...Before even tapping a second mana.

I recently recorded a not-Bible of how to play Phyrexian Dreadnought decks in Premodern (or at least how I play them). You can listen to that here:

But one of the things I've concluded watching the explosive growth of Premodern on Magic Online is how badly even great -- including Hall of Fame-caliber -- players execute on arguably the format's most important strategy.

Please consider this piece to be the do-nots to the Commandments' dos.

1. They Use Way Too Much of the Text on Stifle

The year was 2004.

Standard was in a stranglehold that it would not escape until an unprecedented slaughterhouse of bans across the format.

All the Artifact Lands -- even Ancient Den, which had never hurt anyone; even Tree of Tales, which was much more part of the solution than the problem -- broke beneath the ban hammer.

Of course, Arcbound Ravager went; of course its sidekick, Disciple of the Vault, went.

But until that ban, the format was largely a fight between the obvious Affinity deck and a couple of scrappy Goblins decks that were fast enough to challenge them.

What was the clever deck designer to do?

Build a super-slow board control deck, of course!

We had a cool sideboard, but mostly splashed Green for Oxidize on turn one.

The exciting play was to blow up their Artifact Land on that turn one. Roughly "countless" hours of playtesting revealed that this was one of the worst possible plays.

"One mana Stone Rain" sounds great until you realize the opponent -- armed with much more, better, and faster card drawing -- was going to have an Arcbound Ravager or Skullclamp left over once they recovered.

My point being: This was settled law 22 years ago.

Pro Tour winners are salivating on stream at the prospect of Stifling a Windswept Heath or whatever. Don't do it. It's bad.

Should you never Stifle a Fetch Land? I can tell you I've regretted it every time I've ever done it. The last time was a few weeks ago in the League Top 4. I had to mulligan into a hand that didn't win quickly; but it had Lands and spells, including the Stifle.

My Goblins opponent broke Bloodstained Mire on turn one. I figured I probably needed to buy time, so Stifled him... and immediately drew Phyrexian Dreadnought.

I eventually won the game but won't soon forget the sting of the bad Stifle.

I think it's probably okay to do if you have a backup connector, but I don't think it helps you actually win many games.

2. They Ignore ~50% of the Rules Text on the Card "Phyrexian Dreadnought"

Read Phyrexian Dreadnought.

"Trample," sure.

Where does it ask you to bypass its trigger with Stifle or Vision Charm? We invented that. Well somebody invented it and we're still doing it.

But this wasn't originally a combo card. It was a flashy way to get an enormous amount of power in play, as long as you could pay the iron price.

Why does no one pay the iron price?

I first saw Dave Kaplan do it, and now it's part of my routine play patterns. Sacrifice Dreadnought to Dreadnought.

Occasionally you'll have a Dreadnought on defense but be facing a lethal or near-lethal attack otherwise. The Dreadnought is scaring off the attack, but you're not sure how you're going to win yourself.

Worse, you have a Dreadnought in hand (but no connector). If only you could play the second Dreadnought, you'd have a line to win!

The play, of course, is to attack, and then play the Dreadnought in your hand onto your tapped Dreadnought. Yep. That sure is twelve power.

Best, it's not like their attack got so much better.

3. They Miss the Best 66% of Text on the Card Vision Charm

Weirdly, bad Dreadnought players go too gaga for Stifle but not nearly gaga enough on Vision Charm.

Everyone knows you can Phase a Phyrexian Dreadnought out with Vision Charm. That's how you combo, after all.

Most people know to defend their Dreadnoughts from removal with the same ability; and some know to phase out other people's Dreadnoughts to prevent damage and/or blocking. But do you even know the other two abilities on Vision Charm?

By far the more important one is to mill (the opponent) for 4. This is a key play against decks built around Replenish or Enchantress strategies.

I know this is counterintuitive to you because you currently believe milling is irrelevant. Even when a crucial Opalescence is milled, your poker-trained brain says, "That could have just been on the bottom."

This limited way of thinking stops even masquerading as making any sense at all when you realize you're intending to play to sixties. Milling an Opalescence is like drawing a bonus Counterspell now.

You're playing to win by deck exhaustion, and Vision Charm just made your game four turns faster.

In some versions (Doomsday, ) you will also want to Vision Charm yourself, but we're not getting into that here, besides making the point that many players didn't realize they should be milling anyone.

The other ability that is deceptively game-winning is to change Land types. There are lots of super strange situations where you might want to do this that all sound niche.

You have a Counterspell but only one mana open and you're dead to a topdecked Fireblast. You switch Mountains to Swamps on the opponent's upkeep to buy the time to untap a second Island.

You're in the middle of a Counterspell fight. You add a ton of Blue and prevent the opponent from a Gush or Thwart to Foil line. Neither of you can believe that worked. You assassinate a Dandan.

The most common line is when the opponent only has Plains or Rith's Grove open to power up Kor Haven. You turn Plains (or Lairs) into Swamps before attacking. They read their own Kor Haven. Hilarity ensues.

4. They Also Ignore 60-75% of the Text on Portent

How do you use Portent? Look at the top three, more-or-less take the one you want, right? Use it on your first turn to hit your Land drop, or best-case to assemble the combo on turn two.

Personally, I shuffle with Portent a lot. One of the card's key features is to shuffle your deck! This can be valuable when you know there is a Phyrexian Dreadnought on the bottom of your deck from a mulligan or Impulse.

You just need to get it back in circulation. Somewhere. Anywhere but the bottom of your deck.

But an underrated play is to look at the top of your opponent's deck. This is especially great if your Dreadnought resolved but you don't have any cover spells. Keep them from drawing an answer for... one turn longer than you probably need.

Or shuffle them, if need be.

5. They Play Too Much Hydroblast, and Not Enough Blue Elemental Blast

I'm guilty of this in part because I only own one Beta Blue Elemental Blast. It's for the deck pics, but admittedly not actually optimal for deck construction.

I once suggested Red Decks mix and match Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast to be more unpredictable.

But my friend and teammate Andy Levine recently corrected my wrongthink: Red Decks actually gain value from Pyroblast because they can blow one on a non-Blue target in order to lower their hand size for Cursed Scroll in a pinch.

They should also play all four Pyroblasts before any Red Elemental Blasts because this helps them stockpile for Grim Lavamancer or Barbarian Ring in similar corner cases.

Dreadnought decks, though, don't play Cursed Scroll. Ergo they get slightly more value out of Blue Elemental Blast as a result. Certainly these are small margins, but small margins add up over time: Blue Elemental Blast is less vulnerable to Misdirection and Divert.

This might actually come up in matchups like Iggy Pop. And you don't lose anything (except a little deck pic equity) by making the right choice.

6. They Run Chain of Vapor in Their Decks, at All

When David Raczka won the Spring Fling with the coolest deck pic of its era...

...he was already making a statement with Mono-Blue Dreadnought. It was all about Dreadnought at the time, and the average commentator had no idea what kind of transformations Rackza was going to put on the Premodern format.

You'll note this first successful Rackza deck had no Chain of Vapor. Chain entered Dreadnought mains with Brian Selden's LobsterCon win, via a later Raczka build.

In this deck, main deck Powder Keg was actually "downgraded" to Chains, because as bad as Chains were in comparison, they synergized with the defining sideboard strategy of the day: Transforming into Tide Control.

Any copies of Chain of Vapor you see today -- and there are more than the correct number (zero) -- are remnants of the Selden-era Raczka deck. People were forced to remove Parallax Tide but didn't realize they should also have taken the Chains with them.

It's not that you might not want a Bounce effect. You probably do want some way to interact with the battlefield. It just shouldn't be Chain of Vapor. Why? Because if you've already resolved a Dreadnought... you're giving them a way to deal with it, just by having Chain in your deck.

Choose anything else: Boomerang, Reality Ripple, another Powder Keg... Anything but Chain of Vapor.

7. They Only Put Essence Flare on the Opponent's Creatures

Essence Flare is one of Dreadnought's coolest innovations in recent years. Kills Goblin Lackey or Jackal Pup before they ever attack. Dismembers a Meddling Mage... for the exact price of a Dismember.

But before any upkeep triggers, you'll note that the card adds two power to whatever is Enchanting. Can you imagine ever wanting a 14/12 instead of a 12/12?

I myself once put two Essence Flares on my mighty Phyrexian and killed a Sylvan Library enjoyer on the spot. Remember: Your Dreadnought starts out with Trample, and it will take a good long time for upkeep triggers to down a Creature with 12 toughness.

8. They Keep Way Too Many Hands

Dreadnought is the quintessential strategic mulligan deck. Outside of Pauper Walls Spy, I don't know any deck where I'm so happy to mulligan to five in the blind.

Dreadnought is not best because it's the most powerful, it's best because it's so fast. Keeping operable Lands-and-spells draws is tempting Fortuna with this deck.

If you're keeping a hand that looks good because it has a bunch of two mana card draw or cantrips... you're just asking to get raced. I once made it to the Top 4 of a $1K where the only games I lost, I drew six or more cards with Accumulated Knowledge.

My opponents just had time to make Ringleaders and Hermits. Everyone can beat Dreadnought with sufficient time. Good players focus on cutting that time off.

Be a good player, not a bonehead.

LOVE

MIKE