Is there any dredge left in Indy?
Printable View
Is there any dredge left in Indy?
Granted Phantasmagorian is great with Nether Shadow, but what is Nether Shadow great with other than Dread Return, and what is Dread Return great with other than Dread Return targets? Phantasmagorian, by itself, gives the deck an uncounterable, inevitable discard outlet that increases your quotient of train Dredges and fwiw that's enough.
My philosophy with Dredge is that I do not want to rely on Breakthrough, and to a lesser extent Firestorm to discard my hand, and likewise I don't want to rely on Putrid Imp and Cephalid Coliseum (bar LED) to expose my manabase to Wasteland. With Phantasmagorian, I always have an uncounterable, inevitable way to get my hand into the graveyard even if my first draw spell is countered and it adds resiliency vs RUG etc.
Honestly tho', if you want to SB Firestorm and MD Nether Shadow without Dread Return, or if you want to cut an odd land for a Dread Return go ahead and let me know how it works out because I've never tested the effects of playing the Nether Shadow MD.
Hm. Seems after another , let's say "interesting" dredge build was very succesful in the US, I might have to win GP Ghent to show how it's done...so much pressure:P
Lol, yeah when i saw the list i was like... ":laugh: silly americans" :p (no offence to the good dredging americans :p)
I'd like to hear the explanation for his choices cause i don't understand why he chose flayer+3d dread return over other things. He says that he is very experienced with dredge so he must have a good argument for it.
And i'll relieve some tension from you. I will be at GP Ghent too. And i will probably pilot dredge. However you have more experience with the deck and legacy in general. Since this will be my first GP and i still haven't got the chance to playtest correctly.
" What card has been your deck’s MVP this weekend?
Flayer of the Hatebound "
...Interesting.
On the mothership.
While I think that Flayer is the next [better] Stalking Vengeance, I also think it is overkill much. I think it is 50% a FKZ to speed up the kill and 50% a Angel of Despair so you don't lose to cards like Propaganda, Peacekeeper and stuff. Also it's noteable that Flayer only does his job well 1 turn AFTER Dread return is cast or with another DR, in which case it should be kinda irrelephant if you DR a Flayer or a XX/XX Troll.
It kind of has its own roll, Propaganda and especially Peacekeeper are annoying as fuck to play against, but I think you're fine if you just play Ray of Revelation and Darkblast along with Nature's Claim and Fireblast so it just seems like another "Timmy" Dredge deck got there.
Flayer allows you to win through situations where if you are on recurring ichorids to win and cannot attack through, or even elephant grass/Ensaring bridge/peace keeper/other "cant touch this" enchant/artifact. He can also be recurred via dread return, deal 4 damage be sac'd to cabal therapy or another dread return and deal 5. 9 damage without requiring the attack step isn't bad...
His reasoning might be different, but that was why I included it as a Return target, at least in my board.
List I played at GP Indy to 5-3:
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
3 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
3 Dread Return
4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
1 Sun Titan
sideboard
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Wispmare
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Faerie Macabre
3 Firestorm
1 Gnaw to the Bone
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Aura Thief
I based my sideboard off of the Sun Titan/Golgari Thug synergy to maximize my anti-hate. As for 2 Chain of Vapor/1 Wispmare, I didn't want to just run 3 Wispmare and be stone dead to Show and Tell, as well as being able to have (minimal at best, I know, however, still never saw the card once all day) Leyline of the Void answers and be able to bring in 5-6 cards vs Reanimator (macabre and chain, possibly iona if I think I need it. I suppose it depends on if I got game 1 or not.) I probably would have just kept Angel of Despair over the Aura Thief, but I saw a metric shit ton of Enchantress when I scouted the grinders the night before and got worried. Gnaw to the Bone gained me 42 life t2 vs ANT. In a game 2 on the draw and mulligan to 5 for something with business, I was still able to resolve all 4 Cabal Therapy and all 3 Dread Return on t1, in the best Sun Titan Chain I had throughout the whole tournament. He plays a land t1, Ponder, and says go. I have LED, Looting, Troll, Gemstone, Therapy. I first named LED and missed-I'm not sure if that was the correct card to name on the draw vs storm. By all means flame on. The other 3 took Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, and Preordain to leave him with only a Dark Ritual in hand at the end of the Titan recursion, and I cracked my last LED for green to Gnaw with 5 or so cards left in my library and me with 9 2/2's, a 6/6, and 4 ichorids in the bin. I wished him good luck on top decking Ad Nauseum, as I felt 21 storm should be completely accomplishable if he draws it. He does. He goes to 1 and stops, and can't get over 10 storm with BBBB in pool. Losing to Innistrad commons in the legacy GP gets him to check the drop box. I dropped at my round 8 loss to UW stoneforge merfolk who got turn 1 Aether Vial turn 2 Relic of Progenitus with FoW backup games 2 and 3, I went to the car to nap while everyone else finished as I was exhausted. My other two losses were to Enchantress, Lingering Stoneblade-the exact 75 as the winning decklist, piloted by Drew Levin got the list from Sam Black who brewed it. The only other highlight of my experience at the GP that comes to mind was a Veteran Explorer/Birthing Pod/Academy Rector player naming Breakthrough on a Cabal Therapy t1 targeting me, when I know I have zero in my 75-I therapy on my turn at him for Green Sun Zenith. His hand is 3 Birthing Pod, 1 Academy Rector, land. Play LED, flashback Looting, hit a Narcomoeba and a Bridge. He never played a single spell after his Therapy.
It's obviously very situational, but naming LED is fine turn 1 on the play. Knowing I'm against a storm opponent, I would name LED or Infernal Tutor in the dark if I led on LED. Afterwards, they usually drop their LEDs onto the table to avoid discard.
If you still haven't looked at their hand in the midgame (i.e. turns 2-3), you probably want to name Infernal Tutor if they don't respond with a Brainstorm. Burning Wish or Dark Ritual are also reasonable.
Well, he snap kept his 7, but just pondered. I suppose he doesn't play against many decent dredge pilots, because imo he should have left it open for Brainstorm if he didn't get a hand that killed me t1. He didn't have any red that I saw, so I wasn't in fear of a huge Past in Flames or something. My thought on naming LED was that first of all, he couldn't Brainstorm out of it if he had it and was keeping it for storm count, and secondly that he probably cast ponder thinking I wouldn't have a Therapy or even have an idea what to name- I won t2 game 1 and he conceded to my next-turn swing and kill t2 win I described above. I agree it's definitely a situational call.
A good player piloting any storm deck will play LED as soon as they can to protect them from our therapies.
Dark Ritual would have been the better card to name while being on the draw, LED is better to name while on the play.
Thanks for the input. I quit magic in shadowmoor, and just came back in mirrodin besieged, so I'm a little rusty with legacy, especially with all the modern and limited I've been playing (ptq season and such, meh) but I've been playing the format since it was called 1.5-the constructed criticism is much appreciated, and is the main reason for me to post on the source in the first place.
Gnaw to the Bone is an interesting meta choice. I like that you've adjusted the number of Gold Lands you have to 11, which is the minimum number that I'd be comfortable with, as I really count Cephalid Coliseum as a spell with the bonus of being able to produce blue mana. Did you ever miss the explosiveness that Breakthrough or Cephalid Coliseum usually provides?
Cheers,
jares
Has anyone here had the time to mess around with Burning Inquiry? I'd be interested to find out how the testing went.
Kind Regards,
jares
Yeah, it's basically worse than Breakthrough and Careful Study/Faithless Looting but better than Brainstorm as your +13 draw spell, the major problem is that you can't reliably return your Dredger to the graveyard and randomly lose games because of it.
You'd also need one hell of an argument for playing it over LED.
Thanks for taking note of those points. I'm actually thinking of trying it out specifically because of the card's weakness - inducing randomness into the hands of both players. I haven't had the time to see how it works, but I at least expect it to be fun - after all, anything with randomness in this game is bound to be fun :laugh:.
Cheers,
jares
p.s. I'm also working on the arguments against LED, but that's going to be a serious enough issue that will demand one's full attention.
Gnaw and Aura Thief were both suggested by my teammate while digging through an alpha-deep collection for 5 people's decks. I wouldn't recommend Gnaw without Sun Titan to get back LED, as getting 3 mana is far-fetched, and you want to win or have game on table by turn 2, effectively. He convinced me when he noted it was a blowout vs burn and most storm decks (not tide obviously,) I could pay the flashback with LED, and recur the mana easy with Sun Titan (other cards we were possibly going to run in that slot that didn't make the board: Crippling Fatigue, Psychatog lol, Sadistic Hypnotist, Darkblast, Firestorm number 4) Going up to 11 5 color land was because in testing, I wanted to cast either Putrid Imp, Cabal Therapy, Firestorm, Wispmare, Ingot Chewer, and of course Faithless Looting. All on turn 1, all the time. I sacrificed the explosiveness of 4x Cephalid Coliseum to support the resilience of the deck-which included, as you mentioned, zero copies of Breakthrough in my 75. I had a long discussion with Feldman on facebook about the first 60, and he mentioned he was running zero Coliseum, 4 Undiscovered Paradise, and sideboard all the copies of Breakthrough (he recommended 3 vs combo), to add to consistency, since draw 2 is usually enough to win against decks that aren't combo. He disagreed about running any non Grave-Troll targets for Dread Return, but I felt Sun Titan recurring Golgari Thug's death triggered ability and Cabal Therapy meant I could probably recur the Lorwyn anti-hate evoke kids all day. This is probably much easier done with Tortured Existence, but none of the dealers had any, so whatever. I went with zero Breakthrough, because not only did I not need it, I had enough discard outlets that I didn't have to One for Nothing myself to do anything relevant-like Careful Study while keeping a Faerie Macabre in grip, nullifying a Snapcaster Mage completely. Or holding on to a Firestorm vs RUG Delver, or keeping Wispmare back against Enchantress.
Overall, I could have easily played -2 Chain of Vapor, +2 Wispmare, but then I may have had to run -1 Aura Thief, +1 Angel of Despair.
As for the spell portion of Cephalid Coliseum, no. I never missed it once. I actually left one copy in as you notice, just in case I could recur it with a Sun Titan, and didn't have an LED-Faithless Looting in the graveyard, or if I had an extra open mana. Most of the time I would just win by Dread Return on Sun Titan-bring back Thug-Therapy, sac Thug, trigger Thug, put anti-hate or Narcomoeba back on top, continue mind twisting them.