Originally Posted by
Izor
What I dislike about the current stock list is the fact that's it's a massive glass cannon with little to no resilience against true graveyard hate. The natures of the cards LED and to a lesser extent Breakthrough and the 8 Careful Studies is that they give you percentage points where and when you're already advantaged, which is when there's no graveyard hate or to a lesser extent Force of Will involved (referring to how terrible it is for us if our Careful Study/Breakthrough gets Forced with LED sacked), but in the face of true hate they turn into actively terrible magic cards. LED is straight up the worst card in the deck if there's a Leyline, Rip or Tormod's Crypt effect in play and it is also very risky in the face of Surgical, because it always gives your opponent perfect information on whether they're supposed to hit the Dredgers or the meat.
So I've been trying to find ways to change the deck in a way that doesn't compromise my g1 win percentage against fair decks too much while being significantly better against various forms of hate post board. I was always going to lose percentage points against other fast combo decks like TES or Reanimator this way, but they're tough matchups even for the LED lists and they can be addressed in our sideboard, so I still wanted to try it out.
The first decision then was that LED needed to go and that Breakthrough shouldn't be relied on. You'll see that I still play 2 of the latter, but that's mainly to have enough cards for FoW. They're always boarded out against anything but combo. The second realization was that Careful Study effects are pretty terrible against graveyard hate as well, because they're bad cantrips when looking for an answer to RiP/Leyline, forcing you to give up card advantage and exile cards you'd want access to later. They're also terrible against Surgical, because once again they give the opponent full info on what to go for. That's where I decided to play no more than 4 of them and cut red entirely in the process. Assuming Chain of Vapor as my go-to anti-hate in the board I was also pretty much UB at that point. That gives me access to an actual mana base that doesn't have to play the worst lands that see any kind of play in Legacy.
Back to the question on what's good or bad against hate, the solution to my issue always had to start with Putrid Imp. It's by far the best discard outlet in the face of any kind of hate, because it does everything right that LED and Study effects don't: It is no card disadvantage and lets you start Dredging one full turn earlier by casting it turn 1 and removing Leyline in your t2 upkeep, it lets you carefully play around Crypt effects by slow-dredging until they are forced to sac it (which most of the time they'll not do correctly), and they 100% leave your opponent in the dark about what you still have in your hand, which means that your opponent might make wrong decisions with their Surgical by either hitting a Dredger when you have another one left or vice versa. In fact, after testing with UB lists for a long time my issue was simply that I wanted more PImps than I was allowed to play, also due to the fact that you're kinda struggling to find anything playable beyond the first 8 discard effects (PImp and Study). After being disappointed by Hapless Researcher I decided to add White to the deck just for Tireless Tribe as my PImps 5-8. I didn't expect that to work initially, but it overperformed so massively in its role that I stuck with the idea.
And the last unconventional choice I made is the card that puts all those ties together: Brainstorm. Usually a much worse draw effect than anything that discards at the end of resolution, that drawback is not a factor if you start the game with a discard dork. Unlike Breakthrough it can also be cast in addition to another Brainstorm or Breakthrough off of 2 lands on turn 2. And most importantly, it is great in the face of hate, enabling you to search for things in the same fashion normal Legacy decks also do, and it provides random utility against Surgical hitting your Dredgers as well. I play 8 fetchlands, which maximizes its utility whenever you're not already dredging. Speaking of fetchlands, I cannot stress how much random utility they generate in this deck. First, you always mulligan a lot, and the cards you put back are always graveyard-relevant cards. Shuffling them back in before starting your dredging is actually a huge deal when compared to the common scenario where you know you'll never find those 2 Narcos you put back again in the game. Second, they thin your deck. Third, they let you actually play the long game with hardcast Stinkweed Imps and Golgari Thugs instead of taking 2-3 damage or losing your lands all the time. The only drawback is that you have to be somewhat careful to fetch the few duals before you might dredge them away, leaving you without anything to get back. Because you usually only have and need 1-2 Lands and you usually only dredge 4-6 before sacrificing your second fetch it doesn't come up very often, though.
That said, this is the list I'm playing.
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Putrid Imp
3 Tireless Tribe
4 Careful Study
4 Brainstorm
2 Breakthrough
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
4 Bridge From Below
4 Narcomoeba
3 Ichorid
SB:
4 Chain of Vapor
1 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Silent Gravestone
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Ashen Rider
After my recent testing and influenced by the fact that my only loss was to TES, I'm considering cutting into the holy grail that is Cabal Therapy and playing an Iona main to have something that actually does something against UG Omnishow and TES, both of which play 4 Veils main nowadays. With 2 Dread Returns main I still should have enough sac outlets. I'd also consider swapping Ashen Rider for Terastodon or Woodfall Primus for the same reason that is Veil of Summer. I also never liked Silent Gravestone because of how unreliable it is as anti-hate and because it shuts off your own DRs, and I think the Daze should be something else too, so I'd probably play 2 Mindbreak Traps over them. I might try to write a littl report on the tournament I played later, provided I can remember enough of it/my notes are enough.
And before anyone asks, I'm not a fan of Hogaak in the deck. I don't think this deck should ever need a vanilla 8/8 to be able to win pre-board. You have Zombies and Ichorids to do that job as well as DR to make 15/15 regenerators instead. Hogaak is only good when you hit two of them, which enables you to make infinite Zombies, but as I said, that doesn't help at all against the matchups where you get Veil'd and then die on their turn and it is very unlineky to happen to begin with. DR at least lets you guaranteed turn your meat into Zombies where Hogaak gets stuck in your graveyard with 2 Narcos in play and you not finding the necessary Therapies and/or Bridges to cast it.