Specifics obviously are a big factor when considering what to bring in and what to take out. The two Verdant Catacombs and basic Forest are in there to not only improve your chances finding lands, but they also are there to combat Wasteland-based decks. What you play against depends largely on your strategy.Originally Posted by Que
In a general sense? I guess I would consider this:
-4 Contagion (?)
-2 Phantasmagorian
-1 Dread Return
-1 Griselbrand
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound
+4 Reverent Silence
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Verdant Catacombs
+1 Forest
Again: I have no idea what you're playing against, what creatures are in that match-up, what type of deck you're against (looks to be some sort of control variant based on the number of cards you're bringing in) and if the opponent is playing a tempo-based deck using Wasteland to full effect.
If I knew what you were boarding those cards in against, I could give you better information. Specifics are undoubtedly a huge factor when boarding.
Well it just seemed to me that whenever were trying to bring in enchantment based hate we would board in all those goodies. or am I wrong? Maybe I'm just going "overboard" with the hate.
And as far as particular matchups I guess I should have just been specific from the jump so I'll just go ahead and ask what you usually board in/out against some of the popular archtypes.. Again I know there is no clear cut guide and there really shouldn't be, but I'm interested in hearing your stance/reasoning when it comes to said boarding strategies.
These archtypes
- RUG Delver/ UR Delver
- U/W Miracles
- U/W Blade/Esperblade/Variants
- Goblins/Elves/Merfolk/Other tribal
- SnT decks - Omni/Sneak Attack
- BUG Tempo/Team America
- Maverick
- Any other noteworthy matchup I'm forgetting lol
I'd suggest taking a more flexible approach than expecting to board the same cards every time against a given archetype. Sideboarding with manaless dredge, often the most important question is not "what archetype is my opponent playing?", it's "what hate is my opponent bringing in?"
This is because different archetypes won't always have the same sideboard cards. Maverick, for example, might bring in an extra Scavenging Ooze or a Path to Exile. They might have a couple of Tormod's Crypt. They might have Enlightened Tutor into Wheel of Sun and Moon/Rest in Peace. They might really dislike losing to dredge and board in 4 Leyline of the Void. Some storm players won't change their deck at all, hoping to be the faster combo deck. Others might board in Grafdigger's cage, or something else. So you need to be prepared to change plans if you lose game 2 to hate, so you have a chance at taking back game 3.
"What hate is my opponent bringing in?" is important because some hate we can just deal with. Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus can often be defeated by forcing the opponent to pop them, and winning from there - so you don't necessarily need Nature's Claim to potentially blow them up. Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void do require an answer, however, because they completely shut you down and can enter play before you really have a chance to stop them. This is why a lot of a manaless dredge sideboard tends to be devoted to giving your deck a chance to beat enchantments - because you probably just lose if you can't.
It's also worth considering which cards you're prepared to board out. I'd say the main candidates for boarding out are:
- Contagion/Shoal: little cost to taking these out against creatureless or near-creatureless decks
- Phantasmagorian: if you are expecting hate, it can be worth taking out some amount of these. You may also want to keep some in, to be able to recover explosively once hate is used up or neutralised
- Griselbrand/Flayer: some of these might come out if you're expecting hate, or if you're boarding in alternate Dread Return targets
- Cabal Therapy: stripping key cards out of the opponent's hand can be one of the most important things dredge does to win a game. However, there are some cases where you might want to board therapies out. If you're playing against a fast deck which is likely going to get all its relevant cards into play very quickly, and need room to bring sideboard cards in, Therapy is a possible cut.
For example, suppose you're playing against Maverick. You win game one. Game two, you don't know what the opponent's boarding, so you might just want to bring in an extra removal spell, which can help in case the opponent has a quick Knight/Ooze or some other relevant creature. What to board out? Cabal Therapy is good against Maverick, because you have a decent chance to Therapy Knight/Green Sun's Zenith before they can cast it. I'd probably board -1 Phantasmagorian or maybe a Flayer. You can then switch things up for game 3 if game 2 reveals hate that you need to have an answer to.
All that goes without saying...
I was just asking Hollywood for his opinion on boarding in the general sense. Obvi metas will also differ. I'm looking for experiences over a "set" guide.
I'm interested in sideboarding issue too, so I'll help by asking done specific scenarios. How would you sb against:
1) Omniscience with Cage?
2) ANT with Cage?
3) Maverick with RIP?
4) UW Miracle with RIP?
I would try something like this:
Omniscience with Grafdigger's Cage
-4 Contagion
-2 Flayer of the Hatebound
-1 Dread Return
-1 Phantasmagorian
+4 Reverent Silence
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Verdant Catacombs
Reason: Most Omniscience decks also have access to Leylines in thier sideboards. Being able to destroy Omniscience and other enchantments is very important if they cannot "go off" at that point in time. As you mentioned, Cage is an issue and is obviously another hate card that sees play in this archetype's sideboard. If it pops up regularly in your meta you may want to add more Claims back into your deck. It doesn't see a whole lot of play in mine, which is why I cut my Claims back down to two.
Against any Show and Tell deck, you want to keep all of your Griselbrands in your deck. Flayer becomes unneccessary when you can strip their hand to nothing and swing out for the win the following turn. It's well documented that decks like this suffer against solid discard, which can be utterly devastating if you strip key cards from their hand.
You don't need a basic Forest because the Omniscience player does not run Wasteland, so it's unnecessary.
ANT with Grafdigger's Cage
-4 Contagion
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Verdant Catacombs
Reason: Remember how we were all talking about Unmask before? Yeah, if you're seeing ANT sideboards running Cage that's a problem. Not only is this one of the deck's hardest match ups, it's even harder when they run something like Cage to deal with graveyards. Most ANT decks don't run Cage anyhow from my understanding - they run Extraction or something similar. Even if they do and that's in your meta, consider Unmask or more Claims to deal with that.
Maverick with Rest in Peace
Anyone who runs Rest in Peace in their Maverick sideboard deserves to be tarred and feathered, because that is absolutely terrible. I would have to think more about that before trying to put out sideboard advice for such an awkward strategy. Wheel of Sun and Moon is more realistic in that scenario.
UR Miracle with Rest in Peace
+4 Reverent Silence
+3 Noxious Revival
+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Verdant Catacombs
+1 Forest
-4 Contagion
-2 Dread Return
-2 Phantasmagorian
-2 Griselbrand
-1 Shambling Shell
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound
Reason: You're going up against a strategy that is dependent on running multiple enchantments, tutors and cards *main deck* that are awful for you. Without Rest in Peace game one, the deck is entirely beatable and the match up as a whole laughable. That dynamic does not exist, so we have to try and work backwards here. What I mean by that is that in general Manaless Dredge has a very high win percentage in game one against most other decks in the format.
That's because most other decks in the format don't main deck graveyard hate like Rest in Peace.
With that being said, you have to overcommit to most of your sideboard to fend off either a Tutored or resolved Rest, so you have to bring the house. It requires diluting the Dread Return strategy a bit, but it exists. You can still grind games out if you have to and win with your recursive threats, but being prepared is more important.
This is also the only match where I would even consider boarding out a single dredger in a situation that calls for a lot of cards coming in.
Hope that helps a bit.
Wow thank you very much, it'll help a lot. I face Omniscience often because there a lot of players that played reanimator in the past and moved to Omniscience to avoid GY hate.
About the Maverick, I thought that they would trade Wheel for RIP because I forgot that RIP is bad for them too (I didn't play against RIP yet). I only saw Maverick SBing Crypt or Wheel. Actually, I'm not fighting Maverick anymore, but I'm interested to know if you would side out Contagion against a deck like this, that has important creatures.
I don't think Unmask is the solution to ANT with Cage (not that there really is an easy solution to a problematic matchup with a problematic sideboard card.) If you Unmask on your first turn, you can't DDD, and you give them several turns to set up a win. If you Unmask later, they have a window to get Cage into play, especially consider that they can turn 1 Ponder/Brainstorm and end up with Cage on top of their deck where you can't get at it.
If you have 2 Nature's Claim in the board, I'd consider finding a way to bring in a couple of Noxious Revivals too. If they get cage into play and you have a revival in hand, you can dredge into a claim and draw it the following turn.
That's a possibility, too.
short tournament report on an 8 man legacy tournament here in our local
decks that joined : 1 manaless dredge, 1 dreadstill, 1 elf combo, 1 GW mverick, 1 RUG tempo, 1 RDW, 1 merfolk, 1 rakdos burn
Round 1 vs RDW (2-0)
game 1 - got lucky coz i have a SW in hand. got 1 shadow and 1 ichorid in my turn giving me 6 2/2 zombies thanks to 3 bridges before passing the turn. he burned me bringing my lifepoints down to 5. was able to win thanks to flayer of the hatebound + dakmor salvage shooting him for 2 bloodghast making them haste to close the round.
game 2 - thanks soulspike
Round 2 vs combo elves (2-0)
round 1 - turn 2 grisel's "hyper combo finish KO!" win
round 2 - win by attacking w/ a bunch of ichorid and zombie. shouting "COBRA!!!!!!! (g.i. joe thing) when attacking
Round 3 vs GW maverick (2-0)
game 1 - he got badhands and was able to discard his removals via therapy. unable to stop my zombie army. win
game 2 - he played a turn 1 green sun for 0 bringing out dryad. i DDD and drop trol in my yard. he played turn 2 ooze w/ an open green mana shooting my troll in th yard but i responded by cycling SW as an answer and killed his ooze on my turn via flayer closing the game for the win!
ended at number 1 spot
entrance fee is about US$3.75. and was able to bring home 1 natural order and a free bye for the upcoming major legacy tournament on january 20 here in our country (yey!)
thanks for reading.
Last edited by rektareloaded; 12-16-2012 at 02:09 AM.
Well done - seems you've been having a pretty good run lately!Round 1 vs RDW (2-0)
game 1 - got lucky coz i have a SW in hand. got 1 shadow and 1 ichorid in my turn giving me 6 2/2 zombies thanks to 3 bridges before passing the turn. he burned me bringing my lifepoints down to 5. was able to win thanks to flayer of the hatebound + dakmor salvage shooting him for 2 bloodghast making them haste to close the round.
game 2 - thanks soulspike
People must see you and immediately get their GY hate ready
I have to ask about Soul Spike. How many are you playing? I assume you only play them out of the side?
Do you find the life gain is worth the extra card exile, compared to Shoal?
New article on Cabal Therapy strategy is up!
good article Holly thanks a lot
maybe you can update first page primer with your current list and side (also rektareloaded's list ^^)
Thanks. I'm glad you liked it.
Unfortunately, I am not responsible for the Manaless Dredge thread. The main Dredge primer I wrote has my Manaless list in it, though.
Can anybody explain to me why Hollywood's current list doesn't use gitaxian probe or gigapede. Is it simply because there isn't room for them?
For probe you had to cut something like removal, since there's not a whole lot else you can cut..
And cutting removal in a time of Deathrite Shaman is kinda uncool.
To Gigapede: Why would you want it if you have Phantasmagorian?
Yea it makes sense not cutting the removal. As for gigapede, it's fun to use gigapede and phantasmagorian together, but i suppose there's nothing to cut for it and phantasmagorian gets the job done well enough on his own.
Perhaps I can help.
Contagion and Sickening Shoal provide answers to damning hate cards like Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze and Elesh Norn (Reanimator). Street Wraith and Phantasmagorian are already enough as far as acceleration is concerned. Additionally, Contagion's multilateral use enables faster Dread Returns in your favor if you only have a single creature with three Bridges, or if you have two creatures and two Bridges. It's an enabler in addition to being spot-removal, which is excellent.
I don't really care that Probe draws me a card. I am very competent with Cabal Therapy so the information will come - even in the event I did miss with the first Therapy anyhow. It just doesn't really do anything for me, and honestly Contagion has been ace in so many different scenarios.
Gigapede is just a wasted slot.
Gitaxian Probe can also be a liability against decks with counterspells. Having a Probe countered means you don't get to dredge from it, and also reduces your hand size by 1 so you can't DDD.
Anyone still usin Noxious Revival?
I'm been givin it a bash, had some fun. Still not sure about it. Wanna play it cos it's fun and (sometimes) useful, but I dunno - looks very situational VS. RiP etc..
That horrible white card got me wondering if it's still worth the slots in the side.
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