I'm not one to dig my own grave, but the Dredge mechanic from Ravnica has made the graveyard a much more pleasurable place for my creatures – and to some extent, your creatures – to call home. Alone, it helps to get fat creatures or removal into the ‘yard, to bring back quickly and exactly when the time calls for them. Add that Black is notorious for reanimating fat creatures early on, and I thought of a concept for a new deck. Dredging your creatures into the graveyard and using Oversold Cemetery, Eternal Witness, and Genesis to bring them all back, then hard cast them to gain the advantage of having huge creatures and life gain very quickly!

Back when the Onslaught and Mirrodin blocks were legal in Standard, there existed a deck called G/B Cemetery. You would play out Viridian Shamans, Phyrexian Plaguelords, and Wirewood Heralds, and slowly whittle away at your opponent's board position before overwhelming him after dropping a Caller of the Claw at the end of his turn. This deck is a little bit different. You now play out your Cemetery, and dredge or tutor up your kill spells and whatever creature that can be the most useful at any given time.

With the Dredge mechanic acting as the deck's backbone, it allows us to run fewer copies of some cards because you will eventually dredge them into your graveyard and then recur them at will during your upkeep. This means cards like Darkblast and Stinkweed Imp have a home in the deck as a four-of card, while Golgari Grave-Troll is a two-copy for being a massive beatstick when cast. Once the Grave-Troll makes his appearance, the board should be under your control.

While we are dredging almost our entire library into our graveyard, why not bring in two copies of Life from the Loam to get those precious lands back? We'll have more resources and threats than our opponent. Stinkweed Imp admirably serves us in three purposes here: he has one of the highest Dredge costs in the guild; he can block almost anything and send it to the graveyard; and he keeps coming back for more (like Gigapede).

Another incredible addition to the deck is one of my favorite cards ever made: Undead Gladiator (Onslaught block's best creature cycler – outside of Eternal Dragon, of course). Whenever you cycle him, you can dredge back one of your cards and then pitch a Dredge card during your upkeep to retrieve the Undead Gladiator. This allows you to gain an uncounterable way of fetching Dredge cards back from your graveyard at the end of your opponent's turn.

This is not Wollport's Utility or Kibler's Death Cloud here. It's just a straight G/B graveyard manipulation deck. And I do stress manipulation. So, in honor of the all powerful Senator Rizzo, I hereby name this deck in his honor. Presenting…

The Riz and his Onions Featured by Robert Tristran Lesczinski on 2006-02-19 (Extended) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/11364.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 3 Eternal Witness 1 Genesis 2 Golgari Grave-Troll 2 Ravenous Baloth 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 2 Spiritmonger 4 Stinkweed Imp 3 Undead Gladiator 2 Withered Wretch Enchantments 4 Oversold Cemetery	Instants 4 Darkblast 4 Putrefy Sorceries 2 Life from the Loam Basic Lands 9 Forest 6 Swamp Lands 4 Llanowar Wastes 4 Overgrown Tomb	Stats: Average mana: 1.72 Average creature mana cost: 3.26 Average creature power: 2.22 Average creature toughness: 2.00 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 25.00% Lands: 13.33% Creatures: 38.33% Enchantments: 6.67% Sorceries: 3.33% Instants: 13.33%
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

Note to self: access to a graveyard full of fatties is fun and entertaining.

Both Darkblast and Putrefy round out the deck's control by providing creature or artifact removal at instant speed. Each one can be tutored, if you will, with Dredge for Darkblast and Eternal Witness for both. The Witness itself can be “tutored” through Oversold Cemetery or Genesis. You might notice the lack of Golgari Thug or Grave-Shell Scarab in the deck. Oversold Cemetery, Genesis, and Eternal Witness work better than the Thug, and comparing them all together is like apples and hemorrhoids. The Scarab nets you a draw, which is a plus in any deck, but with four mana being available I would rather cast a Ravenous Baloth and sacrifice it to gain four life every turn. Rather that than drawing a card and either dredging the Scarab back or recurring it with my Cemetery.

Recollect is another good card. Some may ask why it got left out. I decided not to run it because:

A: it's not a creature and,
B: it can't be recurred like Eternal Witness.

Gleancrawler would have been fun to run, but I'm not expecting to lose a lot of creatures on my turn (thus negating his effect). Adding that card would also waste a few of the other (more useful) creature slots.

You don't want to dredge a lot early on… until you draw either an Eternal Witness or Oversold Cemetery. This makes the cards you dredge into your graveyard much more optimal for your use. Once your cemetery comes online, I would say do about two to three heavy dredges. By heavy, I mean Stinkweed Imp or Golgari Grave-Troll. Five to six cards… a heavy dredge. This can fill your graveyard with goodies quickly so you can access them before your opponent can nullify them with any form of a defense.

This deck is packing some powerful beatdown cards, in the form of Ravenous Baloths, Spiritmongers, and Grave-Trolls, which can be brought back with any of your recursion tactics. Remember that the Dredge mechanic can fill your graveyard up more and more as time goes on, so you can get away with running fewer copies of those high-cost creatures (and key spells too).

Four copies of Putrefy can nail your opponent's Isochron Scepter and Umezawa's Jitte from decks like Scepter Chant and Madness, which could cause problems for this deck. It can hit both Tog and Madness decks with the underestimated Stinkweed Imps serving as a kamikaze style of defense, by blocking the biggest Togs and Mongrels and sending them into the graveyard all day long. Darkblast and Ravenous Baloth trump most Boros Deck Wins Strategies, along with those queer goblin decks out there. Gaining four or eight life a turn, and killing a small 1/1 creature also, is more than some decks can handle. Playing against the Heartbeat of Spring and other combo decks is a pretty straightforward battle. Play big men and smash hard every turn before they can build up a lethal Storm count to deck you or combo you out!

Withered Wretch is a key card in the Ichorid, Tog, U/G Threshold, Madness, Loam Assault, and Solitary Confinement deck environment. What is Madness without Wonder? Or Ichorid without, well, Ichorid? Or another graveyard deck without its graveyard? Other than that, your environment could vary. Pack your deck and side board accordingly!

You may wonder about my choice in mana acceleration. Let me explain. The mana acceleration for this deck initially started with the humble Llanowar Elves. Afterwards, it switched to Elves of Deep Shadow for the much needed Black mana, but was cut in favor of Birds of Paradise to avoid the loss of life. The Birds did well for a while, but I found Krosan Tusker – for his cycling ability to fetch a land – worked great. Eventually I settled on Sakura Tribe Elder, because it was one mana cheaper than the Tusker, and it helped get me over that two or three mana slump early on, before adding to the graveyard for Oversold Cemetery to become active earlier than normal. Then the fact that it can be recurred, to thin out the deck later and add more juicy dredge targets for the Cemetery, Witness, or Genesis to bring back into my hand, made him my number one choice.

The beaters (a.k.a. win conditions) of the deck can come out as early as turn 4 in the form of Ravenous Baloth, Spiritmonger, or even Golgari Grave-Troll. A 9/9 Grave-Troll on turn 6 is quite the value, as I can admirably attest. One game had this, plus a Spiritmonger two turns later, and even his Hunted Troll couldn't stop the onslaught of my recursion engine. Staring down even a 4/4 “sac and gain four life” guy, and a 6/6 regenerative creature, on turn 6 is hard for anyone to ignore!

Sideboarding options can swing with your local environment. Personally I would run Duress but I am leaning towards Cabal Therapy. Why?

Me: Cast Therapy. I call Brain Freeze.
You: No Brain Freeze in hand, but three copies of Cunning Wish.
Me: I cast Eternal Witness and bring the Therapy back to my hand. Cast it and call Cunning Wish.
You: Wish for something good, I suppose.

On top of that, you can sacrifice a worthless Stinkweed Imp to force a discard and then dredge him back. How can you not call that a win/win situation?

Other sideboarding cards I would choose are Naturalize, Engineered Plague, Phyrexian Plaguelord, Mortivore, Lhurgoyf, Mortal Combat (alternate win condition that chicks dig), and Haunting Echoes. There are just so many choices when building a graveyard deck. And so many ways to kill people with them, it's scary.

There is a lot of talk of the new Leyline of the Void making Dredge worthless. I beg to differ. Viridian Zealot or Nantuko Vigilante can kill the Leyline quickly – and can be recurred – so they fit the theme of the deck… as do Elvish Lyrist, and Druid Lyrist. Break Asunder was a choice here too, for it's cycling… but the sorcery speed gave me pause. Quagmire Druid was also a consideration (I'll pause while you go look it up); the creature's size wasn't a problem for me, but the three casting-cost drove me away. I want the deck to have a predilection for its mana, and a one-drop creature that can be sacrificed the next turn to destroy your enchantment was just too much for me to neglect.

Another variation I have been working on is what I call the Cranial Extraction lock. Take out eight of any card in the deck, and place four copies of Cranial Extraction and four copies of Hana Kami in their places. Now every turn you can recur your Hana Kami and then recur Cranial Extraction and slowly mill your opponent down to just basic land.

Devious? Yes.
Smart? Yes.
Evil? You bet it is.

Free Tibet, no grapes, all that.

Robert Tristan Lesczinski