In the blue corner, we have traditional best deck and champion Threshold. The deck uses the best spells and creatures in three colors, and backs it with a fetchland and dual land filled manabase. Traditionally the use of six to eight fetchlands helped Threshold get over the potential pitfalls of running just seventeen or eighteen lands. I previously tried to exploit this weakness with Death Cloud, but perhaps the better answer has been sitting under my nose for quite some time.
In the red corner, we have new challenger Dragon Stompy. The first some of you heard of the deck was at Worlds 2007 when a group of French pros including Olivier Ruel brought the deck to battle. The deck, which looked like this, represented only 3% of the field:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
11 Mountain
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Blood Moon
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
3 Seething Song
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Trinisphere
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard:
4 Powder Keg
3 Pyroblast
1 Pyrokinesis
2 Rorix Bladewing
3 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Trinisphere
Dragon Stompy is far older than that. It got its first big success months before Worlds in the hands of Damon Whitby. It is originally a creation by Leif Whittaker and Alex Wrenn. According to the thread on the Source, after the success of Faerie Stompy, they tried to create Ancient Tomb decks in every color, and Dragon Stompy happened to work. Dragon Stompy keeps the Chalice of the Voids and colorless acceleration, but it trades Force of Will and moderate sized fliers for Blood Moon and even large ground pounders. Along the way it picks up eight additional pieces of acceleration. Most of the time Blood Moon is even better than Force of Will; counters trade with just one card in the opponent’s hand, but Blood Moon can stop an entire fistful of spells.
Recent sets have been very kind to Dragon Stompy. The above list has only three creatures that could deal with a threshed Nimble Mongoose in combat, and none of them want to fight a Tarmogoyf on the ground. Deckbuilders experimented with Sulfur Elemental, Masticore, Razormane Masticore, Covetous Dragon, and Tephraderm, but none of them seemed to gain universal acceptance. Two cards have taken slots in the recently. The first is Akroma, Angel of Fury. For a long time I thought it was a cool card without a home; UGW builds of Threshold have zero answers to it. Players started including an Akroma in their Dragon Stompy builds because with all their acceleration, they can actually cast her. The more promising creature to earn a place in the list is Tauren Mauler. Tauren Mauler gives the deck a good number of threats; you do not want to run fewer than 23 or 24 creatures. More importantly Mauler has the potential to be the biggest creature on the board. It is not unreasonable for Mauler to outgrow Tarmogoyf. An early Tauren Mauler does absolutely silly things to Threshold, especially if they do not have a Sensei’s Divining Top.
The base decklist I used is courtesy of chatting and testing partner Stefano Pian (Nihil). Pian used the same list to get 14th out of a 94 person tournament:
10 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Arc-Slogger
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Rakdos Pit Dragon
4 Gathan Raiders
2 Tauren Mauler
1 Akroma, Angel of Fury
4 Chrome Mox
4 Seething Song
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Blood Moon
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
The sideboard needs to be customized for your local metagame, but you start it with 3 Trinispheres. The rest can include Tormod’s Crypt, Pyrokinesis, Pyroclasm, Pithing Needle, and Anarchy. The maindeck should also be tailored to your local metagame; you may want to sit the Blood Moons in the sideboard or run the 4th Umezawa’s Jitte. Because it is a bunch of incredibly good cards, you have a lot of flexibility to build a metagame killer.
Arc-Slogger makes its triumphant return to competitive Magic after being used in Standard Red decks. When you can cast Seething Song and bring out Arc-Slogger on turn 1 or turn 2, things become quite silly. Dragon Stompy wins a significant fraction of its games by dropping the opponent to a low life total, then untapping with Arc-Slogger and slogging them out of the game. It can also remove almost every creature in the game with ease, even Tarmogoyfs.
Seething Song is one of the cards I dislike most in the deck, but it fulfills a necessary role. The deck only has 18 Red sources (counting Chrome Mox), so one of Song’s necessary roles is transforming colorless City of Traitors or Ancient Tomb mana into Red mana, especially for Arc-Slogger (Blood Moon also does a very good job of this). Song also helps you play multiple spells per turn. One of the common plays with the deck is to tap three mana and cast Seething Song. You lead with your three drop and if they do not Daze it you can follow with an Umezawa’s Jitte. Song also powers up Akroma in the long game.
Simian Spirit Guide is a 2/2 creature a fairly significant amount of the time. Sure, most of the time he pairs up with Ancient Tomb on turn 1 to play a three drop or sits in your hand until he can jump, Secret Service-style in front of an opposing Daze. Thinking of the Ape in those terms will cause you to miss the times, William Sitgreaves Cox-style, when SSG gets promoted to the big leagues. Occasionally the Spirit Guide will pick up a Jitte and win, or at least sit back on defense with some buddies and buy you enough time to draw into the win.
Dragon Stompy tries to do something unfair or mean to the opponent every turn until the other player dies. Sometimes you will land an early Slogger or Dragon and just win. In other games, early Chalice of the Void and Blood Moon effects combine, just like t.A.T.u., to distract your opponent until you can smash their face in. Your spells are all in one color and you have tons of acceleration, so you rarely get color screwed or mana screwed. Also, every card in the deck is either disruption, acceleration, a threat, or Umezawa’s Jitte. Yeah, Jitte is so good it gets its own category. Because SSG double as creatures, it is rare for you to draw the wrong answers or blanks the way many of the tricky or blue decks can.
Why do you care about all this and about Dragon Stompy? For about five people Dragon Stompy is the only deck you have the cards for (although how that happens, I have no idea), or because you built the deck and you have an emotional attachment. The rest of the world cares about the deck because it absolutely STOMPS Threshold. Not only that, but you have significant game against combo decks and multicolored control decks like Landstill. Blood Moon can also be a beating against Loam decks and sometimes Survival. Depending on build, you are often less excited to see Fetchland Tendrils, Survival of the Fittest, Eva Green, Ichorid, Enchantress, and decks that are unaffected by Blood Moon. Even though you probably beat Belcher over the long run, a bad 3 game set can easily knock you out of a tournament, especially if you do not have sideboarded Pithing Needles.
Based on some limited tournament data, I expected to stomp Dragon Stompy. I had a good streak of success against the deck in tournaments, so I wanted to write this article shrugging off the deck. Fortunately or unfortunately, I got proved completely wrong.
I started by taking the Threshold build I used in my article deconstructing Threshold a few months ago (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/15334.html). Out of a desire to get the second Engineered Explosives and giant flier into the deck, I cut the 4 Stifle for 1 Mystic Enforcer, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 blue spells. I ended up choosing Spell Snare for general utility. The Threshold deck I brought into the testing gauntlet is the one I would bring to an unknown metagame:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Counterbalance
2 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Engineered Explosives
Sideboard:
3 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Krosan Grip
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Worship
3 Stifle
2 Blue Elemental Blast
I’ve still been tweaking the sideboard based on the local metagame, but Worship is really good; how did people forget this card? In fact, the entire sideboard turns out to be built very well to take on Dragon Stompy.
So how do the games play out? First, game 1 is abyssal for Threshold. I had expected that Threshold’s access to basic lands would shut down Blood Moon, but that isn’t good enough. You have to race the Blood Moon down because it turns off your fetchlands, and you have to draw the right sources. Even in this particular build, you only have the 2 Windswept Heath to help you find the 1 Forest. What amazed me the most was that just drawing basic lands was not the key to winning game 1. In testing Threshold won just one game, and it was not the game where the Threshold player drew basic lands in all colors. Threshold has to get a lot of things right to win the game. They need to either get basics in all three colors or counter Blood Moon, counter Chalice of the Void at 1, and keep the board relatively clear to win off Tarmogoyfs. I have only seen one game won by Nimble Mongoose because the Threshold player had a very nutty draw. Let me give you an example of the way Threshold wants to win the game. These two examples are from the list above with -1 Umezawa’s Jitte +1 Tauren Mauler. I was testing out a way to try and get the 24th creature into the list.
Threshold wins the die roll, and keeps this hand:
Engineered Explosives
Plains
Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Ponder
Nimble Mongoose
Tropical Island
Dragon Stompy keeps this hand:
2 Tauren Mauler
Chalice of the Void
Blood Moon
Magus of the Moon
Ancient Tomb
Mountain
Threshold T1: Plains, Sensei’s Divining Top
Dragon Stompy T1: Ancient Tomb, Chalice of the Void @ 1
[20:18]
Threshold T2: Tropical Island, Engineered Explosives @ 0
Dragon Stompy T2: Mountain, Blood Moon (Blow EE, Daze the Blood Moon)
[20:16]
Threshold T3: Replay Tropical Island, Nimble Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T3: Magus of the Moon (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
[20:14]
Threshold T4: Swords to Plowshares on Magus, Ponder, attack with Mongoose, Island
Dragon Stompy T4: City of Traitors, Magus of the Moon
[20:13]
Threshold T5: Nothing
Dragon Stompy T5: Ancient Tomb, attack with Magus (Brainstorm in response), Tauren Mauler (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
[18:13]
Threshold T6: Island, Counterbalance
Dragon Stompy T6: Ancient Tomb, Tauren Mauler, attack with 3/3 Mauler (Threshold Tops)
[15:13]
Threshold T6: Windswept Heath, Engineered Explosives @ 3
Dragon Stompy T6: Attack, (Threshold blows Engineered Explosives, killing two Tauren Maulers and two Magus of the Moon), Blood Moon, Gathan Raiders face up (Daze)
Threshold T7: Replay Island, Mongoose attacks
Dragon Stompy T7: Chalice at 1 (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top, Counterbalanced)
[15:10]
Threshold T8: Attack with Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T8: Mountain (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
[15:7]
Threshold T9: Attack with Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T9: Simian Spirit Guide (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
[15:4]
Threshold T10: Attack with Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T10: Rakdos Pit Dragon (Counterbalanced) (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
[15:1]
Threshold T11: Attack with Mongoose (Chumped)
Dragon Stompy T11: Chrome Mox, Gathan Raiders face up (Threshold looks with Sensei’s Divining Top)
Threshold T12: Swords on Raiders, Attack with Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T12: Draw a blank, concede
[15:3]
A lot happens in that game, but the there are a few key things. The first is Threshold leading with a basic Plains and not getting punished for it. In most situations Threshold is forced to use their turn 1 play cracking a fetchland for a basic Island to have Daze up. Having access to blue mana through Blood Moon is key to cast Brainstorms and Ponders to find your other lands. Your ideal play is turn 1 Island, Sensei’s Divining Top to prevent Chalice of the Void from wrecking you. The second key is drawing the Daze on turn 2 to remove Blood Moon and having the Engineered Explosives to remove Chalice… and then drawing the second Engineered Explosives later to get the 4 for 1. Many builds have zero or one Engineered Explosives; even with 2 Threshold was fortunate enough to find the first one early. Having the second to remove Blood Moons was fortuitous. Even then Threshold got a few other bones: finding the Mystic Enforcer to counter the Rakdos Pit Dragon, freeing up the Swords to Plowshares to remove Gathan Raiders to let Mongoose through. In order for Nimble Mongoose to win the game Threshold has to keep the board absolutely clear for four or five turns, which is a rarity.
Here is an example of a game where things go a little more according to plans:
Threshold is on the play and keeps this hand:
2 Counterbalance
Plains
Spell Snare
Polluted Delta
Engineered Explosives
Tarmogoyf
Dragon Stompy mulligans:
Mountain
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
2 Simian Spirit Guide
Tauren Mauler
Arc-Slogger
Into:
2 Mountain
Simian Spirit Guide
Rakdos Pit-Dragon
Tauren Mauler
Chrome Mox
Threshold T1: Polluted Delta
Dragon Stompy T1: Mountain
Threshold T2: Plains
Dragon Stompy T2: Mountain, Chrome Mox, Tauren Mauler
[19:20]
Threshold T3: Ponder, Tropical Island, Tarmogoyf
Dragon Stompy T3: Blood Moon, attack
[15:20]
Threshold T4: EE @ 3
Dragon Stompy T4: Attack, Rakdos Pit-Dragon cast off SSG
[10: 20]
Threshold T5: Blow EE killing Blood Moon and Tauren Mauler, attack with Goyf, Mongoose
Dragon Stompy T5: Magus of the Moon, attack with Pit-Dragon
[7:15]
Threshold T6: Ponder, attack with Tarmogoyf
Dragon Stompy T6: Attack with both (Mongoose chumps dragon), Rakdos Pit-Dragon
[5:10]
I talked this hand over afterwards with a few players including my future testing partner Pian, and this mulligan was absolutely a mistake. I was undervaluing the usefulness of Simian Spirit Guide as backup creatures. You would normally play turn 1 Mountain, turn 2 Ancient Tomb and play Tauren Mauler with SSG as Daze backup. Then you can play turn 3 Arc-Slogger with SSG to pay the other Red, and you already have the mana floating to pay for Daze. Instead I was too worried about Threshold having a Force of Will and a Swords to Plowshares, negating my whole hand. But if they do that, you just start beating down with Spirit Guides until you find something better. The mulligan misplay is a great way to show the power of the deck, because the new hand is basically the old hand with one fewer mana source.
But so Dragon Stompy mulliganed, and still won. Why? The Threshold player simply did not have enough disruption. Threshold got a two-for-one with Engineered Explosives and had a Tarmogoyf, but the Threshold player lost completely because of Rakdos Pit-Dragon. Generally the Dragon is enough to win the game if it is not immediately answered. Even Thresh’s big flyer, Mystic Enforcer, will generally only trade with Dragon and sometimes not even that. Against Dragon Stompy a turn 2 Tarmogoyf with two or three power is simply far too slow.
Threshold wants to win the matchup in one of two ways. Because Tarmogoyfs grow, Threshold can hope to keep the ground relatively clear and win with Tarmogoyfs playing offense and defense. Engineered Explosives will help by getting some huge trades. This is difficult if Stompy has even two creatures, because most pairs of Dragon Stompy creatures can hold off even the biggest Tarmogoyfs. The other path to victory is the giant flier; if Threshold can keep the ground with its creatures and removal, a Mystic Enforcer or a Tombstalker will win the game in just a few swings.
I sideboarded like this:
-4 Counterbalance, -3 Daze
+2 Krosan Grip, +2 Blue Elemental Blast, +3 Worship
Dragon Stompy boarded:
-2 Arc-Slogger
+2 Trinisphere
Dragon Stompy can afford to play around Daze, and they have to do that whether you sideboard them out or not. While in the game Threshold won Counterbalance was very good, most of the time it gets pitched to Force of Will because Threshold cannot get two blue mana to play it. Had the two Spell Snares been some other blue instant like Stifle, they would get side boarded out first. With Daze you can either save two to actually counter a spell, or use them for tempo. You can use Daze to stop your opponent from playing two spells a turn or from equipping Jitte.
Dragon Stompy takes out a pair of Arc-Sloggers against most Threshold builds. Initially Dragon Stompy was worried about Rushing River from Threshold, but also because Slogger is one of the weakest creatures to see multiples of. A late-game Slogger will win the game outright, but a midgame Slogger is less impressive than a Rakdos Pit-Dragon or a Gathan Raider.
Post-board things get slightly better, but unfortunately Threshold is stuck on the same losing strategy. You are much more likely to win the post-board games, but it is an uphill battle. Generally Threshold brings in some number of Blue Elemental Blasts and Krosan Grips. This is the biggest evolution to your strategy; having access to a basic Plains is extremely helpful in the pre-board games to Swords to Plowshares the Magus of the Moon (or their next creature if they play Blood Moon). Post-board you can do both with a basic Island. Post-board your biggest priority is finding a basic Island, then setting up your source of green to play creatures.
In metagames that contain lots of burn or Dragon Stompy, Threshold players often bring in Circle of Protection: Red. I have Worship in my sideboard because it is incredible against aggressive decks in general. Both these cards suffer from the same problem; they are very good at helping you not lose, but it is significantly more difficult to actually win. Post-board games are difficult to test in the matchup because the match is frequently going to go to time. Dragon Stompy is going to win game 1, and in a long game Threshold’s creatures have a hard time connecting for damage. Because of your fetchlands and cantrips you will deck first if the game comes to that. So Dragon Stompy can play game 2 just to not lose long enough for time to run out in the round. If they happen to win in the meantime, good for them. Even if you can force a critical game 3, Dragon Stompy can win much faster than Threshold can so the odds favor them to get the win over a draw. Even if you get the Worship lock, you have to win when they will almost always have the advantage on board. I had one particularly memorable game where I set up Nimble Mongoose + Worship and my opponent had absolutely no way to win through damage, but he got Umezawa’s Jitte set up and gained so much life that by the time I found my fliers, I physically could not do enough damage before I decked. You might win a long game that way, but you are unlikely to win two. Your best chance is to get a source of White out and slowroll the Worship as long as possible. If you can trick your opponent into activating an Arc-Slogger on a Tarmogoyf you can play Worship and deck him. Just be careful of Anarchy coming from more prepared Dragon Stompy players. Older Threshold decks that run Predict can actually deck Dragon Stompy; I’m just not sure that is worth the opportunity cost of playing Predict instead of a relevant card instead.
And to think I shied away from four and five color Threshold decks because I was too worried about losing to Blood Moon. To really compete against Dragon Stompy, you would need to make two maindeck changes. The first is to get better access to the one basic forest, and the second is to find creatures that do not require Green. I never thought it was the right choice, but I would look more closely at Rainbow Efreet or Sea Drake in a Blood Moon heavy environment. Threshold got locked out by an early Blood Moon with little pressure in several games, but Blood Moon completely shut the player out and they could not recover even with time. I also experimented with Trygon Predator, and while it is green, you have a better chance of playing it early and getting through to kill Blood Moons and Chalice of the Void. The card that definitely proved its worth in this matchup was Engineered Explosives. I have been skeptical for a long time about Engineered Explosives; ever since Threshold added Counterbalance, Top and some builds even incorporate Oblivion Ring it has become hard to really profit off Explosives. I would strongly consider a third Engineered Explosives in the sideboard. The Explosives also has added value against some of the combo decks like TES and even sometimes Belcher.
The closing though is to change the list slightly with what we’ve learned, and give you a head start on how to metagame for Dragon Stompy:
4 Flooded Strand
3 Windswept Heath
1 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Counterbalance
2 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Engineered Explosives
Sideboard:
3 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Krosan Grip
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Worship
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Blue Elemental Blast
Kevin Binswanger
[email protected]
Anusien
Thanks to Stefano Pian (Nihil) and Andy Probasco (BrassMan) for helping me test.
This article is not intended to be a primer on how to play Dragon Stompy, but just to give players an idea that the deck is out there, how bad it can be for Threshold, and what to do about it. For more information about the deck, check out this thread.