Yeah, I noticed that not playing Breakthrough slowed me down a good chunk, the next list will include 3.Originally Posted by bum_man
Grudge is awesome, however it needs to have an artifact in play and then your GY still gets blasted, while with a Needle it gets blasted only once.
The 2 Salvages are enough. I dredged them during chain dredges to reanimate my BGs and go for the kill.
This is a big issue that I have long considered in deciding whether to play needle or grudge, I decided to play grudge because in my experience its less of a dead card than needle in most of the time. Plus, bloodghast greatly improves the deck's resiliency after being crypted or reliced.
[QUOTE=Nidd;409545The 2 Salvages are enough. I dredged them during chain dredges to reanimate my BGs and go for the kill.[/QUOTE]
Ah, you reanimate ghasts only for the last few points of damage? I share the exact same sentiments.
@Everyone: Just some food for thought. It's obvious that bloodghast has been the next best thing to happen to this deck after bridge from below and dread return. It makes the deck loads better, and this can be seen in the increase of top 8 finishes of dredge decks across all formats in the whole world. It makes the deck's primary combo plan better and its fall back plan even more solid. Despite taking the deck into a whole a new phase in its development, there is still a big problem that bloodghast doesn't solve, the deck's linearity. It is true that bloodghast made the deck more vicious and more resilient, while at the same time increasing in the linearity of the deck. This is a bridge deck through and through, and bloodghast solidifies this point. The problem is the bridges are arguably the first things that opponents handle against this deck, despite having a strong ghast and ichorid swarm back-up plan, there just some matches that can still race this and zombie tokens. I've encountered a number of matches where i had no bridges at my disposal and my opponent just raced my critters. Then it came to my attention that I had I played my old list, I could've won that game. The point I'm trying to arrive at is, does this deck really need a more solid traditional game plan, increasing its linearity or expanding to its game plan, ie. having a win con that isn't bridge enabled (I'm looking at you Reveillark)? I've experienced playing both lists and I feel that both are very good in their own specific metagames. Any thoughts?
Why so serious?
Well, I use it G1 for a faster combo finish and it massively improves my slowrolling G2-3.
Also, I recur Ghast for Therapy.
But yeah, that's it. As a recursive beater, we have Ichorid. BG is the sacrificial lamb, like Narcomoeba.
@Grudge VS Needle
Needle still can shut up things like EE, so it's a hard decision. I wish Nullrod would cost 1...
Also, I start to feel more and more that an Eternal Witness warrants a slot. As a DR target, she can recur Null Rods/CC/Breakthrough/Needle. I dunno whether MD or SB, though. I tend to say SB.
Bum_man, I'm curious, what did you take out for the bloodghasts that lost you the game?
On your main point. You said it yourself; bloodghast makes the deck more resilient to hate, have a better plan A (combo for the flaming zombies)and a better plan B (get a few zombies and kill with Ichord and co.). I think the problem with what you're saying is that Dredge's strength is its linearity; dredge might look like an aggro deck because you generally kill people with a bunch of flaming zombies, but it's a combo deck, through and through, balls to bones. Imagine if storm combo said:
"Guys, look. There're all these good anti-storm cards right now. Stifle, and silence, and meddling mage, and that new trap card. Let's Make the deck less linear."
Also, I'm a bit unsure why you think reveillark would make the deck less linear. Could you explain?
What you actually made me think of is the old Friggorid deck. Remember it?
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=15221
I already thought about banishing Bridge to the SB together with FKZ and play a more... GGT oriented version with Reveillark and Iona MD.
It looks interesting and sounds interesting, but I'm not sure whether this is developing the deck or ripping out it's intestines.
I mean, I suppose that protects you from decks that have creatures they can sacrifice--Zoo and Goblins, if they still have mogg fanatic. But you're sacrificing a lot of the decks power and you still have the same weakness to graveyard hate. I suppose I'd still like to see a list, although we might want to take that to N&D.
Crunching the Numbers
With the SCG 10K in the books, I wish to share a series of interesting observations about the Dredge deck. Much of the discussion over the past day has ignored these results, so I now offer them to liven up the deck building process. I will back up these observations with evidence from the SCG website, specifically from the Excel spreadsheet found here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...gacy_Open.html
1. Tons of Dredge Decks
The commentators and players consistently talked about Dredge being everywhere at St. Louis. The facts are in, and indeed it was. In the entire pool of 128 decks, here were the most played builds.
The Top 5 Archetypes at St. Louis
1. Dredge: 15 decks
2. Merfolk: 11 decks
2. Threshold: 11 decks
4. Countertop (and variants): 9 decks
5. Zoo: 5 decks
(There was also a large showing of various permutations of G/W/U/B beatdown decks, but it is unfair to lump those together without decklists, as they are likely rather different decks; both top 8 Aggro Loam decks are classified as “B/G/R Beatdown”, for instance.)
2. Overall, Dredge Performed Poorly. Very Poorly.
Just because Dredge was everywhere does not mean it did well. While 2 Dredge decks made the top 16, they were a clear exception to the norm. Here is the numeric breakdown of the 15 Dredge decks and their Win/Loss/Draw performance over the day:
5/2/0 record
5/2/0 record
4/3/0 record
4/3/0 record
3/3/0 record
1/2/0 record
1/2/2 record
1/2/0 record
1/2/0 record
1/2/0 record
1/3/0 record
1/3/0 record
1/4/0 record
0/3/0 record
0/3/0 record
Only 4 of the 15 decks had a winning record. One more broke even. The other 10 decks had a losing record. In many cases, it was a truly ugly losing record. Now, I admit that there is variety in Dredge lists, but not that much variety. It would not be fair for someone to say “The players who did well played a better list than the others,” especially with 15 decks which I imagine were all extremely similar.
So what decks did Dredge lose to? Here is the breakdown.
Dredge: 5
Threshold: 5
Aggro Loam: 4
Zoo: 3
ANT: 2
Armaggedon Stax: 2
Evagreen: 2
Merfolk: 2
StifleNaught: 2
38 Land
Affinity
B/W Beatdown
Belcher
Burn
Countertop Beatdown
Dragon Stompy
Goblins
Hulk
Landstill
Mono White Beatdown
Reanimator
Scepter
And here are the decks that Dredge beat over the course of the day:
Dredge: 5
Countertop: 4
Threshold: 4
Armageddon Stax: 2
Belcher: 2
Evagreen: 2
Scepter Chant: 2
Zoo: 2
Bant Beatdown
Elspeth Control
G/B/w Beatdown
Goblins
Merfolk
Reanimator
Sphinx Control
So what do we take away from this? The answer is, nothing good. For one, Dredge was Dredge’s best and worst matchup. That is sort of disheartening for many reasons, but also it was to be expected; a 50/50 race to the death. Countertop was, as expected, always in the Dredge player’s favor. Threshold was also about a 50/50 matchup, slightly in favor of the Threshold player, if the numbers are any indicator. But now we come to the two problematic conclusions that we must draw from this data. Aggro Loam, the tournament’s triumphant deck, beat Ichorid in all 4 matches. Yes, two of them went 2-1 in the Loam player’s favor, but the other two were 2-0 blowouts. This is concerning because this deck is going to become more prolific at future events.
The second problem was all the random losses that Dredge had. ANT and StifleNaught enjoyed 100% wins against Dredge on Sunday, with other decks like Land, Hulk, and Burn randomly appearing to hand Ichorid defeats. I am willing to concede that these are not statistically significant results, as they only played one match against each other. But it is something to consider in future testing of this deck.
3. The Good News
There is a bright side to all of this. Chase Lamm and Jack Dobbin finished 13th and 16th respectively. Both of them had an impressive 5/2/0 record over the day. Why they didn’t make the top 8 is our next item on the agenda, but first, let us see what decks that Lamm and Dobbin smashed en route to an impressive, 100% winning day:
Lamm
Round 1: Evagreen, 2-1 Win
Round 2: Elspeth Control, 2-0 Win
Round 3: Dredge, 2-1 Win
Round 4: Zoo, 1-2 Loss
Round 5: Zoo, 2-0 Win
Round 6: Threshold, 2-0 Win
Round 7: Dredge, 0-2 Loss
Dobbin
Round 1: Aggro Loam, 0-2 Loss
Round 2: G/B/w Beatdown, 2-1 Win
Round 3: Scepter Chant, 2-0 Win
Round 4: Countertop, 2-1 Win
Round 5: Merfolk, 2-0 Win
Round 6: Burn, 1-2 Loss
Round 7: Zoo, 2-0 Win
Both players beat a nice range of decks en-route to their 5-2 finish. So why did neither player make top 8? The answer seems to be a matter of bad luck in both player’s cases. Let us consider Dobbin first. Dobbin lost to Aggro Loam and Burn over the day. Aggro Loam was universally a rough matchup for Ichorid, and it is just unlucky that Dobbin faced up against the deck; a cursory glance at the list shows that there were only 4 or so Aggro Loam decks at the event (although it is hard to tell for sure because the Excel spreadsheet does not label them as Aggro Loam). If Dobbin had played another deck in this slot, he likely would have made the Top 8.
Lamm had even worse luck. In the first place, he lost the 50/50 tossup match to Dredge, which must have been particularly annoying because he won that same matchup earlier in the day. Far more irksome must have been the Zoo loss. Dobbin crushed Zoo 2-0 in his only Zoo match of the day, and Lamm went on to win a second Zoo match just after losing the first one. Even worse, Lamm did not play a single Countertop deck throughout the day, even though he played a matchup against 3 other of the 5 most played archetypes at the tournament. If he had faced a Countertop match instead of his last Dredge one, Lamm would likely have been representing in the Top 8.
4. The Moral of the Story
Without access to detailed decklists and match reports, it is impossible to know for sure what happened to Dredge that day. But what we do know is that it did NOT do very well at all. Compare its performance to Aggro Loam or 38-43 Land. Of the 4 players who played both archetypes, 2 each made it to the top 8, such that half of the top 8 was either Loam or Land. That is an excellent tournament win percentage by any measure. Dredge just did not match up. I imagine that if we crunched all of the numbers, we would find that Dredge, as a whole, did worse than any of the other top 5 archetypes (Zoo, Threshold, Merfolk, Countertop), or at least worse than most of them.
That being said, what about Lamm and Dobbins? Are they just exceptions to the rule? Or were they better players playing better decks who are the true representatives of the Dredge build? This appears possible; after all, both players won matches that others Dredge decks lost throughout the day. But that is purely speculation that cannot be really backed up with concrete evidence (at least not at this juncture). One thing, however, is clear; Dredge was NOT stopped by Graveyard Hate throughout the day. Read on to find out…
5. The Myth of Graveyard Hate
One reason that Dredge gets hated on in forums is because of the ubiquitous hate aimed at it. Let us look at the sideboards of the top 8, or rather, some select cards from them…
4 Leyline of the Void
Andersen, 43 Land, 7th Place
Boss, Aggro Loam, 6th Place
Turtenwald, 43 Land, 2nd Place
McGregor, Aggro Loam, 1st Place
4 Relic of Progenitus
Black, Fish, 5th Place
Cocchiarella, Fish, 3rd Place
4 Tormod's Crypt
Larson, Zoo, 4th Place
Now, unless we are to believe that these decks are unique, then we must imagine that pretty much every deck in the tournament had similar sideboards. This is extremely reasonable; every deck that I have heard of from Sunday had at least 4 cards in the sideboard dedicated to exiling graveyards. So we must conclude that Dredge came up against such sideboards throughout the day.
But Lamm and Dobbins still did amazingly. Now part of this might be the luck of the draw. But another part of it MUST be that Dredge had great resilience to graveyard hatred. This must be true if we think of the numbers. Both Lamm and Dobbins won 5 games each. Unless we are to believe that their opponents in these matches, in both games 2 and 3, did not draw any of their sideboard graveyard hate (4 copies of Crypt/Relic/Leyline), then we must conclude that Lamm and Dobbins just played through the hate. And they won anyway.
Thus in the end, while part of the Dredge tale of the St. Louis 10K is a sad story, the other is quite elevating. Hats off to Dobbins and Lamm for their performance in upholding Dredge.
-ktkenshinx-
Probably everybody who figured Leyline is no longer a card, we can cut these Chains of Vapor got annihilated. Seems basic. Tendrils was never a good matchup.
The mirror will obviously be 50-50 in any sort of breakdown.
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
I cut 1 of my 3 tribes, 1 of my 3 dread returns, and I cut my only Reveillark for 3 bloodghasts in my deck.
It is a combo deck, the aggro part is only the fall back plan, what I was saying is that both game plans rely heavily on bridge from below for tokens. Storm has no other choice since Legacy storm has no other option than to chain spells together to win. Unlike dredge, that has 3 ways to win, hasted zombies, amassing a zombie army, and slowly recur ichorids and the like. 2 of 3 are these rely heavily on bridges, without bridges we are forced to win with the fall back plan. That isn't such a bad idea, but what I was thinking was if the deck would be better given it has a way to win that isn't bridge-based aside from the slow aggro plan. This is where Reveillark comes in. He decreases the deck linearity by making the deck less reliant on bridge tokens. It's a virtually a combo finish without the tokens with a hasted 16/16 Grave-Troll and a FKZ. Somewhat of a Rampage Jackson hook punch that just takes-out the opponent out of nowhere. It's not bridge reliant so not a lot of people would be expecting that. Before you know it, you've won without even having to use tokens. I've won countless games with this plan including a win against the deck's worst match-ups (White Stax, Lands). I wish I could play Larks with ghasts but sadly the deck's space issues can't accomodate such. So I know, I am evaluating which option is better at... well, making the deck better. @__@ Outside of it being a metagame choice that is.
Why so serious?
Bum Man: While I understand the basic point that you are getting at, I must respectfully disagree with you. Dredge does not need any additional stuff in it, especially Bloodghast. While it might work in theory, I must turn you to three pieces of evidence that suggest either a) that it does not work in practice and b) that it is not needed.
First I turn you to this recent article:
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l..._Showdown.html
Specifically, the following quotes:
"I wasn’t impressed with Bloodghast at all."
"If the game goes long, which happens more often than you’d think (as compared to Vintage Dredge games in particular), Bloodghast is far from optimal"
Now, I will concede that Mr. Elias took out Ichorid for Bloodghast, which might have been a bad substitution. Even so, his comments and performance hint at a larger problem with Bloodghast itself, not just his decklist.
If we look later in that article, we will also see the one Dredge list that finished in the Top 8 at the tournament. Yes, it was a small tournament, but it still had a fairly representative field of opponents. Here is the list with no Bloodghast in sight.
Now let us look at the most recent Legacy tournament, the SCG 10K in St. Louis. 2 Dredge decks did well at that event. Here are their lists:Maindeck:
4 City of Brass
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Sadistic Hypnotist
1 Tireless Tribe
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
3 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Dread Return
4 Breakthrough
2 Deep Analysis
4 Ichorid
4 Putrid Imp
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Gemstone Mine
Sideboard:
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 Ancestor's Chosen
SB: 1 Ray of Revelation
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 3 Firestorm
Chase Lamm: 13th Place
Maindeck
4 Stinkweed Imp
1 Sphinx of Lost Truths
4 Ichorid
4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
2 Golgari Thug
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Tireless Tribe
3 Dread Return
4 Careful Study
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Breakthrough
4 Bridge from Below
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 City of Brass
4 Cephalid Coliseum
Sideboard:
4 Force of Will
4 Pithing Needle
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Null Rod
1 Realm Razer
Jack Dobbin: 16th Place
Maindeck
4 Narcomoeba
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Dread Return
4 Breakthrough
4 Bridge from Below
4 Putrid Imp
4 Stinkweed Imp
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
2 Golgari Thug
3 Tireless Tribe
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
3 Ichorid
4 Careful Study
1 Darkblast
1 Sadistic Hypnotist
4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Tarnished Citadel
Sideboard
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Ancestor's Chosen
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Firestorm
3 Unmask
3 Pithing Needle
2 Null Rod
No Bloodghast in either deck. These decks performed admirably against a wide field of opponents (See my earlier post for details) without this card.
The concrete evidence suggests that Dredge is just fine without Bloodghast. If anything, the Bloodghast might be detrimental to the deck.
-ktkenshinx
I am not working on theory here. I am raising up issues I encounter during my experience of piloting the deck.
Bloodghast is over-hyped, it definitely doesn't replace Ichorid, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make the deck better. A number of people that were playing bloodghasts with Ichorids top'd various tournaments in deckcheck.
Refer to:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30554 5th
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30543 3rd
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30473 8th
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30384 3rd
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30369 4th
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30291 2nd
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30262 1st
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30198 1st
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=30009 4th
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29994 1st
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29942 3rd
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29531 1st
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29286 5th
They made the concept work, that means it is possible to make the concept work. They played either bloodghasts or Reveillark, both cards that I advocate to see some serious play. Them being able to make the concept work were able to generate a number of the best results that Non-LED Dredge have had for quite some time only in the span of roughly a month or so. That indicates two things, the concept works and the concept wins. This ultimately means one thing, the card works, it's just a matter of making it work.
From what I have read Elias' list, along with these two lists above lost to decks like affinity, zoo, and burn. Notice anything similar between these decks? They all knock-out bridges. Their lists are great, arguably some of the more solid lists I've seen with the deck so far. But the thing is, those match-ups, zoo, burn, and affinity should be relatively favorable match-ups for the deck. I weren't able to see the matches happen so I had no idea how the dredging and how the play goes, but the fact remains that when the deck is losing games they should normally win, there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Despite finishing solidly in these tournaments, don't you ever wonder if these lists would have done way better had they changed a few things in their lists? That is where the improvement for the deck starts. To say that the deck doesn't need to improved right now is wrong because obviously, the decks are good but they have the potential to do loads better. That should be the objective. To whether getting to this objective is through playing bloodghasts or Reveillark or whatever, some changes need to be made. That is the point of why we are testing and exploring untackled regions of the decks potential, to see it can make the deck better. If further testing show that playing this and that is not the best direction that the deck should be going then, it's not.
Why so serious?
Just for the record, the list you quoted has a playset of LEDs in it.
Just because these 2 dudes didn't play Bloodghast, it doesn't mean that Bloodghast is bad for Dredge. The lists we are testing right now are far from being optimized and substituting Ichorid with BG is a very bad move. He's not a substitute - he's a complement.
Saying this, do you believe that ichorid should be a four-of and bloodghast should be fit in as a 2-3 of?
I think that this would be an interesting idea (fitting both cards into the same deck)... perhaps a 3/3 split or something along those lines?
I've been toying with cutting 2 narcomoebas and an ichorid and running a 3/3 bloodghast/ichorid split as a way of strengthening the mid to late game. Recurring bloodghast does everything that the narcomoeba does, and adds additional damage too. I'm not sold on the change yet, but its an interesting idea that has seen play in a few tournaments.
People winning with a particular deck doesn't prove anything about that list in relation to other tweaks. It just means that deck is popular and not the worst.
Magic Level 3 Judge
Southern USA Regional Coordinator
I have been playing with 3 ichorids and 3 bloodghasts for sometime now and they seem to be playing quite well. I'm still doing some tweaks to the rest of the list though but has been playing great so far.
I have tried this and it had marginal results. I play 4/3/3 split with narcomoebas being the 4-of. It's a free creature, and this is very important when you are chain dredging through a breakthrough or coliseum. There are a lot of times where you have to pass a turn to be able to make a land drop to bring back bloodghasts, and this slows the deck down. Most of the situations you will encounter with the deck, hitting a narcomoeba is always better than hitting a bloodghast.
So winning is all about popularity of a deck in a certain tournament?? I doubt that the number of dredge players per tournament vary that much per tournament in a certain area for that to matter. Dredge is not a widely played deck anywhere, this would mean that the increase in top8s are not due to more people playing the deck but a higher quality of lists playing the deck. People winning with a particular list matters because not just anyone can win with just any build of a certain deck.
Why so serious?
Any one particular win can be a fluke. A trend of people winning with a particular deck does not indicate that the given build is better than other builds that are winning. For example, we could explain a recent trend of Bloodghast Dredge winning by saying "It's more popular now." To extend that claim to say BG is better than Ichorid, you'd need evidence about matchups and whether Ichorid is being played in equal numbers by at least as good pilots with at least as good matchups.
Magic Level 3 Judge
Southern USA Regional Coordinator
I am not sure where you are getting the bolded statement from. Dredge is an incredibly popular archetype, even if we are unwilling to take the SCG 10K as representative of it. Look at decklists from any tournament and Dredge is consistently one of the top decks played.
Anusien, if I am correct in saying this, simply does not believe that we can draw conclusions about archetypes based solely off of tournament data. First, there is a lot of randomness in Magic as I am sure everyone agrees. Over the course of 7 matches in a tournament, let's say 10 if you make it to finals, you get in maybe 20 or so games. No more than 30 if you take every match 2-1. Of those 20-30 games, you might play only 6 against a single archetype. In 30 games, a lot of random stuff can happen. In 6 games, TONS of random stuff WILL happen. You might get lucky and have some amazing opening hands. You might get unlucky and not hit enough dredgers or business cards.
Now, if you test 100 games against one single deck, then you have a much more accurate idea about the true Form (Plato style) of the match.
Second, player skill level varies. 15 players might run Dredge, but only half of them are decent. Only a quarter of them are "good". Of that quarter, let's say half of them are unlucky in a few games. Now only 1 or 2 players get to make it to the top 8. Is this representative? Of randomness, maybe. Of a deck, not really.
Bottom line: there is other evidence to consider. A gauntlet of tests using a BG-inclusive build in a series of matches, compared with another with a BG-less build, would be more conclusive.
-ktkenshinx
As I have said all along... bloodghast is awful. No results from ghast at the 5k, no results from ghast at Vestal. It only did well in philly when the guy got super lucky and also faced next to no hate.
That statement makes it look as if BG would be much worse against GY-Hate than ichorid is, which is just wrong.
And yes, I paired BG with Ichorid. I believe that's the way to go.
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