I think I have a different take on this. Depending on the MU I tend to cut some of my clunkier cards first (Nether Shadow for example, then I shave some things, like maybe a Dread Return). Cutting Probes makes your Forces AND your Cabal Therapies worse while making you even slower. Against Combo-Decks like Omnitell or SnS Faerie Macabre is pretty useless, so it can get the axe too.
Always ask the question which card has the most impact on the actual MU.
Just my 2 cents. ;)
P.S.: If you are on the Spy-Plan you may just add one Progenitus, Serra Avatar etc. to your Deck and suddenly al of your Spys are valid cards to put into your Opponents Show and Tell ;) (good against Decks which play a fast Show for Emmy, not that good against an Omniscience obviously)
I'm not on the FoW/Faerie Macabre plan, so I don't have to worry about worsening my FoWs and don't have the Macabres to side out . About Therapy getting worse - meh, how often does it happen that you can Probe before Therapy'ing? It's in your first 7 only 40% of the time and often you'll use it long before you get to Therapy. If you get to Therapy, just name the card that presents the biggest risk at that point. If you hit it, great. If you miss, yay, they don't have it. I like keeping the engine in tact rather then board out stuff that can help me to combo out (like Nether Shadow).
Can I just say that the primer alone makes me wants to play Manaless Dredge? I'm writing this as someone who's never played any build of Dredge, only against it.
I may have to give Blue Manaless a shot now.
A book about the dark side of Legacy: "Magic: The Addiction" // Conversations with Magic players: "Humans of Magic"
Im playing with 17 dredgers, thats why i wounder.
Point 1
The argument for cutting Probes and Street Wraiths interest me. Same with cutting the Chancellors - Is there a difference between trading in your speed (for answers), and trading in "things that make your opponent slower"?
In a sense, yes - and the answer lies in interaction. Your extra speed in Street Wraiths* / Probes does not not interact with your opponent in general, which is what you want in game 2 and 3. Chancellors do interact by slowing down their game, and changing their choices (as Michael pointed out really well in the primer).
If you're fighting fast combo, my reasoning is as follows:
You want to slow them down enough for you to gain momentum (+ Chancellor of the Annex), to answer their quick, non-protected hate (+ disrupting shoal, + Fow, keep in probes as FoW and DS fodder vs Grafdigger, Surgical Extraction and SW to cycle for answers or reply to Surgical or DRS).
Here I'm thinking: what fits roles the least here. We cannot really cut dredgers, so what should we cut? If we're not cutting Street Wraith, maybe we should cut some:
- Phantasmagorians. They are great for the same reason Street Wraith is great, but doesn't give you the immediate dredge.
- Nether Shadow is important for creating tokens, but doesn't have the power Ichorid has in terms of reliability and damage. I would probably shave one or two here too.
- Flayer of the Hatebound and 1-2 Dread Returns - if you're not playing Spy and you're playing Whirlpool Rider, I would probably cut down on the Combo too. With you already destroying your own hand and either them destroying yours or playing SnT, Returning a Whirlpool Rider won't have the same impact - and vs. SnT the Ashen Rider pretty much seals the deal anyway, making the Combo abundant.
-- If you are playing Spy, I might cut it in favour of SB cards if you still have Whirlpool Rider, but if that's your only alternative: I may just cut Spy anyway and rather focus on Returning a multi-faceted card like Golgari Grave-Troll or a ditched Ashen Rider than focusing solely on that narrow Spy. Sorry, Spy!
I would love to hear thoughts, preferably (like mine) from experience, and with arguments :-).
* Keep in if you expect Surgical Extraction and/or Deathrite Shaman to respond
Point 2
17 dredgers, how does that work? 4 GGT, 4 Stinkweed Imp, 4 Golgari Thug, 4 Shambling Shell... and 1... ? That seems pretty abundant. I've noticed that I'm walking the fine line with 4 GGT, 4 SI, 4 GT and 2 SS, and for consistency 15 seems to be the perfect, perfect number.
Point 3
Michael, how does 2 Chancellor's work for you? To me, it feels a bit like running 2 Leylines (in any deck).
Point 4
Again to Hollywood, http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post842332 <-- here's the report with the PTQ GPT Legacy a New Jersey (final) video.
Last edited by Daize; 03-30-2015 at 09:32 PM.
Updated the OP with the link. I'm going to need to do some adjusting and update the OP as well with some other card choices, like Unmask.
As far as the two Chancellors, they've been really good actually. Chancellor in droves of three or four becomes a little awkward, but two seems just fine to augment the Phantasmagorians and Street Wraiths to counter Deathrite Shaman and enable a turn-one discard to turn on Force or Shoal without worrying about Time Walking yourself.
I see your point, two in hand may actually hurt you too much by taking the place of a possible dredger, FoW, DS. But having one in your starting hand would be great. I'm going to start trying 3 to see what happens.
In a lot of senses this deck has luxury problems so it seems. Too many of the thing that'll be good anytime you have it (in your starting hand) is actually bad. Confusing!
@Michael: What I'm still missing at this point is an in depth analysis on when to recur Ichorids and when not to (in relation to the opponents' board, your graveyard and so on) and an analysis on combat - when to send Ichorids into the red zone and when to sacrifice them to Therapies/just let them die naturally without attacking, ie. Ichorids smashing face (or just smashing face in general) vs. preserving your Bridges/improving your board state (or in other words balancing between the Ichorid beatdown plan and the combo finish plan).
I think those are some of the trickiest parts of the deck and some of the most important things one needs to learn in order to play the deck well.
You might also want to highlight the redundancy in the deck - if my opponent strips away my Bridges, what are my options/how does that impact my gameplan, what if he strips away/disables Dread Returns, dredgers, Ichorids, etcetera. The resilience of this deck is amazing and in my opinion one of the most underlit attributes of the deck.
[QUOTE=Daize;875320]
Point 2
17 dredgers, how does that work? 4 GGT, 4 Stinkweed Imp, 4 Golgari Thug, 4 Shambling Shell... and 1... ? That seems pretty abundant. I've noticed that I'm walking the fine line with 4 GGT, 4 SI, 4 GT and 2 SS, and for consistency 15 seems to be the perfect, perfect number.
Im playing this list, but im curious sbout Unmask...
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...-At-SCGLA.html
I used to run Unmask but at some point I switched to Chancellors and never looked back. I think Unmask is SB material and nothing more. Chancellor can serve a double role where Unmask can't. Chancellor as a DR target is actually a thing in long, grindy matches (like Miracles) where an Unmask in the GY does absolutely nothing.
Also, Chancellor doesn't need another card to do its' business where Unmask does. And since we're on the draw in G1 (normally), Daze is live by the time you get to cast Unmask whereas Chancellor ignores Daze altogether (and protects you from the dreaded 1-drop discussed earlier where Unmask is too slow to catch it while also being vulnerable to Daze & friends).
I run the standard Spy list w/ Chancellors in the flex slots and a Progenitus instead of the 16th dredger/4th Spy.
So that brings us to this :
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Nether Shadow
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Bridge from Below
4 Dread Return
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Street Wraith
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Chancellor of the Annex
1 Progenitus
3 Balustrade Spy
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
Progenitus pisses me off from time to time, but he's proven quite useful in the longer, more grindy matches. He allows you to take some more risks with your Spy (as in DR'ing it, even though you have to use your last DR to return it. Progenitus allows you to pound your opponent into oblivion with a few turns of Ichorid/zombie-token beats when you've run out of gas to combo with or allows you to spread the combo kill over 2 turns in the case that all of your Bridges have been exiled)
I actually had a match where a very resilient opponent had me use my dread returns without comboing early, and finally use my last DR on flayer. I ripped all target removal out of his hand with Cabal Therapy, had 0 cards in my library, and only a topdeck could save him.
Why?
Upkeep is before the drawstep. The returning nether shadows and ichorids with ~15 damage via flayer were enough.
without suggesting you don't, would knowing that still have Progenitus offset its downsides for you?
Flayer doesn't always get you there. Good luck trying that when you've been fighting off a Batterskull the entire game. Sure, the occassions where having Progenitus or something similar is relevant in a limited amount of cases but I tend to run into them often enough to care.
Of course depending on the metagame, I'm rather leaning towards simply running Whirlpool Rider and be wise with dredge choices not decking yourself, saving a spot with Progenitus in an already tight list :p.
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