[Deck] Dredge

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Originally Posted by laststepdown

This feels like a trick question. There's too many variables. Am I on the play or draw? On the play g1 t1 vs an unknown opponent (which is what I'm assuming you're asking) I'll cast Putrid Imp. On the draw, it depends what you drew as much as what you saw from the opponent. Say you draw (best case scenario) LED. You can go all in vs t1 Forest -> Elf card (i.e. cast the Careful Study+hold priority LED), or Mountain -> Goblin Guide, and should-you're running a race at this point and need to start sprinting. On the draw vs say, an uncracked Flooded Strand, you could be setting yourself up for disaster just trying to resolve your first Study and should adjust your plays appropriately. What if this opponent is Miracles? Imp could possibly do 6-10 points of damage unanswered, dual functioning as your discard outlet while they look for interaction. What if they're on Storm, and you didn't topdeck the LED (we're not all perfect)? Careful Study without LED t1 (dredge 4-6 t2) is never going to be as explosive as Imp t1 into Study t2 (dredge anywhere from 12-18). It's not like Careful Study has flashback. So, usually Putrid Imp.

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Not a trick question. And I'm sorry yeah I meant you're on the play T1 against an unknown opponent. It makes sense that you would want to cast Putrid Imp T1 especially with the limitation I gave which was you only have 1 land and like you said you will usually dredge more if you wait to cast your draw spell on turn 2 assuming it resolves.


Now onto the reason I asked that in the first place. And i'm sure there are math wizzes out there that can determine the odds of the following happening, but in my experience leading with Putrid Imp has left me dredging less (the opposite of what you're saying) because my opponent's turn 1 was either a Wasteland or a Duress/Thoughtseize to take said Draw Spell. After that you're left slow dredging every turn which in today's meta is not good enough. The reason I cast the draw spell first is to either draw more Careful Study/Faithless Looting, an LED, a Cephalid Coliseum, or another land in the chance the existing one does get wasted. I feel like you get more options that way rather than just sulking after the realization that the only land/draw spell you had going for you just got wrenched. Also if you did only have that one land then I would still want to fire off the draw spell because if you go turn 1 Putrid Imp with the hopes of casting a careful study on your turn 2 you also now leave yourself open to soft permission like Daze as well as Spell Pierce.

With all that in mind I just decided to not really run it. I do have Street Wraith's in my build which provides that extra food for Ichorid as well as having Prized Amalgams added to the count. Just my little opinion on our friend PImp.

Ok this is what ill try. Any suggestions is welcomed. I was inspired by the core ichorid imp therapy

4 Ichorid
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Putrid Imp
3 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Narcomoeba
3 Breakthrough
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Dread Return
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass
4 Bridge from Below
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
SB: 2 Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Ashen Rider
SB: 3 Firestorm
SB: 1 Dread Return
SB: 1 City of Brass

Just got home from a Tuesday night Legacy LGS event, went 4-0 first place undefeated again with Dredge. I changed a few things & tested some stuff out different from last time I posted. Got excellent results again, so figured I would share.

Games:Opponent
2-0 RUG Delver
2-1 Shardless BUG (loss to Leyline turn 0, happens)
2-0 Abzan KotR (g2 won through surgical on GGT and a Bojuka Bog)
2-0 Death & Taxes

4 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Mana Confluence
2 City of Brass (still don't own a 4th confluence, sorry)
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
2 Prized Amalgam
2 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Ashen Rider
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard
3 Lotus Petal
3 Unmask
3 Firestorm
3 Wear // Tear
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Saw alot of DRS today. Did not care once at all, just overwhelmed the little 1/2 out of relevance. If I see him more I may go back to 2-3 Street Wraith in main. Also, this was the first time I used Prized Amalgam in sanctioned play. I'm going to keep this super short and just say he over-performed. He's the reason I put the 2nd Dread Return from the board to the main.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by laststepdown

Just got home from a Tuesday night Legacy LGS event, went 4-0 first place undefeated again with Dredge. I changed a few things & tested some stuff out different from last time I posted. Got excellent results again, so figured I would share.

Games:Opponent
2-0 RUG Delver
2-1 Shardless BUG (loss to Leyline turn 0, happens)
2-0 Abzan KotR (g2 won through surgical on GGT and a Bojuka Bog)
2-0 Death & Taxes

4 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Mana Confluence
2 City of Brass (still don't own a 4th confluence, sorry)
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
2 Prized Amalgam
2 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Ashen Rider
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard
3 Lotus Petal
3 Unmask
3 Firestorm
3 Wear // Tear
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Saw alot of DRS today. Did not care once at all, just overwhelmed the little 1/2 out of relevance. If I see him more I may go back to 2-3 Street Wraith in main. Also, this was the first time I used Prized Amalgam in sanctioned play. I'm going to keep this super short and just say he over-performed. He's the reason I put the 2nd Dread Return from the board to the main.

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First of all congratulations on doing so well even after a long pause of not playing!
I'm about to build LED Dredge and I have some questions regarding your build, I hope I can get some insight.

1. You "only" play 10 dredge creatures. Is that really enough to consistently hit them?
2. I see some list with 4 Amalgam, some with 0, and yours with 2. How often should I play it and why do you think it is worth playing over another dredger.
3. Why do you play Ashen Rider? Are you playing against a lot of Show and Tell or is there another reason?
4. I see in a lot of lists extra finisher, such as Flame-Kin Zealot and Flayer of the Hatebound. You play none of them. Any particular reasons?
5. Finally, could you give me some input on your Sideboard? I have no idea where you would prefer to board in Lotus Petal and Unmask.

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Originally Posted by HansoRaptor

First of all congratulations on doing so well even after a long pause of not playing!
I'm about to build LED Dredge and I have some questions regarding your build, I hope I can get some insight.

1. You "only" play 10 dredge creatures. Is that really enough to consistently hit them?
2. I see some list with 4 Amalgam, some with 0, and yours with 2. How often should I play it and why do you think it is worth playing over another dredger.
3. Why do you play Ashen Rider? Are you playing against a lot of Show and Tell or is there another reason?
4. I see in a lot of lists extra finisher, such as Flame-Kin Zealot and Flayer of the Hatebound. You play none of them. Any particular reasons?
5. Finally, could you give me some input on your Sideboard? I have no idea where you would prefer to board in Lotus Petal and Unmask.

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Hey thanks. I love questions. Look at the build you quoted as more of a test run to see how Amalgam performs by my own personal play experience than my actual list.

1. Check my usual (maindeck-sideboard can change event to event, it's good to have some read on the field) list a page or so back. I would recommend starting from there and working with what you're comfortable with. This is actually the first tournament I've ever cut to less than 11 dredgers, I'm actually happy that you noticed. That's a good thing to spot, especially for someone new to the archetype. I normally run 12. Although, I do run 4 Putrid Imp which lets you reuse dredgers much more than the normal 4 Careful Study builds, so the smaller number hasn't been very noticeable at all.

2. I own 2 japanese foil Golgari Thugs, and 2 english foil Golgari Thugs. I'd been keeping a mental note of when the english Thugs made an actual difference in scenarios like mulligans and going off. I don't actually think this list is 100% correct, it's just what I was comfortable with that day after goldfishing the changes. Like I said, the initial process was to test Amalgam in a sanctioned environment, 500 goldfishes of using it as flashback fuel won't do anything to help interacting vs actual players. So I bought the hype and took out my english Thugs for 2 zombies. Amalgam was a house, even MVP at that tournament for me. He's the largest free threat we have been introduced to in our combat arsenal since actual Ichorid. Unless we start running Life from the Loam or something trying to hard cast Grave-Trolls. That was good when dredge was in standard, not now. Amalgam though, he's efficient. 3 seemed like it would be overkill and might show up too much in openers. As for running zero, I've played without them for the past decade. That being said, I don't know the right number yet, but it's most likely more than zero.

3. Ashen Rider is amazing. I'm not sure how well I can explain this, but to preemptively answer your next question, I do run a finisher, Ashen Rider is my finisher. If it strip mines their first and/or second land drop (if we're lucky after we sacrificed it to therapy,) we're pretty set to win that game. If someone tries to cast Exhume while you have a Putrid Imp or LED out, it's obviously good for you. It's not terrible in your opener vs a blind opponent-it obviously beats the card Show and Tell. It exiles to Ichorid (and Unmask,) while Flame-Kin and Flayer don't. That 3 haste damage can matter more than you think, especially vs a deck with a clock. All of these things are good. I could give you a decade of scenarios with the deck where I just-don't-see one of my 1-4 dread returns I am running that given year and my random silver bullet Flayers/Flame-kins didn't do anything but force mulligans and chunk up vital cards in that first dredge of the game. Ashen Rider is surprisingly interactive with the current meta in both your hand and graveyard, and a maindeck answer to MOST things we could actually possibly lose to game 1. On a good day with Ashen Rider, Dread Return-Therapy-Dread Return-Therapy you've exiled 4 permanents and Mind Warped them. Or it randomly won because your opponent went "Petal Tomb SNT" before you took a turn. On a bad day, an Ichorid had lunch. (I still remember the days when we had to use Angel of Despair. She didn't care about us or our Bridge from Below. Dark times.) It's my toy and you can't take it away from me.

4. The copies of both cards that I own are english foil and I actually just can't stand them. If you notice, I actually do run my ugly english foil Flayer in my sideboard.

5. Lotus Petal lets you go faster. 10 years ago, when we ran Deep Analysis and Faithless Looting wasn't a card yet, some dredge players rocked 4 Petal main. I was one of those players. It was win-more in most cases, but what it really did was showcase the power of the mechanic. They still have their uses and there are times when the matchup requires you to be a turn faster than you are capable of going off with the game 1 setup. For instance, I want to speed up vs a deck like DNT. I'd rather establish a dominant board presence as fast as possible before they can hope to get any 2 mana hatebears on the board. Lotus Petal lets you get to your silver bullet Iona/Elesh/Flayer/Rider or just to all of your therapies to dismantle their hand. If you think you need more discard, or you want perfect information & missing on a Therapy could be the loss but your opponent can easily sandbag their hate/answer to you, bring in Unmask. I prefer it to Thoughtseize because of a few reasons, besides just the life loss. You can go off the same turn you cast it alot easier than Thoughtseize. If it ever comes up, Unmask gets around Chalice @ 1. There's no harm in tweaking my numbers. My friends and I have gone deep enough to play Homarid Spawning Bed in the sideboard at points in the deck's existence. That choice is admittedly hard to justify to people at times. Anyway. Sideboards should contain interesting cards to keep your opponents off balance, regardless of the archetype you brought to the tournament. "Unmask you" can do that pretty well. There's a ton of other cards that would do just as fine of a job in your personal board, and you should have a sideboard you're comfortable and fluid with.

Thanks a lot! That was more insight than I was expecting, you really helped me a lot.
Guess I have to start playing and see what I feel most comfortable with.

Well, Aether Revolt doesn't seem to have anything for Dredge that catches my eye.
And it's surprisingly thin on large creatures too..... :confused:

Hey Slave, good to see you on here too! I just joined this site and it seems far more active than the other.

But yeah, once again Dredge gets no love.

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

I just joined this site and it seems far more active than the other.

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Nah man. It's pretty much dead here too since there isn't that much to talk about these days.

Oh hey, SHABOOGS! Good to see you on here as well :D

Yeah, I understand. Maybe we should have a moment of silence for Modern. The poor format is once again without Dredge.

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

Maybe we should have a moment of silence for Modern.

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That's what we were doing until YOU guys showed up! GOD!

:D

Oh dear. Forgive us!

I'm just excited to finally be on these forums because there is a lot more activity for Legacy as a whole here than elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

Oh dear. Forgive us!

I'm just excited to finally be on these forums because there is a lot more activity for Legacy as a whole here than elsewhere.

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It's all good! I was just joshing you guys. Glad there are more people reading/posting!

Laststepdown, belated congratulations! Good shooting.

I agree with you about Amalgam. When it was spoiled, I didn't think much of it, but I've been liking it a lot as a double. Powers up our Therapies and Bridges, enables Force of Will out of the sideboard very well, can dodge Terminus, and weathers more stuff than any of our other creatures that aren't dedicated Dread Return targets. With that said, when I tested a third, it didn't do much for me.

Haven't played a ton of Dredge lately, but when I have, I've been on a list with quad-Ichorid and quad-Thug, and I've found quads to work a lot better for me than triples did. Interested to hear if you're still tinkering with the mix.

I'm starting to consider taking out Griselbrand and adding a maindeck Petal (and maybe switching one of my rainbow-lands for a Petal, too). I keep finding G-Brand either overkills people or does very little (esp. with only one Dread Return in the main), but I'm curious as to whether people still like having him around.

I'm probably going to start playing Dredge more than I have been for a while. I think being "that Storm guy" has been working against me at the local, so I'm going to start mixing it up.

Hehe, I had to play Dredge less because I was becoming the "Dredge guy," and people were bringing Leyline of the Void every week.

I always play four Golgari Thug and four Ichorid. I still haven't tested Prized Amalgam yet though, so I could see cutting an Ichorid for one, or even playing more with Force of Will in the sideboard.

I don't like Griselbrand as a Dread Return target. I prefer Flame-Kin Zealot or Dragonlord Kolaghan because they lead to a same turn combo win unless the opponent disrupts it. Griselbrand, on the other hand, requires us to pay life we may not have, and could still fail to win us the game (though that is unlikely). It just feels like adding an unnecessary step that costs life to the combo turn.

I have considered adding a Lotus Petal or two to the main deck, but I can never find room for them. Too many Putrid Imp (and one Tireless Tribe) in my deck because I love them so much :P

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

Hehe, I had to play Dredge less because I was becoming the "Dredge guy," and people were bringing Leyline of the Void every week.

I always play four Golgari Thug and four Ichorid. I still haven't tested Prized Amalgam yet though, so I could see cutting an Ichorid for one, or even playing more with Force of Will in the sideboard.

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I wouldn't cut Ichorid for PAm; Ichorid is just so perfect for everything the deck's trying to do, and it's really fast. (N.B.: It also enables PAm.)

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

I don't like Griselbrand as a Dread Return target. I prefer Flame-Kin Zealot or Dragonlord Kolaghan because they lead to a same turn combo win unless the opponent disrupts it. Griselbrand, on the other hand, requires us to pay life we may not have, and could still fail to win us the game (though that is unlikely). It just feels like adding an unnecessary step that costs life to the combo turn.

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Flame-Kin is excellent, but I just find that it's rarely something I need to have. I keep it in my sideboard for matchups like Storm, where hasting and pumping our dudes is more important than building up a lot of zombies.

The thing that makes G-Brand handy is that he's also a black creature. At this point my real debate is over whether an extra black creature or another mana source would be better for my consistency. Kolaghan would fill that role as well, but I don't like that he neither boosts our other dudes nor draws us cards (nor, for that matter, gains us life). If we've got six zombies and a Zealot, we can swing for 21; we need more guys for lethal with Kolaghan, though I don't know how often that really matters (especially with fetches, etc.).

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Originally Posted by Eretoryi

I have considered adding a Lotus Petal or two to the main deck, but I can never find room for them. Too many Putrid Imp (and one Tireless Tribe) in my deck because I love them so much :P

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I personally don't run either PImp or Tribe, though occasionally I've found that a discard outlet would be good to have. Sounds like we have different approaches, which is fine; PImp is about half a step from being an inclusion for me, too. I'm on singletons Dread Return and G-Brand, with two Amalgams and quads of everything else (except 3x Gemstone and 1x black-bordered Italian City of Brass).

I actually agree with you. Ichorid is the bomb, so I guess Prized Amalgam is best in addition to the four Ichorids in a less combo-oriented list.

Since I play four Putrid Imp I don't find myself lacking black creatures. You're right though, our styles are a bit different, which is totally fine. Now that I think about it, Prized Amalgam might actually be a nice addition to my list since I tend not to emphasize the combo finish. I think I have just grown to like PImp and Tribe because they're good against hate.

I add a 13th land usually, playing four Gemstone Mine, four Mana Confluence, and one City of Brass.

Man, thinking about my list makes me want to play it more! Maybe I'll take it to the next Legacy night I'm able to attend. I miss turning my deck upside down.

Just wanted to say hey! and welcome new members!


Also on Tuesday I'm going to be streaming with Dredge Queen Erin Campbell herself. We will be jamming legacy with my current Dredge list. 7 PM PST. Check it out! :)

https://twitter.com/OriginalOestrus/...21736585383938

Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/originaloestrus

Nice. It's been a while since she played Legacy Dredge in her stream. Will def drop by to watch.

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Originally Posted by Que

Just wanted to say hey! and welcome new members!


Also on Tuesday I'm going to be streaming with Dredge Queen Erin Campbell herself. We will be jamming legacy with my current Dredge list. 7 PM PST. Check it out! :)

https://twitter.com/OriginalOestrus/...21736585383938

Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/originaloestrus

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You gonna post the list?

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Originally Posted by potatodavid

You gonna post the list?

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Oh sorry yeah its pretty much the same as before, however, because DRS has declined somewhat in the meta I have shifted back towards the inclusion of Putrid Imp over the Street Wraiths I had. In either case I don't feel such a change makes or breaks the deck tbh and you can beat DRS with either list convincingly.

Main Deck
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
3 Golgari Thug
3 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
2 Prized Amalgam
3 Putrid Imp
4 Stinkweed Imp
Creature ( 23)

4 Cephalid Coliseum
2 City Of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
4 Mana Confluence
Land ( 13)

3 Breakthrough
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
1 Dread Return
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
Other ( 24)
qty: 60

Sideboard
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Ashen Rider
1 Breakthrough
1 City Of Brass
1 Dread Return
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
3 Lotus Petal
2 Unmask
3 Wear // Tear
Sideboard ( 15)