[Deck] Dredge

[Fizzeler]

I can see cutting PImp actually for Tireless in the current Aggro Meta, as Tireless does chump block almost everything until you get enough steam to kill them

[Vandalize]

Is there a time when you just simply draw a card rather than dredging? Or are you still dredging, just doing so with guys like the Thug?

Yes. Example 1:

You're facing a turn 1 Tormod's Crypt. And you've already been slowdredging for a while (lets say, about 15~20 cards over three turns). And you hit some important cards, like Ichorid and Bridge from Below. You have fodder for Ichorid, and you can build pressure with your graveyard as it is sized now.

In this case, you can draw for the turn, because if you overextend into other business cards, Crypt will have a more devastating effect. So it's pretty acceptable to draw (even better if your chances to draw a Draw-Spell is good).

Example 2:

You've facing a lethal board position or some very threatning position (lets say, Goblin Piledriver + dudes or Scavenging Ooze with few or none mana open). You can calculate how many Draw-Spells you have left in your library (count Cephalid Coliseum as one). If you have a good chance to draw it, go for it, because slowdredging won't help you.

If you draw something like Breakthrough, you can overextend a lot, and get out of trouble. If not, you'd just lose anyways.

@thread I have been shaving stuff, and this is my latest list:

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

4 Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study
4 Breakthrough

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return

4 Narcomoeba
3 Putrid Imp
3 Ichorid

SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 3 Ashen Ghoul
SB: 1 Tarnished Citadel
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Dread Return
SB: 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite

Seems fine for now. But I'll miss the 12th Dredger anytime soon, I guess.

EDIT: forgot the LEDs

[DarkJester]

@Vandalize: don't shave too much, your list is missing 4 cards (obviously LED's)... ;)

[Calado]

I love the manaless idea of don't having dead cards on graveyard. It's like an exploit, but cage and Leyline destroyed this idea.
About dredging vs drawing, your opponent's deck shows when to not dredge, it's rare.
You want to show dredge when you can wait for therapy to avoid your draw spell being countered, or when a crypt/relic is on play (unless you have removal), while sculpting your hand to explode after its activation.
You'll have to draw and hardcast things when forced by Leyline or cage.
DDD can be used when a counter for the only discard outlet is more certain than an extraction, for example.

[Holly]

How do you tend to board versus a diversity of hate?
Since most people diverse their hate into something like:
2 Extraction,
1 Crypt,
1 Cage,

The Ashen Ghouls come in handy when fighting the Extractions/Crypt, but are useless vs the Cage, so let's assume Quadlaser list:
-4 LED
-1 Ichorid
+3 Ashen Ghouls
+2 Lands

and just hoping they dont draw their singleton Cage and scoop if they do? I don't want to lose versus a single Cage but boarding in 4 Nature' Claim for it seems too much.

A friend of mine plays Rock, preboard he got 1 Bog, Kotr to fetch them, GSZ for 1 Ooze, together with Explosives for zombies and swords for Ichorid, most of the times I'm still to fast for him, but postboard he also has 3 Extraction, 1 Cage, 1 Crypt, Crop Rotation & Thalia. How would you board? Without Breakthrough/LED I'm getting to slow for Kotr into Bog or Ooze, slowdreding doesn't cut it (and thanks to Thalia I'll never cast a draw spell later). Till now I just did not board at all, hoping for beeing fast enough and him not having the t1 Crypt/Cage, sometimes it does work, sometimes it doesnt..

[Anusien]

Boarding in 5 cards to fight 2 Extraction seems lopsided.

[Holly]

Well it was a example, since most of the time you don't know yet how much (and what) hate they have, but you can guess it.. So let's say they have 3 Extractions ;P.

The Question would you board anything versus the Cage? It's lethal if you don't have any way to get rid of it, in contrast to the 2(3) Extractions. Or would you just scoop up the time they're lucky and get it?

[Mindlash]

I love the manaless idea of don't having dead cards on graveyard. It's like an exploit, but cage and Leyline destroyed this idea.
About dredging vs drawing, your opponent's deck shows when to not dredge, it's rare.
You want to show dredge when you can wait for therapy to avoid your draw spell being countered, or when a crypt/relic is on play (unless you have removal), while sculpting your hand to explode after its activation.
You'll have to draw and hardcast things when forced by Leyline or cage.
DDD can be used when a counter for the only discard outlet is more certain than an extraction, for example.

I think Manaless greatest Problem is not Leyline/Cage. It's just to slow on average against certain decks.It eats decks with no relevant clock like Stoneblade and presumebly UW Miracle. Once your grave has Sphinx and DR you can flip your entire Deck. It's even easier with Griselbrand.

But I do not like beeing on the draw against Belcher, LED Dredge, ANT or other fast Decks and just DDD the next turn. Without Street Wraith in your hand you cannot even defend yourself against Lackey that is if you dredge into Narcomoeba.

The slowdredging thingy may look a bit unusal to some players. Most people I see seem like they want to flip their decks with LED as fast as they can...leaving them without handcards and with half their deck or more in the grave.

Perhaps its easier to learn with a LEDless version? It is just easier to slow dredge and get going again after crypt/relic without LED and with 8 permanent discard outleds. Everytime I have LED in my hand it whispers to me to use it and dredge half my deck away...hard to resist :D

[HokusSchmokus]

Well it was a example, since most of the time you don't know yet how much (and what) hate they have, but you can guess it.. So let's say they have 3 Extractions ;P.

The Question would you board anything versus the Cage? It's lethal if you don't have any way to get rid of it, in contrast to the 2(3) Extractions. Or would you just scoop up the time they're lucky and get it?

You don't have to board against 1 Extraction. In this case you gave I'd board in lands plus Nature's Claim probably.
@Tim It doesn't really matter much if you Dredge for 6 or less during slowdredging,it just depends on the situation. If you face a fast clock in addition to Crypt, it's often even better to dredge 6 a turn to force them to pop crypt earlier. You could do that with drawspells, too, it is just often better to keep them for after the crypt activation.

[woremak]

Well it was a example, since most of the time you don't know yet how much (and what) hate they have, but you can guess it.. So let's say they have 3 Extractions ;P.

The Question would you board anything versus the Cage? It's lethal if you don't have any way to get rid of it, in contrast to the 2(3) Extractions. Or would you just scoop up the time they're lucky and get it?

I know I'm very high on this card right now, but Ghoultree is super good out of the board against surgical + cage.

[Michael Keller]

X-0'd the local with Manaless Dredge tonight in my return to Syracuse. Wound up beating RUG, U/r/w Delver, and U/w Miracles - drawing into the last round.

I played with four Dryad Arbor main-deck, with a board capable of handling Leyline and such. Worked out pretty well. In an unprepared meta, Manaless can be a wrecking ball. In a prepared meta, it's a little bit harder.

With the format shifting to Tribal again, I'm wondering if it's really that good right now. Dryad Arbor was the tits and enabled Dread Returns on turn two far greater than anticipated.

[NecroYawgmoth]

I know I'm very high on this card right now, but Ghoultree is super good out of the board against surgical + cage.

...unless they play Swords / Path

Hollywood, I am quite interested in your list, because Manaless is still my favorite deck, just barely playable. =( On a sidenote, is 1-2 Ghoultree in Manaless possible with Dryad Arbor?

[Fizzeler]

X-0'd the local with Manaless Dredge tonight in my return to Syracuse. Wound up beating RUG, U/r/w Delver, and U/w Miracles - drawing into the last round.

I played with four Dryad Arbor main-deck, with a board capable of handling Leyline and such. Worked out pretty well. In an unprepared meta, Manaless can be a wrecking ball. In a prepared meta, it's a little bit harder.

With the format shifting to Tribal again, I'm wondering if it's really that good right now. Dryad Arbor was the tits and enabled Dread Returns on turn two far greater than anticipated.

Congrats! I kinda agree, but dredge in general in an unprepared meta (this happened at a tourney I went to) can just 2-0 everything

Arbor, it seems interesting, with land grant can be fetched, I can see this leading to some explosive turns tbh

[Que]

I'm faded right now. Here is a list I came up with..

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

3x Ichorid
3x Putrid Imp
4x Narcomoeba
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Golgarig Grave Troll
4x Golgari Thug

4x Breakthrough
4x Careful Study
4x Faithless Looting
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Bridge from Below

SB:
1x Undiscovered Paradise
3x Firestorm
3x Ashen Ghoul
4x Nature's Claim/Chain of Vapor
4x Leyline of the Void


EDIT: i'll explian better when I sober up. x]

who wants to try Dispel as tech against Surgical Extraction? It'd be funny

[Vandalize]

HOLY CRAP MOTHERFUCKING JESUS OMG DAMN.

MY DREAM CAME TRUE, IT REALLY DID. OMG, I'M SO EXCITED.

I was playing against this douchebag with Canadian Threshold in Cockatrice, and I've FINALLY made my dream-dredging (if that makes any sense):

My Golgari Grave-Troll flipped this:

Narcomoeba, Narcomoeba, Bridge from Below, Dread Return, Bridge from Below, Narcomoeba.

DUDE, HOW AWESOME CAN THAT BE? I THINK I'M GOING TO EXPLODE IN JOY. I'M GOING TO PLAY BELCHER AGAINST TEAM AMERICA, NOW THAT I FEEL LUCKY.

[Vandalize]

who wants to try Dispel as tech against Surgical Extraction? It'd be funny

If you want to play for the lulz, counter Surgical Extraction with Nix. ROFL

[NecroYawgmoth]

If you guys want to "counter" Extraction with zero or one mana spells, please use Noxious Revival. It "counters" Extraction and can also recycle Moebas and screw up opponents Confidants. =P

@ Vandalize: I had some similar Dredge in my playtime, I opened with PImp against Maverick in G2 and Dredged my GGT into Moeba, Moeba, Bridge, Return, Therapy and Elesh Norn. *double-rainbow*

[Final Fortune]

I've not had problems with feeding Ichorid, but I end up using him differently than I would use him in something like LEDless Dredge. I use him to build tokens and administer the final blow. I don't use him for aggressive beats throughout the game.

The faster the dredge deck, the weaker Ichorid becomes. Essentially, when you are consistently flipping over a majority of your deck in a single turn, you really only need Ichorid for one (maybe two) turns in the majority of cases. In slower builds, Ichorid becomes far more important, as he is your essential grinding card. When you only flip 6 cards a turn, you need to get some action going early and be able to maintain that Ichorid action throughout the game, hence why a slower Dredge deck requires more Ichorids and also far more Ichorid fodder per Ichorid in the deck. LED Dredge, at this point, is stupidly fast. It is fast enough that going to 2 Ichorid is not insane, even if it is very likely suboptimal. It is fast enough that running 11 black creatures in total (including Ichorid) is sufficient.



I have tried cutting DR before. I really wish I could use that space for other things. Unfortunately, I've found the card too necessary.

Dread return's literal effect is useful in a non-trivial number of games, both pre and post board. I can't count the number of times I needed a Dread return to win the game and nothing else would do. Sometimes it's the massive token generation, sometimes it's having a giant GGT (or very rarely a Stinkweed Imp), and sometimes it's both. I won't cut all of them. I think going down to 1 is possible, but not optimal. Dread return's indirect effect, primarily as a sac outlet which generates tokens, is actually the most important part of the spell. If Dread return didn't do anything, but still had its flashback, the card would still be worth running. That's how valuable DR as sac outlet, particularly a big sac outlet, is in my eyes. The fact that DR gives me a couple blowout post-board targets in a some matches is often gravy.



LEDless is only unviable in a very weak sense, primarily in the sense that it is strictly worse or virtually dominated by another strategy (namely LED Dredge). I certainly believe LEDless can win many games (it isn't strongly unviable) - LEDless should regularly beat a significant portion of tier 1 and 2 decks. LEDless simply doesn't win as often as LED Dredge - that's the point I was going for.

To say that LEDless is a weaker deck pre-board is pretty much the same thing as saying that LED Dredge is strictly better. Those ~7 discard creatures are still available to LED Dredge post-board, it just means that there is slightly less sideboard space. That said, I'm not finding Tribes to be worth it. Even if I had a 25 card sideboard with Tribes in it, I just wouldn't board him in the vast majority of matchups.



Breakthrough is certainly a reliable way to discard your hand. Going Land, Breakthrough on T1 is obviously not preferred because it is slow. I do, however, Breakthrough to discard my hand and slow dredge in non-trivial number of games, particularly after mulligans.

Please note, however, that while Breakthrough is not the preferred initial discard outlet, it makes for a wonderful secondary discard outlet. Breakthrough relieves you of any trapped cards (Bridges, DR, Ichorid, extra dredgers or black creatures) in hand. Dredge often needs more than just an initial discard outlet to get the ball rolling. Breakthrough serves admirably in these occasions.

Let us not forget that Breakthrough for X=1 is still a decent play in many circumstances, acting as a way to dump our hand and leaving us with a card to go off with in many cases.



peace,
4eak

I think you're relying on Dread Return as a kill condition because you're forced to use your draw spells as discard outlets and just don't have enough gas and food to draw into your Ichorid(s) and support them. Honestly, if you're not playing 2xIchorid and either 3xDread Return and 1xFlayer of the Hatebournd or 2x Dread Return, 1xGriselbrand and 1xFlame Kin Zealot I don't think cutting Putrid Imp makes sense becuase you can't support Ichorid as a kill condition as opposed to a token generator and Golgari-Grave Troll isn't strong enough to end the game for you so Dread Return is a token generator as well and you're essentially "all in" on tokens and vulnerable to Mogg Fanatic.

There's something "wrong" with the list when you have to routinely use your draw step or Cabal Therapy yourself to position a dredger for a draw spell, let alone have to play with Dread Return in order to win game 1 at all.

I think playing Quad Lazer -1 Ichorid, -1 Putrid Imp for +2 Tarnished Citadel with 3 Ashen Ghoul and 1 Tarnished Citadel in the SB is about as consistent as I've gotten the list to "feel."

I think if you're trying to play the "Full Combo" list, one card you should look into is Hapless Researcher, because even tho' he is a watered down Careful Study he still costs U, bypasses Spell Pierce, triggers bridge tokens and increases the density of outlets and draw spells in the deck.

[Izor]

I have actually been looking into playing LED-less Dredge for a while now. While LED provides a level of explosiveness with Faithless Looting - in addition to being used as a discard enabler in conjunction with other draw spells and dredgers - I still kind of like dropping Tireless Tribe on turn one. A lot of decks right now (resurgence of Tribal, Aggro and RUG) have a hard-ass time dealing with it which is a really nice bonus to have.

I still, however, think that cutting Putrid Imp is a mistake and would never do it.

You're right, this is only one advantage of LEDless that many people forget. Being plain faster isn't necessarily better than being slower in some game 1's. Sounds strange, but especially against aggro strategies it's mostly better to drop Tribe on turn 1 and go off turn three than having no creaturs in play turn one and going off turn two.

I've lost my turn two kills with LED Dredge against that turn 1 Lackey on the play. No way this happens if the LED was a Tribe. He Lackey'ed in a SCG on turn two and removed 3 Bridges with 3 Moeba triggers on the stack.

I think I'm going to play LEDless next time there's a local tourney. It's probably a personal thing, but playing with Tribes feels just more smooth to me than LEDs. I'm not questioning that LED is probably the more powerful option in the current meta, though.

[Gui]

Just because one might board out LED's doesn't mean it isn't strictly the best card for game 1. Game 1, LED Dredge is king by a ridiculous margin. I've lost far more game 1's with LEDless than LED Dredge. Games 2 and 3, that's LEDless's only chance to catchup to LED Dredge. It doesn't though.

Boarding does matter, but not the way you've implied. LEDless has one major strength going for it in games 2 and 3; LEDless is generally thought to be pre-boarded, and thus may have more sideboard space than a comparable LED Dredge deck. I've not found the difference in sideboard space to really increase the odds of winning so much so that I would sacrifice the amazing game 1's that I get with LED Dredge.

I believe you got to the point here. The main difference from both lists is indeed be the increased space in LEDless sideboard, letting you enable for better fights against hate g2/g3, while LED is faster in g1.

As you said, maybe the sideboard isn't enough to catch-up with the advantage of being awesome on g1. While this may be true, I believe there's a lot to test before setting this on stone. First of all, Dredge sideboard seems to be one of its most complex issues to be addressed, with high variations from list to list. Inability to side correctly is a historical issue for Dredge, and in my view, this is the main problem, pushing LED to be better in this scenario where we don't really know what works in g2/g3.

Second, as you said yourself, there are different ways to build both decks. While I agree with you and play 14 lands in LED, I would play at least 15 in LEDless, and try to hit for the highest chance of combo in turn 2.LEDless can get close to LED in chances of combo until turn two, depending on how you build.

Thing is that LED players usually sacrifice more superfluous cards in favor of chance to combo, as in cutting all DRs or cutting Ichorids and PImps, while LEDless with 2 DR, a target, and less lands would drop the chances by a good chunk.