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Silver Sniper
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:51 am
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 13 Location:
--- description ---
Improving dredge in constructed.
--- end description ---


So I had a couple of years off Magic: The Gathering, and got back into it a few months after Ravnica hit the shelves. Wow. Great set of cards, great for tech types who lie awake at night thinking up new combos. Shame those Jittes are wizzing around early to break up combo decks. I’m not a great deck builder by any stretch, but after looking around on the net I didn’t see any decks that went in this direction. So here goes.

1. Pre-con Golgari Death Creep


First congrats to Cleston from Brazil for his article Budget Deck: Savra the Queen of control. It’s a good article on building a dredge deck out of the pre-con without splashing a lot of money. I suggest if you are looking to build a B/G control deck using Golgari Death Creep as basis then have a read of his article before this one.

Like Cleston I started with the Golgari Death Creep deck and looked for ways to modify it. Some cards were obvious discards, Drooling Groodion, Woodwraith Strangler and Infectious Hosts are going to struggle to make decks. Other cards weren’t so obvious, Golgari Brownscale and Greater Mossdog are going to have you scratching your head about which direction you want to take the deck in. Dredge can be used to make a control deck, or a combo deck, it just depends where you want to pull. More on that decision later. For now let’s just thank Cleston for his thoughts and move on to the cards.

2. The dredge mechanic

A lot of writers on the net have stressed what a great mechanic dredge is, and I’ve seen a lot of decks that I’d class as either full dredge or semi-dredge. The difference between them is with a full dredge deck you are going to rely heavily on cards like Golgari Grave-Troll, Svothgos and Life from the Loam and maybe splash some Dimir to start pulling cards into your graveyard. A full dredge deck designer may also add some reanimation to take advantage of that second library of cards lying in front of them on the table.

The second category of dredge deck is the semi-dredge deck. It’s the direction that I pick will see a lot more play, because its more versatile when blended with other colours. The semi-dredge deck relies on creature dredge cards like Golgari Thug and Stinkweed Imp to provide answers to opponent’s threats, and may even use dredge threats like the Grave Troll and Grave-Shell Scarab to provide some late game breakthrough.

The third category is what I’ll call the splash dredge deck. Cards like Moldervine Cloak, Necroplasm, Nightmare Void and Darkblast are going be included in a lot of decks because dredge can keep them recurring and hurting your opponent. The main difference between a semi-dredge deck and a splash dredge deck is that the semi dredge deck is still built around dredge, whereas the splash dredge deck is designed around some other mechanic.

However, despite what I’ve said about how useful dredge is, it should be obvious that dredge itself is not a game winner. This is because:

a. there are no dredge cards that are true ‘game winners’
b. dredging is a slow mechanic compared to other mechanics
c. dredging doesn’t drastically improve your tempo comparative to your opponents (the Grave-Shell Scarab is a possible exception)
d. dredging takes a while to start working


To answer those shortcomings (I’ll refer to them as limitations a, b, c and d) we need to:

a. have threats in the deck that are game winners
b. find some way to increase the speed of the dredge deck
c. find some way to dredge and improve, or at least maintain, our tempo
d. have early answers or a gain life mechanic in the deck

Simple huh? Lets get to it.

3. The improved Dredge deck

It’s going to be obvious to a lot of readers that to overcome the limitations of dredge we really need to steer away from a fully dredged-out deck. I’m not saying it can’t be done, because there are cards out there like Sensei’s Divining Top and Phyrexian Arena that can really get dredge humming. But what I would suggest is that there are better ways to use dredge than having it as the sole mechanic in the deck.

Blue is a natural complement to dredge, because drawing a card more than once a turn is one of the most effective ways to overcome limitation b. However I’ve built my deck on GB, so if you want to build an improved UB dredge deck, write in and let everyone know.

So we’ve arrived at one solution to limitation (b). The speed of the dredge deck is improved by any situation where you have dredge cards in the graveyard and have the ability to draw more than one card per turn. This in turn answers limitation (c), because you are drawing random cards AND selecting dredge cards to answer opponent’s threats AS WELL AS increasing your tempo because you are dredging options into your graveyard each turn.

The ability to draw more than once per turn is such a good complement to dredge decks that I’m going to declare it a mandatory mechanic for dredge. And move on.

Limitation (a) states that there are no dredge threats that are true game winners. I’ve seen dredge referred to as ‘waves of mediocrity’. The solution is to include game winning cards in the deck that don’t have dredge or rely on dredge to be effective. Say goodbye to Grave Troll and Svothgos. Say hello to Kokusho the Evening Star and Gleancrawler and other big, nasty, hard to remove creatures.
But these game wining cards are no good in the late game, when they are most needed, if by then we are dredging so heavily that no cards besides dredged cards are ending up in our hand. Unless you have some way to break the deadlock your opponent will eventually have sufficient resources to launch their game breaking combo.

Answer?

Golgari Thug/Golgari Guildmage. The graveyard tutors.

These guys are a great combo if you have the mana to run the Mage and a means to kill the Thug. The Thug is slower, and it’s a vulnerable mechanic to all sorts of tricks, but cheap and you can use him to get your big nasty back to your hand next go. The Mage is quicker if you have the resources to pay his cost and keep playing other spells, which you will in the late game. After persisting with them both for ages I decided that even though they are fantastic combo playing them both is overkill, so I’ve gone with the thug.
There are other options, like Recollect, Necromantic Thirst and Vigor Mortis, but these tend be vulnerable to ending up in the graveyard with the creatures you are trying to retrieve.

The ability to tutor the threats that you need to finish off your opponent is another essential part of the improved dredge deck.

Finally, there is the difficult question of how to make use of dredge and keep an advantage in tempo in the late game. Let’s say I’ve got a Stinkie, a Guildmage and a Wurm on the table. My opponent has an assortment of 5 creatures and two artifacts and enchantments, and the ability to knock out, control or tap some of my creatures. Which dredge card is going to win the game? Answer, none of them. If all I can do is dredge to keep my opponent at bay, sooner or later he’s going to achieve that breakthrough. Unless I am drawing extra cards dredging is going to doom me.

One solution that Golgari Death Creep deck provides is to make use of the cycling nature of the creatures and use the sacrifice mechanic to maintain momentum. That’s the one I chose and I’ll discuss it further in the last part of the article. For now I conclude that:

Dredging needs to do more than just recycle dredge creatures to be effective in the late game

But what about the early game? As dredge players know, there’s an awful delay period before you have dredge cards in your graveyard and during which your opponent is probably going to have more options than you. I can’t think of any better card to solve this than Stinkweed Imp. As people that play him know, he is a bomb that buys time and comes back around to buy even more time. If you plan on playing dredge, you need him. For opponents with lots of flying, the Matsu-Tribe Sniper is the next best thing to the Imp. Not as final a solution as the Trophy Hunter but its quicker and lots cheaper to use overall. It’s also great for locking down Jitte’s and other artifacts. You can use the Mage to cycle the Sniper back from the graveyard and play it in your turn, then tap on your opponents turn to nail that big flyer of his.

Stinkie Stinkie Sniper Stinkie

4. Designing a dredge deck

You may not agree with all of the statements made above, but I’ve tried to keep them fairly generic without basing it too much on my solution. Here it is:

Euthanasia

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Shambling Shell
3 Gristleback
4 Woebringer Demon
3 Savra, Queen of the Golgari
4 Grave-shell Scarab
2 Golgari Thug
Creatures: 28

Dredge Creatures: 12
Other creatures: 16

3 Greater Good
3 Grave Pact
4 Loxodon Warhammer


Other spells: 10


4 Tendo Ice Bridge
4 Golgari Rot Farm
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
3 Moaning Well
3 Forests
3 Swamps
Lands: 22


Sideboard
4 Matsu-Tribe Sniper
4 Naturalize
4 Putrefy
2 Darkblast

(note deck has now been edited through playtesting 9 March)

This deck overcomes the limitation of dredge by tapping into the potential for sacrificing creatures (hello STE and Grave Shell Scarab) for effects that increase your tempo relative to your opponent’s. Effects like powering up your creatures (Shell) gaining land (STE) drawing cards (Scarab and Greater Good) and most importantly, having your opponent sacrifice creatures (Demon and Savra and Grave Pact)
So it’s a combo deck, but once its humming it performs more like a control deck as your opponent struggles to keep creatures in play to block your growing army.
Note that when playing the deck NEVER play the demon unless you have a thug or another dredgeable creature to feed him each turn. You have to be really disciplined with this rule, even if it seems like the demon is all that you need to finish your opponent off.
I normally play creatures in preference to my engines in the early game, trade them for opponents creatures at every opportunity, then throw out a Grave Pact or a Greater Good and start controlling the board in the mid-late game. You win either through an unchecked Demon or Scarab, or sacing a creature equipped with Hammer to Greater Good and putting out a swarm of creatures with the cards you draw.

And before anyone starts hassling me for having less than 4 of each card. PLAY THE DECK.


When playing dredge cars in general, its essential to hold off as long as possible before switching from drawing to dredging cards. Why? Because you don’t draw anything but craetures when you are dredging. Ideally you want to dredge and play, or draw and play, two creatures per turn in the late game. You need a lot of land to be to do this - that’s where the STE comes in.

I don’t even contemplate taking a dredge before I’ve got five lands in play, I believe if I have to dredge before then, I’ll probably lose the game.

Finally, this article isn’t meant to be about an individual deck, it’s about constructing dredge decks, but I’d welcome ideas and suggestions on this deck and others.[url][/url]
Last edited by Silver Sniper on Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:04 pm; edited 13 times in total
Cobra
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:50 pm
Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 1202 Location: Austin, TX, USA
Good article, and I like the different approach you take to writing about decks. In my mind the strategic info at the beginning more than makes up for the lack of specifics about your decklist -- however, our regular MTG writers/critics do like to see matchup analysis, playtest reports, and so on, so I'd recommend adding those features if you have time later. Cool
http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games.
Osion
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 4:58 pm
Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 62 Location: MD
Welcome to the site, Silver Sniper!

This was a solid article, though I do have some nitpicks...

Dredging I believe is actually a tempo-gaining ability.
When you draw, you have a chance of drawing a bomb like Kukosho but you also have the chance to draw a land. The risk involved within drawing a card, especially in formats like limited, is too much to not use dredge.

Ex: It is the late game. My next draw could give me a Mana fixer, which I don’t need, or it could give me a game winner. The dead draw will get me killed, whereas I could survive with the good draw. In either case, I’d rather take no risk and get that Moldervine Cloak from my graveyard - I perfer consistency over chance, even if the cards I miss drawing wind up to be better than my dredged cards.

Compare dredge to transmute and convoke, if you will. Convoke makes your cards cheaper, but the cards that have convoke are overcosted and can’t be cast unless you had a fair amount of creatures anyway. Transmute eats much mana, and can only be done as a sorcery, making it obsolete unless the card you are transmuting for is of great power or restricted. (see Drift of Phantasms for Yawgmoth’s Will)

Look no further for card advantage than Life From the Loam. I don’t know about your experience in extended, but this combined with the cycling lands (from Onslaught, ex. Barren Moor) is one of the best draw engines in the whole game.

I’m thinking Savra + Woebringer + Gravepact is a little too redundant. We get the point, your opponent will have no creatures on the board - its just that kill spells like Last Gasp will neutralize most threats anyway, and can save an awful lot of room in your deck.

the 1 Kukosho, 1 Phryexian Arena, 2 Top and 2 Greater Good are going to show up too infrequently to matter. Most of the time, you’ll want to be playing playsets of cards for consistency.

same comments as above for the sideboard. 2 Naturalize and 2 Pithing Needle are answers, but often you could just never draw them and lose. use four of each for consistency, and cut the Ogre Marauder.

-Osion
inresponse
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:25 pm
Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 162 Location:
miren the moaning well is a great way to have a sac outlet for the thug. If you are going to use savra though, I think you need a few more ways to sac creatures. Maybe Thoughtpicker Witch? It might make the cards in your deck work better together. 1 Phyrexian arena seems strange to me. How are you supposed to get it back if it’s dredged? The only time the card is good is when it is in play for multpile turns and usually that means playing it in the early game, which is very difficult with one copy. The same type of thing goes for the other non-dredge non-creature cards. Putrefy, Sensei’s Divining Top, Greater Good, and Grave Pact can’t be played in such low numbers if you want to draw them consistently.
Silver Sniper
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:49 pm
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 13 Location:
see below
Last edited by Silver Sniper on Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
Silver Sniper
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:02 pm
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 13 Location:
Thanks for the comments guys, but you forgot to vote!

Sorry I haven’t got around to writing up the play testing yet, there’s a couple of decks that I’m yet to play and I don’t want to be endlessly tweaking my article Sad But I’ll get it written up soon...

I haven’t replied to comments before, so I hope all the quote marks go in the rights places.

Quote:
Welcome to the site, Silver Sniper!

This was a solid article, though I do have some nitpicks...

Dredging I believe is actually a tempo-gaining ability.
When you draw, you have a chance of drawing a bomb like Kukosho but you also have the chance to draw a land. The risk involved within drawing a card, especially in formats like limited, is too much to not use dredge.

Ex: It is the late game. My next draw could give me a Mana fixer, which I don’t need, or it could give me a game winner. The dead draw will get me killed, whereas I could survive with the good draw. In either case, I’d rather take no risk and get that Moldervine Cloak from my graveyard - I perfer consistency over chance, even if the cards I miss drawing wind up to be better than my dredged cards.


Well that’s kind of the point I’m making - if you play dredge you can get stuck in this pattern of dredging a card rather than taking a risk. You are going to have always have GOOD dredge cards in your GY, but never GREAT ones. If every single time that you could draw a great card you dredge a not-so-great one, you give your opponent the opportunity to draw a great one and win the game.

Totally agree with your comments in transmute - its a great way to waste a turn.

Quote:
Look no further for card advantage than Life From the Loam. I don’t know about your experience in extended, but this combined with the cycling lands (from Onslaught, ex. Barren Moor) is one of the best draw engines in the whole game.


Yup, I am looking for ways to include 1 or 2 LFTL into the deck atm.

Quote:
I’m thinking Savra + Woebringer + Gravepact is a little too redundant. We get the point, your opponent will have no creatures on the board - its just that kill spells like Last Gasp will neutralize most threats anyway, and can save an awful lot of room in your deck.


Yes and no. On one hand you are accusing me of inconsistency, then you are saying cards in my deck are redundant! But I do agree with you, and in my playtesting, I am trying little tweaks to overcome that. Surprisingly Savra the supposed ’queen’ of the Golgari is #1 on the list of cards to ditch, because grave pact and the demon acheive the same effect faster.
I don’t agree about last gasps though, forcing a sac can’t be countered and is a great removal technique IF you have enough cards in your deck that force it. Putrefy is a multi-purpose removal and therefore much better in this deck than last gasp. so its a better last resort card to gain back the initiative. And there’s always eradicate. Eradicate is a GREAT CARD. Wish I had room for it.
I don’t intend to increase removal spells greatly, because as you can see, one of the strengths of this deck is using creatures that have built in removal abilities. They are uncountering, can be played every turn, and with Demon and Savra can also swing. Last Gasp is not in the same league.

Quote:
the 1 Kukosho, 1 Phryexian Arena, 2 Top and 2 Greater Good are going to show up too infrequently to matter. Most of the time, you’ll want to be playing playsets of cards for consistency.


If you’ve played a dredge deck with a Thug or Two and a Guildmage, you’ll see that creatures turn up TOO frequently. I’ve no plans to include more than 3-4 big nasties in the deck. Remember that once you’ve got them, chances are they are yours for the game.
The ’supporting cards’ that aren’t creatures like Top, GG, Arena, Golgari Germination and Grave Pact are all great cards in the deck. They are all in theme, and its hard to jutisfy including one over the other. But all of those card are all under review and I’ll let you know of any final tweaks.

Quote:
same comments as above for the sideboard. 2 Naturalize and 2 Pithing Needle are answers, but often you could just never draw them and lose. use four of each for consistency, and cut the Ogre Marauder.


I love the marauder in this deck! Slap a cloak on him early and suddenly your opponent is in all sorts of hurt. I’d like to include more of him. His 3 power makes him a good option to sac to Greater Good. He’s in the sideboard atm along with Phyrexian Arena because I am trying to build a faster more aggressive deck to deal with other control decks. We’ll see if it works.


Onto inresponses’ comments.

Quote:
I think you need a few more ways to sac creatures. Maybe Thoughtpicker Witch?


There are enough ways to sac, (I think there are enough ways to sac). I’ve got 2 Woebringer, 2 Scarab, 4 STE, 3 Shell, 3 Guildmage and 2 Greater Good. And I can cycle the creatures with Thug/Mage/Dredge.

The Well is a great idea, I’ll include definitely include one or two, thanks.

Thoughtpicker witch has been tested, but didn’t prove powerful enough for the loss of a creature. She’d be better teamed with tokens. If I want to look and see what’s coming, Eradicate is a possible inclusion.

As for non-drege, non-creature, cards, I’m not actually aiming to draw them consistently, all I need is one or two during the game, and I always get that. (But I am thinking of dropping the tops atm).

Guys, thanks for the comments. Much appreciated. Even though I’ve defended someof my inclusions in these comments I’ll playtest your suggestions as well. Now I gotta go find me a well....[/quote]
The First
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:09 pm
Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 195 Location: Anderlecht, Belgium
I think that your deck isn’t focussed enough: you have a sac theme, card draw theme and the Kokusho/Gleancrwaler combo (which is very efficient if you have 1 Kokusho and Gleancrawler in play and play another Kokusho and get them back to hand...).

The Arena works well with the Golgari Thug -it speeds the process- but shouldn’t the Thug get answers back like a Keening Banshee, Nekrataal, Ravenous Rats, etc...

I would be careful with only 2 enchantment removal cards in your sideboard: Leyline of the Void really messes with dredge decks or Gifts Ungiven decks.
La_Sin_Grail
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:11 pm
Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 806 Location: Maryland
No vigor mortis... that would have made this deck great.

Also, playsets as Osion suggested, are a MUST.

Although I must say I didn’t love your deck, I really enjoyed the format of your article, and the actual words very much.

One more thing, I liked the Savra Deck from October better. This seems a little late to be working on dredge.
Silver Sniper
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:20 pm
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 13 Location:
Quote:
I think that your deck isn’t focussed enough: you have a sac theme, card draw theme and the Kokusho/Gleancrwaler combo (which is very efficient if you have 1 Kokusho and Gleancrawler in play and play another Kokusho and get them back to hand...).


Look at comments made above, which suggest the deck is TOO focussed (ie cards are redundant). Can you explain further why you think the deck isn’t focussed? But good idea on the 2 Kokusho’s, never though of that! thanks.

Quote:
The Arena works well with the Golgari Thug -it speeds the process- but shouldn’t the Thug get answers back like a Keening Banshee, Nekrataal, Ravenous Rats, etc...


See my comments on Thoughtpicker, I’ve tried these cards but they just don’t give enough ’bang for the buck’ e.g. Keening Banshee is only going to do -2 damage, when she costs 4 for a 2/2 flyer. Compare her to Stinkie teamed with Savra or Gravepact and you see the difference immediately, stinkie is cheaper and has a great ability as well as providing a cheap warm body for sac. Remember that you need the creatures to be cheap when you are playing more than one a turn.
As for the Rats, they are a bad choice because discard is not a theme of the deck. Its unfair to criticise the deck for not being focussed and then suggest new cards that aren’t in theme.

Your point on Leyline of the void is a good one though, at the moment I am relying on the relatively low profile of drege for it not to come up often. There are a number of anti-graveyard cards around, but luckily re-animation doesn’t seem to feature in many decks. I’ll let you know how the playtesting goes.
Last edited by Silver Sniper on Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
Silver Sniper
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:34 pm
Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 13 Location:
La_Sin_Grail wrote:
No vigor mortis... that would have made this deck great.

Also, playsets as Osion suggested, are a MUST.



Thanks La Sin Grail, appreciate the comments. I PROMISE I will write up results once I’ve got them all.
Vigor Mortis is a great card. SO MANY great cards I could use in the deck. I haven’t used it because I’d rather use the swing then sac a creature to the Thug/Mage mechanic to re-animate, which is what the deck is designed to for. Watch your opponent beat off one of yor threats then find it gets replaced with an even bigger one! Great fun.
I’ll playtest your suggestion though..

[quote]
One more thing, I liked the Savra Deck from October better. quote]

This deck actually started out as that deck and changed, lol. I found playing that deck, if you survive the early game you end up in this big dredging stalemate, which you normally lose. Playing that deck made me analyse what dredge required and I realised you needed big threats and card drawing abilities to be competitive in standard.

Hey one further point guys, when I wrote this article Ididn’t intend it to be a ’here’s my deck, add your comments’ article, it was meant to be a strategy article. I LOVE discussing my deck, everyone does, but I thought general comments on strategy were more appropriate, or ’in theme’ lol. So keep the comments coming, but I’d also like to hear fromanyone that is using other mechs besides sac to make dredge good. Cheers.

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