i feel that the prized amalgam doesn't made great impact on the games but i can't think of any good replacement for it, maybe an additional land won't hurt the deck (there are games in the league that can be won if only you draw a land) or maybe single haunted dead (gy discard engine)
I have updated my list to include a Conflagrate and Hollow One.
This list does very very well and is able to put out alot of explosive damage by turn 3 fairly consistently. It is also very toolboxy with the death shadow, brownscale, and conflagrate.
I find a one of conflagrate to be very effective as it is most useful from the graveyard.
I love being at less than 10 life and casting two shadows or casting shadow and varolz. It immediately changes the game in your favor. This deck suffers most against flyers. Such as fairies and affinity however, the sideboard darkblasts and conflagrates really deal with that quite effectively.
Since this isnt a very dredge heavy list it is able to adapt to GY hate being brought in especially with hollow one on the MB. I have considered running 4 and even siding out the vengevines for 4 hollow ones game two as the GY hate is definitely on its way after sideboarding. But I am currently playing this list and it is working very well. I would actually have to say you can choose to either go the dredge route or the discard route as dredge allows for the recurrence of vine, gravecrawler and conflagrat while the discard methods allows for deaths shoadow, varolz, and hollow one route to be taken. Its very adaptive
My best play so far has been a turn 2 double faithless looting into 2 hollow ones and 3 vengevines it was glorious.
Let me know what you guys think.
Edit:
ater watching Skitzafreaks gameplay i am considering playing street wraith as a two of instead of brownscale which will help turn on deaths shadow as well as help cast hollow one.. what do you guys think?
Hey skitzafreak I just watched your games.. that is good stuff I honestly feel that this deck could push into tier 2 status just from watching that gameplay.
Though I am probably less experienced than you with this exact build I would say get rid of tasigur there was not one game from what I remember that you played him or where he would have come in handy. Possibly play 18 lands because I do remember you being a little mana hungry a few times.
Otherwise the deck performs really well and again I trully believe there is something that can push this over the edge into tier 2 or tier 1 status we just need to find it.
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Hey skitzafreak I just watched your games.. that is good stuff I honestly feel that this deck could push into tier 2 status just from watching that gameplay.
Though I am probably less experienced than you with this exact build I would say get rid of tasigur there was not one game from what I remember that you played him or where he would have come in handy. Possibly play 18 lands because I do remember you being a little mana hungry a few times.
Otherwise the deck performs really well and again I trully believe there is something that can push this over the edge into tier 2 or tier 1 status we just need to find it.
Honestly I never drew Tasigur so I can neither confirm nor deny whether he would have been any good. When I get a chance though i'll look over the videos and figure out how he would have been if I had drawn him in different scenarios. As for going up to 18 lands, I am honestly mana flooded more often than mana starved with 17 lands, so I am going to stick with the lower number. I actually started at running 18 land and found that to be too many, thus cutting 1 to go down to 17.
With concerns to your list I feel if you want to go all in on Hollow One you definitely need to be playing 4 of them. One card I am considering cutting copies of is Street Wraith I'm going to try going down to 3 copies of it, then maybe 2 depending on what the change feels like. Honestly they've only been really good on turns where I want to combo with Hollow One. However having the free draw definitely makes it easier for me to run the 17 land so that's also something I'd need to keep in mind.
I definitely like the Varolz + Death's Shadow combo in the deck. Death's Shadow seems really interesting since I am also going to a low life total so often. And Varolz let's me just suit up a creature with 13 +1/+1 counters if I need to discard a Shadow. And then there is Birds of Paradise which can both turn into a huge flying threat because of Varolz, as well as help make some turns more consistent by giving us mana.
I'll post some more thoughts when I have time, but that's all I have time for at the moment. Glad to see others are interested in the list and are testing it out
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I have to say street wraith helps with consistency in almost all scenarios. I really do not feel that he hinders the deck at all I think the opposite is true actually. He only helps especially with hollow one combo. When hollow one Isnt around he draws into more important things for only 2 life. I really believe you shouldnt cut him out unless of course there is something more potent. Perhaps a conflagrate which I might add also helps hollow one come out.
As for the lands I can see your point and I dont have anything more to say other than exact number of lands is a tricky part of deck building but id like to point out have you ever tried sideboarding out a land when youre on the draw? I know this tactic is popular amongst affinity players. just a thought.
As for my deck i do want to run 4 hollow one and am currently looking what to take out. I was thinking brownscale which would hurt my dredge option. I was also thinking about life from the loam because I honestly hate drawing that card, especially multiples but it is very useful when dumping nothing but lands from the grisly salvage.
What would you suggest I drop?
Lastly the varolz/shadow or varolz/devil combo is very nice but it makes the deck a little more difficult to play I would say as there are more options on what you should do with shadow and devil in terms of should i dump them to a troll or a reunion or should I keep them for later in the game when i draw into Varolz.. I find dumping shadow into the GY before you have varolz out isnt the best play. The optimal play is to play varolz and shadow at the same time when your health is lower. But I digress.
With your list I do recommend at least trying shadow out but your list seems pretty tight as is, maybe give some thought to conflagrate. Its flash back is killer.
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New list i just tweaked it form the advice I was given here.
I got rid of grisly salvage. It is honestly just too slow at two mana and doesnt help the deck at all. I replaced them with magmatic insight which works so so well with life from the loam and Id like to say that life from the loam is such an amazing card to have when you have conflagrate as you can discard excess land to the flashback which will deal damage as well as get your hollow one into play.
Just popped in to say I hate Tasigur in the deck. Every game I side him out. And when I do cast him Im usually up already and It just feels like winmore. I may try a single Driven//Dispair and see how that works out. But right now Tasigur is not making me happy.
Holy ***** lots of comments O_O. Let's see if I can respond to all of these. Please, if any of you guys want to quote things I say in this post, since it will be rather long please don't just hit the quote button lol
I have to say street wraith helps with consistency in almost all scenarios. I really do not feel that he hinders the deck at all I think the opposite is true actually. He only helps especially with hollow one combo. When hollow one Isnt around he draws into more important things for only 2 life. I really believe you shouldnt cut him out unless of course there is something more potent. Perhaps a conflagrate which I might add also helps hollow one come out.
As for the lands I can see your point and I dont have anything more to say other than exact number of lands is a tricky part of deck building but id like to point out have you ever tried sideboarding out a land when youre on the draw? I know this tactic is popular amongst affinity players. just a thought.
As for my deck i do want to run 4 hollow one and am currently looking what to take out. I was thinking brownscale which would hurt my dredge option. I was also thinking about life from the loam because I honestly hate drawing that card, especially multiples but it is very useful when dumping nothing but lands from the grisly salvage.
What would you suggest I drop?
Lastly the varolz/shadow or varolz/devil combo is very nice but it makes the deck a little more difficult to play I would say as there are more options on what you should do with shadow and devil in terms of should i dump them to a troll or a reunion or should I keep them for later in the game when i draw into Varolz.. I find dumping shadow into the GY before you have varolz out isnt the best play. The optimal play is to play varolz and shadow at the same time when your health is lower. But I digress.
With your list I do recommend at least trying shadow out but your list seems pretty tight as is, maybe give some thought to conflagrate. Its flash back is killer.
I wasn't saying Street Wraith hindered the deck. Rather I was wondering what the deck would play like it I started cutting some of them. I definitely agree that it is very helpful for the deck. And as for Conflagrate it's a card I've been considering since it would definitely help the Affinity match up. However it does have the downside of not being able to be discarded to Lotleth Troll like all of our other pay off graveyard cards.
Going up to 18 lands and boarding one out on the draw may be an idea, it would definitely be something I would be willing to try. Thanks for the suggestion.
I would definitely cut the Golgari Brownscale as I mentioned in one of my videos, the Dredge cards just don't work in this list. We want to draw and discard all of our cards, and honestly not Dredge any of them. Grisly Salvage is also something I'd recommend you get rid of. It's a lot of do nothing for 2 mana sadly, even though it looks like it would be good.
I feel the Varolz + Death's Shadow combo may be worth testing, but I agree, it does a lot to the decklist. It takes up a lot of deck slots and changes up what it is you're trying to do. I feel it may warrant some testing, and I'm going to note it down as something to do some videos with in the future
Don't cut Wraith! It's one of the best cards in the deck, imo.
I'm not a big fan of the Varolz-combo right now, as it's particularly weak to Push. It also slows you down. If you decide to run DS (which I'm also not in love with) you might consider putting a Varolz or two in the sb.
Have you considered upping your delve count? Having an additional line of play where you slam a t2 4/5 is very useful, but only possible if you play the full four.
Lastly, the more I think about it, the less I like having 3 mb Brutalities. 2 seems like a more reasonable number and you might even want to move those to the sb for more aggression g1.
Probably not going to actually cut Street Wraith, but I was just brainstorming it as something I could potentially take out and see what happens. I think at the end of the day the only numbers I won't change on the list are 4x Vengevine. Everything else is up in the air until we can make this into a well oiled machine.
With that being said, as I mentioned above I will test out the Death's Shadow + Varolz combo and see how it plays out. Worst case scenario, I have some Death's Shadows to hold onto the make Grixis Death's Shadow later on Best case scenario, our deck gets a much bigger punch to it.
I had come to the same conclusion about Brutality. Definitely going to go down to 2 in the mainboard and test that out, and maybe I'll throw the 3rd in the sideboard. If going down to 2 of them I still don't like them in the main I will remove them all together.
Skitzafreak since you do get mana flooded have you considered magmatic insight ?
I have considered Magmatic Insight. My problem with the card however is how the discard is restrictive. I'd rather be able to discard one of our recursive creatures than a land, so I'd rather not run it. While I have mentioned that I do draw a lot of lands, I still don't think Insight is where I want to be going.
New list i just tweaked it form the advice I was given here.
I got rid of grisly salvage. It is honestly just too slow at two mana and doesnt help the deck at all. I replaced them with magmatic insight which works so so well with life from the loam and Id like to say that life from the loam is such an amazing card to have when you have conflagrate as you can discard excess land to the flashback which will deal damage as well as get your hollow one into play.
Glad you took my advice about Grisly Salvage (even though I technically just posted it
I do like the idea of Life from the Loam with Conflagrate. Well, at the very least I like Conflagrate. We'll see if Life from the Loam is needed to make flashing back Conflagrate good, or if we can just work off of how our deck works normally.
You guys are keeping me pretty busy. I was on vacation the last couple of days and looked into the thread from time to time and the activity in this thread just went berserk.
Skitzafreak, with your version of Dredgevine/vengeful one/hollowvine you may have revived this deck, to a point where it could really see some play.
At first I wasn't to sure about your list, feeling like it was a little hit or miss, but damn! The consistency is bonkers, some turns are insane and just so satisfying. And not relying on the GY to much + being able to play all cards is sweet. It is a solitaire deck but one with difficult decisions to make and that's something I love about playing magic. Making difficult decisions and figuring out the best lines of play.
I really wanted to thank you for coming up with this beast of a deck!
And just as killermanfred said: this could finally give the deck the needed push away from regular Dredge.
So, today I took basically your list to a few friends of mine and we played a few rounds. The only thing that got changed from your list where cutting 3 brutalities (don't own any yet) and putting in 3 lightning axes to keep the discard outlets high. And the one tasigur for cut for a land. In the mainboard axes are not recommendable, just in case you were wondering.
After a few games of getting used to the different approach the deck began to feel really good, at some point even better than the dredge heavy lists.
Flooding wasn't that much of a problem in my games, but they weren't very long, so I do not know how it would have been in longer games.
The decks I got to play against were enduring dragon and grishoalbrand. 2 decks that are very much like this deck. It came down to who had the faster start every game, grishoalbrand being a bit tougher than the other deck.
But all in all it performed very well.
After these games, even though the match ups were horrible for lightning axe, the got moved to the side again. 3 brutalities seem 1 to many for my taste. The changes for the next testing will be -3 lightning axe, +2 collective brutality +1 driven/dispair.
Driven can just be discarded, but dispair can be a house in a number of match ups.
As for the DS topic. I feel like every deck trying to somehow include DS into the deck is either handicapping itself or just playing a inferior DS deck.
My decklist will follow tomorrow, as I am 1) extremely tired right now 2) not quite sure on the last SB slot(s) 3) on my phone right now.
Thank you for the kind words
Honestly I am just as happy that my little brew idea has hit it off as well as it has and has interested people as much as it has. Dredgevine was one of the first Modern decks I put together and helping it surge in popularity is kind of amazing. Thanks to everyone who is doing testing and letting me know how your lists are working.
Thanks for the tip about the Lightning Axes main. I may still test them, but in solo matches as opposed to a league if they realyl aren't that good lol
Driven // Despair is definitely something that's interesting, especially after seeing the testing @Lantern did over in the Dredge thread. And our deck actually makes really good use from both halves of the card. Since we aren't Dredging over cards we can use Driven to draw us a bunch of cards, while also making our opponent discard a bunch. And even if we discard it and only use the back half that still seems really good.
I do agree with you about the Death's Shadow point, thought between all the fetching, shocking, and street-wraithing I have been doing with this deck I just want to see how good/bad Shadow would actually be in this list.
Just popped in to say I hate Tasigur in the deck. Every game I side him out. And when I do cast him Im usually up already and It just feels like winmore. I may try a single Driven//Dispair and see how that works out. But right now Tasigur is not making me happy.
I wasn't super sure about Tasigur, which is why I only had the one in the deck. Him being a 4/5 for B can help you recur multiple Vengevines in a single turn which is kind of what I wanted to test with him. Thought if in a lot of cases he just seems unnecessary, it may be better to just run something else.
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I will attempt to remain on top of these comments and suggestions and keep the conversation flowing
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"I do like the idea of Life from the Loam with Conflagrate. Well, at the very least I like Conflagrate. We'll see if Life from the Loam is needed to make flashing back Conflagrate good, or if we can just work off of how our deck works normally."
I dont think we can use Conflagrate with the current built. We would need to add loams for that. If that was the case I would go all in with 4 loams. It would refill our hand for reunions, recur bloodghasts, and fuel the conflags. But what do we cut? It starts to just go back down the rabbit hole and become full dredge.
I just modified my build into this list here. It uses only 2 loams and 2 conflagrates as well as grisly salvage in order to fuel tasigur. Give this a play test on tappedout. It is actually quite effective.
One pretty cool combo is to cast conflagrate turn 1 for zero and than flashback it turn two discarding most of your hand which will allow you to cast any hollow one and cast tasigur, the golden fang turn three. I have actually done this a few times now with play testing.
"I do like the idea of Life from the Loam with Conflagrate. Well, at the very least I like Conflagrate. We'll see if Life from the Loam is needed to make flashing back Conflagrate good, or if we can just work off of how our deck works normally."
I dont think we can use Conflagrate with the current built. We would need to add loams for that. If that was the case I would go all in with 4 loams. It would refill our hand for reunions, recur bloodghasts, and fuel the conflags. But what do we cut? It starts to just go back down the rabbit hole and become full dredge.
I think there is a way to make Conflagrate work in our list though it may take some tinkering. I had a thought last night and at the end of this post there will be a decklist I will be trying out the next time I play a League.
I just modified my build into this list here. It uses only 2 loams and 2 conflagrates as well as grisly salvage in order to fuel tasigur. Give this a play test on tappedout. It is actually quite effective.
One pretty cool combo is to cast conflagrate turn 1 for zero and than flashback it turn two discarding most of your hand which will allow you to cast any hollow one and cast tasigur, the golden fang turn three. I have actually done this a few times now with play testing.
I am definitely a fan of how Conflagrate basically almost guarantees you a free Hollow One for turn two. Plus that gives us a lot of game against a deck like Affinity which can throw a bunch of small creatures out turns 1 and 2. If we can just clean the board up early and maybe play 1 or 2 Hollow Ones (and maybe getting back 1 or more Vengevine) that seems like game right there.
So the deck itself has roughly 3-5 flex spots in my opinion. Currently they are 2 brutalities, 1 Driven/Dispair and probably the 18th land, although I like the tip from ccc1522 of just cutting down to 17 lands when on the draw.
In the dredge heavy list conflagrate and Life from the Loam where cards that really got to shine in some match ups and because of the graveyard always being full the problem of having no targets for loam rearly occured. But with this list playing the loam conflagrate package mainboard seems a little ambitious. The problem I have with it is, that once we play loam and it ends up in the yard, do we really want to dredge to get it back, or do we want to dig for certain cards, particularly in the post board matches. I can see it in the sideboard, but even there it is probably not good enough. I have tried conflagrate in a couple of solitaire games and every time I drew it, I would have either been so far ahead that it wouldnt have mattered or I had 1 or even zero cards in hand.
After Lantern bringin up and sharing the testingresults of Driven/Dispair, I really wanted to try it out and in the more grindy matchups this card really can mean the difference. And being able to take advantage of the Driven part as well makes the card even more dangerous + giving creatures menace shouldnt be disregarded as well.
Sideboard wise I still like the thoughtseizes and the decays are just a must. I didnt want to go overboard with the leylines so I just went with 2 and 2 ancient grudges seem like a necessary evil. In matches like eldrazi tron and probably DS lightning axe could do very well.
Including a second Maelstrom Pulse could be very good, as well as EE.
The thing that bugs me the most is, that with cutting Gnaw to the Bone there is no real help against Burn, we either are faster or just loose to our mana base and burn spells. Maybe we are supposed to keep one, but its effectivness definitely decreased with not playing dredge anymore.
I agree that there don't seem to be an excessively large amount of flex slots in the deck. But I am more than okay with that. For over a year now I've been playing Lantern Control in paper, and that deck has maybe] 1 or 2 flex slots in the list. So I've gotten (in my opinion) very good at figuring out how to shave a card here or there.
So this is basically the list I am looking at trying next:
First things first, I decided to turn a Mountain into a Blood Crypt. I found that every time I had the Mountain I wished it also produced black, so switcheroo! Honestly I am not that worried about that extra damage I may take from adding another shockland. It honestly just gives me more reason to want to run Death's Shadow
Now if you look at the creature base you'll notice I've omitted Prized Amalgam. As I said in my last set of videos I have found Amalgam to be extremely underwhelming. It coming into play tapped doesn't help with your aggression, and over the 15 recording games I've played with it I think I've maybe attacked with a single Amalgam once or twice. As such I'm going to cut it from the list and see how I feel about it.
Next I went an shaved a Lotleth Troll and threw in 2 Noose Constrictor. Since I am increasing the number of non-creatures I will be running the restrictive discard of Lotleth Troll becomes a downside. However it is still only a small downside so I will still run 3 of them. It is important to note than Constrictor is easier to cast having only a single colour requirement, but it isn't a zombie, so I can't do the same shenanigans I can with Gravecrawler as I can with Lotleth Troll, where I discard it to pump and then cast it from the graveyard. Also Constrictors discard pumps are only temporary, though the pumps may result in large damage output despite not having trample because of being able to discard anything.
Finally is the addition of Driven // Despair and Conflagrate. The more I thought about it the more I wanted Conflagrate in the deck. It's great at helping our bad match ups (Affinity and other aggro decks) and it also allows us to just punch our opponent in the face for lethal if we have them at a low life total. So the obvious question was, "Are we able to have enough cards in hand to make Conflagrate work?" The obvious go to enabler for Conflagrate is Life from the Loam. Your typical Dredge deck uses this 2 card combination to great effect. However as stated before, Dredge isn't exactly something I want to be running in this list as it's honestly an all or nothing mechanic. So I was thinking about how to make sure we had plenty of cards in hand when it hit me! Driven // Despair! Since we are a deck that actually gets to cast all of it's spells we get to make use of both halves of the card. Meaning we can have turns where we just cast Driven, swing with everything, and draw a bunch of cards. Even if we only draw 1-3 cards, I still think that's great since we can get more use out of the card later by casting the Despair half. But honestly I can see Driven consistently drawing at least 3 or more cards since it does grant our creatures Trample. Hell I can see Driven basically being an Overrun in our deck just because of the Trample effect.
Anyway I am looking forward to testing this configuration out and seeing how it works. I am still not sold on going above 17 lands, but depending on how everything plays out I may have to go up to 18, we will have to see.
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I think when you draw 3 cards off of Driven you're already winning. Especially since you need your opponent to not have good blocks for that, which is the reason we want to run Conflagrate in the first place. Let me know how testing goes, I for one am very sceptical about sacrificing so many slots for things not developing the board.
It's honestly not that hard to draw a bunch of cards off of Driven // Despair, specifically because it grants our creatures Trample. Think of it this way. In situations where we'd cast it, I can see the board state having at least 1-2 4 power creatures, and at least two 2 power creatures. So they need at least 3 blockers, and they need to have those blockers have 2 or more toughness. In a lot of cases, I can see the deck drawing 2+ cards off of Driven as a worst case scenario with our opponent also taking a large chunk of damage in the process. To me it's less, "you're already winning" and more, "now you can't really lose"
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After this weekend Im completely sold on removing dredge all together forever. I played through several deck with turn zero leylines and turn two RIPs like nothing. People think this is dredge and those cards just completely shut us down. They dont.
I finished a game about two minutes ago. I open with a blood crypt into looting. pitch a bloodghast and amalgam. Opponent played a turn two RIP removing my grave. I go and play Overgrown tomb casting a troll. Opponent plays a loam lion. I draw a second looting, cast it, pitch a neonate and cast two free hollow ones. swing with troll which is blocked by the lion. Opponent plays another lion and passes. I lightning axe the lion and before i can get into combat they concede. Opponent kept a terrible hand because he thought RIP would be enough. which it might have been against dredge.
Skitzafreak i have to agree with this guy. I have started experimenting with two tasigur in my variant and it is such a good card. I guess when I criticized your tasigur is because you only had a 1 of and it wasnt able to be seen. I say put 2-3 tasigurs to ensure they get drawn instead of 1 of go more. Instead of driven//despair which IMO is rather slow and would at its fastest draw you 1 or 2 cards perhaps on a gravecrawler and maybe just maybe on a vengevine or hollow one pre turn three. I really only see driven//despair helping in grindy matches.
But i maybe wrong.
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You could both be right and maybe Driven // Despair will not be good for the deck. I am going to test it though. We'll see how I feel when I record some matches this week (provided I get the time to do so)
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i feel that the prized amalgam doesn't made great impact on the games but i can't think of any good replacement for it, maybe an additional land won't hurt the deck (there are games in the league that can be won if only you draw a land) or maybe single haunted dead (gy discard engine)
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Death's Shadow
2x Golgari Brownscale
4x Gravecrawler
2x Hollow One
4x Lotleth Troll
3x Varolz, the Scar-Striped
4x Vengevine
3x Vexing Devil
Spells
2x Cathartic Reunion
1x Conflagrate
4x Faithless Looting
3x Grisly Salvage
2x Life from the Loam
3x Blood Crypt
3x Forest
1x Mountain
4x Overgrown Tomb
4x Stomping Ground
3x Swamp
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Conflagrate
2x Darkblast
2x Gnaw to the Bone
3x Raven's Crime
1x Vengeful Pharaoh
I have updated my list to include a Conflagrate and Hollow One.
This list does very very well and is able to put out alot of explosive damage by turn 3 fairly consistently. It is also very toolboxy with the death shadow, brownscale, and conflagrate.
I find a one of conflagrate to be very effective as it is most useful from the graveyard.
I love being at less than 10 life and casting two shadows or casting shadow and varolz. It immediately changes the game in your favor. This deck suffers most against flyers. Such as fairies and affinity however, the sideboard darkblasts and conflagrates really deal with that quite effectively.
Since this isnt a very dredge heavy list it is able to adapt to GY hate being brought in especially with hollow one on the MB. I have considered running 4 and even siding out the vengevines for 4 hollow ones game two as the GY hate is definitely on its way after sideboarding. But I am currently playing this list and it is working very well. I would actually have to say you can choose to either go the dredge route or the discard route as dredge allows for the recurrence of vine, gravecrawler and conflagrat while the discard methods allows for deaths shoadow, varolz, and hollow one route to be taken. Its very adaptive
My best play so far has been a turn 2 double faithless looting into 2 hollow ones and 3 vengevines it was glorious.
Let me know what you guys think.
Edit:
ater watching Skitzafreaks gameplay i am considering playing street wraith as a two of instead of brownscale which will help turn on deaths shadow as well as help cast hollow one.. what do you guys think?
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
Though I am probably less experienced than you with this exact build I would say get rid of tasigur there was not one game from what I remember that you played him or where he would have come in handy. Possibly play 18 lands because I do remember you being a little mana hungry a few times.
Otherwise the deck performs really well and again I trully believe there is something that can push this over the edge into tier 2 or tier 1 status we just need to find it.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
Honestly I never drew Tasigur so I can neither confirm nor deny whether he would have been any good. When I get a chance though i'll look over the videos and figure out how he would have been if I had drawn him in different scenarios. As for going up to 18 lands, I am honestly mana flooded more often than mana starved with 17 lands, so I am going to stick with the lower number. I actually started at running 18 land and found that to be too many, thus cutting 1 to go down to 17.
With concerns to your list I feel if you want to go all in on Hollow One you definitely need to be playing 4 of them. One card I am considering cutting copies of is Street Wraith I'm going to try going down to 3 copies of it, then maybe 2 depending on what the change feels like. Honestly they've only been really good on turns where I want to combo with Hollow One. However having the free draw definitely makes it easier for me to run the 17 land so that's also something I'd need to keep in mind.
I definitely like the Varolz + Death's Shadow combo in the deck. Death's Shadow seems really interesting since I am also going to a low life total so often. And Varolz let's me just suit up a creature with 13 +1/+1 counters if I need to discard a Shadow. And then there is Birds of Paradise which can both turn into a huge flying threat because of Varolz, as well as help make some turns more consistent by giving us mana.
I'll post some more thoughts when I have time, but that's all I have time for at the moment. Glad to see others are interested in the list and are testing it out
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
As for the lands I can see your point and I dont have anything more to say other than exact number of lands is a tricky part of deck building but id like to point out have you ever tried sideboarding out a land when youre on the draw? I know this tactic is popular amongst affinity players. just a thought.
As for my deck i do want to run 4 hollow one and am currently looking what to take out. I was thinking brownscale which would hurt my dredge option. I was also thinking about life from the loam because I honestly hate drawing that card, especially multiples but it is very useful when dumping nothing but lands from the grisly salvage.
What would you suggest I drop?
Lastly the varolz/shadow or varolz/devil combo is very nice but it makes the deck a little more difficult to play I would say as there are more options on what you should do with shadow and devil in terms of should i dump them to a troll or a reunion or should I keep them for later in the game when i draw into Varolz.. I find dumping shadow into the GY before you have varolz out isnt the best play. The optimal play is to play varolz and shadow at the same time when your health is lower. But I digress.
With your list I do recommend at least trying shadow out but your list seems pretty tight as is, maybe give some thought to conflagrate. Its flash back is killer.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
OK, I jammed games all day with the Devils. Not a fan. I played around 10 games and was unimpressed. Ill keep trying but didnt like it so far.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
turn one stomping ground, turn two blood crypt into faithless looting, tap another red for magmatic insight, play any hollow one you picked up. That is a 4 card dig not to mention you may have discarded some vengevine.
Good stuff
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
I got rid of grisly salvage. It is honestly just too slow at two mana and doesnt help the deck at all. I replaced them with magmatic insight which works so so well with life from the loam and Id like to say that life from the loam is such an amazing card to have when you have conflagrate as you can discard excess land to the flashback which will deal damage as well as get your hollow one into play.
New Deck list I took out the grisly salvage and added magmatic insight, cut out one life from the loam and added an extra hollow one so im up to three
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
I wasn't saying Street Wraith hindered the deck. Rather I was wondering what the deck would play like it I started cutting some of them. I definitely agree that it is very helpful for the deck. And as for Conflagrate it's a card I've been considering since it would definitely help the Affinity match up. However it does have the downside of not being able to be discarded to Lotleth Troll like all of our other pay off graveyard cards.
Going up to 18 lands and boarding one out on the draw may be an idea, it would definitely be something I would be willing to try. Thanks for the suggestion.
I would definitely cut the Golgari Brownscale as I mentioned in one of my videos, the Dredge cards just don't work in this list. We want to draw and discard all of our cards, and honestly not Dredge any of them. Grisly Salvage is also something I'd recommend you get rid of. It's a lot of do nothing for 2 mana sadly, even though it looks like it would be good.
I feel the Varolz + Death's Shadow combo may be worth testing, but I agree, it does a lot to the decklist. It takes up a lot of deck slots and changes up what it is you're trying to do. I feel it may warrant some testing, and I'm going to note it down as something to do some videos with in the future
Probably not going to actually cut Street Wraith, but I was just brainstorming it as something I could potentially take out and see what happens. I think at the end of the day the only numbers I won't change on the list are 4x Vengevine. Everything else is up in the air until we can make this into a well oiled machine.
With that being said, as I mentioned above I will test out the Death's Shadow + Varolz combo and see how it plays out. Worst case scenario, I have some Death's Shadows to hold onto the make Grixis Death's Shadow later on
I had come to the same conclusion about Brutality. Definitely going to go down to 2 in the mainboard and test that out, and maybe I'll throw the 3rd in the sideboard. If going down to 2 of them I still don't like them in the main I will remove them all together.
I have considered Magmatic Insight. My problem with the card however is how the discard is restrictive. I'd rather be able to discard one of our recursive creatures than a land, so I'd rather not run it. While I have mentioned that I do draw a lot of lands, I still don't think Insight is where I want to be going.
Glad you took my advice about Grisly Salvage (even though I technically just posted it
I do like the idea of Life from the Loam with Conflagrate. Well, at the very least I like Conflagrate. We'll see if Life from the Loam is needed to make flashing back Conflagrate good, or if we can just work off of how our deck works normally.
Thank you for the kind words
Honestly I am just as happy that my little brew idea has hit it off as well as it has and has interested people as much as it has. Dredgevine was one of the first Modern decks I put together and helping it surge in popularity is kind of amazing. Thanks to everyone who is doing testing and letting me know how your lists are working.
Thanks for the tip about the Lightning Axes main. I may still test them, but in solo matches as opposed to a league if they realyl aren't that good lol
Driven // Despair is definitely something that's interesting, especially after seeing the testing @Lantern did over in the Dredge thread. And our deck actually makes really good use from both halves of the card. Since we aren't Dredging over cards we can use Driven to draw us a bunch of cards, while also making our opponent discard a bunch. And even if we discard it and only use the back half that still seems really good.
I do agree with you about the Death's Shadow point, thought between all the fetching, shocking, and street-wraithing I have been doing with this deck I just want to see how good/bad Shadow would actually be in this list.
I look forward to seeing your list
I wasn't super sure about Tasigur, which is why I only had the one in the deck. Him being a 4/5 for B can help you recur multiple Vengevines in a single turn which is kind of what I wanted to test with him. Thought if in a lot of cases he just seems unnecessary, it may be better to just run something else.
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I will attempt to remain on top of these comments and suggestions and keep the conversation flowing
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
"I do like the idea of Life from the Loam with Conflagrate. Well, at the very least I like Conflagrate. We'll see if Life from the Loam is needed to make flashing back Conflagrate good, or if we can just work off of how our deck works normally."
I dont think we can use Conflagrate with the current built. We would need to add loams for that. If that was the case I would go all in with 4 loams. It would refill our hand for reunions, recur bloodghasts, and fuel the conflags. But what do we cut? It starts to just go back down the rabbit hole and become full dredge.
One pretty cool combo is to cast conflagrate turn 1 for zero and than flashback it turn two discarding most of your hand which will allow you to cast any hollow one and cast tasigur, the golden fang turn three. I have actually done this a few times now with play testing.
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Death's Shadow
4x Gravecrawler
3x Hollow One
4x Lotleth Troll
2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3x Varolz, the Scar-Striped
4x Vengevine
3x Vexing Devil
2x Grisly Salvage
2x Cathartic Reunion
2x Conflagrate
4x Faithless Looting
2x Life from the Loam
Lands
2x Blood Crypt
1x Dragonskull Summit
3x Forest
2x Mountain
3x Overgrown Tomb
3x Stomping Ground
2x Swamp
1x Woodland Cemetery
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
I think there is a way to make Conflagrate work in our list though it may take some tinkering. I had a thought last night and at the end of this post there will be a decklist I will be trying out the next time I play a League.
I am definitely a fan of how Conflagrate basically almost guarantees you a free Hollow One for turn two. Plus that gives us a lot of game against a deck like Affinity which can throw a bunch of small creatures out turns 1 and 2. If we can just clean the board up early and maybe play 1 or 2 Hollow Ones (and maybe getting back 1 or more Vengevine) that seems like game right there.
I agree that there don't seem to be an excessively large amount of flex slots in the deck. But I am more than okay with that. For over a year now I've been playing Lantern Control in paper, and that deck has maybe] 1 or 2 flex slots in the list. So I've gotten (in my opinion) very good at figuring out how to shave a card here or there.
So this is basically the list I am looking at trying next:
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
2x Copperline Gorge
2x Blood Crypt
2x Stomping Ground
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Stomping Ground
1x Forest
1x Swamp
Creatures - 29
4x Bloodghast
4x Gravecrawler
4x Hollow One
4x Insolent Neonate
4x Street Wraith
4x Vengevine
3x Lotleth Troll
2x Noose Constrictor
4x Faithless Looting
3x Cathartic Reunion
3x Driven // Despair
2x Collective Brutality
2x Conflagrate
4x Leyline of the Void
3x Lightning Axe
2x Abrupt Decay
2x Ancient Grudge
1x Collective Brutality
1x Gnaw to the Bone
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Vengeful Pharaoh
First things first, I decided to turn a Mountain into a Blood Crypt. I found that every time I had the Mountain I wished it also produced black, so switcheroo! Honestly I am not that worried about that extra damage I may take from adding another shockland. It honestly just gives me more reason to want to run Death's Shadow
Now if you look at the creature base you'll notice I've omitted Prized Amalgam. As I said in my last set of videos I have found Amalgam to be extremely underwhelming. It coming into play tapped doesn't help with your aggression, and over the 15 recording games I've played with it I think I've maybe attacked with a single Amalgam once or twice. As such I'm going to cut it from the list and see how I feel about it.
Next I went an shaved a Lotleth Troll and threw in 2 Noose Constrictor. Since I am increasing the number of non-creatures I will be running the restrictive discard of Lotleth Troll becomes a downside. However it is still only a small downside so I will still run 3 of them. It is important to note than Constrictor is easier to cast having only a single colour requirement, but it isn't a zombie, so I can't do the same shenanigans I can with Gravecrawler as I can with Lotleth Troll, where I discard it to pump and then cast it from the graveyard. Also Constrictors discard pumps are only temporary, though the pumps may result in large damage output despite not having trample because of being able to discard anything.
Finally is the addition of Driven // Despair and Conflagrate. The more I thought about it the more I wanted Conflagrate in the deck. It's great at helping our bad match ups (Affinity and other aggro decks) and it also allows us to just punch our opponent in the face for lethal if we have them at a low life total. So the obvious question was, "Are we able to have enough cards in hand to make Conflagrate work?" The obvious go to enabler for Conflagrate is Life from the Loam. Your typical Dredge deck uses this 2 card combination to great effect. However as stated before, Dredge isn't exactly something I want to be running in this list as it's honestly an all or nothing mechanic. So I was thinking about how to make sure we had plenty of cards in hand when it hit me! Driven // Despair! Since we are a deck that actually gets to cast all of it's spells we get to make use of both halves of the card. Meaning we can have turns where we just cast Driven, swing with everything, and draw a bunch of cards. Even if we only draw 1-3 cards, I still think that's great since we can get more use out of the card later by casting the Despair half. But honestly I can see Driven consistently drawing at least 3 or more cards since it does grant our creatures Trample. Hell I can see Driven basically being an Overrun in our deck just because of the Trample effect.
Anyway I am looking forward to testing this configuration out and seeing how it works. I am still not sold on going above 17 lands, but depending on how everything plays out I may have to go up to 18, we will have to see.
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
It's honestly not that hard to draw a bunch of cards off of Driven // Despair, specifically because it grants our creatures Trample. Think of it this way. In situations where we'd cast it, I can see the board state having at least 1-2 4 power creatures, and at least two 2 power creatures. So they need at least 3 blockers, and they need to have those blockers have 2 or more toughness. In a lot of cases, I can see the deck drawing 2+ cards off of Driven as a worst case scenario with our opponent also taking a large chunk of damage in the process. To me it's less, "you're already winning" and more, "now you can't really lose"
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros
I finished a game about two minutes ago. I open with a blood crypt into looting. pitch a bloodghast and amalgam. Opponent played a turn two RIP removing my grave. I go and play Overgrown tomb casting a troll. Opponent plays a loam lion. I draw a second looting, cast it, pitch a neonate and cast two free hollow ones. swing with troll which is blocked by the lion. Opponent plays another lion and passes. I lightning axe the lion and before i can get into combat they concede. Opponent kept a terrible hand because he thought RIP would be enough. which it might have been against dredge.
But i maybe wrong.
RUAffinityUR
GMono Green StompyG
CEldrazi TronC
URWJeskai GeistWRU
WRBoros BurnRW
BRWMardu PyromancerWRB
Modern Decks:
UBG Lantern Control GBU
BRG Bridge-Vine GRB
Commander Decks
UBG Muldrotha, Value Elemental GBU
BRG Windgrace Real-Estate Ltd. GRB
#PayThePros