Chalice. Notice a whole two posts ago where it is mentioned Serenity kills their Chalice and Thorns?Originally Posted by sampi
Yeah. lands too. And Breakthrough. Or Careful Study, even.
~ Team Unicorn Motto
True. I should have been more observant there.
Has anyone had to fight through double thorn before? Getting to 4 mana is tough. I think DR ashen rider would be the other way of dealing with it.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
4 Mana? What are you trying to cast at 2 mana since we all know this deck is more anemic when it comes to casting anything more than CC1. In which case paying 3 mana is not completely farfetched as I've flashed back Faithless Looting before off natural land drops. Two thorns is a luxury, normally you just have to deal with the one, however, even with two on the board it shouldn't stop you from casting Putrid Imp which will allow you to bin your biggest dredger over and over. And unless they back up the thorns with pressure you're still going to be able to build an advantage without needing to actually cast any spells.
Considering Vandalize List (although pretty much the same as Parcher), what you guys think of this board?
4 Firestorm
4 Unmask
4 Nature's Claim
1 Dread Return
1 Ashen Rider
1 Griselbrand
HI evryone, I'm new to LED-dredge but I've been playing the deck online on cockatrice for a month or so and I've been playing manaless dredge for several months. This saturday there is a Legacy local and I'm lloking forward to participate to this event however I have little knowledge of the differents matchups, and thus, my sideboard. I read some pages of this thread and found it very interesting. Anyway if someone could tell me where i can find matchups analysis and sideboard plans I would be really grateful. Anyway is my current list:
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Street Wraith
4 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Mana Confluence
3 Breakthrough
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
1 Dread Return
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 City of Brass
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
//Sideboard
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Ashen Rider
SB: 1 Blazing Archon
SB: 1 Dread Return
SB: 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
SB: 2 Lotus Petal
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
Maindeck is pretty straightforward but my sideboard is still not finished, I'm not sold on the 4-of LoTV, but I seemed like a good card against Storm/reanimator, which i know are bad matchups, but I'd like to put in Firestorms...
Ina nutshell: Help me ! ^^
Thanks and sorry for my english, as I'm French ^^
Played in a local weekly. Went 3-1. My board sucked. I forgot how to board since it has been 2+ years since I have last dredged.
2-0; Storm: He whiffed game 1 and scoops. He mulled to 5 game 2, I stick an iona on black on turn 2
2-1; Sneak: Game 1 I did the thing. Game 2 he caged on 1 and then showed on 3. I did not bring in any anti hate. Game 3 a single zombie got in for like ten points of damage and I faded him drawing a fatty with an active sneak.
0-2; CB: I mulliganed to 5 and kept a bad to mediocre hand but it had pieces so did not want to go lower, did not do anything of value, game 2 kept a slower hand and got swords/terminus'd out
2-0; Grixis delver: We split but played some games. I vomit on turn 1 from a 6, he scoops. More of the same after he mulls to 5 in game 2 and I shred with Therapy.
Overall: My board and board plan needs work. Quad still gets it done. Never needed Dread main. Mulligan always. Unsure if anti hate is needed.
May or may not update with board ideas later once I sit on it some more.
Ive yet to see any video evidence of anti-hate winning a game. I think its more of a mental thing for dredge players rather than anything else.
Can't give you videos, but I've won many games due to Firestorm, Unmask, Nature's Claim and Fatties. But I understand your point, sometimes it cripples us more than help. I've also lost many games as well that I would've won if I was running main deck. But that's why someone like Parcher wins more games than I do: he tested more, knows the field better and how to side better, and sometimes it does means going main deck g3. And he have done it many times.
Now, from Vandalize/Parcher list, I am considering cutting the 2 Pimp for 2 Firestorm maindeck. Where it does the same (almost): discards cards. Where it helps: killing creatures g1, namely DRS (present in many DTB decks, but also infect creatures which could be a though matchup for us). Also, it open 2 SB slots (in my case), where I am considering 2 extra lotus petal. Where it doesn't help: less Ichorid food, one less creature that could help you DR (although irrelevant g1).
Overall, I am happy with the cost/benefit. I don't normally buy nut hands, and we all know DRS can win games alone in case we don't.
I agree that Shaman is a problem that does need to be taken into consideration game one. Firestorm is a fine addition to the main if it resolves. That's the issue I see. 14 is what I believe to be the minimum number of Black creatures to support Ichorid. So with what I've seen, you're going too low there. If you can kill Deathrite, it probably won't matter. But if they counter it, they can shut down both your offense, and your engine by just removing Black dredgers. Wraith is the best solution to Deathrite. it adds a small bit of speed, which is always important. Especially against Deathrite. It protects your dredgers, and feeds Ichorids. I don't run it, as it hurts consistency of opening hands. I believe the same way that you need a certain minimum of fodder creatures for Ichorid, you need a minimum number of discard outlets. And strictly as such, PImp is the best. He's slow, and his ability to reload after GY sweepers has been unneeded recently. Which is why you see him cut so often. But being basically the best single card at facilitating everything this deck wants to do game one makes him unparalleled in consistency. Which is what I care about more than anything else game one.
Last edited by Parcher; 05-25-2016 at 10:50 AM.
~ Team Unicorn Motto
Why do you say it hurts the consistency of opening hands? I think the deck itself is full of discard outlets - regardless of how worse some are over others - that will allow you to consistently bin a dredger on turn 1 and as part of our general rule we don't keep hands that don't have a least a land, an outlet (we didn't specify which), and a dredger anyway. We have Faithless Looting, Careful Study, LED, Cabal Therapy, and Breakthrough and I guess our end step if you're on the draw.
Also the Wraith main deck doesn't hurt the deck as much game 1 because most decks cannot interact with you that game anyway except for decks with DRS which is why we have the Wraith there (uncounterable and instant speed). Most of the time you're taking them out for cards that do something stronger against combo where Putrid Imp would have probably been cut anyway being slower in the those matchups.
Another thing to note against a "fair" deck: Sometimes I have a hand that has a Putrid Imp and a Careful Study/Faithless Looting, but only 1 land. In the past I've cast Putrid Imp so that I can bin Dredgers and then cast the Careful Study in my hand for extra dredging. But now I almost never want to do that because experience has shown me that my land will get hit with Wasteland and I wont actually get to cast that Careful Study which leaves me treading water slow dredging with the PImp. OR I cast the PImp turn 1 then on their turn they cast an Inquisition of Kozilek/Duress/Thoughtseize and take away my Draw spell and then again I'm left treading water slow dredging. OR I cast Putrid Imp on turn 1 and then I don't ever resolve that draw spell on my turn 2 since they will now have Daze/Spell Pierce up and again slow dredging.. I've just gotten tired of slow dredging xD
And at this point I'm not saying that having one over the other is correct as subjective as this deck is, but I like to defend my choices as you've done. Game 1s feel like a formality, however, the times that I have lost a game 1 have been due to unfortunate dredges rather than my inability to bin a dredger.
Wraith hurts consistency in opening hands because it is not a card that does anything this deck is trying to accomplish by itself. You can count it as another card simply due to the cycling. But that's like keeping a double Probe hand with Belcher and trying to draw into a win con. I already stipulated how good Wraith is directly against Deathrite. Unfortunately, most decks that run Deathrite, also run countermagic. Every discard outlet becomes vital since most players have realized it's worth the risk to snap counter the first outlet they see. Running less makes that a higher odds play. Running less obviously reduces the odds of you opening with any. And running less forces you to depend on poor outlets like Therapy and Bthrough. If you lead with Therapy on yourself, they will auto counter it. And it's not like resolving it is swell to begin with. Same with Breakthrough, which I've seen Wraith lists run less than 4 as well. Breakthrough doesn't even have any synergy with Wraith if you don't have a discard outlet. Both have a high chance of you bricking on your first dredge and being stalled for at least a turn. And going to your discard step vs Deathrite is useless if you don't have Wraith. Even if you do, if you brick on hitting a dredger, you're stuck slow dredging anyway.
I agree that PImp is slow vs. Combo. And I usually board them out. Though if running Petal, it can change that. You can discard and dredge T1 with PImp and any draw, and guarantee a body for Therapy. Against Wasteland, PImp is the best opening you can have. The odds of that first Study hitting another land are bad. So you want a way to continually bin dredgers. Not to mention that if you are stuck with just the Study as your action after a Waste, you usually have more than two cards you want to discard. You're forced to bin the dredgers to keep your engine going since you can't count on casting after a Waste. But you have that Ichorid and Bridge stuck in hand now. As you said; in game one the enemy has little to interact. If the deck can't keep dredging, even slowly, it may not matter since they can simply implement their own strategy without your interference. PImp even gives a body for Therapy to force through that Study past Pierce or such. You can wait a turn to be certain of this, since PImp attacking himself, plus the guarantee of the engine continuing applies pressure to the enemy. And if they Waste you, they're not killing the PImp. Which may fall into your plan anyway since you can sandbag Bridges.
EDIT: I probably doesn't matter in most builds anyway. If you are running 4 Looting, and 4 PImp, you do have the most discard outlets of any build. Straight Quadlaser. But with only 8 Rainbow lands, you only have a 51% chance of being able to cast either of those T1. Same with the Wraith builds if you're depending on 4 Loot 4 Therapy as your discard outlets. 8 off-color spells and 8 mana sources leaves only a 51% chance of having at least one of each.
~ Team Unicorn Motto
Yeah of course they know they have to stop the outlet, but unless they have a bevy of countermagic they can't get selective about which outlet they counter. They don't know that you aren't or are running a certain number of discard oultets, they will/should snap counter any of them to prevent the engine from even beginning. Like I said I will lose games because of poor dredging not because I wasn't able to start the engine. Unless of course my opponent just had all the disruption in the world (FOW, Daze, Spell Pierce, Wasteland..etc) in which case even PImp wouldn't have been able to help me.
Study might not hit a land, but ideally you're looking for more 1CC Draw Spells, Cephalid Coliseum, Breakthrough, Stree Wraith and even LEDs so there is definitely a lot of different action we can draw. Even lands aren't the worst allowing us to cast Narcos or Thugs or even flashback Faithless at times, but thats less common. I have gotten into situations that I've had cards "stuck" in my hand be them Ichorids, BfB, or Dredgers, but I don't feel thats a huge detriment considering were more streamlined in card choices. I feel like the times you have cards like BfB or Ichorid stuck in your hand was from openers that unless was filled with other saucy stuff you would have mulled anyway because they're virtually mulls already (were not casting BfB or Ichorid which makes them dead in our hand and would yours as well unless you did have PImp). Which just leaves dredgers, but often a times I can also Therapy them out of my own hand if I really need to.
Maybe I'm beating a dead horse as it seems like under certain conditions there are strong arguments for and against both PImp and Street Wraith. And I understand where you're coming from. Which is why at times I've even thought about putting in a miser's Phantasmagorian in this build for those situations, its just that I've never felt it was a huge struggle having a few cards stuck in the hand. Though discarding in multiples of 3 for Phantasmagorian may be more difficult to meet than I'm thinking idk.
[Side Note]
Also I consider bricking on any dredges as one of those unfortunate events/poor dredges scenarios.
What matchups is Griselbrand the target for?
What permanents are you tagging with ashen rider?
Am I crazy for always wanting Iona?
Just trying to figure out which 1-2 targets to play in SB for DR targets. I mainly just don't know when I want Griselbrand.
I guess I'll field this one. I run Griz mainly just to act as a far, far better Sphinx of Lost Truths. It's for any match where I just need to combo as quickly as possible. His stats are just a bonus. His secondary use is against some decks like Miracles. Where they might threaten Terminus and you want to use his ability to just draw and refill your hand in case they can follow up the sweeper with GY hate. Technically, you can also do some absurd, win-more stuff with Firestorm. I've had six+ zombies trapped under an Ensnaring Bridge vs Painter. Dread Griz, draw 14(up to 19), play a second land, Firestorm for 8, in response Firestorm for 8.
Rider is primarily there for Lands. They have so many different ways to mess with us that we can't interact with that Rider just blows through. They can have both Tabernacle and Chasm set up, and you can remove Chasm, and even let Tabernacle remove itself during your next upkeep. And since it exiles, they can't get either of those singletons back. It's also there for decks where you might not worry about direct hate, but need to deal with other permanents. Painter for instance might have only 1 RiP and 1 Crypt, which you might deal with, and then they drop Bridge. Rider is great against Sneak for obvious reasons. But they sometimes run Leyline of Sanctity. Your plan is to rip apart their hand to stop their combo primarily. So you can Show in Rider, or you can go off, Rider away their Leyline, and rip their hand apart. It's also immune to Karakas vs Miracles or DnT. I often use it vs Miracles just to hit lands. To guarantee they can't Terminus, or play RiP. It's also the safest target vs. Reanimator since you don't care about them getting it much. The life loss from Reanimate hurts them far more than a 5/5 hurts you, and the exile trigger is poor. He only comes in about 5-6 matchups. But if you Griselbrand into Rider by turn two, there is no realistic combination of cards any deck could put together to beat that.
~ Team Unicorn Motto
Thanks for the run down. I was boarding into Iona(white) versus miracles but I guess griselbrand does the same thing when on the go real fast plan. I was mainly trying to narrow down to two targets, and trying to figure out which of the three I wanted. much appreciated.
Iona would be my third choice, so you're on the right track. Griz makes it unnecessary vs stuff like Storm though. And it doesn't do enough vs colorless stuff. Lands, Bridge, Platinum, etc. It does blow out Miracles and DnT. Unless they hit Karakas. But if it's early enough they probably can't Karakas AND RiP the same turn. Again, the inability to discard or destroy lands is the main reason. Terastodon is a close second. But I've had them have Exploration and/or Mox hands where they can Loam back Chasm and fight their way back. Also on the rare occasion you need to remove a creature. Not only can't the Don do it, you don't lose Bridges from Rider removing one.
~ Team Unicorn Motto
As a preface to what I'm about to say, I'm running four Ichorids in my main because beatdowns are often more effective than shooting for a combo (esp. when people keep Extracting things). As a result, whether a creature is black plays no small part in my assessment of its place in this deck. I also continue to run 2x Dread Return and a G-Brand in my maindeck because they're all excellent cards that are more likely to blow the game wide open than they are to fizzle or durdle.
The approach I take to Griselbrand is "when would I NOT want him?" rather than "when would I want him?"
Generally speaking, Griselbrand is the best target you can have for Dread Return if you don't need to kill the opponent immediately. It gives us enough dredging power to dump our entire deck any time we want to; it has Lifelink, and it flies (both extremely important for facing a number of "decks to beat"); and it's black, making it an Ichorid feeder.
If you want to win immediately, FKZ, Flayer of the Hatebound, and Kolaghan are better cards to return. But it's not common that you need to run one of those cards because the only decks we need to T1 are other decks that aim to T1 us (Belcher, All Spells, PSI, and occasionally Storm or the like). Sometimes a deck will assemble a killer combo the turn after we've made 6-24 zombies, but it's rare in my experience.
Essentially, G-Brand's draw-7 pretty much reads "we win" if our opponent doesn't have us dead next turn. It does become overkill in a lot of games, but overkill is better than losing. And there are a number of fringe situations in which it'll pull the game for us, even against otherwise hideously powerful plays from the opponent. The example that comes to mind is Show and Tell: I've gotten S&T'd for Emrakul on turn 2 (3?) with no plays, but I had a G-Brand in hand, so I could play out everything and win because I got an attack step before the opponent did.
Ashen Rider, Iona, Blazing Archon, and FKZ are all excellent secondary choices for sideboard Return targets. I'm less and less enthused about Elesh Norn simply because the other choices above seem to handle threats better and give us added benefits that Elesh often can't provide, but keep in mind that they're all such situational cards that they're not worth running in the main (unlike G-Brand). By no means is Elesh a bad card; it just feels a bit less effective against most decks (obv. excluding Elves, Merfolk, Gobbos, and MonasteryPyromancer.dec) than our other options.
Ashen Rider doesn't really have specific, match-independent priority targets; it's a bit of a catch-all for handling permanent threats we wouldn't expect or that would totally shut us out if they were to stay on the board. (Note that it's no use to bring it in against Leyline, RiP, etc. because we don't have a reasonable means of casting it.) Another big bonus is that Rider is black, so it also fuels Ichorid. Essentially, it's our answer to Moat, Ensnaring Bridge, True Believer clones, Tabernacle, etc.
Iona's fantastic. I absolutely will keep it in my 'board simply because of the number of decks that can't beat it. It's no good in the main, though; there are too many decks that shrug off an Iona to make it worth maindecking (e.g. Eldrazi/MUD, fast combo, the mirror match), and it's not a black creature.
Blazing Archon is a beast in some of those matchups, esp. Eldrazi, which needs a minimum of two spells (that effectively cost 2-6 life each) to kill it. I don't know whether it's necessary, but it feels to me like a strict upgrade over Elesh Norn for certain matchups.
FKZ is probably the best of the trio of "insta-win" creatures. Kolaghan's black, which is an upgrade, but it stacks damage less effectively if you've got 6+ attacking creatures (if you're reanimating an instakill creature, you should have more than 6 creatures on the attack). Flayer's extremely strong, but it requires more work to activate it for the kill (minimum of two Dread Returns in the same turn plus Trolls), and it gets cut off by arbitrary strategies/cards like Leyline of Sanctity. Worth pointing out that it can snipe hate-creatures, but it can't snipe any other type of permanent (which Rider can do).
In short, Iona's great against a ton of decks容.g. Pox/X-Rack, Berserk Poison, D&T, Burn傭ut you don't really need it game 1 against anybody, and it's easy for opponents to play around it if they're running a deck with a relatively even color weight (Delver variants, Miracles, etc.). G-Brand is unquestionably your best reanimation target barring circumstances in which you need a permanent gone or you need to swing for ≥20 right away. The red bros listed above are all good for instant kills, but you'll need to do that rarely.
[EDIT: What other stuff are you running in your sideboard that you think is more useful than a third target for reanimation? Aside from artifact/enchantment hate, the reanimation targets are the most crucial component in my experience, which is one reason I'm running two Returns in the main. For the record, I'm still opposed to running Abrupt Decay or Firestorm; they sound much better than they actually are.]
I only run 2 targets. I am just trying to figure out which two.
Board is
2 targets
2 dread returns
3 petal
4 firestorm
4 ?
the ?'s vary from Claim to Leyline to Unmask to Serenity to Wear//Tear to Echoing truth.
I often board in 6 cards if I want to go fast and sometimes 7, still working out what I take out but it has often been 4 study, a land, and an ichorid or two.
I find firestorm to be one of the better answers versus DRS but like any answer its MMV. At least it does damage and discards, which gives it some more legs than other enchantment answers.
There may be a world where in SB games you just build to be hyper fast with more free dudes and hope they don't have it. Outrace a DRS, dodge leyline all day, etc. May need some tuning on how to streamline the deck to be better against slow eaters like DRS.
I just purchased my plane ticket for Grand Prix Columbus. Anyone here going?
Would love to meet up and talk shop with y'all!
#dredgeisalifestyle
Well done, Que.
TEAM MtG Berlin
"Dredge isn't a deck, it's public masturbation with graveyard triggers."
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
