[Report] Eye of the Titan: Titan Dredge Rises [SCG: DC]

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To go or not to go, that was the question.

As a die-hard New England Patriots fan, I had to decide whether to head on out to the Open here in D.C. or watch the AFC Championship Game in the early afternoon. I was so torn on whether or not to go, but in the end I ultimately decided (albeit just barely) that I would throw my name into the mix at the Legacy Open and contend for the title.

Going into this event, I had been piloting Dredge for a long while with some success. Of course, being as it is my final few months left in the military, it still isn't too often I can get out for the larger events whenever I want. However, I do have the luxury playing at least against some level of competition in Northern Virginia at Curio Cavern - a local gaming store frequented by players (and longtime friends) like Alix and Jesse Hatfield, Dan Signorini, Dave Price, etc.

I arrive at the venue bright and early and am the first person to sign up for the Legacy Open! I kind of just browsed around and did some trading and buying and waited until all the other guys showed up. We all sleeved up our decks and prepared for the tournament to start. I was very confident in my list and had been testing it for several weeks to some outstanding results. After months of grueling testing and a 5-2 performance at January's NELC, I decided to pilot this list; a Dredge variant based on abusing Sun Titan for incredible consistency and explosiveness:

+Titan Dredge+

[4x] Lion's Eye Diamond
[4x] Breakthrough
[4x] Putrid Imp
[2x] Desperate Ravings
[2x] Firestorm

[4x] Golgari Grave-Troll
[4x] Stinkweed Imp
[2x] Golgari Thug

[4x] Ichorid
[4x] Narcomoeba
[4x] Bridge from Below

[4x] Cabal Therapy
[2x] Dread Return

[1x] Flame-Kin Zealot
[1x] Sun Titan

[4x] Cephalid Coliseum
[4x] City of Brass
[4x] Gemstone Mine
[2x] Undiscovered Paradise

Total: Sixty (60) cards.

//Sideboard
[4x] Nature's Claim
[3x] Coffin Purge
[2x] Ray of Revelation
[2x] Ancient Grudge
[2x] Firestorm
[1x] Iona, Shield of Emeria
[1x] Angel of Despair

Total: Fifteen (15) cards.

As you can see from the list I opted to run, I chose a split between Desperate Ravings and Firestorm, forgoing the two other Ravings I originally had in my deck. I don't see a lot of Maverick in my meta, so I typically just go with four Ravings. However, as popular as Maverick has become, I opted to go with the safe plan and bring in two Firestorms for some damage control against decks like that.

I was a little hesitant trying out ten dredgers, as that is really the bare-bones minimum you really want to play. I originally cut a Darkblast to make more room, and in the end I guess I was kicking my own butt because of it.

At any rate, the round one pairings are posted and it's off to races.

Round One vs. John Wolsky (w/ Mono Red Goblins).

Game One: We shuffle around for a little while and talk about where we're from and other friendly things. I really don't remember too much from this round, but I'll give it my best. We start off and John is on the play. He mulligans while I keep a fresh seven. He leads off with Mountain into Lackey - didn't see that coming. My start isn't nearly as explosive as I would have liked and go the DDD route. He eventually lands a Warchief off Lackey and drops a Sharpshooter. So after a few bears it's on to game two.

Game Two: I take the play and John mulligans down to five cards, which makes me believe it is possible he could have sided in Leyline of the Void - which he didn't. His five though was immaculate, and I found out hard. I drop a land and Therapy him in hopes of nabbing a Goblin Lackey (while I boarded in artifact and enchantment hate, Vial is in actuality slower than Lackey so I needed to take a shot). I miss and he winds up dropping a Vial. After getting some attrition beats in over the course of a few turns, he eventually top-decks a Ringleader and proceeds to overwhelm me with Piledrivers and such. In the end, he barely got there.

It hurt to start the event off losing to Goblins with Combo - not even winning a game in the process. The "keeps" were never questionable, it's just he found a way to erupt in game two and swing the game back in his favor. Whatever. I won't let it deter me.

0-1 [0-2-0]

Round Two vs. Brad Jarman (w/ Aggro Loam).

Game One: Brad wins the die roll and starts off with land, Mox, Confidant. I wind up going with Firestorm, Troll, LED, Ravings. I blow the game open, tear his hand apart, and beat him down with an alpha-strike of hasty Zombies.

Game Two: Brad takes the play and mulligans to six, again making me think he is on Leyline (you have to remember I play in a meta where it seems like everyone runs it, so I'm always prepared). After some careful deliberation, he keeps and drops a Mox with nothing else. I wind up destroying his Mox with a Nature's Claim (he could have been baiting me, but it was worth the information). He bricks on land for one turn, while I dredge into some goodies. Eventually, I pound him down to a low enough life total where he's looking at lethal the following turn. I am at nine (9) life. With three cards in hand, he goes: Bolt, Bolt, untap, draw, Bolt.

If this is how my tournament is going to go, I am in for a long afternoon. :rolleyes:

Game Three: I blow the game open with LED and am able to rip his hand apart. He tries to find answers with Loam, but I manage to Coffin Purge it. I Dread Return Sun Titan the following turn into Cephalid Coliseum, and eventually just swing in with a lethal army of hasty tokens, a Zealot, and a Sun Titan who brought me back another LED for good measure. Game, set, match.

1-1 [2-3-0]

Round Three vs. Frank Glenn (w/ Affinity).

Game One: Frank seems like a nice guy and he starts things off with land, triple Memnite, and Aether Vial. I drop a land and Therapy him naming Master of Ethierum. I miss and see double Etched Champion and an Ethersworn Canonist. I pass, he swings. I then draw and pass, only to blow him out with Firestorm before attacking. To be fair, I could have simply cast Breakthrough my turn two - but I was waiting for the blowout. I tore his hand apart and swung in with a horde of Zombies - including a Dread Returned Sun Titan bringing back Thug, allowing me to flashback Therapy on the Thug, get tokens, and plant a Narcomoeba on top of my deck.

Game Two: Frank tries to get some action going but quickly mulls to six. I wind up starting with Breakthrough and LED - which immediately put the game away. Afterwards, he shows me he runs Relics instead of Crypts, which I explain to him that Crypt might be better in that it costs zero to play and isn't as mana intensive as Relic. Affinity plays lands but abuses its namesake to play free cards, not necessarily use mana to cast spells.

Either way, I right the ship and take down two straight. Can I make it three in a row?

2-1 [4-3-0]

Round Four vs. Andrew Indelicato (w/ U/g/r Delver).

Game One: Finally, I would get a chance to bring this deck down to my knees. I start the game off on the play with an LED, which resolves (I tried to bait a counter to make him believe this was my only enabler or source of mana). I then play a land and Therapy him, seeing nothing relevant: a few burn spells and a Spell Snare. I wind up passing and the next turn he taps out to drop a Goyf. I draw and cast Breakthrough at X=1 - cracking LED in response - and wind up nailing a Desperate Ravings. I go nuts on him and the card I wound up keeping off that Breakthrough was another Breakthrough, as I missed on dredging the last draw. I wound up dumping those dredgers, cast the Ravings, and killed him next turn.

Game Two: He is on the play and gets a Delver down. I wind up DDD'ing and proceed to flashback a Therapy on a dredged Narcomoeba. I take a Bolt from his hand, and Ichorids and tokens eventually push me over the top as he is dismantled without any way to interact. He did Surgical Extraction Grave-Troll, but it was too little, too late. There were some Stifled Ichorid triggers in the game, but it didn't really make much of a difference.

3-1 [6-3-0]

Round Four vs. A.J. Sacher (w/ U/r Delver Burn).

Game One: Upon checking the pairings for this round, I am confident A.J. thinks I know who he is, yet I don't think he knows who I am. It's kind of like Legacy's old guard versus new guard in my mind, and I feel like I have something to prove here by burying one of Star City's finest in the standings.

A.J. and I meet and greet and we share some laughs back and forth. A.J. starts the game off with a turn one Goblin Guide, which nets me a City of Brass. I wind up playing a land and I Therapy him, taking a Daze out of his hand (for those who care or want to know, I usually hit an estimated sixty to seventy percent of my blind Therapies. I have been playing the card for close to seven years straight and have a mental discipline how to play it correctly). He bins the Daze - revealing a Force as well, but no other Blue card - and I drop LED into Desperate Ravings. A.J. is stunned and I proceed to go off on him, getting a few Zombies out of some sacrificed Narcomoeba's. He Chain Lightning's a token and proceeds to pass. I am able to recur threats and eventually Dread Return into Sun Titan, getting back LED, and flashback the other Ravings in my graveyard. It's too much for him to handle, and he concedes.

Game Two: This game is pretty awful for me. I get my turn one Putrid Imp Forced and don't really draw into anything relevant. A.J. actually wins the game on old fashioned beat-down with an unflipped Delver and Guide, and there's nothing I drew into that could have saved me. We both agree that wasn't very common game given the circumstances, share a laugh, and proceed to game three.

Game Three: Probably the most savory game I've ever played (and that's a long time). I'm on the play. I mull to six, and keep my hand. A.J. keeps his seven. I proceed to go balls-in on Breakthrough - X=0 - turn one. It surprisingly resolves, which means he doesn't have Force or was ready to drop hate of some form. I have a City of Brass in play and bunch of dredgers and Ichorids in the graveyard. I pass. He takes his turn and drops Goblin Guide. He attacks.

I reveal the top of my deck and it's a Cephalid Coliseum. His eyes widen, a feeling of dejection comes over his face. I overhear someone say, "I guess Goblin Guide is pretty bad against Dredge." We chuckle a bit and A.J. passes the turn. I proceed to recur Ichorid(s), dredge deep, Therapy him once (seeing all Red spells), and finish the game with an Iona on "Red." He evaluates the board and extends his hand. We spend a few minutes talking for a while and he's interested in the Ravings tech, but I assure him that will change once Looting becomes legal.

Huge win, and I'm on fire.

4-1 [8-4-0]

Round Six vs. Joshua Cho (w/ U/r/g Delver).

Game One: Josh and I begin the game chit-chatting about cards and such and he reminds me that he did very well in the Standard Open the day before. Very cool. Anyways, we get things started and he leads off with a Delver off Trop. (Mental fist-pump.) However, my 'fist-pumping' becomes moot after I am unable to draw into any dredgers and Josh manages to counter my early Breakthrough. There was some minimal attacking by a Putrid Imp and Ichorid on my part, but he just kept drawing into threat after threat and that paired with a lack of explosiveness on my part was enough to seal my fate.

Game Two: This one was a little more attrition based, and I opted to play first but keep my opening seven. I had a Breakthrough with land, but opted to keep and pass so I could slow dredge him in case of any Extraction shenanigans. He winds up Extracting my Troll during my upkeep, a ballsy play, but works out for him. I wind up never really drawing into anything off my resolved Breakthrough and he just gets in there with some beats from two Goyfs and a flipped Delver. I was able to shred his hand but his draws were timely and decisive - a combination that is very hard to beat when you're on the ropes.

As it turns out, perhaps that one Darkblast I wound up cutting could have won me a round or two against my two losses of the day. I thought to myself that perhaps ten dredgers might be a little too light, but there were instances that a random Darkblast would have been sick in this tournament - especially paired with Firestorm. I was incredibly disappointed losing to this deck, and I really wanted to take this one down.

4-2 [8-6-0]

I check the score of the Pats game and have to get someplace where I can call my family and friends and get updates, as it was coming down to the wire. I wound up leaving after this round (forgot to sign the 'X' next to my name on the slip after Round Seven, but oh well). I was so excited to have gotten out and put myself in a position to potentially Top Eight or at the very least Sixteen, even though I left to catch the other game. All in all, a great time.

A few thoughts on the deck after playing at the Open in D.C.

Sun Titan

This card improves consistency in your deck by allowing you to recur explosive cards like Coliseum and LED and completely blows the game open from there. It is almost impossible to lose when this card hits the table, giving you basically full access to your graveyard as a toolbox. There are a multitude of plays this card enables, which makes him incredibly powerful in a deck predicated on recurring threats. At first I was skeptical, but I can see now in the midst of competitive play how powerful he is.

Darkblast

I was really comfortable often with ten dredgers, but eleven makes so much more sense in hindsight. This card alone would have either won me round one and six outright, or at the very least pulled me into a game three where I could put myself in a position to close. I think the utility of this card in Dredge is vastly underrated and serves a very good purpose in killing and dredging at the cost of a single mana. As an eleventh dredger, I want this back in.

The card is incredibly flexible and great for what it does. I might even consider adding one more to the sideboard.

No Maverick.

I wound up (ironically) not running into any pure Combo in this event, which kind of startled me. It was even more startling not to run into any Maverick variants, which baffled me since it has increased drastically in popularity and has done increasingly well these past few months. Although I never got to face it through seven rounds, I was prepared with my Firestorms and would have surely been up to the challenge as a fully-dedicated Combo variant of Dredge.

Another thing to note on the lack of Maverick was the lack of hate opponents were playing in their sideboards. I was speaking to several people and asking my opponents after the game what they sided in against me and ironically not many of them had much hate at all. I had a sinking feeling this would be a tournament peppered with Maverick and Reanimator, and while the latter was true, the former just never showed up at my doorstep.

Flame-Kin Zealot

This card really was great when I needed it. The deck drastically wants to speed up its kills and Zealot has always been a personal favorite of mine in doing just that. I won two rounds off his ass, and do not foresee taking him out of the main any time soon. It wound up speeding the deck up by a whole turn as it should.

All in all, a great experience. It was an incredibly conflicting experience, as I really wanted to stay in and watch my team contend but just couldn't miss this opportunity to play. Thankfully I did, and had a great time in the process.

Thanks for reading - feel free to comment!

Love the report, wish it wasnt in the Tourney announcements/results section

As soon as I saw Desperate Ravings, I smiled. Can't wait until that slot becomes Faithless Looting ^_^

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

Love the report, wish it wasnt in the Tourney announcements/results section

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Definitely. Was up writing this late; I'm usually good at things like that but misplaced it here.

Anyways, thanks!

Primer on blind calls with Therapy?

Why would you ever recurr a Bridge with Sun Titan even if they are going to otherwise be exiled? "Saving" it does not mean you get any use out of it once in play and is a waste of a Titan trigger.

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Originally Posted by menace13

Why would you ever recurr a Bridge with Sun Titan even if they are going to otherwise be exiled? "Saving" it does not mean you get any use out of it once in play and is a waste of a Titan trigger.

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I agree with everything you said. I would never nor will I ever recur a Bridge from Below with a Sun Titan. I wrote this up very late and was on two hours of sleep in two days.

That aside, Sun Titan is still ridiculous with LED and Coliseum. Too good.

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Originally Posted by menace13

Why would you ever recurr a Bridge with Sun Titan even if they are going to otherwise be exiled? "Saving" it does not mean you get any use out of it once in play and is a waste of a Titan trigger.

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Maybe having a [card]Nature's Claim[/cards] in hand might help? :tongue: Either way, it still sounds like a bad idea :laugh:

Cheers,
jares

Definitely. It's a misfit play that should never occur.

Another hilarious play I neglected to mention was against Josh Cho in Round Six where I mind-tricked him to use a Dismember on his own Delver when I very excitingly went to declare Ichorid as a blocker of 'Goyf and would gain a token in the process. He wound up doing this before Delver (as an Insectile) was ever able to connect for three, and so he lost two cards, four life, and Healing Salved me in the process.

He seemed confused because he hadn't tested or played against Dredge, so he might have just been afraid at the situation or consequences of my decision to snap-block, so it gave me an out; I just couldn't capitalize.

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Originally Posted by RaNDoMxGeSTuReS

As soon as I saw Desperate Ravings, I smiled. Can't wait until that slot becomes Faithless Looting ^_^

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It's Careful Study & Deep Analysis rolled into 1. It's the missing piece in LED dredge and I think the deck is now bonkers.

Re: Sun Titan, wouldn't Sphinx of Lost Truths be better in its place?

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Originally Posted by Richard Cheese

Primer on blind calls with Therapy?

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Start by taking a deep breath. Empty your mind, and raise your head to stare deep into your opponent's eyes--past the cornea, the pupil, the lens, the retina, and the optic nerve until you are looking into your opponent's soul. At this point, you should know your opponent's hand. Then, pretend like you're doing it rationally. Think for a bit, mumble to yourself "if he has it...", etc. go "into the tank" for a moment. Then name Brainstorm.

Hollywood, I wanna take LED Dredge to a pre-looting test run on Sunday.
I really like the Firestorm/Ravings split, but as you said, I'd really like a 11th dredger.
What would you cut for Darkblast in your list?

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Originally Posted by HokusSchmokus

Hollywood, I wanna take LED Dredge to a pre-looting test run on Sunday.
I really like the Firestorm/Ravings split, but as you said, I'd really like a 11th dredger.
What would you cut for Darkblast in your list?

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Once Faithless Looting becomes legal, I will be playing a sixty-one card list.

The list is kind of at a crossroads because of the lack of Looting, but if you're going to an event and want the eleventh dredger in a non-Looting list, I would go look into simply adding the Darkblast and see how that runs. Running sixty-one cards is perfectly fine, unless you really don't want to. The deck has so many ways of dumping its hand and deck into the graveyard that one more card - in this case another dredger - is practically obscure in the grand scheme of its construction which is filled with explosive spells.

If you want to go down to sixty cards, try subtracting the Zealot. It will give your opponent one more turn, but realistically with a Sun Titan you're going to be shredding their hand and overriding them with threats anyways, so it's not that all that bad. I am really just waiting now for Ascension to become legal so I can start playing with Looting.

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Sun Titan, wouldn't Sphinx of Lost Truths be better in its place?

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Sphinx is fine and one could even make an argument that it could be better than Sun Titan in Dredge. However, in testing, Sun Titan isn't even a "win more" card, it provides consistency where some gets lost over the course of the game and cuts back on aggressive mulligans. With Sun Titan, you're able to bring back your LED's and Coliseums and essentially do the same thing that a Sphinx would do - only you get a powerful, recurring force that continues to enable explosiveness each turn as opposed to one shot.

Flame-Kin Zealot is about the fastest "win now" condition we have, and Sun Titan as opposed to Sphinx allows you to use your entire graveyard as a toolbox. People have only begun to discover its potential and it really does enable broken plays. Also, once Cage becomes legal, Sun Titan enables you to bring Thug back onto the battlefield. Upon its death, you can place an Ingot Chewer on top of your library. A corner case but it's something people in the Dredge forum have been discussing. (Assuming of course that Cage hasn't yet hit the battlefield, in which case traditional hate like Nature's Claim or Oxidize would help.)

I was even at one point before this tournament thinking about trying out Attunement. That's also a lot of fun with Sun Titan and LED tricks. Basically, to me there's no such thing as overkill in Dredge, as the deck predicates itself on overwhelming an opponent with threats and unfair spells to begin with.