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Claymore1
03-18-2015, 12:05 AM
I play enchantress, that Foul-Toungue Shriek won't help. Due to most of the cards we run and main decked prevents any attempts from even being attacked.
Elephant Grass, Moat and/or Sphere of Safety being the culprit.

slave
03-18-2015, 11:50 PM
What are we really discussing here? Am I missing something? Where is the knockout punch. This is a 6/5 dragon you're Dread Returning. The target you're getting should flat out win you the game. It shouldn't be a win more card.
This is not main-deck material > no argument there.
But where I think the discussion is at;
Against decks like Storm, this card potentially locks them out of a combo turn should they be unable to remove it, given many storm decks would be unable to take more than a single -10 life trigger. In some control matches, same-same situation.
Against a deck like Reanimator (considering they run Reanimate and fetches) this might make for some interesting plays....

I think this above is the only reason to consider the card myself, the FKZ-haste-nature of the card is only in addition to this.

gibbousm
03-19-2015, 12:49 AM
I'm not sure when I'd ever want to Dread Return Kolaghan over other targets.
If I want to finish off my opponent in one swing, FKZ does it with less zombies.
If I want to lock my opponent out of casting spells, Iona completely shuts them off of a color. She's useless versus Storm as she only blasts for 10 on creatures and planeswalker spells
I'm sure there are some cases where she's better, but I don't see her as being good enough to replace anything.
Honestly the only reanimation targets I think about adding to my 75 are a second Ashen Rider or a Sire of Insanity. I don't see the Elder Dragon being a better alternative to FKZ or Iona which are the two cards it would displace.

P-E
03-19-2015, 02:17 AM
This is not main-deck material > no argument there.
But where I think the discussion is at;
Against decks like Storm, this card potentially locks them out of a combo turn should they be unable to remove it, given many storm decks would be unable to take more than a single -10 life trigger. In some control matches, same-same situation.
Against a deck like Reanimator (considering they run Reanimate and fetches) this might make for some interesting plays....

I think this above is the only reason to consider the card myself, the FKZ-haste-nature of the card is only in addition to this.

Dragonlord Kolagan only triggers for creatures and planeswalker cards , so it's useless against storm and reanimator.
I think Kolagan pros over FKZ is only being potential ichorid food, but needs more tokens to win with

indefinite.soul
03-20-2015, 01:27 PM
I play enchantress, that Foul-Toungue Shriek won't help. Due to most of the cards we run and main decked prevents any attempts from even being attacked.
Elephant Grass, Moat and/or Sphere of Safety being the culprit.

Very well put. My mistake.


Anyway, guys, I did place a disclaimer: don't think any would make to the 75.

Just wanted to discuss the new set. They always bring more to the other decks than to us. But still, I always have faith that they will bring something in the future to help us protect from all the hate.

Cya

slave
03-20-2015, 09:23 PM
Dragonlord Kolagan only triggers for creatures and planeswalker cards , so it's useless against storm and reanimator.
I think Kolagan pros over FKZ is only being potential ichorid food, but needs more tokens to win with
Against Reanimator, you'd be right most of the time, if not all.
But against Storm I disagree. How often can a Storm player churn out a combo turn without playing more than one card that is already in the graveyard, given that in order for us to have the Dragon in play, we've already cast Cabal Therapy on their arse?
I'm thinking they're gonna be severely constricted in what lines play they could pursue without just somehow removing the Dragon.


I'm not sure when I'd ever want to Dread Return Kolaghan over other targets.
If I want to finish off my opponent in one swing, FKZ does it with less zombies.
If I want to lock my opponent out of casting spells, Iona completely shuts them off of a color. She's useless versus Storm as she only blasts for 10 on creatures and planeswalker spells
I'm sure there are some cases where she's better, but I don't see her as being good enough to replace anything.
Honestly the only reanimation targets I think about adding to my 75 are a second Ashen Rider or a Sire of Insanity. I don't see the Elder Dragon being a better alternative to FKZ or Iona which are the two cards it would displace.

LOL. Sire of Insanity I came up against in a mirror some months ago > was very funny. I can see that card being a great choice in some matchups.

I tend to agree. The new dragon isn't one I'll be buying soon, but I might do some testing with a proxy. Wait and see which matchups it has some use.

movadomk5
03-20-2015, 10:28 PM
You guys need to learn to read cards before posting some rant about how good a card would be for some match up its actually irrelevant in.

jimmythegreek
03-20-2015, 11:20 PM
You guys need to learn to read cards before posting some rant about how good a card would be for some match up its actually irrelevant in.

Wtf. yes.
Creature or planeswalker has nothing to do with combo. This card sucks.

slave
03-25-2015, 06:00 PM
Wtf. yes.
Creature or planeswalker has nothing to do with combo. This card sucks.
I never said the card was great, or even considerable.

But last time I checked Tinder Wall was in a Storm deck.
Elves is essentially a combo deck.

JPoJohnson
04-05-2015, 02:50 AM
I never said the card was great, or even considerable.

Then why arguing so much to defend it? (:


I don't see any major contenders from the new set.

dynamicduelist
04-19-2015, 05:41 PM
Hello eveyone, this is my first post here.
I've been playing dredge for quite some time, but recently have been having thoughts about a potentially different strategy.
I will be testing soon, a dredge deck with 3 Griselbrand and 3 Dread Return in the main.
Off the top of my head, I assume it'll look something like this:
3 Griselbrand
3 Dread Return
4 Therapy
4 Bridge From Below
4 Putrid Imp
3 Narcomoeba
3 Ichorid
2 Bloodghast
4 Tolarian Winds
4 Carefulstudy
12 Dredgers
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Cephalid Colleasum
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Mana Confluence
1 Dakmore Salvage

Notable things that are not in the list:
LED. It's an awesome card that I almost always side out. I've found post board it's better for me to be cautious rather than explosive. I feel Dredge still be powerful enough without LED to the unprepared main deck of our opponent.
Faithless Looting. Undeniably great even without LED. This may be one I shouldn't cut.
Breakthrough. I like Tolarian Winds in the face of Deathrite Shaman. Discard then draw, it's just harder to disrupt.

There are a lot of decks out there that can't deal with a 7/7 flying lifelinker and definitely not more than one with lots of zombies. It's just as guaranteed to kill as FKZ or anything else we've played. Filling hand/bin with Therapy and Bridges, Ichorids and Bloodghasts(basically my Narcomoeba 4&5 with bonus) or G-daddy again means our opponent needs a lot of help to get out ahead.

Please let me know if you think of anything one could change, while preserving this plan of attack, or if it'll work at all.
I'll have some time soonish to start testing, so any feedback on the deck building will be appreciated, thanks!

AmokPL
05-19-2015, 03:10 AM
Not sure about the others but I win most of G1's mainly due to explosiveness of the LED's. Cutting them completely doesn't seem a good idea. Also not sure how you are going to support 2x Bloodghast with only 4x Paradise. Breakthrough have always been awesome to me. And 3 DR only fat targets seem too much. I am playing single Gris (getting replaced with Iona or Elesh after sb). But that's just me.

gibbousm
05-20-2015, 06:19 PM
So I'm planning to attend a SCG IQ this weekend in hopes of qualifying for the New Jersey Invitational.

My main deck is fairly standard Quadlaser except -1 Putrid Imp, -1 Thug, - 1 Breakthrough, +1 Darkblast, +1 DR, +1 Iona. Darkblast is there because I feel Young Pyromancer decks are getting a little too popular on MTGO and I'm not sure how big they are in paper.

I like my main deck but with regards to my sideboard, I just can't decide on what anti-hate package I want to bring. I have 7 slots to work with, the rest of my sideboard I'm happy with.

I have access to: Nature's Claims, Ingot Chewers, Wispmares, Vapor Snags, Abrupt Decays, Ancient Grudges, and Unmasks.

I'm not sure what the meta will be. If anyone plays at Curio Cavern and can give me a better idea of what to prepare for I'd greatly appreciate it. I haven't been to the store in a really long time.

boxian
06-10-2015, 02:07 AM
With such tight lists often threads like these seem "dead" at times

Where is the tightest current version of the LED dredge deck? I've looked at the initial post and the LED example list is from 2012.

Thanks

kombatkiwi
06-10-2015, 05:15 AM
Where is the tightest current version of the LED dredge deck? I've looked at the initial post and the LED example list is from 2012.

Thanks



1 Flayer of the Hatebound
2 Ichorid
3Golgari Thug
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Narcomoeba
4 Putrid Imp
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Careful Study
3 Dread Return
4 Breakthrough
4 Faithless Looting
4 Bridge from Below
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

1 Tarnished Citadel
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine

The only new card to consider in these 3 years is city of Brass 2.0, which is why people say the list is tight - it's a highly linear deck which means that
a) It has very stringent, bizarre standards for a card to playable, and
b) it doesn't have a lot of room to maneuver around metagame changes

Hence why the thread feels dead, half the games are a blowout and the other half come down to whether your opponent draws leyline or whatever, and then everybody goes back to discussing whether you want 13 or 14 lands, or 11 or 12 dredgers, 2 or 3 Dread Returns

-4 Putrid Imp
-1 Dread Return
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound

+1 Golgari Thug
+1 Careful Study
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Ichorid
+1 Griselbrand
+1 Rainbow Land (and fix the manabase now that you can play Confluence)

A lot of this fine-tuning feels a bit like personal preference. To taste you could cut any of these +1s to put some of the Putrid Imps back in. Flayer is a worse DR target than Griselbrand imo and I wouldn't play more than 2 Dread Returns.

I think Kolaghan is interesting as an FKZ alternative
- Better without a bunch of zombies
- Is black

But I don't think it's correct to play either of them atm

bhsman
06-10-2015, 09:01 AM
Dragonlord Kolaghan is an interesting pick over Flame-Kin Zealot, but I think Flame-Kin is a little better here because if they Swords away the FKZ at the end of your pre-combat main phase, your zombie tokens still have +1/+1 and haste, whereas if that happens to Kolaghan you're flat out of luck. In a meta that doesn't use a lot of white or where burn is more prevalent, she might be better.

gibbousm
06-15-2015, 06:46 PM
So I've taken down 2 back to back SCG IQs with this list:

Creature (23)
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
3x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
4x Narcomoeba
3x Putrid Imp
4x Stinkweed Imp

Enchantment (4)
4x Bridge from Below

Instant & Sorcery (17)
3x Breakthrough
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Careful Study
1x Darkblast
1x Dread Return
4x Faithless Looting

Land (12)
4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Mana Confluence

Artifact (4)
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Sideboard (15)
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Ashen Rider
1x Dread Return
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
3x Firestorm
2x Ingot Chewer
2x Nature's Claim
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Wispmare

Combined Win-Loss-Draw between the 2 tournaments: 11-2-1

Its the 75 I plan to bring with me to the DC Open and NJ Invitational. I'm curious as to what peoples' thoughts on my list are.

kombatkiwi
06-15-2015, 08:21 PM
I could see myself going -1 Putrid +1 Breakthrough

What is Darkblast usually for that you think it's worth maining over the 4th Golgari Thug?

BJeagle
06-16-2015, 03:00 AM
So I've taken down 2 back to back SCG IQs with this list:

Creature (23)
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
3x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
4x Narcomoeba
3x Putrid Imp
4x Stinkweed Imp

Enchantment (4)
4x Bridge from Below

Instant & Sorcery (17)
3x Breakthrough
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Careful Study
1x Darkblast
1x Dread Return
4x Faithless Looting

Land (12)
4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Mana Confluence

Artifact (4)
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Sideboard (15)
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Ashen Rider
1x Dread Return
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
3x Firestorm
2x Ingot Chewer
2x Nature's Claim
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Wispmare

Combined Win-Loss-Draw between the 2 tournaments: 11-2-1

Its the 75 I plan to bring with me to the DC Open and NJ Invitational. I'm curious as to what peoples' thoughts on my list are.


HOw do you sideboard against the DTB?

gibbousm
06-16-2015, 10:19 AM
I could see myself going -1 Putrid +1 Breakthrough

What is Darkblast usually for that you think it's worth maining over the 4th Golgari Thug?

Darkblast is because I expect a significant amount of Young Pyromancer decks to show up at the Open and Invitational. While I haven't played against Young Pyromancer decks at the IQs, Darkblast has served as a way to hamstring Delver decks, slow down Elves, hurt D&T, and kill at least one main deck Scavenging Ooze.



HOw do you sideboard against the DTB?

Grixis Control
-3 Breakthrough
-4 LED
+1 Dread Return
+1 Elesh Norn
+1 Ancient Grudge
+2 Ingot Chewer
+2 Firestorm (maybe)

I haven't had many opportunities to play against Grixis Control yet so I'm not sure if I want the Firestorms or I'd rather keep 2 LEDs in the deck. Like most control decks I'm expecting a long grindy match so I cut my "All In" cards.

Miracles
-3 Breakthrough
-4 LED
+2 Wispmare
+2 Nature's Claim
+3 Firestorm

Cut my "all in" cards, LED is too easy to counterbalance. I bring in my enchantment hate for RIP. Why Firestorm? Even if its countered I get to discard my cards. It kills Angels, Venser, Clique, Containment Priest, and SFM. I keep my Darkblast in as I can cast it on my own creatures to get a dredger in the yard and if they try and exile my Bridges I can Blast my own creature in response to still get zombies.

Omnitell
-3 Putrid Imp
-1 Ichorid
-1 Darkblast
+1 Dread Return
+2 Wispmare
+1 Nature's Claim
+1 Ashen Rider

I cut my slower cards as I expect this game to be mostly a combo race. I bring in my enchantment hate for Omniscience and for Leylines. Wispmare and Ashen Rider both trigger to kill the Omni. If I land Iona on Blue, they have very few ways to win.

Death & Taxes
-3 Breakthrough
-4 LED
+1 Ancient Grudge
+1 Nature's Claim
+3 Firestorm
+2 Wispmare

More or less the same way I side for Miracles, just Firestorms to kill their creatures rather than just as a discard outlet. I expect to overwhelm them with a swarm of zombies rather than combo out with Iona. Sometimes I mess around with the Nature's Claim/Wispmare split, it depends on what I see game 2. I once got hit with Faerie Macabre out of D&T, it was unexpected.

BUG Delver
-3 Breakthrough
-3 LED
+1 Ancient Grudge
+2 Ingot Chewer
+3 Firestorm

This I expect to come down to a war of attrition. After sideboarding the only thing I'm really worried about is them getting out a big Goyf while I have don't have them forced to block each turn. If they have Night of Soul's Betrayal or Leyline for game 2 I play it out to see what other graveyard hate they have and adjust my Artifact/Enchantment hate ratio accordingly.

Esper Stoneblade/Deathblade
-3 Breakthrough
-4 LED
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Ingot Chewer
+3 Firestorm

Jeskai Stoneblade
-3 Breakthrough
-4 LED
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Wispmare
+1 Ancient Grudge
+2 Firestorm

The Blade decks are more or less the same sideboard-wise, just Jeskai is more likely to play Enchantment based hate.

Unknown
-1 Breakthrough
-1 LED
-1 Putrid Imp
-1 Golgari Thug
+2 Nature's Claim
+1 Firestorm
+1 Ancient Grudge

This is how I tend to sideboard if I don't know what deck I'm up against. Typically this is because I went off turn 1 or 2 and they conceded in response to Cabal Therapy. I cut 2 all in cards and 2 slower cards and add in my Generic removal, Grudge because artifact hate is more common, and Firestorm because I can always use it as a discard outlet if needed.

I don't always sideboard this way though this is how I sideboard most often. A sideboard guide isn't set in stone and I will sideboard however I feel is most appropriate given the situation.

hermans
06-26-2015, 08:25 AM
Hello Guys,

I am deciding between Dredge and ANT for the coming Legacy GP in Lille.
I am wondering if you guys can elaborate a bit on how you feel the matchup is against Miracles and Omnishow?
Furthermore I was wondering if you guys think Dredge is a good choice right now?

VanHendrix
06-29-2015, 01:29 PM
Hello Guys,

I am deciding between Dredge and ANT for the coming Legacy GP in Lille.
I am wondering if you guys can elaborate a bit on how you feel the matchup is against Miracles and Omnishow?
Furthermore I was wondering if you guys think Dredge is a good choice right now?

Hey buddy, how are you doing?

I think that Dredge is in a pretty high position on Legacy metagame. I mean, Eric Copenhaver just got top4 yesterday at Premier IQ Baltimore, and we have the other dude with that exotic list who got top 5 too. I'm playing the manaless FoW version(Michael Hollywood Keller's one) and im doing fine on the Qualifiers to the brazilian Nacional Legacy, but i'm considering getting back to the LED list(the more aggro one, like Copenhaver's).

So, the matchups: Miracles is most of the times 50/50, but Dredge is slightly favourble. Eric beat two Miracles yesterday, and i guess that means something. Omnishow is pretty much based on who do the combo first.

I would say you to go with Dredge! And not just becouse i'm a Dredge lover(tried other decks like Miracles and Elves, but Dredge is SOOOOOOOO much funnier), but cuz the metagame is good for it too.

Good luck!

gibbousm
07-08-2015, 07:06 AM
So I was wondering how people fight Lands because I haven't won a single match from them in my last 5 tournaments and have only occasionally stolen a game.

Right now I have 3 Leyline of the Voids that I just started running, 1 Ashen Rider, and some artifact hate if they bring in their taxing effects. I've been cutting my Breakthroughs, Darkblast, and LED.

I played against them once last night and while I did have a turn 0 Leyline, it didn't do anything to stop the natural turn 3 Depths-Stage combo they had in their opening hand. I managed to stall a few turns by blocking with my fliers and forcing them to keep Marit Lage back as a blocker but they eventually found Bog and then Tabernacle a few turns later before I could either accumulate enough creatures to attack for lethal or find my Ashen Rider to exile Lage.

Final Fortune
07-08-2015, 07:35 AM
So I was wondering how people fight Lands because I haven't won a single match from them in my last 5 tournaments and have only occasionally stolen a game.

Right now I have 3 Leyline of the Voids that I just started running, 1 Ashen Rider, and some artifact hate if they bring in their taxing effects. I've been cutting my Breakthroughs, Darkblast, and LED.

I played against them once last night and while I did have a turn 0 Leyline, it didn't do anything to stop the natural turn 3 Depths-Stage combo they had in their opening hand. I managed to stall a few turns by blocking with my fliers and forcing them to keep Marit Lage back as a blocker but they eventually found Bog and then Tabernacle a few turns later before I could either accumulate enough creatures to attack for lethal or find my Ashen Rider to exile Lage.

Board control based decks are kind of Dredge's natural enemy, stuff like Lands, Enchantress or Parfait require you to be able to Dredge return some kind of answer or combo in order to be able to win later in case you can't win fast enough.

meffeo
07-29-2015, 06:47 PM
Hi guys, after some unsuccessful results with various Delver.decks, I decided to sleeve back Therapies and Ichorids in form of Led Dredge.

That's the list that I tuned with some friends of mine (thanks in particular to Cabal Therapy, a name, a guarantee in term of experience and wisdom):

Creatures (22)

3 Putrid Imp
3 Golgari Thug
4 Narcomoeba
4 Stinkweed Imp
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
3 Ichorid
4 Golgari Grave-Troll

Spells (25)

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dread Return

Lands (13)

1 City of Brass
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Mana Confluence

Sideboard (15)

2 City of Brass
1 Pithing Needle
2 Nature's Claim
3 Firestorm
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Wispmare
1 Ingot Chewer
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Just wanted to know your thoughts about it. Let always live the raw power of Dredge.

gibbousm
08-02-2015, 03:25 PM
So with the rise of Mentor Miracles how have people been adapting because I've been struggling to beat them. Regular Miracles was annoying to play through but if you knew the match up it was about even.

With Mentor they not only have a much faster clock but they can gum up the board so much easier and block much more freely.

This is the list I'm currently running and I'm planning to play the deck in the DC Open next weekend.

Creature (23)
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
3x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
4x Narcomoeba
3x Putrid Imp
4x Stinkweed Imp

Instant (1)
1x Darkblast

Sorcery (16)
3x Breakthrough
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Careful Study
1x Dread Return
4x Faithless Looting

Enchantment (4)
4x Bridge from Below

Artifact (4)
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Land (12)
4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Mana Confluence

Sideboard (15)
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Ashen Rider
1x Dread Return
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
3x Firestorm
2x Ingot Chewer
3x Leyline of the Void
1x Nature's Claim
2x Wispmare

I've been facing a lot of Lands and Mentor Miracles lately and its really annoying.

Any suggestions for next weekend?

BJeagle
08-05-2015, 04:00 PM
I have replaced my 4 LED and 4 Looting with street raith and thougth scour. Just tried it tonigth so far... But the plan is that i now hav 8 card that can interact at instant speed, manabase(coliseum) is better with a blue card.
Once tonigth i played cabal and my op. Played branstom, i thougth scourd the top 2 (rip and cage) but missed the cabal...

I do lose a bit speed but i think that the deck can be a litlle better agains the blue decks. That do you think?

ThiefSlayer
08-19-2015, 03:45 PM
I have replaced my 4 LED and 4 Looting with street raith and thougth scour. Just tried it tonigth so far... But the plan is that i now hav 8 card that can interact at instant speed, manabase(coliseum) is better with a blue card.
Once tonigth i played cabal and my op. Played branstom, i thougth scourd the top 2 (rip and cage) but missed the cabal...

I do lose a bit speed but i think that the deck can be a litlle better agains the blue decks. That do you think?

Both LED and Faithless Looting are cards that help you discarding cards that are better in the grave than in your hand. Thought Scour mills you 2 random cards and lets you dredge onde, where with faithless loothing you discard 2 cards of your choise to do their thing in the grave, and also you dredge 2.

But I'm not a dredge player, I'm just passing by and leaving some cons of this change of gears.

Alexorrr
08-21-2015, 11:55 AM
I've been playing dredge only casually for the last year or so now (I seem to find myself in places that focus either exclusively on standard or modern, there seems to be little love for Legacy), and I've been living in Japan for the last six months now, where the metagame seems to be exclusively blue based. It's been kind of a mixed blessing, because in my experiences so far here, there seems to be little hate for dredge in sideboards, but Show and Telling a Putrid Imp to the opponent's Emrakul is always a pain.

I was wondering if there was anyone on this board that might have some information about competitive MTG here in Japan (that happens to be in English if possible). I've been searching around and scouring the top 8 lists that get posted from GPs and tournaments, but I was wondering if some one could point me in the right direction.

As well, I was wondering what people thought of Malicious Affliction in the SB for the deck from the most recent Commander set. It's double black, which I know isn't always the easiest to manage with the Dredge manabase, but it's pretty easy to get Morbid even before combat, and icing two potential creature threats can sometimes be pretty useful in finishing the game. I may be missing something obvious that makes it unusable, but I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion. I've been reading the board for a while, and it's been a big help in determining the best choices for the deck!

meffeo
08-21-2015, 05:51 PM
icing two potential creature threats can sometimes be pretty useful

It doesn't look like a great and innovative tool; what for threats are you gonna kill, making value and losing your bridge(s)?

Que
08-21-2015, 11:18 PM
Just secured my byes to Grand Prix Seattle by winning my local GPT.

Same list from my 9th place finish @ SCG Premier IQ LA: http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=16137&iddeck=120494

Round 1: Aggro Loam
G1 He didn't find an Ooze within the 1st few turns. G2 He wasn't running Bojuka Bog and was lite on the GY hate (3 Leyline & ooze, but no way to find it reliably).
1-0
Round 2: Maverick
G1 He couldn't get around my horde of zombies. G2 was Containment Priest turn 2 GG ;_; G3 was Priest turn 2 again, I wait to blow up his board with Firestorm killing 4 of his creatures (Thalia, Priest, & 2 Deathrite Shaman), however, he lays down another Priest and I cry ;___;
1-1
Round 3: Burn
G1 He bricks on burn while were both sitting at 5 life which lets me take the game. G2 was DR into Iona on Red, but he was still having mana flooding issues. D:
2-1
Round 4: BUG or RUG Delver I forgot.
Foggy on the details lol.
3-1
Round 5: Miracles w/ Monastery Monk
G1 He couldn't stop the zombie train; he dropped a Counterbalance without top which didn't help much. G2 he made a shit ton of monks that killed me. G3 I'm able to go off and blow up his hand which revealed a RIP! dodged that bullet.
5-1
Round 6: Merfolk
Heavy Vial draw lets me get there. G2 he has surprise cursecatcher to blow up my bridges. Rolls me with a couple of lords and some other fish. G3 I go off without disruption. He admitted to me after G3 that he was not packing a single piece of GY hate! I felt like I somewhat spiked this tournament as no one was really expecting Dredge to be played. :U
6-1
Round 7: ID Elves
Gentlemen's draw
6-1-1

Top 8:
Quarters: Esper Stoneblade
Semis: Elves
I actually lose G1. I had a hand with Breakthrough and Coliseum but no actual outlet outside of the discard step. I didn't realize how slow my hand actually was against Elves and he quickly dispatches me despite him not having much knowledge about what my deck does or how it works lol. Thats the silver lining I'm looking for. G2 I overwhelm him with zombies and strip his hand away. G3 I had a crazy turn with LED Faithless that allowed me to fetch up 3 Narcomoeba and Dread Return Iona naming Green ending the game.
Finals: 4C Delver
G1 he forgets to flip his delver Turn 2 as were bantering, but the 5 points of missed damage didn't matter this game we determined as I won on the back of zombies early. G2 I was able to teeter on the brink of death by having Flying Narco chump block his Delvers generating me zombies and also allowing me to recur Ichorids to race on damage. At one point I recycled a Narcomoeba by dredging a Golgari Thug back and casting it to sac to Cabal Therpy using his trigger to place a previously dead Narcomoeba on top of my library. This allowed me to dredge into it next turn and chump block again!

I won the byes and an Underground Sea for my troubles. This was a fun tournament overall. Its always great to play at Knightware!

@Alexor. If you want to kill multiple creatures give Firestorm a try. ;D

jimmythegreek
08-21-2015, 11:46 PM
Just secured my byes to Grand Prix Seattle by winning my local GPT.

Same list from my 9th place finish @ SCG Premier IQ LA: http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=16137&iddeck=120494

Round 1: Aggro Loam
G1 He didn't find an Ooze within the 1st few turns. G2 He wasn't running Bojuka Bog and was lite on the GY hate (3 Leyline & ooze, but no way to find it reliably).
1-0
Round 2: Maverick
G1 He couldn't get around my horde of zombies. G2 was Containment Priest turn 2 GG ;_; G3 was Priest turn 2 again, I wait to blow up his board with Firestorm killing 4 of his creatures (Thalia, Priest, & 2 Deathrite Shaman), however, he lays down another Priest and I cry ;___;
1-1
Round 3: Burn
G1 He bricks on burn while were both sitting at 5 life which lets me take the game. G2 was DR into Iona on Red, but he was still having mana flooding issues. D:
2-1
Round 4: BUG or RUG Delver I forgot.
Foggy on the details lol.
3-1
Round 5: Miracles w/ Monastery Monk
G1 He couldn't stop the zombie train; he dropped a Counterbalance without top which didn't help much. G2 he made a shit ton of monks that killed me. G3 I'm able to go off and blow up his hand which revealed a RIP! dodged that bullet.
5-1
Round 6: Merfolk
Heavy Vial draw lets me get there. G2 he has surprise cursecatcher to blow up my bridges. Rolls me with a couple of lords and some other fish. G3 I go off without disruption. He admitted to me after G3 that he was not packing a single piece of GY hate! I felt like I somewhat spiked this tournament as no one was really expecting Dredge to be played. :U
6-1
Round 7: ID Elves
Gentlemen's draw
6-1-1

Top 8:
Quarters: Esper Stoneblade
Semis: Elves
I actually lose G1. I had a hand with Breakthrough and Coliseum but no actual outlet outside of the discard step. I didn't realize how slow my hand actually was against Elves and he quickly dispatches me despite him not having much knowledge about what my deck does or how it works lol. Thats the silver lining I'm looking for. G2 I overwhelm him with zombies and strip his hand away. G3 I had a crazy turn with LED Faithless that allowed me to fetch up 3 Narcomoeba and Dread Return Iona naming Green ending the game.
Finals: 4C Delver
G1 he forgets to flip his delver Turn 2 as were bantering, but the 5 points of missed damage didn't matter this game we determined as I won on the back of zombies early. G2 I was able to teeter on the brink of death by having Flying Narco chump block his Delvers generating me zombies and also allowing me to recur Ichorids to race on damage. At one point I recycled a Narcomoeba by dredging a Golgari Thug back and casting it to sac to Cabal Therpy using his trigger to place a previously dead Narcomoeba on top of my library. This allowed me to dredge into it next turn and chump block again!

I won the byes and an Underground Sea for my troubles. This was a fun tournament overall. Its always great to play at Knightware!

@Alexor. If you want to kill multiple creatures give Firestorm a try. ;D

Congrats! Seems like firestorm is an auto four of. The bbbboooooogey man!!!!

Alexorrr
08-24-2015, 02:23 AM
I completely overlooked the bridge trigger that would occur with the malicious affliction. It wouldn't be the worst in some scenarios, but I think you're all right when you say Firestorm is just better. I have three in my SB now, and I'll probably be looking for a 4th.

I'm counting the days until I can get my LEDs. The list I have now without them is pretty ok for my meta, as there is light GY hate, and being able to explode with DR Griselbrand usually finishes the game no problem, but being able to wreck decks turn one with Looting seems pretty awesome. I'm torn between making the deck more combo or more aggressive, and whether I want to rely on DR'ing a target game one, and switching the target post-SB, or focus on going zombie horde game one, and then figuring out how to close game two. Griselbrand and Iona are both so good in so many matchups, however, it's tough to not try and get them out as much as possible. Is there a better strategy for a non-LED version of dredge, or are they both fairly viable no matter the build?

indefinite.soul
08-24-2015, 09:54 PM
At this point, Omni-Tell at pretty much all Top 8s and winning many champs, I believe we should discuss our strategy against it.

My 2 cents is that the most effective win condition in this matchup is cabal therapy. Should we name directly Show & Tell? Anything further?

Que
08-25-2015, 06:41 PM
At this point, Omni-Tell at pretty much all Top 8s and winning many champs, I believe we should discuss our strategy against it.

My 2 cents is that the most effective win condition in this matchup is cabal therapy. Should we name directly Show & Tell? Anything further?

Yeah I would almost exclusively name S&T because they wont be able to cast Omniscience otherwise. I don't believe the most current Omni lists are running Dream Halls.

Alternatively you can try packing another Iona in the sb. If they S&T you can put it into play and cut them off blue, however, this wont work against Emrakul. And while I'm just theorycrafting I'm also trying Surgical to pair with Cabal Therapy. If you snag their S&T I don't think they can actually win at all.

meffeo
08-25-2015, 07:46 PM
Yeah I would almost exclusively name S&T because they wont be able to cast Omniscience otherwise. I don't believe the most current Omni lists are running Dream Halls.

Alternatively you can try packing another Iona in the sb. If they S&T you can put it into play and cut them off blue, however, this wont work against Emrakul. And while I'm just theorycrafting I'm also trying Surgical to pair with Cabal Therapy. If you snag their S&T I don't think they can actually win at all.

Ashen Rider is also a card, a great tool to do nasty things and a great flashbacked Cabal Therapy target.

gibbousm
08-25-2015, 08:39 PM
The thing about using Ashen Rider or Wispmare against Omnishow decks is that they can often dig in response, cast Cunning Wish, get Firemind's Foresight. Foresight for Impulse, BS, Wish. Wish for Trickbind then go off anyways.

They can fail to find the Wish, but with Dig Through Time and the large amount of cantrips they have its unlikely.

Therapy is really good against them as they are a two/three part combo deck. Iona ends them as they have no way to deal with her. The only time Iona won't win the game is if they manage to land Emrakul.

Honestly, Omni I feel is a fairly even match and comes down to who can go off first.

I'm more preoccupied with improving my match up vs Mentor Miracles.

SHABOOGS
08-27-2015, 02:15 AM
Congrats on the win, Que. I didn't notice the use of Abrupt Decay in your tournament report. Is it a mandatory sideboard card in Dredge nowadays? I tried 2/2 Petals and Decays in the board but I haven't played enough games to test its effectiveness and there aren't as many Legacy tournaments here in the Philippines compared to a few years ago so I'm unsure if buying a couple of foil Abrupt Decays for myself is a good investment for the deck. Thanks!

Que
08-28-2015, 01:43 PM
Congrats on the win, Que. I didn't notice the use of Abrupt Decay in your tournament report. Is it a mandatory sideboard card in Dredge nowadays? I tried 2/2 Petals and Decays in the board but I haven't played enough games to test its effectiveness and there aren't as many Legacy tournaments here in the Philippines compared to a few years ago so I'm unsure if buying a couple of foil Abrupt Decays for myself is a good investment for the deck. Thanks!

Hmm It may have not come up this tournament, however, I do believe it is a very strong card. The fact that its uncounterable is the biggest upside. I can't tell you how many times I've turned on my opponent's counterspells by trying to blow up an artifact or enchantment with Nature's Claim. Not to mention that Chalice of the Void can be a card which completely blanks your Claims (I'm assuming they're putting it on 1). The caveat is that you have to run the Lotus Petals alongside them to be able to afford the 2 CMC and the color requirements; the deck is light on lands as it is. That would be my only real gripe against the card, but I've had positive experiences. End step blow up a RIP, a Deathrite Shaman, a Cage, etc.. and blow them out on your turn!


Also I booked my flight and hotel for Grand Prix Seattle Tacoma. The Boogeyman is coming to Norcal! I want to make Day 2 this time around. Ended up a disappointing 6-3 at GP New Jersey. ;____;

SHABOOGS
08-28-2015, 07:20 PM
Hmm It may have not come up this tournament, however, I do believe it is a very strong card. The fact that its uncounterable is the biggest upside. I can't tell you how many times I've turned on my opponent's counterspells by trying to blow up an artifact or enchantment with Nature's Claim. Not to mention that Chalice of the Void can be a card which completely blanks your Claims (I'm assuming they're putting it on 1). The caveat is that you have to run the Lotus Petals alongside them to be able to afford the 2 CMC and the color requirements; the deck is light on lands as it is. That would be my only real gripe against the card, but I've had positive experiences. End step blow up a RIP, a Deathrite Shaman, a Cage, etc.. and blow them out on your turn!


Also I booked my flight and hotel for Grand Prix Seattle Tacoma. The Boogeyman is coming to Norcal! I want to make Day 2 this time around. Ended up a disappointing 6-3 at GP New Jersey. ;____;
Looks like I need to save money for a couple of foil Lotus Petals and Abrupt Decays then. Best of luck with GP Seattle. Hope you go all the way with Dredge.

slave
08-29-2015, 06:11 AM
Yeah I would almost exclusively name S&T because they wont be able to cast Omniscience otherwise. I don't believe the most current Omni lists are running Dream Halls.
I have a few fellaz I play regularly against. I don't think I've seen them play Dream Halls for quite a while....

birdbrains
09-13-2015, 01:51 PM
I took Dredge to a GPT last night and took the whole thing down. I've been running a similar list to Que the past couple of weeks.

The event was 5 rounds of swiss with a cut to Top 8.

Round 1 - Belcher

Game 1 we both mull to 6, and he Probes me on the play before passing. I had kept a solid, but slower hand and start dredging. I hit a couple therapies and am able to keep him off the combo while I get there with zombies over a few turns.

Game 2 is a turn 1 Belcher. Fun.

Game 3 was really stressful. We both mull to 5, and I don't have the fastest start. I end up having to go on the Narco/Thug beats plan while I wait for him to kill me. After keeping his hand under control for a couple turns, he makes 10 goblins to face my team of 2 Narcos and 2 Thugs. I have 2 Bridges in my graveyard, so he holds off on attacking while I get in for a few more points with Narcomoebas. At 4 life, he wishes for Pyroclasm, thinking it will save him, but he's new to legacy and doesn't know that I still get zombies, so I take the match.
1-0

Round 2 - Storm

Game 1 I get a good hand and make an 11/11 Grave-Troll and a few zombies on turn 1, while he has a slower hand and can't get there in time.

Game 2 he doesn't do much for a few turns while I beat with some early Ichorids and zombies. I have him at 7 with lethal the next turn when he goes for the combo and hits what he needs.

Game 3 I get another 11/11 on turn 1 and am able to take his hand apart in the first couple turns.

We had a discussion after the games about what's correct to name with Therapy. I usually name Dark Ritual in the early turns to stop early mana acceleration, while my opponent believes that LED is the correct play because it can lead to more broken turn 1s.
2-0

Round 3 - Storm

I'm starting to see a pattern with my matchups this tournament. I know my opponent is playing storm, so I'm able to "blind" Therapy turn 2 with a pretty good chance to hit. Based on my conversation at the end of the previous round, I name LED, but he has the Dark Ritual and combos me out on his turn 2.

Game 2 I'm able to control his hand from the early game and get there with some zombies.

Game 3 I keep a hand of Petal, LED, Dredger, Faithless, Study and Surgical and he Probe/Therapies for the Lotus Petal to keep me off my turn 1 mana. I managed to rip a Gemstone mine, Surgical his probe to see what his hand looks like, but it's all card selection and lands and start dredging. Unfortunately, I half brick and get a narco/bridge/therapy but no more dredgers. I try to keep his hand under control, but at 12 life he's able to Ad Nauseam into what he needs and he's able to kill me.
2-1

Round 4 - Jeskai Stoneblade

Game 1 I have a slow start, while he has a turn 2 Stoneforge/turn 3 Batterskull. I take a few hits down to 6 life while I try and get things going, and eventually hit a couple of Ichorids and Bridges to start making zombies. He got a little caught up on killing my Bridges and bounces his Batterskull at 4 lands. I could care less about the bridges, and am able to Therapy away the Batterskull and get the game back in control.

Game 2 he doesn't see much action and my zombie hoard grows slowly over a couple turns until it overwhelms him.
3-1

Round 5 - Burn

My opponent and I are locked for Top 8, so we decide to draw. I'm in 7th at the end of Swiss.

Top 8
Semis - Infect

Game 1 he has an early Glistener Elf, but I'm able to get a Putrid Imp and Narcomoeba early. His Noble Hierarch makes it so that my Narcos can block profitably and I'm able to overwhelm him early without taking a single point of Infect.

Game 2 I get going pretty quickly with a Putrid Imp, but he has a Bog on turn 3 to slow me down. I held back Faithless Looting and a Thug, rip an LED and have a few of the most incredible dredges I can remember. He's able to get in a couple infect damage, but doesn't have any pump spells to accelerate it and I take the game easily from there.


Quarters - Omni Tell

Game 1 we both have slow starts, but I'm able to get some zombies and a Thug online and beat for a few turns while he tries to find a Show and Tell, but fails.

Game 2 I Dread Return Iona on turn 1, and there's not much he can do about it.


Finals - Burn

Game 1 I'm able to get some early zombies while he has a turn 2 Eidolon. It's all good, though as I'm playing out of the graveyard by then with an Ichorid and a Bridge. I make a risky play of attacking with the Ichorid into his Eidolon with 2 bridges, but he lets the damage go through and I'm able to keep the zombie train rolling. He landed a second Eidolon, but I have no need to cast anything at this point and he dies to a ton of zombies.

Game 2 I mull a bit, and don't have that great of a start while he's able to burn me out easily.

Game 3 he has some fast burn, but I'm able to exhaust his hand quickly between throwing burn at me and a couple Therapies, but I don't have much in the way of zombies. I get things going, though and am able to make an Iona on red to keep him out of the game and win me some byes.


I got fairly lucky during the tournament and due to people not expecting Dredge was able to dodge a lot of the hate. I feel like the deck has some really excellent sideboard answers to pretty much everything except Leyline of the Void, so I may end up adding in a Wispmare or Nature's Claim to help deal with it for the GP.

meffeo
09-13-2015, 06:34 PM
I got fairly lucky during the tournament and due to people not expecting Dredge was able to dodge a lot of the hate. I feel like the deck has some really excellent sideboard answers to pretty much everything except Leyline of the Void, so I may end up adding in a Wispmare or Nature's Claim to help deal with it for the GP.

Well done buddy. Haven't you played any copy of Nature's Claim during the day?
I'm running two copies at the moment but they remain in sideboard most of the time.

Alexorrr
09-13-2015, 11:09 PM
Firstly, congratulations on the win bird!

I was looking through the spoilers for BFZ, and I came upon Void Winnower, the 11/9 Eldrazi that prevents opponents from casting even-CMC spells, and prevents opponent's even-CMC creatures from blocking. I was wondering about its potential as a sideboard DR target against certain matchups that either win through token production, as zero is considered even, or with the help of 0-cost spells like Chalice, Mox Diamond/Opal, LED's, Lotus Petal,DTT, JTMS, etc.

My own concerns with it are that it might be too situational to be really effective, or at best a win-more card, and something like Iona or Elesh Norn would do similar jobs better already. The other thing is that the stuff that really concerns us, the GY hate, either comes down before it's possible to DR Void Winnower in, like Leylines, or simply aren't affected by it's abilities at all, as everything that really hurts us is CMC-1.

What do you think? Is there potential there for a sideboard slot, or is it like most spoiler seasons for Dredge, spicy, but not a good fit for the deck?

birdbrains
09-15-2015, 06:44 PM
Well done buddy. Haven't you played any copy of Nature's Claim during the day?
I'm running two copies at the moment but they remain in sideboard most of the time.

I don't run Nature's Claim, personally, because there are much better options. Abrupt Decay hits every relevant piece of hate that you need it to without turning on your opponents counterspells, and it gets around Chalice on 1 and counter-top. I did run a one-of Ancient Grudge in my board at the event, but it was never relevant.


I was looking through the spoilers for BFZ, and I came upon Void Winnower, the 11/9 Eldrazi that prevents opponents from casting even-CMC spells, and prevents opponent's even-CMC creatures from blocking. I was wondering about its potential as a sideboard DR target against certain matchups that either win through token production, as zero is considered even, or with the help of 0-cost spells like Chalice, Mox Diamond/Opal, LED's, Lotus Petal,DTT, JTMS, etc.

My own concerns with it are that it might be too situational to be really effective, or at best a win-more card, and something like Iona or Elesh Norn would do similar jobs better already. The other thing is that the stuff that really concerns us, the GY hate, either comes down before it's possible to DR Void Winnower in, like Leylines, or simply aren't affected by it's abilities at all, as everything that really hurts us is CMC-1.

What do you think? Is there potential there for a sideboard slot, or is it like most spoiler seasons for Dredge, spicy, but not a good fit for the deck?

I don't really see why we would want to play him. 0-cost spells aren't really what we want to be stopping most of the time, unless it's a Crypt, but if we already have our DR target on the field, we should be winning. You want your Dread Return target to either have an immediate effect or put the game away completely. Iona does that by stopping mono colored decks cold, Elesh Norn severely hampers any sort of creature deck from doing what it wants, and Ashen Rider can get rid of any troublesome permanent we need it to.

As far as the blocking part, we shouldn't really need to worry about that. Unless it's Belcher making 10+ goblins turn 1 against a slower hand, you can always just not attack with Ichorids and grow a huge zombie army over a couple of turns and then start turning them sideways. Even against turn 1 goblins, if we can get a few zombies going early we can stay in the game fairly easily by blocking profitably, since losing 1-2 Bridges early can be totally acceptable.

JPoJohnson
09-15-2015, 10:39 PM
Since StP takes it out, I think it won't make the cut.

RhoxWarMonk
09-16-2015, 05:20 PM
Hey guys,

I apologize if this has been asked before as I didn't go back through EVERY page on this thread (though I read quite a few) but I'm considering building Dredge for a GP coming up here and wondering if this is a good choice.

For reference, this is the list (or similar) I'm considering running with: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=89527

I expect there to be a LOT of OmniTell, with Miracles, Lands and Grixis Delver rounding out the most played decks. Do you feel this be a good choice, given the meta I'm expecting?

I've already read the primer and started watching videos and obviously Ill need to do a lot of real playtesting between now and then but is there any advice you can offer for a first time dredge player? I've played AGAINST Dredge plenty of times (I only play legacy), so I know what it can do but have never physically sleeved it up myself to give it a run. That's likely about to change :) In general, how terrible are hate cards against you? Are RIP and Leyline of the Void things you can fairly easily win through? Assuming, of course, you can get a nature's claim or something equal in the SB to combat it.

Any insight or helpful suggestions is most appreciated! TY!

Que
09-17-2015, 01:12 PM
@Birdbrains. Hey dude good job on the win. Congrats! I guess I'll be seeing you in Seattle! :)

@Alexxor. As bird mentioned the DR target has to flat out win the game for you for it to even be a consideration (remember Dread Returning is a privilege, not a right). I personally don't include any in my maindeck currently as a giant Troll is good enough; I would rather gain consistency points by including something else that promotes Dredging. My sb targets of choice are Iona and Ashen Rider though I've been known to also pack an Elesh depending on the Meta. I feel those are the only ones you would probably want. Other targets lend themselves to being too narrow.

@Rhox. That list seems fine, seems pretty standard. The only real differences between lists is how many dredgers are run (either 11 or 12), how many lands (either 12 or 13), and how many Putrid/Ichorid are ran (usually 3-4 Putrid and 3-4 Ichorid). It also depends whether you're running a dedicated target maindeck, if so you would want to run at least 2 Dread Return so as to not sacrifice consistency.

The deck is fine to be playing if your opponent is not prepared. Also sometimes you gain a slight advantage since many of the interactions in Dredge can lend themselves to being convoluted. Your opponent will miss opportunities if he doesn't know how the deck works.

First time Dredge players:
- Don't miss your Triggers! and remember all of them as well ie.. Ichorid, Narcomoeba, Golgari Thug (yes I use his ability to recycle dead Narcos), Bridge from Below.
- You control Bridge from Below Triggers. So if you and your opponent trade creatures you can stack the Bridge triggers so that you get zombies before they're exiled!!
- You only want to keep a hand that has some way of starting your engine, otherwise you will find yourself needing to use the end step which is a lot slower (were not Manaless Dredge). These will be cards like Careful Study, Faithless Looting, LED, Putrid Imp, and lower on that spectrum something like Cabal Therapy which I would only keep if I knew I had something to follow it up with usually a Cephalid Coliseum.
- When you Dread Return GGT he counts himself as part of the Power/Toughness counters he gets.

Cards like RIP and Leyline are lights out for this deck unless you can dispatch them quickly to rebuild your board. You can try the mediocre beats plan, but that doesn't end well normally xD I personally include Abrupt Decay in my sb as well to get rid of anything you could care for, however, this doesn't beat Leyline. As for Leyline I'm hedging and trying to dodge it as one would not normally commit 4 sb lots to beat 1 matchup. (the only other one it applies to is Reanimator both of which are "niche" decks); most people would prefer versatility in their sb as space is limited.

But all in all yes if your opponent has no way of interacting with your graveyard its normally a decisive game in your favor.

Also a disclaimer to playing the deck: You should have the stomach to play it because sometimes variance can be a bitch and you can lose to your bad dredges or flat out lose to a RIP/Cage as you fail to find answer. Its the way it goes. This is the purest graveyard deck.

Hope that helps some. :)

RhoxWarMonk
09-17-2015, 05:10 PM
@Rhox. That list seems fine, seems pretty standard. The only real differences between lists is how many dredgers are run (either 11 or 12), how many lands (either 12 or 13), and how many Putrid/Ichorid are ran (usually 3-4 Putrid and 3-4 Ichorid). It also depends whether you're running a dedicated target maindeck, if so you would want to run at least 2 Dread Return so as to not sacrifice consistency.

The deck is fine to be playing if your opponent is not prepared. Also sometimes you gain a slight advantage since many of the interactions in Dredge can lend themselves to being convoluted. Your opponent will miss opportunities if he doesn't know how the deck works.

First time Dredge players:
- Don't miss your Triggers! and remember all of them as well ie.. Ichorid, Narcomoeba, Golgari Thug (yes I use his ability to recycle dead Narcos), Bridge from Below.
- You control Bridge from Below Triggers. So if you and your opponent trade creatures you can stack the Bridge triggers so that you get zombies before they're exiled!!
- You only want to keep a hand that has some way of starting your engine, otherwise you will find yourself needing to use the end step which is a lot slower (were not Manaless Dredge). These will be cards like Careful Study, Faithless Looting, LED, Putrid Imp, and lower on that spectrum something like Cabal Therapy which I would only keep if I knew I had something to follow it up with usually a Cephalid Coliseum.
- When you Dread Return GGT he counts himself as part of the Power/Toughness counters he gets.

Cards like RIP and Leyline are lights out for this deck unless you can dispatch them quickly to rebuild your board. You can try the mediocre beats plan, but that doesn't end well normally xD I personally include Abrupt Decay in my sb as well to get rid of anything you could care for, however, this doesn't beat Leyline. As for Leyline I'm hedging and trying to dodge it as one would not normally commit 4 sb lots to beat 1 matchup. (the only other one it applies to is Reanimator both of which are "niche" decks); most people would prefer versatility in their sb as space is limited.

But all in all yes if your opponent has no way of interacting with your graveyard its normally a decisive game in your favor.

Also a disclaimer to playing the deck: You should have the stomach to play it because sometimes variance can be a bitch and you can lose to your bad dredges or flat out lose to a RIP/Cage as you fail to find answer. Its the way it goes. This is the purest graveyard deck.

Hope that helps some. :)

Thank you very much, this was a great reply :)

Alexorrr
09-18-2015, 09:58 AM
Both Que and Birdbrain,

Thanks for the replies, and what you've both stated were pretty much my feelings as well. I'm curious about trying the no DR special mainboard target (I currently run it with FKZ, and side into either Iona, or Elesh Norn for the token/mirror). I was curious about the card though, because it always seems like dredge gets more hate with every new set, and very rarely gets something worth adding to it!

Que
09-18-2015, 12:25 PM
Both Que and Birdbrain,

Thanks for the replies, and what you've both stated were pretty much my feelings as well. I'm curious about trying the no DR special mainboard target (I currently run it with FKZ, and side into either Iona, or Elesh Norn for the token/mirror). I was curious about the card though, because it always seems like dredge gets more hate with every new set, and very rarely gets something worth adding to it!

No worries. I'll talk about this deck to anyone who wants to hear. I feel with this deck there are no hard and fast rules sometimes. You have to calculate odds (based off whats in your graveyard and the likelihood you're going to hit a certain card over the next dredge or two) and follow through with whichever line you decide to take.

I would only really run Grisebrand as a dedicated target maindeck as it is a significant threat on its own. FKZ is decent in that you don't have to pass the turn back. Just 6 zombies + FKZ for 21 points of damage isn't that difficult to achieve. Luckily the decline of Sneak Attack has meant not as many people are playing Ensnaring bridge which would stop both of these types of strats; that is part of the reason you see Flayer of the Hatebound in some Sbs.

And yeah hate nowadays is running rampant, but feel some solace in knowing that most likely they only have 2-3 pieces and they have to find those cards for them to be useful. This means they either have to mulligan aggressively which can end badly for them if they mull too low or go with a solid hand with a couple of cantrips and hope to find their hate before you kill them. Its really what it boils down to.

JPoJohnson
09-18-2015, 02:47 PM
Hey Que,

Are you going to replace your Ashen Rider in the side with Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, or has flying been a big enough deal for you against some of the URx aggressive Delvers?

L10
09-18-2015, 02:58 PM
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger's double vindicate only triggers when you cast it.

JPoJohnson
09-18-2015, 04:31 PM
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger's double vindicate only triggers when you cast it.

I misread the card, appreciate the correction. (:

Vandalize
09-19-2015, 11:52 PM
Sup guys, there's a pretty long time I don't post in this thread, mainly due to the fact that I've switched to other decks like RUG Delver and Zoo. But, it seems that OmniTell is pretty strong nowdays, and Dredge is most likely their worst nightmare (and a really fun deck when no one is expecting it).

My list is quite outdated (there's like 1.5 years I don't touch my Ichorids), but this deck doesn't seem to update a lot with time, so I'd like some input on what you guys have been rocking lately.

List:
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug
1 Darkblast
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
3 Putrid Imp
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study
3 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay
SB: 3 Firestorm
SB: 2 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 City of Brass
SB: 1 Wispmare
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Dread Return
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

List has been solid since forever. Any input or tips?

gibbousm
09-20-2015, 10:04 AM
Given the current meta, I feel running Iona in the main deck is the right choice. It hoses Omnishow and other combo decks and even against non-combo decks cutting them off their primary color or removal color is decent. She's a 3 turn clock but with Ichorid/zombie back up is probably going to be a 2 turn one. I'd fill in that sideboard slot with either Elesh Norn or Ashen Rider.

meffeo
09-21-2015, 07:07 PM
SB: 2 Thoughtseize

What are your opinions about them? I do not play any other discard spells in the board.

Que
09-25-2015, 11:36 AM
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay
SB: 3 Firestorm
SB: 2 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 City of Brass
SB: 1 Wispmare
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Dread Return
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

List has been solid since forever. Any input or tips?

Your list is fine.

My question is more for the sb. In what instances have you used these cards? What do you bring in against what and in how many quantities/what do you take out?

I think we should be more focused on combating decks post board and discussing how to improve our games 2 and 3. I think we don't spend enough time discussing tech for the sb. Granted its difficult to board in too many cards as it impacts our consistency. I just want to hear about the success everyone has had on their end and which cards they thought were lack luster.

Sometimes I want to try a transformational sb not unlike the Painter/Grindstone sb, however, I think that one might be too cute.

birdbrains
09-28-2015, 05:53 AM
Given the current meta, I feel running Iona in the main deck is the right choice. It hoses Omnishow and other combo decks and even against non-combo decks cutting them off their primary color or removal color is decent. She's a 3 turn clock but with Ichorid/zombie back up is probably going to be a 2 turn one. I'd fill in that sideboard slot with either Elesh Norn or Ashen Rider.

I'm not sure Iona in the MB is a good call. You will absolutely shut out any mono colored decks you play, but there's a significant portion of the metagame that just doesn't care about her. I only sideboard her into the Burn, Omni and Elves matchups because they get instantly hosed and have little to no recourse to a resolved Iona, but in most other matchups the decks have ways of dealing with her and your best bet game one is just to smash face as quickly as possible before you need to disrupt your opponent's game plan.


Your list is fine.

My question is more for the sb. In what instances have you used these cards? What do you bring in against what and in how many quantities/what do you take out?

I think we should be more focused on combating decks post board and discussing how to improve our games 2 and 3. I think we don't spend enough time discussing tech for the sb. Granted its difficult to board in too many cards as it impacts our consistency. I just want to hear about the success everyone has had on their end and which cards they thought were lack luster.

Sometimes I want to try a transformational sb not unlike the Painter/Grindstone sb, however, I think that one might be too cute.

I copied your most recent sideboard mostly out of laziness/not having played for a significant period of time, but I feel it's in a very good place with a couple changes.

We have so many solid game 1 matchups that the main focus of the board should be combating hate, as it's always been. We're in a really cool place right now where hate is very easy to predict, and therefore easy to do something about if you're paying attention. We don't really have to worry anymore about boarding in the wrong cards because we have some awesome blanket answers. Basically the main cards we're playing against right now are Rest in Peace, Surgical/Extirpate and Cage. I haven't seen Crypt in ages, and Leyline is fairly dead tech outside of a couple matchups. So the core of our sideboard should be able to handle those cards. I'm really liking the set up of 3 Abrupt Decay, 3 petal/1 extra land and 1-2 Surgical Extraction. We have additional insurance against targeted hate with Street Wraith, as long as it's targeting a dredger.

As of right now, I'm skeptical on Ancient Grudge being in the board. It's strength is in putting pressure on the opponent's Crypt or Relic, but it's half a dead card against Cage which is seeing a lot more play due to it's interaction with decks like Elves. I'd love to hear additional input on it, though I feel that Decay has us pretty covered here. Ray of Revelation may be worth bringing into this slot as some sort of out to Leyline.

Ashen Rider is another card I'm losing steam on. Iona just feels stronger in the Show and Tell matchups, especially since Sneak Show has declined in favor of OmniTell. It's possibly just a reflection of my local meta and being out of the competitive scene for a while, but I'm considering dropping to one, or possibly zero.

Firestorm seems like another very strong card right now, and I'd like to bump the number up to 2-3. At the GP, I think we can expect a fair amount of creature decks and some amount of DRS.

In thinking about the expected meta, specifically for the GP, we may want to be prepared for Grindstone. If we have decking insurance against it, we can win on the following turn virtually every time, so I'm considering running a one of whatever I'm able to find before the GP to fill that slot.

I just got around to reading Richard Feldman's pre-NJ article, and I think Reveillark is a super interesting choice. I'm not 100% sold on it's viability, but it could be worth a look.

So for the GP, I'm looking at sleeving up something like the following:

3 Abrupt Decay
3 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Confluence
1-2 Surgical Extraction
1 Iona
0-1 Ashen Rider
1 Dread Return
2-3 Firestorm
1 Blightsteel Colossus
0-1 Ancient Grudge/Ray of Revelation

It's 3 am, so I'm going to get some sleep, but strategies about individual decks is definitely something I'm into discussing. At some point I had begun a pretty comprehensive list, so I'll see if I can dig that up.

Que
10-01-2015, 12:26 PM
I'm not sure Iona in the MB is a good call. You will absolutely shut out any mono colored decks you play, but there's a significant portion of the metagame that just doesn't care about her. I only sideboard her into the Burn, Omni and Elves matchups because they get instantly hosed and have little to no recourse to a resolved Iona, but in most other matchups the decks have ways of dealing with her and your best bet game one is just to smash face as quickly as possible before you need to disrupt your opponent's game plan.

Yeah I think Iona is great option in the board for the reasons Birdbrains mentioned. I would also add Storm to the list of decks she shuts down because generally Iona on Black is lights out unless they have the bounce spell available. With the recent DIG ban I think its all the more reason to leave her in the board.




I copied your most recent sideboard mostly out of laziness/not having played for a significant period of time, but I feel it's in a very good place with a couple changes.

We have so many solid game 1 matchups that the main focus of the board should be combating hate, as it's always been. We're in a really cool place right now where hate is very easy to predict, and therefore easy to do something about if you're paying attention. We don't really have to worry anymore about boarding in the wrong cards because we have some awesome blanket answers. Basically the main cards we're playing against right now are Rest in Peace, Surgical/Extirpate and Cage. I haven't seen Crypt in ages, and Leyline is fairly dead tech outside of a couple matchups. So the core of our sideboard should be able to handle those cards. I'm really liking the set up of 3 Abrupt Decay, 3 petal/1 extra land and 1-2 Surgical Extraction. We have additional insurance against targeted hate with Street Wraith, as long as it's targeting a dredger.

As of right now, I'm skeptical on Ancient Grudge being in the board. It's strength is in putting pressure on the opponent's Crypt or Relic, but it's half a dead card against Cage which is seeing a lot more play due to it's interaction with decks like Elves. I'd love to hear additional input on it, though I feel that Decay has us pretty covered here. Ray of Revelation may be worth bringing into this slot as some sort of out to Leyline.

Ashen Rider is another card I'm losing steam on. Iona just feels stronger in the Show and Tell matchups, especially since Sneak Show has declined in favor of OmniTell. It's possibly just a reflection of my local meta and being out of the competitive scene for a while, but I'm considering dropping to one, or possibly zero.

Firestorm seems like another very strong card right now, and I'd like to bump the number up to 2-3. At the GP, I think we can expect a fair amount of creature decks and some amount of DRS.

In thinking about the expected meta, specifically for the GP, we may want to be prepared for Grindstone. If we have decking insurance against it, we can win on the following turn virtually every time, so I'm considering running a one of whatever I'm able to find before the GP to fill that slot.

I just got around to reading Richard Feldman's pre-NJ article, and I think Reveillark is a super interesting choice. I'm not 100% sold on it's viability, but it could be worth a look.

So for the GP, I'm looking at sleeving up something like the following:

3 Abrupt Decay
3 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Confluence
1-2 Surgical Extraction
1 Iona
0-1 Ashen Rider
1 Dread Return
2-3 Firestorm
1 Blightsteel Colossus
0-1 Ancient Grudge/Ray of Revelation

It's 3 am, so I'm going to get some sleep, but strategies about individual decks is definitely something I'm into discussing. At some point I had begun a pretty comprehensive list, so I'll see if I can dig that up.

I like my current sb except I might be inclined to add that 3rd Firestorm. The only reason I'm on the fence about adding more is that generally my experience has been lack luster with it as its more of a reactive card. However, with the influx of creature based hate (i.e. DRS, Containtment Priest, Ooze, Gaddock Teeg, Thalia even..) it just seems like the best way to go.

I actually like Ancient Grudge because its one of those cards you don't need to have in your opener for it be good and if you do open with it then you gain a lot more value. Generally I use it to blow up troublesome equipment (Jitte namely), artifact hate (Tormond's Crypt, Nihi Spellbomb, Relic of Prog), and other random artifacts I might care about (Ensnaring bridge which I can't actually beat via Attack step, Chalice of the Void, Painter, Grindstone, etc.)

If Ancient Grudge is only half an answer to Cage, then Ray of Revelation is the same to Leyline, though I would agree that Cage is definitely seen a lot more. And there is at least the added benefit of being able to take out a RIP.

IDK how I feel about the DIG ban. Probably better for us in that it gives the opponent less time to find the hate piece. But then again Sneak & Show will come back which I felt was a weaker matchup. Agains Omni Cabal Therapy almost exclusively names S&T. However, against sneak and show you now have more options to choose from weather it be S&T, Sneak Attack, or Griselbrand so there is slightly more guess work.

If you expect Grindstone.dec to be there then I would agree on your inclusion of Blightsteel Colossus. This matchup can be atrocious though since they have hate game 1 in the form of Ensnaring Bridge and games 2 and 3 they actually have some decent GraveHate; RIP if they're playing W/R Grindstone with Enlightened Tutor, and Tormond's Crypt and the like if its mono red not to mention they have goblin Welder which means they get their pieces back the next turn.

Reveilark is definitely interesting and I've seen it in some people's lists. I haven't personally tried it out though. I guess having the chance to grab huge GraveTrolls after a Terminus or something seems quite dank. lol Didn't know Richard Feldman was still keeping up with the Archtype though it doesn't change much. Take his suggestions with a grain of salt remember he told us to go Fearless. ;p doesn't really apply to us nowadays when we actually have to worry about a good amount of things.

Idk how much Reanimator is going to show up, but that matchup is the worse for us I feel so I wanted to maybe even include 3 Surgical, but I'm not sure if thats overkill for that 1 matchup. They're still good against Lands, storm, so they have some other usefulness i guess.

Oestrus
10-01-2015, 03:08 PM
Hey folks!

Long time lurker, first time poster. Been playing Dredge, and Legacy since June of this year.

Reveillark is in fact good against Miracles. I've also found that eschewing a main deck Dread Return target, in favor of 4 Ichorid improves the matchup, too. It's whatever you're into, really.

I have to say, I expected people to lighten up on GY hate once DTT was banned. But it seems like people are responding to the ban by wanting to play more. Perhaps this is because people expect RUG Delver to become popular again, and GY hate affects Tarmogoyf, Snapcaster, and Nimble Mongoose. I'm not sure.

Either way, I'm happy to be here, and look forward to getting involved in discussions with people I've looked up to for a while now.

potatodavid
10-01-2015, 03:28 PM
We want to play in a DTT meta. Delve spells were good times for us Dredge Players. No one playing any hate!

laststepdown
10-01-2015, 06:44 PM
Cards like RIP and Leyline are lights out for this deck unless you can dispatch them quickly to rebuild your board. You can try the mediocre beats plan, but that doesn't end well normally xD I personally include Abrupt Decay in my sb as well to get rid of anything you could care for, however, this doesn't beat Leyline. As for Leyline I'm hedging and trying to dodge it as one would not normally commit 4 sb lots to beat 1 matchup. (the only other one it applies to is Reanimator both of which are "niche" decks); most people would prefer versatility in their sb as space is limited.

This is why I run wear/tear. Versatility. It's rare that Decay would kill anything besides a problematic artifact or enchantment.

gibbousm
10-01-2015, 10:33 PM
This is why I run wear/tear. Versatility. It's rare that Decay would kill anything besides a problematic artifact or enchantment.

Honestly I'm more worried about getting up to 2 mana than about my removal getting countered. Wear//Tear has been working out well for you then? I'm considering cutting my 2 Wispmares for 2 Wears.

I like the Evoke creatures, Wispmare and Ingot Chewer, because 1 mana, can't be spell pierced/flusterstormed/swan songed and hard to hit with counter balance. However while Chewer can still generate me zombie tokens through hate, Wispmare almost never will. While I liked being able to put it into play off of Show and Tell, Omnitell's departure means it won't be as good.

slave
10-01-2015, 11:48 PM
I like Surgical's in LED-dredge.


IDK how I feel about the DIG ban. Probably better for us in that it gives the opponent less time to find the hate piece. But then again Sneak & Show will come back which I felt was a weaker matchup. Agains Omni Cabal Therapy almost exclusively names S&T. However, against sneak and show you now have more options to choose from weather it be S&T, Sneak Attack, or Griselbrand so there is slightly more guess work.
Yeah I'm a bit the same, it was easy to just name S&T everytime I knew they were on Omni....
I feel Miracles probably won't be hurt much by this, or the delver decks, but I don't expect people to stop running gravehate all of a sudden. Unfortunately.

I am a little excited by Black Vise being unbanned.
Blue bounce (targeting lands) might be a thing again maybe? Not super effective against us though. :eyebrow:

birdbrains
10-06-2015, 05:29 AM
I actually like Ancient Grudge because its one of those cards you don't need to have in your opener for it be good and if you do open with it then you gain a lot more value. Generally I use it to blow up troublesome equipment (Jitte namely), artifact hate (Tormond's Crypt, Nihi Spellbomb, Relic of Prog), and other random artifacts I might care about (Ensnaring bridge which I can't actually beat via Attack step, Chalice of the Void, Painter, Grindstone, etc.)

If Ancient Grudge is only half an answer to Cage, then Ray of Revelation is the same to Leyline, though I would agree that Cage is definitely seen a lot more. And there is at least the added benefit of being able to take out a RIP.

Unless I'm totally messing up the interaction, doesn't the Ray go to the graveyard after it hits the RIP/Leyline? As long as we have it in hand, it seems like a decent enough answer.


IDK how I feel about the DIG ban. Probably better for us in that it gives the opponent less time to find the hate piece. But then again Sneak & Show will come back which I felt was a weaker matchup. Agains Omni Cabal Therapy almost exclusively names S&T. However, against sneak and show you now have more options to choose from weather it be S&T, Sneak Attack, or Griselbrand so there is slightly more guess work.

What about moving back to Pithing Needles? It lets us have a little more game against decks like Lands and SneakShow, as well as some fringe match ups. I never particularly liked them previously, but I think this might be the meta to bring them in.


If you expect Grindstone.dec to be there then I would agree on your inclusion of Blightsteel Colossus. This matchup can be atrocious though since they have hate game 1 in the form of Ensnaring Bridge and games 2 and 3 they actually have some decent GraveHate; RIP if they're playing W/R Grindstone with Enlightened Tutor, and Tormond's Crypt and the like if its mono red not to mention they have goblin Welder which means they get their pieces back the next turn.

There will definitely be a non-zero number of them in the room, but if it's a pretty bad matchup, it might be worth just writing off and spending that slot somewhere else.

gibbousm
10-12-2015, 07:20 PM
So now that we've experience the new changes to the mulligan rules and the ban list I have to ask, how have people been dealing with Mentor Miracles because what was formerly a long but favored game 1 has now become incredibly difficult for me to win.

I played against it at my last FNM it being my only lostt.

Game 1 they forced my Putrid Imp and landed a turn 3 Mentor. It took me a long time to get a dredger in the yard and I didn't hit good cards off of it.

I won game 2 by discarding with Firestorm and going off my next turn burning my first DR on their Flusterstorm and flashing back the second one.

Game 3 I mulled to 1. Not much to say there.

Other times I've faced the deck it has proved a huge problem as Monastery Mentor has given them a way to clutter up the board making attacking impossible and a method of closing the game out quickly. When you combine this with their StP and Terminus I feel as if what was once an even match up has become especially unfavored.


In the past when I played against Miracles pre-Mentor I would leave my Ichorids in the graveyard as frequently as I could, slow Dredge, and just build up a zombie army to force their Terminus and keep my horrors safe. That strategy just doesn't seem to work anymore.

This is my Current List
4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Mana Confluence
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
3x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
4x Narcomoeba
3x Putrid Imp
4x Stinkweed Imp
3x Breakthrough
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Careful Study
1x Darkblast
1x Dread Return
4x Faithless Looting
4x Bridge From Below
4x LED

SB: 1x Ancient Grudge
SB: 1x Ashen Rider
SB: 1x Back to Nature (there's 1 Enchantress player at my LGS and 2 other people thinking about taking up the deck)
SB: 1x Dread Return
SB: 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
SB: 3x Firestorm
SB: 2x Ingot Chewer
SB: 1x Nature's Claim
SB: 2x Surgical Extraction
SB: 2x Wispmare

I usually sideboard -4 LED, -3 Breakthrough + 2 Wispmare +3 Firestorm +1 Nature's Claim +1 Dread Return for this match up. I'm considering cutting the Back to Nature for a 4th Firestorm as a discard outlet and instead of making the "slow game" cuts I typically make, make the "fast game" cuts I typically do against Combo and Burn decks though that does leave me more vulnerable to a turn 2 RIP and they often bring in more 1 mana counters to kill my initial discard outlet.

TL;DR : How have you been beating Mentor Miracles?

DarkJester
10-13-2015, 09:58 AM
TL;DR : How have you been beating Mentor Miracles?

I don't play LegacyDredge that often anymore but I run it in Vintage and face similar problems. While thinking about it, could Elesh-Porn be a possible way to go, maybe in addition to some F-Storms?

Oppinions?

apple713
10-13-2015, 10:01 AM
While thinking about it, could Elesh-Porn be a possible way to go, maybe in addition to some F-Storms?

Oppinions?

Another victim of autocorrect

Noctalor
10-13-2015, 10:14 AM
Another victim of autocorrect

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/005/498/1300044776986.jpg

potatodavid
10-13-2015, 11:38 AM
Played to some awesome 1-3 Drops this weekend. Felt like the deck was doing everything in its power to ensure I would not win. Typical angry shit, you know Dredge 5 cards 3 lands a careful study and an LED. Just shit like that. Well until the final round where i got the combo kill turn 2 & 3.

Thursday got more legacy coming up. Hopefully my deck won't be so angry with me then.

gibbousm
10-13-2015, 07:20 PM
I don't play LegacyDredge that often anymore but I run it in Vintage and face similar problems. While thinking about it, could Elesh-Porn be a possible way to go, maybe in addition to some F-Storms?

Opinions?

I currently run 3 Firestorms, I'm tempted to run the 4th. The thing about Elesh Norn is that if I'm getting off a Dread Return it means I'm probably winning the match already. The number of times I've lost a game after resolving Dread Return is 2. One was because I named the wrong color, the other was because I had dredged to many times and wasn't able to close out the game before I decked myself.

So before we get derailed again by more auto-corrects how have people been getting over the roadblock that is Monastery Mentor?

Que
10-15-2015, 07:11 PM
Unless I'm totally messing up the interaction, doesn't the Ray go to the graveyard after it hits the RIP/Leyline? As long as we have it in hand, it seems like a decent enough answer.



What about moving back to Pithing Needles? It lets us have a little more game against decks like Lands and SneakShow, as well as some fringe match ups. I never particularly liked them previously, but I think this might be the meta to bring them in.



There will definitely be a non-zero number of them in the room, but if it's a pretty bad matchup, it might be worth just writing off and spending that slot somewhere else.

You're right, but then you have to have it in your opener. If I had Ancient Grudge in my hand already then it would be the same thing?

Pithing Needle seems ok, but how many would you want? To me bringing in 1 will prob not be worth it. Against lands I feel the worse culprits are Tabernacle and Glacial Chasm - outside of Bojuka Bog obviously- instead of something like Maze of Ith or Thespian Stage so Pithing needle wouldn't be as much help there. But I agree they would be amazing against Sneak & Show as you would be able to stop both Sneak Attack and Griselbrand; course S&T'ing an Emmy into play will still be a thing.

As for other applications: Stops DRS, Sensei's Top, Ather Vial, Equipment, Tormond's Crypt (Relic, Nihi Spellbomb, etc.), Grisel/Sneak, Wirewood symbiote?, idk lol.


To the rest of the thread. I haven't actually had much practice against the mentor strategy. I should get into gear the GP is right around the corner.

Final Fortune
10-16-2015, 12:30 AM
I currently run 3 Firestorms, I'm tempted to run the 4th. The thing about Elesh Norn is that if I'm getting off a Dread Return it means I'm probably winning the match already. The number of times I've lost a game after resolving Dread Return is 2. One was because I named the wrong color, the other was because I had dredged to many times and wasn't able to close out the game before I decked myself.

So before we get derailed again by more auto-corrects how have people been getting over the roadblock that is Monastery Mentor?

I was looking at Fetchlands, Dual Lands and Wonder the other day, seems legit.

vieko
10-16-2015, 12:55 AM
TL;DR : How have you been beating Mentor Miracles?

Hey there – long time follower of this thread and loyal to the grave by choice :) My two cents on Miracles:


OVERALL: be faster than them (shouldn't be a problem)
if you see Mentor Game 1, bring in Elesh and get her on battlefield
if they show you the hate Game 1, bring in Iona and land her on white
I've had success with Sudden Shock vs. Miracles (both in Legacy and Vintage) Also hits: Deathrite Shaman, Containment Priest, Teeg, Fresh Scooze


I did recently lose to a Miracles deck packing 2 Rest in Peace + 1 Energy Field + Helm of Obedience mainboard along with Humility and Caltrops in the board... this was not fun at all... not sure how popular this is but fuck, it was a pain to play against. He had the lock on me by turn two. Anyways, something to look into!

potatodavid
10-16-2015, 09:03 AM
Did my best dredging in a long time last night. Went 2-1 drop because I wanted to watch the Wild Beat the Coyotes. Magic and pro-hockey. Hard life to balance.

I used a pretty standard FKZ list. There's a lot of combo in my meta so having the FKZ maybe a bit win more but it also means win now in some circumstances.

Games:

Round 1. Storm
Game 1: I win the die Roll. I keep a 7 with 2 careful study & 2 dredgers, a Gemstone Mine and a Putrid Imp and a wraith. Play the study. Draw some more lands. Discard my dredgers. Cycle the street wraith to dredge a little earlier. Setup my next turn. pass. Opponent proceeds to drop 10 spells and tendrils me.
Game 2: I bring In Iona and an extra dread return. I doesn't matter as I cabal ritual his hand to pieces then combo off. He concedes when i drop LED & Breakthrough.
Game 3: He Mulls to 4. Probes my hand, plays a Petal to ponder. Passes the turn. Cabal Ritual naming LED. Hits 2. He scoops when i start to dredge.

Round 2. MUD
Game 1. My opponent plays a cavern of souls naming construct. I drop LED breakthrough, start to dredge 5 cards. then 11. He says game 2 before i can do anything else.
Game 2. Opponent plays a cavern naming construct. I play careful study drop 2 dregers and get 2 LED's Pass the turn. My Opponent drops a trinisphere. I dredge 6 to start my turn hit a faithless looting. I forget about the 3 ball and proceed to crack my first led for flooting dredge 12 more cards. I only have 1 bridge So I crack the second LED for a second flooting (see my mistake of forgetting I cannot flash back any spells to the 3 ball?) Correct play would have been to cabal one of my narcomeba's pop the LED and name metalworker, and Get 1 zombie for some beats. My opponent drops a metalworker then hardcasts a blightsteel. Oh for fucks sake.
Game 3. I keep a questionable hand, If I draw any dredger the hand is just insane. Spoiler alert: I don't draw the dredger.

Round 3. Elves
Game 1. Turn 2, flip deck into graveyard kill opponent with Zombies + FKZ.
Game 2. Turn 3 , Play Elesh Norn after cabal ritualing their hand of threats.

Round 4. Would have been BUG Rhino Nic Fit, my opponent kept talking about all this tech he had for me...okay buddy. and I had hockey to watch so i took my packs and headed home.

Lesson learned about MUD and 3ball though. Deck feels good again.

gibbousm
10-17-2015, 10:08 AM
Round 2. MUD
Game 1. My opponent plays a cavern of souls naming construct. I drop LED breakthrough, start to dredge 5 cards. then 11. He says game 2 before i can do anything else.
Game 2. Opponent plays a cavern naming construct. I play careful study drop 2 dregers and get 2 LED's Pass the turn. My Opponent drops a trinisphere. I dredge 6 to start my turn hit a faithless looting. I forget about the 3 ball and proceed to crack my first led for flooting dredge 12 more cards. I only have 1 bridge So I crack the second LED for a second flooting (see my mistake of forgetting I cannot flash back any spells to the 3 ball?) Correct play would have been to cabal one of my narcomeba's pop the LED and name metalworker, and Get 1 zombie for some beats. My opponent drops a metalworker then hardcasts a blightsteel. Oh for fucks sake.


Lesson learned about MUD and 3ball though. Deck feels good again.

I'm a bit confused here. Trinisphere forces you to pay at least 3 mana. LED makes 3 mana. You can use that 3 mana to pay for the T-Sphere. Flashing back Faithless Looting with LED goes through sphere. If you've dreadged enough at that point you crack the LED to pay for the Dread Return flashback.

Legionnaire12s
10-17-2015, 06:22 PM
Hello my fellow graveyard abusers!
I've been posting on here over the years but for whatever reason my old account isn't accessible.
That being said I plan on piloting Dredge at GP Seattle. I'm pretty confident with my main deck (Quad Laser) but I don't have a set side board for such a diverse field. Here is what I plan on running! :laugh:

Creatures: 23

4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari-Grave Troll
4 Golgari Thug (Number 4 is a flex slot, could be a Dark blast)
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Putrid Imp

Spells:: 24

4 Breakthrough
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below

Lands: 13

4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Cephalid Coliseum
2 City of Brass

Here is my plan for the SB.
3-4 Abrupt Decay
3-4 Firestorm
1 Dread Return
1 Ashen Rider

I know I want two slots to be either Chain of Vapor or Natures Claim. I really want to run Leyline of he Void as a four of.
What do ya'll think? I'm welcome to thoughts, comments, suggestions or criticism. That being said, are any of you playing Dredge in GP Seattle and what will your lists look like?

Thanks for being such a cool group of people over the years! May your hands be empty, your yard full and your tokens...doing token things! Cheers!

potatodavid
10-18-2015, 09:09 PM
I'm a bit confused here. Trinisphere forces you to pay at least 3 mana. LED makes 3 mana. You can use that 3 mana to pay for the T-Sphere. Flashing back Faithless Looting with LED goes through sphere. If you've dreadged enough at that point you crack the LED to pay for the Dread Return flashback.

Right. I flashed back flooting twice when I should have once then dread returned for something big.

meffeo
10-19-2015, 05:22 AM
Here is my plan for the SB.
3-4 Abrupt Decay
3-4 Firestorm
1 Dread Return
1 Ashen Rider


Nature's Claim is a must because it hits LotV (as every other Cage, Relic and so on), since Decay won't destroy it.

No big guys to reanimate in your 75s? Iona is obviously GG against Burn, D&T, Omni and Miracles to a lesser extent (beware of Jace / Karakas / Venser). Elesh Norn is also a great tool to swipe the board and pump your creatures. If you want to run more reanimations targets, the 2nd Dread Return has to find its place.

Why don't you run the 4th Coliseum? It's an uncounterable weapon to put in the bin a lot of cards. I understand that casting Decay with four Coliseum could be sometimes an issue, that's why people are running more CoB / Petals in their sideboard. I also tried with just three Coliseums but it's really a broken tool and we have to abuse its power.

My sideboard looks at the moment like this:

3 Abrupt Decay
2 Nature's Claim
2 Lotus Petal
3 Firestorm
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Ashen Rider
1 Dread Return
1 City of Brass

Hope that helps.

Legionnaire12s
10-19-2015, 11:29 PM
Meffeo,
I just settled on my final list as well as the SB.

My main list is the standard quad laser pure and simple. The side, however, is really interesting.

3x Decay
3x Claim
2x City
2x Firestorm
2x DR
1x Iona
1x E.Norn
1x Ashen rider

I have been testing this out and it covers a wide variety of hate. Decay and Claim cover two different types of threats and can also be used in conjunction with each other of the situation calls for it. I ran something similar when I came in third at an IQ on the east coast and it worked rather well.

To answer your question about Coliseum, I run three to better supplement the Abrupt Decays. Seeing one is OK. I never want to see them in multiples. Ever. It rarely comes up when I'm banking on using it.

I do appreciate the reply Meffeo.

BJeagle
10-22-2015, 04:01 AM
Im playing a bit grindier UB dredgedeck(no led or faithless) and thinking about buying 2 Jacy, Vryn's Prodigy. I like the "tap"ability to get cards in graveyard and the - abilities to get a better chance to cast the sideboardcard that been dredged to the gravyard.

What do you think? Is it worth it?

potatodavid
10-22-2015, 09:06 AM
Im playing a bit grindier UB dredgedeck(no led or faithless) and thinking about buying 2 Jacy, Vryn's Prodigy. I like the "tap"ability to get cards in graveyard and the - abilities to get a better chance to cast the sideboardcard that been dredged to the gravyard.

What do you think? Is it worth it?

Short answer: No

Long Answer: HELL NO! Jace although has a good looting ability, is extremely narrow and he has to sit for a turn once you cast him. If you are not running Faithless what are you flashing back once jace flips? You want a grindier version of dredge, play the river kelpie manaless version.

Echelon
10-22-2015, 09:08 AM
You want a grindier version of dredge, play the river kelpie manaless version.

Real men run Whirlpool Drake in that build!

potatodavid
10-22-2015, 09:09 AM
Real men run Whirlpool Drake in that build!

Whirlpool Rider is slightly better IMO.

Echelon
10-22-2015, 09:12 AM
That fully depends on whether you run Disrupting Shoals or not. If not, Drake gives you twice as many dredges (as long as you can kill it after DR'ing it) and no, it can't let you draw yourself to death.

potatodavid
10-22-2015, 09:18 AM
I'm not playing manaless, but when I was. I was playing shoals. Card is pretty clutch sometimes. Too bad manaless is the ultimate shit the bed deck.

Echelon
10-22-2015, 09:20 AM
It's incredibly fun to play. When it works, it works really well. When your opponent has answers or hate in any form or shape, yes, you're fucked. Hard. And not in the good way either!

It's mostly a big YOLO :laugh:

slave
10-23-2015, 12:08 AM
Yeah I really like Manaless. Because it's hard to interact with it can be a good choice on some occasions, but yes > Shit. Bed. Often.
At least lately anyway... so much gravehate the last year. I'm hoping the absence of DTT makes a difference and I can go back to playing LED/Manaless dredge.

jimmythegreek
10-23-2015, 04:10 PM
I used to be a bigger fan of manaless but since recent ive totally converted to led dredge. For the past few weeks ive gone 3-1,3-1 and most recently 4-0 only losing two games. My meta has every deck imaginable but mostly tier one decks. The thing I like about led dredge is its ability to bait out counters allowing us to play our spells. When dredge gets to play spells we win. A resolved breakthrough has almost always proved gg. Dont be afraid to run out an led before a land drop if you have loot effects in hand, a lesser opponent may cast daze. Personally I havnt needed decay and feel that claim is the way to go, cabal therapy has done a remarkable job of clearing the way of counters anyhow. Its been my experience of late that hate has been a combination of a single cage, surgical and an ooze. The more comfortable I get with this deck the more blown away I am at its pure power. Happy Halloween guys, tis the season to dredge!

laststepdown
10-25-2015, 09:13 PM
I was the only person to day 2 SCG STL with dredge. 6-3 record for day 1. 2 of those losses were for sure to my own misplays, hadn't played magic in over a year. Random stuff like not seeing a Faithless Looting in the grave from a foil's reflection to a convention center light. Overslept for day 2, I didn't even know there was a second day until after round 3. Like I said, haven't paid attention to or played magic in over a year. Had I not played like crap, I think the list just gave it to me and i missed it. Highlights were winning against Infect both times i played it, and watching some guy that had a video deck tech for his KOTR deck pick up Firestorm to read it.

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return

4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
2 Street Wraith
1 Ashen Rider

Sideboard
4 Wear//Tear
3 Lotus Petal
3 Firestorm
1 Darkblast
1 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

gibbousm
10-25-2015, 09:42 PM
Congratulations on making day 2. Yeah, they made the format switch at the beginning of this year so its relatively recent.

How were the Wear//Tears in the sideboard? Was there ever a time you cast it for the Fuse cost or wished it was a Nature's Claim or Abrupt Decay?

laststepdown
10-25-2015, 11:33 PM
Congratulations on making day 2. Yeah, they made the format switch at the beginning of this year so its relatively recent.

How were the Wear//Tears in the sideboard? Was there ever a time you cast it for the Fuse cost or wished it was a Nature's Claim or Abrupt Decay?

Thanks. The new scry thing is VERY good for dredge.

They were fine. I hit a Helm and Rest in Peace fused one game which won a match for me. I have fused them multiple times at other events (long story short, I've piloted dredge long enough that I've won a city championship title with it while the mechanic was still in standard.) I suppose it's preference, but I like the utility of the potential 2 for 1. Usually they don't get fused though. The guy with the Reliquary deck that made top 8 or whatever lost a game to me because his DRS and Scavenging Ooze got Firestormed for 2. That being said, if I ran the list again tomorrow, I'd run a third Street Wraith main over the Ashen Rider for more gas in game 1, and go down to 3 Wear//Tear in the board for the 2nd Rider. For now I feel like Firestorm and Darkblast handle any real threats. I honestly haven't considered running Nature's Claim since Wear//Tear was printed.

Thoughtseize sounds amazing though. Someone on the forum has 2 in their sideboard and I think they're probably right.

SHABOOGS
10-26-2015, 01:40 PM
Played in a team legacy tournament yesterday and went 4-2 with this 75:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below

4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Ichorid
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
1 Griselbrand

4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return

4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 City of Brass

Sideboard:
3 Firestorm
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Nature's Claim
3 Faerie Macabre
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

Unfortunately, my team mates (playing oops all spells and pox) wasn't as lucky as I was so we ended up 2-3-1 as a team. Anyways, these were my match ups:

Rd1 0-2 Reanimator
2nd turn Iona on Black on both games.

Rd2 1-2 D&T
Manage to get rid of RIP and dredge most of my library only to have it exiled again with a top deck RIP and Containment Priest on both postboard games.

Rd3 2-0 D&T
No RIP in play? Easy win! Opponent also misplayed his containment priest after Ichorid resolved and didn't know how Bridge from Below works in our favor during combat.

Rd4 2-1 Burn
I mulled to 3 in game 1 and didn't play anything until he killed me. I won game 2 coz he didn't know I was on Dredge. Game 3 I did LED and Breakthrough shenanigans on the first turn.

Rd5 2-1 ANT
I mulled to 3 in game 1 again and lost. I won games 2 and 3 with multiple Cabal Therapies.

Rd6 2-1 Miracles
Game 1 he got a lucky Terminus after fetching a land facing a lethal army of zombies and Ichorid. Games 2 and 3 I played Ichorids one at a time to force him to use his removal spells. Multiple Cabal Therapies got me the win.


I'm thinking of getting rid of FKZ and Griselbrand but I'm not sure what to put in those slots.

Oestrus
10-26-2015, 03:25 PM
I was the only person to day 2 SCG STL with dredge. 6-3 record for day 1. 2 of those losses were for sure to my own misplays, hadn't played magic in over a year. Random stuff like not seeing a Faithless Looting in the grave from a foil's reflection to a convention center light. Overslept for day 2, I didn't even know there was a second day until after round 3. Like I said, haven't paid attention to or played magic in over a year. Had I not played like crap, I think the list just gave it to me and i missed it. Highlights were winning against Infect both times i played it, and watching some guy that had a video deck tech for his KOTR deck pick up Firestorm to read it.

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return

4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
2 Street Wraith
1 Ashen Rider

Sideboard
4 Wear//Tear
3 Lotus Petal
3 Firestorm
1 Darkblast
1 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Congratulations on the finish, friend. I was happy to see one of us make Day 2, and it's great to see you here on the boards. I see that you completely eschew Careful Study, in favor of other cards. How did that work out for you? As a former Living End player in Modern, I have a great appreciation for Street Wraith. But I haven't been able to pull the trigger on it yet in Dredge. In terms of your SB, I assume Darkblast comes in for Death & Taxes. Possibly Infect?

laststepdown
10-26-2015, 10:23 PM
Congratulations on the finish, friend. I was happy to see one of us make Day 2, and it's great to see you here on the boards. I see that you completely eschew Careful Study, in favor of other cards. How did that work out for you? As a former Living End player in Modern, I have a great appreciation for Street Wraith. But I haven't been able to pull the trigger on it yet in Dredge. In terms of your SB, I assume Darkblast comes in for Death & Taxes. Possibly Infect?

Thanks, yeah I've been here on the source for a decade now. Magic for two decades now. Kill me, heh. I stopped running Careful Study when Faithless Looting was printed. I can still remember the days of running it alongside 4 Lotus Petal and 4 Deep Analysis main. In certain metas it's better than Breakthrough, but I just wanted to be as explosive as possible. As for Street Wraith, its just a great enabler game one, especially vs an active Deathrite Shaman. As for the Darkblast, yeah, also Elves and such.

slave
10-27-2015, 08:55 PM
...decklist....

Surprised not to see Careful Study here. I guess you're going for a more grindy approach with lots of black creatures to feed your Ichorids.
Do you think this effects the speed of the deck at all?
I've been playing with Street Wraith for a while now, I really think it deserves it's place in LED-dredge due to it's non-interactive nature.

jimmythegreek
10-27-2015, 09:42 PM
Surprised not to see Careful Study here. I guess you're going for a more grindy approach with lots of black creatures to feed your Ichorids.
Do you think this effects the speed of the deck at all?
I've been playing with Street Wraith for a while now, I really think it deserves it's place in LED-dredge due to it's non-interactive nature.

I would love to play with street wraith in led dredge but what to cut? I'm not cutting the putrid imps as they are great against control and my one of dread return has been optimal. Grave hate comes down so quick that I don't believe moving to a grinder game plan really helps this deck whatsoever. Land loot is where this deck wants to be turn one more often than not, right?

potatodavid
10-28-2015, 11:13 AM
I would love to play with street wraith in led dredge but what to cut? I'm not cutting the putrid imps as they are great against control and my one of dread return has been optimal. Grave hate comes down so quick that I don't believe moving to a grinder game plan really helps this deck whatsoever. Land loot is where this deck wants to be turn one more often than not, right?

I do a 2x2 split of Wraith & Imp. Talked to Que about it for a bit, Tried and tested. Never looking back. You'd be surprised how little the split matters and how often having a turn 1-2 wraith can just put you so far ahead. Especially with deathblade making a comeback.

vieko
10-28-2015, 11:48 AM
Especially with deathblade making a comeback

Don't forget about Shardless and their main deck Shamans! I've been swapping Imps with Wraiths post-board... done the trick so far. Will try the split!

slave
10-29-2015, 05:00 AM
I would love to play with street wraith in led dredge but what to cut? I'm not cutting the putrid imps as they are great against control and my one of dread return has been optimal. Grave hate comes down so quick that I don't believe moving to a grinder game plan really helps this deck whatsoever. Land loot is where this deck wants to be turn one more often than not, right?
Yeah I agree fully. Kind of the reason why I've gotten bored of manaless given it's just autolose, at least here we can race them.


I do a 2x2 split of Wraith & Imp. Talked to Que about it for a bit, Tried and tested. Never looking back. You'd be surprised how little the split matters and how often having a turn 1-2 wraith can just put you so far ahead. Especially with deathblade making a comeback.
Yeah I've been playing with 3 Wraith & 2 Imps in the main myself, full sets of Study, Looting with 3 Breakthru.
Given our fast starts, I usually find that my first couple of spells will cop counter if they have it. Having the extra food for Icky can really make the most of Bridges. I'm not running any reanimation targets in the main FYI, just one Dread Return.

potatodavid
10-29-2015, 09:13 AM
I'm not running any reanimation targets in the main FYI, just one Dread Return.

I wish I could do this. I have to run 1 main FKZ. There's a ton of storm players in my meta.

slave
10-29-2015, 10:57 AM
I wish I could do this. I have to run 1 main FKZ. There's a ton of storm players in my meta.
I don't feel I need to rush against storm once I start hitting them with Therapies.

potatodavid
10-29-2015, 11:49 AM
I don't feel I need to rush against storm once I start hitting them with Therapies.

That's fair, I had someone think the FKZ was the win condition last week. That was funny when they surgical extracted that.

jimmythegreek
10-29-2015, 07:56 PM
i I can't express how important mulligans get when playing dredge. After going 0-2 drop the other night I believe keeping the hands I did were at least part of my problem. At times this deck will crap on you but some of its opening hands are unbeatable. Mulligan aggressively to a hand with multiple draw spells or an imp plus loot. Don't settle for mediocre hands, remember this isn't manaless dredge and we rely on speed over threat density within our deck. Also, if your hand is bonkers don't be afraid to turn one therapy (naming force) to clear the way for a turn two blow out. I'm currently running 13 land, three imps and a single dread return (quad laser besides the prior). I think in my next weekly I'm gonna go quad laser with the two imp/wraith split. Question: how are people boarding against the DTB ?

slave
10-31-2015, 03:53 AM
Question: how are people boarding against the DTB ?
Hard to answer... is there a few decks (besides the obvious UW-Miracles) you're thinking of mainly?

Dziga Murnau
10-31-2015, 09:28 AM
Guys, returning to Dredge, has a question: what for are Petals in SB?

meffeo
10-31-2015, 09:34 AM
Guys, returning to Dredge, has a question: what for are Petals in SB?

Speeding up the game (ANT, Reanimator) and Abrupt Decays. You need more colored mana sources after board.

jimmythegreek
11-04-2015, 02:14 PM
Tried the 2/2 split of wraith and imp last night. While I didn't run into any situations where I desired one over the other I did have openers with led, wraith, land, dredger, breakthrough, x and x. Talk about explosive;unbelievable turn ones with wraith. Currently I'm running the 13th and I'm considering cutting it for the fourth breakthrough, essentially quad laser with the split of wraith and imp. Game ones aren't a sure thing like they used to be. Street wraith not only protects us from Drs but can make for explosive turn ones, I'm on board with wraith for now.

potatodavid
11-04-2015, 03:28 PM
I have a lot of people that are looking at the new Zombie Dargon like he's gonna fit in somewhere in this deck. I am not sold one bit yet unless there's something that I'm not noticing or seeing.


Link for those wondering

http://media.wizards.com/2015/c15_9dsm28ccakCDSk2/en_KVm4xroxCo.png

apple713
11-04-2015, 03:35 PM
I have a lot of people that are looking at the new Zombie Dargon like he's gonna fit in somewhere in this deck. I am not sold one bit yet unless there's something that I'm not noticing or seeing.


Link for those wondering

http://media.wizards.com/2015/c15_9dsm28ccakCDSk2/en_KVm4xroxCo.png

he's just a 6/6 body that doesn't have a synergetic ability. He is unlikely to end the game before you do via your normal strategy. Additionally he cost mana which is typically better spent powering draw.

potatodavid
11-04-2015, 03:39 PM
Right? I thought he looked super sweet in like some form of modern dredgevine or something goofy like that, i don't see anything beyond that.

slave
11-04-2015, 07:54 PM
Right? I thought he looked super sweet in like some form of modern dredgevine or something goofy like that, i don't see anything beyond that.
I don't mind it, but 2 mana is kinda hard for me to get on board. I find having 2 lands isn't where I'm normally at after a few turns.
If I was going to run a card to bring back from the grave other than the obvious (grisel, Iona, Elesh) I'd probably go for for Flayer of the Hatebound (and a couple extra Dread returns to follow that with GGT) for a win on that turn.
The card does look good for casual though.

zbrt
11-05-2015, 03:33 PM
I have dredge built in paper, though I never get to go play in any local events. I'm thinking of getting out of my standard deck online and getting dredge + a modern deck, does anyone else play this online? How do we fare against the miracles/ant/elves heavy metagame (according to Goldfish?

draugr
11-07-2015, 10:58 PM
Hey Parcher, I saw in another thread you were participating at SeaTac. I'd be super interested in hearing how it went for you.

Jon
11-07-2015, 11:55 PM
Is it common to be 6-2 in a GP and still forget bridge triggers? Just wondering.


I have fat fingers and I am posting from my iPhone.

draugr
11-08-2015, 12:02 AM
He also forgot a narcomeba trigger. I'm going to guess it was a tired+LSV intimidation thing going on.

Oestrus
11-08-2015, 12:48 PM
9 rounds, win and in, against LSV, on camera. I might have stumbled, too.

Miracles is tough for us, even when we're firing on all cylinders. To punt, and still get there? I ain't mad.

rufus
11-08-2015, 06:02 PM
I have a lot of people that are looking at the new Zombie Dargon like he's gonna fit in somewhere in this deck. I am not sold one bit yet unless there's something that I'm not noticing or seeing.

I wonder about the Zombie Wizard rather than the dragon.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/commander-2015/26186-corpse-augur




When Corpse Augur dies draw X cards and lose X life where X is the number of creatures in your graveyard.

slave
11-08-2015, 06:43 PM
I wonder ... Corpse Augur
Yeah I looked at that one too, and I will be buying a full set of them for casual decks.
But;
The effect needing a sac outlet to make it work really hurts it's flexibility, and there's always the possibility we're going to kill ourselves if we let it die due to the life-lost with each draw, given there's no *may* in the text. Of course this is highly match-opponent-dependant, but still, it's possible this card could become something we cannot reanimate.

I'd prefer an "Enters the battlefield" style effect myself, or one we can use to respond to removal.
Griselbrand has the whole 7life limitation, but I'm not sure there's many reasons to run this over the G-man.

All that said, if you're looking for a creature specifically;
There's always Whirlpool Rider?
Not a good suggestion, and I wouldn't run it in LED-dredge, but it IS within reach of being hardcast. Which is something....

Blastoderm
11-09-2015, 09:12 AM
Hello everyone,

I've always found Dredge to be a very interesting deck and decided that I might want to build it. If played well, how does it fair against tier 1/1.5?

Note: have many of the commons/uncommons, a couple bridges, all the lands and the LEDs. I'm missing Ichorids, dread return targets, firestorm, couple more bridges and trolls.

Echelon
11-09-2015, 09:19 AM
Generally G1 Dredge does quite well. G2/3, not so much. Decks often run either DRS, Containment Priest/Rest in Peace and/or Grafdiggers' Cage somewhere in the 75 and are usually quite succesful finding those (at least in my experience) or kill even quicker then Dredge.

You usually play games 2 and 3 with your fingers crossed and just hope for the best.

Blastoderm
11-09-2015, 09:34 AM
Generally G1 Dredge does quite well. G2/3, not so much. Decks often run either DRS, Containment Priest/Rest in Peace and/or Grafdiggers' Cage somewhere in the 75 and are usually quite succesful finding those (at least in my experience) or kill even quicker then Dredge.

You usually play games 2 and 3 with your fingers crossed and just hope for the best.

Yea I figured. Thanks.

jimmythegreek
11-09-2015, 10:08 AM
Went 3-1-1 good enough for 3rd/4th place in a twenty-five man local.

Bant with Kotr/combo 2-0
Bug delver 2-1
Counter balance with day's undoing/artifact deck 2-1
Lands I.d.

In the quarters I played against the same bant deck and had some weird hands that didn't pan out. By far the weirdest hand was wraith, wraith, led, faithless looting, breakthrough , stinkweed and bridge. I decided to go all in and cast led, cycle twice maintain priority and sac led. Going all in I kinda bricked, in hind sight I should have cycled to try and find a land.

Echelon
11-10-2015, 01:23 AM
In the quarters I played against the same bant deck and had some weird hands that didn't pan out. By far the weirdest hand was wraith, wraith, led, faithless looting, breakthrough , stinkweed and bridge. I decided to go all in and cast led, cycle twice maintain priority and sac led. Going all in I kinda bricked, in hind sight I should have cycled to try and find a land.

You should have started the engine by dredging to hand size. Once you get a few dredgers in the yard, you cycle your Street Wraiths for some extra dredges. After cycling those, you play and crack LED, discard said dredgers and reuse them with a flashbacked Looting. Four dredges in one turn should be enough to pull ahead.

jimmythegreek
11-10-2015, 08:53 AM
You should have started the engine by dredging to hand size. Once you get a few dredgers in the yard, you cycle your Street Wraiths for some extra dredges. After cycling those, you play and crack LED, discard said dredgers and reuse them with a flashbacked Looting. Four dredges in one turn should be enough to pull ahead.

I forgot to mention I was on the play. Ya, there definitely were some safer lines of play and I think I let my emotions get the best of me. Especially it being game one; generally we have a grace period to win in comparison with game two. Im kinda missing dread return if for nothing else the amount of zombies it produces which can really speed things up. My sideboard I feel lacks the right cards.
For reference:
4 natures claim (have been fine.)
2 dread return (not sure when to bring these in besides with a sideboard target.)
1 iona (good card, havnt played against too many mono colored decks.)
4 lotv (im fine with theses as theres lots of land decks where I play.)
3 firestorm (never side this card in, maybe im doing it wrong?)
1 ashen rider (good against lands and prison stuff.)
My meta is lands, miracles,storm, bug decks and some random blade decks. The most common hate has been surgical and cage with a few random spell-bombs. Any advice is welcome. Still very happy with this deck as top fours have been plentiful over the past three months.

Que
11-10-2015, 11:30 AM
Went a disappointing 6-3 at the Grand Prix once again missing day 2. I was 6-1 going into round 8 so I just needed to clutch out 1 of the last 2 matches. Unfortunately some bad luck stopped my run. I would venture to say my losses were mainly due to the deck's variance rather than any obvious punts/misplays on my part. My losses came to Seth Manfield on Infect, Erich Frolich (efro) on ANT, both of which made top 32 and then some random Shardless BUG deck. I will say that some extra preparation would have served me well, but with so many archatypes who had the time.

I will fill in more with the matchups when I get home.

Also if I met you at the event it was nice meeting you guys! Its cool to hear when someone is also running your list and picking your brain about decklist decisions etc. Someone even had me sign one of their Dredge cards. :)

vieko
11-10-2015, 02:47 PM
Went a disappointing 6-3 at the Grand Prix once again missing day 2

Similar experience for me Que... great to meet you BTW! Had some of the most explosive wins I've ever had, made one mistake that led to defeat on Round 2 and gained my other loses through variance mainly. Looking forward to your report, I didn't keep many notes but can attest that running mainboard Petals makes this Dredge more resilient to early counters and VERY scary to play against!

mistercakes
11-10-2015, 04:38 PM
Went a disappointing 6-3 at the Grand Prix once again missing day 2. I was 6-1 going into round 8 so I just needed to clutch out 1 of the last 2 matches. Unfortunately some bad luck stopped my run. I would venture to say my losses were mainly due to the deck's variance rather than any obvious punts/misplays on my part. My losses came to Seth Manfield on Infect, Erich Frolich (efro) on ANT, both of which made top 32 and then some random Shardless BUG deck. I will say that some extra preparation would have served me well, but with so many archetypes who had the time.

I will fill in more with the matchups when I get home.

Also if I met you at the event it was nice meeting you guys! Its cool to hear when someone is also running your list and picking your brain about decklist decisions etc. Someone even had me sign one of their Dredge cards. :)

would love to hear about your wins as much as your losses!

gibbousm
11-11-2015, 12:13 AM
went to small 16 person tournament. 3-1 was enough to get second on breakers. Beat Esper Deathblade, Elves, and Merfolk. Only loss was to Reanimator. Hard to beat a triple Leyline start in game 2.

Que, 6-3 isn't bad, you managed to play to a win and in and thats always good. Starting in 2016 your consistent 6-3 should be enough to make day 2 according to the GP updates announcement. I think we may have me before at a tournament but I'm honestly not sure. I know I've met a few other Dredge players at tournaments but I've never really exchanged usernames or anything.

draugr
11-11-2015, 01:07 AM
I finally purchased a playset of LEDs and found a Legacy playgroup, so I'm on my way to get serious about piloting this deck. I've got a few questions regarding card choices.

1.) Anyone know Parcher's reason for running 63 cards in his MD during this SCG IQ (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=90407)?

2.) Que, your lists generally run 8 rainbow lands + 4 coliseums. Do you, or people who run a similar configuration, find problems with keeping hands with 1 land, get that land wasteland'd t1, and then unable to play a t2 draw spell enabling fat dredging? In this scenario do you dredge at draw step, or keep drawing until you find another land?

Parcher
11-11-2015, 10:41 AM
I finally purchased a playset of LEDs and found a Legacy playgroup, so I'm on my way to get serious about piloting this deck. I've got a few questions regarding card choices.

1.) Anyone know Parcher's reason for running 63 cards in his MD during this SCG IQ (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=90407)?

2.) Que, your lists generally run 8 rainbow lands + 4 coliseums. Do you, or people who run a similar configuration, find problems with keeping hands with 1 land, get that land wasteland'd t1, and then unable to play a t2 draw spell enabling fat dredging? In this scenario do you dredge at draw step, or keep drawing until you find another land?

It should be 1 City. Not 4. I scrubbed out at SeaTac. Lands, Infect, and Reanimator. All unfavorable, all drew very well. Nothing else worth noting.

Legionnaire12s
11-11-2015, 02:22 PM
Hello Everyone!

Small report from GP Seatac! Went 6-3 (6-2-1) and missed out on Day two by two points. The day started off with arriving to the event way too early which included way too mush standing around for no reason. Before round one, I met up with Parcher and discussed my deck list and switched some card choices around. This is the list that I used.

4 Ichorid
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Thug
3 Pimp
4 Jellyfish

4 Breakthrough
4 Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Darkblast

4 Gemstone mine
4 Mana Confluence
4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 City of Brass

SB:
3 Firestorm
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Lotus Petal
2 Dread Return
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Iona
1 Ashen Rider
1 Memory's Journey

Round 1: Whitney on Death and Taxes!
Win:2-1
Highlights: None

Round 2: Ian on BUG Delver
Win: 2-1
Highlights: None

Round 3: Miracles
Lose: 2-0
Highlights: Mull to 4 G1 and playing like garbage G2

Round 4: Storm
Win: 2-1
Highlights: My opponent opened with Fetch->U.Sea->Ponder. My response Dredge into Jellyfish and Cabal Therapy. Cast Therapy Naming Infernal Tutor (Blind). Hit one. Game Three was something similar but I blind therapy'd a Cabal Ritual out of his hand this time.

Round 5: Ryan on Deathblade
Win: 2-1
Highlights: Game three, blind therapy'd away two SFM.

Round 6: Infect
Win: 2-0
Highlights: This is pretty funny what occurred game 2. My opponent starts things off with the blue infect guy on his turn two. My turn two, Blind therapy naming invigorate. DING DING DING. Hit Three.

Round 7: John on Food Chain
Lose: 2-1
Highlights: None. With the exception that John looked and sounded like Castiel from Supernatural. Great round even though I lost.

Round 8: Demon Stompy
Win: 2-1
Highlights: G1 I have a board full of Zombies on my turn 3. I have a Therapy but don't that great of an idea of what this guy was on. So, I thought of
what could kill me or hurt my current plan. Blind Therapy naming Toxic Deluge. HIT! Win on my next turn. G3 He has a dominant board position after I kept a no land hand with a Chain of Vapor for Leyline of the Void. He doesn't open with void which makes me feel extra stupid. The only usable cards I had in hand were two LED's, Careful Study and Troll. The turn before can kill me with Desecration Demon and another guy, I hit a Colisuem. LED, LED, Careful Study, Crack both LED's for red, Looting looting and hit three Jellyfish, DR and Iona naming black. Iona stole the show on this one.

Round 9: Miracles
Draw: 1-1-1 (I did something I never do and gave this guy the win due to his whining and his cheer leading squad throwing a fit. Just STFU already.)
Never again, If you can't kill me in turns because you slow play like a little D-Bag then you don't deserve the round.

vieko
11-11-2015, 04:02 PM
Draw: 1-1-1 (I did something I never do and gave this guy the win due to his whining and his cheer leading squad throwing a fit. Just STFU already.)
Never again, If you can't kill me in turns because you slow play like a little D-Bag then you don't deserve the round.

Someone asked me to do the same thing... did not happen :) Agreed: if you can't win before time is up with .dec, don't play it.

JPoJohnson
11-11-2015, 05:54 PM
Would you have gone to Day 2 if you had taken the draw instead of the loss?

Legionnaire12s
11-11-2015, 06:22 PM
Would you have gone to Day 2 if you had taken the draw instead of the loss?

It was coming down to neither of us would make day two or one of us would make day two. We were both at 6-2.

meffeo
11-11-2015, 06:50 PM
2 Chain of Vapor

Congrats on the result.

How did you find the Chains? Were the Decays enough from a destroy point of view?

Legionnaire12s
11-11-2015, 11:31 PM
Congrats for the result.

How did you find the Chains? Were the Decays enough from a destroy point of view?

Chains was only relevant in one M/U and that was VS a LotV that I never saw game three vs Demon Stompy. That being said, I do not have them in my current board. Decay would have been more than enough. Decay and Firestorm are all you need against most current forms of hate. The reason i list both of those is most decks that run white (Which was everyone I came across) run both Containment Priest and Rest in Peace. The Miracles player I played against in the final round figured out real quick that Priest was not fire proof.

My current board that I am running is this.

4x Decay
3x Firestorm
3x Needle ( I freaking hate Relic with a passion) Works on DRS.
2x Gemstone Mine
1x Lotus Petal
1x DR
1x Ashen Rider

Needle is a weird call I'll admit. But it works on two of DRS's abilities, relic and has several other random uses. The singleton copy of petal in the board is to compliment the two I run in the main. Gemstone mine is in the board instead of City of Brass due to the situations where I need to use lands multiple times. A lot of my games were grinded out to late game where I had minimal dredgers and having a second permanent land would have been useful to cast a thug in order to refresh a narcomoeba. Decay itself is gold. My current testing has shown that having it as a four is imperative to opening with one and has a higher chance of hitting another one if digging is required. Just my personal thoughts on this and I'm sure Parcher will fry my opinion on this like he has in the past.

draugr
11-12-2015, 03:47 AM
The singleton copy of petal in the board is to compliment the two I run in the main.

Did you remove additional lands in the maindeck to make room for the petals?

meffeo
11-12-2015, 09:33 AM
Did you remove additional lands in the maindeck to make room for the petals?

Petals are played for two reasons: cast Decays and speed up games.
There's actually no logic in boarding out additional lands.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

Legionnaire12s
11-12-2015, 10:01 PM
Petals are played for two reasons: cast Decays and speed up games.
There's actually no logic in boarding out additional lands.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

False! I did remove one land and one Pimp to add two petals to the main. Testing is still currently in progress to measure the possible adverse affects of this.

slave
11-13-2015, 01:28 AM
My current board that I am running is this.
2x Gemstone Mine
Curious. I always have 4x Gemstone in the main. I find the life loss with the other rainbow lands to be an issue in some matchups.

Legionnaire12s
11-14-2015, 12:17 AM
Curious. I always have 4x Gemstone in the main. I find the life loss with the other rainbow lands to be an issue in some matchups.

Let me ask you this. How often do you use your lands outside of the first two turns during your game 1's?

mistercakes
11-14-2015, 11:28 AM
i've decided that i'm going to play dredge a bit more seriously (i have played most of the decks in legacy and have been on doomsday for the last few years, but haven't had the time to play enough.) i've played dredge since it started way back, so i've a bit far beyond the basics.

few questions:

i've been working with the following list on modo:

played 3 matches (in 2 man events), lost to storm, beat miracles twice

4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Cephalid Coliseum

4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Putrid Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Ichorid
3 Street Wraith

4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
1 Dread Return


SB
1 Dread Return
2 Wear/Tear
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Lotus Petal
3 Firestorm
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Darkblast
2 Thoughtseize

1. i question the dread return in the mainboard (not really sure if this is correct) thoughts?
2. mana confluence > gemstone mine (i know it should be confluence > CoB, just working with my modo collection here) what's the reason to play mine over 8 CoB, confluence? is it just to improve burn matchup?
3. i saw recommendations for running ashen rider in sb, is this for the show and tell / reanimator matchups? is it worth being played over some of these other slots? thoughts?

sideboard seems okay so far, haven't played enough yet.

thanks!
-rob

Legionnaire12s
11-14-2015, 11:37 AM
i've decided that i'm going to play dredge a bit more seriously (i have played most of the decks in legacy and have been on doomsday for the last few years, but haven't had the time to play enough.) i've played dredge since it started way back, so i've a bit far beyond the basics.

few questions:

i've been working with the following list on modo:

played 3 matches (in 2 man events), lost to storm, beat miracles twice

4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Cephalid Coliseum

4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Putrid Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Ichorid
3 Street Wraith

4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
1 Dread Return


SB
1 Dread Return
2 Wear/Tear
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Lotus Petal
3 Firestorm
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Darkblast
2 Thoughtseize

1. i question the dread return in the mainboard (not really sure if this is correct) thoughts?
2. mana confluence > gemstone mine (i know it should be confluence > CoB, just working with my modo collection here) what's the reason to play mine over 8 CoB, confluence? is it just to improve burn matchup?
3. i saw recommendations for running ashen rider in sb, is this for the show and tell / reanimator matchups? is it worth being played over some of these other slots? thoughts?

sideboard seems okay so far, haven't played enough yet.

thanks!
-rob

DR in the main is just an additional token generating outlet. Doesn't hurt anything really.
Ashen Rider in the board helps out a great deal when dealing with lands. I have removed Tabernacle and Glacial Chasm in one go with it.
Running Fire Storm and Elesh Norn is a bit over kill. I primarily go with Firestorm because it has far more uses that the Grand Cenobite.
As far as the lands go, I have tried just about every configuration and it hasn't mattered much.

How are the Street Wraiths working for you?

Que
11-14-2015, 08:47 PM
Similar experience for me Que... great to meet you BTW! Had some of the most explosive wins I've ever had, made one mistake that led to defeat on Round 2 and gained my other loses through variance mainly. Looking forward to your report, I didn't keep many notes but can attest that running mainboard Petals makes this Dredge more resilient to early counters and VERY scary to play against!

Thats understandable Lotus Petal is great at creating busted starts. I do like that they put you on parity game 2 allowing you to play around cards like Daze or burying DRS under massive card advantage. The only knock against them is that they actually don’t facilitate dredging (not a discard outlet nor a draw effect).


Que, 6-3 isn't bad, you managed to play to a win and in and thats always good. Starting in 2016 your consistent 6-3 should be enough to make day 2 according to the GP updates announcement. I think we may have me before at a tournament but I'm honestly not sure. I know I've met a few other Dredge players at tournaments but I've never really exchanged usernames or anything.

Well considering I already had 2 byes my performance wasn’t stellar. But I did have a reasonable chance to day 2. The odds don’t always fall in your favor.




2.) Que, your lists generally run 8 rainbow lands + 4 coliseums. Do you, or people who run a similar configuration, find problems with keeping hands with 1 land, get that land wasteland'd t1, and then unable to play a t2 draw spell enabling fat dredging? In this scenario do you dredge at draw step, or keep drawing until you find another land?

That scenario certainly does suck. I would say that it depends. If you know that Slow Dredging is not going to get the job done against XYZ deck then try to draw until you find an LED or a land. If you’ve already cast a Faithless Looting/Careful study your first turn you’ve already dug 2 cards deeper in your deck so your chances to find land get better.

I haven’t had much time to gather my thoughts so I’ll have to do a cliff notes version of the games. I feel that I’m better served answering specific questions on matchups so just let me know if you guys have any.

Round 1: BYE
Round 2: BYE
Round 3: Andrew C. w/ NicFit Scapeshift
Game 1. He didn’t have much interaction so eventually succumbs to zombie/ichorid beats.
Game 2. Gets out an early Scavenging Ooze that takes over the game.
Game 3. We go to time and he almost stalls long enough to get the draw after he top decks a fresh Scooze. He managed to Pyroclasm and Deed away and earlier onslaught of zombies, but I’m able to get it on turn 5 of time with a few zombies and Grave Troll on the board.

Round 4: Seth Manfield w/ Infect
Game 1. He doesn’t interact and I’m able to get the concession after I cast Therapy with a loaded yard.
Game 2. He combos me before I do anything relevant. He casts an Invigorate and berserk and I’m dead.
Game 3. I mull to 4. I don’t have enough resources after he spell pierces an outlet and then fluster storms another. ;___;

Round 5 John H. w/ Infect
Game 1. He doesn’t interact and I get there.
Against Infect I feel you just have to go combo. In that sense I mean running the Lotus Petals out of the board alongside your extra DR and target/targets; ideally Elesh Norn. The Petals will allow you to power out dredges. Don’t bother too much with bogging your deck down with firestorm and abrupt decay. Unless of course you suspect Cage and you need an out.
Game 2. I run out an early Petal that allows me to play around a daze he had. I careful study into a couple of dredgers. On my next turn i run out a coliseum and I’m able to bin a good chunk of my GY. I DR an Iona naming Green and receive the concession.

Round 6: Jesus I. w/ Jund
Game 1. He doesn’t have DRS and I’m able to out value his deck after generating a few zombies and blowing up his hand.
Game 2. I abrupt decay an early Confidant for fear of all the extra cards. I also Abrupt a goyf to alleviate pressure. Eventually I’m able to find a few Ichorid to go alongside a couple of bridges to start generating zombies.

Round 7: Ryan w/ Lands
Game 1. I cabal therapy and he allows it to resolve. I know that if he had Crop Rotation he would have used it seeing as he had the mana available, however, for whatever reason he doesn’t and I still follow protocol and name it. It turns out he had two in his hand! He doesn’t have much game going on after that and eventually concedes.
Game 2. He Crop Rotations into a Bojuka Bog that takes out about 1/3 of my library I had already binned. I sandbaged a dredger and a faithless looting. I cast the faithless and draw an LED. I bin the Dredger drop the LED and crack it to flashback the looting and dredge a good amount of my deck again. Eventually I hit a few Narcos and DR into an Iona naming Green. He finds a Tabernacle and he wastes 1 of my 2 lands, but he doesn’t have an active Loam. On my turn I pay for Iona to remain in play and recur Ichorids on my upkeep (which avoid the Tabernacle trigger all together!!) and lay the beats. I do this over a couple of turns and win the game.

Round 8: Samuel F. w Shardless BUG
Game 1. Brick on Dredgers
Game 2. Unfavorable dredges (bridges and Ichorids on bottom half of deck).

Round 9: Erich Frolich w/ ANT
Game 1. Unfavorable dredges.
Game 2. Mull to 4. Get storm’d out on turn 1. ;____; Got a nod:https://twitter.com/efropoker/status/663217447084814336

The whole event was fun though. I feel that the deck is still strong despite the varience. You can absolutely spike a tournament if your opponent is not prepared both by having an appropriate sideboard as well as knowledge of how your deck works.

mistercakes
11-15-2015, 08:30 AM
street wraith has been really effective for the games I've had it. it's also nice to have another ichorid target. being able to draw at instant speed helps, but I think the benefits of the card are well known at this point.

i don't know the main deck well enough to remember what those slots are traditionally used for... I think careful study?

if that's the case it depends on how much daze is being played. careful study is a better card but can be countered and doesn't have any tricks.

street wraith also makes the deck a bit faster and can help better turn 1s if you have to therapy.

draugr
11-16-2015, 02:52 AM
Hey folks, I'm having trouble justifying the inclusion of Lotus Petal in my sideboard. For refrence, my sideboard looks like:

3x Firestorm
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Nature's Claim
2x City of Brass
2x Dread Return
1x Ashen Rider
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

and the complete list can be found here (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/09-11-15-yXZ-dredge/).

In what match-ups do you board Lotus Petal in, and what do you take out for it? Moreover, what cards do you board in conjunction with the Petals? I imagine the popular answer is going to be Abrupt Decay (which I'm using City of Brass for that purpose). I'm hoping to tease out stories of how people have used it for acceleration, and to understand what people take out for that extra boost in speed.

Thanks!

vieko
11-16-2015, 05:54 PM
I'm hoping to tease out stories of how people have used it for acceleration, and to understand what people take out for that extra boost in speed

I have been running 4 petals mainboard instead of 4 rainbow lands for the better part of 2015. It leads to scorching fast turn-ones (two cantrips on my first turn, yes please!), laughs in the face of Daze and just seems better than a second land by turn two (considering we want mana early and hardly every again). On game two, I swap two rainbow lands for 2 Gemstone Caverns: play a cavern on your first upkeep, tap for mana at the end of your turn one and Firestorm or Claim your DRS or Cage... not often a thing but when it happens, the dismay on your opponent's face after mulling to 4 for their hate... priceless :)

The list I ran in Seattle:

14 MANA
4 Lotus Petal
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Mana Confluence

14 DISCARD / DRAW
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Faithless Looting
3 Breakthrough
3 Careful Study

12 DREDGE
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug

9 RECUR / SAC / DISCARD
4 Narcomoeba
3 Ichorid
2 Putrid Imp

6 EFFECTS
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dread Return

4 DISRUPT
4 Cabal Therapy

1 TARGET
1 Flame-Kin Zealot

SIDEBOARD
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Nature's Claim
3 Firestorm
2 Gemstone Caverns
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

DECKSTATS: http://deck.tk/0dtC8tiu

slave
11-16-2015, 08:12 PM
Let me ask you this. How often do you use your lands outside of the first two turns during your game 1's?
Fair question.
Not that often. I'm usually happy with just a single land, as I rarely use it after the first 2 turns in game1.
I usually find I go all out on game1 in my first turn as we're going for all out speed, so I'll have no reason to hold back my breakthrough's etc. and just go for it.
On game2 and 3 however, opponent dependant of course, I'll often side in Firestorm's.....


I have been running 4 petals mainboard instead of 4 rainbow lands for the better part of 2015. It leads to scorching fast turn-ones...
Huh! I like that idea. I might give that a crack.

How has it fared for you against opponents running taxers and/or heavy counter?

vieko
11-16-2015, 09:58 PM
How has it fared for you against opponents running taxers and/or heavy counter?

You navigate the match as you would normally... just faster: I tend to play aggressively even if I don't know what I'm up against (after all, I want to beat you right there and then):

Will feign no land and cast-sacrifice an LED to get through counters, then land + petal into cantrips and go nuts.
Will hold land, play petal into Faithless / Study to have it countered and then drop land, LED... etc.
Coliseum into Study, discard Troll, pass turn, drop petal, activate Coliseum... pretty slick.
Firestorm does wonders against all creature tax, if no firestorm, be faster than them.
Moon, 3Sphere, Chalice... proceed as you would, now you have petals too.


:)

PS: Much like Que has mentioned many times before, you need to have the stomach to play this deck... when variance gets you, it blows. When you are drawing hot... nothing feels quite like it.

mistercakes
11-17-2015, 08:46 PM
vieko, did you post a report on how you did at the GP?

i'm trying different builds, and want to give yours a go next. i can write up some matchups and games for what goes on with modo.

-rob

edit: was looking at your list some more...what kind of metagame would justify having 4 ichorids? i feel like they grind out a lot of matches, but i can understand it's not a very fast card, which doesn't mesh well with the petals plan. just looking for your experience on that.

vieko
11-18-2015, 10:06 AM
vieko, did you post a report on how you did at the GP?
I haven't posted a report... just mentioned that my experience was similar to Que's and that I had very fast turn-one kills.

My most memorable loss:

Narco on field, multiple Bridges on yard, Dredgers, no Therapies yet, all set for a potential win next turn...
He casts Death's Shadow at 20 life, Bridges exile, delves Tombstalker and casts a giant Tarmo... yah... things get nasty really quick.
Next turn, I'm playing more conservatively, Putrid Imp + land on field, bridges + dredgers + cantrips on hand, end of his turn I proceed to discard for a prime kill on mine...
He Surgically Extracts bridges, he surgically extracts Dredgers, Liliana makes an appearance with Tombstalker, next turn: double Tarmos... yah :)


My most memorable win:

Win die roll, degenerate dredging leads to: 4 Narcos on field, all Bridges and all Therapies on yard, move to dismantle his hand... he scoops...
Blind-side Iona, mull to 6 (Petal, Coliseum, LED, Breakthrough, Stinker, Troll), Scry another Petal... he plays Mountain and passes turn...
Tease-cast LED, no response (YES!), Coliseum into Study, Dredgers to yard, Petals to field into Breakthrough, priority is held and LED breaks... Iona lands on red that turn, he's on Burn... I feel dirty.


ICHORIDS
I used to run 4 Ichorids... she was typically exiled to bring one of her sisters to play so I prefer double Putrid instead: they are discard outlets, beaters and Ichorid feeders. Do let me know what your experience is online with my list, I sold online collection a while back so haven't experience that meta for quite some time.

:)

mistercakes
11-19-2015, 12:27 AM
played a few more matches tonight. doesn't really feel like dredge has a decent meta on magic online. playing vs deathrite shaman almost every match. there's some miracles online, and i feel comfortable vs them, but the rest of the matches are pretty lopsided. only other decks i've played without deathrite have been past in flames storm decks.

thoughts? keep playing?

jimmythegreek
11-19-2015, 07:30 PM
Has a quad-laser list minus the pimp's adding 4 wraiths and substituting confluences adding4 petals been discussed yet? I have an I.q this weekend and I'm thinking of going with this list. Gold fishing has seemed promising although with a new list I'd love some help on a sideboard. I'm assuming miracles, storm, deathblade and others will be present.
Thanks.

birdbrains
11-20-2015, 06:56 AM
Joe, it was good to see you and Cody at the GP!

I don't have a report for the GP, but I ended up doing fairly similar to Que, starting with two byes and losing the win and in to day 2 on some really, really bad beats. But I bought into Dredge on MODO, and have been doing pretty well in some daily events, so I figured I'd start writing them up. I'm also looking into getting streaming to work if anyone is interested in watching some Dredge dailies.

Round 1 - Sneak and Show

G1 on the play: I open with City of Brass, Putrid Imp and 2 LED. He plays a Volcanic Island, and passes. I dredge a lot of cards on turn 2 by chaining some Faithless Lootings, and he scoops before I can see anything else.

Board: +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Iona, +1 Dread Return; -2 Putrid Imp, -1 LED, -1 Breakthrough

G2 on the draw: I keep an okay hand, but he plays Cage on his turn 1. I ditch some dredgers and start dredging, but don't hit anything. He had kept a one lander, but drew into another Cage and then Sneak Attack eventually while I keep not seeing any Chain of Vapors.

G3 on the play: I loot a couple times in the first two turns, while he plays a couple of lands. On my turn 3, I therapy for Show and Tell, revealing a Show, 2 Emrakul and a Ponder. Ichorid beats start coming while he cantrips a bunch. After a couple turns, and 4 cantrips from him, the Ichorids and zombies close up the game.

1-0


Round 2 - Storm

Game 1 on the play: I play a Putrid Imp turn 1, and pass. On his turn, he probes me twice, the passes without playing a land. I discard Stinkweed on my upkeep, and dredge a bit. I Cabal Therapy him for Dark Ritual, revealing Therapy, Tutor, 2 LED and a Ponder. Flashback Therapy for LED, and he scoops.

Board: +1 Iona, +1 Dread Return, +2 Lotus Petal; -2 Putrid Imp, -1 Thug, -1 Ichorid

Game 2 on the draw: I mull into Careful Study, Coliseum, land, Grave-Troll and a Therapy, and he Duresses the Study on his first turn. I draw a Street Wraith, Therapy myself and Dredge. Turn 2, he cantrips, and I bring back an Ichorid and crack the Coliseum, digging pretty deep. I don't hit any Grave-Trolls, but the next turn, I bring back some Ichorids, and Dread Return a Street Wraith. He casts Surgical on Bridge in response to the triggers, but I'm able to rip his hand apart and kill him the next turn with the horde.

2-0


Round 3 - RUG Delver

Game 1 on the play: I start off quickly again with a 2x LED + Loot + Dredger hand, getting a fast scoop from the opponent when I trigger a Narcomoeba with a Therapy in the yard.

Board: -4 LED, -3 Breakthrough; +3 Abrupt Decay, +3 Lotus Petal, +1 Mana Confluence

Game 2 on the draw: He gets a turn 1 Cage, followed by a couple quick Goyfs. I try to loot my way into an Abrupt Decay and some rainbow lands, but fail to find anything relevant.

Game 3 on the play: I get started quickly with some Ichorid beats. He lands a Needle on his turn 2, shutting off my Coliseum, but I'm able to loot into a 10/10 Grave-Troll backed up by some zombies. He has no way to deal with the Troll and dies a turn later.

3-0


Round 4 - Shardless BUG

Game 1 on the draw: I keep a Pimp, some Lootings and an LED, and put some cards in my graveyard for the first couple turns. He plays a turn 2 Goyf and passes. I Therapy on my turn for something, revealing Force, Abrupt Decay, Pulse and 2 Wastelands. I don't have any more Therapies, but he chooses to Decay my Imp, then pulse my zombies, leaving my Bridges in the yard. Over the next two turns, I'm able to come back with Ichorids and the zombie horde to get the game.

Board: -4 LED, -3 Breakthrough, -2 Putrid Imp; +3 Lotus Petal, +3 Abrupt Decay, +1 Mana Confluence, +2 Firestorm

Game 2 on the draw: I keep Coliseum, Study, land, Decay, Looting, Pimp, and he goes Cage, pass. I play land, Loot, and hit Lotus Petal + Dredger and play the Pimp. He plays a turn 2 DRS, but only has one Green source. I'm able to Decay the Cage, and start getting some gas going, but he Cascades into another DRS, and eventually casts a third, closing me out of the game.

Game 3 on the play: I start with a looting, but don't hit much. Over the next couple turns, I get a little action, bringing back some Ichorids for zombies. He's able to get rid of my first bridge, though, and I don't hit another in the top half of my deck, and die a turn before I'm able to make a huge zombie army.

3-1

I've felt really well positioned, online and in paper, recently, with the main enemy being variance. I'm seeing a lot of Cage around, and a lot of lists running only 1-2 hate pieces.

As far as the discussion about 4 Petals replacing 4 rainbow lands, I feel like the amount of Game 1s where we want our lands to get 2+ activations is non-zero and enough to warrant leaving them in the board. I also think that because in our Game 2s and 3s we need our lands to last us 2+ activations, it's better to have the option to board into more impermanent mana sources than have to spend slots in the board on lands. The mainboard as is, with 12 lands is perfectly fine, speed wise for our game 1s against most of the format, and I prefer the option to increase our speed vs combo while also having some versatility to our boarding strategy in other matchups. Personally, I find that I'm often boarding in Petals to replace LED to bring the effective land count up to 14-15, while being able to lose the all-in factor of the LEDs.

I get the appeal of being able to go Land>Loot into LED>LED+Petal>go crazy, but what decks are able to handle 12-18 cards on turn 1 any better than they are 24+? There are a lot of hands with the 12 land set up that go 24+ on turn 1 anyway, while also being more resilient to whatever random happenings might occur.

Oestrus
11-20-2015, 10:38 AM
Very nice, BB! What does your list look like?

mistercakes
11-20-2015, 10:40 AM
Joe, it was good to see you and Cody at the GP!

I don't have a report for the GP, but I ended up doing fairly similar to Que, starting with two byes and losing the win and in to day 2 on some really, really bad beats. But I bought into Dredge on MODO, and have been doing pretty well in some daily events, so I figured I'd start writing them up. I'm also looking into getting streaming to work if anyone is interested in watching some Dredge dailies.

Round 1 - Sneak and Show

G1 on the play: I open with City of Brass, Putrid Imp and 2 LED. He plays a Volcanic Island, and passes. I dredge a lot of cards on turn 2 by chaining some Faithless Lootings, and he scoops before I can see anything else.

Board: +2 Chain of Vapor, +1 Iona, +1 Dread Return; -2 Putrid Imp, -1 LED, -1 Breakthrough

G2 on the draw: I keep an okay hand, but he plays Cage on his turn 1. I ditch some dredgers and start dredging, but don't hit anything. He had kept a one lander, but drew into another Cage and then Sneak Attack eventually while I keep not seeing any Chain of Vapors.

G3 on the play: I loot a couple times in the first two turns, while he plays a couple of lands. On my turn 3, I therapy for Show and Tell, revealing a Show, 2 Emrakul and a Ponder. Ichorid beats start coming while he cantrips a bunch. After a couple turns, and 4 cantrips from him, the Ichorids and zombies close up the game.

1-0


Round 2 - Storm

Game 1 on the play: I play a Putrid Imp turn 1, and pass. On his turn, he probes me twice, the passes without playing a land. I discard Stinkweed on my upkeep, and dredge a bit. I Cabal Therapy him for Dark Ritual, revealing Therapy, Tutor, 2 LED and a Ponder. Flashback Therapy for LED, and he scoops.

Board: +1 Iona, +1 Dread Return, +2 Lotus Petal; -2 Putrid Imp, -1 Thug, -1 Ichorid

Game 2 on the draw: I mull into Careful Study, Coliseum, land, Grave-Troll and a Therapy, and he Duresses the Study on his first turn. I draw a Street Wraith, Therapy myself and Dredge. Turn 2, he cantrips, and I bring back an Ichorid and crack the Coliseum, digging pretty deep. I don't hit any Grave-Trolls, but the next turn, I bring back some Ichorids, and Dread Return a Street Wraith. He casts Surgical on Bridge in response to the triggers, but I'm able to rip his hand apart and kill him the next turn with the horde.

2-0


Round 3 - RUG Delver

Game 1 on the play: I start off quickly again with a 2x LED + Loot + Dredger hand, getting a fast scoop from the opponent when I trigger a Narcomoeba with a Therapy in the yard.

Board: -4 LED, -3 Breakthrough; +3 Abrupt Decay, +3 Lotus Petal, +1 Mana Confluence

Game 2 on the draw: He gets a turn 1 Cage, followed by a couple quick Goyfs. I try to loot my way into an Abrupt Decay and some rainbow lands, but fail to find anything relevant.

Game 3 on the play: I get started quickly with some Ichorid beats. He lands a Needle on his turn 2, shutting off my Coliseum, but I'm able to loot into a 10/10 Grave-Troll backed up by some zombies. He has no way to deal with the Troll and dies a turn later.

3-0


Round 4 - Shardless BUG

Game 1 on the draw: I keep a Pimp, some Lootings and an LED, and put some cards in my graveyard for the first couple turns. He plays a turn 2 Goyf and passes. I Therapy on my turn for something, revealing Force, Abrupt Decay, Pulse and 2 Wastelands. I don't have any more Therapies, but he chooses to Decay my Imp, then pulse my zombies, leaving my Bridges in the yard. Over the next two turns, I'm able to come back with Ichorids and the zombie horde to get the game.

Board: -4 LED, -3 Breakthrough, -2 Putrid Imp; +3 Lotus Petal, +3 Abrupt Decay, +1 Mana Confluence, +2 Firestorm

Game 2 on the draw: I keep Coliseum, Study, land, Decay, Looting, Pimp, and he goes Cage, pass. I play land, Loot, and hit Lotus Petal + Dredger and play the Pimp. He plays a turn 2 DRS, but only has one Green source. I'm able to Decay the Cage, and start getting some gas going, but he Cascades into another DRS, and eventually casts a third, closing me out of the game.

Game 3 on the play: I start with a looting, but don't hit much. Over the next couple turns, I get a little action, bringing back some Ichorids for zombies. He's able to get rid of my first bridge, though, and I don't hit another in the top half of my deck, and die a turn before I'm able to make a huge zombie army.

3-1

I've felt really well positioned, online and in paper, recently, with the main enemy being variance. I'm seeing a lot of Cage around, and a lot of lists running only 1-2 hate pieces.

As far as the discussion about 4 Petals replacing 4 rainbow lands, I feel like the amount of Game 1s where we want our lands to get 2+ activations is non-zero and enough to warrant leaving them in the board. I also think that because in our Game 2s and 3s we need our lands to last us 2+ activations, it's better to have the option to board into more impermanent mana sources than have to spend slots in the board on lands. The mainboard as is, with 12 lands is perfectly fine, speed wise for our game 1s against most of the format, and I prefer the option to increase our speed vs combo while also having some versatility to our boarding strategy in other matchups. Personally, I find that I'm often boarding in Petals to replace LED to bring the effective land count up to 14-15, while being able to lose the all-in factor of the LEDs.

I get the appeal of being able to go Land>Loot into LED>LED+Petal>go crazy, but what decks are able to handle 12-18 cards on turn 1 any better than they are 24+? There are a lot of hands with the 12 land set up that go 24+ on turn 1 anyway, while also being more resilient to whatever random happenings might occur.

hey bird -

do you mind sharing your list? are you only on 2 firestorm in sb, and thanks for the sb'ing. i can see that i'm still very inexperienced with sideboarding as i'm siding out too many cards at a time.

-rob

birdbrains
11-20-2015, 01:24 PM
I'm playing the same list I ran at the GP, which is a modified Quadlazer build, with one exception.

4 Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed
4 Thug
4 Narco
4 Ichorid
2 Street Wraith
2 Putrid Imp
4 Therapy
4 Bridge
4 LED
4 Careful Study
4 Looting
3 Breakthrough
1 Dread Return
4 City of Brass
4 Coliseum
4 Gemstone

SB:
3 Decay
3 Petal
2 Firestorm
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Mana Confluence
1 Iona
1 Dread Return
1 Ray of Revelation
1 Ashen Rider

At the GP I ran 3 firestorm 2 Surgical over the Rider and CoV, but after punting miserably against lands, I wanted something that could deal with a Marit Lage token. They also function well against Sneak and Show. Cutting firestorm #3 was a budget choice just because I didn't want to spend more than $200 in one go, but I'll be picking the third up in the next week.

Que
11-20-2015, 01:39 PM
Joe, it was good to see you and Cody at the GP!

I don't have a report for the GP, but I ended up doing fairly similar to Que, starting with two byes and losing the win and in to day 2 on some really, really bad beats. But I bought into Dredge on MODO, and have been doing pretty well in some daily events, so I figured I'd start writing them up. I'm also looking into getting streaming to work if anyone is interested in watching some Dredge dailies.


Good seeing you too. How much was the Deck on MODO? just curious.

Also I like the list ;D

EDIT: I realized I didn't get to use any of my CoV at the GP. I'll still leave em in the board for now see whats up. :/

birdbrains
11-20-2015, 02:00 PM
Mtggoldfish lists the deck for like $225, but I was able to shave a few bucks by shopping around and picking up foils where they were cheaper.

The chains definitely feel better in those slots than the surgicals did for me. They're just a lot more flexible, and deal with some problematic matchups fairly well. I might bring back one surgical, in place of the Ashen Rider, as an out to loam shenanigans.

mistercakes
11-20-2015, 11:58 PM
would you guys be interested in having a slack channel for dredge players?

it's a good place to have better real time chat if someone is streaming and it's easier to use over mobile.

vieko
11-21-2015, 06:12 PM
would you guys be interested in having a slack channel for dredge players?

Make this happen!

jimmythegreek
11-21-2015, 10:20 PM
First place (split with opponent) I.q. 60 man tournament at gaming etc.
Miracles 1-2
Maverick 2-0
Elves 2-0
12post 2-1
Miracles 2-0
Lands 2-1

Ended up seeded first overall
First opponent scooped as he had other prior engagements.
Death and taxes 2-0
Split in the finals to grixis delver. Opponent gave me the win as he already had an invite. I always say I'd play it out given the opportunity but my opponent and I were smoked.

mistercakes
11-21-2015, 10:37 PM
i made a slack for dredge players that want to have better communication. if you PM me the email address you plan on using for it, i'll go ahead and add you to it.

-Rob

birdbrains
11-22-2015, 01:49 AM
I downloaded that slack deal, my email is mhall1989@gmail.com if you want to add me to it.

I'm looking at getting streaming set up in the next week or so. If I can wake up early enough to get things figured out, I might do a trial run tomorrow afternoon at the 12:30 or 4 pm dailies.

slave
11-22-2015, 06:26 PM
First place (split with opponent) I.q. 60 man tournament at gaming etc.
Well done!
What side were you running? And do you see any changes that might be needed?

meffeo
11-22-2015, 08:09 PM
i made a slack for dredge players that want to have better communication. if you PM me the email address you plan on using for it, i'll go ahead and add you to it.

-Rob

Added. Thanks for the effort, mate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

jimmythegreek
11-22-2015, 08:29 PM
Good evening (said in a Count Dracula voice) Slave and fellow grave-enthusiasts.
Be forewarned and please don't expect a report as I can't comprehend taking notes plus playing the game.
My main-deck was a tried and true quad-laser minus an imp and breakthrough adding city of brass along with a single dread return. The deck ran super well and seemed to avoid the variance bug for most the day. Putrid imp was awesome on the play when it resolved allowing for busted turn twos often incorporating my favorite card breakthrough. For all the talk against pimp he totally served his purpose and then some. My singleton dread return was excellent allowing multiple 12/12 and 11/11 trolls to wreak havoc on opponents weak boards. I'm throughly convinced that besides ashen rider no other singleton targets are necessary to run. Cabal therapy and led were the Mvps all day. What did I learn? We want to be fast and fast starts are what win most games.

Sideboard:
3 natures claim (did some work saving my ass maybe twice?)
4 leyline of the void (came in against lands and that's about it, all in all a good card though.)
2 unmask (no clue how these made it into my deck box.....out!)
1 ashen rider (never saw it but good none the less, lands is really popular on the east coast.)
3 firestorm (good against creatures and I think it has value being uncounterable.)
1 dread return (keep as I'm keeping rider in the board.)
1 Iona (meh, maybe dead weight?)

Biggest lesson learned was don't over board with this deck and make them have the hate. Best sideboard card, that's easy, natures claim. All in all the sideboard in dredge didn't really determine my wins, more often than not it was the dark art of dredge and being a good cabal therapist. I think Richard Feldman's approach as less is more was pretty spot on and if you haven't given his age-old article "the dark art of dredge-fu" a good read then I highly suggest it to every dredge enthusiast. Sorry for the super vague report, although any specific questions I may do better at answering.

Oestrus
11-22-2015, 11:14 PM
Congratulations, Jimmy!

mistercakes
11-23-2015, 12:06 PM
Good evening (said in a Count Dracula voice) Slave and fellow grave-enthusiasts.
Be forewarned and please don't expect a report as I can't comprehend taking notes plus playing the game.
My main-deck was a tried and true quad-laser minus an imp and breakthrough adding city of brass along with a single dread return. The deck ran super well and seemed to avoid the variance bug for most the day. Putrid imp was awesome on the play when it resolved allowing for busted turn twos often incorporating my favorite card breakthrough. For all the talk against pimp he totally served his purpose and then some. My singleton dread return was excellent allowing multiple 12/12 and 11/11 trolls to wreak havoc on opponents weak boards. I'm throughly convinced that besides ashen rider no other singleton targets are necessary to run. Cabal therapy and led were the Mvps all day. What did I learn? We want to be fast and fast starts are what win most games.

Sideboard:
3 natures claim (did some work saving my ass maybe twice?)
4 leyline of the void (came in against lands and that's about it, all in all a good card though.)
2 unmask (no clue how these made it into my deck box.....out!)
1 ashen rider (never saw it but good none the less, lands is really popular on the east coast.)
3 firestorm (good against creatures and I think it has value being uncounterable.)
1 dread return (keep as I'm keeping rider in the board.)
1 Iona (meh, maybe dead weight?)

Biggest lesson learned was don't over board with this deck and make them have the hate. Best sideboard card, that's easy, natures claim. All in all the sideboard in dredge didn't really determine my wins, more often than not it was the dark art of dredge and being a good cabal therapist. I think Richard Feldman's approach as less is more was pretty spot on and if you haven't given his age-old article "the dark art of dredge-fu" a good read then I highly suggest it to every dredge enthusiast. Sorry for the super vague report, although any specific questions I may do better at answering.

curious how you've been handling vs deathrite shaman decks? (mostly the delver kinds of decks, but also jund and elves)

would a 4th firestorm improve that matchup? i think i need quite a bit of work on sideboarding. i generally take out breakthroughs as a no brainer vs non combo, but i'm curious as to some other decisions on what to take out to improve those other matchups.

i think shardless tends to be one of the more difficult matchups for me. i'm not sure if this is due to lack of testing, or because it is legitimately very challenging.

drs, other potential graveyard hate, counters, discard.

-Rob

also if you want access to the dredge slack lemme know the email addy if i haven't added it already.

vieko
11-23-2015, 01:44 PM
also if you want access to the dredge slack lemme know the email addy if i haven't added it already.

Hey Cakes,

Sent you a PM with my email address :) Drop me a line with slack addy when you get a chance.

jimmythegreek
11-23-2015, 02:43 PM
curious how you've been handling vs deathrite shaman decks? (mostly the delver kinds of decks, but also jund and elves)

would a 4th firestorm improve that matchup? i think i need quite a bit of work on sideboarding. i generally take out breakthroughs as a no brainer vs non combo, but i'm curious as to some other decisions on what to take out to improve those other matchups.

i think shardless tends to be one of the more difficult matchups for me. i'm not sure if this is due to lack of testing, or because it is legitimately very challenging.

drs, other potential graveyard hate, counters, discard.

-Rob

also if you want access to the dredge slack lemme know the email addy if i haven't added it already.
The only time deathrite shaman threatened anything was against elves with him on the play. On my turn one I looted and on his turn two he was able to remove both my dredgers through some trickery with Drs and that elf that bounces and un taps permanents. The shaman never posed a threat otherwise as we are too fast for that guy more often than not. I don't have a lot of experience playing against shard-less or Jund. Again, I don't like to overboard with this deck as its initial strategy is often potent enough. I tend to side out slower cards versus faster decks and vice versa. Firestorm is a good card I just never see it when I board it in strangely enough but I'm definetly leaning to a sideboard with more utility and less win-more cards aka dread return targets. Cards like darkblast can easily replace a thug and have an effect on the game state without disrupting our strategy.Another card I'm thinking of adding to my board is a single chain of vapor as multiple times my only land was coliseum with claim in hand. Sometimes game two I'll opt for a faster start and board in nothing as I'm not sure what hate they are running. Counter spells really chap my balls as often we are forced to keep hands with one loot effect. I've become a fan of hands with multiple lands and multiple draw spells (even without a dredger) especially against counter heavy decks, don't be afraid to keep these hands.

Gui
11-23-2015, 04:57 PM
Hi there, long time I don't post anything serious, but I want to share something...

I had an idea while reading the remake of Manaless dredge primer. Prepare yourself, wall of text incoming:

The "idea" I'm talking about is using Serum Powder in LED Dredge.

I've checked for previous tests with it on every dredge subforum here in TS, but idea was quickly dismissed. I'm a software developer, and I had to test it in my simulator, and it looks very good. Keep on reading for the result.

Generally, people consider serum to be bad in Legacy because it can't be as strong as it is in Vintage. This was why people never went ahead testing it - they believed that Powder can fetch Bazaar of Baghdad in vintage, and since all they need is BoB on opening hand, Serum is ok. But in legacy, since you don't have 1 card to go for when mulliganing, it makes no sense.

The thing is, you really are not looking for one card in your starter hand in legacy Dredge, but you are indeed looking for a starting seven that is combined, and don't intend to be drawing for your key cards after that. It is, then, a matter of math. the chance of having your combo pieces in your initial hand is calculable.

What you are looking for:
- dredger;
- discard;
- draw spell;
- land

Or, in case you have LED, you can look for:
- dredger
- LED
- Coliseum or Faithless looting

So all you need to do is to calculate the chance of hitting these initial hands; Obviously, this math is awful hard and I don't recommend it. What I can do, tho, is brute-force simulation of opening hands (as in 1000000 hands in a few seconds), and check how many times I got above hands. Actually, I can also simulate mulligans with it, and I can even go down to mulligan to 3. I can even simulate for DDD strategy 50% of the time if I want, although I kept results here without it, since it applies for any version of dredge anyways, and only accounts positively.

Before Looting inception, my LEDless dredge list had the chance of 67% to open a combo hand. It was terrible, but still, dredge lists had 4 Tireless Tribe and 4 Putrid Imp by that time, and combo hands were but a b-plan.

When Looting came, my LEDless dredge list reached 70.7% chance to open a combo hand. Yet, LED dredge surpassed LEDless because it was "much faster", which actually meant it had a higher chance to open a combo hand. But how much was that, which made LEDless list obsolete? Must have been a very high chance gain, right?

LED dredge, Quadlaser list, using Faithless Looting, actually has 76% chance to open a combo hand. 5% increase, and yet, so sensible by players that it became the standard.

Now, back to Serum Powder. I tested it. Implemented its optional mulligan. The result:

List Chance of combo hand
Gui's LEDless: 70.7%
Gui's LEDless powder: 84.0%
Gui's LED list: 74.7%
Gui's LED powder: 86.1%
Quadlaser: 76.3%
Quadlaser powder: 88.3%


Serum Powder actually gives us 12%~14% increase in chances!

What this means is:
70% means you'll miss it once for every 3.33 games you play
76% means you'll miss it once for every 4.1 games you play
88% means you'll miss it once for every 8.33 games you play

I mean... this is twice as much stability to hit the combo than it had without. Missing once out of 3 can mean a round down in score.

Well, this is the math I wanted to share, but here's my suggested list, round and clean, for a very high chance to combo, and still featuring the least winmore DR return target: (86,1% list)

4 therapy
10 rainbow
12 dredger
4 careful
4 looting
4 cephalid
4 LED
4 powder
4 narco
4 bridge
3 Ichorid
2 DR
1 Iona

I believe this to be a really strong list, able to push dredge one tier above where it is right now. I don't really have a way to put it into prove, tourneys and such, so there was no reason for me to post in TS, since it would be a lost battle against flames and nay-sayers. But if you want to give it a try, feel free.

Just don't forget that whatever you take from the list that is part of initial combo hands will hurt its chances to combo, so, avoid stuff like 3DR + 2 target. I much prefer Iona, which closes 90% of the games she comes in anyways, and hurts the deck much less.

I think this is worthy the debate, and some tests. I wanted to share this because I really think it can help improve Dredge.

vieko
11-23-2015, 05:37 PM
But if you want to give it a try, feel free.

Beautiful :) I'm gonna give this a go and post results.

mistercakes
11-23-2015, 06:40 PM
Hi there, long time I don't post anything serious, but I want to share something...

I had an idea while reading the remake of Manaless dredge primer. Prepare yourself, wall of text incoming:

The "idea" I'm talking about is using Serum Powder in LED Dredge.

I've checked for previous tests with it on every dredge subforum here in TS, but idea was quickly dismissed. I'm a software developer, and I had to test it in my simulator, and it looks very good. Keep on reading for the result.

Generally, people consider serum to be bad in Legacy because it can't be as strong as it is in Vintage. This was why people never went ahead testing it - they believed that Powder can fetch Bazaar of Baghdad in vintage, and since all they need is BoB on opening hand, Serum is ok. But in legacy, since you don't have 1 card to go for when mulliganing, it makes no sense.

The thing is, you really are not looking for one card in your starter hand in legacy Dredge, but you are indeed looking for a starting seven that is combined, and don't intend to be drawing for your key cards after that. It is, then, a matter of math. the chance of having your combo pieces in your initial hand is calculable.

What you are looking for:
- dredger;
- discard;
- draw spell;
- land

Or, in case you have LED, you can look for:
- dredger
- LED
- Coliseum or Faithless looting

So all you need to do is to calculate the chance of hitting these initial hands; Obviously, this math is awful hard and I don't recommend it. What I can do, tho, is brute-force simulation of opening hands (as in 1000000 hands in a few seconds), and check how many times I got above hands. Actually, I can also simulate mulligans with it, and I can even go down to mulligan to 3. I can even simulate for DDD strategy 50% of the time if I want, although I kept results here without it, since it applies for any version of dredge anyways, and only accounts positively.

Before Looting inception, my LEDless dredge list had the chance of 67% to open a combo hand. It was terrible, but still, dredge lists had 4 Tireless Tribe and 4 Putrid Imp by that time, and combo hands were but a b-plan.

When Looting came, my LEDless dredge list reached 70.7% chance to open a combo hand. Yet, LED dredge surpassed LEDless because it was "much faster", which actually meant it had a higher chance to open a combo hand. But how much was that, which made LEDless list obsolete? Must have been a very high chance gain, right?

LED dredge, Quadlaser list, using Faithless Looting, actually has 76% chance to open a combo hand. 5% increase, and yet, so sensible by players that it became the standard.

Now, back to Serum Powder. I tested it. Implemented its optional mulligan. The result:

List Chance of combo hand
Gui's LEDless: 70.7%
Gui's LEDless powder: 84.0%
Gui's LED list: 74.7%
Gui's LED powder: 86.1%
Quadlaser: 76.3%
Quadlaser powder: 88.3%


Serum Powder actually gives us 12%~14% increase in chances!

What this means is:
70% means you'll miss it once for every 3.33 games you play
76% means you'll miss it once for every 4.1 games you play
88% means you'll miss it once for every 8.33 games you play

I mean... this is twice as much stability to hit the combo than it had without. Missing once out of 3 can mean a round down in score.

Well, this is the math I wanted to share, but here's my suggested list, round and clean, for a very high chance to combo, and still featuring the least winmore DR return target: (86,1% list)

4 therapy
10 rainbow
12 dredger
4 careful
4 looting
4 cephalid
4 LED
4 powder
4 narco
4 bridge
3 Ichorid
2 DR
1 Iona

I believe this to be a really strong list, able to push dredge one tier above where it is right now. I don't really have a way to put it into prove, tourneys and such, so there was no reason for me to post in TS, since it would be a lost battle against flames and nay-sayers. But if you want to give it a try, feel free.

Just don't forget that whatever you take from the list that is part of initial combo hands will hurt its chances to combo, so, avoid stuff like 3DR + 2 target. I much prefer Iona, which closes 90% of the games she comes in anyways, and hurts the deck much less.

I think this is worthy the debate, and some tests. I wanted to share this because I really think it can help improve Dredge.

very interesting.

for all

TL:DR -> drop breakthrough, try serum powder.

Thanks for the help! I will test it too on magic online.

slave
11-23-2015, 09:09 PM
... I'm talking about is using Serum Powder in LED Dredge.
Quadlaser powder: 88.3%
I believe this to be a really strong list.
I've tried Powder in Manaless quite a few times, and I would argue it's a worthy choice there.
Here in LED land I'm not sure, never given it much of a test out in the human world, but why not eh?
I have a set, so I'll sleeve them up next time I take the deck out for a legacy night (if I remember)
Another thing I'm looking forward to trying out is running Lotus Petals instead of some lands in the main. I like a broken start...

Looking at your list, I have a few questions;
A lack of black creatures, ie Putrid Imp/Street Wraith. Not running any of them? Why?
Also, 10 rainbow lands, 4 Cephalid. Was there a reason for this number, or just preference?



Sideboard:
3 natures claim (did some work saving my ass maybe twice?)
4 leyline of the void (came in against lands and that's about it, all in all a good card though.)
2 unmask (no clue how these made it into my deck box.....out!)
1 ashen rider (never saw it but good none the less, lands is really popular on the east coast.)
3 firestorm (good against creatures and I think it has value being uncounterable.)
1 dread return (keep as I'm keeping rider in the board.)
1 Iona (meh, maybe dead weight?)

Biggest lesson learned was don't over board with this deck and make them have the hate. Best sideboard card, that's easy, natures claim. All in all the sideboard in dredge didn't really determine my wins, more often than not it was the dark art of dredge and being a good cabal therapist.
Couldn't agree more about "Don't over board", but I'm always wary of hate. I hate top-decking for 5 minutes until they kill me.

My fave's are usually Claim & Firestorm.
I've been running a couple Wear/Tear to go with 4 Claims lately, and I've been liking it a lot.

mistercakes
11-23-2015, 10:01 PM
i've tried a few games already with serum and it's very explosive. because the deck is looking to do really unfair things on t1, i'd recommend cutting 4 rainbow lands for 4 lotus petal. this will allow crazier turns when you have a looting effect + cephalid coliseum.

unless if there are advantages to running 10 rainbow lands over 6 + 4 petal

Gui
11-24-2015, 06:50 AM
I've tried Powder in Manaless quite a few times, and I would argue it's a worthy choice there.
Here in LED land I'm not sure, never given it much of a test out in the human world, but why not eh?
I have a set, so I'll sleeve them up next time I take the deck out for a legacy night (if I remember)
Another thing I'm looking forward to trying out is running Lotus Petals instead of some lands in the main. I like a broken start...

Looking at your list, I have a few questions;
A lack of black creatures, ie Putrid Imp/Street Wraith. Not running any of them? Why?
Also, 10 rainbow lands, 4 Cephalid. Was there a reason for this number, or just preference?


The reason for not having the black creatures are that I was tweaking with quadlaser list and trying for the highest chance of opening a hand with the combo. That's the same reason why I have 10 rainbow lands, since they also enter the equation (I believe the 11th rainbow tied in consistency with other possible changes, so this is why 10). There are more ways to discard a dredger than to generate mana, and there are also more ways to draw. One can obviously use them, but at the cost of some consistency, as the rainbows perform better. I also like having more lands for extra sideboard consistency, so all the best, in my view.

The list can be tweaked, specially if you consider metagame, where having a Putrid can mean more than having the combo available. Just try your best to not cut dredgers, careful/looting, cephalid and rainbows. If you need to, start with rainbows (granted you are losing consistency).

Ronald Deuce
11-25-2015, 12:34 PM
Hadn't played this deck in a while, but I was messing around after a tournament on Sunday and dredged out a T1 Iona against someone playing Infect. Feels good, man.

I wouldn't recommend running more than 14 lands. Our consistency isn't stellar, but I've found it's reasonable to mulligan pretty hard and even to play a three-card hand with one land against non-blue opponents.

Alexorrr
11-25-2015, 06:53 PM
I'm really interested in Cakes work with serum powder. I'm currently working with an LEDless version of the deck, but am going to test with the powders and the four lotus petals and hopefully be able to share some success stories!

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mistercakes
11-26-2015, 11:16 PM
i will have a channel on the dredge slack where i will just post screenshots of the deck in action. unfortunately i think LED is an absolute must for this deck. if you're not playing LED, don't play serum powder. just play some safer version.

slave
11-27-2015, 01:40 AM
...unfortunately i think LED is an absolute must for this deck. if you're not playing LED, don't play serum powder. just play some safer version.
Sure, I'll agree with that, but only unfortunate if you don't already have them.:wink:

I took my list along to a casual legacy night at the local, about 18-20 players or so.
Went 3-1, with a bye to help out organisers. Missed out on boosters by a ducks nipple.
Won against Burn 2-0, Merfolk 2-0 & UW-Stoneforge-blades 2-1. Lost to UW-Miracles 1-2
I won every game1. The Merfolk player was playing a subpar list without Force, Miracles player seemed to topdeck exactly what he needed....

Overall I liked the Powders when I had them straight up and wanted to mull, and I like that it doesn't require you to do a full blown shuffle.
I used the mull feature of Serum Powder twice, and both times I ended up with a hand with another Serum Powder.
On both occasions I held that grip.
...But I disliked them when I had one in my hand with a hand I should keep, given it's a card that has no other purpose and has no synergy with the rest of the deck.
Given I had a very lucky night with my initial grip of 7, I feel like I'll need a few more outings with it to really get a proper read on it, as I feel the greatest weakness of the card will be when you're mulling down to below 6 cards.

Lotus Petal in the main was interesting.
List was 11 lands (4 Cephalid, 7 rainbow) + 3 Petals, for a total of 14 mana sources main. Another rainbow & petal in the side.
It was good when we have a rainbow + petal, bad when we only get a petal and our opponent is playing taxing.
I should also note it's not all that flexible with Cephalid as your only land in your grip.
Against the UW-Stoneforge, he was running Thalia which completely stopped me in one game as I couldn't pay the mana to cast anything, after popping it for an early Study. Overall I liked it for it's explosiveness, but I can't help but feel Street Wraith is almost filling the same job here, just with a different set of pro's/con's.

Alexorrr
11-27-2015, 04:16 AM
I agree with you mistercakes, I think LEDs are the way to go as well, and it's my goal in the next 6 months to get them.

I've been playing with two petals in the main, and replacing the SB slots with two Gemstone Mines, but that could also be incorrect. I'm not sure if it matters what rainbow land you replace them with, or if it's better to cut the amount of pain you take from mana confluence / city of brass.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Gui
11-27-2015, 05:26 AM
i will have a channel on the dredge slack where i will just post screenshots of the deck in action. unfortunately i think LED is an absolute must for this deck. if you're not playing LED, don't play serum powder. just play some safer version.

Actually, Serum Powder helps LEDless dredge as well. It won't get to the same chance, because LED increases the chances considerably too, but it will make LEDless dredge open combo hands more often than LED dredge without powder. The main difference being that LED can combo T1. In my view, LED is much more competitive due to the chance of T1 combos.

mistercakes
11-30-2015, 08:01 PM
Decklist:

4 faithless looting
3 breakthrough
3 careful study
2 putrid imp
2 street wraith
4 bridge from below
4 narcomoeba
4 cabal therapy
4 ichorid
4 troll
4 stinkweed
4 thug
1 dread return
4 coliseum
4 gemstone mine
1 mana confluence
4 lotus petal
4 led

sb

1 iona
1 elesh norn
1 ashen rider
1 dread return
3 nature's claim
3 firestorm
4 leyline of the void
1 gemstone caverns

r1 delver (on play)

g1 i keep an okay hand, but he gets there with a Delver and bolts me twice for the kill turn before I catch up.

g2 i get a pretty fast standard kill

g3 he turn 1 grafdiggers, I didn't bring in all nature's claims bc I assumed wrongfully that he was playing with deathrite. I had brought in 2 firestorm 1 nature's claim.

(he was on Canadian thresh)

r2 miracles (on play)

g1 normal stuff, nothing worth mentioninng

g2 lethal on board with attack, attack with enough so that his only out is Crack fetch and hit terminus. he shuffles and hits terminus and then rest in peace.

g3 he doesn't draw hate and I kill him with ichorid after a long game.


r4 Canadian threshold. (on play)

i don't recall too much of games 1 and 2,but game 3 involved casting cabal therapy with the known info:

I have 2 guys in play after therapy, with a third next turn I can reanimator elesh norn or iona.

his hand prior: bolt bolt brainstorm daze

he brainstorms in response. I name daze. he reveals fow wasteland, bolt, land

he kills me with delivers for exactly lethal as I would have needed to hit my last 2 narcomoebas. I had only 1 ichorid during mid game.

r4 burn. (on play)

g1 i go off on turn 1
g2 I iona on turn 3

r5 Esper stoneblade (on play)

g1 i go off on t1
g2 I go off on t1 (with a luck counter)

r6 death and taxes (on play)

g1 i go off t1 (he concedes before I see a card)
g2 I go off of turn 2

r7 eureka show (on draw)

g1 i hit his show and tell while he's holding show, Griselbrand, ugin.he draws show and tell the following turn and kills me the turn after.

g2 got there with beats. he had living wished for containment, but had to chump.

g3 he t3 containment priest and then when we fight back and forth. he draws another living wish and plays peacekeepers. I start drawing cards as my know out is to cast ashen rider. (I had street wraith in the deck, and storm player can figure out that line) I never drew enough mana sources and by the time I was close he had drawn too much counter magic.

r8 Esper stoneblade (on draw)

he goes t1 DrS. I play led. it resolves. then Crack to cast faithless looting. (I planned on playing DDD, but shaman made me want to rush it. he fow'd the faithless, and after a long game deathrite finally was accompanied by a monastery mentor.

g2 long game, I try firestorm but he fow'd. he messes up with surgical extraction and chooses to gamble by exiting faithless looting (he figured his mentor, DrS and tokens would deal with my bridges) 3 turns later ichorid and 6 zombies kill him.

g3 he plays island go. I choose to DDD grave troll. do this again and again (hoping to bait out a surgical, I had street wraith in hand)

he plays a Jace, and bounces my token. I have narco out. I try to firestorm my narco opponent and me, but he has force... again. we played it out for a few turns, but I succumbed to top much grave hate + DrS + mentor.

i dropped at 4-4 and thought it was a good run for a first time (although I have played a lot of modo)


tldr:
lose, win, win, lose, win, win, lose, lose

overall thoughts:

i really am still behind the lotus petal list. it has some inconsistency at times, but i prefer to win when my opponent plays a t1 deathrite shaman. (i watched the finals that Que had played vs a delver deck, and that 3rd game more or less is a good example of what the deck does turn 1)

i think in the next version of this list (been trying on modo), i will cut the 1 mana confluence and play a darkblast, cut 2 street wraith and play a dread return #2, and a flayer of the hatebound. -1 ichorid + 1 breakthrough.

i may cut the putrid imps all together to run the mana confluence again, and a careful study #4.

this hurts the deck vs grafdiggers cage and leyline of the void, but should ensure more game 1 wins unless if they have multiple counters.

slave
11-30-2015, 08:55 PM
i really am still behind the lotus petal list. it has some inconsistency at times, but i prefer to win when my opponent plays a t1 deathrite shaman.
...
i think in the next version of this list (been trying on modo), i will cut the 1 mana confluence and play a darkblast, cut 2 street wraith and play a dread return #2, and a flayer of the hatebound. -1 ichorid + 1 breakthrough.
Only running 3 Icky's I find works just fine, however I'd be careful cutting all your non-dredger food for your Icky's.
I keep going back to running a bare minimum of 3 of either Wraith and/or Pimp solely for this reason.
Don't forget that Deathrite Shaman is hopeless against Street Wraith.

Being a longtime Manaless player, I get your idea for Flayer of the Hatebound but I've never wanted it in LED-dredge.
Reason being, hitting 2 Dread Returns in the same turn (1st Flayer, 2nd GGT) is how you win the game with it, and that demands deck space to optimize that line of play.
Flayer works in Manaless because your graveyard is almost all creatures, but it's a bit different here in LED-dredge.
Feel free to test it out though, let us know how you go.

cchichy
12-09-2015, 08:41 AM
Hey guys, lost my last post ... I need some major help , im new to dredge, I was an omni guy and run affinity in modern... I see several verisons of dredge here ... I have parts for all of them ... I have a tourny dec 12 ... I know our local meta is grixis and lands ... Need a list and sideboard help until I figure this deck out

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Dice_Box
12-09-2015, 08:51 AM
Read the primer, Quads still my go to or go to tcdecks.net and look up Dredge.

cchichy
12-09-2015, 10:56 AM
I have been reading / watching everything I can ... Not much useful info for sideboards that I can fine its all seems different depending on the build

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Que
12-09-2015, 01:39 PM
I have been reading / watching everything I can ... Not much useful info for sideboards that I can fine its all seems different depending on the build

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

For Grixis I would run the Lotus Petal sideboard with either Nature's Claim or Abrupt Decay. They will try to tax you with cards like Spell Pierce and Daze. Having the Lotus Petals will help a lot in this situation and they put you on parity game 2.

For Lands I don't have much other than try to combo them out asap which is where the lotus petals come into play (again) along with something like Iona to turn off Green. I my experience you cannot afford to play around something like Crop Rotation which is the only card you should probably be naming with Cabal Therapy if they're tapped out. If you wait they will start to find their annoying pieces like Tabernacle and Maze of Ith to stop your zombies or giant Troll not to mention Bojuka Bog.

Also an out against Tabernacle has got to be Ichorid in that it misses the Tabernacle trigger completely and allows you to keep beating down even if you don't have any lands in play.

igri_is_a_bk
12-10-2015, 06:33 PM
Also an out against Tabernacle has got to be Ichorid in that it misses the Tabernacle trigger completely and allows you to keep beating down even if you don't have any lands in play.

The problem is that they will likely get Glacial Chasm before Tabernacle since it game over for us unless we have a DR work around, like Rider.

slave
12-11-2015, 04:08 AM
Okay, so I went along again last night to the local. Went 3-2
Beat Manaless Dredge (ha ha!), some Zombie-Combo deck and a Stasis deck running Horn of Greed and Swords.
I lost to BUG c/o counter, Ooze & DRS killing my action in games 2 & 3, after I won game1.
Other loss to Combo Elves who was just faster after I mulled into nothing in game1.

Not a very good turn out.
The Stasis deck was a new one for me, not seen anyone play Horn of Greed before. He combed out pretty fast but seemed to run out of gas, like he just didn't draw the right cards to make combo stick, maybe? I'm gonna need to research this deck!
The Zombie deck failed to fire and both times I just killed him with Therapies before he could do anything.
I have no idea what the deck was trying to do - he was cagey afterwards and didn't seem to want to talk much.:really: Meh

I ran no Serum Powder's, 3 P.imp, 2 Wraith, 3 Icky, 1 DR, 8 Rainbows, 4 Cephalids & 2 Petals main.
2 Petal and a Rainbow in the side, along with 3 Nature's CLaims, 2 Decays, 3 Firestorms, a DR, 2 Rider, 1 Iona.
Liking this list.


I know our local meta is grixis and lands ... Need a list and sideboard help ...
I'm not going to be adding much that the other guys have said.

I find a side is heavily dependant on what your list looks like main and what you expect to face.
For lands and Grixis, ^^^^ what they said.
Grixis can be tough as they can kill our Bridges quite easily, so I try to hold priority and think out my turns carefully to get maximum value from Bridge.

gibbousm
12-11-2015, 11:55 PM
Brought the deck to a 3-1 finish at this month's Legacy FNM which got me 4th place in standing.

Round 1: Enchantress; Turn 2 RIP both games. I had removal for it in game 2 but they had Enlightened Tutor to fetch a backup copy.
0-2
Round 2: UB Mill; What happens when a Mill deck fights a self-mill deck? I get out Iona on Black and overwhelm them with zombies. I went Black over Blue because I saw Reanimate, Unearth, and Haunting Echoes.
2-0
Round 3: Belcher; They fizzled game 1, Belched me out game 2, game 3 they made 8 goblins on turn 1 and I outraced them. It was closer than I'd have liked as I just didn't hit any Bridges which would have ended the game faster.
2-1
Round 4: Lands; Game 1 they had Tabernacle + Glacial Chasm and while I waited there was never a turn where they didn't have Chasm up. Game 2 I made a horde of zombies and a large GGT on turn 2 forcing them to have Chasm. They didn't. Game 3 I made a horde of zombies and a larger GGT forcing them to draw Chasm. They did. I dredged through the rest of my deck getting Ashen Rider out to kill their Chasm and swing with a personal record number of zombie tokens, 17, which matched the size of my Troll.
2-1

6-4 overall.

As you can, apart from the UB Mill deck it was a fairly rough night for me.
Other decks that were there that night were Miracles, BUG, Grixis, Elves, and a Stasis-Restore Balance brew. Other decks that show up often are RUG Delver, Aggro Loam, TES, and D&T.

I've been running the same main deck for a while, 3 Thug, 3 Breakthrough, 3 Putrid Imp, 1 DR, 1 Iona, 1 Darkblast, 4 of everything else.
The sideboard I went with was:
3 Leyline of the Void
3 Firestorm
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Whispmare
1 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn
1 Ashen Rider
1 Lotus Petal

The Lotus Petal I ran because I couldn't figure out a 15th card I wanted to run so I just went, "eh, it can cast me an extra spell on turn 1/2." I brought it in against Enchantress and Belcher hoping to get a bit more speed but never drew it.

Any suggestions on what I should run as the last card?
I'm thinking maybe a second Ashen Rider but I'm honestly not sure what I want in that spot.

slave
12-24-2015, 02:52 AM
I've been running the same main deck for a while, 3 Thug, 3 Breakthrough, 3 Putrid Imp, 1 DR, 1 Iona, 1 Darkblast, 4 of everything else.
The sideboard I went with was:
3 Leyline of the Void
3 Firestorm
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Whispmare
1 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn
1 Ashen Rider
1 Lotus Petal
Claims? I'm kinda surprised you have so few answers to RiP/Cage etc.
But looking at the plan you're going with, I'd consider either another Rider or an Iona. I find Iona is a sterling addition to shut down most decks, provided you can get past counter.

meffeo
01-08-2016, 01:54 PM
http://mythicspoiler.com/ogw/cards/naturalstate.html

Do we have a new baby boy? Goodbye Nature's claim?

Bobmans
01-08-2016, 05:51 PM
It does not take care of Leyline of the Void.

gibbousm
01-08-2016, 11:18 PM
Yeah, I've been trying to weigh the costs/benefits Natural State over Nature's Claim. So the 4 life doesn't matter in a lot of games but when it does matter, it matters A LOT. However, I feel the fact that you can Claim a Leyline of the Void means that Claim is still better than State.

Also you know that B/X Eldrazi deck flying around everywhere in Modern? Someone at my LGS brought a Legacy version of it to FNM. Maindecked LotV and DRS instead of whatever it is Modern is using.

snorlaxcom
01-08-2016, 11:41 PM
The problem is that they will likely get Glacial Chasm before Tabernacle since it game over for us unless we have a DR work around, like Rider.

Not to mention fighting a field of stages protecting chasm/tab/mazes in this scenario. Terastodon is old tech, but could be useful here. Leyline if you got them.

slave
01-09-2016, 03:40 AM
Thanks for the headsup.:cool:


Yeah, I've been trying to weigh the costs/benefits Natural State over Nature's Claim. So the 4 life doesn't matter in a lot of games but when it does matter, it matters A LOT. However, I feel the fact that you can Claim a Leyline of the Void means that Claim is still better than State.
I tend to agree.
State is nice, and I might give them a test, but I don't feel I need to replace my Claims. I still see LotV occasionally....

jimmythegreek
01-20-2016, 04:12 PM
Went 4-1 at my weekly legacy. Beat storm (ant), shardless, lands and R/b reanimator. My only loss was to a lands deck which went to three games and was very close. Against lands i believe its correct to side in lotv and keep the deck as explosive as possible, fast starts are our best strategy in this matchup. Naming crop rotation is paramount games one and two as some lists mainboard bojuka bog. I tried a different list that eschewed all putrid imps in favor of s.wraith. The deck is quad-esque minus an ichorid and p.imp instead playing three wraiths a dread return and the thirteenth land. Im really in favor of only three ichorids and challenge anyone to drop to three.....i think three seems like the right number. My favorite addition was going up to four breakthrough, hands with led and breakthrough were almost auto wins. There was maybe one instance where i wanted p.imp over a wraith but over all i was much happier with wraith......im starting to really dislike and may totally eschew putrid imp. Wraith not only protects our dredgers but can dig for draw spells which im really liking. On a side note remember that when playing against a tabernacle and a port if ported on upkeep you can float the mana to pay for a moeba or zombie to pay for the effect. Another tip to remember is tabernacle can never hit an ichorid. Finally, i think it would be extremely relevant to keep track of how often boarding in hate actually dictates the outcome of the game when our opponent lands a hate piece. In my opinion the fearless approach and being as fast as possible has proven optimal. Ive stripped hate much more often (with better results) then destroyed hate and gone on to win the game.

Alexorrr
01-21-2016, 12:47 AM
Went 4-1 at my weekly legacy. Beat storm (ant), shardless, lands and R/b reanimator. My only loss was to a lands deck which went to three games and was very close. Against lands i believe its correct to side in lotv and keep the deck as explosive as possible, fast starts are our best strategy in this matchup. Naming crop rotation is paramount games one and two as some lists mainboard bojuka bog. I tried a different list that eschewed all putrid imps in favor of s.wraith. The deck is quad-esque minus an ichorid and p.imp instead playing three wraiths a dread return and the thirteenth land. Im really in favor of only three ichorids and challenge anyone to drop to three.....i think three seems like the right number. My favorite addition was going up to four breakthrough, hands with led and breakthrough were almost auto wins. There was maybe one instance where i wanted p.imp over a wraith but over all i was much happier with wraith......im starting to really dislike and may totally eschew putrid imp. Wraith not only protects our dredgers but can dig for draw spells which im really liking. On a side note remember that when playing against a tabernacle and a port if ported on upkeep you can float the mana to pay for a moeba or zombie to pay for the effect. Another tip to remember is tabernacle can never hit an ichorid. Finally, i think it would be extremely relevant to keep track of how often boarding in hate actually dictates the outcome of the game when our opponent lands a hate piece. In my opinion the fearless approach and being as fast as possible has proven optimal. Ive stripped hate much more often (with better results) then destroyed hate and gone on to win the game.
What was your side board like that included lotv? I keep feeling like I should be including something proactive like that, but can never decide what to cut for it.

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jimmythegreek
01-21-2016, 08:53 AM
What was your side board like that included lotv? I keep feeling like I should be including something proactive like that, but can never decide what to cut for it.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

4 lotv
1 dread return
1 ashen rider
1 iona
1 chain of vapor
3 firestorm
1 darkblast
3 natures claim

Que
01-27-2016, 06:38 PM
Took first at a new local shop. Only 21 players showed, but prizing was guaranteed so I went home with a shiny Underground Sea! :D
I used my same list

Round 1: Infect 2-0; I try to not board in too much if any antihate at this point. Infect can kill you pretty quickly so you want to combo them out.
Round 2: Death & Taxes 0-2; I honestly think this matchup is pretty bad even though they don't have any permission. They have a multitude of cards that slow us down i.e. Thalia, Containment Priest, and Rest in Peace including a way to find it with Enlightened Tutor which is a blow out when they cast it end step or in response to Cabal Therapy.
Round 3: MUD 2-0; Game 2 was lucky for me in that he forgot to board in Platinum Angel. He realized this after he attempted tutor for it with Kuldotha Forgemaster activation. Presumably I would have been able to get it off the board with a DR'd Ashen Rider, but who knows how long that would have taken.
Round 4: Shardless BUG 2-1
Round 5: ID

Top 8
Quarter Finals: Miracles 2-0
Semi Finals: Death Shadow BUG; He didn't find his surgical Extractions in time.
Finals: Same Shardless BUG 2-0

slave
01-27-2016, 09:04 PM
Took first at a new local shop.
Nice!
Are you still running the Abrupt Decay/Petals sideboard?

Que
01-28-2016, 11:17 AM
Nice!
Are you still running the Abrupt Decay/Petals sideboard?

Yeah I am, however, I didn't cast Abrupt a single time this tournament. I do believe Lotus Petals to be correct post board though allowing you to pay for any taxing counters, allow for broken starts, and also helps to flashback Faithless Looting at times.

I opted to go more fearless this tournament which only cost me 1 game where I didn't have an answer for Cage which he played on turn 1. My hand that game was insane had he not dropped it. Later I found out he was only playing 1 copy alongside DRS and I think Surgical as other forms of hate.

jimmythegreek
01-28-2016, 05:20 PM
Yeah I am, however, I didn't cast Abrupt a single time this tournament. I do believe Lotus Petals to be correct post board though allowing you to pay for any taxing counters, allow for broken starts, and also helps to flashback Faithless Looting at times.

I opted to go more fearless this tournament which only cost me 1 game where I didn't have an answer for Cage which he played on turn 1. My hand that game was insane had he not dropped it. Later I found out he was only playing 1 copy alongside DRS and I think Surgical as other forms of hate.
Im sold. Removing the claims for petals and going fearless. Nothing is more terrifying than a turbo-charged dredge deck. Most anything else of concern can be cleaned up with a dread returned ashen rider. Que, do you run street wraiths or putrid imps (maybe a split)? I think speed is the direction this deck wants to take for the near future.
Ps congratz.....no better feeling seeing dredge on top!

Alexorrr
01-28-2016, 07:27 PM
I've been wondering what the best split (if any) between putrid imp and street wraith should be myself. If the idea of fearless dredge is where the deck wants to go, then having four additional replacement effects seems more reasonable than some number of discard outlets that also sometimes attacks. I'm pretty new to the deck, myself, so I would love to hear thoughts on it, but I think giving the opponent as little opportunity as possible to interact with our board state (abrupt decay, etc) fits with the fearless mentality.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

slave
01-28-2016, 11:39 PM
Righto, took the deck out last night, just a regular night at the local;
Main > 8 Rainbow land, 4 Cephalids, 3 Icky, 3 Lotus Petal, 3 Street Wraith, 3 Breakthru.
No P.Imps or DR Main.
Side > 4 Claims, 3 Firestorm, 2 DR's, 2 Ashen Rider, 2 Rainbows, 1 Ingot Chewer, 1 Wispmare

I went 3-1. Beat Infect 2-0, Jund 2-0, Shardless BUG 2-1. Got beaten by Elves 0-2.
Almost every game 1 was a blowout. I actually had 2 games where I combed out most of the deck on turn1, and swung for the win the very next turn. Infect should have made it to game3 but a misplay cost him. BUG was difficult, though Street Wraith saved me in both games I won as he turn1'd DRS both times. LOL.
Elves turn2 combo win in both games. Sigh.
Didn't experience much hate, maybe I was just lucky? BUG was running LotV which got me in one game, didn't draw an answer.

Overall I was pretty happy, got 3rd behind Elves and some other chappie playing D&T.


Im sold. Removing the claims for petals and going fearless. Nothing is more terrifying than a turbo-charged dredge deck.
I really like Petals in the main, but I don't think they'll stay. Reason being, for me they get their spot at the expense of something else. I'd prefer to have more Rainbows in there for unknown matchups and bring in the petals for the matches we need to be quick for.

I've been running a 2-2 split between Wraith/Pimp for a while, but decided to go just Wraith last night. I did miss Pimp exactly once, but Wraith is such a blowout against DRS that I think both have merit.

Que
01-29-2016, 09:00 PM
Im sold. Removing the claims for petals and going fearless. Nothing is more terrifying than a turbo-charged dredge deck. Most anything else of concern can be cleaned up with a dread returned ashen rider. Que, do you run street wraiths or putrid imps (maybe a split)? I think speed is the direction this deck wants to take for the near future.
Ps congratz.....no better feeling seeing dredge on top!

My sb looks inherently different from yours at the moment. If you don't want to be completely cold to hate you might still want some type of anti hate (It's personal preference) in the form of claims, abrupt, or CoV. Up to you really. However, like I mentioned it was not uncommon for me simply board in 5 cards (3 Lotus Petals, 1 DR, and a Combo Target whether that be Iona or Ashen) for post board games.

My reasoning:
1. Against decks that pack permission (FOW, Daze, Spell Pierce) Lotus Petal will shine plus you still have Therapies.
1a. They also might not have FOW+Blue card in their opener (if they do its not the worst; they just 2 for 1'd themselves and assuming you have another discard outlet they will be heavily pressured to find an answer quickly).

2. Lets you accelerate your game-plan and generate zombies at a quicker pace; the less chances they have to interact the better. So while you build an overwhelming advantage they will be durdling with ponder.

And I've posted my list multiple times which is why I had stopped lol. I've been running a 2-2 split since the SCG IQ in LA last year: http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=16137&iddeck=120494

And thank you! This deck is most fun.

Ultimately I like to make my opponent uneasy and this deck accomplishes that very well. haha

slave
01-29-2016, 11:08 PM
This deck is most fun. Indeed. :wink:

mistercakes
01-30-2016, 01:58 AM
i've been playing lotus petals in the main for a while, que - when you side in your 5 cards to speed your deck up and give you an occasional silver bullet, what are you cutting? and does this change for those same 5 cards if you're on the play?

-rob

SHABOOGS
01-30-2016, 06:21 PM
Went 4-0 and got 1st place in an 11-man tournament yesterday with the list below:

Artifacts/Enchantments:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below

Creatures:
4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Ichorid
1 Flayer of the Hatebound

Spells:
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Dread Return

Lands:
4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 City of Brass

Sideboard:
3 Firestorm
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Nature's Claim
3 Faerie Macabre
1 Ashen Rider
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

Here's a quick summary of my match ups:

Rd1 Dark Maverick 2-1
Rd2 MUD 2-0
Rd3 TES 2-0
Rd4 BG Rock 2-0

Got myself a BFZ gameday playmat and a BFZ holiday gift box. Moving forward, I would probabaly add 2 Abrupt Decays and 2 Lotus Petals and take out 1Claim, 1 CoV, 1 Firestorm, and 1 Macabre. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the leaked WMCQ promo card to be real coz the regular foil abrupt decays are out of my budget.

Que
02-01-2016, 12:38 PM
Grats Shaboogs!


i've been playing lotus petals in the main for a while, que - when you side in your 5 cards to speed your deck up and give you an occasional silver bullet, what are you cutting? and does this change for those same 5 cards if you're on the play?

-rob

I take out the 2 Pimps I have main board, 1 Ichorid ( I play 4 in the main), 1 Dredger (I play 12 maindeck), and 1 Careful Study and bring in the 3 Lotus Petals, DR, and Iona/Ashen Rider.

mistercakes
02-01-2016, 10:18 PM
thanks, i was taking out 1 street wraith over the dredger. appreciate the reply.

Ronald Deuce
02-12-2016, 01:18 PM
Hello, all!

It's been a while since I've taken Dredge out for a spin, but I saw an interesting strategy recently: a friend of mine played Phantasmagorians in his LED list. Been following the thread on-and-off for a while, and I'm wondering whether anyone's tried that recently. I'm tempted to do the same because there's at least one flex spot in my maindeck (second reanimation target), and maybe a second (fourth Careful Study).

I've been running quads of the staples (LED, Therapy, Breakthrough, Faithless, Icky, Stinky, Troll, Thug, Bridge, Narco, City of Brass, Coliseum, Gemstones); pretty standard setup, but I've kept the fourth Ichorid and Thug in the main because I feel like it's really important to land our dredges and to have a full set of sac-able creatures. I'd be happy to explain my choices if anyone's interested.

With that having been said, I feel like there's a bit of room in the reanimation package for something else. I'm running two Dread Returns, a Flame-Kin Zealot, and either an Elesh Norn or an Iona. (N.B.: I don't think cutting a Dread Return is a good idea simply because it can barf out a whole load of zombies even without resolving.)

What attracts me to running one or two Phantasmagorians is that a) it can provide an out if we've got a bunch of stuff in hand that we need to dump, b) it can let us keep hands that are light on looting effects or land, and c) it's a black creature, so it synergizes with Ichorid the way PImp does but without requiring mana [EDIT: d) we can bin cards we don't want in the hand that aren't dredgers, too!].

I've found that oftentimes, when I'm running this deck, I have trouble finding enough mana [EDIT: or, more importantly, looting effects] to keep dredging at the rate I can manage in the first couple of turns, and that after not too long I get stuck with the dredgers in my hand even after a pretty strong opener. Going LED, Gemstone, Faithless into Breakthrough and Faithless is supremely effective, but the Shuffle Gods sometimes frown on us mortals and hand us only a few dredgers or leave a piece of the puzzle in the bottom ten (often Bridge from Below or Narcos) where we can't find it. Going to topdeck mode when you've got a full 'yard that's missing something crucial is never good, and I'm hoping that at least one Phantasmagorian can give me another out.

I'm reluctant to cut any of our looters or either Dread Return because they're so strong, but I think at least one of our reanimation targets can afford to get benched for game 1. Nut-drawing into turn-1 Iona is fantastic, but it's not a common enough occurrence for me to rely on it. I focused on Careful Study as the best cut from the rest of the deck because it's our least explosive Loot and it often turns dead after the first couple of turns.

What's everyone think? Any and all feedback is welcome!

Zooligan
02-18-2016, 12:21 PM
Newb here.

So what is the current optimal "Fearless" deck list looking like currently? I of course have seen Feldman's list from back in the day, but could someone post a recently tuned example? Or point me to one of the 186 pages in this thread with one ;)

TIA

McClain
02-18-2016, 05:42 PM
Newb here.

So what is the current optimal "Fearless" deck list looking like currently? I of course have seen Feldman's list from back in the day, but could someone post a recently tuned example? Or point me to one of the 186 pages in this thread with one ;)

TIA

Well keep in mind that Feldman's list came before Faithless Looting was a thing. On that logic, people who wanted the explosive power of LED had to run cards like Deep Analysis, which were complete duds when you didn't have a LED to play. Now, with Faithless Looting, you can get the best of both worlds. I think the general consensus is that LED lists are superior to lists without, since you aren't sacrificing consistency for speed in the way that you once were.

Feldman (if I'm recalling correctly) also advocated against the inclusion of maindecked reanimation targets. For him, Dredge lost when it fails to dredge, and you shouldn't sacrifice your engine for any additional explosive power.

The spiritual successor to the Feldman mindset is probably the Quadlazer builds you see often, with perhaps one Dread Return included for reanimating a GGT and allowing some daggers out of the sideboard like Iona or Elesh.

Now, where the "Fearless" aspect comes from is that Feldman recommends against sideboarding anti-anti-dredge cards. The logic here is that to be effective, 1) Your opponent must have the card you're anticipating 2) They have to draw the card you're anticipating, and 3) You have to draw the card you brought in 4) that card is enough to beat the hate and 5) The dilution of your deck didn't slow you down too much to win. For him, it wasn't worth it to dilute the consistency and power of Dredge for such a low chance of a sideboard card making an impact on the match.

I'd currently take this with a grain of salt. Since the Feldman article, more powerful static graveyard hate cards like Rest in Peace were printed and presents a challenge that I don't believe Feldman anticipated. Where we used to play around cards like Tormod's Crypt by not overextending, some of the common modern hate cards aren't really practically challenged without some specific answer.

That said, it's a matter of preference. Personally, I enjoy having a flexible card like Nature's Claim that can pick off a Grafdigger's or a RiP, but the mathematics of Feldman's rational against anti-anti-Dredge cards is still persuasive. I'll see if I can scrounge up a sideboard that's had success without anti-hate, but the main decklist would be similar to most of the ones within the past few pages that have all 12 dredges and no maindeck reanimation targets.

Zooligan
02-18-2016, 07:55 PM
Ah, so it seems that the fearless concept and the no-LED concept may have changed with the printing of some new(er than Feldman's article) cards. Let me back up a bit then. As a newb to the legacy scene looking to get in with a reasonably-priced, at least reasonably-competitive deck (probably MTGO only since the redonkulous spike in LED prices in paper), what's a good list to get my dredge on?

Oestrus
02-19-2016, 02:28 PM
Feldman wrote a brief update in November 2014, still advocating for 'Fearless Dredge' and with some spicy tech. (e.g. Reveillark)

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29716_Dredge-At-Grand-Prix-New-Jersey.html

Voldaren
02-23-2016, 06:44 PM
So how do people feel about the concept of not side boarding answers for hate that people like Feldman propose? His logic seems pretty sound.

slave
02-23-2016, 10:17 PM
So how do people feel about the concept of not side boarding answers for hate that people like Feldman propose? His logic seems pretty sound.
It's an old article, but the hate we face since it was written hasn't changed much.
I've never tried Revellark in LED-dredge. Anyone else ever run it?

He's about where I feel in most cases, but I differ on a few points.
There's no point siding in much if you don't need to. I very rarely side in more than 5 cards, and when I do it's usually against a deck I may have a hard time beating (like Miracles, Storm etc.).

vieko
02-24-2016, 12:51 AM
It's an old article, but the hate we face since it was written hasn't changed much.
I've never tried Revellark in LED-dredge. Anyone else ever run it?

I tried Reveillark and it is FAR too situational to be considered... but the one time everything aligned, it was awesome. I only ever side-in cards if the deck is running cold and I see hate coming. If I'm running hot or feel my opponent didn't pay the dredge tax: fearless baby. When siding-in cards, I tend to bring one answer as opposed to answers and hardly ever side-in more than 3 cards. Additionally, I may swap the mainboard target with something relevant to the match (Iona vs Elves for example). My 2 cents!

birdbrains
02-24-2016, 01:37 AM
I've been playing a ton of leagues lately with a purely reactive sideboard and been putting up some good results. Right now I'm 22-3 across the five leagues I've done. I think the reactive plan is the way to go, at least with the current online metagame. While it's a fairly open field, I'm still running into a fair amount of DRS, Cage and RiP.

I'm playing quadlazor with the 2 Putrid/2 Wraith set up, and -1 Breakthrough +1 DR, and my sideboard is:

3 Lotus Petal
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Firestorm
1 Mana Confluence
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Dread Return
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Ray of Revelation

I don't have any play-by-plays, but I can look at replays if people want some details on matches, here are my results:

League #1 - 5-0

Rd 1 - BUG Control - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Infect - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Miracles - W - 2-0
Rd 4 - Lands - W - 2-1
Rd 5 - Miracles - W - 2-0


League #2 - 5-0

Rd 1 - Belcher - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - U/R Delver - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Elves - W - 2-1
Rd 4 - 4C Mentor - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - 4C Pyromancer - W - 2-1

League #3 - 4-1

Rd 1 - TES - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Elves - L - 0-2
Rd 3 - Dredge - W - 2-1
Rd 4 - Burn - W - 2-1
Rd 5 - RUG Delver - W - 2-1

League #4 - 4-1

Rd 1 - Eldrazi - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - BUG Control - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Reanimator - L - 1-2
Rd 4 - Burn - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - Storm - W - 2-1

League #5 - 4-1

Rd 1 - Death & Taxes - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Burn - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Mono-G Post - L - 0-2
Rd 4 - Miracles - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - Eldrazi - W - 2-0

Oestrus
02-24-2016, 08:25 AM
So how do people feel about the concept of not side boarding answers for hate that people like Feldman propose? His logic seems pretty sound.

I'm still on the fence, but am leaning towards sticking with the Fearless plan. I started playing Dredge as Fearless, then decided to try reactive SB hate. I haven't been impressed.

There are too many stars that have to align for it to work. They have to have GY hate to bring in, and find it, and you must have the reactive hate in your hand to respond to it. It dilutes your engine, and also makes choosing to mulligan more difficult. 'Should I toss a good hand because it doesn't have Nature's Claim, for something they may not even have in their hand?' I would rather take my chances with Cabal Therapy, and hope for the best.

If they find that one copy of Rest in Peace, and play it on T2? Bless their heart.

vieko
02-24-2016, 11:14 AM
if they find that one copy of rest in peace, and play it on t2? Bless their heart.

love it!

caprino
02-24-2016, 12:06 PM
I've been playing a ton of leagues lately with a purely reactive sideboard and been putting up some good results. Right now I'm 22-3 across the five leagues I've done. I think the reactive plan is the way to go, at least with the current online metagame. While it's a fairly open field, I'm still running into a fair amount of DRS, Cage and RiP.

I'm playing quadlazor with the 2 Putrid/2 Wraith set up, and -1 Breakthrough +1 DR, and my sideboard is:

3 Lotus Petal
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Firestorm
1 Mana Confluence
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Dread Return
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Ray of Revelation

I don't have any play-by-plays, but I can look at replays if people want some details on matches, here are my results:

League #1 - 5-0

Rd 1 - BUG Control - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Infect - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Miracles - W - 2-0
Rd 4 - Lands - W - 2-1
Rd 5 - Miracles - W - 2-0


League #2 - 5-0

Rd 1 - Belcher - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - U/R Delver - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Elves - W - 2-1
Rd 4 - 4C Mentor - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - 4C Pyromancer - W - 2-1

League #3 - 4-1

Rd 1 - TES - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Elves - L - 0-2
Rd 3 - Dredge - W - 2-1
Rd 4 - Burn - W - 2-1
Rd 5 - RUG Delver - W - 2-1

League #4 - 4-1

Rd 1 - Eldrazi - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - BUG Control - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Reanimator - L - 1-2
Rd 4 - Burn - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - Storm - W - 2-1

League #5 - 4-1

Rd 1 - Death & Taxes - W - 2-1
Rd 2 - Burn - W - 2-0
Rd 3 - Mono-G Post - L - 0-2
Rd 4 - Miracles - W - 2-0
Rd 5 - Eldrazi - W - 2-0

main deck list? thanks

Noctalor
02-24-2016, 12:11 PM
main deck list? thanks


I'm playing quadlazor with the 2 Putrid/2 Wraith set up, and -1 Breakthrough +1 DR, and my sideboard is:

3 Lotus Petal
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Firestorm
1 Mana Confluence
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Dread Return
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Ray of Revelation

Ronald Deuce
02-24-2016, 04:25 PM
If we've got sideboard space, not running Nature's Claim or Chain is a very bad idea.

Too many times an opponent's dropped T1 Leyline or has hard-countered our opening looting spells and dropped T1 Grafdigger's. In no way is it a freak occurence for someone to mulligan into their hate cards, and we can't assume they won't have 4 pieces of graveyard hate (especially if they're running a non-optimal list and "JUST HATE DREDGE"). We can't play as though we won't see decks that slay us, and even if they're not that great, graveyard hate is pretty hideously pushed for its cost and losing is losing.

birdbrains
02-24-2016, 05:23 PM
I'm still on the fence, but am leaning towards sticking with the Fearless plan. I started playing Dredge as Fearless, then decided to try reactive SB hate. I haven't been impressed.

There are too many stars that have to align for it to work. They have to have GY hate to bring in, and find it, and you must have the reactive hate in your hand to respond to it. It dilutes your engine, and also makes choosing to mulligan more difficult. 'Should I toss a good hand because it doesn't have Nature's Claim, for something they may not even have in their hand?' I would rather take my chances with Cabal Therapy, and hope for the best.

If they find that one copy of Rest in Peace, and play it on T2? Bless their heart.

I feel like while people are generally playing only 2-3 pieces of hate, the ones that they are playing are game enders if we go the fearless route. If I'm not mistaken, the article was also written before DRS & RiP were printed, which brought a whole new face to what we have to go up against.

Ideally, the changes you make to the main deck should either be shaving, which dilutes your percentages within a margin of error, or taking out pieces that will help shore up your matchup. For example, taking out LED/Breakthroughs against FoW decks to reduce your chances of getting blown out, while shoring yourself up against cards like Cage, DRS and RiP. Mulligans should always be done based on the strength of your current hand, and your expectation of being able to perform based on the hate you expect the opponent to be playing. Part of sideboarding effectively is understanding what decks play what strategies and why, and playing Dredge to it's maximum effectiveness requires you to have a pretty good understanding of the metagame. Anti-hate making mulliganing decisions more intricate shouldn't have any effect on your choice to play anti-hate.

You should be getting most of your game 1s, so you should be mulliganing second in a fair amount of game 2s. You can get a ton of information on whether to mulligan deeper or if you can keep a solid hand without anti-hate just based on how your opponent decides to keep or mulligan. If they snap keep, and you have a solid hand but no recourse for a hate piece, mulligan. If they waffle a bit before keeping, they're most likely banking on their hand being good enough without hate to do well, and you can keep.

I did a small analysis of the last 3 days worth of league results, just to see what kind of anti-dredge cards people are playing and in what numbers.

24 Decks - ~2.75 hate pieces/deck

Crypt - 4
Leyline - 3
Scooze - 3
RiP - 8
Containment Priest - 5
Faerie Macabre - 5
Nihil Spellbomb - 4
Relic of Prog. - 9
Surgical Extraction - 11
Graf Cage - 13

DRS - 28 (not included in pieces/deck)

DRS is pretty rampant online, accounting for around 30% of the metagame (admittedly skewed since mtggoldfish only looks at decks that perform, but from experience there are a significant percent of decks playing 4 mainboard). He's generally paired with some extra hate out of the board, and while we can definitely outpace a DRS in certain games, in others he's able to slow us down enough for the opponent to do their thing, and is awful to face in multiples.

This list also doesn't account for cards like Green Sun's Zenith or Enlightened Tutor, which effectively up the amount of hate cards people are playing.

All in all, I'd rather win games because I was proactive, understood the metagame, and sideboarded effectively than lose games because "oh well, they did a thing."

Zooligan
02-24-2016, 07:11 PM
So based on that analysis, what kinds of anti-hate should folks run online? Seems like 3-4 Firestorm and 3-4 Natures Claim, but that doesn't cover all the hate (Extirpate/Extraction).

Question on Firestorm, say X = 4 and you are targeting the opposing player and 3 of their creatures. If that player kills or bounces one of his targeted creatures, does your whole spell fizzle or just the portion that was targeting that creature?

Ronald Deuce
02-24-2016, 08:25 PM
So based on that analysis, what kinds of anti-hate should folks run online? Seems like 3-4 Firestorm and 3-4 Natures Claim, but that doesn't cover all the hate (Extirpate/Extraction).

Question on Firestorm, say X = 4 and you are targeting the opposing player and 3 of their creatures. If that player kills or bounces one of his targeted creatures, does your whole spell fizzle or just the portion that was targeting that creature?

I'm pretty sure a spell is only countered if it has exactly zero legal targets on resolution. If I'm wrong, by all means let me know.

Extraction's the silver bullet against us (again, dredge-hate is hideously undercosted). Firestorm seems pretty good, but I'd run a full quad if you're running it at all.

One of the big problems with our deck is that if a spell doesn't have flashback, we can't assume we'll ever get the chance to play it. (For that reason I'm not running PImps; they're the worst one-drop we can play and we don't want to play them just to fuel Ichorids.) If we don't open with Firestorm in hand, we shouldn't count on drawing into it later. So I wouldn't consider it to be essential. Either we hit all the right benchmarks and win really quickly or Deathrite will blow us out quickly enough that we can't afford to bide our time.

If we're facing something like RiP or Leyline (neither of which clocks us on its own), biding our time and conserving our dredges is a good plan and Nature's Claim/Chain of Vapor is a lot more likely to be castable. But Deathrite doesn't give us that luxury.

Not sure how I feel about Abrupt Decay because I haven't tested it in the newly Eldrazi-ridden format yet. A quick glance says we're strongly favored, but a Chalice on 1 would be a real problem, and I don't know how much graveyard hate their deck is going to start fielding once they realize how bad their matchup is. I'm inclined to say that we should run a mix of Decays and Nature's Claims, perhaps with a couple of Chains. Not sure about Ancient Grudge or Ray of Revelation; Ray might be a tad better because we can cast it in response to the RiP trigger to burn out the enchantment, but that doesn't save our graveyard.

I don't know; I take a pretty different attitude from that of the previous posters. We can't assume our opponents WON'T just mulligan into whatever 0-to-2-costed hate card they have that'll totally shut us down. We're playing a very, very direct and inflexible combo to which answers have been printed at a premium for any deck that wants to run them, so for someone playing Miracles to just hope they can push through with a hand of land, land, SDT, Counterbalance, Force, Force, Daze is pretty bush-league.

The good news is that we don't really need much in our sideboard, and often we can function without one or two of the "essential" pieces of our combo. Next to three Lotus Petals, one or two extra reanimation targets, and at least four art/ench removers, everything else I'm running is totally flexible. I've run anything from Abrupt Decays to Mindbreak Traps.

Zooligan
02-24-2016, 09:14 PM
Ok, yeah, I'm with you on the whole not being able to count on casting from the hand thing.

Flashing back Ancient Grudge gets around Chalice at 1, but that leaves a hole where enchantment removal would go. Of course Ray would cover that. Memory's Journey gives you flashback-able answers to extraction effects and DRS/Scooze activations.

Seems hard to get an optimal mix out of those.

JPoJohnson
02-24-2016, 11:04 PM
If you guys are wanting to guy fearless, why not just go the Painter Servant transformation sideboard?

Oestrus
02-25-2016, 03:18 PM
If I'm not mistaken, the article was also written before DRS & RiP were printed, which brought a whole new face to what we have to go up against.

Feldman posted an update in November 2014, after cards like Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Peace were printed. He continued to advocate for a Fearless approach.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29716_Dredge-At-Grand-Prix-New-Jersey.html


All in all, I'd rather win games because I was proactive, understood the metagame, and sideboarded effectively than lose games because "oh well, they did a thing."

You assume people who prefer Fearless don't understand metagames. They're not mutually exclusive.

zenden
02-25-2016, 04:10 PM
Hi guys, I always played a SB without lotus and decay (main list all 4x -1break +1 DR) and i want try it.., with a SB like this what do you side in/out vs tier deck?(miracle, delver,D&T etc.)

3x firestorm
3x lotus
2x decay
1x ancient grudge
1x wispmare
2x ingot
1x DR
1x iona
1x elesh

make sense play 3x lotus petal whitout decay (3x nature's claim) only for broken start (or play around daze/pierce)?

@sorry for my terrible english ç_ç

jimmythegreek
02-25-2016, 09:58 PM
For what it's worth, I've played this deck for the past three years with excellent results and I can count on one hand how many times a card like natures claim has won me the game. The games I've won have involved fast starts or I've negated Drs activations (usually via street wraith). Coverage proves this deck wins with explosive starts, not reacting to cards that once resolved nearly impend a loss. I get it though, i hate nothing more than a turn one cage.

Ronald Deuce
02-25-2016, 10:11 PM
For what it's worth, I've played this deck for the past three years with excellent results and I can count on one hand how many times a card like natures claim has won me the game. The games I've won have involved fast starts or I've negated Drs activations (usually via street wraith). Coverage proves this deck wins with explosive starts, not reacting to cards that once resolved nearly impend a loss. I get it though, i hate nothing more than a turn one cage.

I think that you're right that just going for broke is usually the best plan. I don't think it's a good idea to rock up without any answers to the cards that straight up KO us, though, even if we're only running those answers for game 3.

I have much less experience than you do, but in roughly a third of the game 2s/3s I've played, my opponent has snap-mulliganed down to fewer than five cards in order to find an answer.

I don't think we need to run many pieces of removal for dredge-hate, but I think it's a pretty good idea to bring them along in the 75. At this point I'd just run a turbo package (Petals), a couple of reanimator targets, and the rest either added removal or Mindbreak Trap.

I'm thinking of running 3x Phantasmagorian in the sideboard in case of Chalice on 1, which seems to be all the rage these days, probably replacing Mindbreak Trap.

Unless All Spells returns to take its rightful vengeance against a format full of stompy.

Zooligan
02-26-2016, 09:58 AM
At this point I'd just run a turbo package (Petals), a couple of reanimator targets, and the rest either added removal or Mindbreak Trap.

Turbo from the outset or bring in the petals from SB for G2/3?

Ronald Deuce
02-26-2016, 02:09 PM
Turbo from the outset or bring in the petals from SB for G2/3?

Short answer, I think it depends on what we're facing. Personally I don't like running Petals in game 1 because we shouldn't really need the speed boost and it forces us to take out cards I don't want to cut. I've always been a proponent of running quads of as many engine pieces as possible (and doubles/singles of Dread Return and its targets) for consistency's sake, regardless of whether it's game 1. Sure, the fourth Ichorid and Thug are the least useful pieces of the combo, but they're still pieces of the combo, unlike PImp, Wraith, Dread Return, reanimation targets, Petals, removal, or whatever else. If I feel like we really need to board in a lot of things, I'd cut the fourth copies of a couple of things, but I don't like to do it unless it's really necessary.

If the opponent's likely to mull into Leyline, Cage, or RiP in game 2 (assuming we won game 1) I'd recommend running hate cards instead. If they're on the play (which is pretty likely if they get to choose), I think it's a lot more important to find an answer to their hate instead of just going faster. After all, if they're on the play, we're already on the back foot in terms of speed. I think there's a case to be made for bringing in Petals and Abrupt Decays against people who aren't likely to be running Leyline. I haven't tested it yet (haven't played Dredge at a tournament in a month or so) but it feels like a good plan if our opponent has a means to counter spells.

For game 3, if we're on the play again, I think the best strategy is to just go for broke. Turbodredging when we're on the play is a great strategy, but it's something we need to remember the opponent is likely to answer in game 2 if they've got hate. In game 3 it's less likely to be a problem because they don't get to go first, and I find that changing out cards between games 2 and 3 is a good way to keep our opponents guessing. If we start with a pretty orthodox dredge plan in game 1, they might not expect to see Petals in game 3.

With that having been said, I still think that in postboard games it's important to keep anti-hate at the ready. Nothing hurts as much as drawing a turn-1-able hand and having the opponent open with Leyline.

What I'm most worried about facing at the moment is Chalice, primarily because it's The New Thing and a lot of people are likely to be playing it. It doesn't shut us down, but it puts us in a really awkward position if we're forced to draw-go against a clock. My gut was to take out Careful Studies and replace them with Phantasmagorians or Abrupt Decays and Petals for game 2. Or maybe a mix, and take out some Lootings and LEDs. We'll run a bit more slowly, but we don't want to find ourselves in a situation in which we can't play cards because they opened with a land and a thing. And favored as we are against Eldrazi, I don't think it's as great a matchup as a lot of people might, especially given that they're starting to experiment with Rest in Peace.

So what's everyone been boarding in and boarding out against Chalice decks lately? I'm interested to hear from people whose opponents also mulligan to 4 or something just in order to hate us out. There's no way I'm the only one who's had that happen, and I don't feel like fearless is a strategy that'll work against such plays.

[EDIT: Forget what I was saying about Phantasmagorian. The more I goldfish it the less I feel like it does what we would want. I'm a bit tied in a knot at this point about artifacts that shut us down; can't decide whether we'll get run over with only a few Decays and Nature's Claims/Grudges or whether I'm just building it up to be a bigger threat than it really is.]

slave
02-26-2016, 10:43 PM
So based on that analysis, what kinds of anti-hate should folks run online? Seems like 3-4 Firestorm and 3-4 Natures Claim, but that doesn't cover all the hate (Extirpate/Extraction).
I usually run between 3-4 of both, most often 4.
(I don't play online anymore, I got sick of people rage-quitting if they don't get a god hand in their first 7)

If I side in an answer, I want to see it. I ran 4 Claims and a single Wear/Tear for a little while simply to make sure I found an answer in my grip. Not ideal from what everyone is saying, as siding in more than 4 in Dredge isn't ideal > I completely understand and also agree in some part on this thought, but finding one when you need it is far better than not.
JimmytheGreek makes a very good point, that a lot of the time siding in answers doesn't help. I've been there.
Having to actually draw it, rather than flashback/dredge as answer, is a problem of dredges' deck strategy that works against us.
I prefer to be on the side of having answers, than going fearless for the matchups where it counts. For many matchups however I will go fearless to try and beat them for speed.
FWIW, those Evoke creatures are nice to get around CHalice.


If they find that one copy of Rest in Peace, and play it on T2? Bless their heart.
But that's the thing. Many decks run maindeck hate like DRS, and quite a few have more substantial hate in the side that stops us cold.
Sure there will be times when a player doesn't plan for dredge/gravehate, but they are usually in the minority where I play.


[EDIT: Forget what I was saying about Phantasmagorian. The more I goldfish it the less I feel like it does what we would want...
I felt the same way when I tested it.


One of the big problems with our deck is that if a spell doesn't have flashback, we can't assume we'll ever get the chance to play it. (For that reason I'm not running PImps; they're the worst one-drop we can play and we don't want to play them just to fuel Ichorids.)
I don't agree they're the worst 1-drop we can play.
At current I play Street Wraith as DRS is everywhere, but I don't think that Pimp is a poor choice compared to SW, more like a preference, kinda like the difference between Flame-Kin Zealot & Dragonlord Kolaghan.
You're proba gonna be forced to choose between the two of these unless they print something better.


::: Fingers crossed the new set gives us a few new toys ::::

Ronald Deuce
02-27-2016, 02:14 PM
I don't agree they're the worst 1-drop we can play.
At current I play Street Wraith as DRS is everywhere, but I don't think that Pimp is a poor choice compared to SW, more like a preference, kinda like the difference between Flame-Kin Zealot & Dragonlord Kolaghan.
You're proba gonna be forced to choose between the two of these unless they print something better.

It's interesting; I don't play Wraith OR PImp. I feel like if we can't get the engine going without them, they won't help enough to warrant inclusion.

Here's my list:
4x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Golgari Grave-Troll
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Golgari Thug

4x Faithless Looting
4x Breakthrough
4x Careful Study

4x Narcomoeba
4x Ichorid
4x Bridge from Below

4x Cabal Therapy
2x Dread Return
1x Flame-kin Zealot
1x Griselbrand

Sideboard's a bit up in the air. At the moment the core is 1x Flayer of the Hatebound, Iona, Elesh Norn; 3x Abrupt Decay; 3x Lotus Petal; 4x Nature's Claim.

Anybody running a similar list? Also, still curious as to whether I'm overestimating the strength of Chalice on 1.

Que
02-27-2016, 06:15 PM
The whole fearless approach can be warranted based on the ideals given by Feldman. I would consider playing anti-hate a preferential way to play the deck and not necessarily the correct way. I’ve played both strategies and have had success and failures with both.

The issue is how much space you’re willing to sacrifice when you’re boarding for games 2/3; dredging into anti-hate cards when you need to hit action feels bad. Another issue is the whole anonymity of your opponents sb composition. Most sb nowadays have a mixture of hate cards that while on average (thanks birdbrains) only makeup a small portion of it, are actually diverse, which makes it all the more difficult to tackle the “what do I bring in?” question.

Most boards have different forms of hate i.e. Artifacts (Tormond’s Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, Gravediggers Cage), spells (Surgical Extraction, Extirpate), Creatures (Containment Priest, Thalia, DRS, Scooze), Enchantments (RIP, Leyline of the Void,) and others I’m sure I’ve forgotten. While I’m sure we can make reasonable assumptions as to what they’re bringing in based on the deck that they’re playing most will board in a mixture making your anti-hate cards all the more situational.

The reactive approach is fine because it allows you to answer a threat while not having anything committed to the GraveYard. I mean its not like they’re NOT going to slam their DRS, RIP, Cage or other permanent hate piece as soon as possible which allows you to take care of the problem at their end step and blow them out on your turn if you set it up correctly. The problem I’ve found with this approach too is that being reactive usually means you need to have that certain anti-hate piece in your opener, otherwise, why play reactive? If they play a turn 1 Cage and you don’t have Abrupt, claim, or CoV in hand then you’re going to be durdling for a bit while expending your own resources (i.e. Faithless looting, Careful Studies, Coliseum activations, etc.. ) to find them.

So I feel its preference at this point whether you’re willing to go in naked or not, however, I understand that cards like RIP, Cage, and Containment Priest have made it all the more difficult as they shut the deck down cold whereas something like Crypt, Relic, Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical and even DRS could be played around.

You can put the onus on your opponent to have the hate. Dare them. What will likely happen is 1 of 3 things. 1. They will mulligan down to find their hate which means their resources will be severely affected (if it’s a hate piece that doesn’t KO us) if they find it at all which puts you in the driver’s seat. 2. They will keep a solid hand with counters and cantrips and try to stall until they find the hate which again puts you in the driver’s seat or 3. They have hate and you just lose. xD

Thoughts on Phantasmagorian and Chalice:
Phantasmagorian is only ok. The card is way better in Manaless dredge when you’re dumping your entire hand with multiple activations instead of just 3 cards stuck in your hand. If you really want a strategy against Chalice on 1 then you can always DDD. I doubt you will be resolving any spells against the MUD player in the face of his/her other cards like Trinisphere and Lodestone Golem anyway.

Also while on the subject of Chalice decks if you’re a dredge player with Nature’s Claim in the board you will be hard pressed to resolve them. :/

At this point I don’t even know what I want my sb to look like. I have thought about the Painter SB, but that would mean changing the makeup of the main board as you would want to include more lands to facilitate the combo. Meh maybe inspiration will strike with the new set.

Zooligan
02-27-2016, 07:48 PM
If you really want a strategy against Chalice on 1 then you can always DDD.

Sorry, blanking out right now. DDD?

UseLess
02-28-2016, 03:40 AM
Draw, Discard, Dredge. You draw for your turn, immediately go to the cleanup phase (assuming you had 7 cards in hand before the draw phase) and discard a dredger which you can dredge next turn. Not very effective against DRS naturally.

I'm planning to pick up the deck again for fun in a couple of local tournaments after having played LEDless dredge some years ago. Has there been any sort of consencus reached for the amount of discard outlets and draw outlets? I've always favored playing with a DR target in the main with two DR targets, so some choices have to be made with respect to the amount of Careful Study, Breakthrough, Pimp and Street Wraith in the deck. Any tips/comments are most welcome.

Ronald Deuce
02-29-2016, 01:20 PM
Dusted off the deck and played three rounds yesterday at the local. Went 2-1, winning vs. Sneak & Show and Junk Stoneblade, and losing to American Stoneblade.

R1: Sneak & Show (2-1)
G1: I opened with a Looter, dumping a dredger and starting the chain. He played a fast Show and Tell, dropping Emrakul. Good thing I had a Griselbrand in my opener.
G2: Couldn't get the chain together this game, and I think sideboarded Abrupt Decays just took up space. He landed Sneak Attack, then Griselbrand and Emrakul on the same turn to attack for 22.
G3: I think I managed to chain everything this game and went off with a Flame-Kin Zealot before he could kill me.

R2: American Stoneblade (1-2)
G1: Pretty typical combo. When I flipped G-Brand to the 'yard he conceded.
G2: He EoT Enlightened Tutored for RiP. During my first turn. I actually came really close to cobbling everything back together and going off, but it took me around eight turns to find two :g:/:b:-producing lands to cast Decay on his RiP. Came really close to making the combo, but he ulted Jace when I had no cards in hand the following turn.
G3: I don't remember for sure, but I think he landed a pretty quick RiP in this game, too, and I just couldn't break it in time.

R3: Junk Stoneblade (2-1)
G1: Another G1 concession.
G2: This was a bit of a weird game. I started the combo in typical fashion, but I got hit by a double Surgical Extraction on Bridge from Below and Golgari Grave-Troll. It went downhill rather precipitously, with his landing two Deathrite Shamans and taking everything out of my graveyard.
G3: I got in some fast damage with Ichorids, but my opponent stayed in the game for a bit by using a card I hadn't known to exist: Batwing Brume. It hit me for about ten damage, so I took my time getting the combo together, but once it got rolling, it got rolling. I cleared the way with Therapy, then reanimated a 9/9 Grave-Troll followed by a Flame-Kin Zealot and around 17 zombies.

Had a lot of weird draws all day. About 85% of the games in and after the tournament, even AFTER substantial and frequent mulligans, I drew a Narcomoeba. Lands and sideboard cards were in much shorter supply.

This was the first tournament in which I'd tried Abrupt Decay in a long time, and I brought them in once/twice per round to see how they performed. Not sold on the card's viability unless we're running additional lands or Petals, and I feel like boarding in both Petal and Decay is a tall order.

One thing I will say in defense of the "fearless" strategy is that we've got a really good chance of winning game 1 and being on the play in game 3 regardless of whether we board in removal during game 2. In game 2, losing the head start with this deck gives our opponents both an excellent chance of hitting an answer to our combo (which my R2 opponent did in both games 2 and 3, and my R3 opponent did in game 2) and an opportunity to start hitting with their win-conditions before we can stabilize, and there's a good chance we're dead regardless of whether we can bring in anti-hate if they either a) land their hate and any threat quickly enough or b) play hate for which there's no answer (Extirpate/Surgical Extraction).

With that having been said, there are so many cards that completely shut us out that I think we're going to need to keep a set of Nature's Claim/Chain of Vapor/Ray of Revelation/Ancient Grudge in the sideboard. Abrupt Decay would be fantastic, but I don't think we can afford to cut for both the Decays and the necessary mana-adjustment we'd need. Eight lands (Coliseum doesn't count) are not nearly enough to support 3-4 2cmc spells like Decay. Decay also doesn't hit Leyline, which I was surprised I didn't see all day.

I only found Lotus Petal once, even in the games in which I sided in 3. I don't think all three were really necessary to have in the sideboard, so I'm probably cutting back to two.

Firestorm wouldn't have helped me much at all except in game 2 of round 3. I still don't think we can count on drawing it against double-Deathrite. They're just too fast.

So I'm thinking of running a board that's essentially three alternate reanimation targets (Iona, Elesh Norn, Flayer), two Petals, and a bunch of varied 1cmc anti-hate. Maybe one extra Dread Return.

I didn't really test Phantasmagorian much until round 3 and I wasn't impressed. If we were running a higher volume of dredgers and a larger number of recurring creatures, it'd be gold, but it doesn't do much off of only 4 Ichorids, 4 Narcos, and 12 dredgers. I may keep it around as a singleton, but I'm not particularly enthusiastic. One thing I noticed it can do for us is to get around Thought-Knot Seer's EtB trigger by dumping everything important into our graveyard. Probably not worth it to run too much of that effect in the 75, though.

So the takeaway, I think, is that we should bring in a few answers to hate (I'd advocate four to six), but we shouldn't be surprised if those answers fizzle. If they do, it might be worth it to just power through without them in game 3, but that doesn't work at all against RiP and Leyline, which remain the best permanent-based answers to our combo.

Played some games against the Eldrazi guy after the tournament. Chalice on 1 and Tormod's are both pretty severe. Don't remember a whole lot except that there were several really, really close games in which he and I were both down to about 3 life. He edged me out most of the time, and I think I was playing rather clumsily. My gut says that, in this matchup, we need to go as quickly as possible, maybe bringing in additional reanimation targets that could just win us the game on the spot. Blazing Archon comes to mind. Abrupt Decay is definitely too slow here.

So the big takeaway: board in anti-hate removal for game 2; consider it, but don't rely on it, in game 3. Cabal Therapy is really helpful if you know what they're running against you. Don't waste time on Firestorm or Abrupt Decay because you'll almost never get the chance to use them. Chalice on 1 is really tough to beat before heavy-duty beaters show up. DDD yields mixed results at best. More research is needed.

Cope
02-29-2016, 05:40 PM
So I went 6-3 at the Philly Open with Dredge to just miss day 2 :/ played the following list:

2 City of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
4 Mana Confluence
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug
3 Putrid Imp

4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Careful Study
4 Cabal Therapy

4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return

SB:

4 Nature's Claim
4 Firestorm
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Dread Return
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Flame-Kin Zealot

My losses were round 1 against Eldrazi, game 3 he had double Tormod's Crypt when I had a Nature's Claim in my opener and could have beaten 1 Crypt. Lost a close match to BUG Delver fair and square (unanswered Cage game 2, Deathrite Shaman and counterspells game 3), and my last loss was to RUG Delver in a very interesting game 3 where he had Surgicalled my Bridges and Narcomoebas and I lost to his Delver and Goyf, the game basically came down to a turn where I had returned 2 Ichorids and had a Golgari Thug in play I had just dredged and cast for blocking duty to put myself down to 7 from painlands, and I attacked him down to 7 with my 2 Ichorids but he had a flipped Delver and 5/6 Goyf that threatened lethal next turn. After the attack I had an interesting decision since I still had 1 painland untapped, an LED that had been uncracked for several turns, and a Nature's Claim in my hand that he knew about from the 2 Surgicals. So basically I had the 2 choices of Nature's Claiming my own LED to go down to 6 then up to 10, or cracking the LED to flashback a Faithless Looting and try to find my 1 Dread Return in the top 12 cards to return a huge Troll which would then be able to block the Goyf and hopefully kill him with 3 Ichorids coming back my next turn. I chose to try and find the Dread Return and didnt find it and ended up losing the next turn when I think he Pondered into a Bolt. In hindsight and after discussing it with my opponent afterwards tho I think I should have taken the Nature's Claim my LED line, as doing that would have forced him to not even attack the following turn since it wouldnt have killed me and he would die to Ichorids the next turn if he made that attack (I think I was dead to a Bolt if he found one in either case), tho if I had found the Dread Return I feel like I would have been in good shape but oh well, it was definitely one of the more interesting decisions ive had to make with this deck in a long time, and it was pretty remarkable that I was even still in the game at all after being Surgicalled twice.

For full disclosure tho I did get insanely lucky to beat a Lands opponent in a matchup that is maybeee 20/80 for us? Lost game 1 to a turn 2 20/20, game 2 on the play my turn 1 I made like 7 zombie tokens and an Iona naming green and Therapied away his Crop Rotation and Gamble, and he was still drawing live to his Tabernacle his first draw step but didnt hit it. Game 3 I won after he Crop Rotationed for Bojuka Bog with a Narcomoeba trigger on that stack during my 2nd turn's draw step, but I still had an LED, Grave-Troll and Breakthrough in hand to go off again that same turn, followed by him bricking on his draw steps for like 3 turns after that. Basically I had to draw insanely well to win games 2 and 3 but I guess that's Magic sometimes and my opponent was a good sport about it.

The Ingot Chewers and Ancient Grudge in the SB were a nod to the Eldrazi Menace which unfortunately appears like its going to be a real thing in the format going forward. Chalice at 1 is insanely good against us but we can still hope to go off with LED/Coliseum or discarding to hand size if they dont have a fast clock. If they have Chalice at 1 and a piece of hate whether it be Crypt or Leyline I think those are just games we have to accept that we will lose, and after having tried Abrupt Decays in the SB at local tournaments for the past few months I didnt miss having them in my SB during the tournament and would still play this same list going forward, tho I think Dredge is not particularly well-positioned at the moment with Deathrite Shaman and/or Eldrazi/Chalice everywhere.

jimmythegreek
03-01-2016, 08:02 AM
Cope, really like your list by the way. I think people are undervaluing firestorm not only in its ability as an uncounterable discard-outlet (chalice may be prevalent for a bit) but for the potential blow-out factor. Affinity, elves, dnt, goblins (may be seeing more of these guys) and drs decks are all potential targets for a good firestorming. With eldrazi on the rise we may expect an up tick in these creature heavy decks making firestorm a not so bad choice.

zenden
03-01-2016, 01:16 PM
hi guys, went 4-1-1 at a local event sunday.

2-0 vs Cephalid breakfast, easy win with zombie+ichorid

1-2 vs BUG tempo, got beaten by deathrite +3 delver on G2 and Cage+surgical G3

2-0 vs BUG control, G1 22/22 GGT, same thing on G2, 17/17 GGT+ zombie army

2-1 vs D&T, lost to Batterskull-Jitte G2, on G3 discard RIP on turn 1, clear the board with firestorm on turn 5 and win

1-1 vs Merfolk, lost G1 with opponent at 2 life after mulligan 4, G2 easy win, G3 end time with him at 2 life (again) and me with Elesh+ 1 zombie.
I made a huge mistake, i haven't attacked with 1 ichorid before DR Elesh...

2-0 vs miracle, nothing to say

Finished 9th after 6 turns with 4 people at 13 points, i won a Jitte..
My opponent with merfolks finished 8th :'(

gibbousm
03-01-2016, 06:20 PM
hello, so I'm planning to be running Dredge all day at GP DC with an Infinite Challenge badge.

Right now I'm running a Main deck Iona as a hedge vs other combo decks and to lock out my opponents game 1.
But if Eldrazi is going to be as big a presence as everyone is saying, I think it would better if I had Iona in the sideboard.
The question is I have is: Should Iona be in the sideboard or should she stay in the maindeck? If she goes to the SB, should I be running one of my Ashen Riders in the main? Are Riders good vs Eldrazi?

I'm also considering running Reveillark for the lulz, especially if I expect a ton of Miracles. If they Terminus or StP it, I just get back 2 GGTs.