Last week I Dredged through Planar Chaos; this week, I unleash the dog decks of that have been pinging around my brain these last few weeks. A quick caveat - these decks are untested and presented here merely as starting points, a way to get the deckbuilding juices flowing. In the coming weeks I will be attempting to get enough stuff to start testing these ideas, and with any luck make it out to an FNM or two for trial by fire. If some of these ideas prove to be very promising, either through my testing or according to emails I hopefully get from other fans, I will come back and share them with you.
Before we get started, I thought I would channel my inner Remie and answer an email I got about . HydraLord wrote:
I've been running a Dredge deck for the last couple weeks at FNM and been having reasonable success with it. It's a lot of fun. Here's the list I've been running:
4
4
4
4
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
4
1
1
1
1
1
4
2
4
4
4
1
2
2
1
Sideboard
1
1
2
1
4
2
2
1
1
Aside from the usual stuff, Skysweeper comes in versus Akroma. It also combos with to let you take infinite turns (which was actually relevant versus Nassif's deck). The Skarrg plus seems a little gimmicky, but it's won me games fighting against .
The big problems that I've been having are:
i) Untargetable creatures (Solifuge, , )
ii) Stabilizing against Boros and getting burned out
Do you have any suggestions for helping with those matchups?
doesn't really excite me much, at least not for my present configuration. I thought would be good, but seems leagues better.
s Defeated (over 3 weeks): 8
s Lost To: 3, but only one of them really mattered
Pretty fun
Oh! I just had an idea. What about boarding in versus Boros? The extra life might help me avoid death.
Thanks for writing in, HydraLord! First, let me say bravo to your build, which is very much in keeping with “classic” dedicated Dredge style that I have gone over before. I especially like , which seems kinda cool as a later-game killer you can recur with Loam.
To address your questions:
Dealing with untargetables, we get a huge boost in —Damnation. Yeah, I know you're probably cringing at the cost of the card just as I am, but I see it as a crucial card that this deck has needed all along, not least of which is how it deals with the otherwise difficult-to-deal with. The good news is that you can actually get away with running just a couple with your searcher, until you acquire your playset.
As for dealing with Boros… I would highly recommend running , which can help you hold the fort early, and give you extra mana to cast your higher cost spells. Another thought is ; heck, maindeck s and s might be worth it in some Boros-heavy metagames!
? Yeah, I had thought about that before too. The problem with your build is if you draw one early, it is difficult to get it out of your hand. I've run some Dredge builds with , so if you had a few of them in your maindeck, you could get away with running maybe three Firemanes in your sideboard to buy you life against aggro.
I have to say I am certainly pleased to hear that you have successfully fought through the eeeeevil so often, though I'm a bit alarmed that it's cropping up so often for you. I mean, how many Tier 1 Standard decks out there are truly hosed by Tormod's Crypt anyway? Why are people still running so many of them in their sideboards? This is not the sideboard card you are looking for…
Okay, let's go ahead and jump into the new Planar Chaos-juiced Dredge decks I've cooked up for testing. I'll start with the “radical departure” I mentioned last week:
When they reprinted in , I was intrigued about using a Dredge engine to trigger the a la back in the day. Of course, flies in the face of a “classic” dedicated Dredge strategy, since the whole point of that sort of deck is to build up a huge graveyard and overwhelm your opponent with card selection and eventual death by Svogthos beatdown. The problem with classic Dredge is playing non-land, non-creature cards, since once you're in the sweet spot of Dredging every turn, these cards are essentially blanks in your deck. Of course, not being able to play good removal spells like and now is a painful pill to swallow. A deck built around the Dredge / engine is going to have its graveyard reset to zero periodically. What are the implications?
First, becomes infinitely worse. While you will have lands Dredged up you can fetch back a lot of the times, you will almost never want to Dredge back Loam, since if you happen to flip a on that Dredge, you won't have any lands (or anything at all) in your graveyard to retrieve. I'm a little torn about not playing Loam at all though - even if you never Dredge it back, it's still going to be good to occasionally snag three lands from your graveyard when you draw it normally.
Second, the Svogthos end-game isn't really possible. So why do I still have one in the deck? My reasoning is two-fold - against control decks, even a smallish Svogthos is going to be a decent weapon to have, and having a backup option to maindeck for Blessing might not be a bad thing.
You also cannot really run the otherwise awesome smash-mouth . So why go this route? Well, breaking free from the constrictions of dedicated Dredge, you gain the benefit of inevitability with . At the very least, you will never be decked. You also get the benefit of gradually thinning your deck of lands, increasing the number of “business” spells you draw from the top of your deck.
Running the Dredgers perform as eternal “silver bullets” if you want them to. For instance, against a Weenie deck you can keep snagging back your . Against combo, you can keep getting back .
It occurs to me that this might be the deck where actually gets a chance to shine. His low-Dredge count is not a problem here, and he's not a bad “bullet” to keep Dredging back each turn in the later game since he's of a decent size and can Dredge himself back.
Lastly, seems like a nice card to have available. Flip him over when you Dredge, even if the Blessing triggers, you can snag him back with your self-sacrificers. You can even time the triggers on the stack so that you can gain the life after you pay half of it to the Assassin. So long as you are not facing a heavy burn deck, the life-loss should be worth the effect against some decks. Against decks he's not so good against… just let ‘im go!
Here is a Planar Chaos update to the “classic” dedicated Dredge deck. The main addition here - flying in the face of the general rule that you don't play anything you can't access from the graveyard - is , but is too vital to not run. Against fast beatdown decks, you need to draw into Damnation before you get into full on Dredge mode. and should buy you time. Later on, Thug or helps you snag Stomphowler beats or Avatar of Whoa!
By the way, you'll note I keep running one in these decks - since it provides Black mana, I don't see the harm in running one copy since it can help fix your Black mana, and lets Svogthos give you colored mana.
Mmmm, is Haakon's best friend! The main addition to this build is , who lets you get back a Dredge card with no discard drawback. I've gone heavy on the Cloaks since putting one on the Knights is solid, and I imagine throwing one on a or Seer makes for a solid blocker. Grave-Troll or Svogthos should provide some late-game punch. Lack of life gain makes this a poor choice if you expect a ton of Boros burn decks, but it should be solid against control.
Ah, Slivers! When I saw in , I thought it might be interesting to pair up with Dredge in order to prime your graveyard. The problem lies with needing to find your first copy of before you go into full-on Dredge mode. I thought about running or Demonic Collusion to increase a couple virtual counts of the card, but it was hard to find the room. In this current version, you probably just ignore the Dredge aspect and just play as a Sliver deck until you draw the , then you can go nuts with the Dredge to prime the graveyard for a huge – and hopefully hasty thanks to – Living End.
Finally we have an oddball Mono-Green Dredge deck I've been thinking about. Okay, granted the Dredge element is fairly light, but even one Dredger with turns into an extra card drawn each turn. is here to go nuts with , with a side serving of , Pendelhaven or maybe in the later game. complements the land theme nicely. Once you get access to two Treefolk (one drawn, the other either drawn or Dredged), you should have free access to any creatures that end up in your graveyard.
So there we have it… five Dredge decks for your perusal. Hopefully, something above will get your creative juices going!
Until next week,
Bennie
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