[Deck] Dredge

[HokusSchmokus]

Felidae, I run exactly the same 69+6. Oo
Nice coincidence:D
but I think it will be years until such a approach will be nodded through here. People don't like no-DR lists and will state completely untested statements to show you how your deck sucks.


Well, I think you are on the right way.

[Skeggi]

We're not saying it sucks. Way to put words in our mouths.

I'm just wondering, without DR as a sac outlet, do you have enough Zombies on time? How many Zombies do you have on average each turn? My main concern is that it is slow.

[HokusSchmokus]

We're not saying it sucks. Way to put words in our mouths.

I'm just wondering, without DR as a sac outlet, do you have enough Zombies on time? How many Zombies do you have on average each turn? My main concern is that it is slow.

First of all, I only meant certain persons with that.

Second of all: That's why at least I cut DR in the first place. Second or third turn my opponent is dead on combat damage. A thing that you could squeeze in is 1 DR. But you don't really need it, it's game one after all. I am packing DRs after boarding, to go against GW primarily. I don't feel like boarding out LED against them so when you get going you blank both Ooze and Crypt(latter using DR.)

[joemauer]

- Turn 1 Surgical Extraction can be a blowout for this type of Dredge, especially if you go for LED on turn 1. The argument I heard was that with LED you're too fast for Crapcaster and just win before Extraction becomes relevant. The problem is if they extract your only Dredger in resp to your draw effect with your hand already discarded. You don't always get the hand with land, draw effect, LED and at least two different Dredgers. You also don't need to have those hands all the time, but if you don't, then you aren't faster than the LEDless lists any more and lose that advantage.

Here are some hypothetical situations for you.

1. LED dredge:
Trying to go off turn one with LED + Faithless Looting/Breakthrough and your only dredger in hand gets extracted! Well we still get to dig into our library four cards deeper and have a chance to start slow dredging on our turn two.

2. LEDless dredge:
Trying to go off turn turn 2 with Imp into breakthrough and your only dredger in hand gets extracted! Well you still get to dig four cards and have a chance to start slow dredging on turn 3, unless the opponent has snapcaster mage and zaps your next dredger.

It is a slight advantage for LED dredge in this hypothetical situation(that you have created) because we are a turn ahead in our dredging. However both situations for both decks are very very bad.

I will go even further and point out that decks that play snapcaster mage and surgical extraction also play brainstorm. LED on the play can win**(not will win) on turn one before the opponent can dig for an extraction with brainstorm. LEDless does not have this luxury.


**Note: The printing of faithless looting will make this happen more often than it already does. This is why people are amped up about this card.

[AEnesidem]

Just a small input on LED Dredge, maybe I can change some of your minds about them, yet in the end it will allways be a matter of opinion.

Lets start with the list I'm currently testing for about 1 month now:

4City
4Mine
4Colliseum

4PImp
4Ichorid
4Moeba
4Troll
4Imp
4Thug

4Bridge
4Brakthrough
4Study
4Looting
4LED
4Therapy

-No DR and / or DR targets in the maindeck?
As for any argument about maindeck DR targets I can only repeat myself and many others in the thread: If your meta doesn't require you to use them then don't . They take room in your maindeck and will make your opening hands more clumsy.
As for the abstinence of DR:
While it provides a great sac outlet and, on a sidenote, also returns a dude back to the game it has proofen itself to be unnecessary in the maindeck. Ichorids and Therapies generate enought Zombie token by their own. However you can allways cut 1 Ichorid for 1 DR in the maindeck.

Also bear in mid that this is only the maindeck, noone said that you should stop running DR/targets alltogether, or that they aren't usefull g2/3.

-Only 8 Rainbowlands:
If there is one sin that you could make in LED or LEDless Dredge (not talking about Manaless or the hybrid lists) then it's cutting the number of Cephalid Colliuseum.

-But how can you support 4 Lootings with only 8 rainbow lands? Keep in mind that you don't allways have to cast Looting with your lands ( you also won't cast it with your LED's from time to time) and your deck doesn't rely on them either.
I also challenge you to test the list for a couple of games, you might be suprised how often you get to keep a good hand that does indeed include a rainbow land.

-You might not need to cast your Lootings, but how can you support your sideboard hate with only 8 rainbow lands?
Have you seen the board yet? No? Then wait please.

-Why should I run this over the traditional LEDless Dredge or over a Hybrid / Manaless list?
Nowadays the traditional LEDless list has a hard stand, because you have to fight decks like reanimator, who can just slam an Elesh Norn on the table by turn 2 or Maverick, who tend to run 2+ Ooze in the maindeck + Knight / Bok. The key to those matchups is simple: Speed. With LED Dredge you are able to win against those decks, even if you are on the draw and even if they got such a strong hand that allows them to shut you down by turn 2.

As for Manaless:
If you play in a meta where Manaless is a good choice (i.e. just a few decks with Leyline, just a few number of Maverick but a lot of blue aggro control) then you should keep playing it, because you won't gain much by playing with spells than can actually be Dazed, Forced, etc.

As for the Hybrid list:
I hope you guys will have succes with your idea, yet I'm not totally convinced about some of the choices or about the general game plan.

Well I guess thats all their is to the mainboard, now it's getting interesting.

But lets first take a look at the good ol days:

Do you remember the time where LED Dredge used to have 2 Citadells and 2 Tribes in the board? The time where you had to cut Deep Analysis every time you cutted your LED's, because the card itself was nearly uncastable alone?
Welcome to 2012.

Lets take in mind that their are a couple of matchups where you want to board your LED's out, in order to to side in various answers to their hate.
Unlike Deep Analysis you don't need to to board out Looting with them, because on it self the card is still very easy to cast.

Now lets finally take a look at the sideboard:

2Citadell
3Grudge
3Claim
1Ray
6Meta slots

-Thats all ? No fancy new tech, no obvious bombs, just a plain and simple board that was used since the stoneage?

I hope you didn't expected anything else, because even after Looting the general gameplan won't change, thus the board won't change as well.
While the hate nowadays is much more diverse we should still run a couple of the usual suspects, i.e. Grudge to deal with fancy equiments, Relics, Crypts or various other Artefacts, as well as Claim/Ray to deal with Leyline and various other Enchantments or Artefacts.
The meta slots can be various: Leylines, DR + targets, Coffin Purge / Purify the Grave, Faerie Macabre, Firestorm,etc.


Well thats all there is to say.

Some other notes:
-Will Looting push Dredge to a point where we have to fear some bannings?

Dredge has and will allways be a very cheap deck, thus you will allways see enough scrubs who play this deck and fail with it. We also need to remind ourself that sometimes our opponent will draw the nuts and sometimes the deck will just shit on our faces.

-Surgical Extraction will eat you!

As for any other piece of hate we need to take in mind that the average legacy player doesn't know shit about playing his hate correct. You should never lose to a single Extraction, just like you should never lose to a single Relic or Crypt. Remember what you have learned over the years in fighting various pieces of hate.

-But Feldman said ....

Oh shut up, will you......

So long

cheers

Felidae_

i found DR and DR targets heavily needed. 1 if i play LED it's to be able to win before my opponent that's why i run FKZ+it's relevant against combo decks. 2 i got the situation often enough that someone extracts my bridges or ichorids (surgical extraction is quite present in the metagame nowadays) or that i dredge into 3 bridges and the opponent sacs a creature to remove them, how do you plan on winning then? if you can't make zombies, can't DR creatures or have no ichorid how do you make enough zombie tokens?
Allso i think you can't trust the fact that players don't know how to play hate, at my place everyone knows quite well how to play against dredge, let's say certainly 50% of the players i meet here know how to play against dredge.

anyway i will test your list one of these days since i don't want to be a brainless idiot that says your deck sucks. I'm sure it draws stable hands but in my eyes it takes away all the reasons of why you would play LED dredge. I play LED dredge to be faster against combo for example. You play your LED to start dredging faster, but you will at maximum win on the turn that LED-less dredge can win so the combo matchup isn't improved at all in fact it's even better in LED-less lists that play FKZ.

the biggest flaw i could find in your deck was the sideboard. Why aren't you running chain of vapor? if you play against reanimator and they get to reanimate Elesh Norn, your deck is shut down completely. And since you have no way of winning on turn 1 the chance they put an elesh norn on the table is quite big. ofcourse your sideboard isn't complete yet so you might still include them but running 3 claim, 3 grudge and 3 chain seems overkill and waste of space to me.

i'm not trying to say your idea is bad, but i can see so many flaws allready before testing it that i ask myself how you even came up with that idea. Anyway i will be testing it and i will report the results, i am really curious if my statements will be proven wrong.

[igri_is_a_bk]

Apparently somebody has to say this every page because people don't read. You don't need FKZ to beat combo. You need Cabal Therapy. Dredging most of your deck will allow you rip apart their hand enough that you'll win in a turn or two, while they have no action.

[AEnesidem]

Apparently somebody has to say this every page because people don't read. You don't need FKZ to beat combo. You need Cabal Therapy. Dredging most of your deck will allow you rip apart their hand enough that you'll win in a turn or two, while they have no action.

that is often true but often against spiral tide i found my therapies countered and ineffective, he still went off the next turn. And i allso had enough situations that i didn't dredge enough cabal therpapies and Iona or FKZ saved the game.FKZ is not primordial to win against combo but it helps alot and makes the matchup a lot easier.

[HokusSchmokus]

that is often true but often against spiral tide i found my therapies countered and ineffective, he still went off the next turn. And i allso had enough situations that i didn't dredge enough cabal therpapies and Iona or FKZ saved the game.FKZ is not primordial to win against combo but it helps alot and makes the matchup a lot easier.

As do other cards, that are not FKZ. And they do it better.

[Michael Keller]

It's obvious at this point everybody has a different opinion on Dread Return or the lack thereof, so I think it pretty much is suited to tailor your needs at this point. I currently run three, with concurrent targets being FKZ, Sphinx, and Angel of Despair. I haven't had any issues with that configuration and it has worked out well.

The biggest issue it seems people have doesn't appear to have too much to do with D.R. as much as it does with their land configuration, which I think is absolutely critical in this deck.

[jares]

My point was/is that pre Mental Misstep Mana Dredge with MD Putrid Imp/Tireless Tribe and SB Ancient Grudge was a deck that was designed to confront the preferred hate cards of its day i.e. Tormod's Crypt and that the pre Mental Misstep Mana Dredge deck hasn't properly adapted to the current metagame of diversifed SB hate or Surgical Extractions. It's definitely inferior because of it in my opinion, and it's also mechanically inferior to Manaless Dredge or Hybrid Dredge because it dedicates 7+ MD slots as discard outlets and interacts with counterspells needlessly compared to Phantasmagorian, which I'm pretty sure is just inferior when those 7+ slots are no longer addressing hate.

Basically, the only way Putrid Imp/Tireless Tribe Dredge is relevant is if your metagame hasn't progressed and you're still facing 4xTormod's Crypt game 2.

I like that it seems that you've dedicated a lot of time to test and research on the points that you've stated, and that it sounds like you've become comfortable with your current findings. In fact, I agree with the points that you've raised regarding the strengths of using Phantasmagorian, and have strongly considered applying these to the list that I'd like to play.

I would like to suggest, though, that we hold off on labeling certain things to be either superior or inferior unless we can present undeniable proof and undisputed results of our claims. Like I said, at the end of the day, we are all entitled to our opinion, but no one can argue with results - something that 4eak's list has already accomplished.

I did some research on 4eak's winning list, and found some interesting information that could help objectify this discussion. I searched http://www.starcitygames.com/ for the list of Dredge decks that have placed relatively well ever since 4eak won last 2011-09-11, and found the following results:

• After 2011-09-11, there have been 5 SCG-sponsored tournaments where Dredge placed relatively well (21st being the least notable rank).
• In those 5 tournaments, there have been 6 Dredge decks that have placed relatively well (with ranks of 4th, 4th, 4th, 10th, 11th, and 21st).
• All the 6 Dredge decks that have placed well during that period did NOT use Phantasmagorian, but did use Discard Dorks. It's also worth noting that, while all 6 decks used Putrid Imp, only one of those decks used Tireless Tribe.
• Since the metagame changed after the banning of Mental Misstep last 2011-10-1, there has been no record of a "Hybrid Dredge" deck placing well. The latest of these SCG-sponsored tournaments was just last week (2012-01-08), so it would be fair to say that the metagame in that tournament is similar (if not identical) to the current metagame that you might be referring to.

Based on these findings, it would be fallacious to say that Hybrid Dredge is not doing well in the current metagame (as we cannot find conclusive data to support that claim). It would be foolish, though, to say that using Discard Dorks is an inferior way of attacking the current metagame, as it is clear that this method is still effective in at least taking Dredge to a Top-4 finish (which it achieved thrice).

Kindly note that the data that I've gathered is fairly limited, as it is only based on the results available from SCG. As much as it cannot be used to generalize what we believe to be true across all existing metagames, I believe that it is surely enough to show that we should not be hasty in dismissing Discard Dorks as inferior in addressing the current metagame (at least for now).

Again, all I'm suggesting is that we hold off on labeling certain things to be either superior or inferior unless we can present undeniable results - we'll all eventually benefit from this sense of objectivity, not just in developing the Dredge archetype, but also in how we construct and play our decks.

Any available information that could help support the effectiveness of Hybrid Dredge in addressing the current metagame is surely welcome, as I have also been very much interested in developing this version of Dredge ever since I saw 4eak's winning list.

Kind Regards,
jares

[jares]

It's obvious at this point everybody has a different opinion on Dread Return or the lack thereof, so I think it pretty much is suited to tailor your needs at this point. I currently run three, with concurrent targets being FKZ, Sphinx, and Angel of Despair. I haven't had any issues with that configuration and it has worked out well.

The biggest issue it seems people have doesn't appear to have too much to do with D.R. as much as it does with their land configuration, which I think is absolutely critical in this deck.

Taking into consideration the differences in opinion, and to add to what Hollywood said about this discussion (about DR) being influenced by what "is suited to tailor your needs at this point", it might also be worth considering that we all simply have differences in our preferred play-style.

• Some are comfortable with no DR, which would lead them to play beat-down the entire game.
• I personally have one MD and one in the SB, which would normally have me go with the beat-down plan, with the option to go combo-esque whenever necessary.
• Hollywood mentioned that he has three MD, which probably gives him more options for how he would go about with winning the game - comb-esque via the FKZ+Shpinx route, or control-esque (for lack of a better term) via Angel of Despair on anything that might be worth "answering".

I believe that this has been a previously-noted strength of Dredge, where the archetype is able to switch from different "modes" whenever necessary (sometimes even in the middle of a game!).

Also, the discussion regarding DR might also be a question of what we're trying to achieve in including/excluding the card in our lists.

• Are we trying to go for Consistency? (less DR?)
• Are we trying to go for Explosiveness? (more DR)
• Are we trying to go for Versatility? (more DR?)
• Are we trying to go for something different/unexpected? (No DR)

This was also the case in the discussion of LED, where it was a question of Consistency VS. Explosiveness - and it seems that neither is necessarily superior over the other at this point.

I agree that the discussion of land configuration is something worth revisiting, especially since we expect Faithless Looting to be legal soon. Here's a thought:

• With 15 lands in the MD, would Faithless Looting still be worth running without LED, alongside Careful Study and Breakthrough?

[Izor]

DRing a big dude is NOT needed to win games 1. That's why playing no DRs is perfectly fine, whether the list has LEDs or not. However, sacrifice outlets are needed to win game one. That's why I always keep that 1 DR in.

Also, when we talk about how many DRs are needed or not, we can't do that without taking into account the lists that we refer to. Hollywood seems to play a list that's close to manaless, so no DRs would be a huge mistake. Hokus and Felidae talked about the super fast LED list with Lootings, which easily wins without a whole DR package. We should keep that in mind.


@ joemauer:

I see what you mean and I will agree that an extraction in resp to our draw effect can wreck both types of decks. The drawback of LED I was indirectly referring to was that it automatically overextends with the LED and if the Breakthrough whiffs, you'll have huge trouble to get started again. Having a discard dork in play will make that much easier. A dork also gives you the chance to not discard every Dredger you have and bait out Extractions in certain situations.

Again, I don't claim that LEDless will be better, I just said what I didn't like when I tested LED. I also said that I agree with the advantages Felidae named before.

[Michael Keller]

My updated list, for reference:

[4x] Golgari Grave-Troll
[4x] Stinkweed Imp
[4x] Golgari Thug
[1x] Shambling Shell
[1x] Darkblast

[4x] Ichorid
[4x] Nether Shadow
[4x] Narcomoeba
[4x] Bridge from Below
[4x] Breakthrough
[4x] Cabal Therapy
[4x] Winds of Change
[3x] Phantasmagorian

[2x] Dread Return
[1x] Angel of Despair
[1x] Flame-Kin Zealot

[4x] City of Brass
[4x] Gemstone Mine
[3x] Undiscovered Paradise

//

[4x] Nature's Claim
[3x] Coffin Purge
[3x] Ancient Grudge
[2x] Ray of Revelation
[1x] Dread Return
[1x] Iona, Shield of Emeria
[1x] Undiscovered Paradise

[NecroYawgmoth]

@ Jares

Maybe people still win with PImps and stuff and no Phantasmagorians in the main, because they don't want to change a running system. Dredge is good at was it does. Maybe PImp lists are outdated but still very good. People don't like to risk new things because they could turn out to be bad.

@ Hollywood

Winds of Change Mainboard is pure awesomeness. I like.

[Michael Keller]

@ Jares

Maybe people still win with PImps and stuff and no Phantasmagorians in the main, because they don't want to change a running system. Dredge is good at was it does. Maybe PImp lists are outdated but still very good. People don't like to risk new things because they could turn out to be bad.

@ Hollywood

Winds of Change Mainboard is pure awesomeness. I like.

One of the most powerful plays this variation has is the DDD plan first turn, and the second turn into Breakthrough-Winds awesomeness. When you play Winds, you really want to chain dredgers, so that is the reason for the inclusion of Shambling Shell and Darkblast. (A split for Ichorid and improved Phantasmagorian activation purposes.)

One of the reasons I like this list a lot is that it has a lot of options that are presented for the active player:

- You don't have to dump your hand into the graveyard if you don't want to.
- You have more recursive threats in Nether Shadow, adding redundancy.
- You are able to blow the game open without lands or a draw spell turn one by simply DDD'ing and going through a different line of play.
- Winds of Change also allows you to draw a new hand - searching for answers if need be - and completely swallows Breakthrough by allowing you to "draw" six instead of four on your turn two. It also can screw over your opponents' hands really bad in corner cases.
- Playing Phantasmagorian gives you the discard outlet necessary for post-Winds and feeds your graveyard.

I like having the option of "controlling" my choices instead of being forced to run with a single line of play (or two), which other builds - especially L.E.D. variants - tend to fall back on. I've also found that eleven lands seems to be the correct number here as you're only realistically casting one spell the entire game using mana pre-board, and post-board when you need to have access to bringing in anti-hate you have an additional Paradise to help increase consistency.

Pre-board, the deck doesn't even really need mana because it acts more like Manaless, and wins the same way. However, with access to Golden Lands the deck has options that it didn't have before. This version meets Manaless and L.E.D. variants halfway in that it doesn't necessarily have to rely on explosive starts and is just as consistent without them, but indefinitely has the ability of doing so without being forced to dump your hand.

One thing to note: I have always found myself boarding out Breakthrough against hate games two and three. Winds of Change does functionally the same thing (in conjunction with Phantasmagorian), but it doesn't ship cards to the graveyard. Instead, you can draw into anti-hate with Winds and find yourself answers. You also don't want to go "all-in" against an opponent with a good amount of hate, and if you can read players well enough, a "snap keep" or aggressive mulligan is where an open-handed Winds of Change can really be good. (As they can't mulligan a Winds of Change hand.)

It just really depends. I'm just being more cautious here because I hate giving up too much information early and giving my opponent a smorgasbord of options with their hate - effectively walking into a blowout.

@Necro: Firestorm will surely find its way into my sideboard against Maverick.

[Anusien]

Putrid Imp is far better at fighting Tormod's Crypt than Phantasmagoria. Its existence is not new tech from the time of Feldman's writing, for example.

[Michael Keller]

Putrid Imp is far better at fighting Tormod's Crypt than Phantasmagoria. Its existence is not new tech from the time of Feldman's writing, for example.

And Nature's Claim and Ancient Grudge are better at fighting Crypt than either of those, which is why they are in the sideboard.

Putrid Imp doesn't really do anything other than stall the obvious. If your opponent is sandbagging more hate than you have answers to, dropping a dredger every turn isn't going to solve anything. And spot-removal is far more prevalent than anything else capable of stopping a Phantasmagorian, which hides out in your graveyard. In the instance you'd want to get rid of it, you'd have to blow Crypt immediately (which still doesn't stop it, but you wouldn't want to dump your hand anyways so Crypt would be gone) or Surgical Extraction it, which is probably not the best of options given the number of better, more robust targets the deck has.

I'm not saying Phantasmagorian is better than Imp, but in the given build it functions better - which combos incredibly well with Nether Shadow and Ichorid and allowing you an unstoppable way of discarding your hand (or simply three cards). It also functions incredibly well with Winds of Change, which only requires you to hit one Phantasmagorian in your dredges, as opposed to being forced to have an outlet-dork on the table which is far less probable.

Considering you're realistically going to plow through anywhere between twenty-five and thirty cards deep, you have a much, much better shot at hitting another dredger and or Phantasmagorian and effectively have the game locked up. If we're talking about fighting Crypt, slow-dredging and using your anti-hate is - in my opinion - the way to beat it.

[Vandalize]

This is the list I've brewed for a while:

Lands [12]
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Cephalid Coliseum

Dredgers [12]
4 GGT
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug

Draw [12]
4 Faithless Looting
4 Breakthrough
4 Careful Study

Creatures [12]
4 Putrid Imp
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid

Goodies [12]
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard [15]
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Chain of Vapor
2 Dread Return
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

And guys, why the hell are you trying to fit Nature's Claim into a 8-green-mana-land.dec?
If you can hope to destroy LotV 15% of time, you're pretty lucky.

And for people who hate on no-DR-main-decks. I'll state again what have already been said (but clearly): We DO NOT need Dread Return (a.k.a DR) to win the Game 1, because Dredge, as a deck, does that more than often with only Bridge from Below + Ichorid. The Dread Returns ARE IN SIDEBOARD, to make POST-BOARD matchups a little easier.

You ARE NOT going to be Surgically Extracted in game 1. And if that happens... well, shit happens. Like someone said a while ago, sometimes you just lose to Savannah Lions equipped with Bonesplitter.

[igri_is_a_bk]

Here in the dredge forum, we don't just beat a dead horse. We pull out its hair, set it on fire, and grind it into sausage.

[AEnesidem]

Here in the dredge forum, we don't just beat a dead horse. We pull out its hair, set it on fire, and grind it into sausage.

BTW just to clarify, i am not hating on the list, i am intrigued by it. I only completed my dredge deck(and first legacy deck) a week ago. I will be testing the deck and will probably even take it to legacy events here to test it extensively. And i will post results