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The Road To States 2002, Part The Third: Who Let The Dogs Out?

I’ve monkeyed around with adding different colors to OBC Deep Dog in order to strengthen the mirror and maybe help against Sligh, but I discovered that Dog’s mana base is like a Porsche’s fuel injection: It’s very, very fine-tuned and it doesn’t like different kinds of gas. Black is right out. But what other color might work?

Have you noticed that, despite all the obvious bombs in Onslaught, how few are actually seeing play? I mean, aside from all these bizarre rogues that are popping up, by and large what seems to be currently defining Standard is what was good in Odyssey Block: Both flavors of U/G, Psychatog with or without Upheaval and Zombie Infestation, and W/U weenie decks. I was certainly singing the praises of many cards… But the facts don’t lie.

Grinning Demon? Not that good.

Voidmage Prodigy? Not that good. At least not yet.

Oversold Cemetery? Haven’t found a way to break it yet.

Mobilization? Definitely overrated.

The best rares from the set, at least in terms of what’s seeing use in current post-Onslaught standard, are the new”fetch” lands. After that, we look at commons and uncommons like Smother, Naturalize, and Krosan Tusker.

That’s rather sad, really. But there’s still over a week left, perhaps someone will find a way to break something in Onslaught. It was last year’s States, you may recall, that saw the first appearance of our good friend Dr. Teeth, who beforehand had been dismissed with the rest of the Atog family.

So, with that in mind, I’ve put away the rogues and am currently working on what the deck to beat: U/G Madness, better known as”Wonder Dog” or”Deep Dog.” That’s been our acid test for new decks. Play it against the Dog – and if it can’t at least break even, put it away.

Much as I hate playing”best decks,” I must say that it’s my current choice of decks to possibly play at States. The deck has been fine tuned by deck builders better than I for months, so right now, it all comes down to guessing the metagame. My current build looks something like this:

Wonder Dog

4 Careful Study

1 Aquamoeba

4 Basking Rootwalla

4 Merfolk Looter

4 Wild Mongrel

3 Arrogant Wurm

4 Roar of the Wurm

3 Wonder

4 Circular Logic

4 Aether Burst

3 Deep Analysis

1 Windswept Heath

1 Flooded Strand

2 City of Brass

8 Forest

10 Island


Sideboard:

3 Naturalize

4 Phantom Centaur

4 Force Spike

2 Krosan Reclamation

2 Upheaval

I’ve eschewed the Quiet Spec route in favor of card drawing and just general fat. I’d rather drop a Looter or a Mongrel on turn 2 to start applying some kind of pressure rather than dumping three Roars and/or Deep Analyses in the graveyard. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you, but this deck thrives on applying early pressure and then backing it up with Aether Burst and Circular Logic.

Zvi and I definitely disagree about the presence of Aether Burst and the non-presence of Counterspell. Aether Burst has to go in the main deck. I played with Counterspell (the double blue is a killer, though) and Memory Lapse, but the deck needs some way to control what’s on the board. The deck is a classic aggro-control deck, and is usually tapping out early to play threats. It’s a lot easier to hold one mana free for Circular Logic than two for Counterspell. End-of-turn bounce is better than a Counterspell stuck in your hand, waiting for that second island.

And the deck hates-hates!-City of (Br)ass. But what else do you put in the slot formerly held by the beloved Yavimaya Coast? Grand Coliseum won’t cut it, since the deck needs fast starts. Come-into-play-tapped lands don’t cut it. I’m experimenting by removing one City of Brass (I had three) with one each of the Onslaught fetch lands. With these, you only take one damage, not multiple pings, and they thin the deck out incrementally. Early experimentation has shown that, well, at least they don’t hurt you.

The sideboard, ay, that’s the rub. Since it looks like Corruptor Black is rapidly falling to Tier 2 – and, in fact, you aren’t seeing much black outside of Psychatog decks, we can eschew Compost in favor of Phantom Centaur, which also turns out to be very effective against stopping Piledriver Sligh, the one deck I’ve found that can beat Wonder Dog on a regular basis.

As for the mirror – we’ve been digging for that bit of”secret tech” that will win the mirror. For a while, we thought that Silklash Spider might be the thing… But despite it’s ability to block flying 6/6 Wurms and make Wonder a liability, it can be played around. Callous Oppressor had potential, too, but it’s vulnerable to bounce and is limited to what it can target. Maybe we’ll come across something that makes the mirror more than just a whomever-gets-the-flying-Wurms-in-the-graveyard-first test of topdecking.

For now, it’s Force Spike and Krosan Reclamation, with Upheaval for those times you really, really need to hit the reset button. This is very, very subject to change.

I was toying with the idea of adding black to the deck to shore up some weaknesses, notably the mirror. Smother, for example, eats those annoying Mongrels, and you’d have access to Engineered Plague in the board (which is great against Sligh).

Bad Dog

4 Basking Rootwalla

4 Wild Mongrel

4 Merfolk Looter

3 Arrogant Wurm

4 Roar of the Wurm

3 Wonder

4 Smother

4 Careful Study

4 Circular Logic

4 Deep Analysis

4 Polluted Delta

1 Underground River

1 Swamp

1 City of Brass

7 Island

8 Forest

Sideboard:

3 Engineered Plague

4 Aether Burst

2 Coffin Purge

3 Naturalize

3 Compost

It’s not vastly different from Wonder Dog, but I’ve discovered that Dog’s mana base is like a Porsche’s fuel injection: It’s very, very fine-tuned and it doesn’t like different kinds of gas. Putting in black mana is like dumping sugar in the tank. In the ten straight games versus the mirror, I maybe got a decent mana draw once or twice. And even when I did, Smother was no Aether Burst. And even with Engineered Plague, Sligh still rolls over the deck.

Bad Dog certainly lived up to its name: bad.

However, I’ve been toying with using white instead of black with better success. Since you can use allied fetch lands, you aren’t monkeying with the mana base like you are with Bad Dog. Splashing white gives you answers to the mirror (Reprisal, Intrepid Hero) and answers to Sligh (Pilgrim of Justice, Worship)

Just as Super-Gro evolved from Miracle-Gro, maybe this”Dog” variant can prove its worth.

White Fang

4 Careful Study

3 Basking Rootwalla

4 Merfolk Looter

4 Wild Mongrel

2 Intrepid Hero

3 Arrogant Wurm

3 Roar of the Wurm

3 Wonder

4 Circular Logic

4 Aether Burst

3 Deep Analysis

3 Windswept Heath

3 Flooded Strand

1 Plains

2 City of Brass

7 Island

6 Forest

Sideboard:

3 Worship

3 Pilgrim of Justice

4 Phantom Centaur

1 Intrepid Hero

4 Naturalize

The main deck isn’t radically different from Deep Dog, although it loses some beef to find room for the rather puny Intrepid Hero. In the sideboard, however, you have Pilgrim of Justice and Worship – auto win against Sligh, and Worship isn’t too bad against the mirror, either. Does losing the offensive punch of two creatures make up for the presence of a 1/1 for three mana-very fragile against other decks but potentially brutal in the mirror? Depends on how the metagame breaks.

And don’t email me asking,”Where’s the Mystic Enforcer?” I’d rather have a guaranteed 6/6 flier (Wurm + Wonder) than have to beg for threshold. Then again, the deck gets to threshold very fast.

However, if there was one bit of interesting tech from the Invitational, besides that really, really weird Braids-Oppo deck run by Gabriel Nassif, it was the U/G/W threshold deck that ran eight to ten fetch lands built around the OBC U/G Threshold engine. That is probably the direction a U/G/W deck should go, not this one.

I won’t even go into trying to splash red in the deck. That’s just a bad idea all around.

Try as I might, it all comes back to square one: Wonder Dog is the best deck in the format. It’s got holes, big holes, certainly, but you can’t beat it for pure consistency.

This may mean I’m not going to be playing rogue at States this year…. But there’s still a week to change my mind.

Dave Meddish

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