If you have Phantasmagorian in graveyard and Memnite in hand you have a discard opportunity (just use the Phantasmagorian, silly); Rootwalla only has an advantage when either the instant speed is relevant or the number of cards in your hand is a limiting factor (in terms of needing multiples of 3 for Phantasmagorian, not in terms of needing 8 cards to discard to hand size). I consider both of those to be pretty rare conditions.
If you don't have Phantasmagorian, you can't realistically play Rootwalla at all, and you can play a 0-cmc creature. I consider that to be a pretty common condition.
Whether you can afford to discard to hand size in terms of your dredger count in the graveyard is agnostic between the two, in both cases you give up 1 card in hand to get a 1/1 creature. Whether you cast a creature and therefore don't have a discard at all, or you discard the creature to hand size and therefore don't get to discard anything else, is totally the same result. The opponent even gets priority in cleanup if you discard Rootwalla (or any Madness spell), so there's no stack timing advantage to be had. (Unless they were holding up removal for your 1/1 and spent the mana on something else in the end step)
The chief appeal of Manaless is that it absolutely destroys counter-magic strategies. If your metagame is extremely controlling (whether a tempo-based flavor like Delver or more dedicated like Miracles) Manaless Dredge is very attractive because you don't need to resolve spells to get going. It's also more consistent than LED Dredge at the cost of some explosiveness. The ideal LED Dredge hand includes land, discard outlet, dredger, and draw spell. There is some flexibility that makes that a little more likely to occur (Looting can be a discard outlet or a draw spell, and if you have LED you can Dredge into it). The ideal Manaless hand is a dredger and whatever else, which will occur something like 97-98% of the time in the typical list.
In terms of speed, LED is usually only about a turn faster, probably slightly less on average. The ability to use free cantrips closely parallels the speed of most draw spells - a Gitaxian Probe and a Street Wraith will draw just as many cards as a land and a Careful Study. And of course the Manaless lists have a little stronger reanimation option to close out the game in Balustrade Spy.
In terms of hate, I'm convinced that Manaless has to go Fearless, but that you usually want to be Fearless in Legacy Dredge generally. If you want to fill your sideboard with Nature's Claims and Chain of Vapors and whatever else, maybe Dredge is just the wrong choice for that tournament. This isn't Vintage, where you have Bazaar of Baghdad to power up the deck and force your way through hate post-board. It's also not Old Extended, where Dredge was just head and shoulders above the competition and the hate was pretty low in power, albeit numerous. This is Legacy, and people run very little hate and have to prepare against an absolute horde of different linear decks. Running cards to address what your opponent actually has is going to serve you well.
I do think Manaless Dredge is less broadly playable than LED (because you need the meta to be kind of counter-heavy and light on super fast combos) but I don't think it's an objectively worse deck. Its quite a while back now, but when I put together my composite list Balustrade Spy Manaless was the single most successful Dredge archetype over several months of data (and this was after Misstep had been banned)
Discard Phantasmagorian. Use it to drop an amalgam or two, a dredger, whatever. EoT (or main phase if need be for timing reasons, not sure how it works with cards that care about beginning of end step) on your opponent's turn cycle street wraith, dredge and if you hit narc you get amalgam on your opponent's turn and ready for your turn.
It seems like Ichorid or Nether Shadow would be more consistent for you there, as you don't have to hit a Narcomoeba to get those to trigger.
I think Amalgam is viable only after those cards (and possibly after Bloodghast as well)
That's generally been my thoughts on it, but with a decent opening hand you could, potentially, get one or more of these guys at the end of your opponent's second turn/before our second turn and potentially go off turn 2.
Wizards gave it out as a prize. That's more directly "published" than their normal expansions (which go from the printer to distributors to retail to players without WotC touching them)
I try to balance listing format-relevant stuff vs being exhaustive but now, at least, Oxidize strikes me as being too inclusive.
Nature's Claim is generally the go-to if you have good access to green mana.
I still consider the "Fearless" composite list (which is based on the overlap between several successful decks over a long time) to be the authoritative list. This runs no Dryad Arbor and no mana-based sideboard cards. Instead the sideboard features removal (especially Sickening Shoal), Mindbreak Trap and other trumps to popular matchups.
No, I'm talking about section 3.3 which describes which cards are "Authorized Game Cards"
6.5 is the format definition for Vintage, and that's the section that was changed to exclude promos other than the 4 listed.
Are you deliberately mis-reading what I posted? I said it was section 3.3, you quoted me saying that, then you posted section 6.5 as proof that what I said was missing from the rules. I'm going to assume it was just a brain fart but it's a pretty bad one.
The back of those cards are different. They also have a gold border. They are not "Authorized Game Cards" by any measure.
The 1996 World Champion card has a normal back (based on photos). It has a black border. It is a different type of card entirely than those you've identified.
The old tournament rules did not use the word "released" when describing a card's legality. (see section 3.3 and 6.5) Players added that in from other portions of those same rules. If 1996WC is an "authorized card" (which they give a tedious definition of, meaning a playing card with a Magic back, not a token, black or white border, etc) which is "from" (not released but merely from) a "supplement" or "promotional printing" it was previously Vintage-legal. This is why you saw so many of the questions in the thread about the physical card such as "Does it have a normal Magic back?"
I think it was and is plain that 1996WC is an "authorized card" (i.e. fits the phsyical characteristics) "from" a promotional printing or supplement.
The word released was added in from other sub-sections regarding when cards become legal. The argument boils down to something like "this card is not released yet, but it could be someday, so it's not legal yet" which is plainly nonsense.
The current rules leave section 3.3 totally alone (so 1996WC is still plausibly an authorized Magic card) but redefine Vintage legality to include only specifically named promotional cards.
Yes, the rules were recently changed to omit 1996WC; I've acknowledged this three times now. I take this as proof that it should have been banned before - otherwise there would be no need to change the rules. Perhaps you missed that this thread was necro'd in the past few days after the rules change? The original discussion predated that rules change by quite a bit.
The card has a normal magic back. It was distributed in a clear trophy and you can see the normal magic back in some photos.
As we have discussed in the thread previously, a card missing from the Gatherer/Oracle database is not blank. The rules specifically say that you can't "abuse" missing information in those databases (i.e. cards still function and when new promotional cards are released they work before they hit Gatherer). Secondly, even if it were blank that would not address the legality of the card. A card with no rules text could still prove useful for some obscure combo, so declaring it to be blank does not solve the problem for you. There is no additional mechanism to say "blank cards are illegal".
No Gatherer page is not a problem. The rules are quite clear that something omitted from Gatherer still ought to function properly. (A discussion which we've already had in the thread.)
Magiccards.info has zero rules standing.
If 1996WC is illegal because it was technically printed by another company (at WotC's request and designs, and distributed by WotC) then virtually every magic card ever made is illegal. WotC does not run printing presses for their current products such as Oath of the Gatewatch or Shadows over Innistrad. This standard is clearly unworkable unless your goal is to invalidate the overwhelming majority of Magic cards ever printed.
Most importantly, this is all moot. WotC decided the rules were insufficiently clear and re-shaped them to eliminate 1996WC and clear up various other issues with promo cards. I take this as a vindication of my position. If 1996WC were simply illegal before because it wasn't on Gatherer or something like that, there would be no need to re-write the rules to exclude it.
If you don't have Phantasmagorian, you can't realistically play Rootwalla at all, and you can play a 0-cmc creature. I consider that to be a pretty common condition.
Whether you can afford to discard to hand size in terms of your dredger count in the graveyard is agnostic between the two, in both cases you give up 1 card in hand to get a 1/1 creature. Whether you cast a creature and therefore don't have a discard at all, or you discard the creature to hand size and therefore don't get to discard anything else, is totally the same result. The opponent even gets priority in cleanup if you discard Rootwalla (or any Madness spell), so there's no stack timing advantage to be had. (Unless they were holding up removal for your 1/1 and spent the mana on something else in the end step)
Rootwalla is different from a Memnite, but plausibly worse and I don't think it's plausible that it's way better
In terms of speed, LED is usually only about a turn faster, probably slightly less on average. The ability to use free cantrips closely parallels the speed of most draw spells - a Gitaxian Probe and a Street Wraith will draw just as many cards as a land and a Careful Study. And of course the Manaless lists have a little stronger reanimation option to close out the game in Balustrade Spy.
In terms of hate, I'm convinced that Manaless has to go Fearless, but that you usually want to be Fearless in Legacy Dredge generally. If you want to fill your sideboard with Nature's Claims and Chain of Vapors and whatever else, maybe Dredge is just the wrong choice for that tournament. This isn't Vintage, where you have Bazaar of Baghdad to power up the deck and force your way through hate post-board. It's also not Old Extended, where Dredge was just head and shoulders above the competition and the hate was pretty low in power, albeit numerous. This is Legacy, and people run very little hate and have to prepare against an absolute horde of different linear decks. Running cards to address what your opponent actually has is going to serve you well.
I do think Manaless Dredge is less broadly playable than LED (because you need the meta to be kind of counter-heavy and light on super fast combos) but I don't think it's an objectively worse deck. Its quite a while back now, but when I put together my composite list Balustrade Spy Manaless was the single most successful Dredge archetype over several months of data (and this was after Misstep had been banned)
It seems like Ichorid or Nether Shadow would be more consistent for you there, as you don't have to hit a Narcomoeba to get those to trigger.
I think Amalgam is viable only after those cards (and possibly after Bloodghast as well)
How? I assume you're not talking about Lion's Eye Diamond...
I try to balance listing format-relevant stuff vs being exhaustive but now, at least, Oxidize strikes me as being too inclusive.
Nature's Claim is generally the go-to if you have good access to green mana.
I still consider the "Fearless" composite list (which is based on the overlap between several successful decks over a long time) to be the authoritative list. This runs no Dryad Arbor and no mana-based sideboard cards. Instead the sideboard features removal (especially Sickening Shoal), Mindbreak Trap and other trumps to popular matchups.
6.5 is the format definition for Vintage, and that's the section that was changed to exclude promos other than the 4 listed.
Are you deliberately mis-reading what I posted? I said it was section 3.3, you quoted me saying that, then you posted section 6.5 as proof that what I said was missing from the rules. I'm going to assume it was just a brain fart but it's a pretty bad one.
The 1996 World Champion card has a normal back (based on photos). It has a black border. It is a different type of card entirely than those you've identified.
To the contrary, they specifically include "supplements" and "promotional printings" as non-set sources of "Authorized Game Card[s]"
I think it was and is plain that 1996WC is an "authorized card" (i.e. fits the phsyical characteristics) "from" a promotional printing or supplement.
The word released was added in from other sub-sections regarding when cards become legal. The argument boils down to something like "this card is not released yet, but it could be someday, so it's not legal yet" which is plainly nonsense.
The current rules leave section 3.3 totally alone (so 1996WC is still plausibly an authorized Magic card) but redefine Vintage legality to include only specifically named promotional cards.
The card has a normal magic back. It was distributed in a clear trophy and you can see the normal magic back in some photos.
As we have discussed in the thread previously, a card missing from the Gatherer/Oracle database is not blank. The rules specifically say that you can't "abuse" missing information in those databases (i.e. cards still function and when new promotional cards are released they work before they hit Gatherer). Secondly, even if it were blank that would not address the legality of the card. A card with no rules text could still prove useful for some obscure combo, so declaring it to be blank does not solve the problem for you. There is no additional mechanism to say "blank cards are illegal".