Borderland Ranger may be more reliable, as it will always help fix, but does it actually help this deck more? I would argue it does not. You are pinning your hopes to hit 6-7 mana quickly on just 6 ramp cards, how much ramp does CoMD run to hit its 6-7 cmc drops?. Although the shaman may not be actual ramp, it increases your ramp package by 50%, and puts out dragons 2 turns faster. I dont need to tell you the difference between finally getting board pressure turn 4 vs waiting till turn 6. This deck lacks early game, doesnt have stall, so it needs fatties as soon as possible. I agree a topdeck shaman late game isnt great, but any mana you save in casting other dragons can go into more pump damage, or cast Archwing Dragon for only a turn. At worst it ends up being devoured or chumping. Rather than giving the rote statement that it does nothing if it dies, look at what it does if it lives. I agree with you that the mana cost can make it difficult, but you will be running heavy mountains reguardless to meet the cost of Dragon Broodmother and Predator Dragon. Ive run this deck with and without them, and I find the DECK more reliable with them. But if you find that 6 pieces of ramp are sufficient to get your Dragons out quickly, Im happy for you.

Between this and Embracing Avacyn, I think you're good for the year.

4 cultivate, 3 borderland ranger, and 2 explosive vegetation has been enough. I really don't see the need to run the shamans on top of that. And those cards are all better than them long term. Thus........... I will stick with what I run. The 4 other spots I save by not running the shamans lets me run something more useful.

As for board pressure.......... I have no problem getting it turn 4.

While this is true, it's still not as reliable from where I'm sitting. The Shamans require you to get your hands on , everything else only requires and you fetch whatever you need to play your hand from there. The latter also has the advantage of thinning lands from your deck, which is as close as this deck can get to card draw.

In the end, though, this deck is a steaming pile no matter how you slice it, so it won't matter too much going Shaman or not. You're going to get stomped regardless.

^^^ I wouldn't say it's that bad..... the deck simply has Chant single creature disease without a way to recur anything or speed the deck up at all (which is what makes Chant viable).

Drac, you should play some 4ffa with friends.
This deck really gets a chance to shine.
I've came out on top many games and if you saw my friends list and the people I play with regularly they are all top rank guys for the most part.
My rank sucks but I play against random people drunk quite a bit so that explains that.
Drunk or not I play way more heads up with my normal crew(s). 80% of my friends on the list came from random adventures so I don't see my habit of doing that ending anytime soon.

After messing around with my mana base, I fully agree that Dragonspeaker is unreliable... if you are running less than 10 mountains. Run more mountains and throw in 2 cyclers, and it works. Ive actually had good success with dragonspeaker recently, with t3 Cultivate, t4 dragonspeaker shaman, t5 Kilnmouth dragon or Hellkite overlord. But my favorite was vs a CMD recently, when I got stuck on 3 mountains.

T2 Dragon Fodder
T3 Dragonspeaker Shaman
T4 Dragonspeaker Shaman
T5 Kilnmouth Dragon amplified by a Predator Dragon
T6 Predator Dragon devouring the shaman and tokens, swing for 20

Only dropping 3 land all game, unfortunate. Still winning turn 6, Priceless.

Funny thing about land drops in this deck is that it can work out your way or the opposite.
I can ramp faster than CotMD a lot of times. LoL.

Without the shamans, what exactly does your "board pressure" look like?

T1 thallid
T2 goblins
T3 ranger / cultivate
T4 ogre, hatchling, behemoth, bloodbraid, archwing / wurm

Most of that is vanilla combat strength, the hatchling having the most potential, but it needs food and is a 2+ for 1 if removed. Early board pressure is more likely w/ the shamans, dropping individually powerful, evasive 6-drops is stronger than anything I just listed.

That said, I prefer to ramp and remove early, and drop threats later, so the shamans are out for me. I only run 23 land. Focus is on early chumps and land filtering to have more chances to play bombs each turn when I'm ready to...

I agree with seeker, early pressure is not what this deck is about. Early defense + late game bombs. I basically build defense/pulse while in between ramping until I can bring out the big guns.

Do the Shamans really provide any early pressure, though? Your opponent isn't going to hold back attacking for fear of losing his creatures in a trade with the Shaman, since he knows that you value them too highly, and for the same reason he knows you won't attack if he leaves a blocker available. The Rangers and Goblins are much less valuable, and thus do more to discourage early attacks and are much easier to sacrifice in chump blocks.

Don't look at the shaman in terms of being the board presence of a 2/2 creature on turn 3, look at in terms of a possible 6 cmc Dragon on turn 4 . From my playtesting with EtD, Dragonspeaker Shaman has straight up put me in a position to win many games that Borderland Ranger would have lost for me given the same circumstance (and NOT vice versa). The argument that his mana cost is too prohibitive is weak once you adjust your mana base appropriately. We only have 6 ramp spells, so if you dont hit them, you have to wait until turn 6 to have a legitimate threat on the board (Spellbreaker Behemoth being the exception, unless you run Gorger Wurm ugh). Why not increase your ramp package by 50%, get dragons out possibly 2 turns faster, and have a far nicer curve to your deck. Everytime I take them out, I find this deck clunky and slow unless I get near perfect hands. But that's just me.

It's not reliable to have a dragon on turn 4. This is due to the casting cost. It's even less reliable to have a dragon on turn 4 and have that dragon survive. This is due to the orbital doom blade cannon floating around in the ether. This is why I don't run the shamans. Because if they aren't cast turn 3, then cultivate is just plain better and so is the ranger. And there are problems with running the card to have it out turn 3.

How do you define "appropriately"? Because I'm running a 10/8/3 split of Mountain/Forest/Swamp and I still don't see by T3 often enough to make me even think about using the Shamans.

@draconarius, I was able to get it to work only by going 14 mountain, 10 forest, and dropping all of the black completely. But shaman was not worth dropping pulse and a few of the better dragons, so I gave that up very quickly.

Adjust your mana base distribution, and actually playtest with it. I have no issues hitting the required mana, and can often drop a dragon turn 4 or 5 depending on its casting cost. Yes, it may eat removal, but it could also have eaten removal turn 6, so your point is moot. I run cultivate as part of my ramp package, so I can pick and choose what to cast turn 3, but I dont run the ranger because I have Valley Rannet which mana fixes one turn earlier and gives me a better curve. Im not sure why you have so much issue getting it out turn 3, but Im guessing its your mana base, so rather than regurgitating the same arguments, adjust accordingly and then we can have a educated discussion.

Im running 12/6/3 split of mountains/forest/swamp with 2 Valley Rannet and 4 Terramorphic Expanse. Between that and 4 cultivate I hit the mana costs.

My mana base is 11/9/2 with 4 terramorphic. And I don't see the kind of thing you are claiming often enough to run the shamans. Especially since I also want to get a swamp at some point.

It's hard to avoid reusing the same argument when it doesn't stop making sense. Even in your last post you half prove my point; if you're partially relying on Cultivate to allow Shaman to hit the table then we're talking about a T5 dragon at the earliest. Given that this is achievable either way we do things I'll take the way that is less restrictive, provides better early defence, brings my removal online ASAP, thins my deck, and is and not undone by a simple piece of spot-removal. If that means giving up the once-in-a-blue-moon T4 dragon God hand, so be it.

I'm surprised people are still arguing over land consistency. Yes, it can be a common issue with dracomancer, but the real problems are the weak early game, no lifegain, draw power, protection or recursion. Thinning the deck with ramp spells is not good enough to make up for what it lacks, because there's only so many high impact creatures you can draw, many of them are situational, and the more you topdeck land/ramp/token/etc in the late game the more turns you are playing a step behind.

I'm surprised that people are still talking about this deck at all.



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It sucks.