On Monday, the ban hammer fell hard across a range of different MTG formats. The triple banning in Standard stole most of the spotlight, but Legacy actually lost a couple of major cards too. With Entomb gone, specifically, the Dimir Reanimator lists that were dominating the format previously have quickly dropped from the rankings. The archteype may not be gone for good, however. In today’s MTG Legacy League, a fresh take on the deck incorporating the Worldgorger Dragon combo put on an excellent performance.
Worldgorger Dragon Combo In MTG Legacy
If you’ve never seen the Worldgorger Dragon combo in action before, then you’re missing out on a true MTG classic. The list we’ll be looking at here, which Aooaaooa took to a 5-0 finish in today’s Legacy League, uses it as a very effective backup plan for a classic Reanimator deck.
To execute this combo you need two things: Worldgorger Dragon in your graveyard, and either Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead in your hand. Cast one of the reanimation spells targeting Worldgorger, and it’ll return to play, activating its enters trigger. This will exile every other permanent you own, including the enchantment you used to bring Worldgorger Dragon back. You’ll then have to sacrifice Worldgorger, at which point your other permanents, reanimation enchantment included, will return, and you’ll be able to target it to reanimate again.
You can repeat this loop an infinite number of times, allowing for all manner of shenanigans. In this deck, you can actually win on the spot if you have Archon of Cruelty on board before you start the loop. This will hit your opponent for three each time it enters, thus winning the game. You can also access infinite Surveil via Underground Mortuary, and infinite ‘draw’ via Atraxa, Grand Unifier, in order to set up for the Archon finish.
Speaking of setting up, this list manages to do so just fine without Entomb. Unmarked Grave comes in as an easy alternate graveyard tutor, letting you get either Archon or Worldgorger depending on your needs. While it is more expensive than Entomb, this deck really only needs access to black mana for the most part, so Dark Ritual does a great job of making up the difference in speed.
Secondary Strategies
In an ideal world, this MTG deck would win through the Worldgorger Dragon combo 100% of the time. Nobody has that kind of luck, however, which means the deck needs to play fair a lot of the time.
Like Dimir Reanimator before it, this deck can often win by simply playing a beatdown game using an early reanimated threat. Reanimate itself is still legal, after all, which means you can have a huge monster on-board as early as turn one. Archon, Atraxa, and Griselbrand are all perfect in this role, as big Fliers that also generate card advantage. They can end the game in just a few swings, while also digging you closer to your combo at the same time.
The deck’s discard suite similarly pulls double duty. Cards like Cabal Therapy and Unmask help you clear the way for your combo by getting rid of your opponent’s interaction. You can also cast them on yourself after a big Atraxa or Griselbrand burst draw to get either Archon or Worldgorger into the graveyard. Collective Brutality is particularly good here, since it lets you do both at once.
We don’t normally discuss sideboards in detail in breakdowns like this, but Aooaaooa’s deck demands an exception. This list can pull a whole new combo out after game one, in the form of Witherbloom Apprentice/Chain of Smog. If you cast the latter with the former in play, you can target yourself and copy it infinite times for infinite damage.
This seems like an odd sideboard inclusion, but crucially this is a combo that doesn’t require access to the graveyard. Since your opponent is likely to bring in graveyard hate for your primary plan after game one, this gives you a sneaky way to get around that.
A Full Resurrection?
Since the regular Dimir version of the deck is pretty much gone now, the Worldgorger Dragon combo could well be what keeps Reanimator on the map in MTG Legacy going forward, but there are some concerns.
The biggest problem facing this deck right now is speed. Dimir Reanimator ran both early creatures in the form of Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and friends, and cheap disruption to keep the opponent at bay in the first few turns. While this deck does run plenty of hand attack, its undeniably slower overall. This might be alright in some metagames, but right now, with Izzet Delver and Red Stompy running rampant, it’s a major liability. The Worldgorger combo needs a good bit of setup, too, so even if you get the pieces, you may not have time to put them together.
On the other hand, as a deck with so much natural discard, this list is well-positioned against the various other Combo decks in the current meta. Whether it’s Mystic Forge Combo or Painter, you have no less than 12 main deck ways to get key pieces out of their hands. Chain of Smog can even do something similar post-board, since you often won’t mind discarding two cards yourself.
These good and bad matchups aside, it’s also worth bearing in mind that Legacy is very much in flux after the bans. We’ll likely see more changes yet before things settle properly. Hopefully a deck like this manages to carve out a niche of some description. Infamous as it was, it’d be a shame to see Reanimator vanish from the format entirely.
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