14-1 in the past three competitive leagues. Everyone is saying dredge is in a bad position but I don’t see it. I see a lot less storm, tron, and valakut and a ton more jund, uw control and mana dork decks than I have in a while.
I just bought into Dredge last week after 4-1 my first league with the deck (and played abysmally throughout). Very much agreed, meta seems weak, and our Hollow One, Humans, and Jund MUs are all favorable IMO.
My question for the thread moving forward was “is there room for Scrapheap and does he do the work” but someone already beat me to it!
I’m curious if cutting your Driven//Despair for the 3rd copy would be better for grinding out games, seems like it serves a similar purpose vs grindy decks and also serves as a way to get more power on the board faster to help with racing.
Perhaps 3 isn’t necessary though, only need 1 in the GY and 2 is pretty high confidence-interval for our deck.
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I have a land base question about Dredge. Generally the fetches of choice are Mire and Foothills, and I understand why. My question is are Verdants viable in lieu of Foothills? I own a play set of Foothills that are in use, but hate swapping lands back and forth between decks.
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In most lists, all the fetchable lands are Mountains, so it doesn't really matter if you run Arid Mesa, Scalding Tarn, Bloodstained Mire, or Wooded Foothills. I wouldn't run Verdant Catacombs unless you are trying a different build with basic Forest or something.
Scrapheap was bad, haunted dead blocking is much better. I’m on Devil right now, racing has come up a lot vs humans and H1 and scourge helps there more than haunted helps vs UW.
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In most lists, all the fetchable lands are Mountains, so it doesn't really matter if you run Arid Mesa, Scalding Tarn, Bloodstained Mire, or Wooded Foothills. I wouldn't run Verdant Catacombs unless you are trying a different build with basic Forest or something.
In some cases you can use the lands for pretend its the wrong deck. Run grixis fetches, run them out, turns out its a really bad hand, pick the cards up, the guy is now boarding vs the wrong deck.
Its not a huge edge, but I've done/seen it done before. Very situational. If you are a "normal" person and dont have every fetch land, then just buy the on color stuff for cheaper (and in case we ever start running basics.) If you have random fetches that fetch red. Sure what ever you got works. If you have all of em, run grixis colors to pretend you are a control deck if you get a terrible hand.
Would someone please explain how to sideboard with Leyline of the Void in this deck (running it in the sideboard NOT sideboarding when the opponent is playing it). Generally, it has been my experience that you add in 2-4 cards to address the opponent's hate (e.g. Abrupt Decay, Nature's Claim, etc.) and perhaps add in a few cards than benefit the match up e.g. Lightning Ax, Gnaw to the Bone, Vengeful Pharaoh, etc.) while making trims across each aspect (e.g. remove a dredger, payoff creature, and discard outlet). If you have a four pack of Leyline of the Void to target e.g. Storm, KCI, Hollow one, etc., what do you cut for the seven to eight cards you will be bringing in (four leylines plus nature's claims/ Abrupt Decay/ etc.)? Do you still just trim each aspect? I would love to see a sideboard recommendation for the matchups you would bring the Leylines in.
In addition, I would be curious if someone would explain how they design their sideboard with Leyline, my initial thought is to remove the Thoughseize effects because you are using the Leylines to address the combo matchups in lieu of the discard effects.
I just don't think you should be playing Leylines. It is too demanding to sideboard Leylines in addition to anti-gravehate cards (which graveyard combo decks have). You could, in theory, sideboard in the 8 cards to do so, but then your deck is diluted, and having a solid, consistent combo plan with cards to counteract gravehate is the most profitable strategy in the long run.
I think leylines are fine. They just very much are 3-4 or nothing in the board. They have been successful in the past, but you need to be sure its worth having. I remember once that Dredge, grixis, living end and storm were around a total of 20% thus making it a meta you wanted leyline for
Re: Leylines, I've been running 3 and they typically give you a chance in harder matchups like KCI, grishoalbrand, or hollow one if you face those quite a bit. They're also good since dredge can mull aggressively for them and not suffer as much as say jund or living end would.
I've tried nihil spellbomb since it's easy to cast and draws a card, but found it's too easy to play around and you can't really afford to hold up a mana to draw/dredge. Cards like rakdos charm and surgical also aren't great since it's hard to reliably draw them.
Matchups were:
round 1: Faeries 2-1
round 2: Hollow One 2-1 (This was the guy who came 2nd in the event)
round 3: KCI Combo 2-1
round 4: Blue Moon 2-0
round 5: Affinity 2-0
round 6: Mardu Pyromancer 2-0
round 7: Grixis Death's Shadow 2-0 (I could've drawn here but I didn't know how to convince my opponent to draw without making it seem like collusion so we just played it out)
round 8: ID with the guy who made top 8 on Humans.
Finished 1st after the swiss which was awesome, I think being on the play was super important based on the matchups in the top 8.
congratulations on the finish, piloting dredge all day is no easy task.
I have had quite a lot of trouble against the fast combo decks, including kci, and figured the leylines may be able to help. How do you sideboard against kci and hollowed one with your configuration?
congratulations on the finish, piloting dredge all day is no easy task.
I have had quite a lot of trouble against the fast combo decks, including kci, and figured the leylines may be able to help. How do you sideboard against kci and hollowed one with your configuration?
Thanks! The fast combo decks are tough, definitely have been seeing a sub 50% winrate against them.
For KCI I went +3 leylines, +2 ancient grudge, +1 driven/despair, -2 cathartic, -1 darkblast, -1 dakmor salvage, -1 conflagrate. In the 3rd swiss round I took game 1 with a fast t4 kill on the play, lost game 2 on t3 through an ancient grudge, and then won game 3 off the back of leyline and he didn't have the nature's claim for it. In the semis I lost game 1 on t3 when I had him at 8 with lethal on board. I would've won had I dredged over a driven/despair but no such luck. Game 2 I mulled to 5 against his 7 and kept 2 lands, leyline, neonate, and cathartic. He ended up having the nature's claim for the leyline and then had redundant KCIs and scrap trawlers to fight through ancient grudge and conflagrate.
Hollow One isn't too bad I've found. I think we're favoured in game 1, most of the time I take it unless they have a nutty hand like double hollow one on t2 or flameblade into t2 hollow one + gurmag angler. The plus side is once you have a dredger in the graveyard they can't cast burning inquiry, so you give them 4 dead draws. Post board I go with +3 leylines, +2 lightning axe, -2 neonate, -1 cathartic, -1 darkblast, -1 driven/despair. I'm not sold on ancient grudge either but I've heard arguments for it. I don't think it's super important to mull for leyline in this matchup since they can still play through it with adepts and hollow ones, so I tend to keep hands that don't have leyline but also play fast if they also don't have leyline. I've played the matchup where both players start with leyline and it's real bad.
I agreed that Hollow One is not a bad match up, and would go so far as to say it is favorable though they certainly have draws we cannot contend with.
KCI, and any fast combos, seem to be quite difficult matchups though, as you demonstrate, Leylines are helpful.
How have you found driven to dispair? I adopted it quite early, but My experience is that if I delpoy it quickly enough, the other side can just keep the one card that matters and win anyway. I find this deck really generates a board on turns 3-4 and the turn 4-5 driven to despair is strictly worse than a rally the peasants or Loam plus conflagerate. Frankly, there may be a retooled version of this deck that better utilized driven to despair.
first time playing dredge last night at FNM, went 3-1
round 1 went 0-2 against KCI. figured I'd get paired against something like this for my first sanctioned event with a deck. Game 1 kept a seemingly okay hand but he was fatser. Game 2 kept an okay hand but couldn't get much started
0-1
round 2 get paired against some new kid on some seemingly precon deck. 2-1 him, mismanaged my life game 2 and lost. game 3 dredged my last 3 cards and wiped his board with conflagrate
1-1
round 3 I easily 2-0 UR breach. game 1 I was way too fast and got him. game 2 he punted. there were a few turns where n ager would have ruined me but instead he played a Jace Aot then held cryptic mana open. when he decided to anger it was too late, as my board had done its damage and I was able to burn him out for the rest
2-1.
Round 4 another quick work, as I 2-0 UR delver. Game 1 he had a lot of counters but i was just able to overwhelm him. Game 2 he seemed to have kept a slow hand and I punished him for it.
3-1, won 2 packs
overall, I don't think last night was a fair way to judge where I am at. I feel I played sort of poorly due to still learning the deck but got rewarded for it. but I eitehr played better than my opponents or got lucky. still need to pay the deck more
I'm considering buying into Dredge as a second Modern deck, but I was wondering: what are Dredges notably good and bad matchups?
I'm looking for a deck with strong games against Merfolk, D&T, Ponza, E-Tron, and ideally Bogles and Ad Nauseum, and slightly favorable to even matchups against fair interactive decks like Jund, GDS, and to a lesser extent Abzan. Does this sound like Dredge to you?
Bogles and as nauseam are fairly miserable for us, but you have better matchups than you are hoping for against the latter set of decks.
That's fair, those are the two decks I care the least about anyways. How do the first four decks I listed fare? Those are the ones I'm really concerned with. Thanks!
Fairly favored against the first three. E-tron is even to slightly favored, but they can have some busted draws against you. You are awesome against TKS but 2 reality smashers will beat you. In the past and depending on the player they may have up to 10 pieces against you post side. Learn to fetch and Loam well versus Merfolk.
I face a lot of humans/burn/various tron/affinity/combo (kiki cord, coco,4c saheeli, KCI, scapeshift) and various DnT decks (one has U for spell queller and such)
I saw on MTGtop8 that some people are cutting neonates and thugs for more additional removal like darkblasts/lightning axe is that were the deck is headed or was it their judgement call for wanting more removal? I've played decks like LE, Junk, Hollow One. Does my list look fine enough for a very diverse meta? Or should I cut some thugs for darkblasts? I think most of the players have 2-3 modern decks they rotate through but as far as I can tell very little graveyard hate as I look at matches when I finish early.
Playing my first event in a LONG while... I understand the deck hasnt really changed much, but whats the current flavor over the flex spots? Devil, haunted dead, driven//despair? Basically all I need to play, aside from figuring out my board... Which... what should I be worried about right now?
I just bought into Dredge last week after 4-1 my first league with the deck (and played abysmally throughout). Very much agreed, meta seems weak, and our Hollow One, Humans, and Jund MUs are all favorable IMO.
My question for the thread moving forward was “is there room for Scrapheap and does he do the work” but someone already beat me to it!
I’m curious if cutting your Driven//Despair for the 3rd copy would be better for grinding out games, seems like it serves a similar purpose vs grindy decks and also serves as a way to get more power on the board faster to help with racing.
Perhaps 3 isn’t necessary though, only need 1 in the GY and 2 is pretty high confidence-interval for our deck.
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Feel free to PM me about Affinity decks in any format!
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I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Modern:
Dredge | Restore Balance | Titanshift
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In some cases you can use the lands for pretend its the wrong deck. Run grixis fetches, run them out, turns out its a really bad hand, pick the cards up, the guy is now boarding vs the wrong deck.
Its not a huge edge, but I've done/seen it done before. Very situational. If you are a "normal" person and dont have every fetch land, then just buy the on color stuff for cheaper (and in case we ever start running basics.) If you have random fetches that fetch red. Sure what ever you got works. If you have all of em, run grixis colors to pretend you are a control deck if you get a terrible hand.
In addition, I would be curious if someone would explain how they design their sideboard with Leyline, my initial thought is to remove the Thoughseize effects because you are using the Leylines to address the combo matchups in lieu of the discard effects.
I've tried nihil spellbomb since it's easy to cast and draws a card, but found it's too easy to play around and you can't really afford to hold up a mana to draw/dredge. Cards like rakdos charm and surgical also aren't great since it's hard to reliably draw them.
Also, I recently played in the Face to Face Edmonton Open in Red Deer, AB and came 4th! Here's a link to the list: http://f2fseries.facetofacegames.com/red-deer-open-may-12th-2018/
Matchups were:
round 1: Faeries 2-1
round 2: Hollow One 2-1 (This was the guy who came 2nd in the event)
round 3: KCI Combo 2-1
round 4: Blue Moon 2-0
round 5: Affinity 2-0
round 6: Mardu Pyromancer 2-0
round 7: Grixis Death's Shadow 2-0 (I could've drawn here but I didn't know how to convince my opponent to draw without making it seem like collusion so we just played it out)
round 8: ID with the guy who made top 8 on Humans.
Finished 1st after the swiss which was awesome, I think being on the play was super important based on the matchups in the top 8.
Quarter-finals: Infect 2-1
Semi-finals: KCI 0-2
I have had quite a lot of trouble against the fast combo decks, including kci, and figured the leylines may be able to help. How do you sideboard against kci and hollowed one with your configuration?
Thanks! The fast combo decks are tough, definitely have been seeing a sub 50% winrate against them.
For KCI I went +3 leylines, +2 ancient grudge, +1 driven/despair, -2 cathartic, -1 darkblast, -1 dakmor salvage, -1 conflagrate. In the 3rd swiss round I took game 1 with a fast t4 kill on the play, lost game 2 on t3 through an ancient grudge, and then won game 3 off the back of leyline and he didn't have the nature's claim for it. In the semis I lost game 1 on t3 when I had him at 8 with lethal on board. I would've won had I dredged over a driven/despair but no such luck. Game 2 I mulled to 5 against his 7 and kept 2 lands, leyline, neonate, and cathartic. He ended up having the nature's claim for the leyline and then had redundant KCIs and scrap trawlers to fight through ancient grudge and conflagrate.
Hollow One isn't too bad I've found. I think we're favoured in game 1, most of the time I take it unless they have a nutty hand like double hollow one on t2 or flameblade into t2 hollow one + gurmag angler. The plus side is once you have a dredger in the graveyard they can't cast burning inquiry, so you give them 4 dead draws. Post board I go with +3 leylines, +2 lightning axe, -2 neonate, -1 cathartic, -1 darkblast, -1 driven/despair. I'm not sold on ancient grudge either but I've heard arguments for it. I don't think it's super important to mull for leyline in this matchup since they can still play through it with adepts and hollow ones, so I tend to keep hands that don't have leyline but also play fast if they also don't have leyline. I've played the matchup where both players start with leyline and it's real bad.
KCI, and any fast combos, seem to be quite difficult matchups though, as you demonstrate, Leylines are helpful.
How have you found driven to dispair? I adopted it quite early, but My experience is that if I delpoy it quickly enough, the other side can just keep the one card that matters and win anyway. I find this deck really generates a board on turns 3-4 and the turn 4-5 driven to despair is strictly worse than a rally the peasants or Loam plus conflagerate. Frankly, there may be a retooled version of this deck that better utilized driven to despair.
round 1 went 0-2 against KCI. figured I'd get paired against something like this for my first sanctioned event with a deck. Game 1 kept a seemingly okay hand but he was fatser. Game 2 kept an okay hand but couldn't get much started
0-1
round 2 get paired against some new kid on some seemingly precon deck. 2-1 him, mismanaged my life game 2 and lost. game 3 dredged my last 3 cards and wiped his board with conflagrate
1-1
round 3 I easily 2-0 UR breach. game 1 I was way too fast and got him. game 2 he punted. there were a few turns where n ager would have ruined me but instead he played a Jace Aot then held cryptic mana open. when he decided to anger it was too late, as my board had done its damage and I was able to burn him out for the rest
2-1.
Round 4 another quick work, as I 2-0 UR delver. Game 1 he had a lot of counters but i was just able to overwhelm him. Game 2 he seemed to have kept a slow hand and I punished him for it.
3-1, won 2 packs
overall, I don't think last night was a fair way to judge where I am at. I feel I played sort of poorly due to still learning the deck but got rewarded for it. but I eitehr played better than my opponents or got lucky. still need to pay the deck more
I'm considering buying into Dredge as a second Modern deck, but I was wondering: what are Dredges notably good and bad matchups?
I'm looking for a deck with strong games against Merfolk, D&T, Ponza, E-Tron, and ideally Bogles and Ad Nauseum, and slightly favorable to even matchups against fair interactive decks like Jund, GDS, and to a lesser extent Abzan. Does this sound like Dredge to you?
That's fair, those are the two decks I care the least about anyways. How do the first four decks I listed fare? Those are the ones I'm really concerned with. Thanks!
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Copperline Gorge
2 Dakmor Salavage
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Mountain
3 Stomping Ground
2 Wooded Foothills
Spells
4 Cathartic Reunion
3 Conflagrate
1 Darkblast
1 Driven//Dispair
4 Faithless Looting
4 Life from the Loam
4 Bloodghast
3 Golgari Thug
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Narcomeba
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stinkweed Imp
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Collective Brutality
1 Darkblast
1 Gnaw to the Bone
1 Lightning Axe
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Natures Claim
3 Thoughtseize
1 Engineered Explosives
I face a lot of humans/burn/various tron/affinity/combo (kiki cord, coco,4c saheeli, KCI, scapeshift) and various DnT decks (one has U for spell queller and such)
I saw on MTGtop8 that some people are cutting neonates and thugs for more additional removal like darkblasts/lightning axe is that were the deck is headed or was it their judgement call for wanting more removal? I've played decks like LE, Junk, Hollow One. Does my list look fine enough for a very diverse meta? Or should I cut some thugs for darkblasts? I think most of the players have 2-3 modern decks they rotate through but as far as I can tell very little graveyard hate as I look at matches when I finish early.
Modern - Burn
EDH - Neheb the Eternal