Quote Originally Posted by Final Fortune View Post
As far as Shambling Shell is concerned, I think a lot of people don't understand that even if the deck can goldfish with 12 Dredgers it can't win without 16 Dredgers vs any form of hate post-board. Redundancy is the deck's bread and butter, it's as simple as that.
Quote Originally Posted by KoomZog View Post
"Can't win" is quite the exaggeration. If you are referring to targeted graveyard hate such as Surgical Extraction, I find opponents usually go for my Ichorids, not my dredgers. I've won plenty of sideboarded games with 12 dredgers. I'm still not saying it's optimal and I'm playing 14 now, but noone benefits from statements like "it can't win". Let's try to keep the discussion a bit more nuanced. :)
I'm mostly with FF on this one, redundancy is the word here.
That said, 15 was the number I settled on, but I would shave that to 14 postboard dependant on the opponent.
I've played Manaless a lot over the years, from green to blue to all-in fearless versions, including during the time when DRS first emerged and was quickly adopted by a lot of decks.

(All IME & IMHO) I find 12 dredgers to be optimistic, if we're talking postboard against any possible opponent. If we're expecting our first dredger to hit the yard without being removed, fine, 12 could work, but this deck can't mulligan. If we're expecting to face any deck packing DRS, ScOoze or any other repeatable extracting effect, we're going to run out of dredgers in hand to pitch to the grave fairly quickly, and I wouldn't bet on Wraith or Phantasmagorian being there to save the day.