[Deck] Non-LED Based Dredge/Ichorid Combo

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Anusien

If you keep having to cast Dread Return on Eternal Witness just to play a land to bring back Bloodghast, it seems to make significantly more sense just to cut the Eternal Witness and run a land in its place. Sure, sometimes you don't get to Dread Return it and make lots of zombie. On the other hand, you'll find you'll get there with an early Bloodghast beatdown more often, and mulligan less. They're functionally kind of similar.

You could also cut the 3rd Dread Return for Iona.

---

It's not, you either run 1 Eternal Witness or you run 1 Dakmor Salvage to ensure Bloodghast activations; game 1, Eternal Witness > Dakmor Salvage because the opponent can't disrupt the Dread Return -> Eternal Witness -> Cephalid Coliseum chain that serves as a pseudo Cephalid Sage + Landfall all in 1. Post-board, where Tormod's Crypt disrupts Dread Return, it's better to board in Dakmor Salvage, and/or possibly Oboro's in place of Coliseums, because the recursion is less conditional. Tho' I wouldn't fault a MD Dakmor Salvage over Eternal Witness, because even tho' it's less explosive it's more consistent, has some utility by itself and it frees up SB slots.

As far as cutting Narcomoeba, seriously guys, stop butchering Dredge. There's no way in hell a 4th Careful Study, 4th Tireless Tribe, 3rd Dread Return or extra land is ever worth cutting Narcomoeba for.

Also, for people running the 4/3 split of Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe in Bloodghast Dredge, I think a 3/4 split may be superior because Tireless Tribe is more important vs Tarmogoyf and Zoo etc. and Ichorid can munch on Bloodghasts regardless.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

It's not, you either run 1 Eternal Witness or you run 1 Dakmor Salvage to ensure Bloodghast activations; game 1, Eternal Witness > Dakmor Salvage because the opponent can't disrupt the Dread Return -> Eternal Witness -> Cephalid Coliseum chain that serves as a pseudo Cephalid Sage + Landfall all in 1.

---

:eek:
I've never thought of this usage. (And I played EW in dredge.)

Otoh, I am not sure if I really like this play, because going directly DReturn -> Sage eats no mana, while grabbibg either Colliseum / Breakthrough needs mana to continue the chain and you may not have the luxury of open mana / land drop. Not to mention that if you need to take Breakthrough (or *cough* Study *cough*), you don't even get that land that can trigger the Ghast.
Sage ensures this, because he alwas gets that same three cards as Colliseum (and you need to have threshold for both Colliseum and Sage to work.) BT draws one additional card, that for sure can make a great difference, but if you play BT:0, than you cannot keep your one card be it land or not.

Btw, I play four Ghasts and triple Salvage, cause I found the Salvage to be useful as a land. Not that it matters too much in G1, where most of the times (unless oponent throws at me anything) I go for PImp/Study -> massive BT -> gg. But in games 2-3, I like to have additional mana for SB cards (namely Grudge), to pay Propaganda/Daze mana and to slow dredge into Ghasts.

But maybe I will try the EW version. Also because it can return needed Firestorm/anything in post-sb games.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Post-board, where Tormod's Crypt disrupts Dread Return, it's better to board in Dakmor Salvage, and/or possibly Oboro's in place of Coliseums, because the recursion is less conditional. Tho' I wouldn't fault a MD Dakmor Salvage over Eternal Witness, because even tho' it's less explosive it's more consistent, has some utility by itself and it frees up SB slots.

As far as cutting Narcomoeba, seriously guys, stop butchering Dredge. There's no way in hell a 4th Careful Study, 4th Tireless Tribe, 3rd Dread Return or extra land is ever worth cutting Narcomoeba for.

Also, for people running the 4/3 split of Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe in Bloodghast Dredge, I think a 3/4 split may be superior because Tireless Tribe is more important vs Tarmogoyf and Zoo etc. and Ichorid can munch on Bloodghasts regardless.

---

I would never cut Moeba for the same reason, unless in g2 if I desperately need to free a slot for sb stuff. Even than I cannot imagine to take out more than two Moebas.

Breathweapon, could you share your most recent list, please? :smile: :smile:

You're all missing something very important: Narcomoeba is the most castable of our 2CC spells - 1U is much easier to come by than BB (unless your list completely foresakes both Oboro and Coliseum for Salvages). Being able to play the creatures in our opening hand is huge as it takes some of the pressure off our actual dredgeing. This deck will serve up some aggro heavy hands, and to be honest a recuring Thug that returns Narco to the top of your library every turn is pretty savage with even one bridge in the yard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sunshine

You're all missing something very important: Narcomoeba is the most castable of our 2CC spells - 1U is much easier to come by than BB (unless your list completely foresakes both Oboro and Coliseum for Salvages). Being able to play the creatures in our opening hand is huge as it takes some of the pressure off our actual dredgeing. This deck will serve up some aggro heavy hands, and to be honest a recuring Thug that returns Narco to the top of your library every turn is pretty savage with even one bridge in the yard.

---

Yeah, you're right! I think that this fact is so obvious, that everybody forget to mention it... including myself.

:smile:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sunshine

You're all missing something very important: Narcomoeba is the most castable of our 2CC spells - 1U is much easier to come by than BB (unless your list completely foresakes both Oboro and Coliseum for Salvages). Being able to play the creatures in our opening hand is huge as it takes some of the pressure off our actual dredgeing. This deck will serve up some aggro heavy hands, and to be honest a recuring Thug that returns Narco to the top of your library every turn is pretty savage with even one bridge in the yard.

---

So you play Gargadon? I never tried this tech, maybe it is great, who can tell... but I never felt like I wanna waste sb slots on him... :really:

I've tested both ways, and I'm still on the fence for this matter. For the vast majority of players/decks, I wouldn't be removing Narcos. There are possible exceptions though. I consider Narcos optional if you build dredge to be very centered around Bloodghast (not that these decks couldn't play Narco either, but rather they have the option to not play them). If you aren't playing Bloodghast, then this obviously isn't an issue.

I can point you to plenty of games where Narco's flying, ease of triggering, and particularly its explosiveness leads to a win. I think I can also point to plenty of games where those 4 slots could have improved other necessary aspects of consistency which were lacking and have cost me games. (Unfortunately, that means I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with some of you.)

I wouldn't remove Narco lightly though (it is very potent). Narco is a much more balanced "explosive" card than something like LED (just an example) or Breakthrough, and remains a strong card in many more situations, whether they call for explosive plays or slower ones. Besides hardcasting it, I think Thug/Dredging it, making good use of the flying ability, pitching to FoW, counting it in our GGT-DRs, all add up, but I also think these are usually cornercases and not very common additions to game-winning flexibility. The run down, besides the overall 1-time usage (for which there are several alternatives), Narco links together my draw spells->dredging and Dread return/Bridge abuse in a single turn. I justify Narco because it helps me win very quickly, not because I believe it adds much to the consistency and flexibility of the deck.

I do have to ask myself though, "Do I need to win sooner?". For people who see a ton of Storm and Prison, this is easy. For 5-color ranged Fishy/Zooish metagames, I don't think this is such an easy question. I must admit there are costs for attaining some level of explosiveness, payment which could have gone towards other functions and characteristics. I think there are options available to the BG-Dredge builds which spend those slots on improving resilience and consistency, but it results in a slower build.

I think most players of Dredge (even LEDless) are not comfortable with giving up very much explosiveness. There is greater degree of certainty to your strategy and an element of "fun" when you trounce your opponent. It is easy to quip, "hey, we are combo, we either win big or we don't". Truly, when I build and play for explosiveness, there is less thought required; the correct play is more obvious (which I appreciate after many hours of magic). Why make it more complicated, and risk making more mistakes, if the benefits are difficult to realize and only marginally better? The sacrifices of explosiveness, and a concentration on consistency, flexibility, resilience, and performance in games 2 and 3 are not as visible, which makes that line of reasoning easier to dismiss (I think I've seen a few LEDredge players make similar assumptions about LEDless in the past).

It is possible that we have diverging thoughts on LEDless Dredge. On one hand, I see good arguments for maintaining the combo-esque nature of the deck, maintaining that speed and "oops, I win" factor, while also giving us a striker's chance (a small one, imho) to one-hit KO our nightmare matches (Stax, ANT, etc.). Narco has an obvious permanent home in this strategy. If you're: against DDD, using DR-Targets in the main, maintaining, very low dredger counts, etc., then you probably fall into this strategy.

On the other hand, I think there might be another strong strategy, which is to continue down the path of consistency/flexibility. This includes no DR-targets in the main, trying different approaches to DDDing, changing the mana-base to abuse BG, and perhaps even cutting cards like Narco. Such a strategy isn't necessarily going to exclude Narco, but it reasonably could. Yes, it would weaken certain matchups, just as it would strengthen others. The difference may be an overall net gain in some metagames. I think few see this as a reasonable path, but I think few players are very experienced with designing for and playing with a Dredge deck which concentrates so heavily upon slow-rolling.

We also might ask ourselves, why not keep them all? After all, Narco is an awesome card. We just don't have a lot of room, and we need to be concerned with the correct ratio of 'recursive' (cheated) creatures to the other functions in the deck to play. This is alot:

4x Bloodghast
4x Narco
4x Ichorid

I imagine some builds will try find a ratio which forces them to cut a few from this list.





peace,
4eak

4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 City of Brass
3 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Dakmor Salvage

4 Breakthrough
3 Carfeful Study
4 Putrid Imp
2 Tireless Tribe

3 Ichorid
4 Bloodghast
4 Narcomoeba

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dread Return
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

You can do small changes like -1 Dakmor Salvage +1 Ichorid, -1 Iona +1 Eternal Witness, etc.

Sure,

MD

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug

4 Tireless Tribe
3 Putrid Imp

4 Breakthrough
3 Careful Study

4 Ichorid
4 Bloodghast
4 Narcomoeba

2 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below

4 Cabal Therapy

4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Dakmor Salvage
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 City of Brass

SB

4 Unmask
4 Ancient Grudge
1 Ray of Revelation
4 Oboro, Palace in the Cloud
2 Meta Slots

That's baseline for Bloodghast Dredge IMO, no retarded DR targets (except the Dakmor/Witness swap) and you've got room for everything you'd need.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aleksandr

So you play Gargadon? I never tried this tech, maybe it is great, who can tell... but I never felt like I wanna waste sb slots on him... :really:

---

Heh, no I don't play Gargadon - I just attack, block, sac to flashback, and build of up tokens :cool:.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Also, for people running the 4/3 split of Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe in Bloodghast Dredge, I think a 3/4 split may be superior because Tireless Tribe is more important vs Tarmogoyf and Zoo etc. and Ichorid can munch on Bloodghasts regardless.

---

This. Whenever I draw Tireless Tribe and my opponent is trying to attack me I feel like it's very hard to lose.

How good is Bloodghast when you don't draw Undiscovered Paradise? It seems miserable. What about adding an extra land or two and playing Life from the Loam instead?

If you actually make 5 land drops in a row, I'm pretty sure casting Trolls is unbeatable.

jimirynk, I was wondering, what is your sideboard plan vs ANT.
You side in your 4x Duress/unmask, but what do you side out?
Siding out breakthrough there is just wrong.
Would siding out 2x tireless tribe, 1x ichorid and 1x golgari thug be a good play ?

@Narcomoeba: I personally don't see myself playing the deck without 4 narcomoebas. Narcs are great because they are free creatures that come into play without you having to play a land or sac a creature or anything. If you're deck focuses on returning a FKZ and winning with a token rush, the fact that narc is free is VERY important because by being free it speeds up your win for a whole turn, compared to ghast where you have to make a land drop, much worse, ichorid where you need to feed it on its upkeep. If you play the deck like a combo deck aiming to return up a sage or FKZ to win then, narc>ghast>ichorid. If you play it a straight aggro deck, ichorid>ghast>narc. The fact that narcomoeba doesn't recur is not important since its role in the deck is just a speed buff.

@Frogboy: Assuming you play the deck like a combo deck, this doesn't really matter since playing any land combined with dredging can already net you a combination of any 3 creatures that can fuel you to a win. Post-board this can be a factor but more often than not you won't need to recur bloodghasts often because they rarely die or get blocked, along with ichorids, ichorids are the ones that are always blocked. Generally, I use bloodghasts much like narcs, a speed buff helping me return a win, a turn or so earlier. Even with Paradise I doubt that you'd be able to recur using it a whole lot especially with wasteland around; this is the same reason why I think the 2 Dakmor Salvage is absolutely important in any dredge deck that plays bloodghasts.

The problem with cutting PImps for tireless tribe is this...if you run dakmor salvage, you can hardcast PImp with the salvage sure this is slow but if they wasteland it you can simply dredge 2 the next turn and replay it, basically timewalking your opponent and gaining CA.

Narc is essential to the deck's function; getting it into play may be game defining since ichorid takes a turn to get online at minimum and you don't always have the land for ghast. Being able to therapy your opponent off a narc is very strong especially if you have 2 bridges or even 1 bridge because then you can potentially get a lot of cards out of their hand or at least 1 if you miss the first time the second time you can get whatever card out of their hand that is the most troublesome to your gameplan. This for sure matters against combo especially belcher where they can just win on the spot if you don't therapy them naming burning wish, EtW, charbelcher...then it's a tossup you will likely lose.

I would board in FoW against combo and unmask perhaps. FoW might be better for the surprise factor since they will probably board out silence/chant effects most likely or maybe not. Depends on their build and how they play the deck. But therapy can wreck them as well as unmask or FoW. Or if you have a really fast hand that they can't stop so they can't AN to draw 15 cards.

Cutting narcomoeba's is usually wrong but can be justified depending on what deck you're facing.

I really like tribe and wish it were black; then it would be strictly better in the aggro matchup but worse against decks packing moat since it couldn't fly. Although if your meta is all aggro and no control I would likely play more tribes because of how good it is against them.

If you ran 15 land, you MIGHT be able to support loam. It's really risky though; it could potentially be a darkblast with no effect/a dredge 3 if you don't get 2 land drops, one of which has to tap for green, it's poor.

Being able to hardcast GGT's seems to be GG's unless your GY is devoid of any creatures or a bulk of creatures having 5 creatures in the yard when it enters play is meaningless since goyf can potentially walk right over it. And crypt/relic isn't really helping our case with GGT being DRed since facing more than one relic effect seems to make our GGT's very tiny when they enter play unless they crypted only noncreature cards which seems unlikely if they pilot their deck correctly.


Has anyone ever thought of using stifle as anti hate/FoW fodder in the SB? Seems solid against EE, deed, knight of the reliquary, obviously crypt and relic...and it can be cast off of any land in the deck sans dakmor salvage. Although I guess the problem is requiring it to be in your opening hand and not being able to dredge into it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by frogboy

This. Whenever I draw Tireless Tribe and my opponent is trying to attack me I feel like it's very hard to lose.

How good is Bloodghast when you don't draw Undiscovered Paradise? It seems miserable. What about adding an extra land or two and playing Life from the Loam instead?

---

Life from the Loam is bad, if you're going to add lands, then you're going to add a 2nd Dakmor Salvage to recur Bloodghast(s) more consistently and cast Putrid Imps. Bloodghast is fine with or with out Undiscovered Paradise, in DDD 1 land turns Bloodghast(s) into 1 or more Narcomoebas, and the Dakmor Salvage is a 1 shot multiple Narcomoeba activation in the mid/late game. If and when I need to emphasize Bloodghast, mainly when I SB out Narcomoeba, I SB in Oboro and the recursion is much, much more reliable.

Also, I'm running 4 Tireless Tribe and 3 Putrid Imp 100% now, Ichorid recursion was unaffected and Dakmor Salvage never resolved Putrid Imp. Tribe is boss, telling Tarmogoyf to fuck off is essential and the whole "Moat argument" eats it to Ray of Revelation.

I'm 100% ok with 8 rainbow lands, all rainbow lands do is cast Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe, which are good but non-essential components of Dredge, because their effect can be replaced by DDD.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

I'm 100% ok with 8 rainbow lands, all rainbow lands do is cast Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe, which are good but non-essential components of Dredge, because their effect can be replaced by DDD.

---

Ancient Grude is one of the best cards in the sideboard. Ray of Revelation and possibly Firestorm are also strong points in favor of a few extra rainbow lands. If you're running Undiscovered Paradise, you don't have to run Tarnished Citadel for those last few lands; to me, that's an excellent argument for eleven or twelve rainbow lands and then the Coliseums.

I've been running a manabase of 4 City, 4 Mine, 3 Citadel, 4 Coliseum in the Ichorid version (Frogboy's list). The Citadels are the weakest link, but I wouldn't cut them. The Bloodghast/Ichorid/Narcomoeba lists look very interesting, at least partly because of the manabase it offers.

What are you cutting for +3 lands, because I doubt the MD cuts are worth the SB options?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

I'm 100% ok with 8 rainbow lands, all rainbow lands do is cast Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe, which are good but non-essential components of Dredge, because their effect can be replaced by DDD.

---

They also activate Cephalid Coliseum. Further, DDD is a pretty slow plan against an aggressive Zoo draw; if they open on Nacatl plus another guy and you don't flip Narcomoeba on your first dredge (and especially by your second) you might just accidentally lose the game. DDD also makes your Breakthroughs weaker.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

What are you cutting for +3 lands, because I doubt the MD cuts are worth the SB options?

---

Here's the list I'm running, but I go -1 Thug (3 total) +1 Careful Study (4 total). No extra Dread Return targets, a full set of Studies and Breakthroughs. The fourth Ichorid is in the board to help power through hate.

At the SCG: Dallas event, I ran a board of:
4 Ancient Grudge
4 Chain of Vapor
3 Ray of Revelation
1 Ancestor's Chosen
1 Flamekin Zealot
1 Cephalid Sage
1 Ichorid

4 Chain and 3 Ray was excessive; there's never room to board in that many cards, anyways. I'll probably make room for a pair of Thoughtseizes or Forces to help combat Ravenous Trap.

I like the Bloodghast version, but how often does Paradise hamper turn two Breakthrough for two mana or activating Cephalid Coliseum? I use Breakthrough for one card a lot more often than I initially thought I would to hold onto a second Coliseum, second Breakthrough, a Careful Study, or Chain of Vapor.

Where does the Bloodghast version compare to the LED and Tribe versions in consistency and explosiveness?

Sry but what does DDD mean?

...for the 1000th time in this thread -.-


Draw Discard Dredge


...you draw a card, then discard a card (because your handsize is 8), then dredge the next turn...


YawG