Considering the fact that no top tier deck runs Leyline of the Void my sideboard is:
4 Contagion
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 offs: Blazing Archon, Llawan, Elesh, Inkwell, Stormtide, Ancestors Chosen, Sphinx of Steel.
Even here I'm running targets I will most likely never use. So I'm open to SB-discussion even though I still find it necessary to run a anti-LotV-board.
Couldn't aggree more!Originally Posted by berry
Now about Relic T1. Best way to avoid folding to this is through Phanta. Discard Phanta, he taps Relic, you discard 3 cards & exile the least important one. Keep DDD and put pressure on him. He will have to blow the relic. Don't worry, just keep DDD asap. Just 1 relic is not often GG for us. We can recover pretty fast from 1 relic blow.
Affinity is indeed fast, but you can -more often then not- just join the race.
Would anyone care to share specifics on when you would board in these particular 1-ofs?
Sideboard:
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Ancestor's Chosen
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Blazing Archon
1 Gigapede
1 Stormtide Leviathan
1 Terastodon
4 Contagion
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
It's posts like this that make me want to post more.
What you are arguing is to take a deck with an absurdly high game one win percentage, exploit it, and then bail out of any sort of protective plan game two (and potentially three), and accepting the fact that Manaless Dredge - as you indicated a different "beast" than its counterpart - just packs it up and loses.
No deck in Legacy or any format for that matter will ever thrive at Tier One status with a sideboard plan dedicated to accept unconditional and immediate defeat to any form of relegated graveyard hate. It's not as 'simple' as you make things out to be, quite frankly, this archetype requires a serious line of consideration for its sideboard because it has such a powerful game one approach. The swing in favorability is so dramatic after an opponent boards in against you that there is no good reason to accept an 'auto-loss' and bail out on any sort of plan to fight through hate, which is far more prevalent than anyone disagreeing with this concept gives credit for.
And for the record, those Blue "idiots" you refer to playing Standstill might lose to Manaless Dredge, but that same "idiot" will seriously burst your bubble so damn quick the next time you run into him by packing enough graveyard hate to last a lifetime. And that means you lose - and become an "idiot" in the process - because you couldn't plan one step ahead in fully preparing for the fact those same people you trumped last week will show up the following week and blow you out with hate because they want vindication and will not accept losing to Dredge. To not prepare accordingly is not only irresponsible as a player, but a deck-builder as well.
There is no reason what-so-ever to succumb to graveyard hate of any kind when running a deck fully dependent on its primary sixty cards so powerful that finding a way to circumvent an auto-loss seems completely reasonable and acceptable. Maybe I don't want to "sleeve up another deck." Maybe a lot of other people don't want to "sleeve up another deck."
Maybe we want to win games with Manaless Dredge, you know, preferably more than one in a match. Just because Dredge is a meta-based deck doesn't mean there isn't a challenge in testing the theory that, perhaps, maybe a sideboard plan dedicated to actually improve on "auto-loss" match-ups isn't a bad idea at all.
Two weeks ago, I ran into three opponents out of four rounds that ran Leyline of the Void - and powered them out turn zero, no mulligans, games two and three, every...single...time. Needless to say, I lost those games - without a sideboard plan dedicated to fighting it. I didn't play last week, but intend on playing tonight. I am running a configuration dedicated to fighting this issue (as indicated the page prior), basically running it right into a horde of Leylines. I will post the results tomorrow and let everyone know how effective (or ineffective) it turns out to be.
Capiche?
Manaless Dredge is really the strangest and most perverted deck in legacy. Every MtG player will tell you that you should never build a 15 card sb just to beat one single card.
While this might be true for manaless Dredge as well, there actually is just no card that can reliably be run in its sideboard. Then, I gues it's viable to dedicate the 15 to one single card.
Just a weird weird deck...
Thanks guys for answering my queries in a manner that is appropriate. :)
Regarding turn 1 relic. That's what I actually did, turn 1 discard phanta. Then I use its ability to discard 3 cards in response to relic's exile one card ability. then on the next discard phase i discarded phanta again. discard 3 cards at EOT.
Unfortunately at the time he blows relic. I only have like 4 cards in hand. So I have to wait for four turns again so that I can have 8 cards in hand to discard one card to be able to dredge again.
But here is what I tried in MWS yesterday. I played slow but just enough to pressure my opponent. I discarded phanta turn one again but only use its ability once so that i can just have a dredger on turn 2. And never use its ability again up until he blows his relic. So I was able to keep a 7 card hand.
This is my list with Hexmage sideboard:
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Urza's Bauble
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Dakmor Salvage
4 Ichorid
4 Bloodghast
4 Narcomoeba
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
3 River Kelpie
SB:
3 Barren Moor
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Dark Depths
Obviously, this just blanks any opposing hate package. In matchups where the opponent is fundamentally faster, we can also run this to try and get a nuts opener with a 20/20 (and ideally some disruption from Cabal Therapy). I think this form of the deck loses to really fast decks that kill in the first ~3 turns, and just beats everything else.
The other sideboard plan I think is actually worth running is something like:
Maindeck:
Fairly normal, maybe a bit high on cantrips
SB:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
2-3 Dread Return Targets
8-9 Other combo hate
This plan still loses to Leyline, but should beat basically everything else. I don't think it's possible to make manaless dredge beat fast combo and the highly-specific graveyard hate cards (like Leyline of the Void and Yixlid Jailer) but I could be wrong about that if you really push the deck in multiple strange directions (like LED + Arrogant Wurm + Reckless Wurm, perhaps).
On the other hand, 4 Contagion (should be Gut Shot, especially if you only bring it in against Yixlid Jailer, but we'll ignore that) and 11 random DR targets helps basically none of your matchups by more than an tiny bit, and gives you basically the same strategic profile after sideboarding - you lose to basically the same strategies and decks and beat basically the same strategies and decks. While this is fine if your read on the metagame is incredible and you definitely want to adopt the same strategic posture all day long, it's bound to be the wrong plan in the majority of situations.
I've often times felt that the minimum dredge number in this deck should be four, so this doesn't sound too bad in theory. I don't like the thought of adding another dead GY card, but it could very well work out nicely. That is, of course, assuming you're replacing Shambling Swarm; replacing Mishra's Bauble could very well turn out to be even better even though it seems like it has the potential to create a lot of awkward opening hands. I'd need to actually play with the card for a while before forming any concrete opinion. Seems like it could even find a place in the sideboard if it doesn't make the sixty-card roster.
Targets should either win you the game on the spot (Flame-kin Zealot), or take care of cards that would prevent you from winning (Angel of Despair/Terastodon/Woodfall Primus/Child of Alara+Realm Razer). There's no sense in plopping an Iona into play when you could have just won the game that turn. There are some notable exceptions, such as Serra Avatar against a Painter-heavy metagame (if one even exists), but I think this philosophy rings true for the most part.
Also, I think it was you that said it was wrong for me and others to tell people to give up on finding a successful sideboard plan around Leyline; I completely agree. I would LOVE for my assertion to be proven incorrect, I just don't think it's consistently possible to beat Leyline given the current cardpool.
Capiche, I look forward to the hard data.
Interesting that you cut the Phantasmagorians for two additional Kelpies; I agree that there should be more draw targets than what was in your initial Depths list, but at the cost of Phantasmagorian?
That's pretty much the sideboard template I was thinking of as well. I've been thinking about Leyline of Sanctity filling out four of those anti-combo slots since it also blanks a lot of grave hate and enables the ultimate mise hand of LED+Leyline+GGT.
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@KevinTrudeau:
You can should here and there as much as you like, but if you wan't to play a deck that combos out fast and maybe has enough zombies for the FKZ-win or not, I'd say play regular dredge. The entire point of Manaless Dredge (from the beginning, that is) was to be able to grind out opponents. You won't be as fast or will the board with zombies as fast as a mana + LED-based Dredge-deck. Playing FKZ means you either dredge just that good that you get to go off in time, or you sit with your DR-target in your GY waiting to have enough for lethal on board.
With Iona, who acts like an answer you can plop in at any time disregarding the board state almost, you can dump her in play on T2-3 and then safely grind it home from there.
I get that alot of people in here don't like Rausch's list (why grind when you can combo out! why play manaless when you can play regular dredge?), but this is what that list does - and believe me, even though a few of you guys who actively write in this thread likes to play with FKZ and Bauble's, the majority of Manaless Dredgers don't.
Also, I don't think the cardpool is enough for a Leyline-beating-SB either. But I'm not gonna tell others to stop trying. That's just stupid.
And you bring in Contagion vs silly stuff like Grim Lavamancer and Stoneforge Mystic for Batterskull too sometimes, it all depends.
@AJFireCracker:
See, this is what I don't get. How does that list "beat everything else"? If you're talking about the MB, my bad, you're probably right. I just, while writing this, realized that that might be the case. But I might as well: IF you meant the sideboard. HOW does it beat UW StoneBlade i.e.? Again, it's JunkDepths without the Junk.
I cannot agree with you more. This is all true for me, except the bit that's underlined which I don't really understand. The rest is all true.
The main reason why I think this deck is so difficult to build a sideboard for is because Rausch seems to be playing a deck that is already boarded. It feels like any sideboard plan would be unnecessary. So far, like everyone else, I'm stuck on the sideboard as well. Against Leyline of the Void, I still feel the dryad arbor into Reverent of Silence is the best strategy possibly in conjunction with Serum Powder since we really do want to keep as many cards as possible. I think if Leyline is really that bad of a matchup, dedicating 15 cards to it won't hurt any other match up since the preboard game feels postboarded..
Yeah, I'm not really contributing anything that hasn't already been said though. I just wanted to say I agree with you on your view on manaless...
I don't feel that speeding it up is the answer.
I don't agree with you, but not because I'm someone who thinks he has to have the FKZ everywhere, but because I think you transferred a problem of the mana variants to this deck. Mana variants can't really afford to play many DR targets. Manaless can. It cas enough slots in the main, so it can easily play 3-4 DR plus 3-4 targets. And given the natural speed deficit of manaless, it's only logical that people try to win as fast as possible with those DR packages. That doesn't necessarily have to be FKZ, but also 3 Sphinx plus Iona or something like that.
Erm, NO. You never bring Contagion against anything but Yixlid Jailer himself. You lose two cards from your hand by casting it, so it better make a win possible in a situation where you wouldn't be able to win otherwise. Lavamancer and SFM are no problems. You don't waste two cards to kill those, you just play through them.
And the reason why Contagion is better than Gut Shot is the fact that it dodges Misstep, doesn't cost life and can kill some random creature besides Jailer as well. The drawback is that you lose one more card, but IMO that's acceptable in this case.
This is where I agree. IF Hexmage plus Depths on the board summoned a 20/20 Progenitus, I'd probably play it as well. The fact that everyone and his mom play Swords to Plowshares and Jace, the Mind Sucker are a huge problem. Also, random flying dudes can just block the Avatar all day long and buy more than enough time to get through it. Maze of Ith is another problem.
I really dislike this line of reasoning. Who cares what the 'original point' of a deck or strategy was? Just play the best possible 75.
As to beating everything: There's only two reasons to bring in the transformational sideboard: 1) You know/suspect they have graveyard hate, or 2) You need to get lucky against a deck your maindeck can't beat (say, Belcher). Obviously, the second one is rough. Unless you run a lot of anti-combo cards, this'll always be true. As to the first, I think it's pretty obvious that this is a better plan than just playing from the graveyard (sort of by definition). It's not actually a Hexmage Depths deck post-board, although it looks suspiciously like it is. It's really a black weenie deck that happens to run Hexmage Depths and draw it fairly frequently.
Obviously, if you don't come across / suspect either of those two, just run the maindeck and enjoy your bye.
As to things that stop the Hexmage combo: Jace, the Mind Sculptor is not among them unless you misplay. Alternately, assuming they have all these awesome answers like Swords and Maze of Ith and Echoing Truth, just go back to manaless dredge Game 3. Even if they use graveyard hate in Game 3 to steal the match, it's not like the plan of "lose to Leyline of the Void" would save you instead of this sideboard.
@berry- The reason why myself and others play Bauble lists is because we feel the deck has more than enough grinding ability and resilience to one-shot forms of grave hate (Crypt, Bog, etc.) without the Salvages and Bloodghasts. Since the deck can grind very well regardless of what you put in those eight or so slots, putting in draw spells to better the T3/4 combo matchup seems better than running even more resiliency. Plan B (grinding) can act as a function of Plan A (a quick Flame-kin Zealot finish), so why not implement FKZ if it's not going to significantly harm the grinding aspect (especially when you consider the fact that every draw spell, when played correctly, effectively mitigates all forms of countermagic) at all?
Again, you're arguing Iona>winning. You bring up somewhat of a point, FKZ doesn't absolutely guarantee victory since you do need ~five-six Zombies to go off, but the chances of such an occurrence happening are very, very low when you consider that you'll likely have dredged all four Bridges and all four Narcomoebas with your three Sphinx of Lost Truths (or River Kelpie). In the rare situations where FKZ doesn't get there that turn, you're likely winning next turn anyways and will have Mind Twisted any combo matchup with your four Cabal Therapy. If you insist on playing an Iona-esque target though, I recommend Sadistic Hypnotist.
I don't care if the majority of Manaless players run crap like Gigapede and play the ultra-resilient Bloodghast lists, it doesn't make them any more correct. I'd just like to point out that I top eighted a local tourney (granted, it was 1/5 the size of an Open, but Minneapolis has one of the ten or so best Legacy scenes in the country, and I don't doubt that I could have matched Rasuch's Swiss record that day if the tournament had been more than five rounds) three weeks before Mr. Rausch won his Open, so please don't educate me on the beginning philosophies of the deck.
@forum-
I might be able to attend a weekly tourney tonight. If I can, here's what I plan on running:
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Swarm
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Urza's Bauble
2 Mishra's Bauble
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
3 Sphinx of Lost Truths
1 Flame-kin Zealot
2 Phantasmagorian
Feels just as fast as other Bauble lists (I'm averaging turn three or four kills), but has an additional two Nether Shadow for added resilience. Unless I can scrape together two LEDs from someone at the shop, I'm going to run this somewhat questionable sideboard:
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Serum Powder (LED replacement)
4 Chancellor of the Annex/Mental Misstep
1 Angel of Despair
1 Terastodon
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Sorry for the noob question: what’s the purpose of Lion's Eye Diamond in the sideboard? When do you board it?
And why don’t you use it mainboard?
Thanks
This seems slightly wrong. Mishra's Bauble is (imo) usually better than Urza's Bauble, since it lets you see a zone you don't already have 8 other ways to see.
Main-deck LED runs into Daze, Spell Pierce, and Force of Will, giving decks like Merfolk an extra turn or two against you, for 1-2 turns of goldfish speed on our side (if completely undisrupted, of course). Against decks that aren't looking to interact anyway, it gives you speed with relatively little drawback (although if your dredges whiff you're looking at a near-certain game loss). It's risky whether or not the opponent has anything to interact, extremely risky if they have one-shot hate to play against you, and probably just the best weapon we have against fast combo decks.
I disagree, but it's a moot point anyway for two reasons:
A) The difference is largely insignificant.
B) I have a set of Urza's Baubles and only one physical copy of Mishra's Bauble. My store was out of them as well.
@forum- So, I went to that tournament and went 3-0 (6-1 in games), drawing in the last round for a final record of 3-0-1. I beat Enchantress, Junk, and Bant Aggro (2-1) running the list above, except for -1 Mishra's Bauble for +1 Phantasmagorian, -1 Serum Powder for +1 Child of Alara since I only had two SP, and Chancellor over Mental Misstep. Some notes:
-My opponents didn't know any better and put me on the draw in all game twos (I won all game ones), so take these results with a grain of salt.
-I steamrolled Enchantress with two turn three wins. Had the deck not had the enhanced capability of doing so (like by running the Salvage/Ghast package), I would have gotten smacked right back just as hard, since Enchantress is booty like that.
-I beat Leyline in game two of round two because my opponent didn't draw it in his opener. He still kept a pretty good hand though with a turn three Knight, planning on leaving up Bojuka Bog on turn four, but I once again won on turn three because of Sphinx dredging my library into Zealot. Game one I beat a Sworded (of the Fire and Ice variety) Batterskull token by attacking for 46 on turn four.
-Chancellor of the Annex is Real Deal Holyfield, and won game three of the Bant Aggro match. Game one was your average Dredge vs. Blue game. Game two was lost after I had some lackluster dredges, and he played a turn three GSZ into Scavenging Ooze with two Noble Hierarchs already out and untapped. Game three I boarded in the set of Chancellors and opened with one. He had Hierarch and Zenith again but had to wait a turn, and I took advantage by making ten Zombies on turn three with Sphinx (also in part to my slowrolled Street Wraith countering his sole RFG Ooze activation); I would have won that same turn, but I bricked on finding a second Dread Return after dredging for sixteen and had to settle for Mind Twisting him and hoping he didn't topdeck an out; he didn't.
-No sideboard card other than Chancellor in the final game of round three made a difference in any games.
-MVPs today were Street Wraith and Phantasmagorian, and of course the Sphinx and Zealot package.
-I never mulliganed.
-My lifetime match winning percentage against Leyline of the Void decks while running a non-anti-Leyline sideboard is now 33%.
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If you don't follow the 'original point' then the strategy has changed and the deck is no longer what is used to be. From the last tournament, the best possible 75 looks like this:
Creatures
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
Enchantments
2 Sylvan Library
Instants
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Fire / Ice
4 Force of Will
2 Lightning Bolt
3 Mental Misstep
Legendary Creatures
1 Progenitus
3 Vendilion Clique
Sorceries
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
Basic Lands
1 Island
Lands
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Taiga
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wooded Foothills
Land Creatures
2 Dryad Arbor
Sideboard:
2 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Spell Pierce
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I'll say it again since it appears you ignored me the first time around- I top eighted a tournament with a Probe list three weeks before Mr. Rausch won that Open, proving that the 'original point' of the deck isn't as clear as you make it out to be. Both the theoretical examples that I posted above and the concrete example of the small tournament report I just wrote disagree with the Bloodghast package being better for the deck in place of a Bauble package. Of course, this shouldn't matter anyway because the notion that it's bad to deviate from a deck's original list is just completely illogical.
If you really want to see the original version of the deck, created by Mr. Alexander Lapping, click here. You'll see that there aren't any Bloodghasts and that there are four Gitaxian Probes in the sideboard. So, in reality, Probe lists were around before Bloodghast lists.
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Actually, here's the earliest reference to the deck I'm aware of: this forum post by me a week before SCG Denver, but I definitely don't believe that I was the first to come up with the idea. In any case, by the time Alexander Lapping won, many of the posters on that thread had manaless builds that were clearly superior to his (such as taking my initial sketch and moving Dread Return to the main-deck, which was the immediately obvious direction).
One of the other posters at some point talked about an old MTGO Classic version that ran Deep Analysis, Lion's Eye Diamond, Serum Powder, and Cephalid Coliseum as 4-ofs, but was otherwise entirely manaless. He said that this deck did very well for a season, so it could be that that's the oldest instance of (essentially) manaless dredge.
No one's doubting that someone played the list before Rausch. Also, no one said that deviating from the a certain list is bad. No change is illogical and I'm NOT a supporter of that. So I obviously didn't ignore anything.
My point was deviating too far away from the main idea is bad. I never said we should play his 75 and I never said that change in a decklist is bad. To me, it just makes no sense to change 16 cards of a very solid deck. You don't see Goblins or Merfolk shifting around 16 cards at a time. They move 4 cards at a time or 8 cards at a time. Their strategies generally stay the same.
That said, I'm actually a supporter of Gritaxian Probe, since I always seem to get my Cabal Therapies misstepped, but I really don't see a point in playing 4 probes + 8 baubles. At that point, you might as well just played Mana Dredge.
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