Tonight i took out the 2 of bridge and garg and ran 4 tormenting voice, 0 shriekhorn to test out the manabase for post kaladesh. I ran 3 loams and 2 conflagrates. I can see now the reasoning behind the bridgeless list, it is indeed a more consistent gameplan as most of my games either ended with a swing with the swarm and conflag, or clear blockers and swing. I also ran a 1 of rally the peasants and it actually won me 2 matches.
Id post a list but im too tired. Its the stock 25 creature, 20 land (fetch package), 15 spell list.
Went 3-1 losing both postboard games against eldrazi.
I have never beaten the deck, i am now 0-4 against it in a matter of 2 weeks
Whats a good plan of attack against them?
Vengeful Pharaoh is an allstar against Eldrazi, if your meta is full of them i'd put at least 1 into your sideboard. Aside from that, darkblast/conflag their dorks and try to go wide
Any play to Bomat Courier? Discarding the hand on a hasty 1/1 looks fun at least.
I don't like it. The thing we like about Insolent Neonate was the built in evasion that landed a few hits of damage then turned into an enabler. Courier, at best, becomes a discard outlet. Conflagrate does more work for RR.
Out of creatures in this set, I'm most excited about Scrapheap Scrounger . Another creature that can be activated on our opponent's turn might be the card I can run a 2-3 of that might stick Haunted Dead in the SB vs Infect and Affinity. Dead Neonates and Narcomoebas are useless to us in the grave, so let this guy gobble them up and save our hands for Conflagrate.
With Cathartic Reunion available we should focus more on dredging than on cute little things. We should play 1-2 Golgari Thug to increase chances to dredge as deep as we can.
With Cathartic Reunion available we should focus more on dredging than on cute little things. We should play 1-2 Golgari Thug to increase chances to dredge as deep as we can.
I see where you're coming from, but I think we have plenty of dredgers at the moment. We run 4 GGT, 4 Imps, 2-3 Loams, and 2 Dakmor Salvage for a total of 12-13 dredgers plus 19 or so lands for our mana base and 11 or so enablers, and 16 payoff cards. That's approximately 59 cards. Some people play around with a few numbers, so the flex spot number is about 2-4 slots. We normally fill those with meta dependent cards like Darkblast (which ups our dredge count), Flame Jab, Collective Brutality/Defiance, and others.
Those flex cards are things we normally want to start with in hand. Upping the Thug count can potentially be problematic because we don't want to draw too many dredgers, we want some cards that aid the strategy and do things other than 'draw-Dredge-go'. After turn 2-3, we've normally established our pace of the game and get the engine running smoothly. That's where some new cards come in.
What cards do we like to see in our grave? We like dredgers from turn 1-3. Normally, we have enough dredgers in the grave by turn 3 to not worry about them. We don't like to see enablers unless it's Faithless Looting. By turn 2-10, we almost always want to see payoff. Loam/conflag is a good slow way to burn the strategy to the win without decking. That leaves with Narcomoebas, Amalgams, and Bloodghasts. By increasing payoff cards, we can prove to be more consistent by having more things that come back. Cards like Scrounger like to be in the grave and provide a solid body that can bring back a posse of Amalgams at instant speed just from gobbling up a creature in the grave, which is what Ichorid used to do. The card is no upgrade from the original, but it's comparable.
Haunted Dead is a great card. It creates a flying chumper that can deal with infect or zoo or anything that flies. But this deck loves to keep a big hand for that Conflagrate since it's the hallmark of the strategy.
Tldr: we don't need Golgari Thug. Scrapheap Scrounger might be a good card to utilize the Loam/Conflag strategy.
So my issue with the deck currently is still speed. I still feel like the deck when i open a neonate loam hand is just too slow... which sucks. Like most of my game 1 loses are to that. Not even consistancy. So when i see tome scour versions do well that makes sence. But it makes my consistancy really bad...
For a second I thought I found a solution in archive trap... but nope! So while reunion makes the deck reliable... i feel like we still need a 1 mana way to dump (like scour) without the blue... eventually well get it.
I think with the addition of Cathartic Reunion, I might be on board the Scrapheap scrounger train. I feel like between Cathartic Reunion, Conflagrate, Faithless Looting, and Neonate we have all the discard outlets we could want. To be fair, Haunted Dead is a great sideboard against Affinity/Infect, but I like the idea of saving my cards to discard for either more dredging or more damage. I've proxied up a playset of CR and in my testing there have been a few occasions where I have one in hand but only 1 other card and have to wait a turn to use it. Those are often games when I needed to use an early Conflag or Haunted Dead for whatever reason. Scrounger might be a solid maindeck alternative to HD that doesn't drain our hand.
As for your point about speed Lantern, I agree. Opening a meh 7 card hand with Neonate and Loam and 2 lands and 3 non-dredge cards feels bad, although it definitely depends on what those 3 are. I'm always so scared to mulligan away a hand with lands + a dredger + an enabler though, because with so much variance in the deck we often lose to the mulligan boss if we mull too aggressively. On the same token though, all we really need is a 4 card hand of Stomping Ground, Blood Crypt, Neonate, Golgari Grave Troll to have a potentially lightning-fast game. As a whole, I think having more turn 1 enablers rather than less might help this problem, which is why I really want Tome Scour to work. The issue i've had is the rainbow manabase. Frankly, it's just too painful without any mainboard lifegain (barring a singleton of Brutality if you run it for 2 whole lifegain). I know in general 61 card decks are worse than 60 card decks, but I was considering going the rainbow lands route and running a Gnaw to the Bone as my 61st card (or just running Gnaw as my 61st card in a stock list). With 20 lands, your chances of seeing 2 lands are still basically the same, and you'll definitely hit a dakmor at some point if you run 2-3. I might do some testing and see how I like it.
Does anyone have any thoughts on running 61 cards with Gnaw to the Bone as the 61st? I guess my line of reasoning is that dredge really doesn't work the same way other decks do, and the math is very different. We "draw" 3-6 cards per turn, so are much less damaged by running 61 cards than other decks might be.
With Cathartic Reunion available we should focus more on dredging than on cute little things. We should play 1-2 Golgari Thug to increase chances to dredge as deep as we can.
with Sren Larsen's level of play, I think he would have been playing thugs to have continued playing Burning Inquiry as long as he has, if it were necessary, or dropped the inquiries. Reunion is even easier to get max value because of the discard cost and any dredge cards you have in hand. Do you have any testing or #s to back up this statement?
Edit- don't get me wrong, here. I really like your approach to this deck and to modern in general (play the quietly tier 1 options). I just think you have been opposed to burning inquiry while many have experience dredging 3 times with it, and cathartic reunion will be easier to dredge 3 times from.
Honestly, the absolute keep hand is 1 dredger, 1 1-drop enabler, and a green land/fetch. If we run Dakmor Salvage, you'll get your 2nd land eventually and be able to cast Loam at some point. Any addition to this hand is straight gravy.
Burning Inquiry was much harder to assemble - it was random and very weak without any other discard outlet. Cataric Reunion is both "draw 3" effect and good discard outlet. So if we have third good enabler we should focus mostly on consistency - now we have 8 good dredgers, 3 medicore and 1-2 garbage "dredge 2". Adding 1 more bigger dredger would help avoid fizzling after first draw from Reunion. And for me 1 offs like Haunted Dead are a little bit too narrow and slow - I nearly always want to use Conflagrate instead or set up it with Loam. In game 1 I want to focus on my plan, after sideboard - like Haunted Dead - Golgari Thug will be often side out as not so necessary card. After week of testing I'll write report how Thug works.
I suppose maybe haunted dead is more of a meta call. It's been great for me especially because I run a main board Scourge Devil (has won tons of games for me) and that extra evasive body is nice (on top of obviously being a great instant speed blocker/amalgam trigger)
Does anyone have any thoughts on running 61 cards with Gnaw to the Bone as the 61st? I guess my line of reasoning is that dredge really doesn't work the same way other decks do, and the math is very different. We "draw" 3-6 cards per turn, so are much less damaged by running 61 cards than other decks might be.
I actually played against an opponent who ran Gnaw in MB and my list runs 61 and can often go to 64 post board. We don't really care about too high of a library count since its going in the same place anyways. Whether that's correct or not is dependent on the meta. Some people MB Darkblast and some run it in the SB. The flex spots allow all of us to adjust to certain metas like that.
Dumb question, is Cathartic Reunion legal in modern between the prerelease and the release, or do I have to wait for the actual release ? (I got my playset during the prerelease so I wouldn't mind to start playing with them on monday)
Not dumb at all! Cards are not legal for constructed play until official release, so we're stuck with Tormenting Voice for another week longer.
Costs 4 to do one Neonate, so too slow. Its better to get 2-3 dredges off fast, than slow your roll. you dont wanna dredge super hard late game. Plus costs alottta mana
A few words about the list: I play Tome Scour and rainbow lands since the beginning, working with iostream on the deck. The rainbow lands have minimal cost and Tome Scour really does wonder for the deck (more on this below).
About the tournament: I wanted to play Dredge for this event, as it was clear that people would be underprepared for it after a sequence of bad performances. I was right beyond any expectations and I saw no cages or RIP the whole day. Only three scoozes, one kalitas and one anger of the gods. Needless to say I had a deck advantage over 90% of the room.
I went 8-1 in the swiss so of course I had variance on my side, I drew and dredged well all day. Beyond that, the last factor that really help my finish was the mulligan strategy. I mulliganned almost systematically and won many games on 5 or even 4 cards. Really, you want to have a fast start, and it’s worth always shipping back seven card hands with only one enabler. For anyone wanting to improve with the deck, that’s a key margin to boost your win percentage.
Side note: this is exactly why Tome Scour shines. It allows to mulligan aggressively and still have playable four cards hands in a way that neonate or voice cannot guarantee. This is huge in practice, and many people underrate tome scour because this upside it’s not obvious by just looking at the card itself. End of side note.
Now the games (sorry for forgetting some details):
Round 1 - Lantern
Guy was nice but clearly had no idea how to play against dredge. He made a few small misplays, and I had a fast draw both games backed up by conflagrate.
2-0, 1-0
Round 2 - Jund
Game 1 I had a good start and he was behind the whole game, with only goyf bolt and Liliana of the Last Hope. Game 2 took a long time, where he played Kalitas twice, but I killed it twice with conflagrate and then lightning axe. I grind him out by playing gravetrolls, I had to play really tight but I finished him with zero cards left, dredging the last three to find a lethal rally.
2-0, 2-0
Round 3 - Affinity
Lost G1 to a great draw. He couldn’t beat darkblast G2. G3 I was behind the whole game, but eventually started to turn it around. I decided to tap out to flashback lootings facing a two turn clock etched champion in order to apply some pressure, but find myself dead to a topdecked plating, with grudge sitting in my yard. It was the only card that would save him, but maybe I did play too aggressively.
1-2, 2-1
Round 4 - WG Tron
G1 goes very long, I’m able to fight through karn and wurmcoil engine, but I eventually mill myself by dredging too much for no reason. Big mistake, should have thought more ahead. G2 he looses in spite of Ugin and oblivion stone, he misplayed by not playing a second O-stone. We have five minutes left for G3, but fortunately I have a great draw and run him over.
2-1, 3-1
Round 5 – Infect
G1 he mulligans and has a poor draw with only a nexus and misses a land drop after double probe. Not close. G2 he draws too many lands, and has to spend his pump spell to save blighted agent from conflagrate. I fade become immense and win next turn.
2-0, 4-1
Round 6 – Valakut
My first RG Valakut opponent of the day. I believe we split the first two games, as I have a very slow G2 (possibly a one lander). G3 goes long, I gain tons of life with gnaw to the bone and he has to play defensively. I reanimate a large grave troll, and he tries to kill it with four valakut triggers only for me to regenerate it. After this misstep, he’s way too far behind to have a shot.
2-1, 5-1
Round 7 – Valakut
I’m paired against Oliver Tiu, who plays the same deck from Worlds, who he actually got from my last round opponent. I know he doesn’t have any serious hate. G1 is absurd: I mulligan down to 4 with a hand that has lands but no action (but can hardcast amalgam). I’m expecting to loose quickly has he ramps very quickly to five lands. I’m considering not playing anything beyond my copperline gorge to keep him in the dark, but when I draw lootings I decide to try the 1% win. He plays scapeshift next turn, I fully expect to die but he can’t show me enough mountains! He drew one too many and deals zero damage, loosing next turn to rally the peasants. G2 is easy as I protect my self with gnaw to the bone and beat an anger exiling triple bloodghast without much trouble. Very nice guy.
2-0, 6-1
Round 8 - Melira Company
I hope this is a win and in (turned out it will not be) and I’m not happy to face Melira combo. I have a decent draw G1 with pressure and conflagrate, but he draws enough company, chord and combo pieces to gain infinite life. G2 he keeps a one lander with birds and looses to darkblast. G3 is drawn out, I play to my outs, keeping his board as clear as possible with darkblast and conflagrate. I make a mistake on dividing the damages from the second conflagrate, not seeing that he can use the haunt ability of his pontiff to save his melira. Fortunately, he misses it too and realizes it too late. He tries not to tilt and come back in the game but I have too much pressure and win by a close margin. Pfew!
2-1, 7-1
Round 9 – Jund
We have to play, and I’m told he’s on Jund. His 75 has very little against dredge. G1 he goes Turn 2 ooze on the play, but I have darkblast in hand to kill it on my second turn. After that, he is not able to put up any defense in both games.
2-0, 8-1
Wow! From round 6 onwards, it was clear I had one of the best decks in the room for the day. Variance went my way of course, but the only match I lost was from a very close game. I was very happy with the 75 and felt I could beat anything, so I’m not really nervous going into the Top 8. Although I’m starting to get very tired….
Quarterfinal- Valakut
Two quick games, my opponent couldn’t really put anything together. Gnaw puts me far ahead in G2 and Valakut is not that good at playing defense. I think Dredge is significantly favored as long as you play a couple of Gnaw in the board.
2-0
Semifinal - Death’s Shadow Zoo (Sam Black)
I’m not very happy to play Death Shadow, as it’s probably the worst matchup for dredge among Tier 1 decks. Plus, Sam knows Dredge inside out, so can’t expect much edge there. He’s a bit slow out of the gate G1, and I don’t attack too aggressively until I can finish him off with conflagrate. No Temur Battle Rage = clean win. G2 I’m a bit slow and he finds Death’s Shadow + TBR, not very close. Note: at this point, I’ve never lost this matchup when they fail to draw TBR and always lost when they did. By the time G3 comes, I’m very tired and make the worst play of the day by not mulliganing what is essentially a one lander with a looting and an axe. Iostream thought it was a terrible keep at the time and I have to agree with him. I ended having a decent draw but I was just a tad too slow to beat death’s shadow + TBR once again.
1-2
I was a bit disappointed of not giving me the best chance in the most important game, but I didn’t beat myself too hard and it was an amazing tournament overall.
I loved the list, manabase was fine all day, never lost a game because of it. Won multiple games on the back of Tome Scour, turning a five card hand into an insane opening. The 60 is great, although I need to find room to fit Cathartic Reunion. The SB was fine, but still up in the air.
I like your report. Good job on your top 4 finish.
You bring up a good point on mulligan decisions with this deck. The dredge mechanic allows you to mulligan extremely aggressively. In most match ups, game one at least, I still feel favored with a good-but-not-amazing four card hand. For example, I beat Junk in a post-board game on a 4 card hand last Friday. Land, land, faithless, dredger with faithless drawing into artifact destruction was enough to do it.
Neonate, troll, fetch, 4 blanks? Ship it, it's a trap and you can do better.
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Vengeful Pharaoh is an allstar against Eldrazi, if your meta is full of them i'd put at least 1 into your sideboard. Aside from that, darkblast/conflag their dorks and try to go wide
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
Personally, I'd jam 2 Pharoahs and 2 Lightning Axe in the SB.
I don't like it. The thing we like about Insolent Neonate was the built in evasion that landed a few hits of damage then turned into an enabler. Courier, at best, becomes a discard outlet. Conflagrate does more work for RR.
Out of creatures in this set, I'm most excited about Scrapheap Scrounger . Another creature that can be activated on our opponent's turn might be the card I can run a 2-3 of that might stick Haunted Dead in the SB vs Infect and Affinity. Dead Neonates and Narcomoebas are useless to us in the grave, so let this guy gobble them up and save our hands for Conflagrate.
Definitely agree on Courier not being what we need though. Conflagrate is infinitely better
I see where you're coming from, but I think we have plenty of dredgers at the moment. We run 4 GGT, 4 Imps, 2-3 Loams, and 2 Dakmor Salvage for a total of 12-13 dredgers plus 19 or so lands for our mana base and 11 or so enablers, and 16 payoff cards. That's approximately 59 cards. Some people play around with a few numbers, so the flex spot number is about 2-4 slots. We normally fill those with meta dependent cards like Darkblast (which ups our dredge count), Flame Jab, Collective Brutality/Defiance, and others.
Those flex cards are things we normally want to start with in hand. Upping the Thug count can potentially be problematic because we don't want to draw too many dredgers, we want some cards that aid the strategy and do things other than 'draw-Dredge-go'. After turn 2-3, we've normally established our pace of the game and get the engine running smoothly. That's where some new cards come in.
What cards do we like to see in our grave? We like dredgers from turn 1-3. Normally, we have enough dredgers in the grave by turn 3 to not worry about them. We don't like to see enablers unless it's Faithless Looting. By turn 2-10, we almost always want to see payoff. Loam/conflag is a good slow way to burn the strategy to the win without decking. That leaves with Narcomoebas, Amalgams, and Bloodghasts. By increasing payoff cards, we can prove to be more consistent by having more things that come back. Cards like Scrounger like to be in the grave and provide a solid body that can bring back a posse of Amalgams at instant speed just from gobbling up a creature in the grave, which is what Ichorid used to do. The card is no upgrade from the original, but it's comparable.
Haunted Dead is a great card. It creates a flying chumper that can deal with infect or zoo or anything that flies. But this deck loves to keep a big hand for that Conflagrate since it's the hallmark of the strategy.
Tldr: we don't need Golgari Thug. Scrapheap Scrounger might be a good card to utilize the Loam/Conflag strategy.
For a second I thought I found a solution in archive trap... but nope! So while reunion makes the deck reliable... i feel like we still need a 1 mana way to dump (like scour) without the blue... eventually well get it.
As for your point about speed Lantern, I agree. Opening a meh 7 card hand with Neonate and Loam and 2 lands and 3 non-dredge cards feels bad, although it definitely depends on what those 3 are. I'm always so scared to mulligan away a hand with lands + a dredger + an enabler though, because with so much variance in the deck we often lose to the mulligan boss if we mull too aggressively. On the same token though, all we really need is a 4 card hand of Stomping Ground, Blood Crypt, Neonate, Golgari Grave Troll to have a potentially lightning-fast game. As a whole, I think having more turn 1 enablers rather than less might help this problem, which is why I really want Tome Scour to work. The issue i've had is the rainbow manabase. Frankly, it's just too painful without any mainboard lifegain (barring a singleton of Brutality if you run it for 2 whole lifegain). I know in general 61 card decks are worse than 60 card decks, but I was considering going the rainbow lands route and running a Gnaw to the Bone as my 61st card (or just running Gnaw as my 61st card in a stock list). With 20 lands, your chances of seeing 2 lands are still basically the same, and you'll definitely hit a dakmor at some point if you run 2-3. I might do some testing and see how I like it.
Does anyone have any thoughts on running 61 cards with Gnaw to the Bone as the 61st? I guess my line of reasoning is that dredge really doesn't work the same way other decks do, and the math is very different. We "draw" 3-6 cards per turn, so are much less damaged by running 61 cards than other decks might be.
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
Edit- don't get me wrong, here. I really like your approach to this deck and to modern in general (play the quietly tier 1 options). I just think you have been opposed to burning inquiry while many have experience dredging 3 times with it, and cathartic reunion will be easier to dredge 3 times from.
I actually played against an opponent who ran Gnaw in MB and my list runs 61 and can often go to 64 post board. We don't really care about too high of a library count since its going in the same place anyways. Whether that's correct or not is dependent on the meta. Some people MB Darkblast and some run it in the SB. The flex spots allow all of us to adjust to certain metas like that.
Not dumb at all! Cards are not legal for constructed play until official release, so we're stuck with Tormenting Voice for another week longer.
Decklist is here:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/wmcq-top-8-decklists/united-states-september-2016
A few words about the list: I play Tome Scour and rainbow lands since the beginning, working with iostream on the deck. The rainbow lands have minimal cost and Tome Scour really does wonder for the deck (more on this below).
About the tournament: I wanted to play Dredge for this event, as it was clear that people would be underprepared for it after a sequence of bad performances. I was right beyond any expectations and I saw no cages or RIP the whole day. Only three scoozes, one kalitas and one anger of the gods. Needless to say I had a deck advantage over 90% of the room.
I went 8-1 in the swiss so of course I had variance on my side, I drew and dredged well all day. Beyond that, the last factor that really help my finish was the mulligan strategy. I mulliganned almost systematically and won many games on 5 or even 4 cards. Really, you want to have a fast start, and it’s worth always shipping back seven card hands with only one enabler. For anyone wanting to improve with the deck, that’s a key margin to boost your win percentage.
Side note: this is exactly why Tome Scour shines. It allows to mulligan aggressively and still have playable four cards hands in a way that neonate or voice cannot guarantee. This is huge in practice, and many people underrate tome scour because this upside it’s not obvious by just looking at the card itself. End of side note.
Now the games (sorry for forgetting some details):
Round 1 - Lantern
Guy was nice but clearly had no idea how to play against dredge. He made a few small misplays, and I had a fast draw both games backed up by conflagrate.
2-0, 1-0
Round 2 - Jund
Game 1 I had a good start and he was behind the whole game, with only goyf bolt and Liliana of the Last Hope. Game 2 took a long time, where he played Kalitas twice, but I killed it twice with conflagrate and then lightning axe. I grind him out by playing gravetrolls, I had to play really tight but I finished him with zero cards left, dredging the last three to find a lethal rally.
2-0, 2-0
Round 3 - Affinity
Lost G1 to a great draw. He couldn’t beat darkblast G2. G3 I was behind the whole game, but eventually started to turn it around. I decided to tap out to flashback lootings facing a two turn clock etched champion in order to apply some pressure, but find myself dead to a topdecked plating, with grudge sitting in my yard. It was the only card that would save him, but maybe I did play too aggressively.
1-2, 2-1
Round 4 - WG Tron
G1 goes very long, I’m able to fight through karn and wurmcoil engine, but I eventually mill myself by dredging too much for no reason. Big mistake, should have thought more ahead. G2 he looses in spite of Ugin and oblivion stone, he misplayed by not playing a second O-stone. We have five minutes left for G3, but fortunately I have a great draw and run him over.
2-1, 3-1
Round 5 – Infect
G1 he mulligans and has a poor draw with only a nexus and misses a land drop after double probe. Not close. G2 he draws too many lands, and has to spend his pump spell to save blighted agent from conflagrate. I fade become immense and win next turn.
2-0, 4-1
Round 6 – Valakut
My first RG Valakut opponent of the day. I believe we split the first two games, as I have a very slow G2 (possibly a one lander). G3 goes long, I gain tons of life with gnaw to the bone and he has to play defensively. I reanimate a large grave troll, and he tries to kill it with four valakut triggers only for me to regenerate it. After this misstep, he’s way too far behind to have a shot.
2-1, 5-1
Round 7 – Valakut
I’m paired against Oliver Tiu, who plays the same deck from Worlds, who he actually got from my last round opponent. I know he doesn’t have any serious hate. G1 is absurd: I mulligan down to 4 with a hand that has lands but no action (but can hardcast amalgam). I’m expecting to loose quickly has he ramps very quickly to five lands. I’m considering not playing anything beyond my copperline gorge to keep him in the dark, but when I draw lootings I decide to try the 1% win. He plays scapeshift next turn, I fully expect to die but he can’t show me enough mountains! He drew one too many and deals zero damage, loosing next turn to rally the peasants. G2 is easy as I protect my self with gnaw to the bone and beat an anger exiling triple bloodghast without much trouble. Very nice guy.
2-0, 6-1
Round 8 - Melira Company
I hope this is a win and in (turned out it will not be) and I’m not happy to face Melira combo. I have a decent draw G1 with pressure and conflagrate, but he draws enough company, chord and combo pieces to gain infinite life. G2 he keeps a one lander with birds and looses to darkblast. G3 is drawn out, I play to my outs, keeping his board as clear as possible with darkblast and conflagrate. I make a mistake on dividing the damages from the second conflagrate, not seeing that he can use the haunt ability of his pontiff to save his melira. Fortunately, he misses it too and realizes it too late. He tries not to tilt and come back in the game but I have too much pressure and win by a close margin. Pfew!
2-1, 7-1
Round 9 – Jund
We have to play, and I’m told he’s on Jund. His 75 has very little against dredge. G1 he goes Turn 2 ooze on the play, but I have darkblast in hand to kill it on my second turn. After that, he is not able to put up any defense in both games.
2-0, 8-1
Wow! From round 6 onwards, it was clear I had one of the best decks in the room for the day. Variance went my way of course, but the only match I lost was from a very close game. I was very happy with the 75 and felt I could beat anything, so I’m not really nervous going into the Top 8. Although I’m starting to get very tired….
Quarterfinal- Valakut
Two quick games, my opponent couldn’t really put anything together. Gnaw puts me far ahead in G2 and Valakut is not that good at playing defense. I think Dredge is significantly favored as long as you play a couple of Gnaw in the board.
2-0
Semifinal - Death’s Shadow Zoo (Sam Black)
I’m not very happy to play Death Shadow, as it’s probably the worst matchup for dredge among Tier 1 decks. Plus, Sam knows Dredge inside out, so can’t expect much edge there. He’s a bit slow out of the gate G1, and I don’t attack too aggressively until I can finish him off with conflagrate. No Temur Battle Rage = clean win. G2 I’m a bit slow and he finds Death’s Shadow + TBR, not very close. Note: at this point, I’ve never lost this matchup when they fail to draw TBR and always lost when they did. By the time G3 comes, I’m very tired and make the worst play of the day by not mulliganing what is essentially a one lander with a looting and an axe. Iostream thought it was a terrible keep at the time and I have to agree with him. I ended having a decent draw but I was just a tad too slow to beat death’s shadow + TBR once again.
1-2
I was a bit disappointed of not giving me the best chance in the most important game, but I didn’t beat myself too hard and it was an amazing tournament overall.
I loved the list, manabase was fine all day, never lost a game because of it. Won multiple games on the back of Tome Scour, turning a five card hand into an insane opening. The 60 is great, although I need to find room to fit Cathartic Reunion. The SB was fine, but still up in the air.
Thanks for reading! This thread is great!
You bring up a good point on mulligan decisions with this deck. The dredge mechanic allows you to mulligan extremely aggressively. In most match ups, game one at least, I still feel favored with a good-but-not-amazing four card hand. For example, I beat Junk in a post-board game on a 4 card hand last Friday. Land, land, faithless, dredger with faithless drawing into artifact destruction was enough to do it.
Neonate, troll, fetch, 4 blanks? Ship it, it's a trap and you can do better.