Out of all of these, the only one with a lot of potential is Covetous Dragon (Who I'm starting to like in Razormane's slot a little, strangely.) Hydra is awful (I actually tried him once, I'm ashamed to admit,) Lightning Elemental doesn't have first strike to back up his lack of toughness, and Skizzik doesn't seem much better.Originally Posted by Illissius
Lavaborn Muse's biggest problem is that there's a complete lack of synergy between rack-like abilities and abilities that discourage/prevent opponents from playing spells, such as Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Blood Moon. Ultimately, if you're succeeding with any of those plans, Lavaborn is merely a 3/3 for, which could be a lot better.
Covetous Dragon requires you run a playset of Great Furnace or his drawback is too strong. The bright side of this is that even the Moon effects will make Great Furnace an Artifact Land - Mountain, meaning it more or less fits perfectly in the deck. The downside is the fact that you die even more horribly to Pernicious Deed, so Pithing Needle becomes more vital than ever in the board (Beyond that, Blood Moon is your best way to combat Deed.)
New to DS and i was just wondering what were this decks good and badmatchups. Also is arc slogger realy worth playing in this deck. you can only use his ability a few times and 5 mana is alot.
I also dont like sulfur elemental. Is there another option to put in this guys place.
Call me Ishmael
Slogger is MVP. The deck can easily cast him with Seething Songs, Chrome Mox, and SSg. His ability is also awesome. You sound like you are saying that using his ability a few times is not amazing. 8 damage plus beating for 4 a turn is amazing. Play 4.
I, personally, do not play sulfur elemental. I play Razormane Masticore because it kicks ass. Losing a card a turn is bad and he is horrible when your main focus in the deck now is to reach hellbent. I have tried Tephraderm and it was pretty good. I am kind of on the fence between the 2.
The deck has a strong fish and Thresh MU from my testing. You really need to get a blood moon down and I play 7 to their 4 Forces. Play around daze with SSG and Chalice at 1 hurts their engine. Tephraderm and Razorcore are about the same in these MUs. Both can take down a Goyf. One lives, but makes you discard every turn which hurts.
Goblins was a cake walk, but moving all the mass removal out of the deck made it not so strong. It is still easy if you can get down a Slogger and some equipment or Razorcore. I play Pyroclasm in my board which helps, but you should probably play Needle because deed owns the deck hard.
Combo is good with Chalice, Trini and the Moons to slow them down. You get beat by their good turn one win hands, but if you can find a disruption piece you should be in good shape.
Control was terrible, but got a ton better with Moons. I play WOrb SB so it is even better. I just try to win fast against Landstill because once they can drop Standstill or get a full hand with lands on the table it is bad for you. Needle helps to shut off their mass removal, so it is a quality SB spot.
Anyways, here is my board, or the one I want to play, for reference.
4 Pithing Needle
2 Powder Keg
1 Trinisphere
4 Winter Orb
4 Pyroclasm
I play 3 Blood Moons main. No Tormod's Crypt because I don't have any GY reliant combos or decks in my meta. Hope this helps.
Speaking as the original chief hater of Slogger, yes, he's worth it. But to disagree with Jak, he's not the MVP of the deck. Gathan Raiders is the MVP of the deck, with Rakdos Pit Dragon a very close second.
Slogger's a house and very very strong, but playing 4 isn't absolutely necessary as multiples aren't particularly amazing. This is very similar to Razormane, and having 1 Razormane and 1 Slogger on the board is generally better than having two of either one.
As for the options to replace Sulfur Elemental, that's the main gist of the thread's discussion thus far. Here are the options worth considering.
Tephraderm: Always useful, can swing through anything, but never amazing. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.
Flametongue Kavu: Solid in metagames full of creatures. Blows against a lot of combo and all control.
Juggernaut: An efficiently costed beater whose only drawbacks are not being red and occasionally having to swing into something 3/6 or bigger (Tarmogoyf.) Probably the best choice other than Sulfur Elemental in an equipment-heavy build and very good with Sword of Fire and Ice, as you can often go turn two Juggernaut turn three SOFI-Equip with only one red source.
Razormane Masticore: Insane power, castable off colorless, capable of swinging through literally everything in the format, and ungodly strong against Goblins, Deadguy Ale, and especially zoo-style aggro. He can win the game singlehandedly. However, if he can't win the game singlehandedly, he tends to work badly with a heavy Hellbent theme. He can -grant- Hellbent, but can't survive it since the deck cut Squee. Undiscovered Paradise maindeck is an option currently being tested to help fix this problem, but having your red vulnerable to Wasteland is probably a bad idea. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.
Covetous Dragon: 6/5 Evasive beaters have incredible potential, but the dragon is incredibly fragile. Requires Great Furnaces maindecked to consistently negate the drawback, though again, having your red vulnerable to Wasteland is probably a bad idea. Shouldn't be played with SOFI due to the 5-curve being hogged up.
As all of these options are a significant drop from the powers of Gathan/Pit/Slogger/Magus/SSG, this will probably be debated for some time to come.
Slogger is awesome to clear a path for your dudes. That is why I may cut Razorcore, because slogger is better at doing it. Beats for 4 and kills dumb goblins, so that raiders can swing through. I think 4 is good and should stay at 4 until something better comes along at 5cc.
I really need to test other options for the 2 of in my list. I want something that is either a 3cc or 4cc and not more because it does get clunky at times. It doesn't need to be a big beater either because we have a ton of those. I guess I am off to look on findmagiccards.com.
Maybe Epochrasite is what you want. It is quick, strong with Equipment and it helps against those Pernicious Deeds. It is also nice that it comes back with haste, when it has died.
One of the chief attractions of the deck is the tendency to play a potentially crippling disruption piece turn 1 or 2, and still kill a passive opponent by turn 4. Arc-Slogger does that perfectly by beating for a reasonable 4 and converting your mana into damage effectively on that last turn.
Naturally, he also crushes any weenie strategy.
Magus of the Moon, Simian Spirit Guide, Rakdos Pit Dragon, Arc-Slogger and Gathan Riders are all wonderful enough that I want 4 of them; more creatures are strictly optional and I don't believe any other measures up.
This is my reason for disenchantment (pardon the horrible pun) with equipment in this deck: 12 brutes that don't need it to rock, no fast creatures with evasion/First Strike to properly abuse it and 8 shrimps, 4 of which will often be pitched rather than played.
Throwing in a Razormane Masticore or a few Sulfur Elementals won't change this in a fundamental way.
Another exotic creature that deserves mention is Volcanic Hellion as a painful FTK on steroids, although I'm too much of a wuss to keep playing that.
Has anybody thought about Balduvian Horde in the random Critter Slot? The horde's big but has no Evasion...On the otherr hand it's not killed by a Disenchant and forces you not to play 4 Artifactlands. Thoughts?
In a format where you could cast a 4/5 for 1G i think a 5/5 for 2RR with a drawback isnt the way to go.
What do you guys think about Reckless Wurm? Are there more ways than raiders to support that card? Or is that the danger of cool things?
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Phantom and I actually tried this way back when, but it's come and gone from lists. I personally still like him, especially in heavy control metagames, but control is the only matchup where he's any good. What makes him even worse is that against almost every control deck imaginable, you want to get a Chalice for 2 down, which is going to shut down Epochrasite.
Have tried it and am still trying it. What's honestly keeping him out at this point is the
This might be danger of cool things, but sometimes cool things kick a lot of ass. The only other discard outlet you have that would be relevant with Reckless Wurm would be Razormane Masticore, and if we're running that then we have to replace something else. It's distantly possible to try an equipmentless build with Razormane -and- Reckless Wurm (which would probably have a better combo/control matchup also due to a higher threat density), but this might meet with disastrous results.
We do have Gathan Raiders as a one time discard outlet, so it could be an option.
So I took this deck to a 32 person tournament today. We played 6 rounds (don't know whether it counts for the LMF because we were only 32 but I hope it does) and I finished 7th. We had no top8 playoffs (meaning less ID's) so a 4-2 record got me there. I played against the following:
Rd1 Burn Lost 1-2
Rd2 GBw Rock Won 2-1
Rd3 Affinity Won 2-0
Rd4 Cephalid Breakfast Lost 0-2
Rd5 TES Won 2-0
Rd6 GBWr Survival Won 2-1
I will write a more detailed report later. My list was as follows:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
10 Mountain
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Seething Song
4 Chrome Mox
2 Trinisphere
2 Blood Moon
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Mindless Automaton
SB
3 Winter Orb
3 Pithing Needle
3 Powder Keg
2 Trinisphere
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Defense Grid
"Anybody want some . . . toast?" —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
That's a pretty interesting list and an incredibly bizarre set of results.
I fail to see how you lose to a match as excellent as burn, which absolutely hates both Chalice and Jitte, and then manage to beat a match as bad as Survival (Though I'm guessing that since it's 4 colors, Moons owned face here.)
I'm also reeeeally curious about your Affinity report because I've only played that match once ever and I lost, though this was waaaay back in the early days of Dragon Stompy.
Congrats on the finish, though!
Incidentally, I've tried the Red Madness version of DS, with 4x Reckless Wurm and Fiery Tempers along with the discard outlets (Raiders, Masticore, and a few Hordes), and later on even Seize the Day. It was pretty terrible for two reasons: first, a 4/4 or a Lightning Bolt don't pull their weigh much in todays' meta. Secondly, and more importantly, they added another level of inconsistency to the deck: in addition to the "drawing just enough acceleration" problem, you now have the "drawing just the right ratio of outlets / Madness or flashback spells" one.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
As promised here's my report.
After seeing about 100 Landstill, Thresh and Loamdecks running around at the last tournament I decided that I wanted to run a deck with Blood Moon this time. I ordered the last couple cards I needed for Dragon Stompy at a german online card shop. Only after I confirmed my order did I realize that I forgot to add 1 Blood Moon to the list. Luckily that shop has a campain that they send 1 random rare extra with every order. So of course the random rare I get is the Blood Moon that I forgot to add to my order. Looks like a sign to me :-)
I already posted my decklist before but for the record here it is again
10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Chrome Mox
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Seething Song
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
2 Blood Moon
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Mindless Automaton
SB
3 Winter Orb
3 Pithing Needle
3 Powder Keg
2 Trinisphere
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Defense Grid
The maindeck was ok. Mindless Automaton should've been another Sulfur Elemental but due to not finding my second copy I was able to squeeze in the Automaton...
I didn't miss Razorcore at all. Sword of Fire and Ice would've been ok but I had no problems with 4 Jitte in the deck so for now the 2cc equipment stays.
The sideboard had some randomness namely only 2 Tormod's Crypt. This was again because I only had 2 Crypts at hand and didn't bother trying to find 2 more right before the tournament. In the future I'll maybe cut some combination of Grids and Orbs to fit in more Crypts. Although there were lots of Landstillvariants I didn't get paired against one so Orbs were useless that day.
Now on to the actual report.
Round 1 against Arek with Stupid Red Burn
I win the die roll but have to mulligan. Turn 1 or 2 Slogger resolves but I don't draw any more beats or disruption before Arek's powerdraw of Chain Lightning, Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Fireblast burns me to a crisp.
Game 2 I return the favor, resolving Chalice at 1 and a Magus equipped with Jitte takes it home.
Game 3 my deck decides to hate me. I have a promising start with turn 1 Chalice at 1, turn 2 Chalice at 2 but after that I can't find a single red manasource and die to some Fireblasts, Rift Bolts and a Barbarian Ring with multiple Seething Songs, Sloggers and Magi in my hand. Iirc I even managed to bring him down to 2 life thanks to a Gathan Raiders but even if he had pointed a Blast at the Raiders to stay alive he'd have won as the next few draws were more uncastable red cards. I guess you can't always win.
Round 2 against Timo with Gbw Rock
I win the die roll again and I start with a Magus of the Moon who alone beats Timo to death before he can find his first relevant basic land.
Game 2 I mulligan to 5 and have a mediocre start with some critters that Timo handles with Swords and Vindicate. I eventually resolve a Magus again and again my opponent does not have a removal ready and is screwed badly by it. However this time a lonely basic Forest allows him to play some River Boas (before the tournament started he complained about having to play them instead of more Spectral Lynx XD) and they slowly race my Magus. Eventually I have to chumpblock and I lose shortly after.
Game 3 is another game dominated by Magus. This time I start out again with some critters that get handled by Swords and Vindicate but lacking fetchlands Timo has to use the duals in his hand. This really screws him when I topdeck Magus and ride it to victory before he finds a non-Mountain land.
Round 3 against Peter with Affinity
He wins the die roll but I don't care. He plays excellent and I play like a retard. I don't care. His draws are mediocre and I have Slogger plus Jitte both games on turn 2.
For a more detailed version of the slaughter here goes:
Him: T1: Land Thopter Worker
Me: T1: Land Mox Song Slogger
Him: Land Chromatic Star
Me: Land Jitte Equip Swing
Him: concede
Game2
Him: Land Vial
Me: Land Mox Song Slogger
Him: Land Chromatic Star
Me: Land Jitte equip Swing
Him: add second counter to Vial
Me: attack
Him: Vial in Hearth Kami, block (remember I have Slogger and Jitte active and he still gets to block...), sac to kill Jitte
Me: Magus of the Moon
Him: Ravager, make big
(somewhere here I got in a Powder Keg)
Me: Keg goes to 2 counters, gets activated, he flings Ravager at my Slogger, I put Slogger in the grave without any response, then I draw and play hellbent Rakdos Pit Dragon
Him: play random ground pounder
Me: Seething Song to get Pit Dragon attack for 16-ish
Him: concede
I apologize for my absurd luck and misplays. Later I'm told that he takes these competitions very seriously and I probably made him very angry. Whatever. It's just a game and luck is a part of it.
Round 4 against Patric with Cephalid Breakfast
I win the die roll but I have to mulligan. My first turn is Ancient Tomb into Chalice which gets forced. He plays Nomads en-Kor and passes back to me. I can only play a Simian Spirit Guide (hoping to be able to play and equip Jitte next turn). Patric uses his next turn to summon a 3/4 Goyf. My draw is Mountain so I can play and equip Jitte however if I swing now I lose my only creature and his Goyf becomes a 4/5. I shortly consider swinging anyway to kill his Nomads with a Jitte counter but I'm more afraid of a big Goyf than him finding his second combo piece and a third land to combo that turn. Of course after I do not swing he plays upkeep Worldly Tutor, draw Illusionist, play land, combo and smash with a 22 power Ghoul plus a 5/6 Goyf. Frown.
Game 2 I keep a decent hand that has Needle and a big guy. Needle comes out naming Nomads and he plays Aether Vial. I drop my big guy and his Vial brings in Nomads en-Kor the next turn. I try a topdecked Blood Moon but he Forces, then bounces my Needle. During his turn Cephalid Illusionist arrives and I can only watch helplessly as he comboes out again.
Round 5 against Nico with TES
He wins the die roll and thinks long about keeping his hand. Lucky for me he keeps it and goes Land, Mox, pass. I try Chalice for 1 and in response Nico plays Plunge into Darkness for 5. He doesn't find anything relevant and over the course of 4 turns he only plays Chrome Moxen imprinted with Rite of Flame or Dark Ritual. I simply Song into a Slogger that takes his life in 4 point swings until he concedes.
Game 2 he starts again. This time with a sequence of land, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, Cabal Ritual, LED, Infernal Tutor. After he cracks LED for 3 black mana he has 4 black mana in his pool and a Lotus Petal on board. Stormcount is too low for Tendrils but he's afraid of Pyroclasm and Powder Keg so at first he looks for Ill-Gotten Gains. I'm really scared of IGG because I'll lose all but 3 cards in my hand and he'll get back LED, Cabal Ritual and IT with 3 Mana still on board. Again I'm lucky as he decides using IGG as a Mind Twist is for pussies and instead grabs EtW making 12 Goblins. During my turn I play Mountain, Chrome Mox, Keg + activate so we are both left with only a land. After about 2 turns of topdecking I find my second land and with the help of another Chrome Mox I bring in Trinisphere. Some critters follow and they quickly finish my opponent.
Round 6 against Stefan with GBWr Survival
I win the die roll and start with a Magus of the Moon. Stefan has a Forest and Birds of Paradise. Another basic Forest follows the turn after but I have Jitte and some Gathan Raiders who kill him quickly regardless.
Game 2 I have a Needle for his Survival and he has a Needle for my Arc-Slogger so I try to beat him without any additional tricks until he finds Swords and counterattacks with Tarmogoyf. A combination of Harmonic Sliver, Dark Confidant and 2 Tarmogoyfs bring me down low enough before I find another creature that even after I topdeck another warm body I'm dead on board.
Game 3 I have the Needle for his Survival again so he can do nothing but watch as my Rakdos Pit Dragon flies over his hardcast Squee dealing him 10 then 16 damage. I should add that this game I had Umezawa's Jitte again but it made no big difference as the first 10 damage were done without Jitte and the second swing could've been for 20+.
All in all I really liked the deck when it worked but for bigger events I have a feeling that you might need a bit too much luck to do well.
edit for short props and slops:
props: Stefan C. for actually playing Planeswalkers
Alex (tournament organizer) for running the whole thing and giving out awesome prizes
Me for opening Sliver Queen and Mox Diamond in my prizeboosters
slops: Joachim, Jens, Lukas for not showing up so we were "only" 32 people total
Last edited by Silverdragon; 11-18-2007 at 12:11 PM.
"Anybody want some . . . toast?" —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Rofl @ that Affinity report. That's a pretty sick pair of openings. And anyone who A. Plays Affinity and B. Sideboards Hearth Kami shouldn't be taking things too seriously.
But yeah, solid report.
Personally, I would have swung with the SSG + Jitte into the 3/4 Goyf and Nomads, however. This would kill the Nomad, and give you at least a few turns to draw into a second threat, and your chances of drawing a guy to grab Jitte and fight Goyf are a good deal better than your chances of Cephalid Breakfast not being able to grab a combo piece.
Also, did you ever get any use out of Winter Orb at any point in time? I personally feel it's pretty useless in the deck and that any damage it does to control is partially negated by how much it slows you down, and that Needle/Moon are generally as good as you're going to get.
I agree. Right after the match I was thinking of what I could've done differently and killing Nomads would've been the correct play there.
As I said I couldn't test it in the tournament so all my impressions come from the limited amount of testing I did. During testing I had some games where it utterly destroyed Landstill and Loam but with further testing now I think these games were exceptions. As for slowing me down I didn't get that impression but I can see how without Mox or a City/Tomb it can be annoying.Also, did you ever get any use out of Winter Orb at any point in time? I personally feel it's pretty useless in the deck and that any damage it does to control is partially negated by how much it slows you down, and that Needle/Moon are generally as good as you're going to get.
One impotant aspect of Orb in my local metagame is that most controlplayers panic when they see it and try to always counter it. As these players get better at playing around Orb it again loses some value.
I think for now my board will be 4 Pithing Needle, 4 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Powder Keg, 2 Trinisphere, 2 Defense Grid.
"Anybody want some . . . toast?" —Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
I've been searching for some creatures that might be good in this deck and the only ones I found are these:
Jeska, Warrior adept
Arc Mage
Blistering firecat
Fumiko, The lowblood
Ghost-lit raider.
From all of those the firecat seems interesting because it can confuse the opponent(What if it's Gathan raider? what if it's not?).
Jeska and Fumiko are just bad. Arc Mage seems completely inferior to Ghost-Lit Stalker.
The cat is interesting, but probably very bad, because one of the most common ways to lose in this deck is to run out of threats due to the deck having insane inherent card disadvantage. Therefore I'd be highly nervous about running any sort of threat that helps get rid of itself.
Ghost-Lit Raider seems like it has the most potential out of that group. It's sort of like Flametongue Kavu at half-size with the ability to not suck completely against control and to take out mid-size jank. His size is somewhat annoying and I dislike the fact that he requires mana to activate in a deck that has a constantly fluctuating manabase, and I have a hard time telling myself he's any better than Sulfur Elemental or Juggernaut, who are the frontrunners for the last slot.
I did some testing with a lone Godo, Bandit Warlord and a bizarre equipment split, and also with a lone Lu-Bu, Master-At-Arms (Rolling Earthquake tech!), but six is likely just too much even with only a single red in the cost slot. I am now pretty sure the last guy has to cost either, or distantly possible,
I'd consider playing the cat just to confuse the opponent or finish him of due to the trample damage it can do. Also the arc mage is able to throw away crap in your hand to maintain the hellbent your pit-dragon/raider likes you to have.
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