 Ragavan)
    +1 Island (need stable mana)
    +1 Swamp (need stable mana)

    After those changes, you can get away with
    -1 Bayou
    +1 Forest

    That gives you 2 Island, 2 Forest, 1 Swamp. Now you can make Uro's UUGG with basics, which is a big deal. Cutting 2nd Bayou doesn't cost you black sources due to the +1 Swamp (replaced colorless land). There is some marginal impact on ability to fetch black via 2nd Bayou after the 1st is Wasted, but that is small compared to the stability you gain running more basics overall.

    Fox is worried about Thoughtseize due to life loss (UR Delver will punish you for Shocking yourself). However you have 4x Uro to gain back life, so you can manage the life loss as long as you give yourself stable mana to cast Uro. Improving the manabase makes Uro better, which then deals with the life loss problem. You could also replace TS with Inquisition of Kozilek or Duress. Most times you would discard a removal spell or combo piece so the target would cost 0-3 cmc anyway. Inquisition does not hit FoW, but if they 2-for-1 themselves on your creature that's much better than eating Fatal Push, Decay, or Swords. Duress may be better because I can't see many creatures you care about discarding. That slot is to fight combo pieces or answers.

    You could also consider swapping some Decays for Assassin's Trophy. Trophy kills Karakas and enemy Sagas. It also answers things like Karn and Jace and Omniscience (which you cannot hit with Inquisition, so you can use your removal spell to cover the vulnerability of your discard spell).

    After that I would try to find room for the 2nd Sylvan Library. Seems very good with Uro lifegain and Stiflenought.

    Edit: Deck would look something like this


    //Lands: 20
    4 Misty Rainforest
    4 Polluted Delta
    2 Tropical Island
    2 Underground Sea
    1 Bayou
    2 Island
    2 Forest
    1 Swamp
    2 Urza's Saga

    //Creatures: 8
    4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
    4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

    //Spells: 24
    4 Force of Will
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder
    3 Stifle
    3 Duress
    3 Fatal Push
    3 Assassin's Trophy

    //Enchantments: 6
    4 Dress Down
    2 Sylvan Library

    //Artifacts: 2
    1 Retrofitter Foundry
    1 Nihil Spellbomb

    //Sideboard: 15
    3 Endurance
    1 Cling to Dust
    1 Darkblast
    1 Plague Engineer
    1 Toxic Deluge
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Flusterstorm
    1 Drown in the Loch
    2 Abrupt Decay
    2 Veil of Summer

    +1 slot

    I don't see the point of Borrower in Sultai when you can just remove permanents for GB. Force of Vigor also seems bad with such a low green count, when you can already blow up enchantments and artifacts with Trophy and Decay (the green cards you would be pitching). To deal with artifact-heavy decks the last slot could be Null Rod or Collector Ouphe maybe (since those do not affect Dreadnought or Saga Constructs).

  20. #80
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    Re: [Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought

    I'm not really worried about life loss so much as Thoughtseize being terrible vs Ragavan, and especially bad vs Uro. As bad as Thoughtseize is vs Bolt, it is quite good against Stifle variants...ofc none of that matters when you take a Stifle, but had to cast it off a dual land and get Wasteland'd out of the game.

    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.

    The card that should be in every GB deck is Pernicious Deed. Although you can't really fire it off during the construct plan, you can at least develop it to the board.

    Trim the cute stuff [Saga to 2x and Retrofitter/Spellbound out]. Run 2x Scroll. Run 2x Deed. 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. 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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