the dragon and the dead keep removing/returning/buring/reincarnating one another, but I still don't see any win condition.
wait. I got it.
1 animate dragon
2 dragon removes land+animate from game
3 animate triggers, burying dragon
4 dragon returns lands+animate to play
5 tap lands
6 animate dragon
repeat for infinite mana
cute.
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 12:03 am: Actually, scratch the Geyser and Torch, I just realized they couldn't work, but Ghitu and Stroke still can.
The way it works:
Entomb (or intuition) a dragon into the grave.
Cast animate dead (with x spell in hand) on the Dragon.
When it comes into play, it's CiP ability will be activated. This will remove Animate dead, causing it to go to grave. When in grave, it's grave ability will be activated, and Animate will come back. When it comes into play, it gets to choose a target, and thus, the cycle will repeat itself. When all this is going on, your lands will be going RFG and back, and when they come back, they'll be untapped. This allows you to tap for mana, generating infinate mana. With an instant X spell, you can Fire them, stroke them, etc. into game 2. What's interesting is, it's black, allowing for tutors and Duress/Unmask, and it can easily goldfish turn 1 in T1.
By Jacob Orlove, aspiring paragon (Orlove) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 12:21 am: does dance of the dead work too, or just the animate?
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 12:23 am: Yes, it works for Animate, Dance, and Necromancy.
By War Wolf (Warwolf) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 01:27 am: So are we looking at a monoblack build here, or BU, or what? You certainly don't need red mana.
By Burning Ice, the Elementalist (Burningice) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 01:36 am: Drain Life would work fine as a kill method. The deck could be kept monoblack if that was desired.
By Bad Player Meyer (Jpmeyer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 01:41 am: You need an instant as your kill card.
This deck might work in Extended. I tossed this deck together to goldfish. It's inconsistent, but it's also a first draft and it can kill turn 2:
8 Swamp
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Underground Sea
4 Underground River
4 Mox Diamond
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Intuition
4 Entomb
4 Careful Study
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Animate Dead
3 Dance of the Dead
3 Stroke of Genius
1 Worldgorger Dragon
By Bad Player Meyer (Jpmeyer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 02:38 am: Actually here's a better version:
4 Swamp
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Underground Sea
4 Underground River
4 Mox Diamond
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Entomb
4 Careful Study
4 Stroke of Genius
4 Whispers of the Muse
4 Animate Dead
2 Dance of the Dead
2 Worldgorger Dragon
By Acolytec (Acolytec) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 02:49 am: So what happens if you dont have the x spell in hand?
Sounds very interesting- its exceedingly cheap. B and B1 to get infinite mana after which you can cast anything your land can produce. Not too much waste on combo elements either all and all- and its an instant kill. Sounds like the groundings for an excelent combo deck considering all of the shit academy has to go through to make enough mana to stroke. Black is a good color for a combo to start in too. Now, how do we power the search?
By Acolytec (Acolytec) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 02:53 am: Another thing- a super low land count can be used because of the really low mana costs of the combo.
By Bad Player Meyer (Jpmeyer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 03:20 am: If you don't have Stroke or Whispers in hand you have to either wait till you draw one or you can cast the Animate dead which I THINK causes a draw but I am not 100% (if it doesn't cause a draw then it simply brings the dragon into play.)
By Burning Ice, the Elementalist (Burningice) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 03:35 am: JP: You're right. I shouldn't post when I'm so tired =)
By Bad Player Meyer (Jpmeyer) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 04:15 am: Even better version:
4 Swamp
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Underground Sea
4 Underground River
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Unmask
4 Entomb
4 Tainted Pact
4 Vampiric Tutor
4 Animate Dead
4 Whispers of the Mise
4 Stroke of Genius
3 Dance of the Dead
1 Worldgorger Dragon
By Rakso, Patriarch & Rules Ayatollah (Rakso) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 07:34 am: Okay... party's over. I talked to a Level IV judge (Rune Horvik) and he just gave me a few notes on what errata certain Judgment cards will have in the FAQ.
By Izihobip, Harbinger of Doom (Caplan) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 12:31 pm: Well, share them!
By War Wolf (Warwolf) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 01:18 pm: Grrr. Why would they need to errata this? It's not OVERLY powerful...
By Rakso, Patriarch & Rules Ayatollah (Rakso) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 01:21 pm: A 2-card infinite mana combo that can be played on turn 1 is not powerful?
Uh...
By Will, the Walking Dude (Walking) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 03:26 pm: Not turn 1 in extended, there no ritual, you need to wait to at least turn 2. Thats totaly balanced.
By The Bahoo (Ben) on Tuesday, May 07, 2002 - 04:35 pm: So what's the secret errata?
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 12:08 am: lol. Turn two in extended......Oh so balanced. The biggest advantage this deck has in 1.x is being able to run both FoW and Duress, plus Vamp if you want it.
By Magimaster (Magimaster) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 01:12 am: In T1 it would be nuts with ritual.
" Land (Multi color, not City of Ass cuz you can only tap that 19 times) Tap Rit Entomb Animate "
and you're off!!!!
sounds gold 
4x Dark Ritual
4x Entomb
4x Animate Dead
3x Worldgorger Dragon
4x Duress
4x Unmask
4x Force of Will
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will
4x Ghitu Fire
4x Stroke of Genius
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Black Lotus
4x City of Brass
4x Undiscovered Paradise
4x Forsaken City
4x Badlands
I'm 2 cards short.
whatever, this will probably recieve some errata anyways, let's prepare and use this combo as much as we can before WotC 1984's it ;)
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 01:15 am: Dude, there's a reason Stroke was restricted.....
By Teletubby (Teletubby) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 09:23 am: Here is a decklist from an Extended deck:
http://www.brainburst.com/strategy/extended/judgment/020507.asp
I´m very interested in the errata (because it has to get an errata )
By CF (Cf) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 09:58 am: There might be need for errata here, but the combo is risky in its design. (BTW: Rune Horvik knows that there will be one errata, but won't say which card etc).
Here's how this combo works / doesn't work:
If your opponent has Terminate, StP, Unsummon, Disenchant or whatever, you lose all your permanents since he will cast it in response to the dragon CIP.
If there is ANY other creature in ANY graveyard you have to say how many times you will repeat the dragon animation (let's say for a million mana) and then you HAVE to pick another creature if there are any. This means you can get 1,000,000 mana and then play sorceries (X-spells). If there are NOT any other creatures in the graveyard for Animate Dead to enchant, you MUST have an instant X-spell to end the game or some other way to disrupt the combo (StP, Unsummon, Disenchant etc) - if not the game will be a draw.
Hope this clears up some confusion. However, let us wait for the Judgement FAQ to arrive before we jump to any conclusions.
--
Chris
By Jeffrey (Jeffrey) on Wednesday, May 08, 2002 - 04:20 pm: In a type one deck the Falen Empires land Rainbow Vale might be a good mana source.
Land, Fallen Empires Rare
T: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool. Control of Rainbow Vale passes to opponent at end of turn.
In the feudal days of Icatia, finding the Rainbow Vale was often the goal of Knights’ quests.
Illus. Kaja Foglio
It produces mana of any color without pain. In this combo, it's drawback would never come into play, it would return to your hand before the end of the turn. It might be a good subsitute for City of Brass.
By Steve O'Connell, King of Metaphors (Zherbus) on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 09:42 am: Gemstone Mine.
Where is this pooptastic errata?
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Thursday, May 09, 2002 - 10:39 pm: lol.
Don't tell me you don't think this would need to be errata'd.....
By Tracer Bullet, Voice of Reason (Tracer) on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 10:10 pm: Just in case anybody was wondering, this has been named Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and I didn't even propose the name.
Two points to those who know the origins.
By Sylvester (Sylvester) on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 10:11 pm: By Izihobip, Harbinger of Doom (Caplan) on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 01:16 pm:
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
How cool does that sound?
WD Caplan. Now, we only ahve to pray the combo doesn't get errataed out conpletely.
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 10:16 pm: Yeah. Even if it only means the name will get some recognition.
**Smiles**
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Friday, May 10, 2002 - 10:20 pm: No, not those origins Syl.
Where he got it from.
By Superman on dope (Dope) on Saturday, May 11, 2002 - 08:48 am: Mmmm. Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
Wasn't that Calvin's favorite cereal?
By Tir (Tir) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 06:22 pm: Yup... Cruncy on the outside, chewy on the inside,
and provides 100% of your RDA of caffiene.
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 08:29 pm: Nice
(For those of you who don't know, my Sn is based on Calvin's private eye alter-ego)
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 08:30 pm: And I do have one of the propeller beanies....
By Cursedscr (Cursedscr) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 09:33 am: I played a few online games, this deck really rocks. i am going off turns 2, 3, or 4 at the very latest. The FOW/Duress/Unmask are nice for getting rid of the StP/FoW/Meddling Mage.
the main thing is, uncontested, this deck will goldfish turn 3 almost always.
WOTC better nail this deck dead and do it properly this time
or have another trix catastrophe on their hands.
Watch them ban duress in response.
By Mako Satou, Rose among the thorns (Mako) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 10:43 am: This combo seems to be overhyped. It has the potential to be very fast but the versions I see posted do not run enough blue cards to Force of WIll effectively.
Also it has some inherent weaknesses.
The Trix Intuition / Accumulated Knowledge combo deck and Reanimator combo deck has much of the field running Phyrexian Furnace or other grave yard removal to combat them so Furnacing the Dragon in response to the casting of Animate dead would kill it and many of the decks only have 1 Dragon.
Swords to Plowshares maybe played against the Dragons CIT effect on the stack and suddenly you have no permants.
I really hope they do not do it but Wizards might rotate Ice Age out of Extended they rotated Extended last year. If they rotate Ice Age out Extended really becomes Urza's Block Type 2 and I do not want that.
In Type 1, this combo is not better then Academy. Academy has alot more draw cards and can run force of will effectively. Drawing more cards makes the combo more consistant. This combonation requres emtombs, animate deads, dragons and kill card. The combination itself takes up too much space.
By Nevyn, the Village Idiot (Nevyn) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 10:48 am: Just to keep you guys updated, the judgment FAQ is on the judges list, and there is no clarification or errata on Worldgorger dragon. This does not mean for sure that the combo works, as we do not have the wording on the dragon confirmed yet. The spoiler had bad wordings on a couple of cards (wormfang drake for instance) so we should not make assumptions.
By Cursedscr (Cursedscr) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 11:13 am: suppose the DCI made no announcements concerninng worldgorger dragon, and suppose everyone agreed something wouild be done, sometime. How many people do you think would go out and buy jpmeyer's(or variations of) version of Dragon.dec just to win the first month of extended season, konwing full well the DCI would take action eventually? That part annoys me.
By Will, the Walking Dude (Walking) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 02:21 pm: In T1 could this deck be made better as a replenish deck? Just put, a dragon, an animte dead or dance of the dead, and some kill like goblin fesival in the graveyard and then cast replenish. It seems a lot easyer to dump stuff into the graveyard then to get everything togethe rni your hand. Especialy when 2 of the three pieces you get are so cheap that they can be easily hard cast. You could hard cast them to bait out counters then replenish for the win.
When I was testing JPs build of the deck (granted its 1.x not T1) I found that the deck diddn't have enouph search to be consistant. Makeing it more graveyard based would solve that.
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 08:49 pm: I really like Brians build, which can be found in the 1.x mill.
By Cursedscr (Cursedscr) on Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 03:20 am: jpmeyers build is good, although the FOW seems out of place.. seems the FOW doesn have enough blue cards to support it, until the combo goess off in which case you just dures/mask them to heck
I think that could be resolved tho
By Kirdape3, the Court Jester of Beatdown (Kirdape3) on Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 10:10 pm: Eh, JP's build dies like a dog to Suicide unless it has ALL the pieces plus the ability to protect them. Stompy's a 50/50 proposition, and anything with a bunch of counterspells just rapes it. Therefore, it's not worth playing, because it can't ignore good aggro and can't beat control.
By Gzeiger, not a paragon (Gzeiger) on Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 10:52 pm: I don't think this deck requires errata in Extended. I've been looking at it for some time (but didn't see this discussion until just now). It's strong and will likely be the most popular deck at the first round of PTQs, but it auto-loses to the following cards, most of which were already maindeck material in the format:
Phyrexian Furnace
Elvish Lyrist
Swords to Plowshares
Planar Void (SB)
Seal of Cleansing
and it's significantly slowed by spot removal like
Emerald Charm
Funeral Charm
Cremate
I'll be playing PT Junk when Extended season rolls around...
By BrianB, the Patron of Elves and Silly Combos (Brianb) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 03:38 am: The combo requires some sort of errata/banning not so much because it will dominate the format, but because it's just too fast. You can make a build that's quite resilient to disruption and very fast (raw speed is a weapon against most disruption), but it will always be beatable if the field expects it. The real problem is that Timmy is going to be getting rolled out of tourneys with turn 2-3 kills. They've stated many times that they are willing to tolerate combodecks, but turn 4 is the very fastest they should be going off (barring farfetched improbably hands with lots of wierd mana acceleration).
By Superman on dope (Dope) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 03:56 am: Suppose you get the infinite loop off but your X-spell gets countered? Does the game end in a draw? Anybody know the rulings on this type of situation?
By Tracer Bullet, Better than Spiff (Tracer) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 04:24 am: Yes, the game will end in a draw, assuming the Dragon is the only creature in any graveyard. No player is making any further choices, and as such, neither player can stop them.
Think triple Faceless Butcher.
By Superman on dope (Dope) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 04:42 am: Bummer.
What a shitty prospect. Your opponent should get a chance to kill you if your crap fails. Something definitely should be erratad ere.
By Nevyn, the Village Idiot (Nevyn) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 10:52 am: I agree that this will never see the light of day in extended. It may hit type one however.
For those interested, this is the first version I would be testing for type 1:
4 Animate Dead
3 Dance of the Dead
2 Buried Alive
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Entomb
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
2 Worldgorger dragon
1 Stroke of genius
4 Whispers of the Muse
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Braingeyser
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
4 Tainted Isle
4 Underground Sea
3 Underground River
11 Swamp
I'm not at all convinced it will be consistently dangerous (little inherent search, and protection is hard to integrate), but it is certainly worth looking at.
Note that while the prospect of a type 1 turn 1 kill backed by duress is intimidating (I believe the god draw can double duress), this is not the only deck with that ability (TN baby). The deciding factor will be how consistently it can goldfish in the first 2-3 turns, and that number needs to be pretty high for this to be a problem deck. My hope is that it stays in type one and is just good enough to distract away some of keeper's focus, making both of them more attackable by other decks. Combos are generally too good or not good enough though, so I would not expect that.
By Will, the Walking Dude (Walking) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 01:07 pm: I've been testing a T1 build with intuition thats gets turn 2-3 almost every time. However, it runs no dark rituals so it almost never gets any turn 1 kills. A nice bit of tech from brian's extended build is a single flameing gambit. Then you can intuition for the dragons and the gambit and get 2 of the 3 combo pieces wiht one card.
By Bad Player Meyer (Jpmeyer) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 03:02 pm: This is an Extended deck, not a Type 1 deck simply because there is not enough tutoring.
By Jacob Orlove, aspiring paragon (Orlove) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 05:47 pm: This is a type one deck, not an extended deck, simply because extended loses all the cards you need come onslaught.
BOOOOOOOOOOOO Wizards!
By Will, the Walking Dude (Walking) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 06:06 pm: You only lose one tutor when you go to t1. You go from 4 vampires to 1 vamp, 1 dt and 1 consult, seems risky but I've found that most of the time you don't lose all your win conditions (besides, if you do you can just play for the draw and try again, with this combo fizzle does not mean lose). Plus keep in mind that you get 4 entombs, so your tutors need to only find your animates and kill. Plus you can run 6 copies f the kill with no trouble, 4 whispers 1 gambit, 1 stroke, and up to 8 (I go with 7) reanimates. 6 and 7 make it a lot more likely you will have a combo piece in your opening hand than if you just have 4 each. Plus they also increase the chances of finding stuff off an impulse or brainstorm.
By Godder (Godder) on Saturday, May 18, 2002 - 02:14 am: Mystical Tutor is a possibility in this deck - it gets Intuition, other tutors, Ancestral Recall, Stroke, Flaming Gambit, Entomb... depending on what you need, I guess.
By Nevyn, the Village Idiot (Nevyn) on Saturday, May 18, 2002 - 02:36 am: Well there we have it .. looks like the combo rotates out before a major tourney using extended .... which usually means they will leave it alone.
And BTW CF, the card which is getting errata is one of the nightmare blue creatures, which if it CIP as a player's only permanent could start an infinite loop with 1 card before the errata.
By Will, the Walking Dude (Walking) on Saturday, May 18, 2002 - 12:03 pm: Well, I've been testing. I like my current build so I'm posting it. It has two main features to recommend it
A: very consistent turn 3 kill with duress or force back up, often turn 2, but rarely backup then.
B: Uses less than 1/2 the power nine. You can build it with more power, but I think this is more than enough, you don't really need the power.
One note, this deck does not want to be played where everyone packs 4 wastelands. I haven't had trouble with the mana goldfishing, I almost always have enough, but I almost never have extra mana. This makes me think that a few wastes could really set the deck back.
combo 8
2 Worldgorger Dragon
4 Dance of the Dead
2 Animate Dead
Kill 6
1 Flaming Gambit
1 Stroke of Genius
4 Whispers of the Muse (can cantrip when needed)
search 17
4 Entomb
4 Intuition
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Brainstorm
2 Impulse
Disruption 7
3 Force of Will (18 blue cards)
4 Duress
Fun 1
1 Time Walk (not needed)
Mana 21 exactly right for goldfishing
4 City of Brass
4 Underground Sea
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Dark Ritual
4 Underground River
4 Gemstone Mine