I recently played in the 5th Middle School league put on by Romancing the Stones,
. I played Worldgorger Dragon combo and finished 3-3. I wanted to describe the process of how I built my deck and how I think it compares with other Dragon decks that people played.
The way Dragon combo works is by bringing back a Worldgorger Dragon with Animated Dead, Dance of the Dead, or Necromancy. The dragon will exile the aura when it enters the battlefield, which will then force you to sacrifice the dragon. The aura then comes back from exile when the dragon leaves play, and once again brings back the dragon from the graveyard. This process repeats over and over, with each loop exiling and returning all of your permanents. If you tap mana in between the iterations, you generate an arbitrarily large amount of mana with which to do whatever. However, if you don't have an instant speed way to win the game, or another creature in your graveyard (or the opponents graveyard, since the auras can hit both), the game will end in a draw when the loop cannot be broken.
This is what I played:
4 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Ambassador Laquatas
4 Animate Dead
4 Dance of the Dead
4 Entomb
4 Intuition
4 Careful Study
4 Whispers of the Muse
4 Frantic Search
4 Duress
1 Cunning Wish
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Island
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Underground River
Sideboard
1 Capsize
4 Defense Grid
3 Snap
3 Null Rod
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Force of Will
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Stroke of Genius
Background
When researching ideas for this list, I discovered something interesting. While this combo was legal for a brief time period in extended after Judgement was released but before Onslaught released and all of the auras rotated out, there are no lists in the archives of Dragon combo that I could find. The combo was only around for maybe four months and the major event during that time, the 2002 World Championship, did not include extended as a format. I'm sure some exist, but nothing on the pro level.
I spent a lot of time thinking about ways to kill at instant speed, or creatures to use as part of the loop to kill. This was the key factor in my mind. Other formats where Dragon has been viable have also usually included Bazaar of Baghdad, a perfect way to find the combo and to kill once the combo has been assembled by milling your own deck and finding the Ambassador Laquatas to win the game. This is not available in Middle School, and I did not want to play a bunch of dead Stroke of Genius in my deck that only did something when I was actively comboing. Below, I talk about the options of various kill cards I looked at, but the main criteria was finding one that wasn't a dead draw when I was still assembling the combo.
I made the decision to optimize for speed. There are other ways you could build the deck to maybe be better against disruption by having more disruption or alternative win conditions. I didn't think this would be necessary given the decks that had been doing well in the leagues, but its worth remembering for the future.
Main deck
4 Entomb
Clearly the most powerful card in the deck. Premodern has it banned, and I can see why, especially when you can also have Dark Ritual. Later I'll talk more about bans; not much else to say about this other than play 4. Don't get cute and try to put one in the sideboard to wish for.
4 Worldgorger Dragon
There are certainly ways to build the deck without the full four copies of the namesake card, but since I was already planning on using Frantic Search and knew from my experience with PandeBurst that playing Frantic Search without the maximum number of copies of cards you actively want to discard was suboptimal. Once the number of copies of Careful Study increased, 4 Dragon easily locked in
4 Animate Dead
4 Dance of the Dead
0 Necromancy
These all combo with Worldgorger Dragon to usually make infinite mana and occasionally do other things as well. I'm not sure the right number for total copies, but it's probably somewhere from eight to ten. There is also the theoretical situation that you want nine reanimation cards to be able to Intuition the full three times and still guarantee finding one. I was optimizing for speed, so Necromancy didn't make the cut. Necromancy does offer some advantages and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand however. A big advantage is giving counter play to cards like Tormod's Crypt and opposing countermagic. You can play a two mana enchantment and then flash in Necromancy in response. Since the kill can happen at instant speed, the Crypt activation never gets to resolve until it is too late. Additionally, Necromancy can allow you to choose when to draw the game with more information. With Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead, you may be in a situation where you cannot win, only draw, but passing the turn could let your opponent kill you before you get another draw step. Necromancy lets you pass and see if they do have lethal before committing to the draw, and when they don't you still get to see the card for the next turn. With Ancient Tomb in the deck, it isn't as cost prohibitive as it may seem. I think if I wanted to play a ninth reanimation card, I would likely play three Necromancy to have the ability to find it with Intuition.
4 Intuition
Blue Demonic Tutor with upside. I think this card is likely the second best card in the deck, and I went out of my way with my mana base to be able to play four of these. Things this can do in the deck:
1. Find three Dragon to set up combo
2. Find two Dragon and one Laquatas to set up combo with the win from additional discard (Frantic Search or Careful Study) but don't do this if you have Entomb in hand.
3. Find three Animate Dead or other enchantment to start the combo
4. Find three Entomb or Whispers of the Muse to use once the combo is going to actually win the game
5. Find whatever other card you need if you have three in the deck. This might be Duress game one or Defense Grid game two.
I had purchased my fourth Intuition around this time last year, so I've been trying to play with four when I get a chance. Here it is a no-brainer.
1 Ambassador Laquatas
Even though most UB lists have one of these, it isn't the main win condition. Sure, it is usually the card that actually does the killing, but there are many ways to end up in that spot. The reason it gets played in all the UB versions is because you can find it with Entomb. This turns extra Entomb in hand into an actual win.
4 Whispers of the Muse
This was the key find for me to play the deck. Here was an additional card that could win the game when comboing that wasn't completely dead when drawn while still setting up. It has many advantages , or lack of disadvantages, over other cards people play in this spot (see Cursed Scroll and Wu Spy below). The main disadvantage is that it requires colored mana, so you can't draw your deck without an Island, Gemstone Mine, Undiscovered Paradise, or other untapped pain-free blue source. It wasn't difficult to get enough of these into the deck so Whispers was the direction I pursued.
1 Cunning Wish
Sometimes Ambassador Laquatas doesn't actually win the game. Maybe they have Necropotence in play or Gaea's Blessing in their deck. I looked for other possible ways to cover corner cases, including a strange infinite Capsize to set up re-combo with Shivan Gorge or Ancient Hydra on the following turn, but Wish is simpler to use and better when not part of the combo. Having access to Enlightened Tutor means it can be almost the ninth animation enchantment. I think you can build this deck with more copies of this, but I think it is important to not rely on it and keep the Intuition and Entomb at four copies main even with additional Wishes.
4 Frantic Search
4 Careful Study
The numbers on these varied a bunch as I was narrowing my list, but I found the maximum to be the best when optimizing for speed. With these eight plus four Whispers, the deck operates almost like a 40-card deck. Mystical Tutor was the card I tried in lieu of these but it was always underperforming, while these looting cards overperformed, especially Frantic Search. Frantic Search is another way to get Laquatas into the graveyard after drawing your deck with Whispers. This can be important if you don't have the pain-free blue source to draw the whole deck and you draw the Laquatas before you find an Entomb. Frantic Search can also generate mana with Ancient Tomb, allowing for plays like turn three Frantic floating a mana and then casting Intuition for Animate Dead and casting it all in the same turn.
4 Duress
I couldn't decide between Duress and Force of Will for disruption. The blue card count is more than enough for FoW, but the large amount of card disadvantage from the looting cards made it less likely to have the extra blue card around. The one mana from Duress was hard to fit in to the game plan when optimizing for speed however. I ended up on Duress to go with the sideboard plan, but that plan was inherently flawed and I'm still not sure which one is better. I might look at 3 Force of Will 1 Cunning wish in these spots, with at least 3 Duress and the 1 Force of Will in the sideboard.
22 land
You need about 18 colored sources to enable the various cards, especially for the Whispers plan. I had 21 with only three Ancient Tomb for a while, but Ancient Tomb also overperformed and I went up to 22 while optimizing for speed. With the eight looting cards, drawing extra land isn't a huge deal so you can get away with a slightly higher land count to help the goldfish kill. Cutting a few lands for additional cantrip might make Force of Will better.
4 Ancient Tomb
This is too good with Intuition.
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Undiscovered Paradise
These let you cast both Animate Dead while still providing infinite pain-free blue mana for Whispers of the Muse. Additionally they can support a small splash of another color or two for cards like Enlightened Tutor, Abeyance, or some of the red kill cards like Shivan Hellkite or Shivan Gorge.
4 Polluted Delta
2 Island
1 Swamp
You don't need a ton of lands in play so no issue playing more fetches than fetchable lands.
4 Underground River
First builds actually didn't play this at all because it didn't work with Whispers but that was dumb. You can still see 10 cards or so with Whispers and these to find a kill card, or just draw the game. It also helps so much at casting early spells without hindering future mana development like Paradise and Mine
Cards I didn't play
Impulse / Lim Dul's Vault - I'm not a huge fan of either of these cards in this deck. Impulse doesn't dig deep enough, and Vault loses a card while being less explosive than Careful Study and Frantic Search. I could see trying a couple of either but I'm not interested in playing four copies of these.
Sleight of Hand / Portent - Could be reasonable to play these and trim some land, but they don't add to the speed I was optimizing for. One mana is the right price though and I like these better than the two mana options even at sorcery speed. If Ancient Tomb was not the plan, I would consider playing lots of these and 19-20 land.
Cursed Scroll - its a reasonable kill card and doesn't require colored mana, but does almost nothing without the combo. It also requires an upfront mana investment that delays the combo when compared to instant speed win conditions like Whispers or Stroke of Genius
Wu Spy - similar to Cursed Scroll it requires significant investment before delay the combo, but does have the upside of helping you set up the combo. Unfortunately, it also turns on opponents creature removal that can turn a won game into a draw with what would otherwise be a dead Smother or Lightning Bolt. It does let you flashback Cabal Therapy if that is a card you are interested in. I don't think there is enough upside to this card other than showing off the depth of card pool for the Middle School format.
Other win conditions: Ancient Hydra, Shivan Hellkite, Shivan Gorge, Stroke of Genius all are much worse than Whispers in the main deck.
The Sideboard
I need to address the Null Rod right away: it doesn't actually work. I had it in the sideboard of all my graveyard based combo decks so I defaulted to playing it here without thinking how this combo was different. It doesn't stop Tormod's Crypt. It can stop Phyrexian Furnace if you have an extra Dragon in the graveyard for each Furnace they have in play. It does function as a hate card for some artifact strategies, but there aren't enough of those in the format to justify this. Don't play Null Rod, save it for the Hermit Druid deck.
4 Defense Grid
This has similar problems to Null Rod when it comes to stopping Swords to Plowshares or Disenchant, but it is too strong against countermagic to not play. There should be at least three in the sideboard to support Intuition.
3 Snap
Mainly for the card Meddling Mage or Withered Wretch. The free option was the choice because I'm optimizing for speed. Chain of Vapor does hit non-creatures, but I had better answers for those. I'm not sure which is correct in this spot.
1 Enlighted Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Force of Will
These turn Cunning Wish into a solid utility card and should stay in the sideboard at all times.
1 Stroke of Genius
I think this is the best kill card to wish for. As such, it should also stay in the sideboard at all times.
1 Capsize
If for some reason they have a board that doesn't die to Laquatas or Stroke of Genius with like Sterling Grove and Solitary Confinement or something, I think this should get you the win. If it still isn't enough, draw the game and hope they don't do that again. This can be cut if you would rather take more draws in these rare corner cases.
The other card I think should be considered for the sideboard is Abeyance. I had one in my sideboard but cut it for the Mystical Tutor right before submission. I really regret it once I realized that Null Rod didn't work. Abeyance can work against Tormod's Crypt if you have follow up Careful Study / Frantic Search / Entomb and the combo ready to go. It also does a good job at stopping Swords to Plowshares / Disenchant / etc. I would definitely include one in the sideboard and maybe more if you think the mana can support it. Having more Cunning Wish in the main to reliably find the Abeyance is also a consideration. It doesn't stop that pesky Nantuko Vigilante though!
Dealing with on-board permanents that interact with the combo is hard. I think one strategy that I came up with after playing the league would be to include Pernicious Deed in the sideboard. This can answer all of the problematic permanents while minimizing the number of slots you need.
The Matches
R1 - Merfolk - He lost game one when I was too fast. Game two he tried to get me with Misdirection but I was on the Laquatas kill.
R2 - Grixis Squee Tog - I don't remember much except he flooded in game three I think? This might have been on stream.
R3 - Tog with Hymn - Game 3 he kept one land with Duress and countermagic but never drew another land.
R4 - FEB with Fiend and Gilded Drake - I have turn two kill if I don't draw Laquatas for the turn, but I draw Laquatas and have to cast it. He then Gilded Drakes it and I can't win. Game two he disrupts my hand with Mesmeric Fiend and then gets Withered Wretch and I die.
R5 - Tradewind Survival - I win game one when he floods. Game two I don't play around his singleton Counterspell and he has it, I could have easily Duressed it first. Game three he realizes the countermagic isn't the best way to beat me and I can't beat on board Crypt and Nantuko Vigilante.
R6 - Rector Oath - On board Crypt and Seal of Cleansing do me in. Also maindeck Funeral Pyre.
This is what I would register if I was to play this deck again. I think it is a very strong choice for Middle School and just needs some more sideboard tuning to be a real contender.
