MTG Salvation

Long overdue, as I see this thread is almost ten years old. But "snarg's house of sin" is on the sign in Joven's card art. Really a pity that was never a Legendary Land, innit?


*munches cookie*

idk, this is fun and all but just seems like a way to get blown out by Fog. I would rather run Griselbrand or Whirlpool Rider as my self-mill piece, drawing seven is usually enough to dredge the library to nearly empty. I typically leave 2-3 cards left so in case something goes wrong I don't die to my own millout. Flayer of the Hatebound + Prized Amalgams entering the battlefield plus Undying the Flayer by sacing it to something = 4+5+3+3+3+3 = 21 direct damage to the face, gg. If they have white Leyline then just tear their hand to ribbons with Therapies and overrun them a turn later with zombies, flying demons, trampling Hogaaks, flying Amoebas, etc. If their mana is tight you can finish your turn with a reanimated Chancellor of the Annex, she can mess up an opponent's plans with her tax effect.

Quote from n0bunga »

I’ve noticed a lot of recent decks go for 3 Whirlpool Riders and no Spies. Any reason why?

I think blue variants with FoW prefer Rider to have more blue pitch fuel. Rider also has the advantage, like Griselbrand, of doing a more controlled self-mill rather than a total self-mill. I've heard of decks using Spy -> Flayer getting blown out in various ways when they try to go for Dread Return and then dying of their own mill. It's too risky. I'd rather mill all but 3 or 4 cards, this almost always gives enough gas for a lethal Flayer + GGT, and also leaves enough zombie meat on board to win more slowly if they can answer Dread Return. Rider, Griselbrand, and similar cards that let you draw 7 allow you to typically mill 40-50 in one shot, and by choosing which dredgers to use you can often get the library down to exactly as many remaining cards as you want.

Quote from n0bunga »

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-manaless-dredge-58790#paper

This was what I found. Not too sure about Lotleth Giant over Flayer of the Hatebound, either...

I think Giant looks good on the surface (only requires one DR, is black for Ichorid), but has flaws. It becomes neutered if you ever get hit by a big crypt, whereas Flayer can still kill just based on zombie token and ichorid generation. And it can't hit creatures, which could be important. idk, it may be worth testing but really I'm not super impressed. By the time we get to DR anything we've probably swung a few times with zombies. Off a big enough self mill, we'll have Prized Amalgams in yard (if not, get them there with some Therapies). Three Amalgams in yard when you DR Flayer is 13 damage total by end step. All four is 17, which kills if you've connected even once with an Ichorid. Who even needs GGT Troll to kill with Flayer?? The nature of a Dredge Deck is to continuously spit out bodies. Flayer adds an additional clock to that, giving them all pseudo-haste, and its Undying means they have to answer it twice if their first answer isn't exile.

Quote from rowanalpha »

I'm going to try Sphinx of Foresight in place of Git probe. I think the free scry 3 is worth trying as a replacement. Anyone try this yet?

That looks like a cool idea but I honestly don't know. I think I'm happier with the baubles. Sculpting my starting hand gives me a slightly better shot at a good dredger and a Street Wraith, but the eventual bauble draw feels better (even though we can't get the dredge off it until t3 at the earliest). Ultimately I think it's better to trust your deck to provide and just focus on dredging more, which means more free draw.

Quote from ajfirecracker »

Quote from thesedaiv »

Would it be possible to run some Madness Archtype cards with Manaless Dredge or would LED Dredge be better with Madness or is Madness COMPLETELY unplayable?

Madness as a mechanic has good synergy but there's not really any madness cards that are worthwhile. The only free ones are Basking Rootwalla and Call to the Netherworld, and neither of those are really where it's at. (Although, Call to the Netherworld grabbing Street Wraith or maybe 1x Demon of Death's Gate isn't the worst)

This is basically my take here. Call to the Netherworld gets back a Street Wraith (everything else is useless in hand), if you have one in your yard to get - but why not just run Baubles instead of Calls and have admittedly weak, slow draw effects #5-8? And I tried Rootwalla for a while when I was putting the deck together and didn't have my Ichorids and it's just terrible. It's a 1/1, no evasion, and never comes back after it's killed the first time. The only way to get it in your yard is to pitch to discard, therapy yourself (oof), or pitch to 'Gorian. No thanks.

Madness is just not very useful in Dredge because the bulk of the cards in our yard don't get there via discard. The only good madness enabler we have is Phantasmagorian and we have to also be using its pitches to:

• get Dredgers back into the yard
• stack creatures on top of Nether Shadows to keep them coming back
• pitch black creatures for Ichorid food
• get DR and its reanimation targets into the yard if they wind up trapped in hand

'Gorian is already overloaded with all these things to do and sometimes we can't get them all done in the same turn. Adding on "enabling cards that would otherwise be utterly useless" is too much to ask of it.

Quote from mulkers »

Anyone else building the deck with Hogaak?

I saw this guy and at first got really, really excited. he's huge, trample is pseudo evasion, he's manaless, and he can come back over and over from the yard. I worry though that he turns on Path to Exile and bounce type removal too much though. He doesn't seem to fit in with the swarm approach or the combo approach of the deck. The average power of creatures in our deck is around 2 (zombie tokens, with Shadows and Narcos below and Ichorids and Amalgams above), tapping down 7 2/2's to make a non-hasty 8/8 seems... slow? we can keep casting him (again, as long as he's not bounced / exiled), sure, but time is a resource too and every turn we waste tapping down to make a fatty that gets shot is a turn we're letting the opponent interact with us and play (ew) fair Magic. Yuck! I want my opponent to be stuck spending their removal on creatures I got for free.

I'll definitely test it (he's cheap right now) but I'm not expecting it to be amazing (him being cheap this long after release is a telling point there). Nice thing though is we can play a whole playset of him because the extras can always feed Ichorid.

Edit: a few things just occurred to me about Hogaak that make him look better than my original comment, I'll add them here:

• He's easier to cast than I thought because a lot of cards that can go to our yard stay there uselessly. Dead Chancellors and Narcomoebas are useless in every way except Shadow stacking and GGT bodycount. Third and fourth Phantasmagorians, and all cycled Wraiths, are useful only as Ichorid food (and Shadow stacking). Whirlpool Riders past the first aren't generally useful since the most common hate cards will take them all anyway (surgical, RiP, crypt, etc). If you can see that on their turn the opponent is going to force you to lose your Bridge(s), might as well Delve 'em. And in sideboarded games your non-creature spells are all obviously Delve trash once they're used up.
• He can be cast on turn 2 (if Modern can do it, so can we gosh darnit!) and matches up favorably to Tarmogoyf, who is difficult for the oppo to get up to 8/9 in this m/u(oppo has to get a dead 'walker and you can just refuse to attack walkers). If Tarmogoyf is worth spending turn two to make it's hard to argue Hogaak isn't also worth spending turn two to make, and he can be a good blocker for Goyf (since we are typically on the draw). If nothing else we can offer to race.
• Being able to be cast from hand and not just reanimated from yard can catch opponents off guard. They're used to operating with pretty good information about our options on our next turn (one of the few handicaps we face playing almost entirely from a face-up zone). And they're used to our hand (post Wraiths) being nothing but trapped dredgers we're trying to discard. In midgame when the most important decisions are happening, we probably have 18-22 in yard. With an average dredge of 5, our next draw gives us +5 "cards" to play with so the oppo is already seeing 4/5ths of our "hand". Some surprises are possible, yes, like flipping into Narco(s)+Amalgam(s), or assembling the pieces of DR+Flayer all at once. But often it's just more of the same incremental advantage. Hogaak coming out of the hand can be a surprise, and it's good to have one or two of those. (Some might say that the clever opponent will remember our Dredge and Gorian pickups. But many hands can never discard down to zero and wind up with chaff like Chancellors and stranded Narcomoebas sitting around. I've gone plenty of pre-Hogaak games holding cards that were essentially blanks that I never got around to pitching a single time and the opponent would never have been able to know what they were (other than by counting copies in my yard and making educated guesses). Hogaak's mere existence forces the opponent to factor in the possibility that that one unknown card in our hand might be an actual live card.
• Extra Hogaaks can be delved to Hogaak, obviously. I feel pretty stupid for not noticing that especially after I spent a whole Standard delving Tasigurs for Tasigur.

I still don't like Delve a ton in this deck. I like being able to rely on Shadows coming back turn after turn. I like feeding my Ichorids. I don't like increasing my vulnerability to permission, especially with spells that require permanent sacrifice of resources! But, the pro's are enough to definitely push me to order a playset and start my testing.

Quote from Rignes »

Wow. I take a long break from MTG and come back to find Gitaxian Probe is banned. I'm fairly certain that card was unique in what it did so I doubt there is a reasonable direct replacement and if there was WoTC would have probably banned it already for the same reasons Probe got the ban hammer.

How viable are Urza's Bauble and Mishra's Bauble as pseudo replacements? I've done a search and there are no other free blue cards that let you draw a card. I was hoping to find some other blue card to at least be able to keep FoW in there but that doesn't look like it's gonna happen.

Well obviously they are terrible compared to Probe. We can't use them t1 for any reason ever, or we miss our all important discard step pitch. So the earliest we get a dredge off them is the oppo's turn 3. And of course we no longer get to see our oppo's first eight cards, instead we only get to see one of them. I was running Baubles but I've been very depressed by how much the deck has slowed down without those explosive starts enabled by having 8 fast draw spells. I'm actually thinking of having those slots be my Hogaak test slots and just accept the slowdown and try to jam more threats onto the board in midgame.

My list, in case anyone's interested. I think Khans added a card worth considering for the list:


So obviously the notable add here is Altar. A singleton is fine, based on the way this is built you only need one and by the time you're ready to cast it, it should be uncounterable by anything but a free counter. Altar has the advantage of killing right past a Leyline of Sanctity or other player-gains-hexproof effect, and killing past infinite life as well. The *actual* kill is ideally achieved with Coliseum, of course. Why let your opponent untap, after all? But against a hexproof opponent we have to let them untap and die during draw step. The Ghost Quarters are there to nuke all their lands so they won't be able to cast anything to save themselves.

City of Traitors and Horizon Canopy are both missing from this list as I consider neither of them to be "budget". The Lotus Petals are the most expensive cards in the deck. Both are excellent cards to be honest, but the deck can definitely function without them.

Most of how the deck operates should be obvious to eggs players, not much fancy here. I don't run Aether or Pyrite SB's, I consider the Reshape tutor package inferior to the Crop Rotation tutor package (give me a G instant over a UU sorcery any day!). Barbarian Ring is my Pyrite SB and either it or Coliseum could theoretically kill by themselves, albeit not without the risk of the oppo doing something crazy with all the draws / discards, and Ring can be stopped by infinite life shenanigans (and you'll go grey finishing the game if the oppo forces you to act out all 10 Ring activations; Altar can millout in two Sunrises). The advantage of Altar is that you can wait to run it out until you have the opponent on complete lockdown (no lands surviving thanks to GQ, no mana in pool bc you halt your combo, pass to second main, and restart to clear their pool). With no lands or mana they have no way to cast any of the cards you give them with Coliseum. Four Coliseums may seem like overkill and I may be talked into swapping one out for a third GQ, but I'm dubious on it. I don't like to weaken the list with ways to get lands from hand into play like Wayfarer, so my only way of "rescuing" a hand-stuck CC is to use another CC on board to pitch it, then Noxious it under, then Rotate it into play. This means if I draw every CC in my deck without a land drop remaining, I can never get one on board. No thanks. And I've had games where I drew three of them before I could find a Rotation to fetch the fourth. The sheer amount of digging CC gives you can't be overestimated so I want it every single game, and the only way I've found to guarantee that is the 4 CR + 4 CC package.

Sideboard isn't fully worked out yet but 3-4 Seal of Primordium is standard against Tormod's Crypt / Relic of Progenitus / Rest in Peace, cards which could otherwise give us fits. Seal can force the Crypt once you're holding Sunrise, then you get everything back and they Crypt an empty yard. Then you can topdeck their Crypt with a Noxious. At that point, whether they mill or discard it is irrelevant, it will no longer "count" for Sunrise.

The mill plan is also not beatable by any number of Emrakuls or by less than three auto-retuck-replacement creatures (Progenitus, Serra Avatar, etc). Some decks run those in the board as mill protection and may make the mistake of thinking that will suffice.

As with all legacy eggs deck, the real problem is always counters against our engine spells, and tax effects that make it impossible for us to function (looking at Thalia here). A lot of the cards that mess us up the worst are hatebears and that's really who the Barbarian Ring is in to fight against.

Anyway, it's a very sketchy list I'm aware, but it's a lot of fun and against non-counter decks it can snag a few wins here and there. Most blue decks just laugh at it, since it throws its entire board away and then puts the whole game on resolving a 3 or 4 CMC spell that the opponent sees coming for 3-4 turns. IMO not much can be done about this since there's no way to add sufficient blue cards to the deck to fuel a FoW package without utterly diluting its core mechanic (besides, this is a budget thread). Against slower blue based controlly decks we can wait a couple turns, pile up more mana on board, and try to force two engine spells. Or we can go with the Silence plan, which I don't hold out a ton of hope for (hard enough to get enough mana + sunrise + enough eggs to draw into another sunrise with; to get all that plus a Silence to enable it all is rough). It can be done but it will likely add a turn or two to when we go off. Against blue aggro-control / Anything-Delver we die, period. We just don't have enough time.

Is anyone else still interested in this deck? I've got my own Crop Rotation focused list I've been having fun with casually. I agree with the above poster that City of Traitors is firmly outside budget range now, but the deck still has ample options for affordable fast mana.

Quote from n0bunga »

This was the first legacy deck I built about a year or so ago. I love the idea of it dearly.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures 2 Balustrade Spy 3 Chancellor of the Annex 1 Flayer of the Hatebound 4 Golgari Grave-Troll 4 Golgari Thug 4 Ichorid 4 Narcomoeba 4 Nether Shadow 4 Phantasmagorian 4 Prized Amalgam 2 Shambling Shell 4 Stinkweed Imp 4 Street Wraith	Spells: 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Dread Return 4 Gitaxian Probe Enchantments: 4 Bridge from Below	Sideboard: 1 Ancestor's Chosen 1 Ashen Rider 4 Faerie Macabre 4 Force of Will 2 Archive Trap 1 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV 1 Whirlpool Drake 1 Whirlpool Rider

Hi Nobunga! I love your list, it's actually only a few cards off from mine. My only real concern with it is only three Chancellors... to me it hardly seems worthwhile to even run a Leyline / Chancellor effect without running the full boat. If I remember correctly my list is -1 Shambling Shell and +1 Chancellor, and I rarely have no-dredge problems. But YMMV.

The other difference is that I'm -1 Balustrade and +1 Griselbrand. Functionally, Grizzy is about equivalent to Ballsy in terms of deck-flippage. As long as you have 7 life to spend (which most of the time you will) and a dredger or two to play with, he can typically flip your deck, or enough of it to either find the Flayer combo, or generate such a massive pile of dudes as to make you unstoppable. He can also just play beatdown or threaten to block and gain life. Balustrade is technically slightly better as he guarantees the combo but the split provides a touch more protection against various hate cards.

I've also had one opponent actually side in Torpor Orb against me, which shuts down both Spy and Flayer. I mentioned this to a friend and they suggested boarding in a combo package of Triskelion + The Mimeoplasm. Mimeo eats a Grave-Troll and Trike and becomes a huge/huge trike that guns the oppo down with activated ability rather than a 187 trigger. (Note that Mimeo is an "as-enters" replacement, not a "when enters" trigger, so he works through Torpor Orb). IDK if this is worth sideboard space though since Torpor Orb is hardly a common hate card. There are also times when the oppo uses Leyline so you need Flamekin Zealot instead.

Some of your sb pieces confuse me a bit. In what matchups would you prefer Grand Arbiter to a fourth Chancellor? I guess it's better at stopping Eldrazi on-cast triggers than Chancellor, but I can't see any other way in which it's better. I guess you can use it to force a DR past a Daze, but first you have to resolve a DR on Grand Arbiter past that same Daze anyway. So really you beat Daze by just having more DR's / FOW's than they have counters, or tearing their hand apart with Therapies. Other than that I'm not certain what purpose he serves. Is he just a Chancellor that increases your blue card density? I think I'd rather have a Mindbreak Trap for Storm in that slot.

Ancestor's Chosen is a nice touch but Resolute Archangel is strictly better from a Reanimator standpoint IMO. Flying, and will gain a useful amount of life even if we have to panic-reanimate it on a small yard. Ancestor's Chosen might put us in the position of having to slow down our Ichorid feasting to conserve fuel for lifegain, while Resolute just goes to 20 no matter what. Of course, on a full yard Chosen can set us to a ridiculous life total but if we have a full yard why aren't we just winning instead? I'd say both are poor substitutes for Gnaw to the Bone but in Manaless, we have limited options.

What purpose do the Archive Traps serve? I'm trying to think of decks where we want to mill them for 13 approximately once ever. (Only two copies makes it very unlikely we will ever be holding two before we go into dredge-only mode). I'm drawing a blank but this seems like such a strange case I'm sure you have a good plan for it. Maybe just to fight against topdeck tutors? But I thought Vampiric tutor was banned? Is this to fight Sneak & Show and similar "fatty off the top" decks? Trouble is, a lot of those lists just use scrying and Top to set up their flip rather than Worldly Tutors like they used to. Scrying and top don't let us cast Archive Trap. So I'm still a bit mystified. For me these would also be Mindbreak Traps to fight Storm bc with them on the play, I find Storm typically can go off just barely before we can kill them, so we have to have ways to interact and I don't think 4x FoW is enough. :/ Have you alternatively considered Disrupting Shoal as an additional countermagic piece?

I have to say I really like the Whirlpool Drake and I'm considering testing him in my build. The double-Rider effect is amazing, the fact that it works right past a Torpor Orb is gravy, and the fact that unlike Griselbrand or Rider it allows you to fine-tune your library dumping. Heck, you can carefully set it up to leave yourself one card almost every single time, allowing you your combo win and anti-millout insurance in case they have something silly like a fog or Angel's Grace effect (I have actually heard of a Dredge deck losing to a sideboarded Angel's Grace being used in exactly this fashion - genius). This reduces the need to worry about saving a DR to use a Thug to stop millout in such circumstances, and also saves a sideboard slot some people (including me) spend on Progenitus. I think I will start testing Drake immediately! But do you run him and Rider just to diversify your combo pieces to fight against hate cards like Extraction? Or are there matchups where you find them actually superior to Balustrade Spy?

Finally, I like Ashen Rider but I try to always find room for two. An Elesh Norn can also be a great sb add if you are worried about facing Elves.

Looking over this list, enjoying it a lot. Have you considered Magus of the Candelabra as additional mana ramp? Not quite as efficient as Arbor Elf but combos nicely with your enchant lands, much better than Elder Druid. Alternately one could use the Candelabra itself, but it's not Green Sun searchable. The Candelabra has the advantage of not being Boltable, though due to Root Maze it will be effectively "summoning sick" (enter tapped).

As for early plays, it seems to me that t1 Arbor Elf may actually be a better play than Root Maze even if you have it. At least, if you're on the play. If your Elf survives to t2, then you can play a second forest, tap 3 mana, and plop the Orb and Maze in THAT order. If you're lucky the oppo tapped down on their turn and you have them on lock.

Not sure I like Tangle Wire as much as Trinisphere. Heck, even Sphere of Resistance would work. Under Winter Orb, in Legacy, anything that makes the oppo's spells cost more than 1 will severely punish most "fair" decks.

Where you are going to run into SERIOUS problems is with Dredge, which doesn't play fair, and especially with Manaless Dredge, which will laugh itself silly at your Maze/Orb combo and kill you. A singleton ScOoze might not even save you, they have Contagions specifically for him. Frankly you should just be splashing white and running Rest in Peace, it's the strongest possible graveyard hate and usually Dredge has to scoop to it. But I understand that the splash might be difficult. Failing that, you can try adding in Deathrite Shaman, though that strategy also has flaws. Wheel of Sun and Moon isn't tutorable, but it's still pretty strong against Dredge if you can survive whatever they've currently got buried.

Dredge btw is the other reason to prefer Trinisphere / Sphere of Resistance over Tangle Wire. Adding mana costs to Therapy and Dread Return tends to stop Dredge in its tracks.

Edit: Have you considered combining Urban Burgeoning with Omnath, Locus of Mana? This can generate some pretty stupid amounts of mana in short order. Even without Omnath, UB lets you cheat past Winter Orb so it still works as ramp under Orb.

P.S., searching Gatherer for more land auras and astonished that there really is only Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl. Trace of Abundance and Fertile Ground both cost 2, and every other aura that could buff the land costs even more. I say I'm astonished because Wild Growth is the sort of card I would really have expected there to be a functional copy of in one of the Portal sets. As a result we only have eight 1-cost aura ramps, not quite the critical mass we need to be entirely effective. Does anyone else find this an unusual case of WotC making a smart design decision back in the 90's?

Well, having picked myself up off the mat from my devastation over the banning of Summer Bloom (not really surprising given WotC's hate for combo, but at least I take some vindication in them finally banning Twin, after literally years of dithering and allowing it to ruin the format), and I'm ready to go back to thinking about one of my favorite decks.

Obviously time will tell if the deck can ever recover from this loss. t2 wins are obviously out the window now, and even t3 wins are quite iffy. I like that my favorite little land-engine-that-could, Tribe Scout, is now a key element in the Coralhelm replacement engine. It does sort of look like this engine is a lot frailer than the original robust combo. There's a lot that can kill a poor defenseless 1/1. :\

Aside from Tribe-Scout, can anyone think of any decent tap-dudes that have useful abilities that go well with Retreat to Coralhelm? I thought of a few, just brainstorming, but most of them suck.

Ruin Ghost from Worldwake can, in combination with Amulet, Retreat, and a white-producing tapland (Selesnya) produce infinite green. Sort of meh compared to the Scout.

Another big one, but doubtful whether it can be worked into an Amulet list, is Knight of the Reliquary. It seems better suited for Knightfall, but I'm just tossing it in here because it's a useful tap creature that deals with lands. However, if you combined Knight with Prismatic Omen from Shadowmoor, all your bouncelands would become Knight-sac'able "forests". The dream combination of Knight + Omen + Amulet + Retreat would be difficult if not impossible to pull off, though.

I like the looks of the Retreat to Coralhelm + Sakura Tribe Scout list, but frankly doubt whether it can go the distance. Either card is mostly a do-nothing by itself. I only ran Scouts as an "also ran" alongside Blooms in my original list. Retreat is no Bloom - it can ONLY generate mana in combination with Scout, and can only maximize its mana potential with Scout AND Amulet. But good combo decks aren't built around 3-card combos, they're built around two-card combos. I get the feeling that you will win one now and again with the combo but your win/loss rate will just be too low to be competitive, even against a field that (due to the kneecapping of two dominant fast decks) has slowed down a touch.

P.S., Lord Hazanko - with Retreat + Sakura Tribe Scout, Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion is WAY better than Kessig. You can not only double-stronghold to swing with two titans, you can actually double-Sunhome to give both double strike. 4 mana for double strike (essentially +6/+6) on a creature that already has trample, is way better than 8 mana for +6/+0 and an ability the creature already has. It's not often that you go for the double-titan attack, but if you do, really the only thing that can save the opponent is removal. And if your opponent has a removal you'll be glad you spent less mana to get blown out. The only really good reason to run Kessig is if you also run Inkmoth Nexus, as it gives you a great post-Titan endgame, pressuring your opponent's ability to keep finding removal by creating a must-answer threat (Inkmoth + Kessig + sufficient mana = removal or die). But I don't see Inkmoth in your list so I'd recommend switching to Sunhome. I suppose you can randomly Kessig up a Scout or Azusa or whatever but seriously, how often do you actually get away with that sort of nonsense in practice? I can't remember ever pulling off such a thing against an opponent who was somewhat awake.

Against Knightfall, does anyone think there's any use for "landfall hate" cards like Polluted Bonds, Shattered Angel, Sire of Stagnation, or Tunnel Ignus? I think Bonds is the strongest since it can't be Pathed, but they all have the problem that Knightfall can just change over to its beatdown plan. Also none of them are searchable with Pact.

Hmm. Against Knightfall, has anyone considered Bojuka Bog? I run Sakura-Tribe Scout in my Bloom list, and the ability to tutor for Bog via Tolaria West (or Titan and bounceland it), then hold Tribe-Scout open with the ability to use it for an instant Crypt effect, sounds like it would be pretty strong at shutting down Knight of the Reliquary. They would still have Kessig Wolf Run, but it would steal a lot of their thunder.

Just a thought, not sure if Bog is worth a sideboard slot. And obviously it loses a lot of value if you don't run Tribe Scout.

Edit: I see AtomConfirmer already mentioned this. But dunno if you considered the Tribe-Scout for instant speed?

More ideas vs. Blood Moon... not fond of R-Bomb myself. You have to keep it alive for too long. Even if they don't have a way to remove it, what's to prevent them from just using the time to execute their own gameplan to win while you sit there staring at an uncastable hand? So I looked up some more colorless options for removing BM.

(I didn't include EE in this because it doesn't really count as colorless for our purposes. If they land BM, EE can no longer remove it, so EE falls in the territory of "cast before BM, pop to remove BM after it lands" effects, which makes it vastly inferior to Seal of Primordium.)

Culling Scales. Obviously this won't work well against decks that have a lot of permanents. But it might wind up faster than R-Bomb in some matchups. If there are no permanents with CMC less than 3, it gets to go off on your next upkeep to wipe Blood Moon.

Oblivion Stone. Also a bit slow, but speed is dependent on your land count. If you got off an early Titan but then it got killed and Blood Moon came down, you might have enough mana to drop and activate O-Stone on the spot.

Ugin - see O-Stone. Cost can't be split over multiple turns; upside is, it doesn't destroy any Amulets you might still have out.

Perilous Vault - similar to O-Stone. Exiling is probably not worth the extra mana cost.

Scour From Existence / Spine of Ish Sah - both probably too expensive for what you get. At that price point you're better off going with O-Stone or Ugin.

So we have one highly conditional card that could drop on t3 and go off t4 with no additional mana investment (culling scales), a couple pay once, pay to pop boardwipes, neither of which can possibly go off before t5, and a variety of other options requiring between 7 to 9 mana. That appears to wrap it up for colorless Blood Moon removal options (other than those most commonly considered). I've never been fond of EE because it can't beat Blood Moon on the draw, Ratchet Bomb seems miserably slow, Scales is far too conditional, and everything else gives the opponent endless time to beat us up. I think Seal of Primordium or possibly Nature's Claim are best. I'm not comfortable with Seal being bounced, but Claim requires constantly holding a green mana open, which is also miserable.

Also, doubly unfond of the "pay to pop" wipe permanents, not just because they can be bounced, but because BM converting our existing bouncelands into Mountains sets us back usually one, two, or even more mana just by resolving.

DuskHorizons, you don't really need infinite counters, all you need is counters at least equal to the highest CMC creature in your deck. Further experience counters are unneccessary. So realistically if you have six or seven tokens out, resolve Meren, and immediately feed your tokens to a sac outlet like Vish Kal or Ashnod's Altar or some such, you will immediately have all the experience counters you'll ever need. Then you can just loop Meren indefinitely (albeit a bit clunkily) with Saffi Eriksdotter ("the other Reveillark"), and chain them all together with other reanimator bodies like Lark, Karmic Guide, or Phyrexian Delver to repeatedly bring sizeable groups of bodies back to the battlefield.

Personally I don't favor this scheme because I see Meren as simply a slower and less reliable Karmic Guide / Phyrexian Delver type effect, and my Karador list was already overstuffed with such effects. Meren requires creature deaths to become better than Gravedigger, and, while she has a decent cost for her ability and body, lacks other relevant abilities. Frankly I think I'd rather spend a slot on good old Genesis. Meren is great if she is the deck's General, since you can get her back repeatedly (obviously you'd want to voltron her up with some good equipments / enchantments, like Asceticism, Darksteel Plate, and Swiftfoot Boots). But as a member of the 99, I think she's a bit on the weak side as body-plus-reanimators go.

Besides, my Karador list of old - the dedicated pure-Dredge variant - became extremely boring to play a long time ago; too many of its games ended very similarly ("if no one has a Tormod's Crypt effect this turn, I'm going off and killing everyone"). So now I'm rebuilding him as a Tribal Spirits deck focused around Kamigawa's Soulshift and Spiritcrafting abilities. It'll be lower on the raw power scale, but much higher on FUN factor - and just how often does the average EDH game get to see cards like Elder Pine of Jukai doing their thing?

Quote from Mr. Cthulhu »

Just by playing the deck aggressively and swinging when able, I'm also slowly taking away possible topdecks from the opponent due to a lot of my creatures having Ingest.

Minor quibble, I see a lot of new players saying things like this but it's really not true. Whether you're milling the oppo to yard or to exile makes no difference. It doesn't affect their topdecks one way or the other (assuming they're not scrying or engaging in topdeck manipulation). Against a randomized oppo library, your mill/ingest is equally likely to mill a good card, as it is to push them past a worthless blank and get them TO a good card. No effect. So there's no sense in crowing over milling the opponent a card, or being bummed because you got milled one. There's no actual statistical effect upon odds of drawing something good next.

You can only cheat them of good topdecks if you hit them after they scry and keep something good on top, or if you have them milled so far that they are forced into an awkward tactical position (ie., they are so close to millout that they have to block every Ingester or risk loss, forcing them to make suboptimal plays).

Quote from lacco »

I guess as long as Hushwing Griff doesn't see increased sideboard usage, this deck is a real good choice!

There's a much nastier SB card but much more narrow so less likely to face it: Hallowed Moonlight. Crushes CoCo, Rally, all token makers, Deathmist Raptor too. I'm amazed more people aren't boarding it. If Rally takes off in a big way, expect to start seeing this card. It's a beating, it's to this deck what Back to Nature is to Constellation.

Guys, re: Deathmist Raptor and rotation, I'm pretty sure competitive forum rules indicate no new card or post-rotation discussion until after Wizards has posted the FULL spoiler of the new set. I'm just telling you so a moderator doesn't have to...

As for Shadowsauce and the Forge Rally list, I think the point of that list is running creatures that make multiple bodies when they enter, like Gearcrafter and Thopter Engineer. If you're not maximizing bodies per rally I don't think you're getting all the value out of Purphoros that you should be. Have you considered adding a couple Impact Tremors as a way to improve your odds of getting the combo? They're obviously not as strong as Big P but having two of them means you have six copies of some sort of combo-out. By running 4 Thopter Engineer, 4 Gearcrafter, possibly even Hangarbacks and Chiefs of the Foundry, you add the potential for a hasty thopter swing to add to your Purphoros hit. (If your Rally brings back a Chief of the Foundry your Hangarbacks will survive as 1/1's; either way they will trigger Purphoros or Tremors.) And getting Hangarbacks in the yard pre-rally is as easy as 0-casting them if you need. Hangarbacks also give you another relevant two-drop. Finally, running all eight 3-drop thopter-makers plus Tremors gives you a realistic chance of turning on devotion so Purphoros can swing too. Just a few thoughts!

I know the Clerics and Jaces seem tempting but honestly I think Purphoros really wants a thopter rush to be maximally effective.

P.S. shouldn't it really be "Rally Forge", not "Forge Rally"? Better name since it rhymes with "Valley Forge", at least to the history nerd in me.

P.P.S. Unrelated topic - does this deck have any prayer against U/R Tutelage or is that just a lost matchup? I mean, the combination of Anger of the Gods plus Negates for our Rallies, plus our own deck just feeds their mill with Wayfinders... brutal. Is that matchup saveable or should we write it off as hopeless and focus on improving other matchups?