[Deck] Dredge-a-Tog - Psychatog with the new Dredge cards

[Kadun]

The new Dredge cards in Ravnica seem to make a perfect fit with Psychatog based decks. Darkblast in particular helps to offeset the threat of small fast creature decks, while Life from the Loam functions similar to Gush as a 'Tog inflator.

//NAME: HulkBlast
2 Wasteland
2 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
7 Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Mox Diamond
// defense
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Darkblast
// creatures / equipement
4 Psychatog
// draw / util
2 Cunning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
// sideboard
SB: 1 Berserk

There's incredible synergy here. Intuition for any combination of Dark Blast, Life from the Loam (LftL), and/or Brainstorm and you have a pretty impressive position.

The combination of Brainstorm with the Dredge cards alone is impressive. Cast Brainstorm, put two cards you don't need on top of your deck, and next turn Dredge them away. Or, cast Brainstorm and Dredge as one of the three draws you get.

The discard from Mox diamonds is easily rectified by recurring LftL.

Darkblast is a great card at holding off Lackeys or Conclaves, while Wasteland recurred through LftL holds off Factories.

The build is no where near optimal, however. I would like to add some sort of recursion for the 'Togs in the 'yard. Unearth was the main possibility, with red you could include Recoup and open up even more combinations (although weakening your mana base).

Likewise, I'd also like a way to recur Cunning Wish should it be dredged into the yard. With the Recoup addition, Fireshrieker and Reconstruction seemed like possible additions, while cutting the Wishes. You could intuition for these three cards as well.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Edit: The Genesis suggestion talked about in the Judge Dredge thread seems to be the strongest choice for 'Tog recursion. I'm comparing this list to other Dedge lists to see if this deck would be a waste of time, and to just play the other ones. Though this still seems pretty strong.

[LinkXwing]

Corpse Dance and Shallow Grave could be additions in the sideboard. I've used both many-a-time to kill people via Cunning Wish.

Regrowth could be a good addition to the deck, as well as Deep Analysis.

[Sobek]

Stinkweed Imp can take down alot of threats not to mention makes your tog letal faster. Defy Gravity could be some neat tech.

[boom]

Wow, I really like this idea for a deck, although I have no real suggestions yet, but I really dont like how the mana base is looking. 3 main deck green cards do not require 4 duals + 5 fetchs that can get it. I am probably going to scour Oath, Reanimator, and other decks that have some graveyard tricks.

[Ridiculous Hat]

I would recommend cephalid coliseum as a good life from the loam target. It fills up your yard and helps out your hand pretty quick when you discard the extra lands you life'd back.

[Kadun]

In testing the previous list, I've run into the problem that others have encountered. The deck tries to do too much. Draw or Dredge. With that in mind, I've modified the engine so that you want to simply Dredge almost all the time. Heres the list I came up with (thanks for all the suggestions).

//NAME: HulkBlast
2 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Wasteland
2 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Mox Diamond
// defense
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Darkblast
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
// creatures / equipement
2 Genesis
4 Psychatog
// draw / util
1 Krosan Reclamation
2 Intuition
2 Cunning Wish
3 Life from the Loam
4 Brainstorm
4 Deep Analysis
// sideboard
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 1 Berserk

The Genesis addition lets you recur your 'Togs, you can even discard it to the 'Tog if it winds up in your hand. Same with Deep Analysis. The Krosan Reclamation is for if you're going to mill yourself to death because of a stalemate. You should be able to Reclaim both wishes and go for Berserk.

In testing, however, this list still doesn't seem too great. I still felt I needed to take more advantage of Dredge. Mainly, I want a way to get my counters back if I Dredge them. I want every Dredge to be an Ancestral Recall for not just Dredge cards (that's why I'm staying away from the Sylvan library combo).

Possibly a deck featuring the Dredge mechanic, with Recoups and Regrowths. Too bad YawgWill is banned :(

Anyway thanks again for all the great suggestions.

[effang]

you only need one life from the loam

Why? Please develop your posts more---Frogboy



Edited By frogboy on 1130458294

[Bardo]

Loam-a-Tog and Dredge-a-Tog (Hulk Blast) threads merged, since they're the same deck. - Zilla

(I posted this at The Mana Drain, but thought I'd post this here too.)

Straight up, GAT is up there with my favorite decks of all time. It draws cards like a fiend, runs tons of counters, and wins with enormous threats. The loss of Gush was a swift punch in the groin to the deck and it's hobbled along since. Poorly, I might add. But whenever a new set comes out, the first thing I'm looking for is some busted card drawer to replace Gush. And when I saw the Ravnica spoiler, Life from the Loam tickled my belly.

Life from the Loam
Ravnica: City of Guilds - Rare
Card type: Sorcery
Casting cost: 1{G}
Card text: Return up to three target land cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Dredge 3 (If you would draw a card, instead you may put exactly three cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, draw a card.)

Bomholmm at TMD metioned this card in a Threshold thread and I dismissed it since Threshold wants to be drawing spells, not bulk cards that do nothing. But what loves a bunch of random cards in hand that have no particular purpose? Friggin' Psychatog! That's what. It's almost a match made in heaven.

For comparison's sake:

Gush
draw two cards
return two lands to your hand
Gush goes to the GY
pump Tog from your hand +4
four cards go to the GY
pump Tog from your GY +2
Berserk; attack for 14 +

Life from the Loam
return three lands from your GY to your hand
next draw, Dredge LFL to your hand
three cards go into your GY (dredge cost)
pump Tog from your hand +4
four cards go to your GY
pump Tog from your GY +3 (3 dredged cards + 3 lands, LFL still in the GY)
Berserk; attack for 16 +

And the two best ways I thought to take advantage of an early LFL: Diamond Mox and Fetchlands.

I'll do the math later, but you should be able to goldfish as early as turn 4 if you play your cards right.

Here's the exercise I worked through in the SCG forums with Moxless/Loamless GAT:

=-=-=-=-=

"This is with my Night's Whisper Grow-a-Tog build with maindeck Berserks.

"To keep track of our hand, graveyard, and power of our Tog I'm using this notation after each play (x-x-x), that is ('cards in hand'-'cards in graveyard'-'power of tog')

"GAT going first*:

Turn 1: (7-0-0) Play Flooded Strand (6-0-0), sacrifice Strand for basic Island (6-1-0), play Serum Vision (6-2-0).

Turn 2: Draw (7-2-0), Play Polluted Delta (6-2-0), Brainstorm (6-3-0), (put back an extra Tog, etc.), sac Delta for Swamp (6-4-0), Duress (5-5-0).

Turn 3: Draw (6-5-0), Play Flooded Stand (5-5-0), sac Strand for Island (5-6-0), play Psychatog (4-6-1).

Turn 4: Draw (5-6-1), sac AK1 to Tog (4-7-2), play Polluted Delta (3-7-2), sac for Tropical Island (3-8-2), AK2 (4-9-2), Ghastly Demise random critter (3-10-2), pump Tog from hand +2 (1-12-4), pump Tog from graveyard +6 (1-0-10), cast Berserk on Psychatog (0-1-20), attack for 20. <span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Roar!!!</span>

"This is clearly for goldfish purposes since the only interaction with our opponent at this point is Duress and a Ghastly Demise that nailed a Birds of Paradise (or whatever). But there you go. :)

"*You can get a 23 power berserking Tog if you replace the interactive cards with more draw spells. We also would have had a bigger Tog if we were on the play, but I wanted to give myself a few handicaps for this exercise.

"But note how sick this gets with Gush. Gush is +6.5/+6.5 to Tog and +13/+6.5 with Berserk. It's a good thing that sucker's banned."

=-=-=-=-=

Anyway, I haven't tested this and I admit to ripping off Mike Clair (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf34) substantially here (note the competition!), but here's my current test deck:


Loam-A-Tog
Blue/Black/Green Psychatog
by Bardo

3 Psychatog

4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Counterspell
1 Disrupting Shoal
1 Misdirection

4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Serum Visions (placeholder)
3 Intuition
2 Cunning Wish
2 Life from the Loam

4 Engineered Plague

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
5 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Diamond Mox

sb 4 Duress
sb 3 Blue Elemental Blast
sb 2 Ghastly Demise
sb 1 Berserk
sb 1 Fact or Fiction
sb 1 Shallow Grave
sb 1 Hurkyl's Recall
sb 1 Hibernation
sb 1 Naturalize

It's obviously tuned to beat up Goblins, but those removal slots are negotiable (other options being Ghastly Demise, Smother, and Pernicious Deed, or more card drawing like Deep Analysis, etc.).

What do you think?

(p.s. Sorry I didn't see Kadun's post... And I thought I had an original idea :))

[colsmack]

I have found Grave-Shell Scarab to be solid in more controlling Tog builds, it may be too slow for this deck though. What do you think?

[Pyrokinesis]

One thing that's being overlooked is that Life from the Loam helps you find more lands and thin out your deck by getting back Fetches if they aren't just there to feed your 'Tog. That's especially useful in 'Tog/Threshold decks in which part of the principle is that you run few lands and a metric assload of cantrips is that you get cards that matter. In this way Life<.Loam isn't bad without a Dr. Teeth on the board.
The life can add up, though.

[Kadun]

you only need one life from the loam
Actually, I like to see Life from the Loam early.

Consider the opening hand of Fetch, land, Loam, Mox Diamond. You start with Fetch, break for a land. Mox Diamond, discard land. Casst Loam and get your two lands back. Next turn dredge and hopefully get one of your 12 cards in the deck you can play from the 'yard, or more lands you can Loam back.

In testing the only misgiving I have about this deck is the lack of counters that actually get to your hand. If there was a way to get them from the 'yard to hand, this deck would be much better.

Has good game vs Goblins, however, because recurred Darkblasts are so effective.

Against Landstill its about Wasteland recursion. Another reason why I'd like to run 4 total, and 4 Intuition. Intuition for Loam, Wasteland, Wasteland for a solid game against Landstill.

Against Solidarity, you're going to need your counters and your Darkblasts are useless. Which is awkward for a control deck to have trouble with Combo.

Any ideas for Counter recursion?

[Windux]

Whats with Arcon harvest/Chatter of the uqirrel?
Ok, you must pay 3 Life to flashback it, but u get 2 Tokens who can give you Time.
Or even Better: Call of the Herd one or two times. (maybe the Roar of the Wurm?)

[Sobek]

Heres an extended version of this deck that did quite well this past weekend. I found it here.

Craig Jones - Semifinalist Grand Prix-Bilbao Trial
Dredge-a-Tog – Extended Format
Main Deck
60 cards Sideboard
3 Island
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
3 Watery Grave
1 Yavimaya Coast
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Lonely Sandbar
3 Barren Moor
26 land

1 Wonder
3 Psychatog
1 Ghost-Lit Stalker
2 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis
8 creatures

2 Force Spike
4 Life from the Loam
2 Putrefy
3 Cunning Wish
3 Darkblast
4 Remand
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak

26 other spells
2 Engineered Plague
2 Duress
1 Upheaval
1 Naturalize
1 Hideous Laughter
1 Coffin Purge
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brain Freeze
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Moment's Peace
1 Tsabo's Decree
1 Putrefy
1 Stifle
15 sideboard cards
I found it here
Linkage (http:
//www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bd199)

What do you think? It looks like a good base to start with; obviously we need to replace some things, put in FoWs, a Berzerk in the Board, etc... Just thought I would share.

[Windux]

The Ghost looks very random.
In Legay, you cant just spend 7 mana in the Mainphase...i mean: How long u need to get 7 Mana? (mhh ok that could be a reason why he is an 1-off to get Catched by the Genesis).
But still if you Let discard your Enemys full (?) hand, you need 2 Mana for Leak/Counterspell/Remand (probatly this gonna be FoW) or a FoW.
If you dont play against Control, you dont need the Ghost, because your opponent gonna smash out his Threads ;)

And i played the Deck a few times: 2 Wishes are 1 to less ;)
And 4 Coutner for a Control-Deck are Way to less

And the Wonder can be cutted i think.

[Bardo]

I didn't see Kadun's post when I wrote mine (http://mtgthesource.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=28;t=819) yesterday, but here's my current test deck:

Loam-A-Tog
Blue/Black/Green Psychatog
by Bardo

3 Psychatog

4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Counterspell
1 Disrupting Shoal
1 Misdirection

4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Serum Visions (placeholder)
2 Intuition
3 Cunning Wish
2 Life from the Loam

4 Engineered Plague

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
5 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Diamond Mox

sb 4 Duress
sb 3 Blue Elemental Blast
sb 2 Ghastly Demise
sb 1 Berserk
sb 1 Fact or Fiction
sb 1 Shallow Grave
sb 1 Intuition
sb 1 Hibernation
sb 1 Naturalize

[Windux]

I really Like the "Loam gets me Fetch's, Wastelands and CARDDRAW", why nobody of us thought about the Cyclelands?
I was today in our loal Store and talked about the Loam-a-Tog and the First thing I heard was "Yes, this Cyclelands are great!". I didnt saw the Cyclelands in the post above me from the Extended Deck ;)

I Gonna test out this Decklist

2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
2 Wasteland
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
3 Lonely Sandbar
3 Barren Moor
2 Mox Diamond
-------------
25 Manasources

3 Psychatog
1 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis
1 Ghost-Lit Warder (Testslot)
-------------
6 Creatures

4 Brainstorm
4 Life from the Loam
2 Intuition
3 Cunning Wish
3 Darkblast
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
3 Daze
4 Accumulated Knowledge
----------
31 Spells

61 Cards


2 Engineered Plague
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Berserk
1 Naturalize
1 Shallow Grave
1 Coffin Purge
1 Echoing Truth
1 Brain Freeze
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Moment's Peace
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gasthly Demise
2 Stifle
------------
15 SB Cards

Why the Cards?

Why no Cephalid Coluseum?
Since i saw the Cyclelands, i Like it much more.
You play Loam for example on: Sandbar, Sandbar, Wasteland.
you play Wasteland->opponents Land, Cycle 2 Lands, one of them Dredge Loam.
Its a card with {1g} for "Destroy target Nonbasic, you may pay U to draw a card. play this only 2 times".
Sounds quite good. And if your opponent dont have a Nonbasic, draw 3 Cards ;)


Eternal Witness
Witness is a recurring Blocker with CiP regrwoth. T2 and T1.x player know how good she is. Its better to get 1 Card directly to Hand, then 2 Cards shuffled in your Library (Witness makes this more often)


Ghost-lit Wander
It's more for the Lategame. It's a recurring Counter, which cant be coutnered "normally", only with Stifle or something.


Deep < AK'S?
Ak is way better then DA since I play the Witness. You simply Dredge the 3 first AK's. Then return the 3rd with Witness or play the 4th (Or Recur the 4th Whatever you want). ;)

I Hope my english is good enough, that you can read it.
If i made some mistakes, please correct me (maybe per PM ;) )

Thx

[Kadun]

@Windux - I think that is one of the best lists I've seen. In testing my version which wants to Dredge more than draw, I've found myself losing a lot of tempo. I think with 'Tog, the old plan still works, just draw cards.

Some changes I would make to your list are:
-1 Life of the Loam
+1 Intuition
I think Intuition is THE card in the deck and I'd try to run four. Against Lanstill, as mentioned before, you Intuition for Loam, Sandbar, Sandbar for a recurring uncounterable draw engine. Against aggro you Intuition for Darkblast and pretty much anything else.

Additionally I would NOT count the cycle lands towards your mana base cound, as I plan to cycle them and not actually play them.

My mana base would be:
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
5 Fetchland
3 Mox Diamond
2 Wasteland
1 Cephalid Coliseum
6 Island

With an additional 3 Lonely Sandbars that aren't part of the base.

The 1 Cephalid Coliseum is to get Genesis in the yard if needed to recur Eternal Witness. Another reason why I go down to 1 Wish. Intuition also fetches this combo: Coliseum, Gensis, Loam.

There are so many Intuition tricks I think you need to run four. You can't lose focus of what the deck wants to do, however, draw, draw, draw, Berserk Psychatog.

[Windux]

Yeah I Gonna play 1 Colloseum, because of exactly the same Reason like you: Genesis ;)
I really Love to know, that I play 3 Wishes. I AQlso though about, to play Fling.
The Reason is really easy: You allways get Red Mana (Dredge, reccur Witness->Mox) and you can Win Instantly.
Like: 5 Librarycards (I really often have that ;) ) and you Want to Win, but your opponent has Blockers, Removal and so on.
You get the Witness back for a Wish (if you dont have one in your hand). Normally you would play your Tog, Counter all the Oppponent have, destroy all (unless he Play for Example Troll or Mongoose....Gro, Zoo etc are playing this) what you CAN.
But you cant Destroy Untargetable Creatures with thoughness 3+ (Hideous Laughter). So you Smash the Tog on the Table, he defenetly will try to kill him EoT. In response you play your Wish on Fling, pump him and Say:Countered on Solution and never mind, you get 4x DMG from the Tog.

it's much easier That way.

Landbase: I found out, that the Lands are to less. I really dont want to paly a Cycleland to miss no Landdrop, we should play more (and then 3 Moxen?).
Against Landstill the Plan is more like: Loam-> Fetch, Sandbar, Sandbar and Later then Wasteland,Wasteland,CycleLand to kill his Manlands.
Ofc you must try to get the CoW from the Table, to screw him more.

I Dont know if its a good idea to cut a loam for an intuition. I Would like it much more, to have a Loam then a 2nd Intuition.
I mean, you defenetly will Play Intuiton on Darkblast/Loam- Comination, 3 AKs or Darkblast/Loam/AK(maybe 2) for Cardadvantage.
I never played an Ak for less then 3 Cards ;)

[Kadun]

I think our lists are becoming very similar, and it comes down to a few card choices based on individual favorites. Here's the list I'm currently testing:

//NAME: Hulk Blast
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Wasteland
2 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Mox Diamond
3 Lonely Sandbar
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
5 Island
// engine
1 Cunning Wish
3 Intuition
3 Life from the Loam
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
// creatures
4 Psychatog
1 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis
// defense
2 Duress
3 Darkblast
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

// sideboard
SB: 1 Berserk

I'm pretty happy with the list. I'd like to run one more Intuition but I'll make do with three, and possibly run the fourth in the 'board as a Wish target.

Sideboard options would be:
@Landstill - 2 Duress, 2 Wasteland, and X Pithing Needle for the inevitable Tormod's Crypt

@Goblin/Weenies - 1 Darkblast, X Engineered Plague, X Engineered Explosives

@protection from black - some sort of bounce and/or Roar of the Wurms.

[Windux]

Duress looks good, the 2 Times there, but you need Counter too. Wouldnt 2 Daze or Disrupting Shoal better?
You play more on Intuition then me.
But your Landbase Looks very good to me-> 2 Cylcelands, 1 Landdrop.
1 Cunning Wish is to less. I Play Fling instead of Berserk, because you can Fling the Tog Without problems fast to your opponents Head (Also you can make all in just one Turn and Ignore the opponents Creatures)

[Shadow]

Why hasn't anyone suggeted Deed? Or is the fact that Mox is in here outway one of the best board sweepers in the game? It seems that you should be able to use it still. In the late game getting rid of mana sources shouldn't really be a problem because of Loam, and in the early game it seems like you would just accelerate into it for a faster Deed. It seems like a perfect fit if you ask me. 10 times better than EE.

[Windux]

Yes I Thought about Deed too, but i Didnt needed it now.
And I had a lot of Discussions whats better: EE or Deed.
Believe me, EE can do many Things better then Deed. But the Deed can that too, only in other Situations ;)
Ah and here is my Actually Decklist:

// Lands
3 Lonely Sandbar
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Flooded Strand
2 Wasteland
1 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Island

// Creatures
1 Eternal Witness
3 Psychatog
1 Genesis

// Spells
3 Intuition
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Counterspell
3 Cunning Wish
3 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Darkblast

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Shallow Grave
SB: 1 Fling
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 Ghastly Demise
SB: 1 Moment's Peace
SB: 1 Hideous Laughter
SB: 1 Coffin Purge
SB: 1 Misdirection
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Duress
SB: 3 Stifle

I played against Solidarity for a minute.
Her was my Gameplan:
+2 Duress
+2 Stifle
-3 Darkblast
-1 Wasteland

The Plan:
Just make Cardadvantage with Loam, AK and Lands. he cant do anything against it.
Smash the Tog on the Table as soon as possible.
Then Try to get Intuition or even Better Cunning Wish.
You make Cardadvantage. Then, if you got 2-3 Coutners and enough mana, you attack, until he makes his combo. if you can force him, because you got a Lethal Tog, is better. He will his combo, interrupt him with Stifles if you can, but dont Counter any High-Tide/reset/Turnabout, if you not 100% know, he will break down.
Then when you are milled and he forces you to draw a Card, play Cunning Wish and Fling him ;)

[Artowis]

Golgari Grave-Troll and Deep Analysis seem throughly awesome for how much you want to abuse Dredge and cycling lands.

Also, C. Wish for Berserk almost seems like overkill at this point. You can basically jump up +6-9 cards in hand and mill another 10-15 cards into the grave when you go off anyway. Trample is cute and all, but you could always just run a Wonder or two and fly over opponents for the win. And that costs 4 mana less.

Oh and no Putrefy?

[Windux]

Berserk/Fling let kill you faster. You can also kill on Round 4-5.

Putrefy costs 3cc.
preboard you have bad Chances against aggro, but Putrefy makes this not really better.
You must try to smash a Tog on the Table (if you know, your opponent dont play Swords). Its not necessary to protect him all the Time, since were playing Genesis and Witness.
With this you get easiliy 3-4 Rounds more time, because he wont attack with all/you block some Creatures to the Death.

After boarding you got EE, Engineered Plague.
Wishtargets are Hideous Laughter, Moments Peace (really great with Genesis/Witness Engine, you "only" got to remove the Pinger which are SGC 2/2 and Sharpshooter 1/1), Ghastly Remise, BEB.

I also though about, to cut BEB or Ghastly Demise for a 3rd Stifle, because I really think in Lile, there gonna be much Solidaritys.
BEB is the bigger candidat, because Demise kills Angels, Dragons and all the Big Reanimationcreatures.

[Zilla]

Cycling lands are savagely, stupidly good with Life from the Loam. It's basically a recurring draw engine in and of itself. Add in Genesis, Wonder, and Deep Analysis, and you have recurring, evasive beats and even more draw off of Dredge. Other builds I've seen aren't even bothering with the old school Cunning Wish > Berserk tech. Life from the Loam with cycling lands is a robust enough engine in and of itself that the Berserk is often unnecessary, particularly when you have Wonder giving your Tog evasion.

In short, the new engine deserves more focus. The older remnants of the classic Hulk strategy like Wish can be donbe away with.

[t3h.sWaRm]

I just goldfished a few times with the deck, and it feels too slow. Just a suggestion on the board. Wouldn't Shred Memory be better than Coffin Purge? It does cost 1 more mana but with that you get 4 cards and it has dredge.

[Windux]

It hasnt Dredge ;)
It removes 4 at one time.
Purge says "I remove now a Dragon and maybe Later".

I cuttet 2 Darkblasts and 2 Loams.
I Play now 3 intuiton +1 SB and 3 Wishes.
Also i Cuttet the AKs, for being to slow (yes, no AKs with 3 Intuitions :P ).
I also test 2-3 Putrify and 3 Deeds.

I gonna play some Games and then Post the Results.
The Real Testingphase for Lile and the GPT Lile starts in 2 Days for our Team.

[Rastadon]

Cabal Pit, anyone? Looks like savage tech.

[frogboy]

I played against Life from the Loam Madness/Tog at an Extended PTQ yesterday, and he killed me on turn four in game two. Again, this is in Extended. I think the claim "too slow vs. other aggro" is facetious.

[Windux]

Ah the T8 MadnessToG?
I really like this Deck :)

I just talked with a friend some minutes ago and we talked about Sylvan Library. "Top is better because you can dredge him away if you need to dredge, thats why he is better then Brainstorm....hey you dont dredge him away!"
That was our Brainstorming, about Brainstorm vs. Top.

You Tap Top, dredge and THEN put the Top on top.
Recurring Top with recurring Fetchs because of Life of Loam.

This could be a really good thing, but BS is an instant. Top is a permanent, what you only can destroy in response on putting him on Top. And not everybody Counters the Top.

I really gonna think about this, maybe Top/Brainstorm Combination on 5 Slots? 2 Tops/3 brainstorm or 3/2?
Let's see how good this little Artifact can be ;)

[Artowis]

I just goldfished a few times with the deck, and it feels too slow. Just a suggestion on the board. Wouldn't Shred Memory be better than Coffin Purge? It does cost 1 more mana but with that you get 4 cards and it has dredge.
Take the Dredge Tog deck that made T8 at PT:LA and test that. You can generally get plenty of turn 4/5 kills once you get the deck down. And no, I haven't yet. It's a bit more complicated than the older Tog decks, but the Japanese have shown that the deck is indeed as fast a Tog w/ Gush.

[Windux]

Yeah, but look at the Engine.
kenji really only play 6 "Drawspells", which are 3 Gifts and 3 Wishes. I really dont Count the 3 Cyclelands as a Carddraw, for the 1 Loam.
But he really Plays his Deck controlled and btw, the Quarterfinal was really nice, Mulliganed and Screwed his opponent with this one Random oxidize on the Chrome Mox and the pernicious Deed for the Artifact Land.
So there was no problem for him to cast the Gifts and know, the opponent just can't Counter and he gets a Landdrop turn for turn and get the Draw out of the Cyclelands.

You really can Smash the Tog early on the Table and just say "Go, you got 1 Round to Win and i got a full Hand".

[frogboy]

Have you ever played with or witnessed Life of the Loam + cycling lands in action? It's insane. Obviously you'd probably change the deck so it was playing hard counters instead of Leak and Force Spike, but Tsumura can draw three cards a turn for five mana and keep filling his graveyard every single turn. It's a very powerful engine.

[Windux]

I know the Decklist:

4 Island
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Swamp
1 Barren Moor
1 Tranquil Thicket
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Watery Grave
3 Overgrown Tomb
3 Yavimaya Coast
1 Underground River
1 Darkwater Catacombs

26 land

4 Psychatog
1 Wonder

5 creatures
3 Force Spike
1 Darkblast
1 Oxidize
4 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak
2 Last Gasp
1 Smother
1 Life from the Loam
1 Circular Logic
4 Cunning Wish
3 Putrefy
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Gifts Ungiven

29 other spells
2 Viridian Shaman
3 Duress
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Oxidize
1 Naturalize
1 Krosan Reclamation
1 Natural Affinity
1 Mana Short
1 Circular Logic
1 Hideous Laughter
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Tsabo's Decree

15 sideboard cards

I watched the livestream of the LA Pro Tour.
he won the Quarter against Boros Deck Wins (Red Deck Wins with White), but lost against the "Oldschool Tog" from Ruel 0-2.

Yeah, i know how powerful the Engine is, I play them by myself, but how Powerful is a Drawengine, if you don't draw them?

[frogboy]

Have you ever actually played with the Life engine and used it to bury your opponent in an avalanche of card draw that simultaneously fed your graveyard by truly sick amounts?

[Sobek]

I was quite impressed in the games against Ervin how Billy Moreno used his Coleseum+Loam engine to good effect; its a strong engine but then again, are we putting it in the wrong deck?

[Zilla]

I was quite impressed in the games against Ervin how Billy Moreno used his Coleseum+Loam engine to good effect; its a strong engine but then again, are we putting it in the wrong deck?
You mean should we be discussing Life from the Loam in UGb Madness instead of Hulk Smash? Hard to say. In the end, once you add Tog and dredge cards to UG Madness, the differences between the decks decrease rather a lot. It's really mostly a matter of whether you want to be playing a more controlling build or a more aggressive build, which is a metagame call, I'd imagine. In the end, it's probably easier to call this a new archetype entirely, and say that certain variants might include Madness options like Mongrel, Deep Anal, and Circular Logic. Maybe.

[Windux]

This would be MadnessTog and should be Discuss in another Thread. This Thread would be really weird if we just discuss on 2 different Deckconcepts..Aggro and Control

[Anusien]

Here's your starting point. I've done a few tricky things, like running a Witness main to Genesis up, but I think this is definitely where you want to start your resting. You should be looking for a place to put Berserk in the board and an extra land in the main.

// Lands
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
6 Island
2 Swamp
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Barren Moor

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
1 Eternal Witness
1 Wonder
1 Genesis

// Spells
3 Mox Diamond
1 Darkblast
1 Life from the Loam
3 Cunning Wish
3 Pernicious Deed
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
3 Putrefy
3 Intuition

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Putrefy
SB: 1 Intuition
SB: 4 Duress
SB: 1 Mana Short
SB: 1 Hideous Laughter
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Fact or Fiction
SB: 1 Nightmare Void
SB: 1 Coffin Purge

[t3h.sWaRm]

I'm not convinced Putrefy belongs in the deck. The 3cc seems a bit high. Has anybody tested Deep Analysis? It seems like it would belong in the deck. Also, 3 Cunning Wish seems maybe too high, since you don't need the wish for Berserk to win anymore. I also noticed you have no Wastelands in your build. I think they belong as a 1-3 of (right now I have 2) in this deck, with the ability to continuosly recur them. How about:
-3 Putrefy
-1 Cunning Wish
-1 Island
-1 Barren Moore
+1 Lonely Sandbar(I feel more confortable with U because I have i available most often)
+2 Wasteland
+3 Diabolic Edict

SB:
-1 Putrefy
-1 Mana Short(What's this for? Solidarity?)
+1 Diabolic Edict
+1 Darkblast? <- Not sure what to put in yet

I'll have to test more to see if Putrefy's ability to kill artifacts matters much.

[Alvin6688]

I'm not going to Philly, but I am helping someone test for it. Many matches now, I've been on the recieving end of both brutally fast kills and/or long games in which he ended up out-drawing me two to one, using this:

MAINDECK:
4 Psychatog
4 Brainstorm
4 Acc. Knowledge
4 Deep Analysis
4 Intuition
2 Darkblast
4 Chrome Mox
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
1 Wonder
1 Stinkweed Imp
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
2 Coliseum
2 Swamp
6 Island

SIDEBOARD:
4 Duress
4 Hydroblast
3 Back to Basics
3 Smother
1 Morphling

It's a good deck because it has a lot of ways to kill you, is very consistent at all of them, and is incredibly hard to disrupt.

Depending on the situation and matchup, this deck can use:
Plan A. Play as a combo deck and win on turn 4 using Intuition --> Stinkweed Imp, Deep Analysis, and Wonder.
Plan B. Play as a board control deck and wipe your board with a barrage of recurring Darkblasts (this plan also happens to make Tog enormous)
Plan C. Play the traditional control game and burying you in card advantage via plays because it can Intuition for AK AND Intuition for DA OR use Stinkweed OR Darkblast to dump a million DAs into the grave.

Before Ravnica, this deck used a very similar list, except -2 Darkblast, -1 Stinkweed, -1 Wonder for +4 Engineered Plague. That made the Goblin matchup very lopsided but gave it trouble against everything else. The new changes destroy Goblins just as well but also hurt control decks.

Against Goblins, you can go with either Plan A or Plan B. Turn 4 wins result from a turn two Tog, turn 3 Intuition for Imp, a DA, and Wonder, and untapping turn 4 to win on the spot. You can also go for the Cunning Wish--> Berserk combo, but that's tougher to pull off for lethal damage on turn 4. I don't even use Cunning Wish because there's nothing I want that Intuition doesn't get me. Anyway, with this new combo, you can race the Goblin goldfish, except they have to worry about a blocking Psychatog and Force of Will.

Now, you won't always draw Psychatog early. Or maybe you don't feel you can win the race. In a situation like this, Intuition --> Darkblast, DA, DA may be the way to go. Darkblast allows you eternally ping Goblin Lackeys and Goblin Piledrivers and Siege-Gang Tokens and Mogg Fanatics and...you get the point. Basically, Darkblast is the new Masticore that works starting on turn 1.

Against control decks, the Darkblast is pretty useless, so don't get that. Instead, you play the control game, but keep in mind that if they give you the chance to go for the combo, don't hesitate to kill them. For example, if Landstill taps out on turn 3 to cast Crucible of Worlds, you can Intuition eot for the combo, and win on turn 4 without fear of STP. Usually, though, the opponent won't let you win this fast - they choose the slow, painful death. Intuition for 3x Deep Analysis is the play of the day against an opposing blue deck because they'll have a hard time stopping the CA. If they counter all your DA attempts, they won't be able to stop the Tog. Chances are they'll have to let you draw your cards, in which case you'll be able to sculpt something like the hand my friend had against me the last time I played Landstill:

Force of Will
Counterspell
Counterspell
Force of Will
Mana Leak
Counterspell
Psychatog

He showed me his hand...I folded on the spot and proceeded to have nightmares through night.

Some weird choices:
I already talked about the lack of Cunning Wish. Earlier, we had compiled a list of feasible Wish targets and had come to the conclusion that none of them were worth it. For example, Wish-->Smother was just inferior in every way to Intuition-->Darkblast+DA+DA. Wish-->FoF was worse than Intuition-->AK/DA. Wish-->Berserk was just worse than Intuition-->Stinkweed Imp. Everything else, like Wish--> Stifle/Misdirection/Hydroblast/etc was just too narrow. The only things we missed was the access to bounce and Ebony Charm, but we decided that it wasn't worth it to devote all that sideboard and maindeck space just to get a freaking Boomerang.

We chose to run 4 Intuition because every plan goes through Intuition. Intuition gives the deck its synergy and melds the three plans listed above into one cohesive strategy. It allows for a lot of synergy.

Most importantly, we have decided to stick with UB becaues it's so liberating to not have to worry about Wasteland at all.

[Kadun]

Against Goblins, you can go with either Plan A or Plan B. Turn 4 wins result from a turn two Tog, turn 3 Intuition for Imp, a DA, and Wonder, and untapping turn 4 to win on the spot.
Can you go into detail about this play? I'm not seeing the win here.

You have a 'Tog out and EOT intuition for Imp, DA, Wonder. Lets say your opponent gives you the Imp, how do you combo out?

I see that cutting a color gives you mana stability, and running the full suite of Intuition card draw targets can give massive card advantage against control decks. But I like Life from the Loam, Lonely Sandbar, Lonely Sandbar better, because its uncounterable recurring card draw. And it lets you run a recurring Wasteland, which is brutal against many decks.

Also keep in mind that with Life from the Loam, you don't fear Wastelands as much.

[Alvin6688]

The problem with Life of the Loam against Wasteland is that it's a sorcery. If they have Wasteland recursion going, they can Waste any green souce they see during your upkeep and thereby denying you the chance of ever casting that Loam. Also, when you're facing a deck like Goblins, you won't be allowed the time to recover from a Wasteland via something slow like Life of the Loam. Wasteland is a tempo card in that it reduces your early game and prevents you from reaching the late game. Problem is, Loam is a late game card. I'd rather just run the ultimate Wasteland-killer: Basic Island. And in our test games, Back to Basics has just been brutal.

If you look at the semifinals matchup between U/B Tog and Dredge-A-Tog, you'll see that Dredge-A-Tog was never given the time to get the engine activated. Tog is too fast a creature, and the Ruel (playing U/B) had it all at instant speed. Because Ruel ran more small draw (Opt, Mental Note, TfK, FoF), he had the upper hand early on and was able to maintain this upper hand throughout all three games. While Dredge-A-Tog may have the upper hand way into the late game, Ruel's build would never give Dredge-A-Tog the time or the board stability to do so.

We originally had green in the maindeck for 2 Deeds, 2 Wishes --> Berserk, and 3 Life of the Loam. We found that we never really needed any of the green cards. Winning on turn 4 > Deeding on turn 4. Imp combo > Berserk combo. Blue instant speed draw > Life of the Loam.

I consider Intuition --> DA/DA/DA uncounterable as well, since people almost never counter the Intuitions of a Tog deck. They think you're going for AK, and they figure they'll just counter the AK. Then you hit them with three DAs, and they realize that they've just lost the game. If they are smart and they do counter the Intuition, then you can probably untap and get Tog into play with little resistance. Then they'll have to deal with the Tog.

The recurring Wasteland idea via Loam is interesting, and certainly powerful, though I'm not sure how many Wastelands you'd be able to fit into a UBG Tog deck. Maybe 2, and Intuition to find. But again, you're relying on Intuition, and I'd rather just go for either Darkblast, AK, DA, or the win if I'm going to cast Intuition on turn three.

In testing, we found that the blue draw that Legacy has to offer is just stronger and more efficient than Life of the Loam.

As for the combo, this is what happens: You have a Tog out and 4 lands in play. EOT, you Intuition for Wonder, Deep Anal, and Imp. They give you Imp. You untap, and discard Imp to Tog (+1/+1). Instead of drawing your card, you Dredge the Imp back to your hand, putting 5 cards into your grave. Then discard Imp to Tog again (+2/+2). You then spend two mana flashing back the Deep Anal in your grave, but rather than draw two cards, you instead dredge Imp back to your hand for each card you would have drawn. That's twice you dredge and discard Imp. That's another +2/+2 for a total of +4/+4 to Tog this turn, and another 10 cards dumped into your graveyard. By now you probably have atleast 18 cards in your graveyard. Chances are, one of these 18 cards is a second DA allowing you to put 10 more cards into the grave and give Tog a total of +6/+6 until eot because you discard that same Imp 6 times this turn. If you don't have that second DA, any draw effect in your hand (Brainstorm, AK, DA, Cephalid Coliseum, etc) does the same thing. No matter how you go about it, you have a lethal Tog. You could keep going if you have the mana, the HP, and the sadistic desire to do so. Your Tog flies because Wonder got Intuitioned into the graveyard, and before they've even blinked, they're sitting pretty on -15 or so life.

[Rivs]

But but but if deep analysis makes you draw two cards, I don't think you can discard imp between the draw of the first and second cards, i'd say you dredge, get imp, then draw another card because you can't dredge for the imp is back in your hand (that is, if there is only one in the grave at the time DA resolves.

I mean, it is still a brutal thing to behold, but i don't think deep analysis will let you dredge the same card twice.

Rules geeks all feel free to make me swallow teeth witht he full weight of the rulebook.

[Alvin6688]

Yeah, I had a question about that too. It's a replacement effect, so it shouldn't worry about stack or anything. I think it works, but I'm going to ask the person who came up with this in the first place. He should give me the answer. Meanwhile, does anyone know if you can do this?

[Koby]

Concerning drawing more than 1 card and Dredge:

Because Dredge is a replacement effect, it does not use the stack. However, 'Tog is just an instant effect, and there is never an opportunity to return Stinkweed Imp to the graveyard while the draw spell is resolving. At best, you will dredge Stinkweed Imp for 5 and draw one card.

This is different if you have two instances of dredge in your graveyard as you resolve Deep Analysis.

Interestingly enough, in order to hose Dredge you can remove the card anytime prior to the resolution of a draw. (aside from the draw step which doesn't use the stack and you draw immediately at the beginning of that step) So, if they cycle a card, you can respond with a Coffin Purge and remove Life from the Loam and they will draw a card. If you attempt to Coffin Purge first however, they can respond with a draw spell, and dredge the Loam instead.

Point of this story: Dredge is annoyingly difficult to play with in conjunction with draw spells.

PS: Intuition is as broken or more in the Legacy version than Gifts Ungiven is in Extended.
Im testing a version that runs 1 Eternal Witness 1 Regrowth to get ANY card from my deck. Genesis is also there, but i don't really need since Tog is just so broken anyway. Go figure.

[Deep Inside]

@Alvin6688: why nor use Golgari Grave-Troll instead of the Imp. It has one more dredge. And do you ever want to hardcast the Imp?

[noobslayer]

I can see Quicksand working its way into the more controlling builds. Tap: Destroy target goblin anyone?

[Zilla]

I can see Quicksand working its way into the more controlling builds. Tap: Destroy target goblin anyone?
Quicksand is an option, but it only answers one threat, not all of them. Overwhelming armies are your real problem. Intuition > E. Plague is probably your best bet against Goblins, at least post board.

[Alvin6688]

Godzilla, do most Goblin builds these days pack ways to stop Plague? If so, I'd rather run something that they don't so easily expect. For example, if Goblins begins running Goblin Kings, Plague is a lot less effective. Same if they run 4+ Disenchant Effects. In that case, I'd rather stock up on a ton of Hydroblasts and Smothers and do target practive on the creatures that make the deck fast: Piledriver, Warchief, Lackey.

[Zilla]

Godzilla, do most Goblin builds these days pack ways to stop Plague? If so, I'd rather run something that they don't so easily expect. For example, if Goblins begins running Goblin Kings, Plague is a lot less effective.
Extensive testing has shown that the 4x Goblin King strategy is wholly ineffective against Engineered Plague. Basically, the strategy forces the goblins player to find and resolve multiple Goblin Kings to try to stay afloat rather than actively winning the game. Even if they succeed, they're so far behind by this point that you're already bearing down on them with a lethal Tog.

Disenchant is a far more significant problem. However, you are playing a control deck. You have 8 counters, and at least 3 Intuitions to find your Plagues. Depending on your build, you also have recurring Darkblast, Putrefy, and/or Deed to help slow Goblins down. You're also playing an equally aggressive deck than can win as early as turn 4, just like them.

In short, the Goblins matchup isn't a real problem for you, at least post board. Engineered Plague is the correct answer to Goblins. That they are aware of it is irrellevant. Ask any hard-core Vial Goblins player what card they fear more than any other. The answer will invariably be Plague. It's the single best anti-Goblins card in the game, and you're running black. 2+2=?

[blacklotus3636]

Wow I didn't even look at this thread before because so many times you'll see stuff like this and it'll be some newb deck. Anyway if the deck is as strong when it had gush is it possible wizards might do something about it? I personally think it's about time we got a control deck that could kill fast enough to beat goblins.

On a side note does this deck have what it takes to replace that crappy landstill deck as tier 1?

[Zilla]

On a side note does this deck have what it takes to replace that crappy landstill deck as tier 1?
I don't htink that's a discussion worth having right now, for a few reasons:

1. There are some who would disagree that Landstill is crappy. (Although I'm not one of them.)

2. Landstill is pure control where this is essentially combo-control. I don't think they fulfill even remotely the same metagame roles. Therefore, even if DAT is Tier 1 quality, it wouldn't necessecarily be replacing Landstill.

3. It would be pure speculation, since there's not anything even resembling an optimized list, and no one has played this at a major Legacy tournament yet, much less won with it.

4. It's too late for DAT to replace Landstill in Tier 1 because Rabid Wombat already has. Excepting decks with 4 Flashfires in the SB and maybe FlameVault combo, Wombat does literally everything that Landstill does but better.

In any case, this was really just a lengthy rant to explain why we shouldn't discuss this, so ignore everything I just said and discuss the deck itself.

[Alvin6688]

Woot! My Tog thread made it to front page of SCG. Yay.

Ok anyway, I posted this as a response to some of the questions they asked their. Interestingly, the questions are the same as those asked here, so I'll just Copy/Paste my post:

----------

The combo of Intuition --> Imp, DA, Wonder doesn't work, so I changed it to Intuition --> Imp, Imp, DA/Wonder, depending on what you don't have in your hand. If you've already drawn a DA, or have one sitting in the grave already, then go grab Wonder. Otherwise, go for DA, becuase you'll more than likely Dredge into Wonder anyway. If you've already drawn an Imp, then obviously go for the second Imp, a DA, and a Wonder. So it all depends on the situation.

Why Stinkweed Imp over Troll? Because that extra Dredge has not once made a difference between killing them and dying. Not once. On the other hand, stalling for time by blocking a Goblin Piledriver with an Imp has. Imp recursion is also a nice way of killing fatties that Darkblast, Tog, and Countermagic can't handle, like Exalted Angel, Morphling, etc. Imp > Troll because it can actually do something useful.

Pithing Needle is indeed a pain, since it slows you down to a crawl. Pithing Needle is the main reason I miss Wish --> Echoing Truth. Other options include maindeck bounce, or maindeck Nev's Disk/Powder Keg/Engineered Explosives. But what can we take out for these cards? Perhaps cut another Mana Leak, and then either a Deep Analysis, an Intuition, or a Darkblast. Not sure. How do you guys think we go about this change?

As for testing results: I've tested against Goblins and Landstill. I still need to test against MWC and Flame Vault, among other things.

Goblins: 60%. Even if you decide to go for the fast win against Goblins, you still have to make sure you disrupt them. Undisrupted, they can kill you as early as turn three. So you still have to Force of Will that turn one Lackey. Nev's Disk, Powder Keg, and Explosives would make this matchup even better. After sideboarding, and with the changes I made at the bottom of this post, you'll have half a deck of cards that wreck Goblins: 2 Darkblasts, 3 Smothers, 4 Hydroblasts, and 2 Nev's Disk, 10 counters, 3 Psychatogs, 2 Imps = good times against creatures. If you want even more, you can add Plagues to the side, but I that's really not necessary.

Landstill: 75%. Landstill cannot beat you unless they go aggro. The problem is that they aren't very...umm...fast. There is only one card in their entire deck that you care about: Swords to Plowshares. Tog isn't afraid of WoG and Nev's Disk because if they won't win the counterwar if they try to cast those cards. Nev's Disk doesn't help a resolved Tog because it comes into play tapped. Wog is just clunky. They have 4 Swords to kill your 4 Togs, but you have twice the card draw. If Intuition resolves, they have a very hard time of stopping you from controlling the game. Games go very long, which means you'll find your Morphling if it comes to that. You bring in Back to Basics and 4 Duress, which ensures that they can't attack you with manlands and allows you to punch through their STPs. Against Landstill, DON'T waste Duress early on. As I said, there's only one card to care about, so save all of those Duresses until late in the game. Sculpt a hand of Duress, Duress, Duress, FoW, FoW, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Tog or something similar, build a mana base of about 8-10 lands, and you've got it made.

I dislike the Hulk builds because of the mana base. Mana Bases in Legacy are more sensitive than anything else. Tog needs to set up a superior mana base, and its hard to do that when every deck is bombarding you with 4x Wasteland.

I just don't think Deed, Putrefy, and Life of the Loam is worth the green splash when black, blue, and artifacts gives you 85% of that power already.

I don't like Life of the Loam because it's just worse than Deep Analysis in every way. It forces you commit to green mana. It's 8 mana to draw fourcards (4 for Loams, 4 for cycling lands). Deep Analysis is also pretty much uncounterable, and it costs only 6 BLUE mana to draw 4 cards. Life of the Loam may let you win big later on, but Deep Analysis lets you win small starting at an earlier point in the game.

So, to conclude, possible changes to the deck are:

-2 Mana Leak
-1 Psychatog
-1 Deep Analysis
+1 Morphling
+1 Stinkweed Imp
+2 Nev's Disk

---------------------

I did not know that Rabid Wombat is a Tier 1 deck - probably because the name makes it sound SOOOO janky. But, I'll go test it out and come back with the news.

Godzilla: I don't play Legacy as much as you do, so I'll take your word that Plague is the answer to Goblins. So I now have the follow-up question: Since there is a limited amount of space in the sideboard, and since Plague is a narrow card, in what order would you recommend the following cards as answers to the metagame AS A WHOLE?

Hydroblast
Smother
Nev's Disk
Engineered Plague

Thanks.

[kirdape3]

If you have access to Green mana, you get to cast Life from the Loam. If you do that even once, you'll never have problems with Wasteland again.

Also, it allows you to recur your Cephalid Coliseums for truly ridiculous card selection. Even with the threat of Wasteland, you can simply sit on a fetchland and then get your green sources online.

[Alfred]

Life from the Loam is absolutely broken in conjunction with fetchlands. Anyone who doesn't want to run it in conjunction with psychatog just has not tested enough. The comparison between this and Deep Analysis is totally unfair, because life from the loam allows you to draw cards from your deck until there are no more cards in your deck, the only bottleneck is mana.

Also, what is the deal with people running only 2 cycle lands? I run 4-5 myself, mainly because they're useful on their own, and you definately want to see one early enough to abuse with a LftL.

[blacklotus3636]

I just don't think Deed, Putrefy, and Life of the Loam is worth the green splash when black, blue, and artifacts gives you 85% of that power already.

I fail to see how all these cards put together don't make up for the addition of green just like kirdape3 said,

If you have access to Green mana, you get to cast Life from the Loam. If you do that even once, you'll never have problems with Wasteland again.
So what possible drawback do you have beyond wasteland which loam takes care of?

[Alvin6688]

Alright, I think I said this before, but I'm not sure. Life of the Loam DOES NOT solve Wasteland against decks in which you care about Wasteland (IE decks with a clock). Why? Because Life of the Loam is a mid-late game card. Think about it. Do you really think you can survive the Goblin onslaught if you're busy tapping out during the mainphases of your first few turns just to get back a friggin DEAD LAND? Me neither. Life of the Loam doesn't answer the fact that Wasteland still costs you a land drop, that it forces you to waste crucial, crucial, CRUCIAL early turns getting back that lost land, and it's too slow to matter against most decks.

It's not even about losing the green mana. It's about losing your land drop that will kill you. Say you've got a Tropical Island, an Polluted Delta, and an Island in play on turn three. You pass the turn, they untap, cast a Goblin. Then they lay down Wasteland and Bam! You untap on turn 4 with just two lands in play. Tog cannot afford to lose land drops. Goblins can afford to lose a land to kill your land because it's ahead in tempo, but you can't. Don't ever forget that Wasteland isn't just about color screw. It's 95% of the time about the tempo. You may be able to get back that lost land with Loam, but you'll NEVER get back that lost land drop.

That Life of the Loam can get back killed lands is not an arguement against U/B Tog because U/B doesn't run killable lands in the first place.


Life from the Loam is absolutely broken in conjunction with fetchlands. Anyone who doesn't want to run it in conjunction with psychatog just has not tested enough. The comparison between this and Deep Analysis is totally unfair, because life from the loam allows you to draw cards from your deck until there are no more cards in your deck, the only bottleneck is mana.

I've tested both U/B and Loam-A-Tog. In fact, I tested Loam-A-Tog before even considering U/B. The only reason I went to U/B at all is because Loam-A-Tog failed to impress me enough. Was Loam-A-Tog better than preRavnica builds? Of course. Does it take another step up by going to Loamless Dredge-A-Tog? Yes.

Loam allows you to draw cards until there are no cards left in your deck if you're given unlimted time and you just assume that the other guy doesn't keep up with his/her own draw engine and that they don't put any pressure on you. If the other guy is a piece of wood, then sure Loam is insane. The problem is, and we can see this so clearly in the Ruel vs. Loam-A-Tog finals of PT:LA, that a good opponent with a good deck will never give you the chance to just sit there and draw cards with the worlds slowest engine. If you read the reports, you'd see that Ruel just kept countering the Loam or let it through. Meanwhile, the LoamATog deck was so busy Loaming that Ruel simply cast a Tog and won. In the Tortoise vs. the Hare race, Loam is the Tortoise and blue-based draw is the Hare. The Tortoise will win if the Hare decides to fall asleep, but you can't expect the Hare to do that every time.

Do you think Goblins cares about Life of the Loam? Do you think Solidarity cares about Life of the Loam? Do you think Rabid Wombat, with it's maindeck Phyrexian Furnaces, cares about Life of the Loam? Atleast Deep Analysis can be hardcast once before Furnace stops its flashback.

Extended has fetchlands as well, but U/B Ruel Tog still won the Pro Tour. After beating up the Tog deck that DID run Loam. 3 to null.

This brings me to Pernicious Deed and Putrefy. Running UBG Tog, you send the message that you want UU by turn 2, and B and green by turn 3. Thats one Underground Sea, one Tropical Island, one basic Island by turn 3, ideally, to cast a turn 3 Putrefy if the situation calls for that play. Then they Wasteland your Tropical Island and you're in trouble.

And what does Life of the Loam do about Rishadan Port? Good Goblin decks run 4x Wasteland and 4x Rishadan Port, and UBG can't get its green with that kind of mana denial. U/B on the other hand? Doesn't give a D@MN.

By running green, you're allowing the opposing deck to use it's tempo control elements on you. You're telling it that it predicted the metagame correctly because you, indeed, are very susceptible to mana denial. You're reinforcing into your opponent that they can in fact screw you over because you allowed them to. You're saying: "Well, I suppose you can have this match because I'm letting you mess with my game, and you took the opportunity to make sure you would. I guess you're one step ahead of me."

By running two colors and 90% basic lands, you say "HAH! You thought you had this matchup because you could mess with my game, but now you know that I made sure you couldn't. I guess I'm one step ahead of you!"

Splashing colors almost always sounds good in theory. More colors correlates splashier, funnier, cooler tricks. It doesn't correlate to the mundane task called winning. Please, please test the deck, or you're really missing out one some good Philly tech.

EDIT: I made another change to the deck:

-1 Imp (we now have one Imp again)
+1 Nev's Disk

-4 Chrome Mox
+2 Island
+1 Cephalid Coliseum
+1 Underground Sea

Nev's Disk has been really useful in wiping out Humilities, Pithing Needles, Crucibles, Goblins, etc. I think it's better than Cunning Wish, but I'm not so sure.

I'm going down to just one Imp because you can go off just fine with one Imp and one Darkblast. Darkblast is just 3 cards, but usually you're able to Dredge so many cards that it doesn't really matter that much.

[Zilla]

Why Stinkweed Imp over Troll? Because that extra Dredge has not once made a difference between killing them and dying. Not once.
I think this statement is egregiously incorrect. But then again, we're playing signifcantly different builds. I'll say this though... because of my curiosity about the differences between Imp and Troll, I've been paying close attention to my damage during test games. I am within one or two points of killing my opponent nearly half of my games. This is after Dredging 3-4 Trolls. Imps in the same situation would have netted me 3-4 less cards in the yard, hence 2 less damage. This is very relevant.

However, it's possible that our strategies are very different. I play my build like straight up combo. I goldfish a turn 4 kill in nearly half my games, and turn 5 kills are far more common than anything after it. This is due in part to the fact that I'm running 8 Dredge cards (3 Loam, 3 Troll, 2 Darkblast) and 6 cycling lands. Like you, I'm running Deep Analysis for tricky Intuition combos. Unlike you, I'm not running AK because it's counterable, and I usually want my Intuitions to grab 2 Trolls and a DA for 18 cards in my yard on my next turn.

I'm not necessarily saying it's absolutely incorrect, it's just that it's as relatively slow against aggro as Life from the Loam and 2 cycling lands, but is significantly worse in the control matchup because it's a one shot, counterable draw engine, where the Loam engine is reusable and is, for all intents and purposes, uncounterable.

Aside from the strength of Putrefy (which answers the pesky Pithing Needle problem to a large extent), Life from the Loam alone makes the green splash worth it. Honestly? My manabase is attrocious. With 6 cycling lands and 8 duals, it's utterly terrible. That said, my attrocious manabase is irrellevant for a few reasons: a) if necessary, I can operate at 3 mana without a lot of trouble, b) Mox Diamonds and a few basic lands mean I can maintain a decent amount of protected mana, c) Life from the Loam makes mana denial strategies largely irrellevant, d) I'm running 26 manasources so I rarely miss a land drop, and e) I typically win before recurring mana denial strategies are relevant to my gameplan.

Because of these reasons, I don't think that the Wasteland issue is a compelling enough reason not to play 3 colors, particularly when Wasteland's presence is vastly overestimated in the metagame. Gro, Wombat, Burn, Angel Control, Tog, MBC, RGSA, High Tide combo, basically every other combo, and hell, even many Landstill builds aren't running Wastelands anymore. You pretty much have Goblins as the only tier 1 deck consistently maindecking Wasteland.

Furthermore, I feel you're ignoring the ability to play around Wastelands with Fetchlands. You simply don't crack a Fetch until you're ready to cast a Loam. Then you get your Fetch back along with two other lands, and replay your Fetch. Then you don't crack that Fetch until you're ready to play Loam again. Unless your opponent has resolved a Crucible, they're losing tempo and a card every time they Waste one of your lands. You, on the other hand, are getting back every land that was removed, and are drawing cards to boot, while simultaneously filling your 'yard. Card advantage ftw.

Life from the Loam is not to be underestimated. It provides an uncounterable draw engine to the deck, as well as feeding the 'yard for your Tog. There's very little not to like about it.

As for Deed, I don't run it. I do run Genesis and Brawn, however. Brawn is additional evasion to supplement Wonder, and Genesis is the number one reason you have an upper hand against dedicated control. Lastly, if the game goes long, Golgari Grave-Troll can be hardcast and provides somewhere between a 4/4 and 5/5 regenerating beatstick to seal games where your opponent has forced you into a war of attrition.

Green splash? Thumbs up, I say. It's damn good times. Also because Naturalize in the board gives you answers to most singificant hindrances to your strategy.

EDIT: It occurs to me I've been talking a lot about strategy and haven't actually posted my decklist, which makes it difficult to discuss with any degree of meaningfulness. The following list is still undergoing fine-tuning and testing. Credit to Josh Sylvestri (Artowis) for the initial concept:

//NAME: Dredge-a-Tog
// Mana
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Lonely Sandbar
3 Barren Moor
3 Mox Diamond

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
3 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Wonder
1 Brawn
1 Genesis

// Search & Draw
4 Brainstorm
3 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
2 Deep Analysis

// Disruption
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

// Removal
2 Darkblast
3 Putrefy

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 3 Naturalize

Again, note that this is unlike most of the Hulkish builds listed here. In fact, strategically, it's like a combination of the Hulkish builds and Alvin's build. This one is light on the control elements and goes straight for the throat. It can race Goblins. It can even race Solidarity, if need be. It has Plague and Chalice, respectively, for these matchups post-SB. Needle is there as an answer to problems like Crypt, Phyrexian Furnace, and, well... the rest of the format, really. Naturalize is also a generalized answer to these problems, as well as others like Humility, for example.

As stated, it's still very much in the optimization stage, but early testing has been quite positive thus far.

[laststepdown]

Has Tolarian Winds been considered? With Dredg/Madness all over the place, it seems like it might be a viable Wish target. But I haven't seen a Cunning Wish on the decklist...yet.

Also, I think Careful Study would be a better choice in this deck than Brainstorm. Flame on.

[Artowis]

Life of the Loam DOES NOT solve Wasteland against decks in which you care about Wasteland (IE decks with a clock). Why? Because Life of the Loam is a mid-late game card. Think about it. Do you really think you can survive the Goblin onslaught if you're busy tapping out during the mainphases of your first few turns just to get back a friggin DEAD LAND? Me neither.

Just a note, but this is completely irrelevant. You smash Goblins into the ground, so I'm suprised that you would be worried about 'solving' a problem in Wasteland, that isn't even an issue. You can beat them up for the win on turn 4/5. I run ZERO basics in my own build and have rarely been bothered by Wasteland. Why? Because I only need 3 mana to get Tog down and then the game is basically over. After that I need like 2 mana on my next turn to cast Deep Analysis, whoopity do.

Most of your post is basically wrapped around the faulty assumption that DAT has a weak match against Goblins (Or similar aggro) because of it's mana disruption. Or that it's weaker than U/B specfically because of some abusable flaw in the mana base. Fact is that's not true at all.





Do you think Goblins cares about Life of the Loam? Do you think Solidarity cares about Life of the Loam? Do you think Rabid Wombat, with it's maindeck Phyrexian Furnaces, cares about Life of the Loam?

Actually yeah I do. Since it's another card that just says, 'pump my tog to obscene levels for two mana'. Do you really think it's main use is for the cycling card engine? Sorry, that's only against control decks that are god awful slow. The rest of the time you use it as a mini-Berserk, instead of running the Cunning Wish -> Berserk plan for more mana and hurting your board.


Undisrupted, they can kill you as early as turn three. So you still have to Force of Will that turn one Lackey.

This makes me question if you were playing the deck correctly. I wasn't at first and had some major issues with getting the supposed kill rates that some 1.x pros had claimed. Once I became more comfortable with the deck and Dredge interactions though, I realized you can race any aggro deck in the format. About half of the time I don't even counter Lackey, because I can race them without a major issue.

[Zilla]

But I haven't seen a Cunning Wish on the decklist...yet.
Most of the lists at the beginning of the thread have Wish. Alvin and I don't run it because we feel we're fast and evasive enough without it.


Also, I think Careful Study would be a better choice in this deck than Brainstorm. Flame on.
No flames here. I actually believed the same thing, because there are plenty of cards you want in the yard. I tested Study though, and I was really really displeased with it. It doesn't dig as deep as Brainstorm does for one thing. For another, you can't get 3 Dredge activations off it like you can with Brainstorm. This is highly significant. Also, the fact that it's a sorcery is not at all incosequential. The ability to protect your hand from hand destruction and leave open mana to bluff countermagic is important. Lastly, as advantageous as it seems to be tossing cards to the yard, that's two less cards you get to pitch to Tog, and this has proven highly significant as well. In the end, I'm almost certain that Brainstorm is the better choice for this build.


Once I became more comfortable with the deck and Dredge interactions though, I realized you can race any aggro deck in the format. About half of the time I don't even counter Lackey, because I can race them without a major issue.
I can confirm this. I've had the same experience. Earlier this evening, for example, I let a first turn Lackey resolve even though I had the FoW in hand. All I had to pitch to it were Tog and Wonder, and I opted to just win on turn 4 instead.

[Alvin6688]

Alright, you guys got me. I'm going to proxie up Godzilla's decklist and run it against the gauntlet. I'm pretty sure I can play his Troll-A-Tog build well because I play that deck in Extended. Nice discussion, guys!

I do have a question: How is your game against Wombat? I'm guessing its a good matchup because of the additional beats (3 Grave Troll, Genesis, Gigapede, etc).

I tested against Rabid Wombat with my build yesterday. The games take forever but usually end in favor of the Tog player. This goes completely against logic, seeing that Wombat gets Abeyance, Phyrexian Furnace, Pithing Needle, STP, Wing Shards, Wrath of God, Renewed Faith, Humility, Akroma's Vengeance, and more. However, because the most draw these decks run are via cycling things, and because they don't run spell disruption (only creature disruption) and don't have much of a clock, you can set up your game for like 10 turns completely uninhibited. Often, you'll find yourself thinking that you run too many draw spells because you're just drawing cards and drawing more cards. There's literally nothing to cast except draw spells for the first like 6 turns of the game. Wombat doesn't do anything but cycle a few Renewed Faiths and Akroma's Vengeances. It spends its entire game saving up STPs and Wing Shards to kill your final Tog.

What the Tog deck wants to do is take advantage of the fact that it can rebuild a depleted hand a million times faster than Rabid Wombat can. Tog wants to force a war to start. Bait with a Psychatog on turn 5 or 7. 5 because you can then leave UU open for Counterspell. 7 because you can leave 4 mana open for two counterspells. Never bait on turn 6 because after casting Tog you only have 3 mana open, which is kind of pointless. Anyway, bait with the Tog. Wombat will throw all sorts of removal at the Tog. Counterspell and Mana Leak and Force of Will as much of it as you can. You know that it's never enough, and that the Tog WILL die, but you don't care because letting Tog live isn't your goal. You're simply happy that both sides just used up their entire hands, because you know that next turn you can flashback a few DAs and you're back up to 7 cards. Meanwhile, Wombat can't because it doesn't run any draw. Do this two or three times throughout the game and eventually you'll build a big enough lead in cards that one of your Togs will remain alive for a turn - and that's when it's all over.

So right now, games against Goblins don't go past turn 4, because that's when I Intuition for the win. Games against Wombat go for like an hour because it's a massive war of attrition that Wombat doesn't have the draw capacity to win. Games against Solidarity can either end turn 4 or can go for a while, depending on how aggressive my hand is.

Anway, I'm testing UBG DAT right now.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I suspect that either your opponent was a bad Wombat player, or Godzilla is a bad DaT player, or some combination thereof, as brief testing showed the exact opposite results. It sounds like your opponent was even trying to kill a pre-pumped Tog, which is almost never worthwhile. Abeyance and Wing Shards give your deck hemmoraging, the dig isn't realistically any slower considering how much of your "draw" engine is simply burying instead of actual drawing, and they run more ways to kill Tog than you run Togs. Godzilla correctly identified Grave Troll as likely your best weapon in this matchup, but it still bites it to Swords. Gigapede gets around Shards and Swords, and seems like a decent option anyway, but it only amplifies the many ways in which DoJ is bad for you. And you still need to sweat the possibility of Humility resolving.

[t3h.sWaRm]

Godzilla, why no Wasteland or Cephalid Colliseum(sp?) in your deck? Even as 1 ofs they could be extremely helpful.

Also, I'm confused on the purpose of Golgari Grave Troll. Is he there just to dredge a whole bunch, with the bonus of being a finisher also?

I like the idea of Brawn in the deck, but I beleive it makes Wonder pretty useless. Do you think it is necesary to have both in the deck?

Lastly, why Putrefy over Deed? Deed does take one turn longer to be activated an kills your Diamonds but it can also kill multiple creatures(read Goblins). What is your reasoning for Puterfy since I haven't decided which I like better yet.

[DI419]

I've never even tested this deck, but it seems like a lot of people want to make this a control deck with Life from the Loam, which Godzilla has stated is not the goal. The purpose of the counters is the same as if you were playing combo. They are protection, not permission. Likewise, attempting to lock your opponent out of the game with Wasteland and such is wasteful maindeck, because the only deck this is truly effective against is Landstill, which this is supposed to smash anyway.

Also, Alvin's deck runs VERY differently from Godzilla's. He talks about leaving mana open for counters, of which Godzilla has none for which he need to pay mana for. I don't know which is better, but I'd suspect that Alvin's deck will be weaker in the aggro matchups by running hard counters, which may counterbalance the Wombat matchup.

[blacklotus3636]

I was about to PM zilla about this but I figured this stuff was relevant enough for me to put it here:
@ Zilla: The more I think about it the more I start to understand that this deck needs to decide if it's going to be control-combo or combo with disruption. I feel the more comboish builds have better game against aggro decks but have a harder game versus control such as wombat and the opposite is true for the more controllive builds with the combo finish I would assume.Also I feel uncomfortable turning this into a combo deck. As a control combo deck it can play the control route as needed and can kill quicker than pretty much any other control deck but if it's a combo deck it essentially means it will be able to goldfish about as fast as solidarity with a good bit of disruption which to me is significantly less impressive than solidarity because they are playing about as much draw with almost as much disruption. I guess what I'm really asking is how effectively you can play the control role when you need to against decks like wombat when you've pushed this deck so far towards the combo route.

[Alvin6688]

BlackLotus, that's exaclty what I'm asking. I do not believe this deck can play like a pure combo deck, because it's win condition is easily killable. Against a Goblin deck boarding in 4 REBs, you need to be very careful of trying to go off too early without protection. 2x REB is game over if you only have 1x FOW. If you try to go off and they kill your Tog, you won't be able to recover and try again in time because you've been neglecting their board.

A control-combo deck, on the other hand, doesn't NEED to rush things so much, since it can play control until it no longer can, and then it wins. I think this is a better approach, since there's just too much disruption out there for 4 FOW and 3 Daze to handle.

I think Julien's deck from Grand Prix: Copenhagen is the perfect mix of combo and control. It runs Smother and Darkblast, zero Putrefy and zero Pernicious Deed, 1 Life of the Loam, 4 Gifts Ungiven, 14 cheap counters, other draw, and Tog. You can see it at magicthegathering.com. Check it out, because it won the whole thing, and it's an amazingly elegant deck.

Now if you were to add Quirion Dryad or Wild Mongrel into the mix, then I'd suggest going aggro-combo-control, in that order of priority, simply because you have additional threats that STP has to worry about, and because Dryad makes tapping out for counters naturally bad.

[blacklotus3636]

I do not believe this deck can play like a pure combo deck
I'm not saying this at all I'm saying that forcing this deck into a combo deck to the degree at which zilla has done is to me like using a ratchet to hammer in a nail. It's not that I don't think it can be a combo deck it's just that I'm not sure that that is the most effective way to utilize this particular deck. Maybe I'm just partial to control decks but seeing as how it can do both combo AND control why not do both to stall until you can combo out with disruption.

[Alvin6688]

Ok, I didn't mean to say it CAN'T play like a pure combo deck. I was trying to say that I don't think it plays most effectively as a pure combo deck. Blacklotus, we are agreeing with each other here in that we both feel combo-control gives the most versatility, stability, and game against disruption. Use control elements to stall until you can combo and protect yourself when you do decide to combo off.

[Icemyn]

yeah about that

[t3h.sWaRm]

Do you guys ever have a Fow in hand but nothing to go with it? It's come up quite often in my testing. Either that or I have something like a Wonder or Deep Analysis. BTW just making sure it's the best play, but should I toss a Wonder to FoW and save my Tog? The way I see it, Wonder is useless without a Tog but Tog isn't useless without a Wonder so I usually FoW.

[UniversalSnip]

It being 3:40 am (EDIT: now 6:30) and not the time of life at which I would want to change my policy on mws scrubs, I decided to test Alvin's build against myself.

So it's not objective. It never is. Even if it's subconscious, I've discovered there is an uncontrollable urge to make plays that favor the deck you like, especially with countermagic in the mix. It's also very easy to make minor but significant mistakes when you're playing two decks, so I generally let myself take them back. Consider that a fore-warning.

Still, I thought it'd be the perfect chance to illustrate some of my objections to the pre-board matchup.

// Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
2 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
6 Island

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
1 Wonder
1 Stinkweed Imp

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Deep Analysis
4 Intuition
2 Darkblast
4 Chrome Mox
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak

This is the list I was using. Readers of this thread may find the list familiar. Accept no imitations. Copyright USofNip 2005 [glare].

// Lands
4 Wasteland
11 Mountain
4 Rishadan Port
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire

// Creatures
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Piledriver
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Matron
1 Goblin Pyromancer
1 Goblin Grappler

// Spells
4 AEther Vial

This is a build I arrived at after a few days of refinement. Since I don't keep updated on legacy and my gauntlet for it usually consists of my other (similarly bad?) builds, it probably looks untuned.

Whatever. It worked for me and it'll work for this experiment.

Wait... rocking out to ok computer.

That's better.

Game 1:

It turns out a testing partner of mine (Death Pits of Crap) can play a game before school starts, so we do. We flip and he runs tog. In the interests of full disclosure I make sure he sees the whole gobbos decklist.

I win the second flip (AHMGWTFMISE) and am on the play.

My hand is lackey, driver, driver and ringleader. Nice. We both keep. I play turn one lackey. It resolves and he flashes me darkblast. At least this game wasn't a blowout, right?

Well...

Despite being stuck on three lands while he went for a turn two intuition (mox) and a turn three imp followed up by imp + double darkblast turn four and then a turn five tog, I still won by just throwing guys at his face until he died. Gempalm Incinerator completely invalidates stinkweed.

My partner doesn't have enough time for another game. I argue that deed is bad in extended tog and he throws out possible slots to cut for real removal until it's bus time.

Game 2 (by myself this time):

Tog is on the play. It rips a broken grip of force, anal, StImpy and lands. Mully. My second hand is brainstorm and lands. I mully to 6 again. No land. Mully. 5 lands and intuition. Guess what my new hand is?

A broken grip of force, anal, StImpy, and lands. Screw this. I'm keeping.

Goblins mulligans to 6 and keeps an extremely mediocre hand with two wastes and no play before turn three.

Between a force on warchief and a mox tog is rapidly into topdeck mode. Stinkweed stands uselessly back on defense while goblins resolves matron >>> kiki >>> time-saving scoop.

Game 3:

Goblins go first (I'm alternating this, if you hadn't caught it). I don't usually keep one trick pony hands, but this is such an asskicking brainmunching bloodpony it can't be resisted. Three lackies, fanatic, port, and matron.

Tog again has no play before turn three and mullies. The next hand features force, two AKs, and a counterspell. Keep.

The vial, obviously, gets forced. There goes my pony. What a bastard I am.

Goblins gets manascrewed for a turn before it draws a mire. No second red source shows up, which makes it impossible to avoid darkblast. I would top frantically for land like a pro, but goblins doesn't run it. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS OVERSIGHT?

Tog glomps onto my ass like a huge flying toothy anal lamprey and it's all over.

Game Four:

Tog goes first. It seems to have a good hand, with darkblast, counterspell and stinky. Unfortunately casting darkblast first turn will mean bearing my throat to wasteland, but it's worth the risk. Goblins has a similarly pretty good curve with fanatic, port, matron and ringleader. Keeps all around.

This game goes quickly and furiously, with a whole lot of dredging on togs part. Stinky and two togs mean that goblins is forced to wait helplessly for the end, but when ringleader, which really reads "3R: Goblin Ringleader mises the game." shows up, things are clearly in favor of goblins. Soon tog has to make unfavorable uses of darkblast to stave off the oncoming alpha rush, until the glorious battle is decisively settled with an eot incinerator for lots, untap, two more incinerations and a pyromancer.

I didn't actually need the incinerators, but flair cannot be denied.

Game 5:

Goblins goes first. It keeps because it has vial. The hand will be a little slow if it's countered, but hey, you win if it isn't.

Tog keeps a decent hand without force, which is all you really need to know.

Double piledriver's pro blue brings tog down to two health on the fourth turn. Tog has one turn to rip dark ritual and double engineered plague off the top. Does it happen? No.

4-1

Between this and my previous testing session with the deck, I've learned a few things.

For one, stinkweed as removal just doesn't work in this matchup. Nothing is more welcome for goblins (well... my build of it. it might not be representative, but I think good players will have come to the same conclusions as me) than a dork that eats into your tempo and keeps you from drawing real answers when it eats a few incinerators.

Darkblast is genuinely lame against goblin's x/2s. Yeah, you can pull fun tricks to kill them. No, that's not particularly good. At least in my build that's fourteen creatures your main removal spell really isn't at all useful against.

I cannot ever imagine losing to tog after going mountain vial resolve. Ever. I do not want to mulligan aggressively against goblins for force so I'll dodge a turn one kill. That fucking sucks.

It needs more real removal to beat goblins, and if you can't beat goblins game one, you need to play a different deck. The flat out truth across formats is that winning post-board gives you an extremely tepid matchup.

I haven't tried a combo-control version of the deck, but I would expect it to have a much stronger matchup. Going all hypercomboslaughter seems practically impossible with this build. They have a million dudes you need to work past to get a hit in, and every turn tog attacks is one he isn't blocking.

On that basis, I just wouldn't play your version to a tournament tommorow, unless I knew damn well that goblins weren't showing up. But even then, I have strong doubts. I just don't see how the deck is supposed to handle cheap, problematic permanents like survival and jitte that get under the wall (I categorize these as Vial Class Threats). Once tog goes lethal, you're probably in the clear, but what version of tog is that untrue for? And if that inevitably wins you the game, shouldn't your goal be to accomplish it?

There are no doubt virtues to the build that I don't understand just because I haven't played against control. It seems likely you would destroy landstill and other midgame decks, but I nonetheless feel this falls by the wayside compared to it's clear issues.

[hhatleejr]

I am scared of giving off my decklist, but I feel that it is important for you guys to see it. I am stuck between running this deck or my HotBox deck (time vault + fusillade). I have been running into goblins non stop, since I decided to build this deck.

The decklist goes as follows:

Creatures
4 Psychatog
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
1 Genesis
1 Wonder
1 Brawn
1 Stinkweed Imp

Draw
3 Intuition
4 Deep Analysis
2 Sylvan Library

Action
3 Life from the Loam
3 Darkblast
3 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy

Acceleration
3 Mox Diamond


lands
1 of each cycle land (three total, green/blue/black)
1 Cephalid Collesium
3 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
2 Island
2 Swamp
2 Forest

Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
4 Blue Elemental Blast
+7 ?

This is what I am running right now, I really think one or two of ya'll should run it, see how it goes...and then get back to me. I have had a very positive matchup against goblins so far, game one going about 60% in my favor. I have yet to do any sideboard games, but I am quite pleased so far.

[bigredmeanie]

@hhatleejr I like your creature base. A lot. However I do not think you need more than 1 Life from the Loam. The reason being, you won't really dredge more than 1 a turn any way. I would say -2 LftL +1 Intuition +1 Roar of the Wurm.

Cabal Therapy is also absolutely nuts in this deck. -1 Duress +1 Cabal Therapy.

I don't like Sylvan library in your list. With out a way to get it from your grave, its generally going to not be very useful as a 2 of. Therefore I would say they could become 2 more Duress.

I think the changes I am suggesting will make the deck a little more synergetic and make you care less what gets milled into your yard.

Other than that, good work.

[SMR0079]

hhatleejr,

The list looks aggressive and good, but I think it belongs in the Madness/Tog thread.

Looking at Julien Nujiten's winning decklist at the Cophaugen GP illustrates how one can combine both the dredge mechanic with ore traditional builds of Tog. Here is a link for reference: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/gpcop05/top8decks

The winning decklist could be broken down into these sections:

Counterspells: 13
Removal: 4
Draw/Search: 10
Win/utility: 8
Mana: 25

Following a similiar balance in deck construction seems like a good idea.

I think you lose much of what makes Tog good by going heavily toward a aggro or combo direction. The control shell must be maintained.

Some of the specific questions that must be answered are:

1) Moxes? - If you run Deed they can be problmatic, otherwise they allow you to compete with faced aggro.

2) Cunning Wish & Removal - IMO, C. Wish shold not be cut. Berserk speeds up your kill tremendously, along with having flexible answers. Finding the right spot removal is also crucial. Do you run Smother? Putrefy? Or just Deed?

I will post a list later. Any thoughts?

Sean

[t3h.sWaRm]

I'm not sure Berserk is necessary. With the Dredge mechanic, Tog gets really big really fast. Going down more of a control path gives you even more time to fill your yard and hand. However, I've always liked C. Wish's versatility, being able to get me out of bad situations. Maybe 2 would do he deck some good? Of course the current decklist we have would have to be totally revamped for a more controlling build to fit the Wishes in because I don't believe the Aggro//Combo Togs that have been worked on need Wish at all, it's too slow. Putrefy seems like the perfect removal spell for the deck, dealing with pesky creatures and more importantly, pesky artifacts(Pithing Needle). I don't like Deed only because I run 4 Mox Diamond(and love them).

On another note, I've been thinking of cards to help the deck and I came up with Squee. If you dredge him away he just goes back to your hand. Sure it's not that good with Tog, but I've also been working on a more contorlling build featuring Zombie Infestation. I'll post a list if I feel the deck is strong enough. Right now, I'm still not sure.

[Vimes]

In testing vs. gobbos pre-board, I like Alvin's list best. I do play myself, and that's probably the reason for the few games Zilla's list won. Goblins was always just a turn or two fast that Zilla's, and Alvin's is controllish enough to win. I liked the fourth Intution in Alvin's build and that probably made a difference. I also want the fourth Mox Diamond. I don't think the deck is quite consistent enough for a true combo deck. The deck needs to be able to play control if it needs to, and Alvin's build is more capable of that than Zilla's. Of course, it's also possible I'm not good enough with Dredge-a-Tog yet, so don't overweigh my opinion (Reality Check: Like there's a real chance of that happening).

[UniversalSnip]

I've fiddled with the combo build as follows:

-1 Barren Moor (??)
-3 Putrefy
-1 Darkblast
+1 Lonely Sandbar
+2 Ghastly Demise
+1 Ray of Revelation
+1 Uktabi Orangutan

This gives us

// Lands
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Lonely Sandbar
2 Barren Moor
2 Island

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
3 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Wonder
1 Genesis
1 Brawn
1 Uktabi Orangutan

// Spells
3 Mox Diamond
4 Brainstorm
3 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
2 Deep Analysis
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Darkblast
2 Ghastly Demise
1 Ray of Revelation

I have no idea why moor and sandbar were split 3/3 in the first place.

Putrefy is just too slowwwwww and I don't feel it belongs in tog.

Ray allows this deck to deal with enchantments, which it just couldn't do before. The second darkblast also seemed largely gratitious, especially since I could be running a demise (gold) in that slot. Blast isn't as strong out here in legacy-land.

I still wanted a way to deal with artifacts, and it had to be tutorable like ray. Bingo! Enter uktabi + genesis.

Daze continues to feel really mediocre.

I wish I justify replacing brawn with a second wonder, but I, you know. Can't. Frown.

[Zilla]

I have no idea why moor and sandbar were split 3/3 in the first place.
It's mostly a moot point, but the 3/3 split was so that you have a consistent way to work around a Pithing Needle naming Lonely Sandbar, which happened to me in a couple games, where my opponent was trying to shut down my draw engine. When Loam is already in my yard, I like the ability to Intuition for all 3 Moors to keep my draw engine going despite the Needle targeting Sandbar. Just pointing out that there was in fact reasoning behind it... but that doesn't necessarily make it correct.


Putrefy is just too slowwwwww and I don't feel it belongs in tog.
I'm torn. Part of me loves it, part of me agrees that it's slow. And it doesn't pitch to FoW. Tough call. Its versatility has straight up won me games I wouldn't have otherwise, but again, that doesn't necessarily make it correct.


Ray allows this deck to deal with enchantments, which it just couldn't do before.
Ray is some tasty tech. I hadn't considered it before. Highly synergistic. I'm not totally convinced it belongs in the maindeck though... the only enchantment that you really really want an answer to game 1 is Humility, and that's uncommon enough that I'm not sure it belongs in the maindeck. If it hit artifacts that'd be a different story for sure. It's late... am I missing something? I mean, it's nice to hit the occasional Survival, but what enchantments are we really afraid of and how prevalent are they?


The second darkblast also seemed largely gratitious, especially since I could be running a demise (gold) in that slot. Blast isn't as strong out here in legacy-land.
Agreed. In fact, in three days' worth of testing, at least 4 hours a day, I think I cast Darkblast like... once. I'm not entirely sure that any belong, really, but it's nice to have a backup answer, just in case, I guess.


I still wanted a way to deal with artifacts, and it had to be tutorable like ray. Bingo! Enter uktabi + genesis.
Tempting idea, but slow as balls. Not necessarily saying it's wrong, but it's not a no-brainer. I'll test it myself, but do let me know how it turns out.


Daze continues to feel really mediocre.
Sigh. Agreed. So does FoW, actually, because I'm rarely holding a blue card I want to pitch. Do I want to throw away my Tog? No thanks. Intuition? Screw that. DA? I guess. Seems like I only ever pitch Daze or FoW to FoW, which isn't that cool. The combo aspect of the deck feels super solid, but the control aspect feels inconsistent. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile trying the proactive rather than reactive route; the deck has very few one-drops, and Therapy has natural synergy with Dredge. It's also classic protection for combo strategies. Perhaps it deserves testing in the Daze slot? But then FoW sucks even more. Might try Duress in the FoW slot... I dunno. Sooo much stuff needs testing. It makes my brain hurt.


I wish I justify replacing brawn with a second wonder, but I, you know. Can't. Frown.
We apparently think rather similarly. I feel the same way. But it's always nice to have a way to run over an Angel.

On a side note, I've been tempted to drop a single Troll for an Imp. The ability to chump block problem creatures seems desirable. An Imp with Wonder in the yard can singlehandedly hold off big threats like Exalted Angel and Phantom Nishoba. Just a thought.

[Windux]

I hadnt really time to play and Test the Deck.
is the Golgari Troll really so good?

And Gozilla can you give me your actually Decklist? I dont want to beg, but i Think after your massive Testings my Decklist should be really outdated ;)

[Vimes]

Godzilla, Saint Impy doesn't need Wonder in the 'yard because it already has flying.

If you try Cabal Therapy, Birds of Paradise could also be worth a shot. A little bit of accel and a body to sac to Therapy.

You could try out Mana Leak too. Maybe - 3 Putrefy, -3 Daze and +4 Mana Leak, +1 Intuition and +1 something else.

[Windux]

I often Thougth about Daze.
It can Counter for 0cc, but it give your Opponent 1 Turn more, because you bounce a Land.
I would prefer Force Spike or Mana Leak.
If i think on Welder, SotF and Vial, I would prefer Force Spike.
Whats about 2 Force Spike and 1 Disrupting Shoal?

[MattH]

For those who aren't liking Darkblast, isn't Cabal Pit probably a lot better?

[Slay]

When Goblin Lackey gets banned, yes.
-Slay

[Vimes]

I often Thougth about Daze.
It can Counter for 0cc, but it give your Opponent 1 Turn more, because you bounce a Land.
I would prefer Force Spike or Mana Leak.
If i think on Welder, SotF and Vial, I would prefer Force Spike.
Whats about 2 Force Spike and 1 Disrupting Shoal?
Force of Will is already being debated on whether it fits. I don't think Shoal would cut it at all. Not sure about Force Spike though...

Cabal Pit will be better than Darkblast when it loses the Threshold requirement on it's ability and gets Dredge. 'Nuff said.

[Zilla]

is the Golgari Troll really so good?
In the combo build? Yes. It makes for relatively consistent turn 4 wins. It's actually an impressive beatstick in the lategame as well, which helps you avoid total reliance on Togs.


And Gozilla can you give me your actually Decklist? I dont want to beg, but i Think after your massive Testings my Decklist should be really outdated ;)
It's at the bottom of page 3. Universal Snip's post at the bottom of page 4 is the same list with slight modifications. Some I agree with, some I might, but I'm not sure about. I'd post another list here, but it's in such a constant state of flux right now I'm not sure there'd be much of a point.

The only thing I'm totally convinced about is that the core of any Dredge Tog list should include the following:

At least 1 Basic Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Psychatog
At least 3 Dredge Creatures (Grave-Troll/Imp)
At least 1 Wonder
4 Brainstorm
At least 3 Intuition
At least 2 Deep Analysis

Beyond that, it's really wide open. Even the green splash isn't a given. Life from the Loam is very very good, but there are tons of other directions the deck can go, and I've been testing all kinds of them.



Godzilla, Saint Impy doesn't need Wonder in the 'yard because it already has flying.
True. It was 4am and I straight up forgot.


You could try out Mana Leak too.
Mana Leak is almost strictly inferior to Counterspell. All of the lands in the deck aside from maybe 3-4 of them produce blue. If you don't have UU up by turn two you have a whole different set of problems. The issue isn't one of color availability; it stems from the fact that the combo version of the deck is highly proactive. It has a lot of sorcery speed things to do with its main phase, like casting Tog, Loam, or DA. Leaving 2 mana open in the early game drstically reduces the deck's speed, hence the switch to Daze. A 1cc counter like Force Spike or Circular Logic (if you add more discard outlets) could be acceptable as well.


Cabal Pit will be better than Darkblast when it loses the Threshold requirement on it's ability and gets Dredge. 'Nuff said.
I don't agree. The deck commonly has threshold as early as turn 3. Cabal Pit doesn't cost you a draw phase. It can be recurred with Life from the Loam. It doesn't utterly suck against X/2 threats.

As for not having Dredge, I've never Dredged a Darkblast solely for pumping the yard ever. In doing so, you're skipping a draw. That one card in hand is actually strictly better for pumping Tog than Darkblast is, because it adds +1.5 power (1 card from hand, 1 from yard) as opposed to just +1 (2 cards from yard). Frankly, I'm not nearly as enamored with Darkblast as many others seem to be. Aside from answering a first turn Lackey (which happens infrequently with only 1 in the deck), it's really not very good at all.

[L3X]

[color=#000000:post_uid12][quote:post_uid12="GodzillA"]Frankly, I'm not nearly as enamored with Darkblast as many others seem to be. Aside from answering a first turn Lackey (which happens infrequently with only 1 in the deck), it's really not very good at all.[/quote:post_uid12]
This is very true. I also noticed that Darkblast just isn't good enought because it does not take care of Warchief and Piledriver. I also never want to give up a card for the Darkblast in my graveyard. If only there was a sort of green/blue/black pyroclasm that isn't expensive :(

Some suggested Mox Diamond. I tested it and sure it's powerful when you get 2 mana first turn, but I think that you shouldn't play it because often you miss your second land drop unless you're able to brainstorm. Drawing land, land, land, mox diamond, and some non-brainstorm spells is almost always a bad hand to start with. Also, when you play Mox Diamond you can't play Pernicious Deed and that card just happens to be quite good against goblins...[/color:post_uid12]

[venustomars]

As for not having Dredge, I've never Dredged a Darkblast solely for pumping the yard ever. In doing so, you're skipping a draw. That one card in hand is actually strictly better for pumping Tog than Darkblast is, because it adds +1.5 power (1 card from hand, 1 from yard) as opposed to just +1 (2 cards from yard).

That's actually not true. You mill 3 cards for +1.5 power. Darkblast then goes to your hand for +1 power, for a total of +2.5 power. I have however, gone down to one darkblast because, as others have said, they are rather lackluster.

[Zilla]

As for not having Dredge, I've never Dredged a Darkblast solely for pumping the yard ever. In doing so, you're skipping a draw. That one card in hand is actually strictly better for pumping Tog than Darkblast is, because it adds +1.5 power (1 card from hand, 1 from yard) as opposed to just +1 (2 cards from yard).

That's actually not true. You mill 3 cards for +1.5 power. Darkblast then goes to your hand for +1 power, for a total of +2.5 power. I have however, gone down to one darkblast because, as others have said, they are rather lackluster.
True. That's what I get for posting at 4 in the morning. Regardless, dredging Darkblast feels sooo underwhelming compared with, say, Golgari Grave-Troll, or even Life from the Loam. Basically, it costs me a draw and BB to remove an X/2 creature. In testing, that's been phenomenally bad.

[BoTS]

I wasn't sold on this deck until I actually played it in a side event this past weekend, and I regret playing goblins over it in the Grand Prix. The following is a quote from a post I made in the Adept Lounge about the deck:


I trult see DaT rising to tier 1.5 status sometime soon. I played it in the side event for dual lands, and walked out splitting because it was 11:40 and we didn't feel like playing a 3 hour game. The deck is just ridiculous. Darkblast is a house against goblins, it can easily race it, and Plagues out of the board can be reliably dug for via cycle lands and Brainstorms. Even though Wombat is a hard matchup, it still has game if it has a fast enough hand, the same is true for Solidarity, not to mention Chalices and other tech out of the board smash it games 2 and 3. The deck is incredibly resilient, consistant, and the synergy from dredge means that you can find you engine and win conditions easily.


I ran the list Godzilla posted on page 3, but I cut two GG Trolls for Stinkweed Imps, bad choice. I thought it would improve my Goblin matchup, but the Imp is terrible against them because not only are you not setting up the win by casting Intuition, Tog, or some combination of Brainstorm + cycle lands, but you are playing a card that just gets Gempalm'ed out of the way. GG Trolls, like Zilla mentioned, not only dredge for one more (which does make a difference, especially when digging for Loams, or Pits/Darkblasts), but it is a secondary threat to control decks like Wombat - which by the way is a horrendous matchup if you don't have the turn 4 win with counter backup) - and Landstill, and wrecks the shit out of grow (recurring fattie that regenerates and flys and tramples with incarnations in the yard? GG Troll!).

I haven't tested Pit mainly because I forgot it existed, but I was strongly considering it after watching someone play it in the extended PTQ and cause many a blowout against aggro.

Darkblast is decent. It acutually won me a game versus Landstill because I was at 4, him having 3 factorys, me having a 4/4 GG Troll, a Genesis, and a Shitweed Imp on the table, 8 lands in play, and my hand consisting of 3x Sandbar 1x Moor, and a D-Blast in the 'yard. He's at 15 so I tell him "Whatever, attack with the 4/4's because I'm crazy" (they fly and trample, btw). He goes to 7, EoT cast swords on Imp, so it looks like I'm going to lose. Next turn he turns factorys sideways for lethal, so I cycle Sandbar, Dredging Blast casting it, again, and then once more, putting me at 1 life and proceeding to win. So its decent sometimes. Also, it kills 2/2's if you cast it in your upkeep, dredge it, then cast it again.

[UniversalSnip]

I just got my computer working again (which it hasn't since my last post in this thread) and immediately made some modifications for a tourny I noticed was coming up in a few minutes on o-gaming.

// Lands
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Lonely Sandbar
2 Barren Moor
1 Island
1 Tundra
1 Cabal Pit
1 Plains

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
3 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Wonder
1 Genesis
1 Brawn

// Spells
4 Mox Diamond
4 Brainstorm
3 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
3 Deep Analysis
1 Ray of Revelation
4 Duress
4 Swords to Plowshares

// Sideboard
SB: 2 Oxidize
SB: 1 Regrowth
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Diabolic Edict

I'll come back with some explanations after this tournament is over.

[UniversalSnip]

About the above list:

First, the fourth diamond was easy. That card is responsible for all of this deck's broken openings, and it's an amazing colorfixer.

Second, I felt Demise just wasn't going to cut it after the GP results. Black creatures now exist. StP in, demise out. Splashing the fourth color wasn't a problem with the increased diamond count.

Force and Daze sucked and we knew it. Give up on them. If you force, you'll run out of gas, and daze just doesn't work.

I'm not sure where I was going with the sb, but it worked out alright. Edict was good. Plague was good. Blast was good.

Made t8, then lost. Not a particularly large tournament - only four rounds before the cutoff.

I went:

0-2 against R/G Survival. I would have won the first game and possibly the second, but I'm a pretty bad player.

Note that FtK is just as insanely good against togs in legacy as extended. Goddamn I love FtK.

2-1 against Deadguy Ale. The first game went pretty badly, but I logicked thusly:

Ale doesn't have very many creatures, so they should topdeck horribly if you keep confidant off the board. I sided in plagues and edicts and things went according to plan. Lessons: plague is very good against ale. Keep confidant off your ass. Keep loams md. Goddamn I love confidant.

2-1 against goblins. This guy had the most amazing ringleaders in the history of ever. They always pulled at least three cards and there was always either a piledriver or a lackey in the booty. Goddamn I love goblins.

In the first game I just got horribly vialed out. You know how it works. Second I got a plague out and just won from there. In the third, my hand was obscenely broken. I went first turn tog, discarded the last card in my hand during my next upkeep, and dredged for six. Some good.

I drew in the next round, went to t8, played the guy I just drew with, and got hammered. First game, I nearly locked him out with pit/loam recursion, but he just ended up burning me out. The second came down to hardcast trolls. He sacced all his permanents to double fireblast me. I sworded one of the trolls, but it was only a 3/3 - exactly small enough that I died anyway. We checked and he didn't have land coming for a looooooong time. Had I brought back a fetch instead of cabal pit at one point, I would have easily taken the game. Goddamn I hate burn.

Here's the list I'd now run:

// Lands
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Lonely Sandbar
2 Barren Moor
1 Island
1 Tundra
1 Cabal Pit
1 Plains

// Creatures
4 Psychatog
3 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Wonder
1 Genesis
1 Brawn
1 Akuta, Born of Ash

// Spells
4 Mox Diamond
4 Brainstorm
3 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
2 Deep Analysis
4 Duress
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ray of Distortion

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Oxidize
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 4 Meddling Mage
SB: 1 Ray of Revelation
SB: 2 Night of Souls' Betrayal

Distortion is obviously tough on the flashback, but a tutorable maindeck answer to needle and survival is too good to pass up. I made the sideboard a lot better and added akuta, which seems like a natural bomb to me.

[Slay]

You still get monkeystomped by any kind of combo, though. Also, the deck's mana requirements are insane! I think a good LD draw by your opponent, Life from the Loam or no, is going to stall you miserably.
-Slay

[UniversalSnip]

You still get monkeystomped by any kind of combo, though.

Yeah. :(


Also, the deck's mana requirements are insane! I think a good LD draw by your opponent, Life from the Loam or no, is going to stall you miserably.
-Slay

I can't put it any less bluntly than to say you're wrong. I fear price of progress. I fear back to basics. I do not fear land destruction, be it wasteland or sinkhole or army ants or whatever.

Also notice ray of distortion is the only card that requires double mana, and that only when flashbacked. Note that a single mox diamond is capable of fixing your mana for the whole game. Observe that this is one of the most synergetic manabases to EVER grace the halls of magic.

The mana really isn't a problem. If I found a need I wouldn't have had any issue with splashing red.

EDIT: I would make one adjustment. -1 Delta, +1 Flooded Strand.

[midnightAce]

I drew in the next round, went to t8, played the guy I just drew with, and got hammered. First game, I nearly locked him out with pit/loam recursion, but he just ended up burning me out. The second came down to hardcast trolls. He sacced all his permanents to double fireblast me. I sworded one of the trolls, but it was only a 3/3 - exactly small enough that I died anyway. We checked and he didn't have land coming for a looooooong time. Had I brought back a fetch instead of cabal pit at one point, I would have easily taken the game. Goddamn I hate burn.

I'm not really understanding this whole bit here. I assume first, that these Trolls are not Troll Ascetic, and then I assume by "sacced all his permanents to double fireblast me", you mean he sacced 4 Mountains to double Fireblast you?


That aside, looking at the current meta: this deck will often have 3 first turn needs.

First turn blue for Brainstorm for any suboptimal hands.
First turn black for Duress against combo/control.
First turn white for StP against Goblin Lackey.

My question is that is white really needed as a 4th colour? Basically you are splashing white for Mage SD and StP main. Wouldn't say... Darkblast and Deed serve virtually identical purpose? If not better, given Darkblast's interaction with Tog?

[Zilla]

Hrm. I suppose I should have listed my sideboard along with my original build:

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Pithing Needle
4x Engineered Plague
3x Naturalize

The Chalices answer many of the combo matchups and lock down the Burn matchup hard. The original list only had 5 1cc cards (Brainstorm and Darkblast) and 6 2cc cards (3 Loam, 3 Daze), so there was a lot of flexibility there. Now that you've added 8 more 1cc cards, Chalice is probably no longer an option. You've got Mage for the combo matchups, for what that's worth... but unless you want to make room for Chill, I think you're probably resigned to losing to Burn. I mean, unless you want to run 3x Golgari Brownscale in the board. I imagine that tactic would work fairly well.

I'd really really miss Chalice as an SB option though... it just shuts down so many problems for the deck. It locks down most combo, it locks down Burn, it protects your Tog from REB and Swords, and and it keeps Pithing Needle off the table. Hell, at one point I was tempted to run it maindecked, but it really is more of a reactive SB option I think.

In any case, more than anything, I see a real problem with your ability (or lack thereof) to control the board and protect your Tog. 4 Duress as your only protection seems like you're asking for trouble. I've tested a similar build with 4 Duress and 3 Therapy and even that seemed light as far as control was concerned.

Frankly, having spent two weeks testing 6 distinctly different dredge Tog strategies, I'm getting a little disheartened with the endeavor. Any build with the ability to race other aggressive decks in the field tends to end up feeling woefully light on control, and any build that feels solid on control seems to take forever to win... particularly when it only has 4 real win conditions in the entire deck which force you to overcommit and go "all in".

I'm beginning to wonder how much better than the more classic Tog builds these ones really are. They can be lightning fast but they're also very fragile. I dunno, it's late and I'm rambling. I'll keep working with it. Keep me posted.

[UniversalSnip]

I'm not really understanding this whole bit here. I assume first, that these Trolls are not Troll Ascetic,

They're of the golgari persuasion. They can be hardcast if you need some revised quality beatsticks.


and then I assume by "sacced all his permanents to double fireblast me", you mean he sacced 4 Mountains to double Fireblast you?

Don't see what else it could mean.


That aside, looking at the current meta: this deck will often have 3 first turn needs.

First turn blue for Brainstorm for any suboptimal hands.
First turn black for Duress against combo/control.
First turn white for StP against Goblin Lackey.

Ok.

That's not very hard. Goldfish it if you have doubts.


My question is that is white really needed as a 4th colour? Basically you are splashing white for Mage SD and StP main. Wouldn't say... Darkblast and Deed serve virtually identical purpose? If not better, given Darkblast's interaction with Tog?

A) Deed is awful in tog, whatever the format
B) Darkblast is very much a niche card out here


Hrm. I suppose I should have listed my sideboard along with my original build:

I think you did, actually. [/too lazy to look]


I mean, unless you want to run 3x Golgari Brownscale in the board. I imagine that tactic would work fairly well.

Hmm.

Here's a thought:

Firemanes.


In any case, more than anything, I see a real problem with your ability (or lack thereof) to control the board and protect your Tog. 4 Duress as your only protection seems like you're asking for trouble. I've tested a similar build with 4 Duress and 3 Therapy and even that seemed light as far as control was concerned.

I notice you gravitated towards seven disruption slots again. It seems to me you'd have to make some structural changes rather than -4 Force -3 Daze +4 Disruption +3 Other Disruption.

The build I posted is NOT intended to protect the tog. It's intended to protect the engine. Get the engine going and all other things will fall into place.

I think the problem with disruption in this deck is that it has to be extremely cheap (like cabal therapy), extremely good (like cabal therapy), and extremely synergetic (not like cabal therapy. or force of will for that matter).

Worst case scenario we're looking at Thwart. Ugh. Thwart is ass.

[midnightAce]

Okay, I'm not really understanding the whole "golgari persuasion" bit here, so I'll skip ahead to the rest.

I did some goldfish, well, more like I generated 200 opening hands on MWS. The mana base is shakey in a vacuum, and it will only destablize more once you factor in Wastelands, Ports, and BwD's Sinkholes and Vindicates. Four colour decks, even with full out suited duals, IMO, will always have mana consistency issues.


A) Deed is awful in tog, whatever the format
B) Darkblast is very much a niche card out here

This to me, is not an expliantion. Why is Deed bad? Other than losing the Mox, you will likely lose no other permanents. Deed can wipe out an army of Goblins, blow up some random Mystic Enforcers, kill any RoP/CoP Black that Wombat's running in fear of BwD, and it does NOT require a 4th colour splash. So why is it bad?

Darkblast can take out first turn Lackey, it can help you set up your engine, which by your own admission, is the most important aspect of the deck. Again, it needs no 4th colour splash. In my mind, using "on-colour" utility that advances the primary goal/engine of the deck is good, not bad. I would very much appreciate some explinations.

PS. Firemane over Golgari Brownscale? I must be overlooking the Plateaus in the deck list.

PPS. Wouldn't Foil be actually superior? Since you can discard two lands to counter, and get the lands back later with Loam?

[Zilla]

Firemanes.
Meh. Gaining only 1 life per turn against Burn isn't likely to be enough. Further, Brownscale actually supports the dredge engine and Tog itself. And in a pinch, they can be hardcast and used as beaters.


The build I posted is NOT intended to protect the tog. It's intended to protect the engine. Get the engine going and all other things will fall into place.
Clearly. The problems I see with the argument are as follows:

1. Tog is a key part of your engine.

2. Get the engine going without protecting Tog, and any non-control deck will race you every single time. The comboesque build that you and I are working with operates under the premise that it can ignore a lot of other decks and just win on turn 4. This plan isn't going to work if we let our opponent StP/Edict/REB our Tog off the table. Sure, we still have an uncounterable draw engine and Genesis to recover, but it will take us until like... turn 20 to do it. That's a feasible strategy against control, but not against, say, Burn, Goblins, Solidarity, etc.

We're working with a difficult paradox here. To operate as a combo deck, we need to be winning consistently by turn 4. If we can't do that, we have to add control elements. The problem is that the more control elements we add, the slower the clock becomes, because our entire deck is our combo engine, as opposed to, say, a deck like FlameVault, where only 8-11 cards are dedicated to the engine, and the rest of the deck can be control elements and draw.

Honestly, I don't have any easy answers. Some options are to go much mroe heavily control, but at that point, you're just playing with a really really slow combo deck. Another option is to add more win conditions, but again, while this removes your reliance on Tog, it slows you down overall.

[Anusien]

Why is no one running Nightmare Void? If you can stop Wombat from going aggro, Nightmare Void will recur to be a huge kick in the junk against slow control decks; you can literally rip apart their hand and then swing. This is especially significant because Wombat can't actually get card advantage, it can only filter its cards.

[Zilla]

Personally? I don't run it because it's slow and my build is designed to be fast. More importantly though, Wombat isn't really a metagame concern in my meta. If it were, and I was going to SB specifically for it, I think I'd run something more likely to utterly neuter it, like Stench of Evil. Certainly Stench is the narrower card, but it's better at the specific job. Outside of the Wombat matchup, Nightmare Void is really only necessary against combo, and I'm already running 4x Chalice and 4x Needle for that purpose.

[Brushwagg]

I have a question. Has anyone else been unhappy with the Grave Troll? I been messing around with a version of this deck and have been totally unhappy with it. I might go with the Imp, but not sure. My problem with the Troll is with so few creatures in the deck it really is never that big. I mean the Dredge 6 is nice, But 5 mana for a 1/1 or 2/2 ! ??? Maybe I'm doing something wrong but WTF.

[Jesus]

So i was sitting on my couch watching Down Periscope, the Kelsey Grammer movie. Reading the forum's and Going over the recent improvment's/developement stage's the deck has been going through, I decided to put a deck list of my own toghter.

Creatures
Psychatog-4
Wonder-1

Counter Spell's
Circular Logic-4
Force of Will-4
Counterspell-4
Force Spike-2

Draw Spell's
Fact or Fiction-3
Accumilated Knowledge-4
Mental Note-3
Deep Analysis-1
Gift Ungiven-1

Other Spell's
Smother-2
Engineered Plague-3
Darkblast-1

Land's
Polluted Delta-4
U/B Duel-3
Island-9
Cephalid-2
Cabal Pit-1
Swamp-2
Stalking Stones-2

Don't ask me about side board yet i have no clue, However i have nothing but faith in the Stalking stone's keep in mind this is a control varient, Doctor Teeth is now a Professor in Classroom 101.

[Brushwagg]

I really don't think we need anymore deck lists in this thread. All the lists I've seen so far are basically the same (a few different card choices). If everyone comes up with one how are we going to get any where? I think it's time that we, meaning people who are interested in improving this deck, need to chose a build and start tweaking it. I personally like Zilla's list and will start trying to tweak it.

[Jesus]

I personally think people with list's should contribute THEM if they have them, it's part of the entire process and i don't think we need to narrow Down and pick ONE build.

[Zilla]

You're running a single Darkblast with only 1 Gifts Ungiven to tutor for it. I wouldn't even call your list Dredge Tog. It's just Hulk Smash with a Darkblast in it. I don't mean to be impolite, but it appears that you're missing the entire point of the archetype.

[Jesus]

Do you see any Cunning Wish's or Berserks? No i didn't think so btw they combined the TWO forum topic's if you look back a bit, hense why im posting it in here. MY deck is control varient i also made a few changes.

-1 Plague
+1 Stinkweed Imp
-1 Fact or Fiction
+1 Gifts Ungiven

[JACO]

I personally think people with list's should contribute THEM if they have them, it's part of the entire process and i don't think we need to narrow Down and pick ONE build.
I'm not sure there can really be ONE build, as it depends on what you regularly play against, or expect to play against.

I just won/split in the finals of the GenCon SoCal 40 duals Legacy tournament this past weekend. My tournament report, and decklist can be found here:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=25643.0

[Zilla]

Do you see any Cunning Wish's or Berserks? No i didn't think so btw they combined the TWO forum topic's if you look back a bit, hense why im posting it in here. MY deck is control varient i also made a few changes.
"They" didn't do any such thing. I merged two seperate Dredge Tog threads here in Developmental. There's still a standalone Hulk thread in Open for the discussion of non-Dredge Tog strategies.

And no, I don't see Cunning Wish or Berserk. What I see a slow-as-balls control list with a minimal number of dredge cards and no Intuitions to search for them, meaning your list is inferior to both Dredge Tog and Hulk Smash. Congratulations.

[Jesus]

That's very single minded of you i'm not running combo your right i am however running dredge so my deck fall's under the dredge thread. I do not wish to run Combo I Run dredge though wich makes mine a CONTROL varient, Oh look gifts Ungiven go figure.

[Zilla]

My point is this: one of the most significant aspects which makes Tog an even vaguely viable strategy in this format is its ability to race when it needs to. This is the reason that even the much more controlling iteration of Tog (Hulik Smash) runs Cunning Wish for Berserk. It can literally cut the time it takes to go lethal in half. Without this ability, Tog provides a clock roughly on par with Morphling, which is, in most peoples' estimation, too slow for this format.

The reason that many Dredge Tog lists don't run the Wish>Zerk plan is because the Dredge cards provide roughly the same speed, which makes it largely unnecessary. However, this strategy works for Dredge Tog is due in large part to the inclusion of Intuition, which allows you to dig for your more important Dredge cards and draw to go with it. Without Intuition backing it up, it's mostly superfluous.

You have Gifts Ungiven, but you only have one of them, and frankly, they're just a slower Intuition. The reason they get run in Extended is because Intuition isn't legal int hat format. If it were, you'd be seeing Intuition replace them in those lists, because it's a full turn faster,use them to tutor for a single card without having to use recursion to get it back from the yard.

As I said, I'm not trying to attack you personally, I'm just saying that it appears you're missing the point of the Dredge strategy in Tog. Even the more controlling lists in this thread are running at least 3 Intuition to dig up their Dredge elements asap. You don't have to be playing a combo-style build to want the speed and versatility offered by this plan.

[quodo]

Something people should think about :

Playing with the Cephalid Coliseum/Centaur Garden/Cabal Pit toolbox. Those lands are just great, and the Life engine gives them more and more power. Being able to recurre a Garden is like playing a Giant Growth each turn, which is far from being negligible.
And you can tutor them with Intuition (typically, Land + Life + Land/Deep Analysis/Brainstorm).
The only problem with this secondary engine is its speed : it is quite slow, turn 3+, and is not of a big use against Goblin. However, it really shines against control. Attacking with a 6/6 Brawn is alway funny :D

[Brushwagg]

As anyone considered including Anger? After playing the deck this past weekend, I needed a Tog with Haste for the win.

@Zilla:I was wondering how often do you go turn 4? Is off the nut hand or what? Also could you give a little sample play or what to do in certain situations please?

[Vimes]

Has anyone given thought to using Ichorid in Dredgatog like they did in Extended? It's nuts AND naturally synergistic. Plus, I'm sure there are cards in Legacy that will work well in Ichorid that don't exist in Extended, such as Recurring Nightmare. Recur your Grave-Trolls by sacrificing Ichorid, which is going to die anyway! Think about it.

[dryadfanatic724]

Hi, I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, but is it possible to turn this into combo with tolarian winds / dredge cards (like gravetroll, imp, darkblast) / reanimate or exhume / krosan reclaimation. Sort of like the old Hermit/Sutured Ghoul decks? I've seen what tolarian winds do in extended with dredge and Ichorid, so in 1.5, this should be able to be abused on a much larger scale. Deck ideas anyone?

Nevermind, there's a seperate board for this idea.

[Bane of the Living]

I think anger is actually a terrible idea because this deck can't afford to draw the anger or the red mana source, it also splits the colour pie 4 ways. I hope you were kidding.

Of course there are better ways to abuse dredge but one of the best is tog.
-THIS DECK IS NOT FRIGGORID-
You need to watch out not to make this a dredge deck, its a tog deck that utalizes it. You can't replace amazing cards with mediocre ones to make up for dredging. In my testing I haven't needed Genesis, I think he's clunky, slow, and starting off with him is almost as bad as taking a mulligan since you need a discard outlet. Unless you want to tap out on turn 4/5 to play a vanilla 4/4. If for some f'ed up reason you dredge away 3 togs and your opponent sends one farming you can still cunning wish for reclaim.
4 tog, 1 wonder, maybe 1 meloko should round out your creatures. Stinkweed is largely irrelavent to the decks mission. He'll get gempalms or stp'd all day against the decks you'd actually play him out against. Witness also becomes a liability. I've tested 1-2 copies and everytime I draw see her opening hand I wish she was a force spike. You already have recurring land tricks that feed your win condition, witness=win more liability.

I'd also like to endorse cunning wish even in dredge heavy builds. You draw about 2/3 of the time you normally would in a loam based deck. You need to ensure you draw what you need and cunning wish is known for doing that I hear.

Darkblast is much more important in 1.5 and I would at least play 3 maindeck along with 3 deeds to round out removal slots.

Focusing discussion on one fixed decklist is irrational but I think we should decide on a core 30 cards or so. Heres my suggestion.

3 Mox Diamond
1 Celaphid Colesium
1 Lonely Sandbar
4 Delta
2-4 Additional Fetch
4 Watery Grave
4 Tropical Island
? Wasteland
? basics

4 Dr. Teeth
1-3 back up men

4 Force of will
4 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
3-4 Intuition
1-3 Darkblast
3-4 Loam
? Deed
? C Logic
? F Spike
? FoF
? AK
? Deep Anal
? C Wish
? Duress

Lets try to work on that core 30 cards.

Please explain choices. Removal debates have been beaten to death so maybe we should figure that out later.

[Brushwagg]

@Bane: How fast can you get Tog big turn 9??? The reason Imp/Troll are there is because of the how many card they Dredge. With out them you are just going to get run over by Goblins and Solidarity because your list is looking to slow. This deck pretty much needs to race those match-ups. I really think you should look at Zillas list and go from there.

@Anger:Have you tested it? It allows you to drop Tog, and swing in the same turn. It really isn't that hard to splash for either 1x Volcanic Island.

Genesis can be cut. Sometimes it's good, while others it just get eaten by Tog. I'll give that one.

[MattH]

In the Deeding greener builds, I HATED how Mox Diamond interacted with Deed. I always wanted the Diamond to be Exploration, since that is nearly as good at accelerating early game, and much more useful late-game. It also doesn't die to a random Deed for 0 (against Affinity, Mishra's Factory, or a random Engineered Explosives).

[Brushwagg]

I really don't feel you need Deed at all. It just slows you down also. You just race anything.

I do feel that more Cycle Lands need to be added. Upping the count to 6-8. More testing should reveal the correct number. I would rather pitch one to Mox Diamond, and always bring 3 back with Life and not to mention dig deeper into the deck.

@Tolarian Winds:Not that bad of an idea. With any Dredge cards in hand you can just replace some of your draws to Dredge them back. Worth some testing I think.

[Bane of the Living]

In the Deeding greener builds, I HATED how Mox Diamond interacted with Deed. I always wanted the Diamond to be Exploration, since that is nearly as good at accelerating early game, and much more useful late-game. It also doesn't die to a random Deed for 0 (against Affinity, Mishra's Factory, or a random Engineered Explosives).
Exploration does speed the deck up but it makes for a very green tog deck. Is this the right move? How much more consistant would having both make the deck. Mox pitches a land for you to get back via loam. This is quite important in the builds with heavier green splashes.

What if we focused more on a Green Tog?


2 Celaphid Colesium
2 Lonely Sandbar
4 Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
2 Wasteland

3 Mox Diamond
3 Exploration
3 Loam

4 Dr. Teeth
1 Meloku

4 Force
4 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
2 Darkblast
4 AK

I'm not sure how this would perform since I havent shuffled it up but it looks quite fast. The lack of removal in the deck feels like a gapping hole in my soul, but maybe you can race through a waste lock, or just land a turn 2 tog and cross your fingers. I think it needs 4 Loams but I'm already at 61 cards! :D

[Brushwagg]

The main problem most people are having is their build wants to do too much. Currently I'm working on a build that pretty much you just want to Dredge with. The biggest problem is dropping Tog on turn 3-4 and winning the next turn or that turn.

While Exploration would be nice, I think you would have to also use Horn of Greed. Just because you want to create as many extra draws/Dredges as possible.

On another note, I'm thinking Life might be a cutable slot also. It's fine if you are going to more control. But for a speed deck, which this probably should be, it's too slow.

[Bane of the Living]

LftL too slow??? With exploration!? What would you replace it with in my deck list?

*I agree, its very easy to do too much with this deck.

[Brushwagg]

I think I came across wrong in my other post. If you are going for a speed win, which I fell this deck need to be to have a chance in the format. But if you are going for a control deck with a combo win then Life is a house. It really only become awesome after turn 4 when you have the extra mana to cast then use the cycle lands to get insane.

Here's a list thst I've been testing. So far it's about a turn 4-5 win. But I think it can get faster.

//Lands
1 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Lonely Sandbar
3 Barren Moor
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
1 Volcanic Island
4 Underground Sea

// Creatures
1 Brawn
1 Anger
4 Psychatog
2 Wonder
3 Golgari Grave-Troll

// Spells
3 Serum Visions
4 Deep Analysis
3 Careful Study
4 Mental Note
4 Brainstorm
4 Mox Diamond
2 Life from the Loam <--Might becaome 4th Troll and ???
4 Duress

You basically want to get Tog in hand by turn 3. Drop Tog turn 4 and swing for the win. If Tog is in hand you want to Dredge every extra draw you can, and save Duress to protect the Tog.

[gackt]

I'm not saying my list is the optimal list here but there's one card that seems vastly overlooked. Volrath's Stronghold. It gives you infinite 'Togs and makes decking impossible.

Mana (26):
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Lonely Sandbar
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wasteland
2 Mox Diamond

Creatures (6):
4 Psychatog
1 Stinkweed Imp
1 Brawn

Disruption (16):
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Smother
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Mana Leak

Card Draw (7):
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition

Tricks (5):
4 Cunning Wish
1 Life from the Loam

Sideboard:
1 Intuition
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Naturalize
1 Hideous Laughter
1 Ebony Charm
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Reclaim
1 Stifle
1 Putrefy
1 Capsize
1 Mana Short
1 Dominate
1 Berserk
1 Evacuation
1 Natural Affinity

So yeah, the sideboard is obv. not what it should be, but I'm just trying out some cards that I might wanna Wish for.

[Bane of the Living]

gackt welcome to the source. Your build looks pretty good but your lack of any real sideboard slots is somewhat scary. Also do you really think putrefy is the best candidate for the slot?

[gackt]

Thx bane. I've been reading here for about a year but decided to break the silence now. Now, about the sideboard...

Obviously, going to a tourney with 15 wishboard targets is not a good idea. This build is what I'm toying with in testing pre board, and if I'm allowed to have 15 cards to wish for, I'm going to have 15 cards, you know? The cards in my wishboard I really use on a regular basis are:

Intuition: You rarely win a game without resolving this spell. Playing 3 maindeck plus 4 wishes means I get to do just that. If I haven't drawn a Intuition, this is almost always the card I go for first.

Hideous Laughter: EoT wish for Laughter rarely produces laughter from my weenie playing opponent.

Ebony Charm: To be able to hose SotF and Gro game 1 makes all the differance.

Reclaim: This let's you worry slightly less about dredging all your important spells away.

Berserk: Well, duh.

Those 5 cards are probably the most important ones, if I could get greedy and choose some more, those would be:

Fact or Fiction: If I go for FoF it usually means I'm winning and just want extra cards for the 'Tog or that I'm losing so bad that no wishboard card can help me or are already gone. It's basically just a card to get when you don't really need anything else. When you play 4 Wishes, sometimes you end up drawing like 3 and don't know what to choose, and then it's always nice to have a FoF to pick.

Putrefy: A really good spot removal. Usually you don't need more than what the maindeck supplies you with, but better safe than sorry.

Capsize: Bounce that doesn't cost you a card is always useful.

What the actual sideboard should look like...it's so difficult to say. 'Boards are always so meta dependant that I usually settle on them in the last minutes. But by the look of things, you can't go wrong with Plague, Needle and Cranial. Maybe 3 of each and keep 6 slots for wish targets?

[Brushwagg]

@Gackt:I think the lack of Dredge in your deck might become a problem. I would also like to see at least Brawn in the main. Just because it gives Tog trample with out having to wish for it. I'm also curious at what turn it wins on?

[gackt]

@Brushwagg: Basically, each game starts with a decision; should I go for a quick kill or a control-ish setup? I understand that lot's of builds concentrate on one or the other, but I personally feel that DredgeAtog can go both ways in one build without losing too much consistancy. If I go all in for the kill from turn 1 it usually ends with me swinging with a 22/23-ish 'Tog on turn 5 or 6, hopefully with FoW-backup. This requires one or two things of my opening grip and usually could cost a mulligan to get. I need 1 'Tog, 1 Intuition or Wish, and one of the following: A cycle land, Stinky, or Life from the Loam. And a decent mana-base of course, but that's usually the least of concerns. If I have all of that before turn 5, it usually means game shortly after. But like I said earlier, the deck is filled with redundancy and can easily go long, and I consider the all-in method merely a bonus against ill prepared opponents.

[EatThisShoe]

I've recently made a build of Dredge-a-Tog. In playtesting I found I was getting stomped pretty hard by UGw Thresh. With 4 Meddling Mages and 3 Pithing Needles I had a lot of trouble using Deeds and Psychatogs. I have since changed my decklist to reflect the weaknesses I saw in that match-up. However I'm still looking for good sideboard options.

So far I have thought about:
Chalice of the Void
Chains of Mephistophles
Perish
Dystopia
Withered Wretch
Mind Harness

Chalice and Chains are probably the worst options because they hurt me too. I think that Mind Harness and Dystopia might be the best choices. I would like to know what other people are using against Thresh, especially the white versions as it has been a problematic match-up for me.

[Bane of the Living]

I played Dredgatog this past Sunday and went 3-2. I lost to Scepter Chant, and Madness. Both games I lost were very close. The only problem the deck had was not finding tog when I needed him.

3 Bayou
4 Watery Grave
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Island
2 Lonely Sandbar
1 Celephid Coliseum
1 Wasteland

2 Mox Diamond
3 Life from Loam

1 Golgari Grave Troll
1 Wonder
4 Psychatog

1 Ghastly Demise
3 Darkblast
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Cunning Wish
3 Intuition
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Accumulated Knowledge

SB
3 Arcane Lab
1 Hideous Laughter
1 Putrefy
1 Naturalize
1 Oxidise
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Berserk
1 Krosan Reclamation
1 Circular Logic
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Reclaim
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Ebony Charm

Round 1 Hunting Grounds
He got out hunting grounds all three games but his deck didnt seem to be working right. I beat him first game, decked myself due to Moments Peace game 2, and went Berserker game 3 for the win.

Round 2 Scepter Chant
I lost but it was a close game

Round 3 w/u/r control
He had some burn and counters will stp's and akromas vengance, almost screwed me with turn 2 no stick but I wished for oxidise.

Round 4 Madness
I lost game 3 to consecutive hard cast arrogant worms, I wasnt seeing much mana.

Round 5 ww/u
Game one he busted out crazy double mages and 2 more men I wish for hideous laughter, darkblasts clean the rest up. Game 2 goes the same.

3-2-0 Final record.

I've changed my list a bit, I took out accumulated knowledge for brainstorm and took out deeds for wild mongrels. Mongrels are great in the deck staying 5/5's because of loam and being a cheap threat the deck needed. I also added an Akuta, Born from Ash to the deck. Most of the games I could've been winning if I had him. He's very powerful in the right place.

Things I liked-

Mox severly improved the games where I saw it. I only own 1 but my goal is to play 3 in the deck at least.

Loam x3 This seemed like the right number, I got it when I needed it and saw 2 of them late game when things were running well. Adding Mongrel should make it even better.

Loam + Wasteland. This was verry powerful, some opponents didnt see this happening till it came around for a second stab.

Cunning Wish + Constant Mists + Loam. This is something I just added to my list and I'm very happy with.

Things I disliked-

Sometimes I ran out of win conditions when I needed them. Golgari Grave Troll is only a 2/2 when cast usually. So tapping out to play him as a 2/2 is more usless than a weatherman with dementia. When I wanted to dredge with him I didnt have ways to discard him. Mongrels should help this too. @ lack of win condition, I also added a Volraths Stronghold gackts idea. Seems like I'll be happy with this.

Arcane Labs in board were also quite usless for the day.

[Zilla]

Golgari Grave Troll is only a 2/2 when cast usually.
The more Grave Trolls you run, the better they all are. This is true both for dredging and for hardcasting. The ideal creaturebase has been 2x Wonder (or 1x Wonder 1x Brawn), 4x Tog, 3x Grave Troll. This makes for consistent evasion, consistent dredge power, and consistently fat beats in the lategame. The problem, of course, is that you have to drop countermagic or other utility to make room for 3 more creatures. I'm pretty sure it's worth it though.

[Brushwagg]

The problem, of course, is that you have to drop countermagic or other utility to make room for 3 more creatures. I'm pretty sure it's worth it though.

I agree with Zilla here. I think that this deck really needs go more "2 Land Belcher". Meaning just ignore your opponent and win. As of right now I'm currently only running Duress for my protection, just because it's cheap, and my current build is proactive. I was thinking of Cabal Therapy but with a lack of creatures on the board I will almost never use the Flashback. Meaning my sideboard(still under construction) is going to have to make up for weak spots IE:decks playing counters, STP, Needle etc.

I'm currently looking at Defense Grid, and some sort of bounce to keep problem cards off the board. Maybe Wild Mongrel for the longer Control matches.

[Zilla]

I'm currently looking at Defense Grid, and some sort of bounce to keep problem cards off the board. Maybe Wild Mongrel for the longer Control matches.
Actually, I started running 3x Echoing Truth main as one of my main sources of disruption. It's pitchable to Force, and often times I found that I only need to remove a single threat (or set of threats) like Pithing Needle for a single turn so I could attack for the win.

As for Mongrel for better control matches, I haven't really had many problems with control. The deck has massive speed, uncounterable draw, and threat recursion.

[Brushwagg]

I'm currently looking at Defense Grid, and some sort of bounce to keep problem cards off the board. Maybe Wild Mongrel for the longer Control matches.
Actually, I started running 3x Echoing Truth main as one of my main sources of disruption. It's pitchable to Force, and often times I found that I only need to remove a single threat (or set of threats) like Pithing Needle for a single turn so I could attack for the win.

As for Mongrel for better control matches, I haven't really had many problems with control. The deck has massive speed, uncounterable draw, and threat recursion.

Could you possibly post an updated list? I'm very interested in this archtype, but I think that it still needs alot of work.

[Zilla]

Sure, but to be honest I haven't touched the archetype since before GP Lille, and not much has changed. It's still heavily tilted towards a combo playstyle. The most current version of my build (which is a couple months old):

//NAME: Dredge-a-Tog
// Mana
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Lonely Sandbar
2 Barren Moor
3 Mox Diamond
// Creatures
4 Psychatog
3 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Wonder
1 Brawn
// Search & Draw
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
3 Deep Analysis*
3 Life from the Loam
// Disruption
3 Daze/Duress**
4 Force of Will
// Removal
4 Echoing Truth
// Sideboard
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 3 Pernicious Deed/Naturalize***

*In a control heavy environment I sometimes run Genesis over the third DA, as a means of recurring Tog.

**I keep flipping back and forth here. Most of the time I prefer Daze, simply because it pitches to FoW and it's not that great against Vial Goblins. In a combo heavy meta, I'd probably run Duress.

***This can go either way. Naturalize answers problems like Humility, Confinement, etc., but Deed can be pretty solid against weenie hordes and Soldier/Zombie tokens. Again, a metagame call.

[plouften]

Hello all i'm new to MTGTheSource and toLegacy at the same time.

I love the concept of Dredge-a-Tog and i wanna share my impressions about it with you.

I tested since 2-3 days for something like 20 matches against differents match-ups this deck and i think that i can be improve a lot.

My results seemes to be not very favorable VS gobs, bad VS threshold and correct against random.deck.

SO i thought about this deck and search cards that could make it a little better.

I found two or three cards immediatly :

- zombie infestation : this is a great card in it i think. It has good interaction with dredge cards that couls be discarded, with deep analysis too and other wonder ... It can be on the place turn 1 with mow diamond, can kill lackey and piledriver and mongoose ... it can save us in the first turns not to die too quickly. It is shutted down by pithing needle but a few decks only played it MD. So i think it could be a great card.

- mental note : in the only Dredge-a-Tog deck that made top 128 in Lille 4 Mental Note was played, so i tested it and i can say that i love it a lot. After a brainstorm put 2 cards in your graveyard + draw one could improve your draw heavily. I put it in 2 slots in my MD.

- stinkweed imp : i'm sorry guys but i don't love Grave-Troll. For me it's usually a 2/2 for 5 that it's not very good ..... Imp kill any others creature, dredge for appro as same as grave-troll and fly. 3 For me please !!!

- ghastly demise : for me it's the perfect anti-creature here cause it could kill 2/2 turn 1 easily ( fetch + cycling land or fetch + mox diamond ) for only 1 black. Black creatures are not really big and dangerous this time so we can play it.

I think of Drop of honey too in an aggro metagame what do u think of ??

Thanx for reading me and excuse me for my english but i'm french.

[Bastian]

Welcome plouften, hope you like it around here :)

I have been mostly lurking, more than posting, but I think I can give you an answer on Ghastly demise.

I have tested this deck and it finally seems to be walking towards the right path. As a control deck, relying on the dredge to slowly build up hand with Life and cycling lands is something that already takes quite some slots and if you look at former decklists the decks never seem to pack enough answers for what they're probably going to be against.

Dredge fills the graveyard fast, and has excellent sinergy with the tog, but it takes many cards. That means: less answers to the threats. That's why Echoing Truth is there: it can answer anything, even if temporarily, and it can return several copies of that card back to hand, so, in the worst case scenario it's a 1 for 1 trade. On the plus it's a blue card and hence pitchable to FoW. Ghastly Demise is very nice spot removal but unfortunetely it leaves too many possible threats unanswered.

zilla: Have you been using Trolls to attack late game? Have they grown enough by then to be put to good use? (3/3 or bigger?)

I've noticed you took away the Colliseum. It probably was for the best since it took even more time to play it and start to use it... Have you been missing it or has the deck be running more smoothly?

[Brushwagg]

@Zilla:Looinkg preety good. As Bastain pointed out no Colliseum? Although if you cut beacuse ut us too slow I can see where you are coming from.


Have you been using Trolls to attack late game? Have they grown enough by then to be put to good use? (3/3 or bigger?)

Troll is there to fill the yard. That's it. In a pinch they can be hard cast, but the main kill is Tog.

@Zombie Infestation:This can get retarded with Dredge (I've used it). However I really don't think it fits in Dredge-A-Tog, just beacuse you want most of the dead cards or cards you want in the yard to pump the Tog.

@Mental Note:I'm currently testing it and liking it in the deck. Most of the time you really don't care what goes to the yard, other then Tog. I think this is going to be a must for the deck.

@Stinkweed Imp:A possible replacement for Troll, just because of the Dredge 5, which is one less then Troll. I will admit that I didn't like Troll at first, but it can mean 1 or 2 damage more. Really the only creature that should see play is Tog, unless the "fit hits the shan".

@Demise:Bounce takes care of what is going to be in the way. This deck wants speed, and should be able to race Joblins, and Solidarity. You should only need to bounce problem cards for one turn. Also Demise doesn't pitch to FoW.

[Ray D 3]

Alright, so I have been testing out this deck ALOT for a while now, and I would like to discuss the list I came up with, as well as match-ups and such.

Main Deck:

1 Genesis
1 Brawn
1 Wonder
3 Stinkweed Imp
4 Psychatog

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

4 Pernicious Deed
1 Darkblast

3 Intuition
4 Life from the Loam
4 Brainstorm

4 Lonely Sandbar
2 Barren Moor
2 Tranquil Thicket
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Wasteland

Sideboard:
4 Engineered Plague
3 Withered Wretch
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Darkblast
1 Nightmare Void
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Intuition

Card by Card Analysis:

Main Deck:

Genesis-- Gets back countered/killed/dredged/intuitioned togs. Also acts as a half way decent win condition himself in a pinch.

Brawn-- Makes Dr. Teeth punch through anything that chooses to block him. 2 evasion granting incarnations were needed to be able to reliably find one. This one also acts as a half way decent win condition on his own.

Wonder-- Makes Dr. Teeth fly over blockers for the win. 2 evasion granting incarnations were needed to be able to reliably find one. This one can still beat if it has to (hopefully not, but it has in the past).

Stinkweed Imp-- Creates the combo finish of Loam, cycle, dredge back Imp, discard imp to pump tog, cycle, dredge back, etc. He also makes Threshold (or any big) critters cry, can hold off hyppies, and can hold off even goblins for a turn or 2. I tried 2 and it proved to be lacking, so I'm sticking with 3.

Psychatog-- Your win condition, your wonder-blocker, and your best friend :D

Force of Will-- I stop things. Pitching can be painful, but 20 blue cards is a pretty good number; so use with caution.

Counterspell-- More protection. Leaving mana open seems like a draw back, but usually you will just use the mana to cycle stuff away/play brainstorm/intuition. Leave the mana open if you can afford to or if you can't afford not to, but in my experience, it hasn't been much, if any of a problem, and is actually one of my favorite draws.

Pernicious Deed-- Removes feilds of red men, threshold fat, lots of white critters, etc. and gets rid of problem permanents. It may seem bad since I have no real way to force overcommittment, but if they slowplay, they just give me more time to build up my combo win.

Darkblast-- A strong reusable answer to anything small.

Intuition-- Sets up the engine on its own, gets tog when needed, grabs 1 last counter when needed, gets stuff into the yard when needed. 4 seemed to be too much.

Life from the Loam-- The most powerful and resillient draw engine in all of Legacy. It even gaurantees land drops every turn. 4 because even with a simple fetch land it can get going in a couple of turns and because dredging into it is useful.

Brainstorm-- Brainstorm+fetchland/Intuition=good. Brainstorm, draw 3, put back 2, then dredge is also quite good. Last but not least, it can be up to 16 cards in the gy for 1 mana when you are comboing out.

Lonely Sandbar-- Asides from being part of your draw engine, its a blue mana source that can cycle when dead.

Barren Moor-- See Lonely Sandbar, cept it produces black.

Tranquil Thicket-- See above, cept Green

Polluted Delta-- Finds the duals/basics I need, works well with Brainstorm, works well with Loam.

Flooded Strand-- see above, only it can't get the swamp.

Tropical Island-- obvious

Underground Sea-- obvious

Island-- Basics are useful

Swamp-- see above

Wasteland-- Makes Intuition gg against Landstill, as well as many other decks in the right spot. Also answers random stuff like Maze of Ith.



Engineered Plague-- Makes Goblins suck :D

Withered Wretch-- Makes threshold critters suck, and makes any other Loam based strategy cry. Also owns jank like reanimator.

Chalice of the Void-- Protects you from StP's, REB's, etc. and makes Solidarity and burn cry.

Darkblast-- Amazing against quite a few decks, and a damn good lock for Goblins with Plague. Sometimes, you just want more.

Nightmare Void-- Helps deal with decks that happen to run 8,000 answers to tog.

Intuition-- Some match-ups you will want the 4th in.





Cards Not Included:

Mox Diamond-- Sucks at least 75% of the time you see it in your opening, and just takes up space. The speed boost seems to be much larger than it is. Since I have cut it, my turn 4 rate has actually gone UP simply because I'm not mulling away hands that could be good, and because it gives me room for more cycling lands which make drawing into Loam good times...and easier to do.

Golgari Grave-Troll-- The speed difference between him and imp is insubstantial, and he can't do much of anything. He can be a late-game win condition, but Imp is actually useful early and makes NQG sad.

Gifts Ungiven-- Too slow, and I dont even md the 4th Intuition.

Cabal Pit-- Doesn't seem worth running another crappy mana source for a slightly better Darkblast that only works with Thresh.

Cephalid Coliseum-- Weak speed boost, cipt, nonbasic 1 color land, and card disadvantage.

Deep Analysis-- The speed it provides is not very much at all, and the loss of life can actually take the turn you would save away from you anyway (Bolting yourself twice in one game between deep and fetches can be painful.). Also, sucks in opening (more mulling) and is just a bad draw in general.



Match-ups:

NQG-- Both the red and white builds should be strong match-ups for you, but the white will be more difficult thanks to StP, Armageddons sb, and Meddling Mages. Game 1, you just have all the answers. You have 8 counters, an amazing draw engine, mr. wonderblocker (tog), Stinkweed Imp, and Pernicious Deed. You should have a good edge. Games 2 and 3 change a bit. The red build gets REBs and Winter Orb, and the White build gets Armageddons (eep). Make sure you play around the WOrb/Geddon, and you should still have the edge. Also keep an eye out for gy hate (keep a draw ability to respond to removal with or keep a loam in hand).

Goblins-- Game 1 should be slightly in their favor. Make sure you do what you can to stop their relevant cards and either race them or deed them out of the game. Game 2 things get much better. With 4 Plagues, 4 Intuitions, 4 Deeds, and 3 Darkblasts, you will have one sad Goblin player.

Deadguy-- This match-up is VERY easy to screw up in. There are 2 things you must remember: 1) Resolving Loam is your first and largest priority. I don't care if it is only for a fetch land, play it. 2) Don't cycle away lands you need thinking you will draw into ones that don't cipt...its not a good idea. With that said, this game comes down to whether or not they can stop your engine from getting up in time. I would say it is slightly favorable game 1, but game 2 can be rough. Game 2 you have a second goal. Keep Withered Wretch off the damn table! If he does come down, unless its late enough that he can't do anything in time, keep your engine protected (in hand) and wait for some way to remove him (Deed/Darkblast if he has little enough mana)...or just hope to beat with alt. wins for a while (don't laugh...it works >_<).

Rifter/Wombat-- There are 3 relevant spells in their entire deck: Humillity, StP, and possibly Wing Shards (Which you can often just throw out an imp/additional tog or two to deal with.). This should not be terribly difficult for you. Games 2 and 3 are pretty much more of the same.

Salvagers Game-- Do what you can to stop the combo (Gamekeeper) and race them. Even if they do resolve the little bastard, you don't have to kill it which is a plus. Games 2 and 3 Withered Wretch gets to laugh at them.

Landstill-- Your card advantage engine will overwhelm them plain and simple. Tog will be difficult to protect, but StP is their only relevant spell, so deal with it. You have the nice little ability to own them with Loam+Wasteland (Thus making Intuition almost gg on its own.) Pretty easy match-up. Games 2 and 3 you get Chalice to stop StP, REB's, and Crypts/furnaces if you think you need em. You also get the 4th Intuition and Nightmare Void for more fun.

Solidarity-- This will be a tad difficult, but still pretty close to even. You only have 8 counters; use them well. Try to end it before they can get off the ground since your dredging will help them. Games 2 and 3 you get Chalice, and you can side out your really useless stuff for some less useless stuff.

Burn-- Stop the heavy stuff and try to race. Chalice will help game 2 on. Its not pretty, but not to bad either.

Fast Combo-- Your counters, fast clock and chalices post board will keep these games pretty good.

Slow Combo-- So long as you can keep their central combo pieces (Enchantress and such) off line early, you should certainly be able to race.

Fast Aggro-- Depending on the deck, you can expect this to be somewhere between Goblins and Burn. Them having creatures is a good thing though.

Slow Aggro-- Watch the removal. Other than that, should be easy. Imp and Tog can handle big nonsense as can Deed.

Aggro-Control-- See The NQG match-ups for blue based, and Deadguy for Resource Denial based.

Pure Control-- See Landstill, but watch out for things like Back to Basics...

Combo-Control-- Aim for their early draw (They can't outdraw you late game, so keep em from doing it early) and their combo pieces. If it is another Loam deck, you should be able to abuse Loam much quicker than they can, and you should be able to win faster as well. You have the advantage thanks to inevitability and being essentially a 1 card combo, where-as most rely on 2 or more cards that can do nothing on their own.

Conclusion:

Though this deck may have a few issues, it is a very strong deck in concept. It has the most resilient, powerful, and synergystic draw engine I have ever seen, and has some of the strongest/most flexible control elements available in the format, and on top of all of this, it is capable of straight out racing just about any aggro deck in the format with the right draw. Please pick it up and give it some testing. I think it has much potential, and I think it is all too commonly overlooked, so please give my list a try and see if ya like it.