Breakthrough is more of an all in card than LED and won't help pay for soft counters. Try siding out Breakthrough versus Tempo decks.
It's definitely not more of an all in card than LED fwiw, you can get around soft counters just as easy with threat density as you can with LED and LED doesn't do anything on its own. Like I said, I really think it depends on what you're facing and whether or not you're on the draw, I'd rather have Breakthrough than LED vs RUG on the draw for sure if they're on Extraction for example.Originally Posted by joemauer
yea... all i really saw was him post a situation where you and vandalz idea was wrong... and then you both attack him... so you def need to get called out as well. You can feel free to deny that and attack me as well as much as you like, but you'll honestly just prove my point. Just keep the topic focused on the deck, leave personal attacks out of it. the forum doesn't need or want it.
secondly if you've tried sideboarding all alternatives, then im assuming you have tried sideboarding temp with LED's main... LED also does a lot of things by itself... like discard your hand... give you three mana... all things this deck wants. Breakthrough draws you four cards... and in the rare occasion lets you keep 1 ? I can't think of many situations where I've kept more then one card off of a breakthrough and this has been my deck for four years. Breakthrough is good when you have dredgers in the yard. But when your sideboarding i always side out some number of these if the matches can be grindy since they're not fantasic cantrips to dig for anti-hate with. your right as well, dredge is not a storm deck. But it is a combo deck... and needs to be played like one. setting up the combo and being able to dredge and accelerate your dredge are of the most importance, and LED allows for both of these on it's own by being able to discard your hand and give you mana. A topdecked LED when you can't slow dredge anymore cuz ur dredgers are in your hand is like one of the most busted draws. Secondly, No rug player will ever play 4 grafdiggers cage or 4 surgicals in their sideboard unless their playing at a local gaming store. it's just a waste of sideboard space when they have cantrips on top of cantrips to find their hate... so they'll prbably be playing 2. Thirdly, if were talking about RUG, this match up is in our favor 60/40 anyway because we play LED. go ask most RUG player's and they'll agree. American delver is a little harder because they play Rest in Peace, but they only play two in the side. This is because 4 rest in peace in any sideboard is a dead card. If anything most hate i've personally seen from american delver comes in the form of 2 rest in peace, meddling mages, flusterstorm and spell pierce... and in the RARE occasion stifle. Thats because they are all cards that can slow down dredge in certain situations that ill enable them to play rest in peace. BUG Delver would probably be the worst one to play against as they have counterspells and deathrite shaman, in this match up i can see firestorm being very good, but this goes back to the point if your firestorm gets countered ... what do you do ? You don't have gas and they have an active deathrite.
Personally I'm a fan of going fearless, I've almost never sideboarded in more then 3 or 4 anti-hate cards. and most of these sidebaords end up just being a diff dread return target, some number of nether shadows, or ancient grudge lol. All things i can play while dredging.
Hi guys, new poster here. I top'd 9 GP Providence way back in 2011 when mental misstep was legal and faithless looting and rest in peace hadn't been printed yet. Shortly thereafter, I took a hiatus from competitive magic as I started a PhD program. Recently, I've realized legacy in too sweet to stay away from and I'm starting to play dredge again.
I played in a legacy FNM tonight using Parcher's list (0 Dread Return version with Unmask in the board) and went 0-2, bye, drop after running badly, with quite a few mulligans and whiffed dredges. That being I came to some important conclusions about the deck.
First, now that the deck plays less lands due to LED/Faithless looting, the deck is really strained on when LED gets sided out. I think I like having access to at least 14 lands post-board.
Second, there are cards that beat you now. It used to be that you could make a bunch of guys, cabal therapy away their hand and then have a secure win next turn. This plan feels much less secure now that cards like Grafdigger's Cage, Rest in Peace and Terminus are seeing play. I ran into several situations where ichorids and zombies wouldn't win the game but Dread Return into Griselbrand + Flamekin Zealot would. For this reason, I'm tempted to test a larger dread return package. I was impressed by the performance of dread return in a manaless dredge deck that I faced.
Third, people still don't know how to play against the deck and that is going to lead to free wins.
I also have several questions:
What are the viable dread return packages and which is best in the current meta?
It seems most successful lists I've seen are either playing 2-3 dread return and 2-3 targets to ensure that you draw both pieces together or playing 0 dread return with 0 targets for consistency. I can see either being good, it's a trade-off between power and consistency. In theory, I like the idea of erring on the side of consistency, but after the deck under-performed tonight, dread returning Griselbrand sounds a lot more attractive.
What's the general sideboard plan and what is the reasoning behind it?
My current impression is that you side out LED and breakthrough against decks where you're going to be exchanging resources (ie creature decks) and bring in unmasks against decks you suspect have powerful hate cards like rest in peace. Then you take out a couple of bad cards and replace them with a couple of good ones.
What's the mulligan plan? Do you keep or mulligan the following hands on 7 cards? What about 6?
3 LED, 1 Golgari Grave-Troll, 2-3 irrelevant cards
1 City of Brass, 1 Breakthrough, 1 Faithless Looting, 1 Careful Study, 2-3 irrelevant cards
Congrats on making it through this wall of text and happy dredging!
-Dan
Last edited by dedicateddan; 02-02-2014 at 12:42 AM.
Did you feel your soul getting sucked out mortal kombat style when you realized you got 9th?
I knew I was likely dead for top 8 after going x-2-1 since my breakers weren't great. I was focusing more on hitting top 16, so missing top 8 wasn't so bad.
I will try to awnser your questions mate!
FIRST: hard question, as many of us preffer to use just the Dread return with no dedicated targets in the main deck, or even none at all, as reducing the package open up the opportunity to use more lands.
But I like the configuration of 2- dread return and 1 flayer of the hatebound, if you can find room for more be my guest, but I like to see it as an alternate wincon
SECOND: that's even harder, it really depends of what you expect to face, but in a neutral meta, or when trying to play it safe it would go something like this:
3-5 anti hate card
0-2 Dread return target (elesh norn or Iona, but any game breaking creature can fit here)
0-2 Dread return ( for those who use no copies in the main deck)
2-4 Combo hate (unmask, Thoughtseize, mindbreak trap, pithing needle)
2-4 firestorm
0-3 Extra creatures (ashen ghoul, nether shadow or even more copies of ichorid are pretty common)
0-4 Anti hate (coffin purge, leyline of the void, surgical extraction)
It does not allways follow this configuration, but it's a place to start if you are really lost
THIRD: Getting good with mulligans is one of the key aspects of the deck, you will mull A LOT, and even more deppending on your land configuration, that's why I'm not a fan of Dread return in the main deck, it makes you thin your deck to much of usefull options and broken starts.
but let's get to the awnsers!
HAND 1:3 LED, 1 Golgari Grave-Troll, 2-3 other cards:
are those cards draw spells? do you have a therapy or an land in those cards? I would keep this if I was on the draw and had some lootings but no lands, otherwise I would probably mull it.
HAND2: 1 City of Brass, 1 Breakthrough, 1 Faithless Looting, 1 Careful Study, 2-3 other cards:
Now that's an risky hand, not only you are full of cantrips but no dredgers, and a single land, you would be probably screwed if they use wasteland on you before you have the chance to get those key spells in, It's an hand that I would think twice before keeping it a big tour, but be aware that things could go very easy or terrible bad deppending on your opponent's hand.
Hope I helped man! Let's keep the deck awake!
Thanks for the input!
How often do you dread return the flayer of the hatebound versus golgari grave-troll. Do you feel that this gives you an edge in otherwise close games?
I've edited the sample hands to clarify that the extra cards are irrelevant cards that don't contribute to getting dredge set up like Ichorid or Narcomoeba.
HAND 1:3 LED, 1 Golgari Grave-Troll, 2-3 irrelevant cards:
So the line here is to play 3 LED, crack one on the upkeep of your second turn, dredge troll for 6, hoping to hit a looting and dredge into ~10 cards and another looting and then ~10 more cards. If you don't, you'll probably be dredging around 6 cards per turn.
I think you can do better on 7 and I'd keep on 6.
HAND2: 1 City of Brass, 1 Breakthrough, 1 Faithless Looting, 1 Careful Study, 2-3 other cards:
Critically, this hand has no dredger, the deadly sin of any hand. We get to loot 2 cards on the first turn, and another 2 on the second before possibly hitting breakthrough. If we hit a dredger in a hurry, we're in excellent shape, but if we miss or get wastelanded, the hand does nothing.
On 7, I think you can mulligan looking for hand with a dredge card. On 6 I think you have to bite the bullet and keep.
EDIT: Any other comments?
Last edited by dedicateddan; 02-02-2014 at 09:29 PM.
Hi all, played in a second local legacy tournament tonight and here's a tournament report and conclusions Ari Lax style.
The deck: Parcher's list card for card. (0 DR, 14 lands MD, unmask and wear/tear SB)
Round 1: Goblins
Game 1: He plays fetchland into shockland, simian spirit guide, warren instigator, which ends up trading with a putrid imp and a golgari thug. I end up dredging into all 4 bridges at once and amassing quite the hoard of zombie tokens. At 9 life, he almost manages to finish me by attacking with a bunch of 2/2's with a hasty goblin sharpshooter ready, but I end up surviving at 1 life.
Game 2: I crush him
1-0
Round 2: Belcher
Game 1: During shuffling, he flipped a Pyrretic Ritual, so I know he's on some sort of storm deck. On the play, I opt to looting, LED, flashback looting. I don't hit any therapies and he makes 10 goblins off empty the warrens. I make a couple of zombies every turn and keep him off of action with cabal therapy and he eventually loses.
Game 2: Unmask is very good against belcher, but not when the make 14 goblins on turn 1. I lose.
Game 3: We both mulligan and therapy and unmask keep him off action. He crucially declines to play a lotus petal on turn 1, we allows me to therapy it, keeping him off initial red mana. He eventually dies to a couple of 2/2s.
2-0
Round 3: Sneak and Show
Game 1: I mulligan and he show and tells in a Griselbrand on turn 2, followed quickly by a sneak attack and an Emrakul.
Game 2: I'm on the play and on turn 1, I cast cabal therapy, naming brainstorm to turn on future therapies. It hits, but he also has lotus petal, ancient tomb, show and tell and griselbrand for the turn 1 Griselbrand. I dredge a bunch and make a game of it, making a bunch of zombies and crucially hitting echoing truth with therapy. He ends up going to 1 off griselbrand and needs to find another echoing truth to survive as I have something like 25 zombie tokens now. I end reminding him to draw a card off ponder, a lotus petal, which he ends up playing and attacking with Griselbrand. This is a punt on his part, because I have ancient grudge in the yard, but I punt back by not using it. He ends up drawing 7, hitting echoing truth, nailing my tokens and then dropping a grafdigger's cage. Ouch. I would have won if I had used ancient grudge during combat.
2-1
Round 4: BUG Delver
Game 1: I'm on the draw and he's not applying pressure, so I put him on a hand full of answers and so I draw-discard-dredge. He seems frustrated with his draws, even after a brainstorm. I see a hand full of weak answers, like abrupt decay, and quickly hit 3 bridges and he scoops.
Game 2: He goes turn 1 grafdigger's cage on the play. I end up having therapy, therapy, grudge (my only out to cage), and he has a daze as his only unknown card. After the match, he had said he would have left the spell pierce (which I knew about) up if he didn't have daze.
Game 3: He makes a couple of delvers, I make a couple of 2/2's and crucially therapy away two tarmogoyfs. I hit some draw spells and my army of zombies grows. I'm at 5 life, he's at 8. I'm playing quickly and make a fairly major punt by sequencing a dredge in advance of a cabal therapy. This enables his use the abrupt decay (that I suspected he had) to kill a narcomoeba and give him live outs to a removal spell flipping his second delver and killing my last narcomoeba. He ends up bricking and I take a close match.
3-1
That was good enough for top 4 and some store credit. Of course, I ended up losing the promo Tromokratis, which is farrr more important.
Conclusions:
-Dredge is hard to play. The board states were typically complicated, close races with a lot of options in the graveyard. Although some games were one-sided, many were very close.
-Hate cards do matter now. It used to be that the most commonly played hate cards were tormod's crypt and relic of progenitus. This meant you used to be able to sideboard just an ancient grudge or two as a countermeasure. No longer. Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage are now the go-to hate cards of choice. This makes unmask and artifact/enchantment removal a must in the sideboard. Unmask is particularly impressive because it's good even if they don't have hate and turns on cabal therapy.
-Even though Rest in Peace is very powerful, it's also predictable. The white, non-graveyard based decks generally pack 2 copies. The fact that it costs 2 mana gives you time to catch it with unmask and set up therapies. If it sticks, you have a chance to hit it with enchantment removal or just go off before it's cast.
-Grafdigger's Cage is very unpredictable. It's a good cards against elves, dredge, and reanimator, so many decks are packing 1 copy in their sideboard. It's cheap mana cost and singleton nature make it resilient to cabal therapy. Crucially, it also dodges the flashback on ancient grudge. Some number of nature's claims are likely needed as a concession to cage.
-The quad lightsaber build is good, but 12 lands is far too few, especially if you plan on cutting the LED's against tempo decks. I played 14/1 lands in the MD/SB and I wouldn't recommend going below 13/1. I think I also want a fourth ichorid in the main, over perhaps the fourth careful study or signleton firestorm.
-Dread return seems good if it wins you the game on the spot, i.e. if you have several targets, but without targets, I'd rather play other cards. Cabal therapy did an excellent job of killing my creatures when needed.
Overall, how well positioned dredge is now depends very sensitively on the type and amount of hate that people are playing, especially grafdigger's cage. If people stop sideboarding cage for elves, dredge is in a much better spot.
Instead of Claim, why don't you try a mix of Wispmare and Ingot Chewer out of the board? Chewer dodges cards like Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce, while making tokens off of Bridge. Granted, it's not instant speed, but then again the merits are there.
Any 1 mana answer to artifacts would do. I was playing a list with wear//tear, which was quite subpar at killing artifacts.
The only hesitation I have with ingot chewer/wispmare is their narrowness. Wispmare is dead if they don't draw RiP, whereas something like nature's claim could hit batterskull.
Right now, I have 6 slots in the SB for artifact/enchantment destruction and typically bring in only 3 cards at a time, so I could see playing some crazy nature's claim/ingot chewer/wear-tear/ancient grudge split and bringing in the best answers for the matchup.
Hello everybody,
Does anybody know against which decks the gitaxian probes in drew tunison's dredge list (sb) come in?
And what gets taken out for them?
Thanks so much in advance for the help
Hi, I'm new to this thread and I would also like to understand sideboard options better. I'm used to Manaless Dredge, so it's really a whole new world!
Is Nature's claim the best anti-hate card? Is D&T the most difficult fair matchup, and how do you board against it? Do you have discard in the side and when do you bring it in?
Many thanks!
Death and taxes is by no means difficult. they play no permission and rely on natural draw steps or enlightened tutor to find rest in peace or what ever hate card. your entire plan against them is to blow them out as fast as possible by comboing off. Honestly claim is a good catch all, but i've come to prefer wispmare for takign out rest in peace and ancient grudge for taking out artifacts.
Can you explain why you prefer Wispmare over Nature's Claim? Are you running Nether Shadow/Ashen Ghoul in your 75 as well?
Also, what are the deck's worst MUs right now? And how is the 12Post MU in particular?
Here's my list for reference
creatures
4 grave troll
4 stinkweed
3 thug
4 narcomoeba
3 ichorid
3 putrid imp
2 street wraith
1 flayer
spells
4 LED
4 Bridges
2 breakthrough
4 careful study
3 faithless looting
4 cabal therapy
2 dread return
Lands
4 gemstone
4 colisseum
4 city's
1 tarnished citadel
sideboard
2 nether shadow
2 ancient grudge
3 wispmare
1 breakthrough
1 iona
1 elesh norn
2 firestorm
2 nature's claim
2noxious reviva/surgical extractionl (flex spots, these change between pithing needle and other garbage i test)
I prefer wispmare to nature's claim because most artificat hate are singletons. If they happen to draw it i can't do anything about it. Dredge hate these days has been streamlined into primarily deathrite shaman, Rest in Peace, and surgical. Shaman by itself isn't a problem. Rest in peace by itself is. Plus i play in a meta where miracles with maindeck rest in peace is a thing. Wispmare can kill a rest in peace through both spell pierce and counterbalance which has been very relevant for me. I run nether shadows in my sideboard as extra bodies for dread return and therapies when i'm facing a deck that run's surgical extraction.
As to the decks worst match ups, i would argue the only decks that really scare you are the decks that can kill you on turn one like OOPS and belcher, however both of these decks barely exist and if they give you a turn you are fairly well in the game, you can be just as fast as the and you run disruption in cabal therapy. In my own personal experience the one deck i have now and always will face dredging against will be Miracles, the deck itself has so many ways of just crippling our game plan and all it takes is one terminus to put all our moeba's and ichorids on the bottom of our deck if we play into it.
Match Up's that i would say aren't in our favor i'll list below
-belcher
- oops
-miracles
- tes
-reanimator
and that's about it... with enough practice you'll find dredge to be one of the most powerful choices in the format as game ones are ridiculously in your favor, and game two's are wholly reliant on the hate your oppoenent has and your abilitiy to play around it, after a while you'll gain the skill to just make a lot of hate useless.
I would add 12post to that list as well. Crop Rotation ---> Bojuka Bog is quite painful and they have Vesuva to keep making copies of the Bog. Along with Brainstorm and Top to hide their goodies from Cabal Therapy. It's obviously winnable but it's definitely an unfavorable matchup overall.
Team Hammafist-We don't take kindly to those who don't take kindly."Got any trade boogas?"
Hi there!
I was readding a lot of this forum, in dredge and manaless dredge, and I have a question, what is better, and in what metagame is better one or the other?
Thanks for all and continue dredging!! :D
It depends a lot on playstyle, but generaly speaking, in a meta with lots of U-decks, manaless is the deck with a higher resilience. If your meta has more fast combo, then LED-dredge is better.
Hi guys,
I have a question RE: chat over the last few pages.
I have a fairly typical LED-Dredge list, but my local is pretty hateful. Sure every deck runs gravehate, but it's the style of hate I see.
Game2 and 3 tend to be very difficult, as cards like RiP, Grafdiggers & Leyline are quite common.
I'm a dredge fanboy, so I might be to blame for that in some small part.
Anyways, seeing as the hate I see is typically a complete shutdown with a very tough (or impossible) way to play through it, is Tireless Tribe perhaps a better choice?
I too, find that LED is usually a card I side out.
> Could Tribe be a more flexible choice postboard, giving the deck a better game 2 and 3?
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