This seems stupid. If the mana version of dredge has no outs for hate cards then the plan of "Hardcast Golgari Thug and Narcomeba, attack opponent with them" barely ever works. I have no idea why you would want to deliberately make this your plan B in postboard games. Especially because "until they land their hate card" typically only gives you 2 turns maximumOriginally Posted by ntropy
With 15 lands, all Wasteland-able (enough opponents forget to take out their Wastelands when SB'ing against you), your chances of landing enough lands to cast anything are next to none. In the best case you hardcast a Shambling Shell, while being 3+ turns behind on Delver-beats. Great plan.
Congrats to Dan for his 5th place
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=86602
Cool build. I'm hoping for a report, especially when it comes to the performance of the Arbors and the SB.
Curious about kelpie over rider but with only 2 Shoal in side Maybe it s ok
Pros: Less sensitive to Stifle, works better with the aggro plan, creates a snowball-effect (hence the MB Zealot)
Cons: Doesn't let you win the same turn, so it's slower
My guess is it's a good build for a slow and grindy meta. It achieves the win using less resources/commitment then the full combo build and the snowball effect lets you break through your opponents' disruption more easily.
Interesting, you're writing: MB Zealot, but at the same time you're writing: doesn't win on the same turn.
It can win with quite some tokens + recurred Zealot, or with Flayer, I suppose.
Dread Return on a River Kelpie means dredging once. Casting a Cabal Therapy then means dredging another time, doing it with River Kelpie means dredging already 3 times. I'm not sure if I'd add Zealot as a second plan, but I enjoy the idea of having a bit of green, a bit of blue. I feel like it loses explosiveness a bit too much though (going explosiveness but fragility Spy -> blue -> greenblue -> green). Or am I missing something with the Ghasts here?
Yup. Selkie mainly helps speed up building up your board position to a point where after a couple of turns you're able to Therapy 2/3 times before firing a single DR again to reanimate Zealot. Hence the not the same turn bit. Especially G2 & G3 it's rather likely you can't rely on your Bridges so the Ichorids/Nether Shadows will have to do the heavy lifting during those games. Selkie helps you power those out more quickly (whilst being less of a red flag then when you're targeting a Balustrade Spy/Griselbrand/Whirlpool Rider with your DR).
The combo works often enough G1, but G2 and G3 tend to be a lot more grindy and it's much more important to outmaneuver your opponent and keep sneaking in some beats wherever you can. Hence the need to trick your opponent into thinking "Ok, I can let this DR resolve". G2/G3 I like to DR Chancellors quite often and just proceed to smash face with those. Opponents like to keep their counters for when you target something that flips your library and forget that a 5/6 flyer can present a nice clock as well.
Hey everyone. That was me with the list at the Indy PIQ. Thanks for the congrats.
Round 1 vs AD Nauseam
Game one the guy just kind of fizzles after I have already hit him with a couple ichorids.
Game two I actually lose to past in flames.
Game three I shoal his infernal tutor and get there.
Round 2 vs Sultai Delver
Game one he casts DRS on turn one after fetching for an Underground Sea. I probe him my turn one to see if there is a green source for him to eat my troll that I want to discard this turn. No green source in hand but he has a ponder, meanwhile i have no street wraith nor phantasmagorian to get around it. I discard troll, he draws and casts ponder and shuffles. I cross my fingers, he top decks a verdant catacombs, then goes on to cast two more DRS in the next three turns. I lose.
Game two I have street wraith in hand and he leads with DRS once again. I cycle my wraith when he activates DRS on his turn two and I hit a Troll and a narcomoeba, this game turns out to be quite grindy with his DRS but I eventually get there with some 2/2 zombies!
Game three he plays a delver on turn one and never flips it, I counter a Cage with shoal pitching probe then I tear into his hand with therapy taking his goyf and a Lily. I make some zombies and he plays another cage but I dredge some dakmor salvages to play stinkweed imp from my hand. Zombies and Imp get there.
Round 3 vs Thopter Sword (I believe it was this list: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1236702
Game one he leads with city of traitors, mox opal, chalice for 0, dimir signet, chalice for one. I discard and cycle a wraith to get going. He plays an ensnaring bridge so now I'm for sure killing with Flayer. He also plays a tezzeret the next turn finding thopter foundy. I combo off next turn.
Game two He plays lodestone golem on turns two and three. I lose.
Game three I keep a hand with dryad arbor and natures's claim. I chose to draw this game clearly. He slams a leyline of the void an passes, I draw a force of will to go with my narco in hand. I play dryad arbor and pass, he plays a second land and passes back, I natures claim and pass back, he plays nothing and passes back I force something eventually and Combo off with kelpie and flayer.
Round 4 vs rug delver
Game one he flips delver on turn two an stifles a narco and an ichorid slowing me down. I end up comboing with flayer.
Game two he kills me with a couple delvers and by exiling some bridges.
Game three he sees a couple delvers and I cabal therapy my way to flayering him.
Round 5 vs Storm
Game one He gets pretty unlucky and I aggro him out with ichorids.
Game two I have a hand with street wraith, narco, force, force, troll, x, y. He probes me to see whats happening. then casts cabal therapy. I cycle street wraith drawing shoal. I counter the therapy with force pitching narco. I start dredging. He then chains a narco back to my hand before main phase one. Then surgicals my force of wills, seeing my shoal plus narco. I use it to counter an infernal tutor and get there.
Round 6 vs Death and Taxes. (I had to play this matchup because i got paired down to an X-0-1, i was less than thrilled to see D&T in this scenario)
Game one He leads with plains aether vial, I sigh. I end up getting there by playing a dakmor salvage to get my bloodghasts back and dread return a dryad arbor to make a bunch of zombies a couple of times.
Game two he plays plains and passes. I discard troll and pass. He plays spirit of the labyrinth and passes. I find cabal his hand naming STP and hit two of them. He does nothing and passes back, then EOT enlightened tutor for RIP. I force the rip and just start to amass tokens. he plays thalia and a jitte. Attacks with thalia i block with 6 tokens. he kills one of them and leaves his jitte with two counters and puts it on the Spirit. He exiles some bridges when I start to combo but its too late since i have bloodghast recursion and all the tokens I combo with flayer.
Round 7 ID
Top 8
I lose to burn in 3 games. Game one I get there with a bunch of tokens and bloodghast in much the same manner as against D&T. Games two and three my dredges were just terrible and he was able to kill me with multiple swiftspears. :p
Sorry if some of the match recollections seem a bit scarce, I only had about 5 hours of sleep and then drove a few hours before playing this PIQ so please forgive me.
More about the deck: RiverGhast
So this version i don't actually call manaless because of the 10 lands in the 75. Main board you have access to three more "free" creatures than a traditional manaless build. I have played the manaless balustrade spy version before but I was tired of losing to Thalia... a 2/1 for two. So I decided to brew this little list up. There are many different lines of play in this deck. It goes very deep and is very grindy sometimes. River Kelpie, in my testing, fits in the list better than whirlpool rider would for a couple reasons. There was a fair amount of time that I had dumped my whole hand to a phantasmagorian and then animated a rider and only had a few cards in hand which led to me not dredging near enough of my deck and leaving me to pass the turn back and die. River Kelpie, 90 percent of the time I feel like, gets me there. Upon reanimation the best case scenario is to have some amount of bloodghasts in the yard. At this point you can use the kelpie ETB trigger to dredge back a salvage, or maybe you just have a land in hand. After dredging a couple times, more than likely you've found another spell to cast from the GY or some amount of Narcos coming into play to allow for more river kelpie triggers and dredging, furthermore, river kelpie has persist so if you have a couple of bridges and you sac the kelpie, you are back up to three guys and you get to dredge again when kelpie comes back. If you already have some other creatures to flashback some spells, you probably want to leave the kelpie alone, in case you actually need to use it to flashback some spells after some more dredging. The most important thing to remember about Kelpie is that the trigger is a must. Because of this, you must be aware of your library card count. You can dredge down to two cards left if you have a kelpie that has not persisted. You must then use the kelpie as part of both of your dread returns to win the game. the first one will have the kelpie come back into play, and you draw a card, and bringing the flayer back and drawing a card, then sacing the kelpie to another dread return on the grave troll with no cards in library. Alternatively, in the two cards left scenario, you can reanimate a flame-kin and attack with zero cards in library. Most of my favorite lines of play in this deck involve bloodghast and dryad arbor. Whether its being able to discard bloodghasts to a phantasmagorian and suprising to your opponent have three creatures when you play your dryad arbor to go off on your turn two, or reanimating a dryad arbor to bring back some ghasts and getting a bunch of kelpie triggers or making a bunch of tokens a couple times in a turn. The lands in this list as I previously mentioned give you more game against thalia and daze, as well as sometimes allowing you to cast a creature from your hand when necessary. There was a match I played months ago where I won against RUG delver by casting two Stinkweeds and an ichorid from my hand to get there in the face of a GD Cage. The sideboard is pretty tuned i think. I understand that people run whirlpool rider to be able to pitch it to a shoal to dodge a RIP. Alternatively, they are still in the same boat against Cage and without any green, are completely dead to Leyline. With this sideboard we have ways to deal with these menacing cards before or after resolution. Certainly no one wants a RIP to ever resolve, but if they do, with claim we still have a chance. The counterspells in the board also take your matchup against ad nauseam , from terrible to fine. I've always had some amount of mindbreak trap in the SB, but cabal therapy is just too good for it to get there all the time. I saw that someone had mentioned before this post that I couldn't win on the same turn that I reanimate. That is false, like I said, reanimating kelpie in conjuction with the multiple ways to trigger it, almost always leads to a win the same turn... as early as your turn two. I truly believe this version is much more resilient and just as, or more, explosive than regular manaless, while having the ability to grind away if thats what it comes to.
Last edited by JTMSFTW; 06-23-2015 at 12:58 AM.
really interesting readings i'll give your version a try ^^ plus it's full foilable
what's your usual in and out ? i saw you side in force against dnt but did you side forest claims too ?
Hey Dan, thanks for the report and congrats again for the high placing! I just wanted to ask how you sideboarded and what justified those decisions for the matchups.
I would be more than happy to go over some sideboard plans, I am currently at work so I will post in the next few hours. Sideboarding with this deck is very much an art instead of the usual "This is the exact sideboard plan for this X matchup". Thanks for the interest my friends, it makes me happy to see anyone is interested in my brew!!!!!
I'm foiling mine out currently! and yes I brought in everything except the mindbreaks.really interesting readings i'll give your version a try ^^ plus it's full foilable
what's your usual in and out ? i saw you side in force against dnt but did you side forest claims too ?
I'm still somewhat new to the world of manaless dredge, so the only real decks that I got to see in action and do well were landless builds that made top 8's in 2013-14 that were purely flayer/balustrade plan. The primer obviously included River Kelpie as a good card to use, but I was never able to conceptualize its power level when not many decks revolved around its ability. Your build obviously has some unique choices with the Dakmor Salvages, so I'm very intrigued by this build.
Haha I feel exactly like that, sideboarding being "an art". But there's got to be rationale behind it. So try to think what your reasoning was, then going by that reasoning let's see if it makes sense (or other choices would be more optimal)!
Hey there, thank you for the report and explanation about the build. I'm very much intrigued by it. Wonderful work and out of the box thinking!
And my apologies for missing the DR Selkie -> dredge & drop Dakmor -> recur Bloodghasts -> ??? -> profit-line.
Kelpie+ghast+salvage is really decent target after all ^^
did you faced Lands or 12 posts already with your list ? i find this 2 MUs really difficult for manaless/riverghast
I've seen the light on my 15 land sideboard. I might as well just run 15 Trolls. I tried it because I was sick of feeling so powerless against hate. I wanted to to convert to something that could just ignore the hate. I suspected it would be bad, and now I know for sure! I'm currently fiddling with the blue cards.
thanks for the report! can't wait for the sbding details and rationale :)
Wow. A deck that can cast natures claim and force....let's continue the conversation. A bit grinder than I like but I'm totally interested in testing this deck.
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