[Deck] Dredge

[Michael Keller]

Dredge is a deck that is basically more open to interpretation and configuration than any other deck in the format. You're basically using your entire deck as your hand and avoiding interaction by getting creatures into play for free. Everyone has their own unique taste as to how the deck is played.

Sometimes, however, it's better to be lucky than good.

[ZebraSleeves]

Hey guys, just wanted to get some advice for my build in an upcoming tourney. I don't like using LED because I often find myself punting games to get a quick win and make sloppy mistakes. This is just a personal preference. Anyways:

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
2 Tarnished Citadel

3 Phantasmagorian
4 Putrid Imp
4 Breakthrough
4 Careful Study
4 Cabal Therapy

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
1 Darkblast

2 Dread Return
4 Bridge From Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid

Sideboard

3 Tireless Tribe
3 Wispmare
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Angel of Despair
1 Elesh Norn
1 Woodfall Primus
2 Purify the Grave
2 Surgical Extraction

Here are explanations for the Sideboard choices

Tireless Tribe:
Phantasmagorian is great in my meta that is filled with BUG, Tempo, and Blade Decks. However, against decks without counterspells or discard there is really no reason to run them over Tribes because you can't hardcast them to block or make warm bodies for dread returns. The reason I don't just use Tribes MD is because no one really runs grave hate game 1 so you can really commit to filling your 'yard and Phantas make the deck more synergistic in that regard (Ichorid food, don't have to mulligain, etc.)

Wispmare:
I've found that I'm not really a fan of reactive cards, but enchantment removal is a must when Gayline of the Void, Wheel of sun and Moon, and Planar void exist. The Wispmares are actually for the mirror match, because it seems that most dredge players use Leyline's as their primary means of grave hate. So if my opponent mulls into a bad hand with Leyline cuz he thinks it will blow me out, I have the ability to get rid of the Leylines, destroy their bridges, and make my own zombies depending on what the game state is.

Ancient grudge:
Batterskull, Swords, Jitte.

Angel of Despair/Woodfall Primus:
Woodfall is better against Enchantress or other prison decks because you can get a 2-for-1 with him, but the Angel is in there for Scavenging Ooze. Also, they are both great to have in your hand if your opponent plays a Show and Tell.

Elesh:
Tribal decks, Aggro. Speeds up your kill by pumping your guys. Pretty obvious choice.

Purify/Surgical Extraction:
Honestly, I only have 2 Surgicals otherwise I would replace the Purify's with 2 more. It's for the mirror, reanimator, snapcaster.dec, or just getting rid of key cards in conjunction with Cabal Therapy.

That's it. Thanks for the help!

[Michael Keller]

I know it's not exactly necessary, but when I see lists without Nether Shadow that run Phantasmagorian, I sometimes cringe. I'm just wondering if at this point raw speed is completely necessary.

Has anyone else thought of walking away from the LED-Looting plan?

[jares]

And also, GTFO. If you have nothing more to do than talk a bunch of smart ass bullshit and insult those people who really have done much for this archetype or really try to improve their dredge game, just because we are pointing out some "unforgivable mistakes" (quote Jares), GTFO this thread.

Now that you mentioned it, I'm now trying to think of some "forgivable" mistakes .

I like to refer to the "unforgivable mistakes" as blunders X_X.

Forgivable mistakes are probably the ones that can be described as "sub-optimal" lines of play.

Just thinking aloud .

Cheers,
jares

[jares]

Has anyone else thought of walking away from the LED-Looting plan?

I don't know if this counts, but I'm currently leaning towards going LEDless, but with [4x] Faithless Looting in the main deck.

Why do you ask?

Kind Regards,
jares

[Ziveeman]

I think everything has been said about his plays, so I'm not going to talk about that any further.

However, something that also strikes me is that apparently NO single Dredge player on SCG Opens really keeps track of their graveyard order properly. I don't remember if he did it in the finals, but earlier when he was featured during the swiss, he just spread out the whole graveyard on the table, not paying attention to his grave order and in a way that neither player was able to track what's in there and what's not.

I do not understand how this is allowed to happen in such a prestigious tournament, especially at the feature table where hundreds of people are watching and where they even have a table judge. Usually the judges interfere immediately if something goes against the rules, but somehow graveyard order doesn't seem to matter.

The most common argument seems to be "well, yeah, it doesn't matter anyway", which is just untrue. Nether Shadow is more than viable in Dredge decks for instance.

Practically, it also doesn't matter if you don't shuffle sour library after activating a Fetchland and getting the bottom card of your deck without looking at any other cards in there. It's still entirely unknown and random, but the rules tell you to shuffle, so you do. I don't quite understand it.

If you're in the Top 8 when all decklists are revealed to anyone and you have no cards that care about graveyard order, I don't feel it matters then. But in the Swiss, it should be important to maintain the correct game state because of cards like Nether Shadow.

[jares]

I am not sure sour grapes would be the best way to descrribe the reaction. He didn't win when the deck should have won (it gave him the cards), and as members of a Dredge board we were no doubt cheering for a representative of the deck only to be let down by poor play when on camera.

Then there are those of us that are flabbergasted by another dredge deck doing well while being suboptimal in MD design while also sporting a weak sideboard vs hate.

Gaming gods be a trollin'

Now that I think of it, I'm not so sure either . I can't think of anything else to call it though - but I guess you already know what I mean .

Cheers,
jares

[Michael Keller]

I don't know if this counts, but I'm currently leaning towards going LEDless, but with [4x] Faithless Looting in the main deck.

Why do you ask?

Kind Regards,
jares

I just keep looking at LED as more of a liability than anything else. I mean, the entire basis for running LED is to win the game on the spot by comboing with either Coliseum or Looting. When you extract that post-board, I just think it warps your entire strategy in some ways.

LED is a combo card, and although Dredge can function without it, I just see it as pointless to run it if you always plan on boarding it out anyways. Dredge already wins a large percentage of its game one's, so is LED more of a liability than anything else at this point?

[HokusSchmokus]

I just keep looking at LED as more of a liability than anything else. I mean, the entire basis for running LED is to win the game on the spot by comboing with either Coliseum or Looting. When you extract that post-board, I just think it warps your entire strategy in some ways.

LED is a combo card, and although Dredge can function without it, I just see it as pointless to run it if you always plan on boarding it out anyways. Dredge already wins a large percentage of its game one's, so is LED more of a liability than anything else at this point?

Are you guys really boarding out LED a lot? I normally don't do that against a lot of decks. Boarding out Breakthrough makes much more sense imo.

[Izor]

I am still testing both variants, because on the one hand I want to see how insane Lootings-LED can be and on the other hand, I don't want to get too fancy about it and stop playing a list that has worked incredibly well for months (LEDless).

Basically, LED plus Lootings is huge. I would no doubt run it over LEDless any day, if there wasn't that one problem. I hate, I mean I really really HATE having only 8 gold lands. I will stick with LED as long as I'm able to play at least 10 Gold lands and not lose anything else. The thing is, even of I start cutting Ichorids, DR or Dredgers, LED eats up a lot of main board space and I haven't found a configuration with LED that suits me.


For those of you who are sold on LED: I understand all arguments in favor of it. Just tell me why you can live with so few lands after agreeing for years that more land in Dredge is very important. Noone has answered this question yet. the question you usually get is: The lands are usually enough and LED just freaking rocks. I want my land to always be enough.

[Vandalize]

I've moved back to LEDless shotly after I got my set of Lion's Eye Diamonds.

The main reason? Dredge already wins game 1 a lot. And what kills Dredge post-board is hate. Graveyard hate is the very reason why dredge loses the match, not it's speed or lack of it.

As someone stated here before, Dredge wins by dredging. But I'd like to add a second part of this statement: Dredge wins by dredging, and when it can fight through hate.

LED can't really cope on hate besides being as fast as it can be (mostly Artifact-based hate). It's so, so against Surgical Extraction. Perhaps the only piece of hate that LED seems to have an edge is against Scavenging Ooze.

That being said, this is my current list:

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Tarnished Citadel

4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Putrid Imp

4 Breakthrough
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dread Return

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug
1 Darkblast

SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 3 Firestorm
SB: 3 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Pretty simple and good. The only arguable cards seems to be -1 Darkblast +1 Golgari Thug main deck, and -4 Leyline of the Void +4 something in sideboard.

Faithless Looting comes into Tireless Tribe spot in the deck, because it can help to find pieces you need, instead of just taking a mulligan.

[jares]

I just keep looking at LED as more of a liability than anything else. I mean, the entire basis for running LED is to win the game on the spot by comboing with either Coliseum or Looting. When you extract that post-board, I just think it warps your entire strategy in some ways.

LED is a combo card, and although Dredge can function without it, I just see it as pointless to run it if you always plan on boarding it out anyways. Dredge already wins a large percentage of its game one's, so is LED more of a liability than anything else at this point?

It's interesting that you're also headed in the same direction that I've been exploring. I have not had enough time to do the number-crunching, but I believe that it will help if we could analyze the numbers that would help objectify this observation.

At this point, I would say that it's clear that LED helps Dredge in doing what it already does very well. It provides another gear for how quickly we can put cards into the graveyard, but also introduces a number of dependencies that, thanks to the emergence of Faithless Looting as a Dredge staple, are no longer as noticeable as when Deep Analysis was the LED "outlet" of choice.

I'll try to post some figures soon.

Kind Regards,
jares

[jares]

Are you guys really boarding out LED a lot? I normally don't do that against a lot of decks. Boarding out Breakthrough makes much more sense imo.

I believe that it can go both ways, really (regarding boarding-out LED or Breakthrough). I think that is does make sense to board-out Breakthrough more often because LED is essentially another Careful Study, which is much more stable than a Breakthrough.

I'm personally not too concerned about the fact that LED gets boarded-out very often, but rather, I'm concerned about whether or not LED's interaction with the rest of the deck actually helps the deck more than it harms it. As of the moment, I'm skeptical, but largely undecided.

Kind Regards,
jares

[jares]

I am still testing both variants, because on the one hand I want to see how insane Lootings-LED can be and on the other hand, I don't want to get too fancy about it and stop playing a list that has worked incredibly well for months (LEDless).

Basically, LED plus Lootings is huge. I would no doubt run it over LEDless any day, if there wasn't that one problem. I hate, I mean I really really HATE having only 8 gold lands. I will stick with LED as long as I'm able to play at least 10 Gold lands and not lose anything else. The thing is, even of I start cutting Ichorids, DR or Dredgers, LED eats up a lot of main board space and I haven't found a configuration with LED that suits me.


For those of you who are sold on LED: I understand all arguments in favor of it. Just tell me why you can live with so few lands after agreeing for years that more land in Dredge is very important. Noone has answered this question yet. the question you usually get is: The lands are usually enough and LED just freaking rocks. I want my land to always be enough.

Based on observation, I believe that it's fairly accurate to state that the main difference between LED and LEDless builds is the number of lands available. Having said that, I believe that, as much as Dredge is one of the few decks that need very few lands to operate (which was taken to the extreme by the manaless variant), the availability of lands is the still the major dependency of the LED and LEDless variants, and the more lands, the better you'll be able to address this dependency.

Kind Regards,
jares

[jares]

As someone stated here before, Dredge wins by dredging. But I'd like to add a second part of this statement: Dredge wins by dredging, and when it can fight through hate.

I believe that that was me . I remember borrowing it from Richard Feldman, though, but he stated it in another way: "Dredge loses when it fails to dredge". This might be the best "generalization" of what we're both trying to state.

My list looks almost exactly like yours, minus the [2x] Dread Return, where I instead added more lands. I might have gone overboard in maximizing the number of Gold Lands to 12, but the results I've gathered have been positive, even if I feel like I could add some versatility to the deck by cutting the 16th land and adding another utility card (Dread Return, Tireless Tribe, or even Lion's Eye Diamond or Street Wraith as a singleton, just for fun ) - after all, as stated in one of my previous comments, the availability of lands is the still the major dependency of this deck.

May I ask about how often you would board-in Ancient Grudge, and if you've also considered going for a 2-2 split between Nature's Claim and Chain of Vapor? I'm also assuming that, against Storm, your game plan is to either play Cabal Therapy in the timeliest manner or get Iona, Shield of Emeria into play quickly.

Kind Regards,
jares

[K1w1]

I tested a lot in the last weeks and i came to the conclusion, that i really don't need Putrid Imp. So how can i cut him without losing the fodder for Ichorids? I tested Street Wraith and it's the better choice imo.
In addition, i hate Scavenging Ooze. How can i stop him? The answer is Pithing Needle.
This is my list:

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Street Wraith

2 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Angel of Despair
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug


SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Tarnished Citadel
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

I just cut my Purify/Coffin because i came to the conclusion, the people realized, that Ravenous Trap/Extirpate/Leyline is better than Surgical. And you can't beat this hate with purify/coffin.

Any other thoughts?

[HokusSchmokus]

I tested a lot in the last weeks and i came to the conclusion, that i really don't need Putrid Imp. So how can i cut him without losing the fodder for Ichorids? I tested Street Wraith and it's the better choice imo.
In addition, i hate Scavenging Ooze. How can i stop him? The answer is Pithing Needle.
This is my list:

4 Cephalid Coliseum
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Street Wraith

2 Dread Return
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Angel of Despair
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug


SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Tarnished Citadel
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

I just cut my Purify/Coffin because i came to the conclusion, the people realized, that Ravenous Trap/Extirpate/Leyline is better than Surgical. And you can't beat this hate with purify/coffin.

Any other thoughts?

[K1w1]

Wow, really nice...
How about telling me what you dislike instead of this picture??
You can't say the list is bad with just looking at this. How about testing?

[HokusSchmokus]

Wow, really nice...
How about telling me what you dislike instead of this picture??
You can't say the list is bad with just looking at this. How about testing?

Sorry, just had to post this picture:P
I don't like the lack of Putrid Imps, because without them you actually lose to crypt.
I don't like the maindeck Dread Returns, but that is fine, I guess, though I really don't like maindeck Angel.
Pithing Needle in the board: I hate Hate you actually have to draw. But that's true for Claims and stuff too, so nevermind

Also, you might end up with no turn 1 play on the play.Has this been an issue in testing?

[K1w1]

Sorry, just had to post this picture:P
I don't like the lack of Putrid Imps, because without them you actually lose to crypt.
I don't like the maindeck Dread Returns, but that is fine, I guess, though I really don't like maindeck Angel.
Pithing Needle in the board: I hate Hate you actually have to draw. But that's true for Claims and stuff too, so nevermind

Also, you might end up with no turn 1 play on the play.Has this been an issue in testing?

Against Crypt: Pithing Needle, when needed.
In addition, there are players who can't crack them correctly and lose to that. AND i have not seen any crypts in the last time.
I don't like DR, too. I just hive it a try. Angel of Despair is for Platin Imperion/Moat etc. Game 1.
I can easily find the stuff with studies.
I tested a lot with Jona/Necro and i don't have any problems to start dredging few turn later, as long as i can therapy/needle them.

I still have to test some things. So i think i will change again and again and again until i found a list i like.

I still have to test some things.