[Deck] Non-LED Based Dredge/Ichorid Combo

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Originally Posted by sunshine

A. That's the point. Redundancy in our list yields... well redundancy, or consistency if you prefer. If you mean it sucks to draw multiples in your opening hand, I have to disagree there - having a second permanent discard outlet is great simply because they are the number one target for counters. It's not that permanent discard outlets number 5-8 are bad it's just that in a world without counters you may be better off running extra copies of Breakthrough - which you did and I'm glad it worked out for you. I think we can agree though that running Pimp over extra Breakthroughs is a safer play if you expect a "blue shifted" meta.

B. Really? I would say that's when they shine, would you mind expanding that point a little?

C. This is true, and neither do pitch to FoW. PImp does pitch to Unmask though, however, I can see how FoW would seem appealing if you want to stop your opponent's turn 1 Crypt/Relic when on the draw. The problem is siding in FoW almost forces you to either also side in CoV or not take out any blue cards (Breakthrough) which seems a little awkward considering there are also 4 PNeedles to bring in.

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I did a little play testing tonight to try to understand what you meant. I think maybe you make less of 2 moves that I often make. Move 1, on the draw neglecting to play my land and discarding. Move 2, cabal therapying myself. I really don't like permanent discard outlets. They don't do enough. I need more speed, without Ichorid I can't sit back and attack adding tokens to the board. Take for instance this hand: Stinkweed Imp, Bridge From Below, Undiscovered Paradise, Tireless tribe, Careful Study, Cabal therapy, Gemstone Mine. You're on the play so no drawing and discarding EOT. You don't know your opponent's deck. What do you do? Personally I put them on Merfolk, because that's a high % deck with a bad match-up. I want to draw out a force so turn 1 I use gemstone mine play tireless tribe. If they force, I don't mind losing him. If they don't I can go nuts. I don't therapy because if they have force and daze it will slow me down next turn, and if they aren't merfolk or thresh I just wasted a turn. My plan turn two if they force is to therapy myself and then careful study (assuming I don't draw either another tireless tribe or breakthrough).

I have just started testing a list with a 3/3 split of Bloodghast and Ichorid (almost the same as the list GreenOne posted). I've only played a couple of games but I'm liking it so far. Bloodghast can be quite spectacular although I don't see myself cutting Ichorids entirely any time soon.
Some more testing is required though.

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Originally Posted by sunshine

The problem is siding in FoW almost forces you to either also side in CoV or not take out any blue cards (Breakthrough) which seems a little awkward considering there are also 4 PNeedles to bring in.

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This is a problem. Watering down your deck is a problem with any boaring strategy. Force isn't really meant to be an answer for Tormod's or Relic. Pithing Needle does a much better job of answering those. It's meant to answer threats from decks that rely on 1 or 2 big spells, but don't put up a much of a clock (therefor you can risk watering down your deck to include them) such as Lands, ANT, stax, and . These match-ups you are more than willing to lose tribe or PIMP. It is also meant to answer slower yard hate such as Ravenous Trap and Loaming Shaman. You don't bring it in against decks like Merfolk, Thresh or Zoo (unless you think/know they have rav trap or Loaming Shaman) These three are the highest % of the metagame but FOW is in the sideboard because legacy is the most diverse format there is. You are bound to play some decks other than those three.

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Originally Posted by Bluemagex2517

If incremental advantage fits your playing style/ works better for you than play LEDless Ichorid. If you want to quickly and consistently dread return for the win play my deck. If you want to roll the dice on turn 2 win play LED Ichorid. I think it should depend on the metagame, there is no clearly superior version. I felt my version was superior for the meta-game that was shaping up for the 5k. The $850 tell me I was right. I think it would be very short sighted to only ever consider one version. There is a reason I bought Ichorids and putrid imps, and its name is merfolk. I don't like LED, unless the meta is like 15%+ white stax/ similar decks with out force that put wasteland to good use.

If someone swords/paths my discard outlet I discard what I can and hope to hit more dredgers when I dredge. 9 times out of ten this will work out. Then again I run an extra 2 dredge 2s. If my first discard outlet gets exiled the second one's primary value is sacing anyway. Sure in really rare instances you won't hit any dredgers and they will be stranded in hand. Well in those cases be a man and draw until you discard. Undiscovered helps with that plan.

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So what matchups do you think this build is better than LED-less Ichorid in? Without the ability to sit back and make Zombies, it seems worse against Zoo for one thing.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

So what matchups do you think this build is better than LED-less Ichorid in? Without the ability to sit back and make Zombies, it seems worse against Zoo for one thing.

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Why would you want to sit back and make tokens? Against zoo (game 1) I want to combo out, make them discard there hand and land a 8+ power Troll (out of bolt plus blast range even when I'm tapped out), or attack for 30+ damage with FK. In game 2/3 I want to hit Ancestor's chosen for 25-40 life. When I was testing with Ichorid they would path ichorid and then kill there own creature to get rid of my bridges. Once they did that I was dead. A good zoo player kills his worst creature to get rid of you're bridges. Then you're only option is to have 4 creatures to therapy away paths and get a big troll and hope he goes the distance (which my version is better at doing.) Relying on ichorid seems bad because of path, Goyf, Woolly Thoctar, Jitte, and sometimes lavamancer.

It's not like I haven't tested all three decks.
Ichoridless is better against: lands, zoo, survival, ANT, C-top, goblins
LED less ichorid is better against: Merfolk, canadian thresh, UBr fae (basically more aggressive blue decks)
LED ichorid is better against: Other dredge decks, Stax, dragon stompy with triny, solidarity, Elf Ball (anything where winning turn 2 is necessary and force doesn't make a huge difference [like ANT])

obviously some of these differences are slight: i.e. all are pretty good against zoo and goblins, all are pretty bad against stax and ANT, all are pretty so so against merfolk. but slight difference are the difference between top 32 and top 8.

eva green: best MU ever for all 3 decks, at least post board, (hows that hymn working for you?)

LED Ichorid loses a lot post board, because it has more trouble playing it's hate cards. And diluting its numbers can be more destructive to such a explosive but inconsistent build.

The way you describe it, LED Ichorid just suxx against any form of hate. I have played both, LED and LED-less Ichorid in tournaments. Basically LEDless Ichorid is better against hate but not as much as you'd like to think. Relic, Crypt, Leyline and friends still make up for a lot of trouble and are usually going to beat you unless you get rid of them assuming that your opponent got a decent draw besides having Gy removal.

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Originally Posted by Bluemagex2517

I did a little play testing tonight to try to understand what you meant. I think maybe you make less of 2 moves that I often make. Move 1, on the draw neglecting to play my land and discarding. Move 2, cabal therapying myself. I really don't like permanent discard outlets. They don't do enough. I need more speed, without Ichorid I can't sit back and attack adding tokens to the board. Take for instance this hand: Stinkweed Imp, Bridge From Below, Undiscovered Paradise, Tireless tribe, Careful Study, Cabal therapy, Gemstone Mine. You're on the play so no drawing and discarding EOT. You don't know your opponent's deck. What do you do? Personally I put them on Merfolk, because that's a high % deck with a bad match-up. I want to draw out a force so turn 1 I use gemstone mine play tireless tribe. If they force, I don't mind losing him. If they don't I can go nuts. I don't therapy because if they have force and daze it will slow me down next turn, and if they aren't merfolk or thresh I just wasted a turn. My plan turn two if they force is to therapy myself and then careful study (assuming I don't draw either another tireless tribe or breakthrough).

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I'm not sure what you were trying to point out with that sample hand as it didn't really highlight any your list's innovations. What concerns me more are the hands that contain no permanent discard outlet. I understand you can DDD to get a dredger in the yard and that Therapy can target oneself. Let's try a different sample hand - we're on the play, and this is a generous one: Careful Study, Cabal Therapy, Breakthrough x2, City of Brass, GGT, Bloodghast. Seems pretty good, and I would say it also shows why permanent discard is so strong. As busted as this hand may be it also gets thrown completely off track by a single Wasteland, especially if our Troll doesn't hit any more gas. Substitute a PImp for one of the Breakthroughs and the hand is much more threatening.

How about something like this, on a mull to six against Tempo Thresh: Stinkweed, Tribe, PImp, Gemstone, Undiscovered Paradise, Narcomoeba. Would you rather have a Breakthrough in the place of the PImp? I certainly wouldn't. What this is supposed to suggest, and what I think is rather obvious, is that permanent discard outlets provide much more consistency than one time outlets after a mulligan (or more).

I really didn't want to piss on anyone's first win, but now that someone is saying that in addition to posting that Bloodghast Dredge abomination all over The Source, that they are going to promote it on Star City, I have to say something.

Several of us watched at least parts of 4 to 5 of the Bloodghast player's matches, and we quite literally have never seen anyone play Ichorid worse. Ever. And remember that I'm the guy who watched an Ichorid player reanimate a Progenitus. Dominic is legally retarded, and he was pointing out more mistakes a turn made by this player than he could actually count to. So how'd it win?

Bloodghast was far worse than Ichorid in the deck for several obvious reasons. The first, and most important being against any control deck you lose the ability to ramp zombie tokens(sitting back and making tokens is for certain the best possible plan against any deck that can't remove your Bridges, and isn't The Beatdown). The second, being that the lack of hate before 10 life proved highly relevant, and should have cost several games if his opponents not total donkeys. The third was that the extra point of power again, was hugely important.

Slowing the deck down with this build is fine if that's what you want to try out; this version seemed like a fine way to do it. But the manabase was obviously awful, which negated a great deal of the sideboard flexibility that LED-less normally takes advantage of. A single Wasteland on an Undiscovered could shut down the entire offense, and Dakmor can't cast SB cards. And every arguement for Bloodghast over Ichorid has proven either baseless or false. I am very happy that someone actually took this to a tournament so that I could see it in action though. It showed in action how it is actually worse than either LED or LED-less builds.

And sure, I'm certain some will claim the always specious arguement "Well, it won." But anyone intelligent knows that means nothing. And after seeing how his opponents played against him that he played, I feel totally confident in stating that most of his wins were completely due to either luck, matchup problems, or by a vast majority, punts by the other players. When even highly proven players like Woltereck are completely throwing away entire matches against you, you damn well better win. At first glance, I thought the deck must be good, since he hasn't got a clue of how to play it and is winning. But after watching for a while, I can say that the deck is pretty awful too.

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Originally Posted by Parcher

I really didn't want to piss on anyone's first win, but now that someone is saying that in addition to posting that Bloodghast Dredge abomination all over The Source, that they are going to promote it on Star City, I have to say something.

Several of us watched at least parts of 4 to 5 of the Bloodghast player's matches, and we quite literally have never seen anyone play Ichorid worse. Ever. And remember that I'm the guy who watched an Ichorid player reanimate a Progenitus. Dominic is legally retarded, and he was pointing out more mistakes a turn made by this player than he could actually count to. So how'd it win?

Bloodghast was far worse than Ichorid in the deck for several obvious reasons. The first, and most important being against any control deck you lose the ability to ramp zombie tokens(sitting back and making tokens is for certain the best possible plan against any deck that can't remove your Bridges, and isn't The Beatdown). The second, being that the lack of hate before 10 life proved highly relevant, and should have cost several games if his opponents not total donkeys. The third was that the extra point of power again, was hugely important.

Slowing the deck down with this build is fine if that's what you want to try out; this version seemed like a fine way to do it. But the manabase was obviously awful, which negated a great deal of the sideboard flexibility that LED-less normally takes advantage of. A single Wasteland on an Undiscovered could shut down the entire offense, and Dakmor can't cast SB cards. And every arguement for Bloodghast over Ichorid has proven either baseless or false. I am very happy that someone actually took this to a tournament so that I could see it in action though. It showed in action how it is actually worse than either LED or LED-less builds.

And sure, I'm certain some will claim the always specious arguement "Well, it won." But anyone intelligent knows that means nothing. And after seeing how his opponents played against him that he played, I feel totally confident in stating that most of his wins were completely due to either luck, matchup problems, or by a vast majority, punts by the other players. When even highly proven players like Woltereck are completely throwing away entire matches against you, you damn well better win. At first glance, I thought the deck must be good, since he hasn't got a clue of how to play it and is winning. But after watching for a while, I can say that the deck is pretty awful too.

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Touche`, then again you only saw maybe 2 of my matches... And yes I played very poorly against Woltereck. And yes he gave me the game where he cracked that fetch. And no I don't think that winning makes my deck better. But, you presume because I was playing poorly in my last match before I could draw into my first top 8 at a big event, when I'm tired and nervous as hell playing against Woltereck with cedric phillips sitting next to me... I'm not just making post hoc excuses. Ask chris if I played better against him in the top 8. I certainly did. Did you playtest my deck at all? You didn't make it sound like you did. Did you read my report? You didn't make it sound like you did. - the first game with Woltereck, where I played very horribly, and the last game of the top 4, which I'm pretty sure you weren't watching. You think I'm just some super luck sac, but you have no basis for this except the one game. You know nothing about me, and yet you assume so much. If you think I'm somehow debasing a deck you've put a lot of effort into ,then why don't you take it up with me personally? Instead you flame me because I made some play mistakes and you saw my deck falter in 1 maybe 2 matches.

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Originally Posted by Parcher

The second, being that the lack of hate before 10 life proved highly relevant, and should have cost several games if his opponents not total donkeys..

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This was highly relevant in exactly 1 game. Way to overgeneralize.

Actually, it was the Top 8 match against Woltereck that everyone was watching. And I can assure you that you made as many, if not more play errors as in the previous match. Woltereck just made less mistakes, so I assume you feel you did better because he didn't punt that one.

I stated that I didn't play this deck pretty clearly. I also stated that I don't need to do so to see how it will play. I know LED Ichorid better than anyone, and I've tested LED-less extensively to see if it can be better in some situations (which I've yet to agree with). Everyone had the same idea of using Undiscovered and Dakmor in Ichorid with Bloodghast. I even tested the build myself initially. All I needed to see was the situations in which Bloodghast would be in use in different situations against different decks. And then compare these against what would be possible in the same situation with Ichorid. Ichorid is better in most. Nothing shown or posted really refutes this.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted the deck to be good. I just don't like luck, match-ups, and opponent's lack of skill and/or knowledge to determine a winner. I'm not making any assumptions about you or your deck at all, and if I was flaming there would be no doubt. I'm reporting exactly what I saw, what several others saw, and backing it up with facts. I don't think you're 'debasing' anything. But if someone who does well in an event with coverage posts enough times in enough different threads, and has some thing on another site endorsing them as well, then some poor fools will believe the hype. I'm presenting a more accurate reality of the situation so that those who weren't there can better judge for themselves.

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Originally Posted by sunshine

I'm not sure what you were trying to point out with that sample hand as it didn't really highlight any your list's innovations. What concerns me more are the hands that contain no permanent discard outlet. I understand you can DDD to get a dredger in the yard and that Therapy can target oneself. Let's try a different sample hand - we're on the play, and this is a generous one: Careful Study, Cabal Therapy, Breakthrough x2, City of Brass, GGT, Bloodghast. Seems pretty good, and I would say it also shows why permanent discard is so strong. As busted as this hand may be it also gets thrown completely off track by a single Wasteland, especially if our Troll doesn't hit any more gas. Substitute a PImp for one of the Breakthroughs and the hand is much more threatening.

How about something like this, on a mull to six against Tempo Thresh: Stinkweed, Tribe, PImp, Gemstone, Undiscovered Paradise, Narcomoeba. Would you rather have a Breakthrough in the place of the PImp? I certainly wouldn't. What this is supposed to suggest, and what I think is rather obvious, is that permanent discard outlets provide much more consistency than one time outlets after a mulligan (or more).

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The first: sure it can be taken down my a single waste. But, if you drop PIMP and they waste you're land then you can only dredge once a turn. This is pretty slow, sometimes it works out, but often times not. My argument against that is that the deck has 12 more land that can play breakthrough with, you have the carestudy draws plus three turns to draw 1 of those lands and still dredge faster than the putrid imp play. I'm fairly sure the % of that happening is pretty high. Someone better at statistics that me can tell us exactly.

In the second I'd rather have breakthrough. You already have a discard outlet, if they don't force tribe it's way better, if they force tribe you breakthrough with x=1. If they have daze you're dead for a while, but they lost 3 cards and are back a land so you have time to draw something else. If they don't daze/force breakthrough you're likely to hit another breakthrough/ tribe/ careful study/ coliseum/ 2 dredgers. If you hit any of those you are set.

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Originally Posted by Parcher

Actually, it was the Top 8 match against Woltereck that everyone was watching. And I can assure you that you made as many, if not more play errors as in the previous match. Woltereck just made less mistakes, so I assume you feel you did better because he didn't punt that one.

I stated that I didn't play this deck pretty clearly. I also stated that I don't need to do so to see how it will play. I know LED Ichorid better than anyone, and I've tested LED-less extensively to see if it can be better in some situations (which I've yet to agree with). Everyone had the same idea of using Undiscovered and Dakmor in Ichorid with Bloodghast. I even tested the build myself initially. All I needed to see was the situations in which Bloodghast would be in use in different situations against different decks. And then compare these against what would be possible in the same situation with Ichorid. Ichorid is better in most. Nothing shown or posted really refutes this.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted the deck to be good. I just don't like luck, match-ups, and opponent's lack of skill and/or knowledge to determine a winner. I'm not making any assumptions about you or your deck at all, and if I was flaming there would be no doubt. I'm reporting exactly what I saw, what several others saw, and backing it up with facts. I don't think you're 'debasing' anything. But if someone who does well in an event with coverage posts enough times in enough different threads, and has some thing on another site endorsing them as well, then some poor fools will believe the hype. I'm presenting a more accurate reality of the situation so that those who weren't there can better judge for themselves.

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I guess maybe you need to show me how to play LED ichorid sometime. I started by testing you're list, now that I realize your that person. I found it to be far too inconsistent. So, when you say luck I think wow you're deck needs a lot more luck, but maybe I miss some possible plays. it seemed really explosive, but there where fewer keepable hands and a lot more hands that went no where. Like I said in my report without deep analysis or breakthrough LED is like a 0 mana one with nothing.

I also question looking at a play when bloodghast is on the board and seeing if ichorid would be better, because A. Ichorid is a lot harder to get on the board b. Ichorid is always going to be bigger and hastier, bloodghast is meant to be easier to get out on the board on turn 3 in non-LED ichorid.

Did you watch any of my first 4 matches, where I think I played much better? Honestly, I do enjoy your imput, maybe I did make a ton of mistakes. But, I think your impression is somewhat overblown.

Fair enough. I saw part of the match with Jesse, but it seemed such a blowout each way that I didn't really pay much attention. I can only speak from the last three I saw.

When I refer to luck, I mean the way the cards fall during Dredging(like hitting a Narco and two Bloodghasts in a single 6-card dredge). Which is the same with any version, just slower without LED. Which I feel causes inconsistancy, since it's harder to recover from a slow, bad Dredge. Also, LED powers Coliseum on turn one, on the draw. And turn two on the play, sometimes even with double Coliseum. This can happen in LED-less, but not if your oponnent plays Wasteland.

And I'm one of the few that think LED is equally consistant, so I'm not surprised you feel that way. I'm not really referring to this difference though, more to whether the Bloodghast build is worse than Ichorid without LED, since it won't replace Ichorid in the LED versions for obvious reasons. To start off, both Undiscovered and Dakmor are awful, especially in a deck that needs multiple lands in play since it lacks the mana boost of LED. Regardless of which Black creature is better, this alone is a reason to not run Bloodghast. Not to mention all of the reasons I already stated.

I don't have much expertise on ichorid, but is there no room in the deck to run a mix of both ichorid and bloodghast? would there be any advantages to running a split?

The decklist is really, really tight. As in it's hard to side in 4 cards even =/

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Originally Posted by Bluemagex2517

The first: sure it can be taken down my a single waste. But, if you drop PIMP and they waste you're land then you can only dredge once a turn. This is pretty slow, sometimes it works out, but often times not. My argument against that is that the deck has 12 more land that can play breakthrough with, you have the carestudy draws plus three turns to draw 1 of those lands and still dredge faster than the putrid imp play. I'm fairly sure the % of that happening is pretty high. Someone better at statistics that me can tell us exactly.

In the second I'd rather have breakthrough. You already have a discard outlet, if they don't force tribe it's way better, if they force tribe you breakthrough with x=1. If they have daze you're dead for a while, but they lost 3 cards and are back a land so you have time to draw something else. If they don't daze/force breakthrough you're likely to hit another breakthrough/ tribe/ careful study/ coliseum/ 2 dredgers. If you hit any of those you are set.

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You have about a 68.7% chance of drawing at least one other land that produces blue mana in those five draws - of course you would have at least one dredge mixed in there as well. I'm assuming you would try to chain dredges together as long as possible, then if you manage to get to eight cards without missing a dredge you would just DDD.

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Originally Posted by Parcher

Fair enough. I saw part of the match with Jesse, but it seemed such a blowout each way that I didn't really pay much attention. I can only speak from the last three I saw.

When I refer to luck, I mean the way the cards fall during Dredging(like hitting a Narco and two Bloodghasts in a single 6-card dredge). Which is the same with any version, just slower without LED. Which I feel causes inconsistancy, since it's harder to recover from a slow, bad Dredge. Also, LED powers Coliseum on turn one, on the draw. And turn two on the play, sometimes even with double Coliseum. This can happen in LED-less, but not if your oponnent plays Wasteland.

And I'm one of the few that think LED is equally consistant, so I'm not surprised you feel that way. I'm not really referring to this difference though, more to whether the Bloodghast build is worse than Ichorid without LED, since it won't replace Ichorid in the LED versions for obvious reasons. To start off, both Undiscovered and Dakmor are awful, especially in a deck that needs multiple lands in play since it lacks the mana boost of LED. Regardless of which Black creature is better, this alone is a reason to not run Bloodghast. Not to mention all of the reasons I already stated.

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I guess I don't worry about wasteland that much. I try to play around it. When you don't get wastelanded, or I sucessfully play around it Blooghast seems superior to ichorid, to me at least. In so far as you can dredge multiple times that turn and then bring it back; as opposed to ichorid which comes back before even the first dredge of the turn. I don't understand how Ichorid builds can win turn 3 without absurd draws that hit 3 narcs or good draws that hit 2 narcs with Pimp out. My deck has those two possibilities, plus the ability to hit 2 bloodghasts and either have a land in hand or dredge dakmor. Sure dakmor dredges less, that's why I have sage and sadistic to either keep going or get a functional win.

And before anyone says anything, I'll reiterate, my deck is much worse than ichorid builds against merfolk, canadian thresh and UBr fae. All of these decks ichorid is much better against because you can sit back attack with him and slowly build advatage with tokens. I have to try to combo or get lucky that my crappy ass aggro is slightly better than their bad keep.

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Originally Posted by sunshine

You have about a 68.7% chance of drawing at least one other land that produces blue mana in those five draws - of course you would have at least one dredge mixed in there as well. I'm assuming you would try to chain dredges together as long as possible, then if you manage to get to eight cards without missing a dredge you would just DDD.

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True. chaining dredges can be nearly as effective as the putrid play (your not likely to hit all trolls). And I see where you were coming from. There is a bit of added stability with Pimps and Tribes, but the price is speed. I'm willing to sacrifice the ability to have a lot of games where I can dredge once per turn to have a little more speed. I won't sacrifice all permanent discard outlets for speed, but I don't feel like the deck needs 8 discard outlets to be consistent. 4 Seems right, maybe it should be 3,5 or 6. Magic players tend to think in playsets, it's hard to get out of that habit. I felt like I had enough speed, and consistency. I wouldn't berate you for adding some PIMPs, I just don't think that kind of consistency is necessary.