Hi guys! Long time no see! :)
I see the new list for the moment is old quadlazer -2 coliseum +2 city -4 study +4 wraith.
My question reading recent reports is: being the meta filled with drs isn't -4 pimp +4 firestorm mainboard viable? What about a 2-2 split?
I understand wraith also answer drs, but you know, I just hate 'em face..
You already know it's going to be ridiculous. Enjoy!
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...17#post1030717
Strawberry Shortcake
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...erry-Shortcake
What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
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Love it 😃
Interesting....Originally Posted by Kap'n Cook
4 Pimp & 4 Wraith, omitting Careful Study isn't something I've tried before.
I'm not sure it's the direction I want, but I'm going to give it a shot.
Kap'n Cook, I'm curious: did you find your list to be more consistent than the traditional(?) plan with a quad of Careful Study? I ask because I got BTFO'd on Sunday running my usual list, and most of the trainwreck was the result of bad openers, even after rigorous mulligans.
(In case anyone cares, I played against The Czech Republic [1–2], Blue-Black Reanimator [0–2], and a brew [2–0].)
Inconsistency has always struck me as the biggest weakness in Dredge—not hate, nor speed (or a lack thereof). I'm wondering whether anyone's been working to correct this. At the local, I've gone undefeated with Dredge one week only to completely crap out a few weeks later using the same list, and not because opponents adapted to the deck.
Not that this is scientific, but I still end up with Narcomoeba in my opening hand roughly 60% of the time, even after aggressive mulligans.
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I think study/coliseum vs pimp/wraith really just comes down to what do you want to be doing. I look at study and think its better with LED when you have no other draw spell, worse than wraith when you do, and leads to more turn 2 blowouts. Its also a better way to find anti-hate. That style has been proven to succeed with tons of results.
My gripes with the list I had been running (full led/bthru/study/looting) was the inconsistency in returning ichorid. If it ever became a longer grind because bridges were removed or something, I would often run out of black creatures. Based on the meta, I looked at it like deathrite and surgical are the primary (only?) hate cards you will see. There are also a lot of things that show up regularly that are not necessarily hate cards but still interact with you, like daze, wasteland, and chalice for example, which are very good against study. Wraith kinda answers all those issues, and pimp helps a lot in mitigating wraiths downside of not being a discard outlet. I just found that i preferred the 4 ich+16 black+8 draw (with wraith essentially a 0.5 draw spell) vs 3 ich+8 black+12 draw. There very well could be a solid middle ground that is better than everything too, like 4 study over 4 pimp for a super fast build.
Just preference really, i think both styles are consistent, just depends on what you want to be consistent in.
Strawberry Shortcake
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What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
#FreeNedleeds
When you look at the top decks like Grixis Delver, Pile and Miracles, you will see that there will be many red blasts, flusterstorms and spell pierces postboard, which all hit study. Street wraith is very good against those because you can start the the dredging uncounterably (if you resolved a PImp) and you then maybe find a therapy to resolve that looting/breakthrough before they find more surgicals or grind you down with Drs. Street Wraith lets you use the DDD plan even against Drs or surgicals, which also plays around the counterspells nicely. The way you lose these matchups is, that you get all your draw spells and discard outlets countered and get wasted off your only land to prevent future draw spells. This will slow you down enough to make surgicals and drs relevant.
A blue list may not be strictly worse than the black list, but this may explain why the black list had better results lately.
I can't say my experience is quite the same, but I've definitely shared that feeling of the deck being inconsistent week to week.
My main issue with the deck is the fact gravehate is so flexible and so very often .... final.
The lack of black targets for Icky is also a bone-of-contention for me. GGT is a pretty big target for extraction, so relying on Stinky or Thug for bringing Icky back is somewhat flawed. However, it's also worked for me enough to have stayed with Study for years and never feel the need to put in more than 4 of Wraith/Pimp.
At one stage I ran only 2 and it still felt ok, even when Deathrite appeared & everyone jammed it blindly into any deck they could.
Wraith and Pimp in the same deck is fine (I ran a 2-2 split for ages) but I'm not sure about 8 of them at the expense of Study.
For me, the whole point of dredge is to win game1. Race!!! We HAVE to win game1.
Using Wraith instead of Study, and a full suite of Pimp leaves me feeling we may end up being slower, even if we are a little more reliably bringing Icky back.
That said, I'm going to run a full 8 Wraith/Pimp tonight and see how I roll just for the hell of it. I haven't worked out my board yet....
What game 1s are you not winning as dredge? inconsistency? I feel like games 2 and 3 are way more importantI can't say my experience is quite the same, but I've definitely shared that feeling of the deck being inconsistent week to week.
My main issue with the deck is the fact gravehate is so flexible and so very often .... final.
The lack of black targets for Icky is also a bone-of-contention for me. GGT is a pretty big target for extraction, so relying on Stinky or Thug for bringing Icky back is somewhat flawed. However, it's also worked for me enough to have stayed with Study for years and never feel the need to put in more than 4 of Wraith/Pimp.
At one stage I ran only 2 and it still felt ok, even when Deathrite appeared & everyone jammed it blindly into any deck they could.
Wraith and Pimp in the same deck is fine (I ran a 2-2 split for ages) but I'm not sure about 8 of them at the expense of Study.
For me, the whole point of dredge is to win game1. Race!!! We HAVE to win game1.
Using Wraith instead of Study, and a full suite of Pimp leaves me feeling we may end up being slower, even if we are a little more reliably bringing Icky back.
That said, I'm going to run a full 8 Wraith/Pimp tonight and see how I roll just for the hell of it. I haven't worked out my board yet....
Hi and thanks so much for the write up. Question for you as a person new to dredge: why doesn't Crippling Fatigue http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Ca...iverseid=34225 warrant consideration? It just seems like it would be good in exactly the situation you found yourself in here in game 2. It's much easier to dredge into CF than draw into Firestorm.
I don't mean to sound like I've discovered something you haven't already considered. I am just trying to understand why it isn't good enough.
On a sort of related note, I was wondering about Deep Analysis. It could be a flashback dredge engine in addition to Looting. My guess is that 2 mana is asking a lot for the effect from either of these cards, but most of my experience is with manaless builds, so what would I know about casting spells?
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
I guess for DA the questions are:
1) Is DA a better draw spell than anything already in the deck? Generally not. It's the best option when it's in your graveyard and you have two lands. Every other option is as good or better in just about every other case.
2) If it isn't replacing an existing draw spell, does the deck need another draw spell? Since we aren't maxed out on all of Breakthrough/Street Wraith/Careful Study/FL, I don't see why we would go to DA next. DA seems like it would be good when you are already humming along- mostly win more. I don't think there are many possible openers where DA is good and any other draw spell isn't better.
That's my feeling. Haven't tested it and I'm liable to be very wrong.
Last edited by ConBro; 11-30-2017 at 02:08 PM.
Some. There's decks that can race us or just plain stop us winning. Reanimator, Storm etc., not to mention the decks out there that pack maindeck hate like Helm/Rip Combo etc.
I feel game 1 is the most important to win. Our deck should be streamlined to double-down on winning that one, as RiP, LotV, Cage, Surg, Relic etc etc. all come in from the side after game1. If we lose game1, you're stuck hoping their hate isn't going to be terminal.
Deep Anal does nothing until it's in the grave. It's was popular back before Faithless Looting arrived. I think we have better options, as the life-loss is relevant.
Compare to Firestorm.
For me, Firestorm is there to deal with Elves or any other deck that can flood the field with creatures quickly.
I see what you're saying, Fatigue can be fetched up from the grave, but Firestorm is my preference here due to it not only being able to ditch your GGT's etc back into the grave, but it also kills all your opponents creatures (most of the time).
Okay so I went along to the local last night.
Went 4-1 with the Wraith-Pimp list as per Kap'n Cook, altho my side was a bit different.
I got to beat Burn 2-0, Grixis 2-1, some homebrew GB grave-based deck 2-0, Dark Depths 2-1
Lost to Reanimator 0-2.
Losing to Reanimator was brutal. Terrible draws left me mulling down to 4 in both games before I kept bad hands.
All other games the deck felt okay without being spectacular.
So what do I think about the 4 Pimp, 4 Wraith deck with no Study?
I like it. I'm not sure I'll keep going with it though. I had to really think about sideboarding, I'm not used to this list.
It felt a bit more grindy, a bit less explosive. It played out quite similarly to what dredge usually would after turn2 albeit a little more aggressive, but I was playing out my first two turns a little differently.
The big difference was playing against DRS & Extraction, having Wraith and Pimp was nice....
I don't play dredge anymore but as a former player I like that you get a grind element with the Wraith Pimp, plus the fuel for Ichorid is strong and it gives you cards to easily remove when you do want to become more explosive, IE combo MU. I think it's here to stay.
Yeah, it would definitely be a swap with Firestorm as the removal option. So, you are not using LEDs or Breakthroughs until later so you can keep Firestorm in hand and clear the elves? Huh. I had not been playing it that slowly. I am probably too aggressive and not patient enough in sideboard games.
Would you agree that Firestorm is better for clearing multiple creatures, but CF is better for killing individual problem creatures (such as containment priest)? Is it down to metagame, or is Firestorm just miles ahead overall such that it's just wrong to be going with CF over Firestorm? Don't get me wrong: I'm using 4x Firestorm. I'm not on some crusade for CF. Just trying to get a better feel for the strengths and weaknesses we are building on. I'm just not often using Firestorm to kill more than one creature, so I'm a little lost.
My opinion might not be too popular, but I don't much like Firestorm or other removal generally. We need it right away, we need to be able to pay for it, and it has to be the right kind of removal to actually do anything.
This is almost certainly a product of confirmation bias, but I've been happiest just bringing in Force of Will for LED. The window for it is narrower than for the other cards, but we don't have to throw mana at it, and it stops everything but Leyline. (It also gets mileage out of my pesky Narcomoebas, which really, really want me to hold them—much to my dismay.)
Regarding Crippling Fatigue, I don't think it's something we want. I think Firestorm's uncounterable discard is more important than actually picking off creatures and that if our opponent has multiple threats down that hit our 'yard, we're probably already fishtailing out of the game. Though Fatigue can be cast from the graveyard, that's often not relevant (I stopped running Grudge and Ray for that reason). It's also more expensive than Firestorm, and Firestorm is an instant. I'd be interested to know if I'm missing something, though, because I don't play Dredge as much as any good citizen worthy of the title should :D
Kap'n Cook, thanks a lot for getting back to me! I really appreciate the analysis. I might try a similar build next time I bring the deck out for a spin, though it might be a little while because it looks like graveyard hate at the local is at the high-water mark. Leaves me in a pretty awkward spot for this coming weekend because almost all my decks rely on the graveyard.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
Have you tried Darkblast? With Dredge 3 you can cast Darkblast during your upkeep and dredge it during your draw step to cast again and finish any x/2 creature (notably Deathrite Shaman or Containment Priest). It is not ideal, but since this is a recurring spell with dredge you even don't need to significantly dilute number of dredgers in your deck.
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Carpe Diem
Cool, thanks for the input. If you are bringing in 4x FOW, you aren't playing the PImp/Street Wraith version, right?
So I played Kapn Cook's exact list at my FMN tonight, this was my first ever event with Dredge so I made plenty of mistakes. Missing triggers, sideboarding incorrectly, more importantly which hands to keep and which hands to throw away.
Match 1 vs DNT
Game 1: I have the nuts of LED Breakthrough GGT and Faithless looting, turn over like 40 cards strip his hand with Therapy a turn or two later and he saw enough after that.
Game 2: My dredges were not as spicy as last game but his hand sadly didn't have a lot of action, He Faerie Macabre'd something out of my GY honestly I forget, but all he had was a SFM in play which got Jitte, I therapied Jitte and road some zombies and Ichorids to victory.
Match 2 vs UB Control?
Game 1: My dredges were poor but was able to push through an active DRS and get some good beats after stripping his hand with therapies
Game 2: I got my poor Ichorids surgicaled and he got double TNN and I only saw 1 bridge in 40 cards of dredging :(.
Game 3: He mulled to 5 kept a no lander :( He was a great guy so I enjoyed playing him, he conceded after I had the nuts with breakthrough.
Match 3 vs Burn
Game 1: Nutty hand, ripped his hand apart by turn 2 he conceded after.
Game 2: Kept a 6 I should've mulled and he killed me with goblin guide and a bunch of rift bolts..
Game 3: I dredge about 40 cards and saw 1 therapy and 0 bridges and 3 Narcs, he has me at 8 with 3 cards in hand, I name fire blast, which was a blank he burns me out the next turn. Bad luck from my dredges :(
Match 4 vs Grixis Delver
Game 1: My dredges were hating on me, saw another 40+ cards only 1 bridge and all 4 therapies went to stripping his hand of TNN/Gurmag/Peeze ended up losing to triple DRS.
Game 2: I won on the back of Firestorm being the greatest, killed his board 2x and got him for the last extra points of damage after he surgicaled my Ichorids.
Game 3: Was a long game, he surgicaled my ichorids ate most of my trolls and got rid of my faithless lootings. I didnt see any bridges/therapies early which sucked I ended up having 2 Zombies and a Narcomeba out with a therapy left and 2 bridges in the GY. I cast therapy he Brainstorms in response, therapy resolves I go in the tank of and just take a guess and name Young pyromancer... DING DING we got him coach, he couldn't believe it but was a good sport about it (lowkey Im a super hero). He ended up dying to zombie beats.
Overall I enjoyed playing the deck, made a lot of mistakes (missing Ichorid triggers, a narcomeba trigger, sideboarding probably) but was a good learning experience.
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