 8/10/03.
This contest was by far the most popular contest yet. I would gander
that a large portion of the casual community has a liking or great
affinity for Dragons. I am personally a big fan of dragon
cards like Nalathni Dragon, Teeka's Dragon and good old Shivan
Dragon. As far as the contest goes, I received 23 entries and two
additional entries by myself. Six of the total 25 were
mono-colored, 13 were dual-colored, and 6 were three or more colors.
Of all of the color combinations, Black-Red seemed the most popular (all
using Bladewing the Risen) with 8 decks total. If you would like to see the
guidelines for Double Dragon, please see the side bar to the right.
On a side note, why do I
add my own entries to a contest I promote? The answer is simple: for reference and for
casual fun. I do it because I like to fill in slots that I didn't
see but expected to see. For instance, I didn't receive a single
mono-white or mono-blue dragon deck - so I made them. Of
course, I didn't see a mono-green dragon deck... wait, I lie. I
did... but all it had was Canopy Dragon and Elves. The poor guy who
made the deck lost a point for not submitting a DRAGON-THEME deck.
I'll get to the point system in a little bit.
Click
here if you want to jump to the deck scores.
Below, I am going to give
you a little background and insight into the monthly deck contests as well
as go through a few of the commonalities running through the decks.
Why do I
have monthly deck contests?
This question has a few
answers but the most important one is this: to promote creative deck
building. I am all about making a deck that isn't a copy of R/G
Madness or the latest Tog. You see, part of the fun of Magic: the
Gathering is the endless possibilities you can have with all of the cards
out there. I can't give you a number, but there's lots and lots of
combos to be had and synergies to be shared. Whatever the case is,
have fun with your deck creation.
The other day I was on www.mtgfanatic.com
and one of the member's there started a thread with the following:
I
read an article the other day from a person that said they never
thought Magic would get off the ground. It got me thinking: Why would
Magic go away now that it's as big as it is? I thought to myself:
Self, why would YOU stop playing magic? Granted the thought makes my
head spin, I was able to find a few things that bothered me about the
way WotC does things:
1. There are so
many cards that it is impossible [for me to] make a decision on which
[cards] to put in [my] sixty card deck, and I only have a few thousand
cards. Can you imagine if you had one of everything?
2. Why do they keep bringing out (basically) the same card and making
it cost more?
3. In the age of modern technology that we are in, you would think
that they would make the On-line version more feasible. I mean why
should I pay for a digital copy of a card that I still need a hard
copy of to use in my games with friends. Why not charge me a slightly
higher price and give me a digital version and a hardcopy?
Brad Westermann
The section that I jumped
on is highlighted in yellow. Where there is confusion to be found in
the large number of cards out there, there is satisfaction to be had when
you find a combination worth playing. I suppose this is why I have
such an extensive combo section (in comparison to other sites). I
experience this concept back when I started to get back into Magic when
Urza's Saga came out. Let me tell you, I made a gazillion
decks during that year and found so many cool deck ideas and concepts (one
of which is expressed in a deck I made called Clergy
Chaos). Finding the likable card combinations, to me, was fun.
Endless possibilities =
Endless challenge
& fun.
Another reason I have
deck building contests is to fill the MDV deck database with unique
decks. What better way to find a cool deck than to have you readers
submit your ideas and in some cases, unique concepts, with something to
shape it. The shaping tool is the theme of the contest. You'll notice I have been adding the decks to the database
from the various contests in the past. Typically, I will be doing
this at the time of the contest results from now on.
 Lastly,
I like sharing ideas over the net about decks and different ways to go
about them. Below you will find 25 different dragon theme decks
(some almost dragon theme decks) each with a different approach.
Some used mana accelerators like Thran Dynamo, Helm of Awakening,
Dragon Arch or the Dragonspeaker Shaman to get the dragons out.
Others used recursion tricks like Exhume or Coffin Queen to get the
dragons in play. And then there were a few unique methods I never
thought of originally like Show and Tell. Whatever method they used
to pull off a quick dragon, these are approaches and methods you can use
yourself now that you have been exposed to them - all you have to do is
tweak the idea to fit your own needs and collection.
One of my favorites
thoughts about this site is that all of this work I have put into the site
is for good. That people like you are sifting through the decks for
an idea they are contemplating and find a deck they can make their
own. With having contests like this we all get many different angles
to work with as opposed to just one, mine or yours. While some of
the decks below didn't get added to the database, this doesn't mean they
aren't good. This just means I have other decks like them or it
needs some work before it can be added. There were some common
mistakes running through all of the decks like low mana count, no focus,
or bad card choices.
Common
mistakes with entries.
 There
were a number of great decks. There were also a number of not so
great decks. It's a shame to see the great decks lose out of the top
five because they didn't title their deck or they didn't make their deck a
theme deck. There was even an instance where someone lost three
points because they use one or more of the power nine cards. NOTE:
I thought the "NO USE FOR A NAME" logo was appropriate for this
section of the article. No Use for a Name is an awesome punk band
for those of you who have no clue. In fact, I have even linked to
their website for you. Other problems include not including
your lands with the deck, not having 60 cards in the deck, or not
including a Legendary card.
It's sometimes difficult
to define a theme deck from a non-theme deck given the combos that are in
it. I guess for this contest, I needed at least 16 cards that were
devoted to dragons or a variety of seven or more dragons. The most common mistake was mixing up a theme
deck with the graveyard-trix deck. When you have cards like Expunge,
Buried Alive, Entomb, Patriarch's Bidding and the like, it's almost
immediately deemed "G-TRIX". Now if you have a nice
selection of dragons (more than say 15), then it can be considered a
dragon theme deck with graveyard trix tendencies.
Decks like Decking Dragons, My Dead Dragon, Burning Stitch, Nguyen's Attack, Koster's
Domain,
Dragon Apparition, Almost Dragon Theme Deck, and Exhumation were all
penalized for being something other than a dragon theme deck. There
were a few exceptions. For instance, if the all the cards in the
deck focus on the dragon theme cards then it could still be considered a
dragon theme deck. One example of this can be seen in Accelerated
Dragons. In this deck, all of the cards were about getting more mana
to pump out more dragons with Dragon Roost. This to me is still a
dragon theme deck. Another example is Dances with Dragons; in this
deck there was an extremely heavy recursion theme running through the
cards but there was 16 cards that were dragon themed cards. Again,
this to me is a dragon theme deck with recursive tendencies.
The other big problem I
had was the no name thing. I made up names for the following decks: Burning Stitch, DragonX, Nguyen's Attack, Koster's Domain, Almost Dragon Theme Deck, and Exhumation.
I understand that naming a deck is sometimes trivial, but it is one of the
musts in the deck contests on MDV. I figured that highlighting it
yellow and making it bigger than the other guidelines would make you
think, wow, this must be important. Some, however, missed
this. Whenever there was no name, the
deck lost 1/2 a point.
If you disagree with any
of the above, please send me an email.
Understand I am human and I may have been slightly inconsistent or just
plain idiotic in my ratings of the decks. Although, none of the
scores will change, but I just may post your rebuttal on the front page.
Also note that since I sent emails to the people who entered the contest a
few scores changed. You can tell if the number in a category is
highlighted yellow.
Side note: I received a few
emails about the power nine cards. What are they? They are
Time Walk, Time Twister, Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, and the Five
original Moxes.
Another side note: Decks
where the whole line is highlighted yellow will be added to the deck
database.
Point
System.
When I first started
rating the decks in my first few contests, it was just based off of
personal like and deck quality. I changed that to be more fair to
the various entries I receive for each contest. All of the score
categories are based on a 5 point scale with 5 being the highest.
Below is a quick summary of each category.
Balance: Did you
equally spread out the colors on the card selections in your deck?
Balance means a lot even when you splash a color. A five is for a
mono-colored deck. I try never to give a balance rating of less than
3.5. Please understand rating a domain like deck is always difficult
with this category.
Cohesiveness: (Is
that a word?) Anyway, do you have synergy between your cards?
This is how this category works. For instance, if you have cards
like Sway of Illusion and Cowardice in your deck and other supporting
cards like Blind Seer, Morphling in your deck you are likely to score
high. On the other hand, if you have cards like Scrapheap and no
artifacts in your deck other than that, you are likely to score low.
Focus: I like decks
that go: (4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 24). That would be the card count
for each of your cards. But seriously, if your deck is a bunch of
onesies and twosies, you are likely to score low. Remember that
having more of the key cards as opposed to fifty of a variety of cards
makes for a more solid deck. I usually look at a deck at first
glance and can tell is the focus is for good reasons or because the
designer couldn't solidify the deck.
Creativity: Are you
making a copy of some already well established combo deck? If so, then you
are not being creative. Creative isn't copying your deck out of SIDEBOARD
magazine and tweaking one land to a Grand Coliseum... its being original and
making a new combo, even if it isn't the best. Show me you are
thinking about your cards interactions. If you do, you are likely to
score high
Overall Playability: Sometimes
what look good doesn't play well. This is the concept here. I
don't play test each deck but I have a good feel for a well put together
deck. Can it handle on its own permission or beatdown? The
better that deck is overall, the better this score will be. I look
at all of the combos, all of the synergies and the mana curve. Are
the cards well placed or are their alternatives that would be
better.
Bonuses: If you used
any of the cards mentioned above to the right you got +0.1 point per
cards. For the previous contests is was +0.2, but there were a few
mediocre decks that jumped too far because they used 8 cards from the
list. I changed it from +0.2 to +0.1 for this reason.
Negative Points: If
you forgot to name your deck you lost 0.5 points. If you didn't
submit a dragon theme deck you lost 1 point. If you used any power
nine cards you lost 3 points. If you didn't use a Legend card in
your deck you lost 0.5 points. If you didn't submit your lands
with your main deck you lost 0.5 points. If I just hated your deck
you lost 20 points.
That's it. Below
are the deck scores and the decks themselves. I decided to put all
of the decks on this page instead of each deck on its own page. This
saves room on the site. Thank you to everyone who entered the
contest. It was quite fun reviewing the submissions and seeing all
the great and unique ideas you all had. Don't forget to enter the
next deck building contest: Legacy of Lat-Nam.
John Streetz, webmaster
of www.magicdeckvortex.com
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