Dredgevine is a rather unique aggro-combo deck, based on the principles of Hedron Crab-fueled Crypt of AgadeemUnearthCombo as well as the play-style of an older graveyard aggro-combo deck, Friggorid. Information for the Standard Dredge deck can be found at this thread. Decklists for the Friggorid deck can be found at this location.
For those who want to do their homework, the initial discussion for this style of the deck can be found on this page of the Dredge thread, where Vengevine is first mentioned. I highly recommend reading from there all the way through to page 31, if you want to gain a complete knowledge of the deck's origins. I warn anyone interested in playing this deck that it is extremely complicated, difficult to pilot, and counter-intuitive to one's basic understanding of the game on many levels. Any knowledge you can attain will be beyond valuable, when it comes to this archetype.
The goal of the deck is to use Hedron Crab and Thought Gorger to set the graveyard up with lots of self-animating creatures, then carry out a series of actions in order to deliver a serious and efficient beat-down. Whether it's through multiple Extractor Demon unearths, Vengevine and Bloodghast beats, or a huge Bloodthrone Vampire, this deck has multiple ways to get the job done. Couple that fact with the existence of un-counterable Upheaval effects that are playable from the graveyard, and you have a very strong and versatile strategy.
Card Choices, Part I: The Set-Up
Hedron Crab. This guy is the most efficient way to put a large number of cards into your graveyard quickly. While he does mill random cards from your library into the discard pile, remember that 'random' only refers to random options within a controlled environment. 1/3 of the card in this deck are black creatures and therefore feed Crypt of Agadeem. 1/3 of the cards in this deck are creatures that return themselves from the graveyard to play, given certain conditions are met. And Grim Discovery makes everything else in the maindeck potentially recursive, so when you mill random cards you're opening up a toolbox for Grim Discovery.
Grim Discovery. Half Raise Dead, half Life from the Loam, always impressive and never useless. If you need to hit a land drop, this card gets you a used fetchland or a milled/discarded land from your graveyard. If you want to dredge hard, you can grab a Crab and a land with this. If you need a second creature to reanimate your Vengevine(s), this can help you out. If you need a big creature to hold up some board presence, you can get one back with Grim Discovery. And because it's black, it fits right in with Crypt of Agadeem. It's card advantage and recursion rolled into a budget price of 2 mana. This is your tutor for Crypt of Agadeem and specific creatures, but it's also you way of fighting an attrition war. Love it.
Thought Gorger. This is new tech from Rise of the Eldrazi. Because you won't always draw a Crab, and because Crabs have a big target on their faces, there has to be a secondary 'dredge' engine. The old version of Standard Dredge ran 4 Tome Scour, 4 Architects of Will and a debatable number of Monstrous Carabid and/or Viscera Dragger for additional gas. Thought Gorger is not as cheap as those tools, but it brings a few advantages to the table. The first is that it's a creature, which means it can block or attack. If your opponent doesn't have some sort of evasion, Thought Gorger will cause the following decision from your opponent: Do I attack into this creature and sacrifice my biggest guy (and all the damage that comes with that), do I play a removal spell on this creature and swing through while my opponent just drew a new hand, or do I stop attacking and let my opponent capitalize on the board stall? None of those decisions seem very practical for an opponent trying to beat down against a Thought Gorger. The whole point is that it clogs up the board against aggro or applies pressure against control, and if it gets removed you draw a new hand. In the mean-time, just resolving a Thought Gorger means you have discarded any gas from your hand into the zone where it belongs, and you have also set yourself up for the future by digging so hard into your deck. While Thought Gorger is an awkward card to use initially, it becomes a very powerful and practical tool when you have learned how to set it up a couple of turns in advance.
Bloodthrone Vampire. When we started adding Thought Gorgers to this deck, a problem arose. Thought Gorger is really good when it gets removed, and usually the opponent won't hesitate to kill off a huge blocker to promote his beatdown plan. However, there are times where an opponent will be able to just ignore it and race it with a flier, or otherwise transcend the sub-game which Thought Gorger creates. For those times, a sacrifice outlet would be very useful. Fortunately, the new set brought Bloodthrone Vampire into the card pool, and it is about as efficient a sacrifice outlet as you'll get in this format. Bloodthrone Vampire was tested as a 2-of, then a 3-of, and finally found its place as a staple 4-of within the archetype. While it is still primarily used in this deck as a way of removing one's own Thought Gorger, it also greatly strengthens the deck's muscle in combat. This deck is filled with cheap, disposable creatures, so a Bloodthrone can become enormous at little expense.
Picture, if you will, a turn 4 board position with a Bloodthrone Vampire, Bloodghast, Hedron Crab, and Rotting Rats. If an opponent attacks with his team, you can chump with the Rotting Rats and Hedron Crab, block the biggest creature with your Bloodthrone Vampire, and pump it all the way to a 7/7 to finish the job off. Rotting Rats was intended to chump anyways, and the Hedron Crab already got its mills in before chumping, so you're not exactly wasting resources by turning them into pump spells. And Bloodghast will come back next turn when you hit your land drop, then pump the Bloodthrone when it attacks--so you're not wasting any damage from the Bloodghast by sacrificing it to pump up its buddy Vampire.
In addition, Bloodthrone Vampire is a fantastic way to get damage in through a recently-resolved Baneslayer Angel. If your opponent drops a Baneslayer Angel as a blocker, it can throw a monkey wrench into your plans by being a 10-point life swing when you attack. However, if you have a Bloodthrone Vampire on the table, you can use it to sacrifice whichever creature Baneslayer Angel chooses to block--before first strike damage is dealt. This avoids the 5 life gained, and makes up for the lost creature by giving you an additional 2 points of damage via Bloodthrone Vampire himself.
Bloodthrone Vampire has fantastic symmetry with essentially every other creature in the entire deck, and absolutely belongs here. I think we'll see this creature in multiple decks, across multiple formats, as time goes by; it's very powerful.
Rotting Rats. Don't mistake this card for disruption; while it does force the opponent to discard, it's more important to think of it as a way of pitching cards that belong in the graveyard. It also makes for a magnificent chump-blocker when you're up against a hyper-aggressive opponent, and it's a black creature in the graveyard. Plus, when dealing with Vengevine and Bloodghast, this is your go-to card to get a free creature out on the table quickly. For example, if you drop a Rotting Rats on turn 3 and pitch a Bloodghast, the next land drop reanimates the Bloodghast for free. Likewise, if you drop a Rotting Rats on turn 4 and pitch a Vengevine, the next creature you cast will reanimate all of your Vengevines (including the one you just discarded). How does this add up? You are rapidly developing board position and presenting pressure while simultaneously applying minor hand disruption. It's quite the strong card for setting up this deck.
Crypt of Agadeem. While this is a land, it's more like a combo piece that initially acts like a bad Swamp. This deck is designed to put a lot of cards into its graveyard, and a third of the cards in the deck are black creatures. That means Crypt becomes a way of churning out a few extra mana out of your lands. It is included here because it allows you to unearth many creatures in one turn, hardcast Extractor Demons, unearth Leviathans, and pay for multiple mana costs all at once. Note, however, that Crypt of Agadeem's efficiency is not maximized in this deck. It is not the primary instrument of reanimating hasty attackers. Think of it more as a catalyst. The deck can and does indeed win games without setting up a Crypt of Agadeem, though Crypt is still included because it's simply powerful.
Fatestitcher. Crypt of Agadeem is a strong land, but it has a tangible downside: it enters the battlefield tapped. That's a fair restriction, considering it's a hybrid of Tolarian Academy and Cabal Coffers. In order to further break Crypt of Agadeem, this deck runs a couple of Fatestitchers. This allows you to expend merely one blue mana and a creature in your graveyard to give your Crypt 'haste.' Fatestitcher can also be used like a mana ritual to give you almost double the mana out of a Crypt. As if that wasn't enough, it is also a pseudo-removal spell via tapping down a blocker before the alpha strike, and it can give a Vengevine vigilance when you need to play both offense and defense at the same time. Even just having a single Fatestitcher in the deck can vastly increase its reach.
Pawn of Ulamog. This is the most recent addition to the maindeck, and it does a valuable job of 'oiling the gearbox,' so-to-speak. There are some issues with this deck's ability to race faster aggro decks while finding the mana to carry out its tasks. And sometimes, you just don't have enough gas to win if you don't find a Crypt. So what Pawn does is provide a solid blocker (that trades with Bloodbraid Elf), as well as generate some valuable resources from chump-blockers. Think of it this way: if you have a Hedron Crab, a Rotting Rats, and a Pawn of Ulamog on the table and your opponent attacks with his team, you now have 3 blockers and you'll get 3 more mana for next turn. This is often enough to turn a 4 land-not enough mana situation into a Leviathan-stablilized situation. In addition, Pawn has some very clear synergies with Bloodthrone Vampire, especially if Bloodghast becomes involved. Granted, that is a 3 piece combo, but the whole point is to have more ways of 'getting there,' and if Pawn does more than its primary job of blocking and ramping, that makes it a very practical inclusion. And let's not forget: Extractor Demon becomes a way of digging for even more gas when you have Spawns that sacrifice themselves for mana....
Card Choices, Part II: The Smack-Down
Vengevine. The deck's namesake; the card that caused the movement from traditional Crypt Dredge. Vengevine requires only 2 things to be useful: finding its way into the graveyard, and then having 2 creature be cast in the same turn. I remember when I saw it in the spoiler, I had to keep rubbing my eyes because I thought it was a mirage. A 4/3 haster for 4, no drawback, and a ridiculous upside? Who cares if it requires the deck to be able to hardcast more of its creatures; it's a free creature from the graveyard, it's huge and hasty, and it can block. There is so much potential within this card, it is worth constructing an entire new version of Dredge in order to break it. And that's why this thread has come into existence.
Vengevine is un-castable in this deck because there are no green sources and there are no ways to filter mana. That is irrelevant. Even if you wanted to add 2 Forests to the deck, you are almost always making a mistake by simply casting a Vengevine. The creature can come into play for 0 mana when you cast 2 other creatures, so why should you be a chump and pay full price on the card?
In order to bring a Vengevine to life, it has to be in the graveyard. Fortunately, this deck is packed full of dredge effects and discard outlets, so that's not a problem. It's easy to get a Vengevine into the graveyard. Things get a little tricky when you have to make executive decisions about whether or not to cast a chump-blocker, or to save it if you need it to potentially reanimate Vengevine(s) in a turn or two. I warned you that this deck was complicated, and a lot of those complications are due to Vengevine set-up being an annoyance. I will eventually edit in more details regarding the use of Vengevine, since it will take a considerable amount of effort to describe how to and how not to use the creature.
Bloodghast. Think of this guy as Vengevine's little brother. The older Standard Dredge builds always had the opportunity to play him, but declined because it usually doesn't have haste when you play against any non-control deck (and this deck is already very favorable against control without Bloodghasts). This build, however, breaks that mold in two ways.
First, there is simply a lot more pressure in the deck. Rather than building up for a big unearth turn, Dredgevine has the ability to set up a few beat-sticks and some chump-blockers, and race the opponent out. Bloodghast fits in by being a free creature and putting a rather stable and steady source of damage onto the table. It is very reasonable to get your opponent down to that magic 10 life, then use Bloodghasts to put the nail in his coffin.
Second, Bloodghast has outlandish synergy with Bloodthrone Vampire. If you have one Bloodghast in your graveyard, Bloodthrone Vampire becomes a Plated Geopede without first strike. Every landfall returns Bloodghast to play, then Bloodthrone sacrifices the 'ghast for +2/+2 and acts just like a landfall creature. Think about how much aggression you can pull off when you dredge a pair of Bloodghasts, and lay a Bloodthrone on the table. Even on defense, that's a relatively easy way of producing a large creature to out-muscle a Wild Nacatl/Putrid Leech, or avoid massive trample damage from a Ball Lightning.
Bloodghast could be any number of other 1-2 drop black creatures that aid in reanimating Vengevine, but it exists in this deck because it's so aggressive and it really turns up the volume for Bloodthrone Vampire.
Extractor Demon. It does 5 damage for 3 mana and a card in your graveyard. It adds a mana when Crypt is tapped (the right way). It can be hardcasted when you want to switch gears and play for board position, or if you need to cast 2 creatures in one turn. Beyond that, it's also a good way of fishing out additional gas through its mill ability. Unearthing multiple Demons and swinging with your team usually results in a pile of damage, dead blockers, and a bunch of extra dredges in combat and at your end step. Absolutely amazing card in this deck. While it's not the greatest without an active Crypt, Extractor Demon is always useful if you are willing to pay 3 mana to get a nice 5-point swing in the air, for a turn.
On another note, Extractor Demon and Bloodthrone Vampire go very well together. If you have a bunch of random creatures on the table (and you usually do, with this deck), you can use a Bloodthrone Vampire and Extractor Demon to throw away useless creatures for free dredges and +2/+2 pumps on your Throne guy. This is especially practical when you have already made your land drop, so you can toss your Crab(s) for more dredging and damage; or when you have already used a Fatestitcher to untap a Crypt, you can throw that away in a similar fashion.
Card Choices, Part III: The Upheaval
Kederekt Leviathan. It's so good, it demands its own section! While it is a good source of 5 damage, it's even better at ignoring the general constraints of a game and ruining your opponent's well-laid board position. Got a problem with blockers? Bounce everything. Want to gain some tempo on control? Bounce his Jace and Chalice and swing for 5. Don't like getting beaten up by midrange decks? Make your opponent pay for all of his stuff again while you set up a subsequent attack. Do you desire a way to stop Knight of the Reliquary from coming online, even if just for one turn? Tap your Crypt, 2 lands, and a blue....
I personally think the single most powerful effect in the entire deck is Kederekt Leviathan. As a purely defensive tool, it is elegant. As an out to nearly any problem, it is practical. But, in Dredgevine, you're getting even more mileage out of the card for its synergy with Vengevine and Thought Gorger.
Vengevine can be tough to animate sometimes, when you are running out of cards in hand. Leviathan aids in this department by bouncing whatever Bloodghasts and/or Hedron Crabs are laying around on the table, giving you cards in hand which can, in turn, be dropped to trigger 'Vines. You haven't seen the look of fear in someone's eyes until you've unearthed a Leviathan, cast 2 creatures that were just on the table, returned 3 Vengevines, and swung for 17 against an empty board.
If you have a Thought Gorger on the table, Leviathan can bounce it and draw you a new hand. I don't think this requires much more explanation, but I must admit that it happens more often than it probably should. If you Gorge your hand away and have no sacrifice outlet, Leviathan can solve that problem while it solves any other problems you've been dealing with. Pretty nifty, eh?
Card Choices, Part IV: The Mana
The manabase is actually rather simple, when you look at it through the right lens. There is a minimal number of basic lands, the maximum number of fetchlands, and then a bunch of dual lands. It is useful to have a split between the various dual lands, to avoid random Pithing Needle upsets. There is no real downside to playing different named cards with the same exact function.
Drowned Catacomb is the best U/B dual land available in the format, so there will always be 2-4 of them in the deck. Having dual lands makes any given manabase more stable, and there are no exceptions here.
Terramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds are good at playing both the role of dual land and fetchland. Because there aren't a lot of one-drops in the deck, you can get away with some more taplands. Most of the time, the deck will play a tapped land on turn 1, a creature and an untapped land on turn 2, a tapland and a creature on turn 3, and some sort of play involving an untapped land on turn 4. If you're expecting to play 2 tapped lands within the first 4 turns of the game, a couple of Terramorphics make the mana much smoother without screwing up the deck's curve.
A singleton Creeping Tar Pit is in this deck because it is a good form of reach. You can lay back on blockers and use it to get the necessary few points of damage in, and it's a little easier to activate if you have Crypt of Agadeem going to pay for other spells/abilities. Note that Creeping Tar Pit is also tutorable, considering this is a Dredge deck with 4 Grim Discoveries. As if Grim Discovery needed to be any better.
Card Choices, Part V: Sideboarding
Aether Tradewinds is your go-to anti-control card, as well as a catch-all. It's the most ideal bounce spell for Dredgevine, in this format. Initially, it was added to the Dredge deck because it's the perfect answer to Spreading Seas--you EoT bounce your spreaded Crypt and bounce a second Spreading Seas, solving the problem while gaining tempo. This also means you can use it to temporary shut off some mana of your opponent's, so if he leaves only one mana open for Path...EoT Tradewinds makes that 0 mana. Tradewinds is also a good way of temporarily handling an Oblivion Ring or Tectonic Edge, and it gives you the option to bounce your own guys in response to removal spells while also bouncing would-be attackers. Theoretically, you can board this card in against almost any deck and do wonderful things with it, so it could just be included in the maindeck. However, because it doesn't actually contribute directly to the combo in any ways, I think it belongs in the sideboard.
Blister Beetle. This dude looks like 100% Grade A Jank, but I assure you it has a plethora of uses. The primary reason for its inclusion is Boros/Koros, which is a deck filled with X/1 creatures. When you think about it, Blister Beetle is the perfect solution to those kinds of creatures. Plated Geopede looks like it's indestructible while it's barreling its way into combat on your opponent's turn, but on your turn it's just a 1/1. Blister Beetle, at the very least, kills a landfall creature and then sticks around to block. After it blocks, it goes to the graveyard and contributes to Crypt of Agadeem. If you dredge it out, it's still a black creature for Crypt and therefore its relevant in your 'yard. Plus, you can Grim Discovery it back to your hand, if so inclined. And don't forget that it's a 2-mana creature to help bring back Vengevine(s) for a reasonable cost. You can basically go -4 Bloodghast +4 Blister Beetle and absolutely destroy any boros/Koros opponent, given that you understand the inner-workings of the Dredgevine deck. However, there is only so much room in the sideboard, and Blister Beetle is a rather narrow answer to a very specific problem (landfall dudes and mana dorks), so Beetle may not necessarily be a 4-of in the board.
The other match-up where Blister Beetle really shines is Bant Mythic. It seems like the most threatening creatures out of that deck are the really huge ones that hit the table so quickly, but actually what's deadliest from Mythic are the mana dorks. If you kill a Noble Hierarch/Birds of Paradise/Lotus Cobra with a Blister Beetle, that's the equivalent of casting Sinkhole and getting a creature out of it. Then, because Mythic is such a mana-hungry deck, you have essentially Time Walked your opponent. It's not like you're going to stop them from eventually dropping that Baneslayer Angel or Rafiq, but if you can stall them for a full turn, that gives you a significant amount of time to race hard, to find a Leviathan, or to find some other removal spell. Then, when your opponent is crashing in with a huge double-exalted Knight of the Reliquary, you get to block with your Sinkhole--err Blister Beetle. Great tempo, all around--and of course it still counts as a black creature for Crypt of Agadeem.
Agony Warp is easily the best card you can board in against red decks. It's equivalent to Lightning Helix when cast on 2 opposing creatures, and it's even stronger when you have your own creatures involved in combat. Don't leave home without it.
Death's Shadow is a piece of anti-aggro tech that I discovered about a month ago. If you can drop it when you're at about 6-10 life, it will usually win you the game against any sort of red deck. It actually trumps Searing Blaze and Earthquake completely, and it's a very good blocker. If your opponent swings in with a trample creature, he has to assign all or almost all of the trample damage to the Shadow if he wants to kill it off, or the Shadow is just going to grow bigger due to the Trample damage. For example, if a 3/3 Shadow blocks a Ball Lightning, and the Ball tramples over for 3 damage to the player, the Shadow will be a 6/6 after combat--after stopping 3 of the damage done to the Dredgevine player. The Ball Lightning could assign 5 damage to the Shadow and 1 to the player in order to finish it off...but then the RDW player is looking at trading his 3 mana spell for the Dredgevine's 1 mana spell and one measly point of damage. When your opponent is forced into these kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations, good things are happening. If he doesn't kill the Shadow, it's going to beat serious face for a couple of turns. If he does kill it, he just wasted some damage that he could have gotten in with his Ball Lightning, and you've been using your mana more efficiently than the red deck has. Plus, Death's Shadow is a black creature, which means it helps Crypt generate mana, and it can be recurred with a Grim Discovery. Very useful card, if you understand how to utilize it properly.
Deathmark. Deathmark is primarily boarded as a stall tactic against Knight of the Reliquary decks. Because Knight tutors for some annoying lands (Tectonic Edge, Bojuka Bog), it also has the capability to act as a mana source, and it even acts as huge threat, it's a major threat against this deck. You don't absolutely need to remove it in order to win the game, but it certainly helps. You gain a large amount of tempo by getting rid of a Knight, and Deathmark is the absolute most efficient way to do that. Deathmark is also a good way to remove mana dorks and Baneslayer Angels, making it a valuable tool worth boarding in against any KotR deck.
Basic Playing Guidelines
Because the deck is still under development, exhaustive guidelines for mulligan decisions and how to play out individual hands simply don't exist yet. Those will come in time. For now, this is what you need to know in order to pick up the deck and understand how to play it.
Your opening hand needs to go somewhere. This isn't a typical Standard deck where you just want some lands that can add the right colors, and spells that you can start casting early to curve out. There are a plethora of 2-drops in the deck, so almost any hand you open will have a tapland for turn 1 and a 2-drop for turn 1. That doesn't mean it's keep-able. Your opening hand needs to have the right color(s) going on, and the ability to do something degenerate by turn 4. If you don't have a Crab, land, and fetch-land, then you want a Thought Gorger and a way to survive until you stick it on the table. If you don't have either a Crab or a Gorger and your hand isn't going to explode with Bloodghasts and Bloodthrone Vampire beats, you probably should just mulligan. Don't be afraid to mulligan down to 5 in order to find business--this deck doesn't really care about card advantage in the traditional sense, so mulligans should be considered ways of drawing more cards and not losing cards in hand. Also, note that Crypt of Agadeem is not something you need in your opening hand. If you have a Grim Discovery or a Crypt, that's nice--but it doesn't contribute heavily to whether or not you can keep that hand. You should be aggressively sending hands back and looking for broken ones.
When you have an opening hand with a Crab in it, it is almost always incorrect to cast that Crab turn 1. If you're on the play and you know your opponent can't possibly kill your turn 1 Crab (like how Jund usually fails at having a Mountain and a Lightning Bolt on turn 1), go for it. If you have multiple Crabs in hand, go for it. Otherwise, your plan is always to play a blue source on turn 1, then turn 2 drop the Crab with a fetchland. Most of the time, what you're going to do is let the mill trigger resolve and see what you have, then crack the fetch and (if you're lucky) landfall any Bloodghasts you hit off the first dredge. If your opponent has the potential to play a removal spell on your Crab, then just leave the fetchland on the table and wait until he acts first before you crack it. Rarely can your opponent sit on a removal spell without using it on the Crab and simultaneously set his own game plan in motion, so often you'll find your opponent will just "give up" the stand-off and use his removal on your end step, which is when you respond and dredge 3 more cards off the fetchland. To quote Training Day, "this (game) is Chess, not Checkers." Use your brain and play around your opponent's potential actions, especially when Crabs are involved. The difference between dredging X cards and dredging X+3 cards can be massive, if those 3 include business.
If you open with a Crab and get some solid dredges from the little guy, usually your graveyard and hand will have enough resources to win any given game of Magic in this format. If you dredged out some Bloodghasts/Vengevines, set a course in motion to reanimate those and either win on board position or get a lot of damage in quickly and end the game. If you hit a decent number of black creatures and you can set up a Crypt, go that route. If you have the opportunity to bring a Leviathan onto the board, you probably should do it. The actions you take should be based on what business you have drawn/dredged,
Thought Gorger starts are much more difficult to implement because you have to consider the following factors:
-How can I survive until the turn after I drop the Gorger?
-How can I get Thought Gorger to die, if I need to draw a new hand? Can my opponent just use evasive creatures to ignore it, and if so do I have a Bloodthrone Vampire or Leviathan (or sideboarded removal) available to force it to leave play, myself?
-What is my plan for making sure this Gorger resolves? Do I need it to resolve, or do I have a contingency plan? Note that your opponent can use removal in response to the Gorger's enters-play trigger, which stops the discard and draw effects entirely--so many decks have the potential to use removal as countermagic against a Gorger.
So when your plan is to Gorge your hand away, things can certainly go wrong. However, remember that Thought Gorger is a Wheel of Fortune effect and a black creature for your Crypts. When it does work, it usually leads you straight to victory.
NOTE: This opening post is not finished. I took a great deal of effort to write what's here so far, and I didn't get paid at all for it. It will take some time to complete the primer. If you think that something specific in this opening post could be significantly improved, I would be thrilled to have someone else do a portion of the work for me. As is, this opening post is already over 4000 words long, and copy-pasted into Word it's about 8 pages.
I dislike the Vengevine. Unearthing does nothing for Vengevine, so you'll be dependent on casting 2 creatures from you hand in one turn. Thought Gorger makes this harder to do as well.
By the way, you still put the curves onto 24?
It's a matter of person, i guess? Or if you have some crucial reasons, please be willing to tell me.
Well, with no intentions to steal the start, I want to ask about facing mana-ramping deck like Elves or else.
I found Elfdrazi match is really tough, we still have chances to win, but it just slight and almost no.
My sideboard until now (just tried with testings):
Can't decide the other so I ask for permission to follow the discussion here. Thx.
I dislike the Vengevine. Unearthing does nothing for Vengevine, so you'll be dependent on casting 2 creatures from you hand in one turn. Thought Gorger makes this harder to do as well.
It was the opposite. Vengevinge makes this deck much cooler than before. It gives any deck great threat, or at least become something that they have to handle.
Casting 2 creatures isn't that hard. Hedron Crabs, Bloodthrone Vampire, Bloodghast are examples of low cost mana creature. I guess you need to see someone's Hedron Crab mills 2-3 Vengevine on turn 3 and then smash away for 12 damage that ARE recurring.
And also like the first statement, it was the opposite. Thought Gorger discards the drawn Vengevine AND make you draw more. And when they cast 2 creatures, wham to the face again.
CMIIW
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Standard:
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
I started another thread for the Dredgevine version of the deck. Here is a link to that thread. To be clear, I started the other thread because the two decks function much differently from each other, even if they share a lot of similarities. It will help the discussion of both decks for there to be two separate threads, so now we won't get so tripped up in figuring out who's talking about which version. Regardless of which build is better (or whether one of the builds is distinctly stronger than the other, in the first place), I think this is ultimately better for both decks' individual discussion.
I dislike the Vengevine. Unearthing does nothing for Vengevine, so you'll be dependent on casting 2 creatures from you hand in one turn. Thought Gorger makes this harder to do as well.
Essentially you're telling us that it's difficult to make Vengevine work, and Thought Gorger is a tough resource to use. This is common knowledge, and it doesn't really help anyone make progress with their understanding of how to build or play this type of deck. We know that Vengevine has no easy synergy with Unearth...how about we look at how to make Vengevine function alongside Unearth? You could be thinking about how to make a card work, instead of the obvious truth that it is tricky to make that card work. That's a good place to start, I think.
EDIT: Hey, rdwjustrdw, what's the deal with the sideboarded Vampire Hexmages? They seem to be for killing planeswalkers and for blocking certain aggressive red creatures, but I feel like you don't need something for the former and there are better tools for the latter. Care to enlighten me?
I dislike the Vengevine. Unearthing does nothing for Vengevine, so you'll be dependent on casting 2 creatures from you hand in one turn. Thought Gorger makes this harder to do as well.
what a fail post.
of course unearthing doesnt count towards the 2 creature count, but its not build exclusively around the vine.. and thought gorger is a house
from the previous thread, and on SB choices:
heres some thoughts: consume the meek: not bad, but only as a 2-of max. destroys allies, boros/koros, rdw (only if their stupid), and a few other decks. once was helpful against jund with a super over-cluttered board with tokens etc, but wouldnt recommend it. I would much rather run inquisition or duress here --> inquision of Kozilek: again not bad, and can be very VERY powerful against our main offenders: boros/rdw/allies. a 3 mana cost may not seem like much, and people say 'oh no, you cant get planeswalkers', but its the real deal. it removes Ball lightning, any burn, paths, counters, chalices, manadorks (kill their T1 ramp), KoTR, SO much. Probably the only situation where duress is better would be in polymorph, and even then they can just draw another one. But, il say it again, inquisition on naya/bant/ramp/elf taking their T1 manadork can be gamebreaking, esp if they were counting on it and only holding 2 lands.. and 1 mana to get rid of a ball lightning is no small thing. COULD replace death's shadow --> deaths shadow: The only decks I side this in against would be boros/RDW (Koros has too much equip, and would just ping it down usually), and even then boros is an iffy decision. its good when it works, and it works great for the life margin 8-12 (because then it negates all their tramplers), but otherwise its not so good. esp with flame slash coming into SB's, it could be an issue. I am thinking of switching them for inquisitions and: Suffer the past: mad RDW tech. unearth hellspark/thunder? no worries, tap crypt, remove 5 cards in GY, gain 5 life and you dont get your dude. also awesome vs KoTR decks (attack with a 10/10 knight? sure, il take him down to a 4/4 and gain 6) having said that though, its largely useless against other decks, barring any mirror MU's. currently a 2-of in my testing. Mainly for the lifegain. deathmark/agony warp/vendetta: again, very useful utility cards. I think the issue is balancing the control element vs maintaining functionality. deathmark is obviously good against naya/allies/jund. agony warp is good vs allies/red/boros/koros/bant/WW/etc. vendetta is good against RDW and anything that haste creatures are a problem. atm im looking at having 5-7 removal spells. BUT, you have to remember inquision can double as a quasi-removal if played early. KoTR? deathmark. OR inquisiton while still in hand. aether tradewinds: Still awesome. a solid 3-of atm. spreading seas/LD/tectonic edge tech. also good vs rdw/naya/pretty much anything. again, inquisition a T1 dork, bounce their land T3 = massive temp loss and a T6 BSA. *phew* blister beetle: incredible card vs naya and other decks sporting low end mana dorks and cards. will probably become less relevant with spawn tokens forcing big guys, but a strong answer along with inquisition for elves and naya
and incredible primer smiles! Its awesome! though I loved the pic of the death star put it up again at the bottom 'this is what this idea is like'.. boo yah
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[CENTER]ITS A TRAP[/CENTER]
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It was the opposite. Vengevinge makes this deck much cooler than before. It gives any deck great threat, or at least become something that they have to handle.
Casting 2 creatures isn't that hard. Hedron Crabs, Bloodthrone Vampire, Bloodghast are examples of low cost mana creature. I guess you need to see someone's Hedron Crab mills 2-3 Vengevine on turn 3 and then smash away for 12 damage that ARE recurring.
And also like the first statement, it was the opposite. Thought Gorger discards the drawn Vengevine AND make you draw more. And when they cast 2 creatures, wham to the face again.
So, basicly, the deck depends on getting lucky.
1. You need to get the crab and it needs to stay on the board.
2. You need a lot of fetches
3. You need to hit Vengevine with your mill, or you need to have Rotting Rats and Vengevine in hand.
4. You need to have 2 cheap creatures in hand
5. You need to have the correct colours of mana to cast those 2 creatures.
I find the list very interesting, and will playtest this. There's a quote somewhere on the web about Dredge not playing by the rules of Magic the Gathering, so it just might work out.
what a fail post.
of course unearthing doesnt count towards the 2 creature count, but its not build exclusively around the vine.. and thought gorger is a house
Uncalled for. The amount of times that you are triggering Vengevine from your GY is something you have to consider. Thought Gourger does not have synergy with 'playing things from your hand' (even though it probably IS a house).
Sorry for just a short question but have you thought of trying UB's Bloodbraid Elf for a possible way to get two creatures in a turn to help with Vengevine? Kathari Remnant, his 0/1 is the bad part but it is a way for your deck to last longer games to have a regenerating blocker. Plus if you tried Aether Tradewinds mainboard someday, bouncing him wouldnt be a bad thing.
@cloverstorm: Kathari Remnant was tested. I never thought it was very relevant, to be honest. If it had 1 power, it might be playable in here, but at 0 power it's just not worth it because it's never able to attack or be a threat. Cadaver Imp was a strong card in this deck because it acted a lot like Kathari Remnant--but it was an attacker that could get some damage in, and it could bring back a Hedron Crab, Thought Gorger, or Bloodthrone Vampire at will. And even that card eventually was cut as well, because it didn't pull enough weight for the deck.
Besides, if you know what you're doing, Vengevine isn't that hard to reanimate in this deck. You don't have to reanimate Vengevines every single turn in order for them to be good. You simply have to do it once or twice in the duration of a normal-length game.
@SClone: If you think this is the only deck that requires "getting lucky" in order to win, maybe you should remember that this is a card game and every single deck is playing the odds.
@SClone: If you think this is the only deck that requires "getting lucky" in order to win, maybe you should remember that this is a card game and every single deck is playing the odds.
That's a poor argument. The whole point of competitive deck building is to increase the consistency of the cards you draw. The way to increase these odds is through card advantage, be it card draw, fetching, or cascade.
On to the deck, I like the idea. I just don't like the consistency. You have a fair amount of creatures to reanimate a vengevine but very few ways of getting them into your hand. I believe you need more draw outlets. I also think adding white mana to the build may make this deck much more viable. You get Ranger of Eos, who isn't mana intensive and pretty much tells your opponent, "Remove vengevine from my graveyard or he's gonna swing."
Its just a thought, but in my opinion moving away from the standard "Dredge" build is a good thing. Recurring creatures are awesome, but I think the deck really needs some "omph". This is a aggro build where the dredge deck is more of a combo deck. I believe you need a more aggressive build, as well as removal. If you want to keep the creature count high you have access to Fleshbag Marauder and Gatekeeper of Malakir.
@i-never-smile: Hexmages are quite useful in UW matchup (well, fair to us, it just example) and facing White Weenies. Seeing Gideon Jura and Transcendent Master is no fun for us.
I've been having hard times to face them, since I could only pass their White Knights via Vengevine, and now they bring Jura and Transcendent Master.
I preferred Deathmark and so at first glance, but Vampire Hexmage can touch graveyard easily, and like what I've pointed, Hexmage is 2cc, that way we could play Vengevine more easily.
So that more of my thoughts. Try to test them if Levelers come into some decks. In my meta, this unpredictable card had make some breakdown.
@SClone: for your points, don't assume it like that. You'd make it like having 3 Vengenvines in hand is a mulligan or a scoop. That's why Thought Gorger here (and this is why I believe the deck has potential).
@BCGamer: seeing you define "consistency" makes me think you haven't faced or played this kind of deck. No offense anyway. But take easy examples of Dredge Deck itself. "Lack of consistency" is just on paper hypothesis.
Besides, if you know what you're doing, Vengevine isn't that hard to reanimate in this deck. You don't have to reanimate Vengevines every single turn in order for them to be good. You simply have to do it once or twice in the duration of a normal-length game.
I guess this is the correct answer for those who asking what are Vengevines doing in this deck.
CMIIW
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Standard:
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
I've heard standard dredge had a nearly advantageous pre-board mu against Jund- How does the matchup for Dredgevine compare?
On another note- To whoever came up with this deck and helped, it's like one of the most creative non-gimmick decks I've seen ever seen. Holy ☺☺☺☺
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Type 2:
:symr:Tribal Goblins:symr:
:symb:Mono-Black Control:symb:
:symb::symu::symw:Esper Aggro:symw::symu::symb:
EDH:
:symb::symr::symu:Sedris, the Traitor King:symu::symr::symb:
@Grizzlebubbear: in my opinion and as far as my testing, Standard Dredge is a bad matchup for Jund, now Dredgevine is just worse for them. They have to build up blockers rather than hitters. Their removal just put our creatures into graveyard, yet we are able to put them back onto battlefield with ease. Even though they bring the same Vengevine with Dredgevine, the post damage after it will be marvelous. In my shop, since the testing of pre-build, this deck never been beaten by Jund, at all. Well, since our first FNM is going to be this week, so it will settle things greatly.
Well, that is Jund for us. I guess. CMIIW
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Standard:
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
The biggest reasons to play this deck are its Jund match-up and control match-up. Its just rolls those decks so hard because they follow convential laws of card advantage and try to exist within the typical constraints of tempo and board position. While Dredgevine does aspire to attain card advantage, to make tempo plays, and to develop its board position, it follows its own set of physics.
About sideboarding: I haven't filled in the rest of the SB in the OP decklist because I want to work on that aspect of the deck a bit more, first. I feel like at least 3 Aether Tradewinds is mandatory because that card solves all sorts of problems. The rest is pretty wide open.
I have been a big proponent of Deathmark in the board, but I think it should become Doom Blade at this point. Everything you want to kill with Deathmark is a nonblack creature. If you're boarding Deathmark in against Jund to kill Putrid Leech, you're over-sideboarding. So going to Doom Blade gives you the advantage of instant speed, another removal spell for Ball Lightning/Goblin Guide, and a much better answer to Steppe Lynx (make them break their fetchlands and then kill it off, as opposed to letting them build up fetchlands for the next attack with a landfall guy). Deathmark is only better when you are really tight on mana, and I don't see that being the primary issue anymore for this deck.
I also really like Blister Beetle, and I think it should probably be a 3-4 of in the board as well. It is somewhat narrow, but it's the best card in the format for what it does. Cutting off your opponent's development by a full turn is strong. Being able to use it to resurrect Venvine is solid. It is very easy to swap the Bloodghasts for Blister Beetles and immediately have a stronger foundation against Mythic/Boros/Elfdrazi.
I don't quite know where I stand on Death's Shadow or Agony Warp right now. I also have simply not tested Consume the Meek in here, either. That's the next set of cards I wish to playtest, when I get around to it.
This deck is very fun to play. Played with op's list on lackey ccg and won all 4 games against a white weenie and a r/g aggro. Vengevine is so absolutely ridiculous when milled. i mean really really good. I even won 1 game where i didn't get the crypt, just had gorger and bloodghasts.
Because she's the hero standard deserves, but not the one it needs right now... and so we'll chase her... because she can take it... because she's not a hero... she's a silent guardian
Love this deck.. More often than not, my opponent has no idea what I am doing when I goto mill myself turn two.
My FNM is Jund heavy with a little more Polymorph builds than I would prefer. The Jund matchup is a little rough until G2 when I can side in some more disruption in the form of Mind Rot and Duress but the Polymorph builds are pretty scary.
Any thoughts on tweaking the SB against these two MU's would be greatly appreciated.
Beetle is for Mythic and Boros and even Allys., Coil is exclusive to RDW and MAYBE Boros if I'm feeling saucy. Smother and Duress are for any polymorph build, and Rot + Duress are for taking Jund out.
Thoughts?
What do you have to SB against most of the time? What do you take out?
I think we should find space for Cadaver Imp. Its a 1/1 flying body, which chumps various flying things and gets in there for 1 generally, but its ability to pull creatures back from the graveyard is what makes it good. Play it for 3, and for 2 more you play whatever creature you pulled back and voila, out pops the vengevine. Just my $0.02 to throw in there. Other than that, i love the deck, and its inclusion of thought gorger, my all-time favorite card from this set.
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First tournament top 8 11/4/12 at the SCG IQ in Santa Cruz!
I love how Vengevine adds another way to win with the deck. The deck doesn't revolve around Vengevine, it is just another wincon. Good ol' dredge is still the main wincon. Bloodghasts offer help vs control (not that it was needed), and Thoughtgorger is a HOUSE (well put to whoever said that first).
I think we should find space for Cadaver Imp. Its a 1/1 flying body, which chumps various flying things and gets in there for 1 generally, but its ability to pull creatures back from the graveyard is what makes it good. Play it for 3, and for 2 more you play whatever creature you pulled back and voila, out pops the vengevine. Just my $0.02 to throw in there. Other than that, i love the deck, and its inclusion of thought gorger, my all-time favorite card from this set.
Cadaver Imp is good in this deck, but what would you remove to put it in the deck? Space is very tight.
I always had trouble getting Immortal Coil to work. I just don't think it gains you enough life to bring you out of reach unless you start removing gas from your graveyard. Sometimes, you get a golden moment to drop it on the table the turn before you die, but most of the time it just gains 4-5 life and that life total now includes the gas you need in order to go off and kill off the RDW player. I still really like Immortal Coil because it's such a cool card and it has a unique effect on the game state, but as of yet I have not found anyone able to explain how to make it a more stable and effective tool against red decks.
What today's dredge player should realize long before shuffling is that the cards in their GY represent their 'hand' and their ACTUAL hand represents the board. In game one, Dredge doesn't really care about what their op does, as it's usually a matter of going off sooner than yoru op can react/stabilize. That being said, we have to view cards like tome scour and hedron crab as CA and not combo pieces.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
Let me say that again.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
A combo deck by definition will net a win after a sieres of plays on a single turn. See FlashProtean Hulk decks, and Pact Hive Mind combos. Elfball is a combo deck, Elfball without grapeshot is not combo. The 'Unearth Combo' is simply an easy way of saying "Here's what I can do on a turn, are you able to survive?"
Coil has been an all-star for me post-board against direct damage based decks including but not limited to RDW, RDW splash Black and sometimes boros.
With an Immortal Coil on the board, tome scour becomes "Gain 5 life, draw 5 cards." Alongside a hedron crab, Coil reads "Landfall: Gain 3 life, draw 3 cards." Cyclers become "Gain 1 life, draw a card, add B to your mana pool."
It's good enough to warrant a few slots in every Dredge SB, and at the same time, I understand where you are coming from in regard to it not shining bright everytime you see it in your hand. It's situationaly usefull, something that no player should hope for in any card, but when it's online and affecting the game, it's almost always a lock.
Anybody have any other reccomendations for SB plans against Jund or other consistantly naughty mid-range decks (naya, some mythic builds) or polymorph?
The polymorph MU has got me a little worried. T3 polymorph into an Eldrazi is pretty terrible for Dredge, no real way to come back after one of those baddies hit the field.
What today's dredge player should realize long before shuffling is that the cards in their GY represent their 'hand' and their ACTUAL hand represents the board. In game one, Dredge doesn't really care about what their op does, as it's usually a matter of going off sooner than yoru op can react/stabilize. That being said, we have to view cards like tome scour and hedron crab as CA and not combo pieces.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
Let me say that again.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
A combo deck by definition will net a win after a sieres of plays on a single turn. See FlashProtean Hulk decks, and Pact Hive Mind combos. Elfball is a combo deck, Elfball without grapeshot is not combo. The 'Unearth Combo' is simply an easy way of saying "Here's what I can do on a turn, are you able to survive?"
What's next? Are you going to start telling me that Academy wasn't a combo deck because it was about generating a lot of blue mana and drawing a lot of cards? Think about what you're saying here.
Elfball without Grapeshot is still a combo deck. If you draw almost your entire deck, make an army of a billion dudes, gain a thousand life, and return all your opponent's permanents to the top of his library, the game is basically over. Sure, you're asking "Here's what I can do on a turn, are you able to survive?" but if your opponent says no, the game is over. He gets another turn, more importantly you get an upkeep where you have to remember to pay for Pact(s), and then the game ends when you decide to attack.
Hulk-Flash also asked "Can you stop me, this turn?" That deck was clearly a combo deck. If you had the Force and then a counter in response to the Pact, you stopped Hulk-Flash. Similarly, if you disrupted the Reveillark/Slivers end of the combo with removal or grave hate or something, you stopped Hulk-Flash (at least, for a turn).
I don't understand how unearthing a bunch of Demons and beating for lethal is any different. Instead of your opponent needing countermagic to stop you, he needs removal/grave hate/fog effects. Maybe you're not comboing off every single time you play this deck, and maybe you're going off in multiple waves--but it's still a combo deck at heart. Beating down the hard way happens to be a back-up plan, no matter how often you choose to use it.
Coil has been an all-star for me post-board against direct damage based decks including but not limited to RDW, RDW splash Black and sometimes boros.
With an Immortal Coil on the board, tome scour becomes "Gain 5 life, draw 5 cards." Alongside a hedron crab, Coil reads "Landfall: Gain 3 life, draw 3 cards." Cyclers become "Gain 1 life, draw a card, add B to your mana pool."
It's good enough to warrant a few slots in every Dredge SB, and at the same time, I understand where you are coming from in regard to it not shining bright everytime you see it in your hand. It's situationaly usefull, something that no player should hope for in any card, but when it's online and affecting the game, it's almost always a lock.
I understand that if you have a Hedron Crab out, Immortal Coil is insane. However, If I am so fortunate that my Hedron Crab lives against red decks, I'm probably already winning. If they can't actually kill it, clearly their hand has no burn--so I don't really need to gain life. And if they don't have removal for a Crab, it's just going to end the game by itself anyways.
With a Coil out, Tome Scour actually theoretically gains 6 life against RDW. You have to count the Scour itself. Still, you can't sit there and tell me that you're both gaining 6 life AND drawing 6 cards. You're drawing 6 cards, and if your opponent does any damage to you, that's damage coming out of your hand instead of your life total.
I get that it's situationally useful, but I have such a difficult time setting up those situations. I don't consider myself thick-headed or close-minded, and I've really tried to make it work. The trouble is that it's only good in those clutch situations where you've dredged really hard, you're in burn range, and Coil can buy you a turn or 2 to go off. That means you need a good amount of gas in your opening draw, and you also need to draw a Coil. A lot of the time, that's a tall order--especially since red decks tend to kill off your primary dredge outlet.
That's why I have issues with Coil. To me, it isn't a lock...or if it's a lock, it's a very soft one. You're changing your life total to your graveyard, which means your opponent's burn spells will eventually run you out of gas (unless you're so fortunate as to hit tons and tons of dredgers). So what am I missing? Are you supposed to use Coil to buy yourself time so you can hardcast a Demon or Architects or other cycler guys, and beatdown like that while you keep filling your lard to get around your opponent's burn? I couldn't get that to work, either.
Anybody have any other reccomendations for SB plans against Jund or other consistantly naughty mid-range decks (naya, some mythic builds) or polymorph?
The polymorph MU has got me a little worried. T3 polymorph into an Eldrazi is pretty terrible for Dredge, no real way to come back after one of those baddies hit the field.
Put removal in your board, and board it in for Polymorph. Removal doubles as countermagic against Polymorph, and they're sure as Hell not going to win with Jace or through hardcasting a 9+ mana creature. I like boarding in Aether Tradewinds, whatever other instant-speed removal I have (Doom Blade/Agony Warp), and Blister Beetles for Polymorph. Blister Beetle is better than something like Specter or Dragger because it kills a token and it's pro-active, but it's still a black creature. Sometimes, they just don't have an infinite stream of tokens. Plus, if you shoot down an Eldrazi spawn, you are cutting them off a potential mana, so Beetle is pretty good.
I suppose you could use countermagic, too, but countermagic isn't as good as spot removal is in other match-ups.
You guys really need to play with Halimar depths. This whole arguement about supposedly not being able to have a few more ETBT lands because you "always want to be cycling" or something is a terrible justification not to run it. First of all, a lot of the builds run Drowned Catacombs, which will ETBT if you have a crypt or multiples of it. Next of all, it acts as a pseudo-ponder in itself considering you're running fetches and cyclers. Don't write it off simply because you think you have the deck figured out, and don't resign yourself to such a narrow view. I've been playing this deck since Fall 09, I know how it works and I know that Halimar depths belongs in this deck.
If everyone "needs" to run Halimar Depths in this deck, then why did I cut Halimar Depths after testing it over and over again here? Why did I decide to play 4 Drowned Catacomb, instead? Could it possibly be that a Ponder effect isn't worth the ability to produce 2 different colors of mana? How about the fact that Ponder just isn't that strong in this deck, to begin with?
If you sincerely believe Halimar Depths is not only a good card in this deck, but also a mandatory card, you need to give much stronger evidence to support that opinion. OK, you think 9 ETBT lands are acceptable in this deck. Explain how you're getting away with having a significantly lower amount of mana in the early turns, in a deck that ideally wants to spend every last mana that it can on cyclers, Tome Scours, and Hedron Crabs.
If everyone "needs" to run Halimar Depths in this deck, then why did I cut Halimar Depths after testing it over and over again here? Why did I decide to play 4 Drowned Catacomb, instead? Could it possibly be that a Ponder effect isn't worth the ability to produce 2 different colors of mana? How about the fact that Ponder just isn't that strong in this deck, to begin with?
If you sincerely believe Halimar Depths is not only a good card in this deck, but also a mandatory card, you need to give much stronger evidence to support that opinion. OK, you think 9 ETBT lands are acceptable in this deck. Explain how you're getting away with having a significantly lower amount of mana in the early turns, in a deck that ideally wants to spend every last mana that it can on cyclers, Tome Scours, and Hedron Crabs.
Why you decided to play 4 drowned catacombs is beyond me. Halimar depths is good because it provides you with more information, you essentially are (when you play it) looking at 10 cards, 7 in hand 3 on top. Playing depths t1 is unbelievably good. Tome Scour in hand? Get that grim discovery that was third from the top. Hedron Crab in hand? Look at the top three and pick the one you want to keep, put it on top, draw it, then crab. Another example, a t1 tap land followed by a t2 tap land still allows you to cycle/crab/scour t2. Only once, yes, but you also (if one of them was depths) gave your draws a potentially great rise in quality. If you're playing a deck that, to get Crypt you rely on either cycling and drawing into it, or by milling yourself, then grim discovering, how could you possibly not want a card that both helps you filter the top (maybe you put carabid on top and the 2 lands below him, then fetch next turn) AND find grim/crab/scour before you potentially mill him away?
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This is where those two decks collide:
4 Crypt of Agadeem
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Marsh Flats
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Swamp
3 Island
4 Hedron Crab
4 Grim Discovery
Black Creatures (22):
4 Rotting Rats
4 Extractor Demon
4 Bloodghast
4 Thought Gorger
4 Bloodthrone Vampire
2 Pawn of Ulamog
Other Graveyard Creatures (7):
4 Vengevine
1 Fatestitcher
2 Kederekt Leviathan
4 Agony Warp
3 Death's Shadow
3 Aether Tradewinds
3 Deathmark
2 Blister Beetle
The goal of the deck is to use Hedron Crab and Thought Gorger to set the graveyard up with lots of self-animating creatures, then carry out a series of actions in order to deliver a serious and efficient beat-down. Whether it's through multiple Extractor Demon unearths, Vengevine and Bloodghast beats, or a huge Bloodthrone Vampire, this deck has multiple ways to get the job done. Couple that fact with the existence of un-counterable Upheaval effects that are playable from the graveyard, and you have a very strong and versatile strategy.
Card Choices, Part I: The Set-Up
Hedron Crab. This guy is the most efficient way to put a large number of cards into your graveyard quickly. While he does mill random cards from your library into the discard pile, remember that 'random' only refers to random options within a controlled environment. 1/3 of the card in this deck are black creatures and therefore feed Crypt of Agadeem. 1/3 of the cards in this deck are creatures that return themselves from the graveyard to play, given certain conditions are met. And Grim Discovery makes everything else in the maindeck potentially recursive, so when you mill random cards you're opening up a toolbox for Grim Discovery.
Grim Discovery. Half Raise Dead, half Life from the Loam, always impressive and never useless. If you need to hit a land drop, this card gets you a used fetchland or a milled/discarded land from your graveyard. If you want to dredge hard, you can grab a Crab and a land with this. If you need a second creature to reanimate your Vengevine(s), this can help you out. If you need a big creature to hold up some board presence, you can get one back with Grim Discovery. And because it's black, it fits right in with Crypt of Agadeem. It's card advantage and recursion rolled into a budget price of 2 mana. This is your tutor for Crypt of Agadeem and specific creatures, but it's also you way of fighting an attrition war. Love it.
Thought Gorger. This is new tech from Rise of the Eldrazi. Because you won't always draw a Crab, and because Crabs have a big target on their faces, there has to be a secondary 'dredge' engine. The old version of Standard Dredge ran 4 Tome Scour, 4 Architects of Will and a debatable number of Monstrous Carabid and/or Viscera Dragger for additional gas. Thought Gorger is not as cheap as those tools, but it brings a few advantages to the table. The first is that it's a creature, which means it can block or attack. If your opponent doesn't have some sort of evasion, Thought Gorger will cause the following decision from your opponent: Do I attack into this creature and sacrifice my biggest guy (and all the damage that comes with that), do I play a removal spell on this creature and swing through while my opponent just drew a new hand, or do I stop attacking and let my opponent capitalize on the board stall? None of those decisions seem very practical for an opponent trying to beat down against a Thought Gorger. The whole point is that it clogs up the board against aggro or applies pressure against control, and if it gets removed you draw a new hand. In the mean-time, just resolving a Thought Gorger means you have discarded any gas from your hand into the zone where it belongs, and you have also set yourself up for the future by digging so hard into your deck. While Thought Gorger is an awkward card to use initially, it becomes a very powerful and practical tool when you have learned how to set it up a couple of turns in advance.
Bloodthrone Vampire. When we started adding Thought Gorgers to this deck, a problem arose. Thought Gorger is really good when it gets removed, and usually the opponent won't hesitate to kill off a huge blocker to promote his beatdown plan. However, there are times where an opponent will be able to just ignore it and race it with a flier, or otherwise transcend the sub-game which Thought Gorger creates. For those times, a sacrifice outlet would be very useful. Fortunately, the new set brought Bloodthrone Vampire into the card pool, and it is about as efficient a sacrifice outlet as you'll get in this format. Bloodthrone Vampire was tested as a 2-of, then a 3-of, and finally found its place as a staple 4-of within the archetype. While it is still primarily used in this deck as a way of removing one's own Thought Gorger, it also greatly strengthens the deck's muscle in combat. This deck is filled with cheap, disposable creatures, so a Bloodthrone can become enormous at little expense.
Picture, if you will, a turn 4 board position with a Bloodthrone Vampire, Bloodghast, Hedron Crab, and Rotting Rats. If an opponent attacks with his team, you can chump with the Rotting Rats and Hedron Crab, block the biggest creature with your Bloodthrone Vampire, and pump it all the way to a 7/7 to finish the job off. Rotting Rats was intended to chump anyways, and the Hedron Crab already got its mills in before chumping, so you're not exactly wasting resources by turning them into pump spells. And Bloodghast will come back next turn when you hit your land drop, then pump the Bloodthrone when it attacks--so you're not wasting any damage from the Bloodghast by sacrificing it to pump up its buddy Vampire.
In addition, Bloodthrone Vampire is a fantastic way to get damage in through a recently-resolved Baneslayer Angel. If your opponent drops a Baneslayer Angel as a blocker, it can throw a monkey wrench into your plans by being a 10-point life swing when you attack. However, if you have a Bloodthrone Vampire on the table, you can use it to sacrifice whichever creature Baneslayer Angel chooses to block--before first strike damage is dealt. This avoids the 5 life gained, and makes up for the lost creature by giving you an additional 2 points of damage via Bloodthrone Vampire himself.
Bloodthrone Vampire has fantastic symmetry with essentially every other creature in the entire deck, and absolutely belongs here. I think we'll see this creature in multiple decks, across multiple formats, as time goes by; it's very powerful.
Rotting Rats. Don't mistake this card for disruption; while it does force the opponent to discard, it's more important to think of it as a way of pitching cards that belong in the graveyard. It also makes for a magnificent chump-blocker when you're up against a hyper-aggressive opponent, and it's a black creature in the graveyard. Plus, when dealing with Vengevine and Bloodghast, this is your go-to card to get a free creature out on the table quickly. For example, if you drop a Rotting Rats on turn 3 and pitch a Bloodghast, the next land drop reanimates the Bloodghast for free. Likewise, if you drop a Rotting Rats on turn 4 and pitch a Vengevine, the next creature you cast will reanimate all of your Vengevines (including the one you just discarded). How does this add up? You are rapidly developing board position and presenting pressure while simultaneously applying minor hand disruption. It's quite the strong card for setting up this deck.
Crypt of Agadeem. While this is a land, it's more like a combo piece that initially acts like a bad Swamp. This deck is designed to put a lot of cards into its graveyard, and a third of the cards in the deck are black creatures. That means Crypt becomes a way of churning out a few extra mana out of your lands. It is included here because it allows you to unearth many creatures in one turn, hardcast Extractor Demons, unearth Leviathans, and pay for multiple mana costs all at once. Note, however, that Crypt of Agadeem's efficiency is not maximized in this deck. It is not the primary instrument of reanimating hasty attackers. Think of it more as a catalyst. The deck can and does indeed win games without setting up a Crypt of Agadeem, though Crypt is still included because it's simply powerful.
Fatestitcher. Crypt of Agadeem is a strong land, but it has a tangible downside: it enters the battlefield tapped. That's a fair restriction, considering it's a hybrid of Tolarian Academy and Cabal Coffers. In order to further break Crypt of Agadeem, this deck runs a couple of Fatestitchers. This allows you to expend merely one blue mana and a creature in your graveyard to give your Crypt 'haste.' Fatestitcher can also be used like a mana ritual to give you almost double the mana out of a Crypt. As if that wasn't enough, it is also a pseudo-removal spell via tapping down a blocker before the alpha strike, and it can give a Vengevine vigilance when you need to play both offense and defense at the same time. Even just having a single Fatestitcher in the deck can vastly increase its reach.
Pawn of Ulamog. This is the most recent addition to the maindeck, and it does a valuable job of 'oiling the gearbox,' so-to-speak. There are some issues with this deck's ability to race faster aggro decks while finding the mana to carry out its tasks. And sometimes, you just don't have enough gas to win if you don't find a Crypt. So what Pawn does is provide a solid blocker (that trades with Bloodbraid Elf), as well as generate some valuable resources from chump-blockers. Think of it this way: if you have a Hedron Crab, a Rotting Rats, and a Pawn of Ulamog on the table and your opponent attacks with his team, you now have 3 blockers and you'll get 3 more mana for next turn. This is often enough to turn a 4 land-not enough mana situation into a Leviathan-stablilized situation. In addition, Pawn has some very clear synergies with Bloodthrone Vampire, especially if Bloodghast becomes involved. Granted, that is a 3 piece combo, but the whole point is to have more ways of 'getting there,' and if Pawn does more than its primary job of blocking and ramping, that makes it a very practical inclusion. And let's not forget: Extractor Demon becomes a way of digging for even more gas when you have Spawns that sacrifice themselves for mana....
Card Choices, Part II: The Smack-Down
Vengevine. The deck's namesake; the card that caused the movement from traditional Crypt Dredge. Vengevine requires only 2 things to be useful: finding its way into the graveyard, and then having 2 creature be cast in the same turn. I remember when I saw it in the spoiler, I had to keep rubbing my eyes because I thought it was a mirage. A 4/3 haster for 4, no drawback, and a ridiculous upside? Who cares if it requires the deck to be able to hardcast more of its creatures; it's a free creature from the graveyard, it's huge and hasty, and it can block. There is so much potential within this card, it is worth constructing an entire new version of Dredge in order to break it. And that's why this thread has come into existence.
Vengevine is un-castable in this deck because there are no green sources and there are no ways to filter mana. That is irrelevant. Even if you wanted to add 2 Forests to the deck, you are almost always making a mistake by simply casting a Vengevine. The creature can come into play for 0 mana when you cast 2 other creatures, so why should you be a chump and pay full price on the card?
In order to bring a Vengevine to life, it has to be in the graveyard. Fortunately, this deck is packed full of dredge effects and discard outlets, so that's not a problem. It's easy to get a Vengevine into the graveyard. Things get a little tricky when you have to make executive decisions about whether or not to cast a chump-blocker, or to save it if you need it to potentially reanimate Vengevine(s) in a turn or two. I warned you that this deck was complicated, and a lot of those complications are due to Vengevine set-up being an annoyance. I will eventually edit in more details regarding the use of Vengevine, since it will take a considerable amount of effort to describe how to and how not to use the creature.
Bloodghast. Think of this guy as Vengevine's little brother. The older Standard Dredge builds always had the opportunity to play him, but declined because it usually doesn't have haste when you play against any non-control deck (and this deck is already very favorable against control without Bloodghasts). This build, however, breaks that mold in two ways.
First, there is simply a lot more pressure in the deck. Rather than building up for a big unearth turn, Dredgevine has the ability to set up a few beat-sticks and some chump-blockers, and race the opponent out. Bloodghast fits in by being a free creature and putting a rather stable and steady source of damage onto the table. It is very reasonable to get your opponent down to that magic 10 life, then use Bloodghasts to put the nail in his coffin.
Second, Bloodghast has outlandish synergy with Bloodthrone Vampire. If you have one Bloodghast in your graveyard, Bloodthrone Vampire becomes a Plated Geopede without first strike. Every landfall returns Bloodghast to play, then Bloodthrone sacrifices the 'ghast for +2/+2 and acts just like a landfall creature. Think about how much aggression you can pull off when you dredge a pair of Bloodghasts, and lay a Bloodthrone on the table. Even on defense, that's a relatively easy way of producing a large creature to out-muscle a Wild Nacatl/Putrid Leech, or avoid massive trample damage from a Ball Lightning.
Bloodghast could be any number of other 1-2 drop black creatures that aid in reanimating Vengevine, but it exists in this deck because it's so aggressive and it really turns up the volume for Bloodthrone Vampire.
Extractor Demon. It does 5 damage for 3 mana and a card in your graveyard. It adds a mana when Crypt is tapped (the right way). It can be hardcasted when you want to switch gears and play for board position, or if you need to cast 2 creatures in one turn. Beyond that, it's also a good way of fishing out additional gas through its mill ability. Unearthing multiple Demons and swinging with your team usually results in a pile of damage, dead blockers, and a bunch of extra dredges in combat and at your end step. Absolutely amazing card in this deck. While it's not the greatest without an active Crypt, Extractor Demon is always useful if you are willing to pay 3 mana to get a nice 5-point swing in the air, for a turn.
On another note, Extractor Demon and Bloodthrone Vampire go very well together. If you have a bunch of random creatures on the table (and you usually do, with this deck), you can use a Bloodthrone Vampire and Extractor Demon to throw away useless creatures for free dredges and +2/+2 pumps on your Throne guy. This is especially practical when you have already made your land drop, so you can toss your Crab(s) for more dredging and damage; or when you have already used a Fatestitcher to untap a Crypt, you can throw that away in a similar fashion.
Card Choices, Part III: The Upheaval
Kederekt Leviathan. It's so good, it demands its own section! While it is a good source of 5 damage, it's even better at ignoring the general constraints of a game and ruining your opponent's well-laid board position. Got a problem with blockers? Bounce everything. Want to gain some tempo on control? Bounce his Jace and Chalice and swing for 5. Don't like getting beaten up by midrange decks? Make your opponent pay for all of his stuff again while you set up a subsequent attack. Do you desire a way to stop Knight of the Reliquary from coming online, even if just for one turn? Tap your Crypt, 2 lands, and a blue....
I personally think the single most powerful effect in the entire deck is Kederekt Leviathan. As a purely defensive tool, it is elegant. As an out to nearly any problem, it is practical. But, in Dredgevine, you're getting even more mileage out of the card for its synergy with Vengevine and Thought Gorger.
Vengevine can be tough to animate sometimes, when you are running out of cards in hand. Leviathan aids in this department by bouncing whatever Bloodghasts and/or Hedron Crabs are laying around on the table, giving you cards in hand which can, in turn, be dropped to trigger 'Vines. You haven't seen the look of fear in someone's eyes until you've unearthed a Leviathan, cast 2 creatures that were just on the table, returned 3 Vengevines, and swung for 17 against an empty board.
If you have a Thought Gorger on the table, Leviathan can bounce it and draw you a new hand. I don't think this requires much more explanation, but I must admit that it happens more often than it probably should. If you Gorge your hand away and have no sacrifice outlet, Leviathan can solve that problem while it solves any other problems you've been dealing with. Pretty nifty, eh?
Card Choices, Part IV: The Mana
The manabase is actually rather simple, when you look at it through the right lens. There is a minimal number of basic lands, the maximum number of fetchlands, and then a bunch of dual lands. It is useful to have a split between the various dual lands, to avoid random Pithing Needle upsets. There is no real downside to playing different named cards with the same exact function.
Drowned Catacomb is the best U/B dual land available in the format, so there will always be 2-4 of them in the deck. Having dual lands makes any given manabase more stable, and there are no exceptions here.
Terramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds are good at playing both the role of dual land and fetchland. Because there aren't a lot of one-drops in the deck, you can get away with some more taplands. Most of the time, the deck will play a tapped land on turn 1, a creature and an untapped land on turn 2, a tapland and a creature on turn 3, and some sort of play involving an untapped land on turn 4. If you're expecting to play 2 tapped lands within the first 4 turns of the game, a couple of Terramorphics make the mana much smoother without screwing up the deck's curve.
A singleton Creeping Tar Pit is in this deck because it is a good form of reach. You can lay back on blockers and use it to get the necessary few points of damage in, and it's a little easier to activate if you have Crypt of Agadeem going to pay for other spells/abilities. Note that Creeping Tar Pit is also tutorable, considering this is a Dredge deck with 4 Grim Discoveries. As if Grim Discovery needed to be any better.
Card Choices, Part V: Sideboarding
Aether Tradewinds is your go-to anti-control card, as well as a catch-all. It's the most ideal bounce spell for Dredgevine, in this format. Initially, it was added to the Dredge deck because it's the perfect answer to Spreading Seas--you EoT bounce your spreaded Crypt and bounce a second Spreading Seas, solving the problem while gaining tempo. This also means you can use it to temporary shut off some mana of your opponent's, so if he leaves only one mana open for Path...EoT Tradewinds makes that 0 mana. Tradewinds is also a good way of temporarily handling an Oblivion Ring or Tectonic Edge, and it gives you the option to bounce your own guys in response to removal spells while also bouncing would-be attackers. Theoretically, you can board this card in against almost any deck and do wonderful things with it, so it could just be included in the maindeck. However, because it doesn't actually contribute directly to the combo in any ways, I think it belongs in the sideboard.
Blister Beetle. This dude looks like 100% Grade A Jank, but I assure you it has a plethora of uses. The primary reason for its inclusion is Boros/Koros, which is a deck filled with X/1 creatures. When you think about it, Blister Beetle is the perfect solution to those kinds of creatures. Plated Geopede looks like it's indestructible while it's barreling its way into combat on your opponent's turn, but on your turn it's just a 1/1. Blister Beetle, at the very least, kills a landfall creature and then sticks around to block. After it blocks, it goes to the graveyard and contributes to Crypt of Agadeem. If you dredge it out, it's still a black creature for Crypt and therefore its relevant in your 'yard. Plus, you can Grim Discovery it back to your hand, if so inclined. And don't forget that it's a 2-mana creature to help bring back Vengevine(s) for a reasonable cost. You can basically go -4 Bloodghast +4 Blister Beetle and absolutely destroy any boros/Koros opponent, given that you understand the inner-workings of the Dredgevine deck. However, there is only so much room in the sideboard, and Blister Beetle is a rather narrow answer to a very specific problem (landfall dudes and mana dorks), so Beetle may not necessarily be a 4-of in the board.
The other match-up where Blister Beetle really shines is Bant Mythic. It seems like the most threatening creatures out of that deck are the really huge ones that hit the table so quickly, but actually what's deadliest from Mythic are the mana dorks. If you kill a Noble Hierarch/Birds of Paradise/Lotus Cobra with a Blister Beetle, that's the equivalent of casting Sinkhole and getting a creature out of it. Then, because Mythic is such a mana-hungry deck, you have essentially Time Walked your opponent. It's not like you're going to stop them from eventually dropping that Baneslayer Angel or Rafiq, but if you can stall them for a full turn, that gives you a significant amount of time to race hard, to find a Leviathan, or to find some other removal spell. Then, when your opponent is crashing in with a huge double-exalted Knight of the Reliquary, you get to block with your Sinkhole--err Blister Beetle. Great tempo, all around--and of course it still counts as a black creature for Crypt of Agadeem.
Agony Warp is easily the best card you can board in against red decks. It's equivalent to Lightning Helix when cast on 2 opposing creatures, and it's even stronger when you have your own creatures involved in combat. Don't leave home without it.
Death's Shadow is a piece of anti-aggro tech that I discovered about a month ago. If you can drop it when you're at about 6-10 life, it will usually win you the game against any sort of red deck. It actually trumps Searing Blaze and Earthquake completely, and it's a very good blocker. If your opponent swings in with a trample creature, he has to assign all or almost all of the trample damage to the Shadow if he wants to kill it off, or the Shadow is just going to grow bigger due to the Trample damage. For example, if a 3/3 Shadow blocks a Ball Lightning, and the Ball tramples over for 3 damage to the player, the Shadow will be a 6/6 after combat--after stopping 3 of the damage done to the Dredgevine player. The Ball Lightning could assign 5 damage to the Shadow and 1 to the player in order to finish it off...but then the RDW player is looking at trading his 3 mana spell for the Dredgevine's 1 mana spell and one measly point of damage. When your opponent is forced into these kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations, good things are happening. If he doesn't kill the Shadow, it's going to beat serious face for a couple of turns. If he does kill it, he just wasted some damage that he could have gotten in with his Ball Lightning, and you've been using your mana more efficiently than the red deck has. Plus, Death's Shadow is a black creature, which means it helps Crypt generate mana, and it can be recurred with a Grim Discovery. Very useful card, if you understand how to utilize it properly.
Deathmark. Deathmark is primarily boarded as a stall tactic against Knight of the Reliquary decks. Because Knight tutors for some annoying lands (Tectonic Edge, Bojuka Bog), it also has the capability to act as a mana source, and it even acts as huge threat, it's a major threat against this deck. You don't absolutely need to remove it in order to win the game, but it certainly helps. You gain a large amount of tempo by getting rid of a Knight, and Deathmark is the absolute most efficient way to do that. Deathmark is also a good way to remove mana dorks and Baneslayer Angels, making it a valuable tool worth boarding in against any KotR deck.
Basic Playing Guidelines
Because the deck is still under development, exhaustive guidelines for mulligan decisions and how to play out individual hands simply don't exist yet. Those will come in time. For now, this is what you need to know in order to pick up the deck and understand how to play it.
Your opening hand needs to go somewhere. This isn't a typical Standard deck where you just want some lands that can add the right colors, and spells that you can start casting early to curve out. There are a plethora of 2-drops in the deck, so almost any hand you open will have a tapland for turn 1 and a 2-drop for turn 1. That doesn't mean it's keep-able. Your opening hand needs to have the right color(s) going on, and the ability to do something degenerate by turn 4. If you don't have a Crab, land, and fetch-land, then you want a Thought Gorger and a way to survive until you stick it on the table. If you don't have either a Crab or a Gorger and your hand isn't going to explode with Bloodghasts and Bloodthrone Vampire beats, you probably should just mulligan. Don't be afraid to mulligan down to 5 in order to find business--this deck doesn't really care about card advantage in the traditional sense, so mulligans should be considered ways of drawing more cards and not losing cards in hand. Also, note that Crypt of Agadeem is not something you need in your opening hand. If you have a Grim Discovery or a Crypt, that's nice--but it doesn't contribute heavily to whether or not you can keep that hand. You should be aggressively sending hands back and looking for broken ones.
When you have an opening hand with a Crab in it, it is almost always incorrect to cast that Crab turn 1. If you're on the play and you know your opponent can't possibly kill your turn 1 Crab (like how Jund usually fails at having a Mountain and a Lightning Bolt on turn 1), go for it. If you have multiple Crabs in hand, go for it. Otherwise, your plan is always to play a blue source on turn 1, then turn 2 drop the Crab with a fetchland. Most of the time, what you're going to do is let the mill trigger resolve and see what you have, then crack the fetch and (if you're lucky) landfall any Bloodghasts you hit off the first dredge. If your opponent has the potential to play a removal spell on your Crab, then just leave the fetchland on the table and wait until he acts first before you crack it. Rarely can your opponent sit on a removal spell without using it on the Crab and simultaneously set his own game plan in motion, so often you'll find your opponent will just "give up" the stand-off and use his removal on your end step, which is when you respond and dredge 3 more cards off the fetchland. To quote Training Day, "this (game) is Chess, not Checkers." Use your brain and play around your opponent's potential actions, especially when Crabs are involved. The difference between dredging X cards and dredging X+3 cards can be massive, if those 3 include business.
If you open with a Crab and get some solid dredges from the little guy, usually your graveyard and hand will have enough resources to win any given game of Magic in this format. If you dredged out some Bloodghasts/Vengevines, set a course in motion to reanimate those and either win on board position or get a lot of damage in quickly and end the game. If you hit a decent number of black creatures and you can set up a Crypt, go that route. If you have the opportunity to bring a Leviathan onto the board, you probably should do it. The actions you take should be based on what business you have drawn/dredged,
Thought Gorger starts are much more difficult to implement because you have to consider the following factors:
-How can I survive until the turn after I drop the Gorger?
-How can I get Thought Gorger to die, if I need to draw a new hand? Can my opponent just use evasive creatures to ignore it, and if so do I have a Bloodthrone Vampire or Leviathan (or sideboarded removal) available to force it to leave play, myself?
-What is my plan for making sure this Gorger resolves? Do I need it to resolve, or do I have a contingency plan? Note that your opponent can use removal in response to the Gorger's enters-play trigger, which stops the discard and draw effects entirely--so many decks have the potential to use removal as countermagic against a Gorger.
So when your plan is to Gorge your hand away, things can certainly go wrong. However, remember that Thought Gorger is a Wheel of Fortune effect and a black creature for your Crypts. When it does work, it usually leads you straight to victory.
NOTE: This opening post is not finished. I took a great deal of effort to write what's here so far, and I didn't get paid at all for it. It will take some time to complete the primer. If you think that something specific in this opening post could be significantly improved, I would be thrilled to have someone else do a portion of the work for me. As is, this opening post is already over 4000 words long, and copy-pasted into Word it's about 8 pages.
By the way, you still put the curves onto 24?
It's a matter of person, i guess? Or if you have some crucial reasons, please be willing to tell me.
Well, with no intentions to steal the start, I want to ask about facing mana-ramping deck like Elves or else.
I found Elfdrazi match is really tough, we still have chances to win, but it just slight and almost no.
My sideboard until now (just tried with testings):
4 Spreading Seas
3 Vampire Hexmage
Can't decide the other so I ask for permission to follow the discussion here. Thx.
It was the opposite. Vengevinge makes this deck much cooler than before. It gives any deck great threat, or at least become something that they have to handle.
Casting 2 creatures isn't that hard. Hedron Crabs, Bloodthrone Vampire, Bloodghast are examples of low cost mana creature. I guess you need to see someone's Hedron Crab mills 2-3 Vengevine on turn 3 and then smash away for 12 damage that ARE recurring.
And also like the first statement, it was the opposite. Thought Gorger discards the drawn Vengevine AND make you draw more. And when they cast 2 creatures, wham to the face again.
CMIIW
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
Legacy:
:chaos:Dredge:chaos:
:symrw::symb:Team Italy:symb::symrw:
EDH:
:symbr::symbr:Lyzolda, Blood Witch:symbr::symbr:
:symb::symb:Shire, Shizo's Caretaker:symb::symb:
Essentially you're telling us that it's difficult to make Vengevine work, and Thought Gorger is a tough resource to use. This is common knowledge, and it doesn't really help anyone make progress with their understanding of how to build or play this type of deck. We know that Vengevine has no easy synergy with Unearth...how about we look at how to make Vengevine function alongside Unearth? You could be thinking about how to make a card work, instead of the obvious truth that it is tricky to make that card work. That's a good place to start, I think.
EDIT: Hey, rdwjustrdw, what's the deal with the sideboarded Vampire Hexmages? They seem to be for killing planeswalkers and for blocking certain aggressive red creatures, but I feel like you don't need something for the former and there are better tools for the latter. Care to enlighten me?
what a fail post.
of course unearthing doesnt count towards the 2 creature count, but its not build exclusively around the vine.. and thought gorger is a house
from the previous thread, and on SB choices:
heres some thoughts:
consume the meek: not bad, but only as a 2-of max. destroys allies, boros/koros, rdw (only if their stupid), and a few other decks. once was helpful against jund with a super over-cluttered board with tokens etc, but wouldnt recommend it. I would much rather run inquisition or duress here -->
inquision of Kozilek: again not bad, and can be very VERY powerful against our main offenders: boros/rdw/allies. a 3 mana cost may not seem like much, and people say 'oh no, you cant get planeswalkers', but its the real deal. it removes Ball lightning, any burn, paths, counters, chalices, manadorks (kill their T1 ramp), KoTR, SO much. Probably the only situation where duress is better would be in polymorph, and even then they can just draw another one. But, il say it again, inquisition on naya/bant/ramp/elf taking their T1 manadork can be gamebreaking, esp if they were counting on it and only holding 2 lands.. and 1 mana to get rid of a ball lightning is no small thing. COULD replace death's shadow -->
deaths shadow: The only decks I side this in against would be boros/RDW (Koros has too much equip, and would just ping it down usually), and even then boros is an iffy decision. its good when it works, and it works great for the life margin 8-12 (because then it negates all their tramplers), but otherwise its not so good. esp with flame slash coming into SB's, it could be an issue. I am thinking of switching them for inquisitions and:
Suffer the past: mad RDW tech. unearth hellspark/thunder? no worries, tap crypt, remove 5 cards in GY, gain 5 life and you dont get your dude. also awesome vs KoTR decks (attack with a 10/10 knight? sure, il take him down to a 4/4 and gain 6) having said that though, its largely useless against other decks, barring any mirror MU's. currently a 2-of in my testing. Mainly for the lifegain.
deathmark/agony warp/vendetta: again, very useful utility cards. I think the issue is balancing the control element vs maintaining functionality. deathmark is obviously good against naya/allies/jund. agony warp is good vs allies/red/boros/koros/bant/WW/etc. vendetta is good against RDW and anything that haste creatures are a problem. atm im looking at having 5-7 removal spells. BUT, you have to remember inquision can double as a quasi-removal if played early. KoTR? deathmark. OR inquisiton while still in hand.
aether tradewinds: Still awesome. a solid 3-of atm. spreading seas/LD/tectonic edge tech. also good vs rdw/naya/pretty much anything. again, inquisition a T1 dork, bounce their land T3 = massive temp loss and a T6 BSA. *phew*
blister beetle: incredible card vs naya and other decks sporting low end mana dorks and cards. will probably become less relevant with spawn tokens forcing big guys, but a strong answer along with inquisition for elves and naya
and incredible primer smiles! Its awesome! though I loved the pic of the death star put it up again at the bottom 'this is what this idea is like'.. boo yah
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[CENTER]My Sale Thread[/CENTER]
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[CENTER]So many funny sig's, so little space...[/CENTER]
So, basicly, the deck depends on getting lucky.
1. You need to get the crab and it needs to stay on the board.
2. You need a lot of fetches
3. You need to hit Vengevine with your mill, or you need to have Rotting Rats and Vengevine in hand.
4. You need to have 2 cheap creatures in hand
5. You need to have the correct colours of mana to cast those 2 creatures.
I find the list very interesting, and will playtest this. There's a quote somewhere on the web about Dredge not playing by the rules of Magic the Gathering, so it just might work out.
Uncalled for. The amount of times that you are triggering Vengevine from your GY is something you have to consider. Thought Gourger does not have synergy with 'playing things from your hand' (even though it probably IS a house).
Besides, if you know what you're doing, Vengevine isn't that hard to reanimate in this deck. You don't have to reanimate Vengevines every single turn in order for them to be good. You simply have to do it once or twice in the duration of a normal-length game.
@SClone: If you think this is the only deck that requires "getting lucky" in order to win, maybe you should remember that this is a card game and every single deck is playing the odds.
That's a poor argument. The whole point of competitive deck building is to increase the consistency of the cards you draw. The way to increase these odds is through card advantage, be it card draw, fetching, or cascade.
On to the deck, I like the idea. I just don't like the consistency. You have a fair amount of creatures to reanimate a vengevine but very few ways of getting them into your hand. I believe you need more draw outlets. I also think adding white mana to the build may make this deck much more viable. You get Ranger of Eos, who isn't mana intensive and pretty much tells your opponent, "Remove vengevine from my graveyard or he's gonna swing."
Its just a thought, but in my opinion moving away from the standard "Dredge" build is a good thing. Recurring creatures are awesome, but I think the deck really needs some "omph". This is a aggro build where the dredge deck is more of a combo deck. I believe you need a more aggressive build, as well as removal. If you want to keep the creature count high you have access to Fleshbag Marauder and Gatekeeper of Malakir.
I've been having hard times to face them, since I could only pass their White Knights via Vengevine, and now they bring Jura and Transcendent Master.
I preferred Deathmark and so at first glance, but Vampire Hexmage can touch graveyard easily, and like what I've pointed, Hexmage is 2cc, that way we could play Vengevine more easily.
So that more of my thoughts. Try to test them if Levelers come into some decks. In my meta, this unpredictable card had make some breakdown.
@SClone: for your points, don't assume it like that. You'd make it like having 3 Vengenvines in hand is a mulligan or a scoop. That's why Thought Gorger here (and this is why I believe the deck has potential).
@BCGamer: seeing you define "consistency" makes me think you haven't faced or played this kind of deck. No offense anyway. But take easy examples of Dredge Deck itself. "Lack of consistency" is just on paper hypothesis.
I guess this is the correct answer for those who asking what are Vengevines doing in this deck.
CMIIW
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
Legacy:
:chaos:Dredge:chaos:
:symrw::symb:Team Italy:symb::symrw:
EDH:
:symbr::symbr:Lyzolda, Blood Witch:symbr::symbr:
:symb::symb:Shire, Shizo's Caretaker:symb::symb:
On another note- To whoever came up with this deck and helped, it's like one of the most creative non-gimmick decks I've seen ever seen. Holy ☺☺☺☺
:symr:Tribal Goblins:symr:
:symb:Mono-Black Control:symb:
:symb::symu::symw:Esper Aggro:symw::symu::symb:
EDH:
:symb::symr::symu:Sedris, the Traitor King:symu::symr::symb:
Well, that is Jund for us. I guess. CMIIW
:symr::symr: RDW :symr::symr:
:symg::symw::symu: STD Bant Pod :symu::symw::symg:
Legacy:
:chaos:Dredge:chaos:
:symrw::symb:Team Italy:symb::symrw:
EDH:
:symbr::symbr:Lyzolda, Blood Witch:symbr::symbr:
:symb::symb:Shire, Shizo's Caretaker:symb::symb:
About sideboarding: I haven't filled in the rest of the SB in the OP decklist because I want to work on that aspect of the deck a bit more, first. I feel like at least 3 Aether Tradewinds is mandatory because that card solves all sorts of problems. The rest is pretty wide open.
I have been a big proponent of Deathmark in the board, but I think it should become Doom Blade at this point. Everything you want to kill with Deathmark is a nonblack creature. If you're boarding Deathmark in against Jund to kill Putrid Leech, you're over-sideboarding. So going to Doom Blade gives you the advantage of instant speed, another removal spell for Ball Lightning/Goblin Guide, and a much better answer to Steppe Lynx (make them break their fetchlands and then kill it off, as opposed to letting them build up fetchlands for the next attack with a landfall guy). Deathmark is only better when you are really tight on mana, and I don't see that being the primary issue anymore for this deck.
I also really like Blister Beetle, and I think it should probably be a 3-4 of in the board as well. It is somewhat narrow, but it's the best card in the format for what it does. Cutting off your opponent's development by a full turn is strong. Being able to use it to resurrect Venvine is solid. It is very easy to swap the Bloodghasts for Blister Beetles and immediately have a stronger foundation against Mythic/Boros/Elfdrazi.
I don't quite know where I stand on Death's Shadow or Agony Warp right now. I also have simply not tested Consume the Meek in here, either. That's the next set of cards I wish to playtest, when I get around to it.
gonna start posting online results
W/X Weenie - 3-3
R/G Aggro - 2-0
U/W Control - 3-0
Grixis Control - 2-0
EllE:
My FNM is Jund heavy with a little more Polymorph builds than I would prefer. The Jund matchup is a little rough until G2 when I can side in some more disruption in the form of Mind Rot and Duress but the Polymorph builds are pretty scary.
Any thoughts on tweaking the SB against these two MU's would be greatly appreciated.
2 Immortal Coil
4 Blister Beetle
4 Duress
3 Smother
Beetle is for Mythic and Boros and even Allys., Coil is exclusive to RDW and MAYBE Boros if I'm feeling saucy. Smother and Duress are for any polymorph build, and Rot + Duress are for taking Jund out.
Thoughts?
What do you have to SB against most of the time? What do you take out?
My decks
Top 4 (4th) SCG IQ 11/4/12
Spirtdancer Spreads 'em
Cadaver Imp is good in this deck, but what would you remove to put it in the deck? Space is very tight.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
Let me say that again.
THIS IS NOT A COMBO DECK.
A combo deck by definition will net a win after a sieres of plays on a single turn. See Flash Protean Hulk decks, and Pact Hive Mind combos. Elfball is a combo deck, Elfball without grapeshot is not combo. The 'Unearth Combo' is simply an easy way of saying "Here's what I can do on a turn, are you able to survive?"
Coil has been an all-star for me post-board against direct damage based decks including but not limited to RDW, RDW splash Black and sometimes boros.
With an Immortal Coil on the board, tome scour becomes "Gain 5 life, draw 5 cards." Alongside a hedron crab, Coil reads "Landfall: Gain 3 life, draw 3 cards." Cyclers become "Gain 1 life, draw a card, add B to your mana pool."
It's good enough to warrant a few slots in every Dredge SB, and at the same time, I understand where you are coming from in regard to it not shining bright everytime you see it in your hand. It's situationaly usefull, something that no player should hope for in any card, but when it's online and affecting the game, it's almost always a lock.
Anybody have any other reccomendations for SB plans against Jund or other consistantly naughty mid-range decks (naya, some mythic builds) or polymorph?
The polymorph MU has got me a little worried. T3 polymorph into an Eldrazi is pretty terrible for Dredge, no real way to come back after one of those baddies hit the field.
What's next? Are you going to start telling me that Academy wasn't a combo deck because it was about generating a lot of blue mana and drawing a lot of cards? Think about what you're saying here.
Elfball without Grapeshot is still a combo deck. If you draw almost your entire deck, make an army of a billion dudes, gain a thousand life, and return all your opponent's permanents to the top of his library, the game is basically over. Sure, you're asking "Here's what I can do on a turn, are you able to survive?" but if your opponent says no, the game is over. He gets another turn, more importantly you get an upkeep where you have to remember to pay for Pact(s), and then the game ends when you decide to attack.
Hulk-Flash also asked "Can you stop me, this turn?" That deck was clearly a combo deck. If you had the Force and then a counter in response to the Pact, you stopped Hulk-Flash. Similarly, if you disrupted the Reveillark/Slivers end of the combo with removal or grave hate or something, you stopped Hulk-Flash (at least, for a turn).
I don't understand how unearthing a bunch of Demons and beating for lethal is any different. Instead of your opponent needing countermagic to stop you, he needs removal/grave hate/fog effects. Maybe you're not comboing off every single time you play this deck, and maybe you're going off in multiple waves--but it's still a combo deck at heart. Beating down the hard way happens to be a back-up plan, no matter how often you choose to use it.
I understand that if you have a Hedron Crab out, Immortal Coil is insane. However, If I am so fortunate that my Hedron Crab lives against red decks, I'm probably already winning. If they can't actually kill it, clearly their hand has no burn--so I don't really need to gain life. And if they don't have removal for a Crab, it's just going to end the game by itself anyways.
With a Coil out, Tome Scour actually theoretically gains 6 life against RDW. You have to count the Scour itself. Still, you can't sit there and tell me that you're both gaining 6 life AND drawing 6 cards. You're drawing 6 cards, and if your opponent does any damage to you, that's damage coming out of your hand instead of your life total.
I get that it's situationally useful, but I have such a difficult time setting up those situations. I don't consider myself thick-headed or close-minded, and I've really tried to make it work. The trouble is that it's only good in those clutch situations where you've dredged really hard, you're in burn range, and Coil can buy you a turn or 2 to go off. That means you need a good amount of gas in your opening draw, and you also need to draw a Coil. A lot of the time, that's a tall order--especially since red decks tend to kill off your primary dredge outlet.
That's why I have issues with Coil. To me, it isn't a lock...or if it's a lock, it's a very soft one. You're changing your life total to your graveyard, which means your opponent's burn spells will eventually run you out of gas (unless you're so fortunate as to hit tons and tons of dredgers). So what am I missing? Are you supposed to use Coil to buy yourself time so you can hardcast a Demon or Architects or other cycler guys, and beatdown like that while you keep filling your lard to get around your opponent's burn? I couldn't get that to work, either.
Put removal in your board, and board it in for Polymorph. Removal doubles as countermagic against Polymorph, and they're sure as Hell not going to win with Jace or through hardcasting a 9+ mana creature. I like boarding in Aether Tradewinds, whatever other instant-speed removal I have (Doom Blade/Agony Warp), and Blister Beetles for Polymorph. Blister Beetle is better than something like Specter or Dragger because it kills a token and it's pro-active, but it's still a black creature. Sometimes, they just don't have an infinite stream of tokens. Plus, if you shoot down an Eldrazi spawn, you are cutting them off a potential mana, so Beetle is pretty good.
I suppose you could use countermagic, too, but countermagic isn't as good as spot removal is in other match-ups.
3 Halimar Depths
3 Island
3 Swamp
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Marsh Flats
1 Mountain
8 Fetches, perfect. 9 ETBT lands? Not even a problem, test it and you'll see.
If you sincerely believe Halimar Depths is not only a good card in this deck, but also a mandatory card, you need to give much stronger evidence to support that opinion. OK, you think 9 ETBT lands are acceptable in this deck. Explain how you're getting away with having a significantly lower amount of mana in the early turns, in a deck that ideally wants to spend every last mana that it can on cyclers, Tome Scours, and Hedron Crabs.
Why you decided to play 4 drowned catacombs is beyond me. Halimar depths is good because it provides you with more information, you essentially are (when you play it) looking at 10 cards, 7 in hand 3 on top. Playing depths t1 is unbelievably good. Tome Scour in hand? Get that grim discovery that was third from the top. Hedron Crab in hand? Look at the top three and pick the one you want to keep, put it on top, draw it, then crab. Another example, a t1 tap land followed by a t2 tap land still allows you to cycle/crab/scour t2. Only once, yes, but you also (if one of them was depths) gave your draws a potentially great rise in quality. If you're playing a deck that, to get Crypt you rely on either cycling and drawing into it, or by milling yourself, then grim discovering, how could you possibly not want a card that both helps you filter the top (maybe you put carabid on top and the 2 lands below him, then fetch next turn) AND find grim/crab/scour before you potentially mill him away?