Im thinking about sanctity myself after losing straight rounds to burn with gnaw in hand all post g1.
I guess it makes sense to hedge against Burn now since Dredge mirrors are infrequent. What else would you bring the leylines in against though? Do we really care about T1 discard from Abzan/Jund? Or is it specifically for the Burn matchup?
Its probably mostly for Ad neaseam. They can still win via milling themselves, but you can conflag for that, and they probably didnt board in that combo.
I top 4 the US wmcq, lost to Sam black on death shadow. Went 8-1 in the Swiss, almost 300 players. Deck was great, dodged the hate and drew well. I'm too tired to post a report now but here is my list:
4 bloodghast
4 narcomeaba
4 prized amalgam
4 golgari grave troll
4 stinkweed imp
3 life from the loam
1 darkblast
I'm thinking so hard about my Conflagrate plan and sweating on finding it that in my flashbacked Faithless Looting two draw two LfTL I remember the Narcomoeba trigger but skip past my end step, forgetting to return 3 Prized Amalgams... I wanted a hole to crawl into after that missed trigger. It turned the tempo of the game as he topped removal for the Stinky and could start attack with Kalitas without fear of a swingback. 1-1
Ok, so time to enlighten, well, probably a lot of people depending on how many views this post gets.
When you bring back a ghast, narco, haunted dead, whatever: point at your Amalgams and say "trigger". If you do that, you literally can't miss their return trigger for roughly the rest of your opponent's turn. It's really that simple. As long as you acknowledge their trigger to create a delayed trigger, even if you forget to get them back on your end phase, the judge will just have your opponent choose whether they ETB immediately or at the beginning of the next phase.
Source: I am a L2 judge, and regularly read nerdy ***** such as this right here...
I'm thinking so hard about my Conflagrate plan and sweating on finding it that in my flashbacked Faithless Looting two draw two LfTL I remember the Narcomoeba trigger but skip past my end step, forgetting to return 3 Prized Amalgams... I wanted a hole to crawl into after that missed trigger. It turned the tempo of the game as he topped removal for the Stinky and could start attack with Kalitas without fear of a swingback. 1-1
Ok, so time to enlighten, well, probably a lot of people depending on how many views this post gets.
When you bring back a ghast, narco, haunted dead, whatever: point at your Amalgams and say "trigger". If you do that, you literally can't miss their return trigger for roughly the rest of your opponent's turn. It's really that simple. As long as you acknowledge their trigger to create a delayed trigger, even if you forget to get them back on your end phase, the judge will just have your opponent choose whether they ETB immediately or at the beginning of the next phase.
Source: I am a L2 judge, and regularly read nerdy ***** such as this right here...
Really? Oh, then I got done in because at my event I realised such during my opponents draw step and I called the judges myself.
They specifically asked my opponent if I had announced a trigger for my prized amalgams when the Narcomoebas had come in, which I did and to which he confirmed.
They went off and conferred and informed me that I had missed a trigger and that it was up to my opponent if he wanted to put the trigger on the stack, which he declined. So it was a missed trigger and we continued.
That's pretty disappointing. Shame you weren't on the judging panel for our event...
It's not something even most judges would know, because there are so few cards that create delayed zone change triggers. The only two I know off hand are Obzedat, Ghost Council and Prized Amalgam. Obzedat because I played that standard and it was the card that got that change implemented. Amalgam because I play Dredge a lot. It's something you as a dredge player need to learn and remember, specifically so you can educate judges that don't know.
Edit: Actually, I even had it a little wrong. According to:
“If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.”
You have forever to remember to bring it back. In reality, your opponent would have to confirm that you definitely remembered the initial trigger, and after a couple turns it's reasonable that they just won't remember.
So i've been running 2 Spellskite in my sideboard and it's superb. Very good against Infect,Burn,Suicide Zoo,Bogles & Small Zoo which are called to be our worst matchups. A solid blocker against Zoo. Stealing some pumps against infect and suicide zoo. Getting some armors against Bogles, and a Nature's Claim target if you desperately needs life (against Burn). What are your thoughts? Might buy another 1 since i have 1 free slot on my board.
Here's my sideboard:
1 Darkblast
1 Lightning Axe (also have 1 mainboard)
2 Nature's Claim
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
2 Spellskite
1 Gnaw to the Bone
1 Free
just like @dinausorus (congrats by the way!!!), i also lost in the top 4 of my wmcq. Although mine was sixty-some people and only 6 rounds. Meta is pretty defined and predictable, we all know each other and what we´re playing. I knew coming in that there would be almost no copies of dredge, since cards are tough to get, and therefor also almost no hate. Practiced around 500 games on xmage, which payed off as well. People misplayed, sideboarded and kept incorrectly, triggered my bridges for free etc etc. Still lost to melira combo in between rounds and in the top 4 to the same person.
Beat living end (first game of the turnament on a mull to 3 on the play), hatebears, burn, and bant eldrazi. Beat burn in the top 8 and then lost to melira.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A huge thanks to Argetlam and the guys at Hakai studios for this awesome banner
I tried Engineered Explosives before, no doubt that it's really good but i only board it in against Zoo or Suicide Zoo so i dropped it. I tried it against Merfolk but i always ended up killing my Narcomebas too (since i always put 2 counters in EE) thus slowing my clock or potential blockers. Based on my experience, EE is not good against Infect (diff casting cost) and Boggles (totem armors) matchup which is right now i'm looking for answers. Skite is a decent blocker against Suicide Zoo, stealing Temur Battle Rage if they tried to make it trample. Spellskite is "ok" (not very good but not too bad) too against Burn, the lesser the damage the better & a good blocker.
I really don't think Skite is the answer to infect and burn, it's certainly solid vs suicide zoo and bogles, but ultimately it still suffers from "has to be drawn" syndrome. Granted, with the new Cathartic Reunion we have much more dig than ever before, but I still think that if a card can't be cast from GY or easily fetched from the graveyard, we might want to reevaluate boarding it at all. That's why I began running bogs vs the mirror instead of leyline. I think Gnaw to the Bone and Vengeful Pharaoh are both solid against Burn and Suicide Zoo, and meanwhile Darkblast and Conflagrate and Haunted Dead are great vs Infect. I was also considering side boarding some ghost quarters, since land-based hate cards are probably our easiest to access reliably via life from the loam, and GQ is solid vs Infect, Affinity, Jund/Junk, Grixis, etc.
Ive been really tempted to run a singleton ghost quarter as well, with the 3 loams we have on the norm. However seeing as were really tight on the manabase, i cant justify fitting it into the 20 enough. Maybe if i go 21 lands? Or if i free up a sideboard slot.
Huanted dead single handedly rocks the infect matchup. Darkblast too. I run a single in my main of both just for that. I side in an axe, a grudge, 2 decays, and a EE, and I start really feel like being favored with out stressing my deck so much I lose cards for other matchups. Something I noticed alot of people DONT do early is actually cast Stinkweeds. There are plenty of times I dont just go "6 dredge is the most! Dredge troll" and I go "5 is still good, dredge stinkweed, cast stinkweed. Come attack."
Sometimes its about the play, not the cards. Stinkweed happens to be STUPIDLY good stopping the single threat from coming through. Troll happens to be the answer to late game angers and wraiths. I often early game dredge my loam, simply so I have 8 cards in hand to discard a troll. You need to know how to work the dredge cards for more than just mill at times.
I top 4 the US wmcq, lost to Sam black on death shadow. Went 8-1 in the Swiss, almost 300 players. Deck was great, dodged the hate and drew well. I'm too tired to post a report now but here is my list:
4 bloodghast
4 narcomeaba
4 prized amalgam
4 golgari grave troll
4 stinkweed imp
3 life from the loam
1 darkblast
2 dakmore salvage
2 shivan reef
2 copperline gorge
1 mountain
4 city of brass
4 gemstone mine
4 mana confluence
Sideboard
4 lightning axe
3 ancient grudge
2 gnaw to the bone
2 darkblast
1 rally the peasants
2 collective brutality
1 natural state
Tome scour was great all day.
I'd love to see a report, congrats on the result! I'm glad to see successful testing of tome scour, I was really curious a out trying a rainbow build with tome scour and cathartic reunion, I feel like that has lots of potential.
So today, I just played a few matches with Raven's Crime and Cathartic Reunion. Mom Hugs is the real deal. I have to play more matches to gauge the consistency and decision trees, but I almost milled half my library by chaining Grave-Trolls together. Raven's Crime, I believe, occupies the same slots as Darkblast does. Similarly, those who might be interested in Flame Jab can utilize the same slots. The biggest advantage that Darkblast has over Raven's Crime is that it dredges, adding to our strategy. However, Raven's Crime hurts combo decks bad since they can't maintain a hand for long and need to rely on topdecks. Flame Jab has an advantage over control and aggro decks since it's recurring damage. It can handle more creatures than Darkblast and can even be used as a mini Conflagrate.
So for people who like to try to Min/Max this deck, your two-of slot is either of those 3. My suggestion might be to replace Darkblast with Flame Jab and leave Raven's Crime in the SB. We have enough dredge power with Cathartic Reunion to not need too many dredgers and we can treat Loam+Jab like Darkblast.
if you have faithless looting and neonate... which card is the best start?
do you prefer starting dredging in the first turn with neonate, or discarding a troll with faitless?
That really depends on a whole lot of things.
1. How many creatures do you have in hand that you want to dump into the yard? Having an amalgam and ghast already might make you want to go looting first.
2. How good/big is your dredger? If the dredger you are discarding is just a loam you are probably better of going with the looting and hoping to find a better dredger. If you have a dredge 5 or 6 you might rather go neonate so you can start dredging on your second draw step already and have a good shot at maybe finding more dredgers that will let you dredge with your looting as well. Another bonus is that neonate gives you a shot at hitting amalgam + moeba for 4 power as early as turn 1.
3. How many lands do you have in hand? Sometimes you keep a one lander and you would rather just looting first to have some more looks at land.
4. What do you know about your opponents deck? Sometimes you would rather save the looting should you need to find an important sideboard card.
I don't think there's a clear cut answer. I know a lot of people seem to think looting is always correct but as you can see I don't agree.
I was curious on this and decided to map out a probability tree so see what outcomes could come of such a hand. (Disclaimer: I'm not a mathematician, I just like learning online and giving things a go. So I could well have made mistakes here).
Lets assume we're on the play and our opening hand is Land, Land, GGT, Neonate, Faithless Looting, Prized Amalgam & Bloodghast.
Leading with Neonate
T1: Land + Neonate, sac the Neonate in opponent's Main 2 to benefit from a possible end step resolution. We can either find an additional dredger or whiff.
If we whiff, T2: Draw (Is it another R enabler?). If not. Faithless Looting, draw 2 and hope for another R enabler. Discard GGT plus likely an additional dredge. Go off T3. We're likely starting Main 1 of T3 with 6+1+2+6=13 additional cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+T3Draw) seen/dumped beyond our original hand.. 40 cards left in the deck.
If we have another R enabler then we're ok, dredging the discarded GGT and likely finding another dredge on the second enabler to develop in the middle of T2 that'll also guarantee a GGT to dredge for the T3 draw step. So we're likely starting Main 1 of T3 with 6+1+2+10+6=25 cards seen (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+AVGFaithess/Neo+T3Draw).
Quickly running the numbers is seems that the likelyhood of drawing the second R enabler is close to 50/50. So overall we can have an EV of approximately (13+25)/2 = 19 in this scenario which'll occur about 20% of the time (the rate that GGT will whiff).
If we hit, then T2 Draw extra dredge for a generous average of 5. Is there another Dredge in the yard to start Faithless Looting well? If so, Faithless Looting Dredge + possible Dredge Again/Generic Draw. Discard at least GGT + another Dredge for a nice setup in T3 or, if unlucky on the first Looting Dredge and lucky on the top deck, a second R enabler dredge chain. The likelihood of starting Faithless Looting on a Dredge in this scenario is high at 85% if we're dredging 5, 72% if we're averaging the dredge outcomes to 4.25. So in this best case scenario, which'll happen 72-85% of 80% of the time we'll be likely digging 6+5+5+5+6=27 cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+Faithless+T3Draw).
If we don't find the additional dredger then we've drawn 6+5+5+1+6=23 cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+BadFaithless+T3Draw).
Really lucking out would mean we hit a dredge for the first card of Faithless Looting, then natural draw the second card into a second R enabler allowing another chain for +11 cards. Plausibly allowing us to be 34-38 cards deep by the start of T3.
Overall, we have about a 65% likelihood of seeing near the ceiling of 23-27 cards by T3. A 20% chance of a floor of 13ish cards. And an exceptionally low chance of a super high ceiling of 35ish cards.
Leading with Faithless Looting
T1: Land + Faithless Looting. Do we draw a second dredge card to discard (assuming we always want to, to maximise the size of our dig)? This'll happen 40% of the time.
If we whiff, discard GGT + random. T2 Dredge GGT, finding a second dredger only relevent here for the T3 draw as we have the GGT to discard to Neonate regardless. Neonate, discarding GGT and dredging. T3 draw on the 97% likelhood of finding an additional dredger from 12 dredged cards so lets call it a certainty. If so, we've dug 2+6+6+6=20 (Faithless+T2Draw+Neonate+T3Draw) cards deep. Plus we have an additional payoff card discarded from Faithless Looting whiffing on a 2nd dredge card.
If we hit, discard GGT + another Dredger. T2 Dredge GGT, discard GGT to Neonate, have an certain dredge on the T3 draw. 20 cards deep.
TLDR; Faithless Looting is the workhorse if played, giving a consistent 20 cards in the yard by the start of T3 + 1 additional card of your choice (Amalgam, Bloodghast etc). Neonate is the primadonna, if things go poorly you could be as few as 13 cards deep by the start of T3, average a couple more than Faithless Looting, or have up to 35 cards if Magical Christmas Land is your residence. You don't get an additional discard of your choice from your hand though.
Important Notes: All of this is on the assumption that you start with a GGT that gives you the highest odds of hitting a dredge chain, 80%. Stinky is 73%, LftL & Darkblast are 54% & Dakmor is 40%. A straight topdeck is 22%. All of this is on the assumption there are 12 live hits in the deck (ie you don't have any additional dredgers in your hand already).
All of this also assumes a high return on dredges (I was working on 5 cards a dredge rather than a statistical average of 4.25 cards, as that number flexes according to which dredge cards are live in the graveyard and gives me headaches).
Given all of this, IVG I think you're right. I never realised the variance in Neonate and that I could decide in a matchup where I was desperate for speed that he could be the play. Things do change again if you have a more reliable Tormenting Voice / Cathartic Reunion as your T2 play. But I think in this scenario with two 1drop enablers I need to think more carefully. Thanks for the heads up on that.
Whoops, I was re-reading my post just then and realised already that I stuffed up.
I didn't incorporate the odds of drawing a second one R enabler from the T1 Faithless Looting to setup a stronger T2 play.
From our draw 2 there is a 20% chance of drawing an additional Faithless or Neonate for an average of 6-12 additional cards (51,6,2,1). Averaging it at 9 I should've added about 1.8 cards of Expected Value on what I had written up for Faithless.
So Faithless has a floor of 20 cards, a ceiling of 32 10% of the time, 26 a further 10% of the time too. Which puts its average expected value pretty much on par with Neonate, so the differences we're looking at are probability and range.
It's not something even most judges would know, because there are so few cards that create delayed zone change triggers. The only two I know off hand are Obzedat, Ghost Council and Prized Amalgam. Obzedat because I played that standard and it was the card that got that change implemented. Amalgam because I play Dredge a lot. It's something you as a dredge player need to learn and remember, specifically so you can educate judges that don't know.
Edit: Actually, I even had it a little wrong. According to:
“If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.”
You have forever to remember to bring it back. In reality, your opponent would have to confirm that you definitely remembered the initial trigger, and after a couple turns it's reasonable that they just won't remember.
Actually, according to IPG 2.1:
Triggered abilities that do nothing except create delayed triggered abilities automatically resolve without requiring acknowledgment. Awareness of the resulting delayed trigger must be demonstrated at the appropriate point.
That means that not pointing out Amalgams' triggers cannot be the reason to assume that Amalgam trigger was missed.
Triggered abilities that do nothing except create delayed triggered abilities automatically resolve without requiring acknowledgment. Awareness of the resulting delayed trigger must be demonstrated at the appropriate point.
That means that not pointing out Amalgams' triggers cannot be the reason to assume that Amalgam trigger was missed.
That's interesting. It certainly reduces the amount of information we need to provide to our opponents. If they didn't see the Amalgams in the gy, we can get the element of surprise.
Huanted dead single handedly rocks the infect matchup. Darkblast too. I run a single in my main of both just for that. I side in an axe, a grudge, 2 decays, and a EE, and I start really feel like being favored with out stressing my deck so much I lose cards for other matchups. Something I noticed alot of people DONT do early is actually cast Stinkweeds. There are plenty of times I dont just go "6 dredge is the most! Dredge troll" and I go "5 is still good, dredge stinkweed, cast stinkweed. Come attack."
Sometimes its about the play, not the cards. Stinkweed happens to be STUPIDLY good stopping the single threat from coming through. Troll happens to be the answer to late game angers and wraiths. I often early game dredge my loam, simply so I have 8 cards in hand to discard a troll. You need to know how to work the dredge cards for more than just mill at times.
Yep. Good points on both counts. Haunted Dead is so good in tricky creature matchups that I think it's best to hedge against them.
Against Suicide Zoo which I inexplicably won, Game 2 went long because he couldn't find his Temur Battle Rages while I was just hardcasting Stinkweeds.They don't have much removal (same goes for Infect and Bogles)) pre or postboard so it's always a good idea to hardcast the Stink.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern
Dredge, Evo-Chord, U/G Faeries, Living End, Something New
Right, you don't have to announce the first trigger, but if you forget to bring it back during the end step, you have not demonstrated awareness at the appropriate time, so you'll miss the trigger completely. If you do announce the initial trigger, you can't miss the important one.
Its probably mostly for Ad neaseam. They can still win via milling themselves, but you can conflag for that, and they probably didnt board in that combo.
4 bloodghast
4 narcomeaba
4 prized amalgam
4 golgari grave troll
4 stinkweed imp
3 life from the loam
1 darkblast
4 faithless lootings
4 insolent neonate
4 tome scour
2 tormenting voice
1 rally the peasants
2 conflagrate
2 dakmore salvage
2 shivan reef
2 copperline gorge
1 mountain
4 city of brass
4 gemstone mine
4 mana confluence
Sideboard
4 lightning axe
3 ancient grudge
2 gnaw to the bone
2 darkblast
1 rally the peasants
2 collective brutality
1 natural state
Tome scour was great all day.
Ok, so time to enlighten, well, probably a lot of people depending on how many views this post gets.
When you bring back a ghast, narco, haunted dead, whatever: point at your Amalgams and say "trigger". If you do that, you literally can't miss their return trigger for roughly the rest of your opponent's turn. It's really that simple. As long as you acknowledge their trigger to create a delayed trigger, even if you forget to get them back on your end phase, the judge will just have your opponent choose whether they ETB immediately or at the beginning of the next phase.
Source: I am a L2 judge, and regularly read nerdy ***** such as this right here...
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2013/02/tournament-tuesday-zone-change-triggers/
Really? Oh, then I got done in because at my event I realised such during my opponents draw step and I called the judges myself.
They specifically asked my opponent if I had announced a trigger for my prized amalgams when the Narcomoebas had come in, which I did and to which he confirmed.
They went off and conferred and informed me that I had missed a trigger and that it was up to my opponent if he wanted to put the trigger on the stack, which he declined. So it was a missed trigger and we continued.
That's pretty disappointing. Shame you weren't on the judging panel for our event...
My Builds
W: Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
WB: Karlov of the Ghost Council
WR: Anax & Cymede
WUG: Phelddagrif
Others' Builds that I've Enjoyed
WUB: Chromium
Edit: Actually, I even had it a little wrong. According to:
“If the triggered ability is a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object, resolve it. For these two types of abilities, the opponent chooses whether to resolve the ability the next time a player would get priority or when a player would get priority at the start of the next phase. These abilities do not expire and should be remedied no matter how much time has passed since they should have triggered.”
You have forever to remember to bring it back. In reality, your opponent would have to confirm that you definitely remembered the initial trigger, and after a couple turns it's reasonable that they just won't remember.
Here's my sideboard:
1 Darkblast
1 Lightning Axe (also have 1 mainboard)
2 Nature's Claim
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
2 Spellskite
1 Gnaw to the Bone
1 Free
Beat living end (first game of the turnament on a mull to 3 on the play), hatebears, burn, and bant eldrazi. Beat burn in the top 8 and then lost to melira.
A huge thanks to Argetlam and the guys at Hakai studios for this awesome banner
I tried Engineered Explosives before, no doubt that it's really good but i only board it in against Zoo or Suicide Zoo so i dropped it. I tried it against Merfolk but i always ended up killing my Narcomebas too (since i always put 2 counters in EE) thus slowing my clock or potential blockers. Based on my experience, EE is not good against Infect (diff casting cost) and Boggles (totem armors) matchup which is right now i'm looking for answers. Skite is a decent blocker against Suicide Zoo, stealing Temur Battle Rage if they tried to make it trample. Spellskite is "ok" (not very good but not too bad) too against Burn, the lesser the damage the better & a good blocker.
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
Sometimes its about the play, not the cards. Stinkweed happens to be STUPIDLY good stopping the single threat from coming through. Troll happens to be the answer to late game angers and wraiths. I often early game dredge my loam, simply so I have 8 cards in hand to discard a troll. You need to know how to work the dredge cards for more than just mill at times.
I'd love to see a report, congrats on the result! I'm glad to see successful testing of tome scour, I was really curious a out trying a rainbow build with tome scour and cathartic reunion, I feel like that has lots of potential.
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
So for people who like to try to Min/Max this deck, your two-of slot is either of those 3. My suggestion might be to replace Darkblast with Flame Jab and leave Raven's Crime in the SB. We have enough dredge power with Cathartic Reunion to not need too many dredgers and we can treat Loam+Jab like Darkblast.
What are your thoughts, Swarm?
I was curious on this and decided to map out a probability tree so see what outcomes could come of such a hand. (Disclaimer: I'm not a mathematician, I just like learning online and giving things a go. So I could well have made mistakes here).
Lets assume we're on the play and our opening hand is Land, Land, GGT, Neonate, Faithless Looting, Prized Amalgam & Bloodghast.
Leading with Neonate
If we whiff, T2: Draw (Is it another R enabler?). If not. Faithless Looting, draw 2 and hope for another R enabler. Discard GGT plus likely an additional dredge. Go off T3. We're likely starting Main 1 of T3 with 6+1+2+6=13 additional cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+T3Draw) seen/dumped beyond our original hand.. 40 cards left in the deck.
If we have another R enabler then we're ok, dredging the discarded GGT and likely finding another dredge on the second enabler to develop in the middle of T2 that'll also guarantee a GGT to dredge for the T3 draw step. So we're likely starting Main 1 of T3 with 6+1+2+10+6=25 cards seen (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+AVGFaithess/Neo+T3Draw).
Quickly running the numbers is seems that the likelyhood of drawing the second R enabler is close to 50/50. So overall we can have an EV of approximately (13+25)/2 = 19 in this scenario which'll occur about 20% of the time (the rate that GGT will whiff).
If we hit, then T2 Draw extra dredge for a generous average of 5. Is there another Dredge in the yard to start Faithless Looting well? If so, Faithless Looting Dredge + possible Dredge Again/Generic Draw. Discard at least GGT + another Dredge for a nice setup in T3 or, if unlucky on the first Looting Dredge and lucky on the top deck, a second R enabler dredge chain. The likelihood of starting Faithless Looting on a Dredge in this scenario is high at 85% if we're dredging 5, 72% if we're averaging the dredge outcomes to 4.25. So in this best case scenario, which'll happen 72-85% of 80% of the time we'll be likely digging 6+5+5+5+6=27 cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+Faithless+T3Draw).
If we don't find the additional dredger then we've drawn 6+5+5+1+6=23 cards (Neo+T2Draw+Faithless+BadFaithless+T3Draw).
Really lucking out would mean we hit a dredge for the first card of Faithless Looting, then natural draw the second card into a second R enabler allowing another chain for +11 cards. Plausibly allowing us to be 34-38 cards deep by the start of T3.
Overall, we have about a 65% likelihood of seeing near the ceiling of 23-27 cards by T3. A 20% chance of a floor of 13ish cards. And an exceptionally low chance of a super high ceiling of 35ish cards.
Leading with Faithless Looting
If we whiff, discard GGT + random. T2 Dredge GGT, finding a second dredger only relevent here for the T3 draw as we have the GGT to discard to Neonate regardless. Neonate, discarding GGT and dredging. T3 draw on the 97% likelhood of finding an additional dredger from 12 dredged cards so lets call it a certainty. If so, we've dug 2+6+6+6=20 (Faithless+T2Draw+Neonate+T3Draw) cards deep. Plus we have an additional payoff card discarded from Faithless Looting whiffing on a 2nd dredge card.
If we hit, discard GGT + another Dredger. T2 Dredge GGT, discard GGT to Neonate, have an certain dredge on the T3 draw. 20 cards deep.
TLDR; Faithless Looting is the workhorse if played, giving a consistent 20 cards in the yard by the start of T3 + 1 additional card of your choice (Amalgam, Bloodghast etc). Neonate is the primadonna, if things go poorly you could be as few as 13 cards deep by the start of T3, average a couple more than Faithless Looting, or have up to 35 cards if Magical Christmas Land is your residence. You don't get an additional discard of your choice from your hand though.
Important Notes: All of this is on the assumption that you start with a GGT that gives you the highest odds of hitting a dredge chain, 80%. Stinky is 73%, LftL & Darkblast are 54% & Dakmor is 40%. A straight topdeck is 22%. All of this is on the assumption there are 12 live hits in the deck (ie you don't have any additional dredgers in your hand already).
All of this also assumes a high return on dredges (I was working on 5 cards a dredge rather than a statistical average of 4.25 cards, as that number flexes according to which dredge cards are live in the graveyard and gives me headaches).
Given all of this, IVG I think you're right. I never realised the variance in Neonate and that I could decide in a matchup where I was desperate for speed that he could be the play. Things do change again if you have a more reliable Tormenting Voice / Cathartic Reunion as your T2 play. But I think in this scenario with two 1drop enablers I need to think more carefully. Thanks for the heads up on that.
My Builds
W: Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
WB: Karlov of the Ghost Council
WR: Anax & Cymede
WUG: Phelddagrif
Others' Builds that I've Enjoyed
WUB: Chromium
I didn't incorporate the odds of drawing a second one R enabler from the T1 Faithless Looting to setup a stronger T2 play.
From our draw 2 there is a 20% chance of drawing an additional Faithless or Neonate for an average of 6-12 additional cards (51,6,2,1). Averaging it at 9 I should've added about 1.8 cards of Expected Value on what I had written up for Faithless.
So Faithless has a floor of 20 cards, a ceiling of 32 10% of the time, 26 a further 10% of the time too. Which puts its average expected value pretty much on par with Neonate, so the differences we're looking at are probability and range.
Sorry about that!
My Builds
W: Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
WB: Karlov of the Ghost Council
WR: Anax & Cymede
WUG: Phelddagrif
Others' Builds that I've Enjoyed
WUB: Chromium
Actually, according to IPG 2.1:
That means that not pointing out Amalgams' triggers cannot be the reason to assume that Amalgam trigger was missed.
MTGO: UberMower
That's interesting. It certainly reduces the amount of information we need to provide to our opponents. If they didn't see the Amalgams in the gy, we can get the element of surprise.
Yep. Good points on both counts. Haunted Dead is so good in tricky creature matchups that I think it's best to hedge against them.
Against Suicide Zoo which I inexplicably won, Game 2 went long because he couldn't find his Temur Battle Rages while I was just hardcasting Stinkweeds.They don't have much removal (same goes for Infect and Bogles)) pre or postboard so it's always a good idea to hardcast the Stink.
Modern
Dredge, Evo-Chord, U/G Faeries, Living End, Something New