Hey jackad, Surgical Extraction is a cheap alternative to Games, but it has to be in their yard, so probably not what you're looking for. As for an outlet, I remember a few pages back, some people tried using Viscera Seer as an outlet, as Melira Pod does a lot. Its cheap, but kind of a dead draw. I never tested it, so I can't say, but if you're looking for a sac outlet, this could be awesome.
As for Tymaret, the Murder King, he is absolutely awesome. I've won quite a few games off of him by attacking into a stalemate board and just sacrificing creatures (usually Gravecrawler) to deal straight damage, then returning the crawler in my second main phase. It is a alternate way I feel to help put back DRS effects into the deck. A lot of people hate Tymaret and I agree he is a 1-of, but he is definitely a necessary staple.
Acrupt Decay is a 3 of in my list. I could only get my hands on 3 and when the price sky rocketed, I never bothered getting a fourth. A playset of Bolt helps me finish my removal package and I'm quite satisfied only having three. Especially against some decks where I just side him out (aka Control), it lets me maintain my consistency post SB when I bring in my hate without sacrificing more than 4-5 slots. Statistically, siding 10% of your deck lowers your consistency and speed by nearly 13% when you refer to permutations of cards in your hand. Having three lets me bring my control package out and still have the "Dredgevine" play style. This is also another reason I hate Bloodghast because he constantly gets sided out and messes up recur percentages on Vengevine. Also, less targets to discard with LolTroll/Looting
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Modern decks: BGRDredgevineBGR UWRJeskai ControlUWR
This is a variation on Dredgevine I've been working on. I originally posted it in the Griselbrand Reanimator thread, since at core it's using the Goryo's Vengeance and Griselbrand interaction. However, I'm looking for some more opinions, so I thought I'd post it here too.
First, a little history. I've been trying to find the best Goryo/Griselbrand deck to play for some upcoming tournaments, as I feel it's one of the most powerful things you can do in Modern, especially on turn 2. I started with the classic Red/Black Griselbrand/Emrakul Goryo/Through the Breach version, but after just one Modern FNM, it was clear it could not fight through decks with significant counterspells or hand disruption very well, and gravehate just sealed the deal, even with Breach. The Grixis version offered a bit more digging power at the cost of even less resilience, so that wasn't really what I wanted.
I realized that the important part of the deck is fundamentally only the 8 card combo. The rest is just a bunch of enablers to put things in the graveyard where it matters or as backup if the main plan fails. So I put the Goryo/Griselbrand pair in a Grixis Delver shell, taking advantage of the high density of spells to pair with some Delvers and Snapcasters to give me better resilience to counterspells or gravehate, and have some early game pressure to soak up removal spells and slow down their board development. It worked moderately well at the next Modern FNM, but still had some not great matchups, especially against permission or control heavy decks.
The attempt could probably be tuned into something fairly solid, but it was only marginally more resilient than the original Breach version and while it had better long game, it was significantly less explosive. It was also only slightly more explosive than a straight up Delver build. So while I was trying variations for tuning, I also started looking at other shells.
At the core, putting a lot of cards in the graveyard to get value, matches up pretty well with a dredge shell. Dredgevine is pretty much the best dredge-based shell currently in Modern, and it's a deck I've considered running every so often. It's also very resistant to hand disruption and moderately resistant to counterspells and removal, and at least a little resistant to mana-denial, at the cost of being weak to grave hate. Since the combo is already weak to grave hate, but grave hate tends to be one of the weakest things for most decks mainboard and not super strong in most sideboards, that gave me a lot of the overall resilience I was looking for without significantly increasing my overall weaknesses.
Turns out that slotting this combo into Dredgevine seemed to produce a pretty interesting deck. The two strategies complemented well, providing an over the top "combo" finisher/enabler in a shell with a lot of fairly cheap, recurring, aggressive threats to keep pressure on. The first round of goldfishing proved it could have some pretty explosive plays, which ended up winning on turn 3 semi-frequently, through a couple of different routes.
So far the deck has only been tested against one live opponent, running a fairly typical mono-white D&T build. I got in about 15 games over one evening. Pre-board, the matchup felt pretty even, with it basically coming down to if the horde of 2 power hatebears could do enough damage before I got either a Griselbrand, Lotleth Troll, or some Vengevines to stick in play. The board is pretty random at the moment, but I did try a handful of games with a pair each of Vengeful Pharaoh and Slaughter Pact in, which seemed to bump the match in my favor, though he never did see his sideboarded RiPs.
Some of the particularly interesting interactions I've seen out of this list above and beyond the normal dredgevine:
Turn 1 Faithless, discarding a Griselbrand or a dredger which can dredge into Griselbrand in the graveyard. Leads to a fairly consistent ability to Goryo's a Griselbrand on turn 2, which drawing 7 or 14 can often discard a number of relevant cards into the graveyard for a turn 3 "go off" with Vengevines.
Drawing 7 on Griselbrand with dredgers in the graveyard is even more fun than Faithless Looting. Not uncommon to dredge into more dredgers and end up with 10 to 15 extra cards in the bin. This makes the pain of keeping the Dakmor Salvage as extra dredge sources more worth it, probably.
Turn 2 Lotleth Troll, discard Griselbrand and Dredgers, and the above can lead to Goryo's on turn 3, then drawing enough cards to discard to Troll that Griselbrand plus a 10 power or larger Troll for lethal.
Vexing Devils are normally kinda mediocre, but after you've hit someone for 7 with a Griselbrand, the snap choice to take 4 for the sacrifice becomes a lot harder. Turn 3 Devils (and Gravecrawlers) to trigger Vengevines that dredging or discarding put in the bin can put 12, 16 or even 20 power on the field for 2 mana between Devils and Vines.
Tymaret in the graveyard or Smallpox can act as a sacrifice outlet for a reanimated Griselbrand, bypassing the normal end step exile trigger and making a second Goryo's easier to pull off.
But it's not all upsides, either. I definitely feel it's not quite as consistent at reanimating Vengevines, due to the lower density of 1 drops, fewer dredgers than I'd really like and the lack of some of the extra enablers for Gravecrawler (no Bridge from Below, Dregscape Zombie, Rotting Rats, or Necromancer's Stockpile). It also can't afford as much mainboard hate like Thoughtseize, Lightning Bolt or Abrupt Decay, in order to fit in the Goryo's. So overall, it's probably more explosive in the early game, at the cost of being a little less capable in longer games and being a bit more at the whims of getting the right enablers in the opening hand. It does mulligan surprisingly well, since any discard outlet and a dredger along with a few lands is usually enough to get things started.
The thing I'm most unsure about is the Smallpox. They did what they were supposed to do, but at least against D&T, it felt like Lightning Bolt would have done the same thing and also combined with early early Vexing Devils to have given me the possibility of some reach for the last few points in a few games. Mainboard Abrupt Decay could also go in the same slot, which seems to be general advice for lists closer to stock. If I did that, I'd probably also strongly consider dropping the one-of Loam for another Thug or Imp.
Hey guys, I'm back. some personal stuff has been getting in the way of me playing, but I made my current list on MTGO so I would have some good practice, and other than the issues I'm having with the client, all is well. I want to try something a bit radical, so around this time tomorrow I'll be back with some preliminary test results
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Man, Its times like these it makes me wish that I had more slots to work with. I mean, 21 lands, 4 Vines, 4 Faithless, 4 Gravecrawlers, and a minimum of 6 Dredgers basically have to be in the deck. That gives me 21 cards to play with, and in the long run most of those are taken by cards that while not as necessary as the others I've mentioned, still have to be in there.
Its a little disorganized, but I have a 100% WR with this build over ~25 games on MTGO, except with City of Brass instead of Confluence because I already had those.
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Phantasm reads opponents graveyard, you are pouring cards into your own graveyard not theirs so I feel like he would be more in line with a mill deck rather than dredgevine.
Its a little disorganized, but I have a 100% WR with this build over ~25 games on MTGO, except with City of Brass instead of Confluence because I already had those.
Are you playing single games or matches and is it in Just For Fun or in Tournament Practice? I noticed that game 2/3 with grave hate they side in is a lot tougher. But if you indeed won everything it is about time for a Daily Event.
Don't you need a sac outlet for Bridge from Below?
Yeah, it was in tournament practice. I said this once or twice before, I really like Bridge even without a way to abuse it per se, it makes trading with you a near impossibility, and makes the deck even more resilient to board wipes than it already is. Long story short, I saw a lot of UWR and went slightly overboard in preparing. Its useless against pod though. I really should try my hand at a daily, how long do they usually take? 4 rounds so I'll assume around 2 or three hours, considering how fast the format is and how Eggs isn't a thing anymore. I really want to squeeze Lotleth Troll and some Bloodghast back in the deck, but the build I'm working with is really really tight so finding seven slots will be tough, and I'd probably have to redo the mana. Again.
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Hey zxxz I played vs you a few days ago under the name Wozcause. I've been making a few changes to the deck since we played and I wanted to hear your thoughts.
4 Hedron Crab
3 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Vengevine
3 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug
4 Faithless Looting
3 Fatestitcher
4 Gravecrawler
3 Dangerous Wager
2 Izzet Charm
1 Darkblast
4 Bloodghast
1 Life from the Loam
1 Blood Crypt
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation
SB: 3 Lightning Axe
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 2 Rakdos Charm
SB: 2 Ground Seal
First change: Adding one loam because I've been caught in a few situations where dredging it would would have helped me get back my ghasts to close out a game (usually after some sort of board wipe).
Second: Upping the fatesticher count. Having a third has helped me close out games vs wormcoil engines/batterskulls/archangle of thunes. I feel that 3 is the correct number.
Third: Added a blood crypt. I've been caught in a few situations where I've really needed to grab both a B/R source so I like having the option available.
Fourth: Ground seal -- haven't really tested it yet but I have gotten wreaked by scooze a few times and I felt that this could help.
I read your post initially thinking wtf is this guy thinking? Read it over again and decided I like this make a lot. I wouldn't be totally against 4 fatestitchers. He is a creature for the vine and can untap the land to pay back is casting cost. I would put more removal mainboard. Personally drop the wagers and put the lightning axes mainboard. Another note is drop the groundseals. They sound awesome but you'd be better off putting in another charm or too and a extra darkblast in your sideboard. I understand groundseals sounds awesome but once you try it out its really just meh. Plus it doesn't stop cards like grafdiggers cage because it doesn't target your graveyard.
Value is good. But Dredgevine isn't supposed to be about value. It's supposed to be about V-8; 2000 pounds of nitro boosted war vegetables. The more velocity, the better.
Modern: DredgeVine EDH: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight Anima Standard:
I read your post initially thinking wtf is this guy thinking? Read it over again and decided I like this make a lot. I wouldn't be totally against 4 fatestitchers. He is a creature for the vine and can untap the land to pay back is casting cost. I would put more removal mainboard. Personally drop the wagers and put the lightning axes mainboard. Another note is drop the groundseals. They sound awesome but you'd be better off putting in another charm or too and a extra darkblast in your sideboard. I understand groundseals sounds awesome but once you try it out its really just meh. Plus it doesn't stop cards like grafdiggers cage because it doesn't target your graveyard.
Part of it is that a lot of people on this thread like the more grindy builds that can burst, and have the ability to use removal, this is almost certainly based on the build I was using at the time which I try to always keep able to do everything it needs off of 2 lands, making removal slightly non conducive to that plan. I actually really like your build woz, I'm not sure about the sideboard, but those are my weak point honestly. I'd love to be able to fit in more Fatestitcher, but room is always in issue in Dredgevine because decklists have a large number of "must haves", similar to Jund for example. Okay, we have to have Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Lightning Bolt, Liliana, some discard, lands... where did all the slots go? Same thing for Dredgevine (Different Cards of course). I've been tearing my deck apart and rebuilding it over and over again but it is pretty much the same at the core.
In other news, I've been debating about retrying the Haakon+Crypt package I ran for the Lantern IQ if anyone remembers that old build. Any thoughts?
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Has anyone ever tried dream twist instead of hedron crab in versions of this deck splashing blue? By the looks of it, it seems like an almost ancestral recall for dredge?
Has anyone ever tried dream twist instead of hedron crab in versions of this deck splashing blue? By the looks of it, it seems like an almost ancestral recall for dredge?
I run the crab and I wouldn't ever consider swapping out for this. Particularly with fetch lands, the crab is milling often 6 cards a turn, and it gets insane if you have multiple crabs out. Second, the crab costs 1 blue once, while the cost to mill six from the twist is 3. Third, the crab is a creature which by nature turns on Vengevine, which twist doesn't. Finally, the crab is a body that in a pinch can block buying you time if needed. For all those reasons I wouldn't swap out the crab for the twist, nor would I add the twist in place of something else either.
Sorry I can't really help you there, I've never played it aggressively, could you give me an idea of what you would use besides crypt, haakon, and name less inversion?
Value is good. But Dredgevine isn't supposed to be about value. It's supposed to be about V-8; 2000 pounds of nitro boosted war vegetables. The more velocity, the better.
Modern: DredgeVine EDH: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight Anima Standard:
Just got back from a PTQ today, so here's a report on the on the Goryo's Vengeance version of Jund-vine that I've been working on the past few weeks. I'd gotten in some testing against a few more archetypes since my last post, including UWR control and NinjaBear Delver, and I felt confident enough to take it with me, after a few minor changes.
Game 1, mull to 6, but keep a decent hand. Turn 1 Vexing Devil, then get there on the strength of vine, gravecrawler, and ghasts, as he gets no time to draw any real action.
Game 2. Similar story. Turn 4 he eventually gifts for Damnation, Supreme Verdict, Wrath of God, and Snapcaster. Wrath and Damnation go to the bin, a Troll regenerates through the Verdict, and a bolt and land in hand and a Bloodghast in bin against his empty board seals the deal.
1-0 in matches, 2-0 in games.
Round 2. Thea on Junk.
Game 1, mull to 6, keep a somewhat sketchy 1-land hand that does not pay off in the face of discard and a Scavenging Ooze. 2 Gravecralwers alone do almost nothing. Draw no more land, and fairly quickly die to a Goyf and a 5/5 Ooze with a grip full of creatures I can't cast or discard.
Game 2, Mull to a not horrible hand 5. Two turns of running Slaughter Pacts out of the board against back to back Scavenging Oozes keep things in doubt for a while. A Pharaoh in bin keeps a Tarmogoyf at bay for a number of turns, but eventually a Bob sacrifices itself to put Pharaoh back on my Library and I've seen no dredgers or discard spells. I get stuck on 4 mana with only 1 green source and a Vengevine, a Pharaoh, and a Griselbrand in hand. Eventually she's down to 2 life, mostly off her Bob triggers and some Bloodghast beats, but she's got Abrupts for both Confidants to keep from killing herself and a second Goyfs seal the deal.
Thea eventually top 16s.
1-1 in matches, 2-2 in games.
Round 3. Jordan on UR Delver.
Game 1 is pretty straightforward, with a faithless into double Vengevine on turn 2 off a pair of Gravecrawlers. Bolts and Snaps slow things down a little, but a bloodghast and remaining crawlers close it out.
Game 2, mull to 6, and he manages to counter my lootings and a mediocre series of draws never sees any dredgers or other enablers. Sideboard Pillar of Flames neuters my few recurring dudes, and a pair of Snapcasters eventually beat for the win. Getting stuck on 3 land didn't help.
Game 3 is mostly won on the back of a Lotleth troll and keeping up regen mana to crash through YP tokens and chip away. Lots of dredging Stinkweed then discarding it for more counters. Eventually a dredge into a pair of bloodghasts closes it out.
2-1 in matches, 4-3 in games.
Round 4. Grant playing Ad Nauseum Combo.
Game 1, turn 1 Vexing Devil for 4. turn 2 Troll, discard 4 creatures. He stumbles on mana and 3 turns later is dead to a huge troll and reanimated Griselbrand.
Game 2, keep a somewhat slow hand and hard cast both stinkweed and thug, before a bloodghast joins the party. Finally get the Goryo/Griselbrand combo set up for my next turn, but he goes off on his. A misplay on my part as his turn he'd scryed to the top, and had an Urborg in play, while I had an open Ghost Quarter which would likely have kept him from hitting the mana he needed.
Game 3, turn 2 Phyrexian unlife via SSG. No cares given, as a pair of Vengevines and two Griselbrands put him to -4 and 10 infect counters over 2 more turns.
3-1 in matches, 6-4 in games.
Round 5. Neil playing Kiki pod.
Game 1, he mulls to 6. Long fairly drawn out game, getting him as low as 4 before Helixes claw him back into things and he manages to double Resto which I can't answer.
Game 2, Turn 3 concession in the face of double Vengevine off Gravecrawler + Vexing Devil.
Game 3, my deck is apparently tired and cranky. Mull to 4 before ever seeing a single land. Meanwhile, he eventually turn 3 Restos, Turn 4 Restos, Turn 5 Kiki.
3-2 in matches, 7-6 in games
Round 6. Tom playing UR Delver.
Game 1, Delver and Snapcaster get in for solid beats and my board presence is hindered by bolts, leaks, and whiffing on my enablers. Loaming on empty graveyards just trying to get anything viable going. Eventually fall to Snapcaster.
Game 2, Turn 3 and 5 Blood Moons hamper things, but Bloodghasts don't care, and eventually 'ghasts, plus Stinkweed and Golgari Thug get there with a bolt to finish things off. A long grindy game.
Game 3, Another turn 3 Blood Moon, but eventually an Abrupt Decay shuts it off and unlocks my board. Unfortunately, I failed to call a judge when he took back a Counterflux targeting the Decay ("oh, not a legal target", no, in fact it is legal, just doesn't do anything) and I let him have it. That flux later hits my hard cast Griselbrand which would have stabilized the board against his Young Pyromancer. Bad play mistake that cost me the game. Lesson: never be afraid to call a Judge in a serious tournament. This is not FNM.
3-3 in matches, 8-8 in games.
Round 7. Joe playing BW Tokens.
Game 1, everything fires on all cylinders. I turn 1 Devil, he turn 1 Inquisitions and sees 2 Gravecrawlers, 2 Vengevines, and a land. Draw faithless, and by turn 4 reanimate Griselbrand and he is dead to 15 power on board.
Game 2, he finds paths for my first turn 3 reanimated Griselbrand and a Vengevine, but I draw 14, and put 24 power in play over the next 2 turns. Elspeth and some Raise the Alarms make enough tokens to chump for a while, but eventually even 2/2 tokens can't deal with that many vengevines and another Goryo's Griselbrand.
4-3 in matches, 10-8 in games.
Round 8. Tim playing UWR Geist.
Game 1, is moderately tight. He's down to 3 when he gets through with Geist and then reveals double bolt for the kill.
Game 2, a blowout. Turn 2 Rest in Peace keeps me off my main game plan, and I never see any of the 6 answers post-board for this expected piece of hate. A combination of Resto Angels, Snaps, and Helixes keep the game out of reach, as hard cast Stinkweed Imps and Golgari Thugs can only hold things off so long. Of course, the 1 land I needed for hardcasting a Griselbrand to potentially stabilize would have been my next draw when he finally managed a lethal combat. Such is the way of things.
End result:
4-4 in matches, 10-10 in games, which put me at 46th out of a 130ish field and was good for a few packs. I was hoping for 5-3, but I can accept .500 for my first tournament outing with a new deck, especially as it's not exactly stock.
All in all I was pretty happy with how the deck performed. I lost a few games (and one match) to just multiple mulligans or unusually bad draws, which is about what you'd expect over any 8 round tournament. Giving away another match due to reluctance to call a judge isn't something I can put on the deck, so all my other non-variance losses were to good pilots or very good draws for my opponents. I never really felt like the deck was up against a matchup I couldn't win, had I drawn decently.
Overall, I think the main board configuration is solid.
I obviously didn't hit the Goryo's combo every game, but every game I did, I won. That's pretty consistent with my testing. I like how explosive it makes the deck, and I think the loss of removal in game 1 is definitely worth it. Sideboarding the combo out for a more typical Dredgevine removal package also an option if it seems unlikely to resolve.
Of the other creatures, Bloodghasts felt weakest, mostly due to having only 20 lands, not usually triggering Vengevine, unable to block, and not being able to crash through anything. The only saving grace is that when you need any creature through open counter mana, it's fantastic. Vexing Devils proved their worth, as I had no less than 9 games where they started turn 2 with 16 or less life due to a 1 mana virtual Boros Charm, and had numerous others where they were a critical part of triggering Vengevine. They were probably close to as effective as the Vengevines themselves, overall, in terms of life lost by opponents.
Not having Birds, I might try going up to 21 lands, as I did have slightly more mulligans than I was really happy with, including one down to 4. Possibly move the 4th decay to the board and put the 2nd Ghost Quarter in the main, or just staying with one Quarter main and picking up another basic Swamp or Blood Crypt.
The lack of mainboard removal compared to a more stock Jund Dredgevine list was noticable. I had a few games where a couple extra Abrupt Decays, Lightning Axes, or just Thoughtseizes probably could have swung a longer one in my favor earlier, and maybe 1 or 2 games out of the 20 I played where that might have won me one that I ended up barely losing. OTOH, that was probably made up for by the fact that every game I did get Griselbrand into play, I won, which which was 5 of the 20.
The sideboard seemed acceptable. As mentioned, I boarded out the Goryo combo entirely a few games. Vengeful Pharaoh ended up coming in many matches and proved surprisingly excellent against both Delver and BG/x decks, as neither tends to run a large number of creatures, and if you've also got a dredger, it becomes pretty insane. The final kill tally was 2 or 3 Delvers, 1 Snapcaster, 1 Dark Confidant and around 3-4 spirit/soldier/elemental tokens, plus stalling a 'goyf for 3-4 turns. Not bad.
I didn't ever end up using either Ancient Grudge or Rakdos Charm, but I also never played Affinity or Twin, which were the matchups those were meant to shore up. Most often a few Bloodghasts came out, along with 1 or 2 Griselbrands or Life from the Loam. I also regularly swapped Lightning Bolts for Decay and vice versa depending on the matchup. I do feel like I'd kind of like some kill spells that can hit 4+ toughness, 4+cmc creatures like Resto Angel. Terminate seems like a possible option for this, as does Shriekmaw, since evoking it would still help trigger Vengevine.
Value is good. But Dredgevine isn't supposed to be about value. It's supposed to be about V-8; 2000 pounds of nitro boosted war vegetables. The more velocity, the better.
Modern: DredgeVine EDH: Gisela, Blade of Goldnight Anima Standard:
I've run it in the straight up Griselbrand/Emrakul Goryo deck that eventually led me to this deck, and it was mostly mediocre depending on the match up. I like that it kills both Resto Angel and most reasonably sized Goyfs, and provides another discard outlet. I think it might be better here as discarding things other than Griselbrand is substantially less a drawback in this deck than it is in the Through the Breach/Emrakul style decks.
I'll give it a try, though I'm not exactly sure which slots it goes into.
3 Darkblasts in the main are worth noting as is the 4x Diregraf Ghoul. I think the Ghouls are good to have a game even in presence of grave hate.
The major problem I have with the deck is Combust in the Side. If you feel confident enough about discarding things that you will run Troll, why not run Lightning Axe? The only big players that Combust hits are Resto and Baneslayer. Baneslayer is a problem card against a lot of decks, but it just isn't in the meta. Basically Lightning Axe does everything Combust does better, and helps enable the strategy.
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The major problem I have with the deck is Combust in the Side. If you feel confident enough about discarding things that you will run Troll, why not run Lightning Axe? The only big players that Combust hits are Resto and Baneslayer. Baneslayer is a problem card against a lot of decks, but it just isn't in the meta. Basically Lightning Axe does everything Combust does better, and helps enable the strategy.
Did not think about the Exarch, but Pestermite is easily cleaned up by the copius amout of mainboard Darkblast's
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Question: As a thought experiment, what would a typical Dredgevine list look like (however unlikely) if dread return and golgari grave-troll were both unbanned? Obviously, even with these two cards available we still can't go the same route as Legacy Dredge, but it would be interesting anyway to see how it would work...
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As for Tymaret, the Murder King, he is absolutely awesome. I've won quite a few games off of him by attacking into a stalemate board and just sacrificing creatures (usually Gravecrawler) to deal straight damage, then returning the crawler in my second main phase. It is a alternate way I feel to help put back DRS effects into the deck. A lot of people hate Tymaret and I agree he is a 1-of, but he is definitely a necessary staple.
Acrupt Decay is a 3 of in my list. I could only get my hands on 3 and when the price sky rocketed, I never bothered getting a fourth. A playset of Bolt helps me finish my removal package and I'm quite satisfied only having three. Especially against some decks where I just side him out (aka Control), it lets me maintain my consistency post SB when I bring in my hate without sacrificing more than 4-5 slots. Statistically, siding 10% of your deck lowers your consistency and speed by nearly 13% when you refer to permutations of cards in your hand. Having three lets me bring my control package out and still have the "Dredgevine" play style. This is also another reason I hate Bloodghast because he constantly gets sided out and messes up recur percentages on Vengevine. Also, less targets to discard with LolTroll/Looting
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First, a little history. I've been trying to find the best Goryo/Griselbrand deck to play for some upcoming tournaments, as I feel it's one of the most powerful things you can do in Modern, especially on turn 2. I started with the classic Red/Black Griselbrand/Emrakul Goryo/Through the Breach version, but after just one Modern FNM, it was clear it could not fight through decks with significant counterspells or hand disruption very well, and gravehate just sealed the deal, even with Breach. The Grixis version offered a bit more digging power at the cost of even less resilience, so that wasn't really what I wanted.
I realized that the important part of the deck is fundamentally only the 8 card combo. The rest is just a bunch of enablers to put things in the graveyard where it matters or as backup if the main plan fails. So I put the Goryo/Griselbrand pair in a Grixis Delver shell, taking advantage of the high density of spells to pair with some Delvers and Snapcasters to give me better resilience to counterspells or gravehate, and have some early game pressure to soak up removal spells and slow down their board development. It worked moderately well at the next Modern FNM, but still had some not great matchups, especially against permission or control heavy decks.
The attempt could probably be tuned into something fairly solid, but it was only marginally more resilient than the original Breach version and while it had better long game, it was significantly less explosive. It was also only slightly more explosive than a straight up Delver build. So while I was trying variations for tuning, I also started looking at other shells.
At the core, putting a lot of cards in the graveyard to get value, matches up pretty well with a dredge shell. Dredgevine is pretty much the best dredge-based shell currently in Modern, and it's a deck I've considered running every so often. It's also very resistant to hand disruption and moderately resistant to counterspells and removal, and at least a little resistant to mana-denial, at the cost of being weak to grave hate. Since the combo is already weak to grave hate, but grave hate tends to be one of the weakest things for most decks mainboard and not super strong in most sideboards, that gave me a lot of the overall resilience I was looking for without significantly increasing my overall weaknesses.
Turns out that slotting this combo into Dredgevine seemed to produce a pretty interesting deck. The two strategies complemented well, providing an over the top "combo" finisher/enabler in a shell with a lot of fairly cheap, recurring, aggressive threats to keep pressure on. The first round of goldfishing proved it could have some pretty explosive plays, which ended up winning on turn 3 semi-frequently, through a couple of different routes.
3 Vexing Devil
3 Bloodghast
2 Golgari Thug
4 Lotleth Troll
1 Tymaret, the Murder King
2 Stinkweed Imp
4 Vengevine
4 Griselbrand
4 Faithless Looting
3 Smallpox
1 Life from the Loam
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Dakmor Salvage
1 Forest
1 Swamp
So far the deck has only been tested against one live opponent, running a fairly typical mono-white D&T build. I got in about 15 games over one evening. Pre-board, the matchup felt pretty even, with it basically coming down to if the horde of 2 power hatebears could do enough damage before I got either a Griselbrand, Lotleth Troll, or some Vengevines to stick in play. The board is pretty random at the moment, but I did try a handful of games with a pair each of Vengeful Pharaoh and Slaughter Pact in, which seemed to bump the match in my favor, though he never did see his sideboarded RiPs.
Some of the particularly interesting interactions I've seen out of this list above and beyond the normal dredgevine:
But it's not all upsides, either. I definitely feel it's not quite as consistent at reanimating Vengevines, due to the lower density of 1 drops, fewer dredgers than I'd really like and the lack of some of the extra enablers for Gravecrawler (no Bridge from Below, Dregscape Zombie, Rotting Rats, or Necromancer's Stockpile). It also can't afford as much mainboard hate like Thoughtseize, Lightning Bolt or Abrupt Decay, in order to fit in the Goryo's. So overall, it's probably more explosive in the early game, at the cost of being a little less capable in longer games and being a bit more at the whims of getting the right enablers in the opening hand. It does mulligan surprisingly well, since any discard outlet and a dredger along with a few lands is usually enough to get things started.
The thing I'm most unsure about is the Smallpox. They did what they were supposed to do, but at least against D&T, it felt like Lightning Bolt would have done the same thing and also combined with early early Vexing Devils to have given me the possibility of some reach for the last few points in a few games. Mainboard Abrupt Decay could also go in the same slot, which seems to be general advice for lists closer to stock. If I did that, I'd probably also strongly consider dropping the one-of Loam for another Thug or Imp.
Anyone have thoughts or suggestions?
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Bloodghast
1 Golgari Thug
4 Gravecrawler
2 Legion Loyalist
4 Lotleth Troll
3 Stinkweed Imp
1 Tymaret, the Murder King
4 Vengevine
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Darkblast
4 Faithless Looting
3 Grisly Salvage
2 Lightning Bolt
Lands: (20)
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
3 Copperline Gorge
1 Forest
2 Marsh Flats
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
BGRDredgevineBGR
UWRJeskai ControlUWR
Pauper:
GMono-Green AggroG
MTGO Username: creamy99
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1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Hedron Crab
4 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Vengevine
4 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug
4 Faithless Looting
2 Fatestitcher
4 Gravecrawler
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bridge from Below
1 Swamp
1 Steam Vents
4 Mana Confluence
3 Dangerous Wager
1 Mountain
2 Izzet Charm
1 Darkblast
2 Ray of Revelation
4 Lightning Axe
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Spell Pierce
3 Rakdos Charm
Its a little disorganized, but I have a 100% WR with this build over ~25 games on MTGO, except with City of Brass instead of Confluence because I already had those.
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
It's a 5/5 for U once you get rolling, allowing you to Vengevine for cheap.
Obviously it's not a high level choice (No cast from graveyard), but is it good enough for a beginners deck?
Yeah, it was in tournament practice. I said this once or twice before, I really like Bridge even without a way to abuse it per se, it makes trading with you a near impossibility, and makes the deck even more resilient to board wipes than it already is. Long story short, I saw a lot of UWR and went slightly overboard in preparing. Its useless against pod though. I really should try my hand at a daily, how long do they usually take? 4 rounds so I'll assume around 2 or three hours, considering how fast the format is and how Eggs isn't a thing anymore. I really want to squeeze Lotleth Troll and some Bloodghast back in the deck, but the build I'm working with is really really tight so finding seven slots will be tough, and I'd probably have to redo the mana. Again.
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
4 Hedron Crab
3 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Vengevine
3 Stinkweed Imp
2 Golgari Thug
4 Faithless Looting
3 Fatestitcher
4 Gravecrawler
3 Dangerous Wager
2 Izzet Charm
1 Darkblast
4 Bloodghast
1 Life from the Loam
4 Watery Grave
1 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
1 Steam Vents
4 Mana Confluence
1 Mountain
1 Blood Crypt
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation
SB: 3 Lightning Axe
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 2 Rakdos Charm
SB: 2 Ground Seal
First change: Adding one loam because I've been caught in a few situations where dredging it would would have helped me get back my ghasts to close out a game (usually after some sort of board wipe).
Second: Upping the fatesticher count. Having a third has helped me close out games vs wormcoil engines/batterskulls/archangle of thunes. I feel that 3 is the correct number.
Third: Added a blood crypt. I've been caught in a few situations where I've really needed to grab both a B/R source so I like having the option available.
Fourth: Ground seal -- haven't really tested it yet but I have gotten wreaked by scooze a few times and I felt that this could help.
Thoughts?
Modern:
EDH:
Standard:
Part of it is that a lot of people on this thread like the more grindy builds that can burst, and have the ability to use removal, this is almost certainly based on the build I was using at the time which I try to always keep able to do everything it needs off of 2 lands, making removal slightly non conducive to that plan. I actually really like your build woz, I'm not sure about the sideboard, but those are my weak point honestly. I'd love to be able to fit in more Fatestitcher, but room is always in issue in Dredgevine because decklists have a large number of "must haves", similar to Jund for example. Okay, we have to have Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Lightning Bolt, Liliana, some discard, lands... where did all the slots go? Same thing for Dredgevine (Different Cards of course). I've been tearing my deck apart and rebuilding it over and over again but it is pretty much the same at the core.
In other news, I've been debating about retrying the Haakon+Crypt package I ran for the Lantern IQ if anyone remembers that old build. Any thoughts?
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
I run the crab and I wouldn't ever consider swapping out for this. Particularly with fetch lands, the crab is milling often 6 cards a turn, and it gets insane if you have multiple crabs out. Second, the crab costs 1 blue once, while the cost to mill six from the twist is 3. Third, the crab is a creature which by nature turns on Vengevine, which twist doesn't. Finally, the crab is a body that in a pinch can block buying you time if needed. For all those reasons I wouldn't swap out the crab for the twist, nor would I add the twist in place of something else either.
Modern:
EDH:
Standard:
This was the 75 I registered:
4 Gravecrawler
4 Vexing Devil
3 Bloodghast
2 Golgari Thug
4 Lotleth Troll
2 Stinkweed Imp
4 Vengevine
4 Griselbrand
Spells (13)
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Faithless Looting
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Life from the Loam
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Slaughter Pact
1 Lightning Bolt
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Golgari Charm
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Vengeful Pharaoh
Game 1, mull to 6, but keep a decent hand. Turn 1 Vexing Devil, then get there on the strength of vine, gravecrawler, and ghasts, as he gets no time to draw any real action.
Game 2. Similar story. Turn 4 he eventually gifts for Damnation, Supreme Verdict, Wrath of God, and Snapcaster. Wrath and Damnation go to the bin, a Troll regenerates through the Verdict, and a bolt and land in hand and a Bloodghast in bin against his empty board seals the deal.
1-0 in matches, 2-0 in games.
Round 2. Thea on Junk.
Game 1, mull to 6, keep a somewhat sketchy 1-land hand that does not pay off in the face of discard and a Scavenging Ooze. 2 Gravecralwers alone do almost nothing. Draw no more land, and fairly quickly die to a Goyf and a 5/5 Ooze with a grip full of creatures I can't cast or discard.
Game 2, Mull to a not horrible hand 5. Two turns of running Slaughter Pacts out of the board against back to back Scavenging Oozes keep things in doubt for a while. A Pharaoh in bin keeps a Tarmogoyf at bay for a number of turns, but eventually a Bob sacrifices itself to put Pharaoh back on my Library and I've seen no dredgers or discard spells. I get stuck on 4 mana with only 1 green source and a Vengevine, a Pharaoh, and a Griselbrand in hand. Eventually she's down to 2 life, mostly off her Bob triggers and some Bloodghast beats, but she's got Abrupts for both Confidants to keep from killing herself and a second Goyfs seal the deal.
Thea eventually top 16s.
1-1 in matches, 2-2 in games.
Round 3. Jordan on UR Delver.
Game 1 is pretty straightforward, with a faithless into double Vengevine on turn 2 off a pair of Gravecrawlers. Bolts and Snaps slow things down a little, but a bloodghast and remaining crawlers close it out.
Game 2, mull to 6, and he manages to counter my lootings and a mediocre series of draws never sees any dredgers or other enablers. Sideboard Pillar of Flames neuters my few recurring dudes, and a pair of Snapcasters eventually beat for the win. Getting stuck on 3 land didn't help.
Game 3 is mostly won on the back of a Lotleth troll and keeping up regen mana to crash through YP tokens and chip away. Lots of dredging Stinkweed then discarding it for more counters. Eventually a dredge into a pair of bloodghasts closes it out.
2-1 in matches, 4-3 in games.
Round 4. Grant playing Ad Nauseum Combo.
Game 1, turn 1 Vexing Devil for 4. turn 2 Troll, discard 4 creatures. He stumbles on mana and 3 turns later is dead to a huge troll and reanimated Griselbrand.
Game 2, keep a somewhat slow hand and hard cast both stinkweed and thug, before a bloodghast joins the party. Finally get the Goryo/Griselbrand combo set up for my next turn, but he goes off on his. A misplay on my part as his turn he'd scryed to the top, and had an Urborg in play, while I had an open Ghost Quarter which would likely have kept him from hitting the mana he needed.
Game 3, turn 2 Phyrexian unlife via SSG. No cares given, as a pair of Vengevines and two Griselbrands put him to -4 and 10 infect counters over 2 more turns.
3-1 in matches, 6-4 in games.
Round 5. Neil playing Kiki pod.
Game 1, he mulls to 6. Long fairly drawn out game, getting him as low as 4 before Helixes claw him back into things and he manages to double Resto which I can't answer.
Game 2, Turn 3 concession in the face of double Vengevine off Gravecrawler + Vexing Devil.
Game 3, my deck is apparently tired and cranky. Mull to 4 before ever seeing a single land. Meanwhile, he eventually turn 3 Restos, Turn 4 Restos, Turn 5 Kiki.
3-2 in matches, 7-6 in games
Round 6. Tom playing UR Delver.
Game 1, Delver and Snapcaster get in for solid beats and my board presence is hindered by bolts, leaks, and whiffing on my enablers. Loaming on empty graveyards just trying to get anything viable going. Eventually fall to Snapcaster.
Game 2, Turn 3 and 5 Blood Moons hamper things, but Bloodghasts don't care, and eventually 'ghasts, plus Stinkweed and Golgari Thug get there with a bolt to finish things off. A long grindy game.
Game 3, Another turn 3 Blood Moon, but eventually an Abrupt Decay shuts it off and unlocks my board. Unfortunately, I failed to call a judge when he took back a Counterflux targeting the Decay ("oh, not a legal target", no, in fact it is legal, just doesn't do anything) and I let him have it. That flux later hits my hard cast Griselbrand which would have stabilized the board against his Young Pyromancer. Bad play mistake that cost me the game. Lesson: never be afraid to call a Judge in a serious tournament. This is not FNM.
3-3 in matches, 8-8 in games.
Round 7. Joe playing BW Tokens.
Game 1, everything fires on all cylinders. I turn 1 Devil, he turn 1 Inquisitions and sees 2 Gravecrawlers, 2 Vengevines, and a land. Draw faithless, and by turn 4 reanimate Griselbrand and he is dead to 15 power on board.
Game 2, he finds paths for my first turn 3 reanimated Griselbrand and a Vengevine, but I draw 14, and put 24 power in play over the next 2 turns. Elspeth and some Raise the Alarms make enough tokens to chump for a while, but eventually even 2/2 tokens can't deal with that many vengevines and another Goryo's Griselbrand.
4-3 in matches, 10-8 in games.
Round 8. Tim playing UWR Geist.
Game 1, is moderately tight. He's down to 3 when he gets through with Geist and then reveals double bolt for the kill.
Game 2, a blowout. Turn 2 Rest in Peace keeps me off my main game plan, and I never see any of the 6 answers post-board for this expected piece of hate. A combination of Resto Angels, Snaps, and Helixes keep the game out of reach, as hard cast Stinkweed Imps and Golgari Thugs can only hold things off so long. Of course, the 1 land I needed for hardcasting a Griselbrand to potentially stabilize would have been my next draw when he finally managed a lethal combat. Such is the way of things.
End result:
4-4 in matches, 10-10 in games, which put me at 46th out of a 130ish field and was good for a few packs. I was hoping for 5-3, but I can accept .500 for my first tournament outing with a new deck, especially as it's not exactly stock.
All in all I was pretty happy with how the deck performed. I lost a few games (and one match) to just multiple mulligans or unusually bad draws, which is about what you'd expect over any 8 round tournament. Giving away another match due to reluctance to call a judge isn't something I can put on the deck, so all my other non-variance losses were to good pilots or very good draws for my opponents. I never really felt like the deck was up against a matchup I couldn't win, had I drawn decently.
Overall, I think the main board configuration is solid.
I obviously didn't hit the Goryo's combo every game, but every game I did, I won. That's pretty consistent with my testing. I like how explosive it makes the deck, and I think the loss of removal in game 1 is definitely worth it. Sideboarding the combo out for a more typical Dredgevine removal package also an option if it seems unlikely to resolve.
Of the other creatures, Bloodghasts felt weakest, mostly due to having only 20 lands, not usually triggering Vengevine, unable to block, and not being able to crash through anything. The only saving grace is that when you need any creature through open counter mana, it's fantastic. Vexing Devils proved their worth, as I had no less than 9 games where they started turn 2 with 16 or less life due to a 1 mana virtual Boros Charm, and had numerous others where they were a critical part of triggering Vengevine. They were probably close to as effective as the Vengevines themselves, overall, in terms of life lost by opponents.
Not having Birds, I might try going up to 21 lands, as I did have slightly more mulligans than I was really happy with, including one down to 4. Possibly move the 4th decay to the board and put the 2nd Ghost Quarter in the main, or just staying with one Quarter main and picking up another basic Swamp or Blood Crypt.
The lack of mainboard removal compared to a more stock Jund Dredgevine list was noticable. I had a few games where a couple extra Abrupt Decays, Lightning Axes, or just Thoughtseizes probably could have swung a longer one in my favor earlier, and maybe 1 or 2 games out of the 20 I played where that might have won me one that I ended up barely losing. OTOH, that was probably made up for by the fact that every game I did get Griselbrand into play, I won, which which was 5 of the 20.
The sideboard seemed acceptable. As mentioned, I boarded out the Goryo combo entirely a few games. Vengeful Pharaoh ended up coming in many matches and proved surprisingly excellent against both Delver and BG/x decks, as neither tends to run a large number of creatures, and if you've also got a dredger, it becomes pretty insane. The final kill tally was 2 or 3 Delvers, 1 Snapcaster, 1 Dark Confidant and around 3-4 spirit/soldier/elemental tokens, plus stalling a 'goyf for 3-4 turns. Not bad.
I didn't ever end up using either Ancient Grudge or Rakdos Charm, but I also never played Affinity or Twin, which were the matchups those were meant to shore up. Most often a few Bloodghasts came out, along with 1 or 2 Griselbrands or Life from the Loam. I also regularly swapped Lightning Bolts for Decay and vice versa depending on the matchup. I do feel like I'd kind of like some kill spells that can hit 4+ toughness, 4+cmc creatures like Resto Angel. Terminate seems like a possible option for this, as does Shriekmaw, since evoking it would still help trigger Vengevine.
Modern:
EDH:
Standard:
I've run it in the straight up Griselbrand/Emrakul Goryo deck that eventually led me to this deck, and it was mostly mediocre depending on the match up. I like that it kills both Resto Angel and most reasonably sized Goyfs, and provides another discard outlet. I think it might be better here as discarding things other than Griselbrand is substantially less a drawback in this deck than it is in the Through the Breach/Emrakul style decks.
I'll give it a try, though I'm not exactly sure which slots it goes into.
The major problem I have with the deck is Combust in the Side. If you feel confident enough about discarding things that you will run Troll, why not run Lightning Axe? The only big players that Combust hits are Resto and Baneslayer. Baneslayer is a problem card against a lot of decks, but it just isn't in the meta. Basically Lightning Axe does everything Combust does better, and helps enable the strategy.
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
Did not think about the Exarch, but Pestermite is easily cleaned up by the copius amout of mainboard Darkblast's
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft