Worldgorging in Legacy

is an infamous combo enabler from back in the days that was eventually released from the banlist prison because R&D thought it would make for interesting and fun decks. Well, the first of them just won the Magic Online Legacy Challenge and proved that it's still capable of playing with the big guys.

Worldgorger Dragon Is a Bad Card

If you're reading for the first time, you're probably asking yourself why anybody should ever want to cast that creature. A 7/7 flier with trample for 6 mana isn't where you want to be in Legacy and once you read the drawback you're sold on its unplayability. After all, it exiles your entire remaining battlefield for as long as the Dragon remains in play. What good could come of that? Glad you're asking …

What Makes the Dragon Powerful?

The reason this card was banned is a fairly complicated combo with oddly worded enchantments from more than 20 years ago. I'm talking about , , and .

Those enchantments revive a creature from the graveyard and become Auras that enchant the targeted creature. If the enchantment leaves the battlefield, the creature does as well. While those cards are very flavorful in my opinion, they're also fairly complicated and fragile. Making your creatures vulnerable to effects like further increases the risk of getting blown out by interactive spells. This already is the biggest weakness of Reanimator strategies even without relying on Auras.

But we don't want to keep Worldgorger Dragon on the battlefield anyway. Otherwise, we'd pick more powerful spells such as or , which are commonly used to put better creatures like onto the battlefield as fast as possible.

How the Combo Works

When enters the battlefield via , the Dragon's ability triggers and exiles all other permanents you control, including the Animate Dead that keeps it alive. Once the triggered ability has resolved, Animate Dead's ability triggers and makes you sacrifice the Dragon. Once the Dragon hits the graveyard, all the exiled permanents return to the battlefield, including the Animate Dead, which can bring back the Worldgorger Dragon and start the loop all over again. If this was too fast, here is a compact overview of the steps:

1. Animate Dead enters the battlefield and reanimates the Dragon.
2. The Dragon exiles all other permanents you control, including Animate Dead.
3. Animate Dead makes you sacrifice the Dragon.
4. The Dragon returns all exiled permanents. Animate Dead enters the battlefield …

If nobody can interrupt the loop with abilities or an instant, and no other creatures are in graveyards, the game ends in a draw, because this process would go on forever. Note that, if another creature is in a graveyard, a judge will eventually ask you to break the loop as you need to make a decision that advances the game state. Doing nothing else than looping the Dragon while other options are available will count as stalling and result in a penalty. Also be aware that if your opponent removes the Animate Dead or the Worldgorger Dragon at the right time — in response to the global exiling ability — you'll lose all your permanents and won't get them back.

Why All the Effort?

If you've been paying attention to my explanation, you may have noticed that this fiddly combo doesn't even end the game in your favor on the spot. However, since your permanents return to the battlefield untapped for each iteration of the loop, you can get sheer endless mana from your lands. You can also benefit from permanents that do something whenever the loop is performed. For example, previous iterations of Worldgorger Combo in Vintage used to mill the complete library and broke the loop by choosing as the final target for Animate Dead, spending all the mana generated throughout on Oona's ability. Other decks of the past relied on for the kill.

Since I'm not a big fan of playing cards that turn a big mana pool into a win and do little outside of the combo, I'm very excited for and . New versions now run the bare minimum amount of bad cards — looking at you, Worldgorger Dragon — and instead incorporate a respectable fair game plan.

Possible Win Conditions

Like I mentioned, people ran all kinds of bad cards in the past to make use of the Dragon combo. Astrolabe and Coatl make it so that you don't need a dedicated win condition at all anymore. You can generate so much mana and draw so many cards that you'll likely be able to create a game state that most opponents can't beat. Simply draw until you have enough , end the loop by animating another creature but Dragon, cast all your creatures and planeswalkers, and make sure not to deck yourself in the process. Note that, if necessary, you can get another creature into the graveyard at instant speed via or .

Nevertheless, it is often handy to have something in your 75 that can end the game on the spot. Here is a shortlist of options to consider.

1. : It was used a lot in the past and brings back many fond memories. You can pitch it to Force of Will, cast it in a grindy control mirror to get ahead on cards, or win with it at instant speed inside the loop. If you run , you can execute the complete combo including kill at instant speed. If you run a single , you can that to animate it and give the Stroke flashback.

   
   

   

2. : Simply draw your entire library and use the last Animate Dead to get back the Oracle you entombed earlier. The card doesn't do much outside of the combo, but it's a clean kill through , , and other nonsense.

3. plus : If you don't want to include a bad finisher, you can try to build a juicy control deck in the style of Stryfo Pile and add the Worldgorger combo. For every loop, Grove will return untapped and will be able to deal a point of damage to your opponent with a Fire in either graveyard or hand. You can also entomb it within the loop. Just note that this takes way too much time online.

4. in the sideboard: This kill requires you to run in the main deck and eats up one of your sideboard slots. It provides additional utility as the Fae can grab a lot of other stuff to get out of a tough situation. But sideboard slots are valuable here, because you need all the space you can get for your transformational sideboard plan.

   
   

   

5. : This card executes the kill pretty quickly on Magic Online. You only need 23 mana to activate the first ability five times and the second ability twice for a total of 20 life loss. It's also great against decks as it can mess up their piles and isn't the worst card for a fair game in general.

The Deck

This is the list that brought Worldgorger Dragon back into the conversation:

This version won the Legacy Challenge on June 28 and the player was also interviewed for the Everyday Eternal podcast. Kyle streams the deck a lot and was heavily involved with its creation. If you want to learn more and enter the awesome community of Worldgorger players, I suggest you enter their Discord channel. There you can find a lot of useful information on the deck and get in touch with the people playing and working on the deck.

Snow Control Featuring a Combo

This deck reminds me of in Modern. It's a combo deck that threatens to win the game by turn two but can also play a slow and grindy game, sculpting the perfect hand and going off later on when the coast is clear. To fight the fair fight, the Snow mana base makes it possible to use Ice-Fang Coatl, a plethora of basic lands, and all the good Sultai interaction alongside the best cantrips and Force of Will. To make the control plan worthwhile, Entomb can also tutor up , which can escape in the later stages of the game as a very strong finisher.

Since Animate Dead is also able to grab an opposing creature you've destroyed, countered, or discarded to seal the deal, the combo pieces this deck needs to run are sometimes just very good Magic cards that win the game on their own. This is a huge upside compared to other combo decks. The sideboard makes it possible to transform completely into a control strategy that doesn't need the graveyard or relies on whacky combos at all. Add everything together and you've got a very versatile deck that catches opponents off guard and leaves the opponent in the dark about your post-board strategy.

I'm generally someone who often complains about recent additions to Legacy. Many have shaken Legacy to its core and shrunk the effective card pool as everybody needs to play the new good cards. But this deck is an example of how new printings reinvigorated old forgotten cards and made the metagame more diverse.

Even the new is an upgrade to previous planeswalkers here, especially because you can activate his ability in between Dragon loops to draw through your entire library. So he works as another combo enabler whereas wouldn't do the job.

If switching strategies between games is your playstyle and you love to surprise people with old combos, I strongly suggest you give this one a try. Have you cast Animate Dead targeting Worldgorger Dragon in the past? Are you excited to do so in the future? Do you think this deck is meme or monster? Share your opinion in the comments!

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.