[Deck] Dredge

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Originally Posted by owerbart

Hi. I've never played Dredge before in my life but since I have a playset of LEDs and Therapies without being used at all I got Echonance list and started to playtest some games online. Dredge looks fun to play :)

My main concern, is, I still don't own the Rainbow Lands in paper, so would it be possible to have a Dual-Lands based manabase? I have Underground Seas, Volcs and Tundras to build it with. Could it be possible to build a manabase with them until I acquire the Rainbows?

Thanks for the help.

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One of the older/more experienced dredge players in this thread can probably answer this better than I could - But in my view the rainbow land manabase is strictly better no matter the way the deck is built. I do think that it would still be playable and in many cases work just fine, but there WILL be situations where the deck will suffer without the access to the 3 main colors (4 if boarding Wear//Tear or serenity). Any chance that you own any copies of Undiscovered Paradise however? Can even brew around it with Bloodghast (and maybe a couple Dakmor Salvages) but I haven't had any real success figuring out how to put that together yet. But I'll play some games with some attempts at a dualland manabase and see if I can figure out a playable method in the meantime.
Also, luckily for us Dredge players, Rainbows are very very cheap at least compared to any other real manabase in Legacy. So hopefully you wouldn't be on the duals for long :)

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Originally Posted by Echonance

One of the older/more experienced dredge players in this thread can probably answer this better than I could - But in my view the rainbow land manabase is strictly better no matter the way the deck is built. I do think that it would still be playable and in many cases work just fine, but there WILL be situations where the deck will suffer without the access to the 3 main colors (4 if boarding Wear//Tear or serenity). Any chance that you own any copies of Undiscovered Paradise however? Can even brew around it with Bloodghast (and maybe a couple Dakmor Salvages) but I haven't had any real success figuring out how to put that together yet. But I'll play some games with some attempts at a dualland manabase and see if I can figure out a playable method in the meantime.
Also, luckily for us Dredge players, Rainbows are very very cheap at least compared to any other real manabase in Legacy. So hopefully you wouldn't be on the duals for long :)

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So in the Maindeck you have 3 different colors of spells to cast, postboard that frequently goes up to 4 or 5 colors. Because once you start Dredging most additional spells cast from your hand beside the initial discard outlet will accelerate you, but typically aren't necessary to win. Dredge is a land light deck because so much of the deck is devoted to the Dredge engine and how you really only need to get a Dredger in the yard once. Because of this you want your lands to cast as many of your spells as possible, increasing your odds of having Dredger + Castable discard outlet in your opening hand. Cephalid Coliseum, while it can only cast Blue spells, is more of an additional loot spell than a land.

If you're running a Fetch/Dual manabases you run the risk of dredging over all your fetchable lands and because Duals can only make 2 colors instead of 5, the chances of having an opening hand unable to cast any discard outlets increases. There are plenty of great looking hands I've had to send back because my only land was a Coliseum, but my discard outlets were not Blue. This problem would be compounded by not running Rainbow lands.

If you really want to run Duals until you get Rainbows, you're probably better off cutting Faithless Lootings and LEDS for Hapless Researchers and a bigger Dread Return package and going straight Blue/Black. There's an old decklist by Alexander Shearer from a few years ago you might want to look at.


TL;DR: You get a bunch of consistency issues and have more opening hands you need to mulligan when you run Duals instead of Rainbows.

@Echonance and @gibbousm thanks for the quick answers :)

I guess I can spend a few bucks on the rainbows. Looking forward to play some dredge :)

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Originally Posted by Echonance

My decklist is shown second here:
http://blog.gameplace.ch/legacy-12-03-17/

Overall I was very happy with the 2nd place finish, especially having crawled back from the round 1 loss. I had a lot of unlucky and lucky games over the course of the day which seemed to balance out pretty well in the end. I have little else to say other than that I'll definitely continue playing the deck, as it seems to be performing for me and most importantly is a lot of fun for me to play.

May your dredges keep hitting gas and hope to chat with you all more in the thread over the coming months! Thanks especially to Que whose decklist I mostly copied before making my own touches, and whose advice greatly helped me learn to pilot the deck.

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Yo great report and congrats on the finish! And thanks for the kind words dude. I'm more glad others are having success with a similar list more than anything.

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Questions for all.
So what do you guys board out for Unmask?
Do you board in Unmask alongside FOW or alongside Petals? These cards are lost card advantage and require some 2 for 1s. If you have to mulligan at all these feel incredibly bad.
Do you board in Unmask both games 2 and 3? Idk how much I like them on the draw.
Against what decks are you boarding in Unmask?
Against what decks are you boarding in FOW?

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Originally Posted by Que

Questions for all.
1 So what do you guys take out for Unmask?
2 Do you board in Unmask alongside FOW or alongside Petals? These cards are lost card advantage and require some 2 for 1s. If you have to mulligan at all these feel incredibly bad.
3 Do you board in Unmask both games 2 and 3? Idk how much I like them on the draw.
4 Against what decks are you boarding in Unmask?
5 Against what decks are you boarding in FOW?

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1 I board in Unmask mostly against combo decks that I believe to be faster than me and D&T. If it is a combo deck, I board out 1x Dread Return and 1-2x Prized Amalgam.
2 If I board in Unmask I don't board them alongside Petals. Petals and Unmask is too much card disadvantage, while also reducing the number of black cards I can exile. I don't play FoW in my 75.
3 If I board them in g2, I will also board them in g3 (if they were useful to begin with).
4 See 1
5 See 2, don't have it in my 75.

Regarding Unmask, I would also like to know against which decks you guys bring it in. Card feels sometimes amazing and sometimes utter trash.

new to the forum and thought id see what suggestions were out there

4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Street Wraith
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Narcomoeba
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Ichorid
4 Faithless Looting
3 Breakthrough
1 Dread Return
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Careful Study
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Bridge from Below
2 Cephalid Coliseum
2 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine

Sideboard:

1 Dread Return
1 Darkblast
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Firestorm
3 Leyline of the Void
3 Nature's Claim
2 Serenity

current list I am running but hasn't been as effective since I took out putrid imps, similar to list i ran at gp Columbus to 31st, probably adding the imps back in and considering adding a memory's journey to side board

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Originally Posted by HansoRaptor

1 I board in Unmask mostly against combo decks that I believe to be faster than me and D&T. If it is a combo deck, I board out 1x Dread Return and 1-2x Prized Amalgam.
2 If I board in Unmask I don't board them alongside Petals. Petals and Unmask is too much card disadvantage, while also reducing the number of black cards I can exile. I don't play FoW in my 75.
3 If I board them in g2, I will also board them in g3 (if they were useful to begin with).
4 See 1
5 See 2, don't have it in my 75.

Regarding Unmask, I would also like to know against which decks you guys bring it in. Card feels sometimes amazing and sometimes utter trash.

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That makes sense. Against combo I normally board in the Petals alongside my extra DR and target for the situation. But as you've mentioned its not very beneficial running both Unmask and Petals due to the sheer amount of card disadvantage. For that reason I tend not to board in the Unmasks as I generally speed up my deck with petals and extra breakthrough. Not to mention they can still Brainstorm in response if you're on the draw.

Ultimately I'm trying to determine whether I should continue to run petals or swap them for FOW. The notion being that I'm boarding in FOW against the other combo decks where I would have boarded in the petals. If we can agree that having the FOW makes the deck more versatile in the general meta then I'll maybe run them again.


@Mexico. The main deck looks fine. I would consider ditching 1 street wraith and adding an extra Coliseum with the current configuration you have. Its a free draw 3 that will almost never get countered unless they have stifle. Its one of the better cards in the deck imo.

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Played in a GPT last Saturday. Went 4-2 in 6 rounds of swiss 50 players. My matchups were as follows:

Round 1: 4c Loam, 1-0

G1: I dredge him out.
G2: He double Leylines me
G3: He opens with Mox Diamond, Mox Diamond Scavenging Ooze. I Ancient Grudge one of his Diamonds away and he never picked up extra green sources before dying to my steady stream of Ichorids, Amalgams, Narcos and friends.

Round 2: Enchantress, 1-1

G1: I dredge him out
G2: RIP
G3: Opens with Leyline of Sanctity. Drops a Solitary Confinement with Sterling Grove to protect it and I lose.

Round 3: Esperblade, 2-1
G1: I dredge him out
G2: He doesn't have much in the form of grave hate and meets a similar demise game 2.

Round 4: Grixis Delver, 3-1
Don't remember much games 1 and 2, but game 3 I'm on the play and I unmask a Nihil Spellbomb out of his hand and therapy away his brainstorm leaving his hand pretty anemic. I'm able to start my engine and "draw" more gas than he does.

Round 5: B/R Reanimator, 3-2 What I consider the worst matchup that isn't Enchantress lol.
G1: Reveals Chancellor and reanimates a Griselbrand on turn 1...
G2: I don't have a particularly strong hand, but I'm able to drop him to 1 life before he goes nuts and drops sneak attack dropping a G daddy and getting back in the game.
They were prizing to top 10 so I decided to play out the last round and see what happens.

Round 6: Sneak & Show, 4-2
G1: Dredge him out.
G2: My hand is Coliseum, LED, Breakthrough, Bridge, Bridge, Ashen Rider. I my turn I draw a land. I drop a land and LED and pass it back. Next turn I draw another bridge. I cast Breakthrough were X=1 to keep the Ashen rider in my hand. He FOWs my Breakthrough. On his turn he casts show and tell. He drops Emrakul and I drop my Ashen Rider exiling his Emmy. I beat him down for a few turns and keep my life total above 15. He manages to assemble the combo again via Sneak attack and swings with emmy. In response to the Annihilator trigger I Sac'd my LED binned my Bridges then sac'd my Ashen rider and swung on my turn to kill him while I was at 1 life.

I ended up in 12th out of a field of 50. I felt pretty good throughout the day outside of those rough matchups. I'm definitely feeling a lot of the splash damage from B/R Reanimator though which is concerning, but understandable. Its definitely a deck to fear and for good reason. I'm not sure what that means for Dredge atm. I don't particularly enjoy jamming Leylines, but will see..

I noticed that some Vintage Dredge decks are playing this as their sideboard.

Sideboard (15)
4 Dark Depths
4 Thespian's Stage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Vampire Hexmage


Is there any value in doing this in Legacy? It does get around graveyard hate. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by wsurugby10

I noticed that some Vintage Dredge decks are playing this as their sideboard.

Sideboard (15)
4 Dark Depths
4 Thespian's Stage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Vampire Hexmage


Is there any value in doing this in Legacy? It does get around graveyard hate. Thoughts?

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Some time ago, I was thinking why Vintage was playing Dark Depths in the Sideboard and Legacy not. My conclusion as a non-Vintage player (so take what I say with a grain of salt) was the following:
As you know, Vintage Dredge plays Bazaar of Baghdad and Petrified Field as its only mana source. By doing so they have only used 8 of their deck-slots for their mana sources and draw spells (see Bazaar of Baghdad), while Legacy Dredge plays 13 lands and about 10 Draw spells (taking them together 23 deck-slots).
Now if Vintage Dredge boards in their 15 card Sideboard, they have naturally Petrified Field in the mainboard, which can be quite handy when it comes to return a destroyed (or milled) Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage. Since I have zero experience playing Vintage, I have no idea how strong Petrified Field is in the Dark Depths Sideboard plan, but I can imagine it being really strong. And if this is true, we have the obvious problem of it missing in the Legacy version (and it does not make any sense to play it in Legacy since it can not be used to cast any of our ~10 draw spells).
Another thing to mention is the inclusion of Serum Powder in the Vintage version. It makes taking a mulligan easier, which can also help when it comes to playing Dark Depths game 2. At least that's what I'm expecting.
Having said all that, I'm not even sure if sideboarding Dark Depths in Vintage is even worth to begin with. I can't imagine it being fast enough, but perhaps some Vintage players can give some insight on this one.

Do I think it is worth trying out in Legacy? Sure why not, perhaps I will try some matches online later on. Other input on this topic would be welcome, there are probably many things I have not considered yet.

i've tried it before. it's not very good. i would recommend if you are hellbent on trying it to try with something like 3 loam and 4 crop rotation over the hexmage plan, although hexmage is kind of cool with bridge. at least this will give you some more consistency.

the other thing is that dredge is pretty good even through graveyard hate, you don't always have to find an alternative strategy.

I tried the Dark Depths alternate side idea a while back. I couldn't get any consistency out of it, and even when I did get it to work, Terminus.

Ever since Embalm was mentioned as a mechanic I was expecting something possibly playable to pop up... An Ashen Ghoul-ish card could be be interesting. And so we have a cat:

http://mythicspoiler.com/akh/cards/sacredcat.jpg

The fact the Embalm makes tokens is a sad thing thing due to them not synergising with Bridge.

Nonetheless, thoughts? On this card, or what we'd like to see from Embalm?

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Originally Posted by ChemicalBurns

Ever since Embalm was mentioned as a mechanic I was expecting something possibly playable to pop up... An Ashen Ghoul-ish card could be be interesting. And so we have a cat:

The fact the Embalm makes tokens is a sad thing thing due to them not synergising with Bridge.

Nonetheless, thoughts? On this card, or what we'd like to see from Embalm?

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The card is cute but it's no where near the level of Ashen Ghoul.

Dredge wants a creature that has an Embalm cost of 0 (in addition of being not a weak card), which I'm pretty sure won't happen.

@Que

Looks like you got what you wanted in Insult // Injury

Back half is 2r deal to damage to target creature and 2 to its controller

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Originally Posted by ChemicalBurns

Ever since Embalm was mentioned as a mechanic I was expecting something possibly playable to pop up... An Ashen Ghoul-ish card could be be interesting. And so we have a cat:
http://mythicspoiler.com/akh/cards/sacredcat.jpg

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I don't think I'll be playing this one, but I'm curious to see what else the block turns up.
A graveyard-themed set has me paying attention, but so far all I'm seeing is luke-warm gravehate, rather than graveyard abusing cards.

i think embalm is almost always going to be worse than unearth as they don't trigger narcomoeba or prized amalgam, but let's see what else shows up.

This person has gone 5-0 three times in the last two weeks.

I'm fascinated by some of their card choices.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/602159#online

I think his list just goes to show how powerful dredge is game one and he must have some good runs with his sb cards.

Holy shit, the creature on Dread Return is Mindslicer?! Anybody going to Worcester tomorrow?

Speaking of interesting lists... There's been a guy in Japan running a Breakthrough-less list here:

http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/k/kD26017S/