Right, but I think it depends on your deck list and the match up.
If you're playing some number of Golgari Thug, for example, it's probably a great play. I'm playing 4 Grave Troll/4 Imp/2 Loam/2 Salvage as Dredgers and T1 Neonate has been sort of hit and miss for me in testing. But I'm also playing 4 Lotleth Troll/4 Zombie Infestation as discard outlets so the initial Draw 2 from Looting usually gives me some +1/+1 counters or an extra Zombie token.
It's far from cut and dry, is what I'm saying. Some players value the consistency over the possibility of untapping with 4 power on T2, though the second one definitely wins some games.
I'm going lighter on lands and heavier on enablers & dredgers than most people seem to be - in my testing so far you only need one land to start rolling, and once you do you can dredge a dakmor salvage & loam to get to unburial rites on craterhoof in a few turns. Also I think phantasmagorian is a great fit for this deck, but only as a 1 of to discard your best dredgers and keep the engine going. Stitchwing Skaab fills a different role in the deck imo, more being a way to discard a couple of cards while getting your amalgams back on turn 2.
Also tome scour has been working well as an enabler for me, and I prefer it over spells like tormenting voice and dangerous wager - since there's going to be one dredger in every four cards on average, you can also go T1 tome scour, T2 dredge on draw step then faithless looting and dredge another 12 reliably. Same goes for insolent neonate on turn 1.
How is the sideboard looking? It's pretty standard fare at the moment but I've been told by another dredge player that I have too many slots dedicated to dealing with graveyard hate, and that I should be looking at sideboarding other unburial rites targets (even though that's only a 2 card package, not a major component of the deck's game plan.) What do you think?
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Modern
Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
I've played both iostream's (enabler-heavy) and Lee's (Conflagrate + Loam) builds, so I can give an opinion on the differences between them.
iostream's build is a lot more explosive. You have 8 Tome Scours (4 Scour + 4 Neonate), increasing the chances of T1 milling Narcomoeba + Amalgam. The inclusion of Burning Inquiry is also a factor, since it mills up to 18 for just R.
Lee's build is a little slower, but more reliable. Conflagrate is like Skaab, Darkblast, Bridge and Rally rolled into one card - it's a discard outlet, removal spell, and a way to close out the game when/if your creatures aren't enough. Maintaining hand size counts with his build, hence the decision of Tormenting Voice over Dangerous Wager. It's also worth pointing out that Tormenting Voice is a net +0 to hand size, as opposed to a net -1 for all 1-mana enablers.
There are two situations where the two builds play out differently:
1) Recovering from a 1-land starter. With iostream's build, my plan A is to cast Looting or Inquiry to try to dig for the second land. If that fails, I dredge as much as possible, with the intention of getting Narcomoebas and Amalgams onto the field to buy time (or miraculously win by themselves). Usually this ends up milling a Dakmor Salvage along the way, which I then use as the second land. You have to watch out if your first land is Gemstone Mine though, because you can end up color screwed if it gets sacced and you only have Salvage as your other land.
With Lee's build, you can't do this because you don't have as many 1-mana enablers. You can't keep a 1-land hand unless it has Looting or Neonate + scry from mulligan. Of course with 20 lands it's rarer to draw a 1-land opener in the first place, so that balances out.
2) Against Grafdigger's Cage. With iostream's build, you can lead T1 Scour/Neonate, hope to mill Narcomoeba + Amalgam (scrying after mulligans can take some of the uncertainty out), and ride them to victory. Hardcasting Imp/Grave-Troll is backup.
With Lee's build, your main plan is to hardcast Imps and Grave-Trolls. His build is better at doing this because of the higher land and Loam count. Also, not taking damage every time you cast a spell (vs City of Brass/Mana Confluence) helps.
Thanks for the interesting list, Chilli_Axe. What is your reasoning behind the Copperline Gorge and Mountain? I understand a basic is usefull against Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter, but don't you feel that in a deck so light on lands, every non-Dakmor Salvage one should be able to cast any spell in your deck? You yourself mentioned how the deck can operate on one land, but you do have 8 relevant cards that you cannot cast (or activate in the case of Stitchwing Skaab) if that one land is a Copperline Gorge and then the Mountain doesn't even cast Life from the Loam.
Thanks for the interesting list, Chilli_Axe. What is your reasoning behind the Copperline Gorge and Mountain? I understand a basic is useful against Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter, but don't you feel that in a deck so light on lands, every non-Dakmor Salvage one should be able to cast any spell in your deck? You yourself mentioned how the deck can operate on one land, but you do have 8 relevant cards that you cannot cast (or activate in the case of Stitchwing Skaab) if that one land is a Copperline Gorge and then the Mountain doesn't even cast Life from the Loam.
That's definitely a good point, and the 1 of copperline gorge is mostly a concession to the prevalence of fast aggro decks in my local meta (as rainbow lands can be very painful), but I should definitely try out the 4th city of brass in place of copperline gorge next time I play. Maybe mainboarding 1 gnaw to the bone could be a decent way to offset the loss of life from the manabase.
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Modern
Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
Just got home from a weekly modern tournament with the list I posted the other day, and went 2-2 (6-5 in games, playing against faeries, burn, scapeshift and burn.) A few quick thoughts:
- I need a lot more practice with dredge. It's very easy to miss triggers from all of your free graveyard based creatures, and I almost lost a game I could have very easily won because of this.
- The decklist feels pretty solid, but I think the unburial rites package might be too slow, even though it's certainly game over if it resolves. Maybe sideboarding the darkblast and turning it into another loam could help the deck in this regard, so you can reliably dredge hard on turns 1 and 2, then on turn 3 dredge & play loam and rites to kill them on turn 4. Rally the Peasants could just be better though, and this option also frees up another slot in the deck for utility cards or increased consistency
- The deck can brick pretty hard if you are forced to crack your gemstone mine on turn 3 with no other green producing lands and without casting a loam, so it's important to be careful in this regard
- Any new playable cards from Eldritch Moon will almost assuredly make this deck scary enough that it's extremely hard to beat without dedicating a significant chunk of your sideboard to dealing with it (putting it in a very similar position to legagy dredge), so I'm looking forward to that It's already extremely consistent once it gets rolling as-is
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Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
Hey, this is a really nice primer. And I'm not saying that just because my deck is in it.
My record with the deck is currently 18-1-1, if you discount IDs. That is every sanctioned match I've played since completing the deck.
At Tuesday night modern yesterday, I went 3-0 against Mardu midrange, shared fate combo, and Abzan Midrange.
Game 2 against Mardu, my opponent has double Cage. I answer them both with the grudge and claim from my opener, get double amalgam and ghast into play only to promptly have them angered away. At that point the game slows way down. I end up getting ghost quartered off green mana to cast loam, and can't get any creatures out of my GY. He plays ajani vengeant, eventually managing to ult it. Luckily, this put salvage in my grave, finally giving me a land to play.
The shared fate player asked me if I was playing dredge. When I said yes, he conceded the match, because he can't ever beat a card with the word "dredge" on it.
I ended up dropping a Game to the abzan player, because I wasn't playing around nihil spellbomb. I expected cages and more Scooze. Instead he had more Scooze and a nihil spellbomb off the top.
I keep considering moving away from Rites to Rally, because it feels like Rites should be too slow. But it never is. It's not too slow, because I never want to play like I'm a combo deck looking for the pieces. Instead, I play like an aggro deck that occasionally oops a Craterhoof all over the field. I'll still try out Rally at some point. Probably when I r st the various Bridge versions. Or maybe if too many people start playing combo decks at my LGS just in an attempt to speed up my goldfish a turn.
I am currently at just over a 60% win % with dredge. I am playing the bridge from below version. I am constantly tinkering with how many draw/discard outlets to use and I think I have settled on 13 it seems to offer to the most consistency while still leaving room in my deck for other tricks. So far my worst matchups are Elves, Affinity, Bogles and Scapeshift. I find the majority of my losses are directly related to my starting hands either having to mull down to 1 which has happened to me a couple times or my first couple dredges just completely whiff. I think this is all pretty routine for most decks however.
All you guys and gals running 15 16 or 17 lands with some of them Dakmors do you not run into major mana issues? I run 19 lands and 1 dakmor in that bunch and still have wonderful hands that have no source of mana on t1.
Hello fellow dredgers, I've got a few questions for those of you who are more adept with specific variants.
Unburial Rites users: Granted, I've only played a handful of games with this version so I don't have the most experience with it but it has felt like awkward space in the graveyard. I'm finding 4 mana is a lot for this deck especially with things like dakmor coming in tapped. That and if I have a lethal with an unburial+craterhoof I'm generally far enough ahead/have enough inevitability through recursion anyway that it wouldn't have mattered. If you unburial rites players could provide some examples as to where rites was useful and not a flashy kill please let me know because it feels like rally is just faster for the pump kill.
So far I've been really impressed with conflagrate. It shores up the aggro matchup really well which is something I was missing from dredgevine. I also am liking stitchwing skaab as a beater/blocker/discard outlet. A land count between 18-20 has been working best for me and I'm thinking I'm going to error on the high side to help with mulligans. What's the consensus on land count so far?
I'm mostly on your side with regards to the Rites package. I definitely have encountered situations where Behemoth did the job Rally would not have been capable of (simply too many blockers for Rally usually), but on the whole I'm liking Rally a bit more. It just feels much cleaner. It's significantly cheaper, it requires far fewer slots and in many scenarios it ends the game just as well as Behemoth does. But I know some people in this thread do swear by Rites, so I'll leave it to them to defend it.
It is fun to attack people for 220 though...
I have also been very impressed with Conflagrate. Although I do feel the deck needs to be transformed a bit for it, like Li Shi Tian has done with his build (full set of Loams, Tormenting Voice instead of enablers like Burning Inquiry or Dangerous Wager that empty your hand much faster), so it is also a reasonably big comitment to go for the Conflagrate plan. I have to admit, though, that I haven't played with Conflegrate a ton in lists that are not geered towards abusing it. But so far it seemed quite weak there.
I'm also really happy with Skaab and like playing 2 in my lists. Having an instant speed Amalgam triggerer that you have a lot of control over and also is great as a discard outlet just has so many applications. For me this is enough of a reason to prefer a rainbowland manabase over one with fetch- and shocklands. I just really want red for the 8 mandatory 1-cmc enablers, green for Loam, black for Darkblast and blue for Skaab. In Tian's list I do really miss the Skaabs. After a Surgical Extraction on Bloodghast or a few Path to Exiles I often feel a bit threat light without them.
With regards to landcount: As far as I know, most people either play 15-16 lands with ca. 14-15 1-cmc enablers (like iostream's list) or 18-20 lands with fewer enablers overall but more utility such as Conflegrate or Rites as well as some 2-cmc enablers.
Jund when they have multiple goyfs and other blockers.
Abzan just in general. They're very likely to be able to out class you on the board, unless you have some pretty nutty dredges to win turn 4.
Really any creature deck featuring goyf. I see various flavors of zoo running around my meta, and the games frequently get into huge ground stalls.
On conflagrate:
I liked it enough in testing that I wanted to run it when I built the deck, but I just couldn't fit it in, so I put it on the side board.
I'm also really happy with Skaab and like playing 2 in my lists. Having an instant speed Amalgam triggerer that you have a lot of control over and also is great as a discard outlet just has so many applications. For me this is enough of a reason to prefer a rainbowland manabase over one with fetch- and shocklands. I just really want red for the 8 mandatory 1-cmc enablers, green for Loam, black for Darkblast and blue for Skaab. In Tian's list I do really miss the Skaabs. After a Surgical Extraction on Bloodghast or a few Path to Exiles I often feel a bit threat light without them.
Any thoughts on Ghoulsteed in place of Stitchwing Skaab? It's three mana instead of two and not a flyer, but it keeps us in Jund colors and doesn't die to Bolt. Is it just too slow?
I played dredge on 2 tournaments. I played something similar to Krok's decklist from mtgo. So far I made 5-0 and 3-1. This deck is hidden tier 1, I will definitely test more, maybe it will be my choice for WMCQ.
I'm also really happy with Skaab and like playing 2 in my lists. Having an instant speed Amalgam triggerer that you have a lot of control over and also is great as a discard outlet just has so many applications. For me this is enough of a reason to prefer a rainbowland manabase over one with fetch- and shocklands. I just really want red for the 8 mandatory 1-cmc enablers, green for Loam, black for Darkblast and blue for Skaab. In Tian's list I do really miss the Skaabs. After a Surgical Extraction on Bloodghast or a few Path to Exiles I often feel a bit threat light without them.
Any thoughts on Ghoulsteed in place of Stitchwing Skaab? It's three mana instead of two and not a flyer, but it keeps us in Jund colors and doesn't die to Bolt. Is it just too slow?
As a URx Dredge player, I heavily prefer Stitchwing Skaab because it provides faster, nuttier starts. 6 power on Turn 2 is realistic if you cheat out Stitchwing and either discard or plain cheat out Prized Amalgam with it. Ghoulsteed cannot provide 6 power on Turn 2.
Yeah, that 1 extra mana is a killer on the horse. A realistic play is to get a Skaab into the GY turn 1 any number of ways, then discard 2 amalgams to bring it back on your opponent's turn. Swinging for 9+ on turn three is pretty ok when it cost you essentially 0 resources other than, maybe, 1-2 life or 1-2 gem counters
As far as horse not dying to bolt goes: who cares if Skaab dies to bolt? It came down a turn earlier than steed, it's a discard outlet again, and you can use it to trigger amalgams all over again.
Also, an update on how my list is doing: I am currently 25-1-5 with the list, with this week's match ups being Jeskai Nahiri x2, Mardu control...midrange...stuff? (not sure how to classify it. Probably control) x2, abzan mid-range, TitanShift, Grixis delver, and shared fate combo.
This is counting both Tuesday night and Friday night. Starting next Tuesday, I'm pretty sure I'll be playing a rally the peasants package for a couple weeks just to try it out.
After some more testing with Rites I may have come around a little bit, but I do feel like you need 18-19 lands to make it work. The biggest advantage of Rally, in my opinion, is that you can get away with playing 15-16 lands and running more 1-cmc enablers (inquiry, scour) making the deck a fair bit more explosive.
Oh, and I agree with Lectris and Xlapus on Steed VS Skaab. The difference between 1U and 2B is pretty huge in a deck so light on manasources and so set on being as explosive as possible.
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Faithless Looting
4 Burning Inquiry
With
4 Narcomoeba
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave Troll
3 Golgari Thug
3 Street Wraith
2 Conflagrate
To some degree of success. I've been able to put up to 10 power on board before my opponents first Upkeep. I think I'm going to go 4 Dangerous Wagers instead of 3 Wraith and going to 4 of Thugs and 16 lands. I want to abuse the fast starts and so far it's really fun but not consistent. I'll leave my results with the new list if anyone would be interested
I don't like your decklist at all! You basically need faithless looting in your starter, otherwise you can't really start the engine. I can imagine in a 7-9 rounds tournament, that you'll lose more often to yourself than to your opponent.
On a different note: I played an scg iq in amsterdam yesterday and played a version just slightly different to Lee's list. In the primer it says RG Tron is a favourable Matchup. I played this Matchup twice yesterday and by any means I don't think it is positive. They have so many silverbullets which can come turn 3 or 4. Namely Wurmcoil Engine and Ugin. Also Karn + o-stone can be enough. What is your oppinion on this one ? Maybe it is because I play the slower version, but even with 10 power on turn 2, you just scoop to the Wurmcoil Engine. I thought about 4 GQ in the side, which can be good with Loam. That way you hinder them to get tron online, and get to dredge.
As predicted I destroyed Affinity and Nahiri Jeskai, and won against Temur Delver. I think the green Midrange Decks like Abzan Company, Naya Company and Kiki Chord are about 50/50. I lost to Kiki and won against Naya Company. My result was 4-3 at the end, ended up 38. of 109
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If you're playing some number of Golgari Thug, for example, it's probably a great play. I'm playing 4 Grave Troll/4 Imp/2 Loam/2 Salvage as Dredgers and T1 Neonate has been sort of hit and miss for me in testing. But I'm also playing 4 Lotleth Troll/4 Zombie Infestation as discard outlets so the initial Draw 2 from Looting usually gives me some +1/+1 counters or an extra Zombie token.
It's far from cut and dry, is what I'm saying. Some players value the consistency over the possibility of untapping with 4 power on T2, though the second one definitely wins some games.
4x Bloodghast
1x Craterhoof Behemoth
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
2x Golgari Thug
4x Insolent Neonate
4x Narcomoeba
1x Phantasmagorian
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Stinkweed Imp
2x Stitchwing Skaab
Land (15)
3x City of Brass
1x Copperline Gorge
3x Dakmor Salvage
4x Gemstone Mine
3x Mana Confluence
1x Mountain
3x Burning Inquiry
4x Faithless Looting
2x Life from the Loam
4x Tome Scour
1x Unburial Rites
Instant (1)
1x Darkblast
3x Ancient Grudge
1x Conflagrate
2x Gnaw to the Bone
1x Lightning Axe
3x Nature's Claim
3x Thoughtseize
2x Vengeful Pharaoh
I'm going lighter on lands and heavier on enablers & dredgers than most people seem to be - in my testing so far you only need one land to start rolling, and once you do you can dredge a dakmor salvage & loam to get to unburial rites on craterhoof in a few turns. Also I think phantasmagorian is a great fit for this deck, but only as a 1 of to discard your best dredgers and keep the engine going. Stitchwing Skaab fills a different role in the deck imo, more being a way to discard a couple of cards while getting your amalgams back on turn 2.
Also tome scour has been working well as an enabler for me, and I prefer it over spells like tormenting voice and dangerous wager - since there's going to be one dredger in every four cards on average, you can also go T1 tome scour, T2 dredge on draw step then faithless looting and dredge another 12 reliably. Same goes for insolent neonate on turn 1.
How is the sideboard looking? It's pretty standard fare at the moment but I've been told by another dredge player that I have too many slots dedicated to dealing with graveyard hate, and that I should be looking at sideboarding other unburial rites targets (even though that's only a 2 card package, not a major component of the deck's game plan.) What do you think?
Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
iostream's build is a lot more explosive. You have 8 Tome Scours (4 Scour + 4 Neonate), increasing the chances of T1 milling Narcomoeba + Amalgam. The inclusion of Burning Inquiry is also a factor, since it mills up to 18 for just R.
Lee's build is a little slower, but more reliable. Conflagrate is like Skaab, Darkblast, Bridge and Rally rolled into one card - it's a discard outlet, removal spell, and a way to close out the game when/if your creatures aren't enough. Maintaining hand size counts with his build, hence the decision of Tormenting Voice over Dangerous Wager. It's also worth pointing out that Tormenting Voice is a net +0 to hand size, as opposed to a net -1 for all 1-mana enablers.
There are two situations where the two builds play out differently:
1) Recovering from a 1-land starter. With iostream's build, my plan A is to cast Looting or Inquiry to try to dig for the second land. If that fails, I dredge as much as possible, with the intention of getting Narcomoebas and Amalgams onto the field to buy time (or miraculously win by themselves). Usually this ends up milling a Dakmor Salvage along the way, which I then use as the second land. You have to watch out if your first land is Gemstone Mine though, because you can end up color screwed if it gets sacced and you only have Salvage as your other land.
With Lee's build, you can't do this because you don't have as many 1-mana enablers. You can't keep a 1-land hand unless it has Looting or Neonate + scry from mulligan. Of course with 20 lands it's rarer to draw a 1-land opener in the first place, so that balances out.
2) Against Grafdigger's Cage. With iostream's build, you can lead T1 Scour/Neonate, hope to mill Narcomoeba + Amalgam (scrying after mulligans can take some of the uncertainty out), and ride them to victory. Hardcasting Imp/Grave-Troll is backup.
With Lee's build, your main plan is to hardcast Imps and Grave-Trolls. His build is better at doing this because of the higher land and Loam count. Also, not taking damage every time you cast a spell (vs City of Brass/Mana Confluence) helps.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
That's definitely a good point, and the 1 of copperline gorge is mostly a concession to the prevalence of fast aggro decks in my local meta (as rainbow lands can be very painful), but I should definitely try out the 4th city of brass in place of copperline gorge next time I play. Maybe mainboarding 1 gnaw to the bone could be a decent way to offset the loss of life from the manabase.
Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
- I need a lot more practice with dredge. It's very easy to miss triggers from all of your free graveyard based creatures, and I almost lost a game I could have very easily won because of this.
- The decklist feels pretty solid, but I think the unburial rites package might be too slow, even though it's certainly game over if it resolves. Maybe sideboarding the darkblast and turning it into another loam could help the deck in this regard, so you can reliably dredge hard on turns 1 and 2, then on turn 3 dredge & play loam and rites to kill them on turn 4. Rally the Peasants could just be better though, and this option also frees up another slot in the deck for utility cards or increased consistency
- The deck can brick pretty hard if you are forced to crack your gemstone mine on turn 3 with no other green producing lands and without casting a loam, so it's important to be careful in this regard
- Any new playable cards from Eldritch Moon will almost assuredly make this deck scary enough that it's extremely hard to beat without dedicating a significant chunk of your sideboard to dealing with it (putting it in a very similar position to legagy dredge), so I'm looking forward to that It's already extremely consistent once it gets rolling as-is
Dredge (117-70 W/L in games) (Pre-GGT ban: 103-70 W/L in games)
My record with the deck is currently 18-1-1, if you discount IDs. That is every sanctioned match I've played since completing the deck.
At Tuesday night modern yesterday, I went 3-0 against Mardu midrange, shared fate combo, and Abzan Midrange.
Game 2 against Mardu, my opponent has double Cage. I answer them both with the grudge and claim from my opener, get double amalgam and ghast into play only to promptly have them angered away. At that point the game slows way down. I end up getting ghost quartered off green mana to cast loam, and can't get any creatures out of my GY. He plays ajani vengeant, eventually managing to ult it. Luckily, this put salvage in my grave, finally giving me a land to play.
The shared fate player asked me if I was playing dredge. When I said yes, he conceded the match, because he can't ever beat a card with the word "dredge" on it.
I ended up dropping a Game to the abzan player, because I wasn't playing around nihil spellbomb. I expected cages and more Scooze. Instead he had more Scooze and a nihil spellbomb off the top.
I keep considering moving away from Rites to Rally, because it feels like Rites should be too slow. But it never is. It's not too slow, because I never want to play like I'm a combo deck looking for the pieces. Instead, I play like an aggro deck that occasionally oops a Craterhoof all over the field. I'll still try out Rally at some point. Probably when I r st the various Bridge versions. Or maybe if too many people start playing combo decks at my LGS just in an attempt to speed up my goldfish a turn.
All you guys and gals running 15 16 or 17 lands with some of them Dakmors do you not run into major mana issues? I run 19 lands and 1 dakmor in that bunch and still have wonderful hands that have no source of mana on t1.
Unburial Rites users: Granted, I've only played a handful of games with this version so I don't have the most experience with it but it has felt like awkward space in the graveyard. I'm finding 4 mana is a lot for this deck especially with things like dakmor coming in tapped. That and if I have a lethal with an unburial+craterhoof I'm generally far enough ahead/have enough inevitability through recursion anyway that it wouldn't have mattered. If you unburial rites players could provide some examples as to where rites was useful and not a flashy kill please let me know because it feels like rally is just faster for the pump kill.
So far I've been really impressed with conflagrate. It shores up the aggro matchup really well which is something I was missing from dredgevine. I also am liking stitchwing skaab as a beater/blocker/discard outlet. A land count between 18-20 has been working best for me and I'm thinking I'm going to error on the high side to help with mulligans. What's the consensus on land count so far?
I'm mostly on your side with regards to the Rites package. I definitely have encountered situations where Behemoth did the job Rally would not have been capable of (simply too many blockers for Rally usually), but on the whole I'm liking Rally a bit more. It just feels much cleaner. It's significantly cheaper, it requires far fewer slots and in many scenarios it ends the game just as well as Behemoth does. But I know some people in this thread do swear by Rites, so I'll leave it to them to defend it.
It is fun to attack people for 220 though...
I have also been very impressed with Conflagrate. Although I do feel the deck needs to be transformed a bit for it, like Li Shi Tian has done with his build (full set of Loams, Tormenting Voice instead of enablers like Burning Inquiry or Dangerous Wager that empty your hand much faster), so it is also a reasonably big comitment to go for the Conflagrate plan. I have to admit, though, that I haven't played with Conflegrate a ton in lists that are not geered towards abusing it. But so far it seemed quite weak there.
I'm also really happy with Skaab and like playing 2 in my lists. Having an instant speed Amalgam triggerer that you have a lot of control over and also is great as a discard outlet just has so many applications. For me this is enough of a reason to prefer a rainbowland manabase over one with fetch- and shocklands. I just really want red for the 8 mandatory 1-cmc enablers, green for Loam, black for Darkblast and blue for Skaab. In Tian's list I do really miss the Skaabs. After a Surgical Extraction on Bloodghast or a few Path to Exiles I often feel a bit threat light without them.
With regards to landcount: As far as I know, most people either play 15-16 lands with ca. 14-15 1-cmc enablers (like iostream's list) or 18-20 lands with fewer enablers overall but more utility such as Conflegrate or Rites as well as some 2-cmc enablers.
Decks/situations where Rites is better-
Jund when they have multiple goyfs and other blockers.
Abzan just in general. They're very likely to be able to out class you on the board, unless you have some pretty nutty dredges to win turn 4.
Really any creature deck featuring goyf. I see various flavors of zoo running around my meta, and the games frequently get into huge ground stalls.
On conflagrate:
I liked it enough in testing that I wanted to run it when I built the deck, but I just couldn't fit it in, so I put it on the side board.
As a URx Dredge player, I heavily prefer Stitchwing Skaab because it provides faster, nuttier starts. 6 power on Turn 2 is realistic if you cheat out Stitchwing and either discard or plain cheat out Prized Amalgam with it. Ghoulsteed cannot provide 6 power on Turn 2.
Stitchwing's Flying has also been great for me.
As far as horse not dying to bolt goes: who cares if Skaab dies to bolt? It came down a turn earlier than steed, it's a discard outlet again, and you can use it to trigger amalgams all over again.
Also, an update on how my list is doing: I am currently 25-1-5 with the list, with this week's match ups being Jeskai Nahiri x2, Mardu control...midrange...stuff? (not sure how to classify it. Probably control) x2, abzan mid-range, TitanShift, Grixis delver, and shared fate combo.
This is counting both Tuesday night and Friday night. Starting next Tuesday, I'm pretty sure I'll be playing a rally the peasants package for a couple weeks just to try it out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/4prw7x/whos_2515_and_loves_playing_dredge_this_guy_401/
Oh, and I agree with Lectris and Xlapus on Steed VS Skaab. The difference between 1U and 2B is pretty huge in a deck so light on manasources and so set on being as explosive as possible.
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Faithless Looting
4 Burning Inquiry
With
4 Narcomoeba
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave Troll
3 Golgari Thug
3 Street Wraith
2 Conflagrate
To some degree of success. I've been able to put up to 10 power on board before my opponents first Upkeep. I think I'm going to go 4 Dangerous Wagers instead of 3 Wraith and going to 4 of Thugs and 16 lands. I want to abuse the fast starts and so far it's really fun but not consistent. I'll leave my results with the new list if anyone would be interested
On a different note: I played an scg iq in amsterdam yesterday and played a version just slightly different to Lee's list. In the primer it says RG Tron is a favourable Matchup. I played this Matchup twice yesterday and by any means I don't think it is positive. They have so many silverbullets which can come turn 3 or 4. Namely Wurmcoil Engine and Ugin. Also Karn + o-stone can be enough. What is your oppinion on this one ? Maybe it is because I play the slower version, but even with 10 power on turn 2, you just scoop to the Wurmcoil Engine. I thought about 4 GQ in the side, which can be good with Loam. That way you hinder them to get tron online, and get to dredge.
As predicted I destroyed Affinity and Nahiri Jeskai, and won against Temur Delver. I think the green Midrange Decks like Abzan Company, Naya Company and Kiki Chord are about 50/50. I lost to Kiki and won against Naya Company. My result was 4-3 at the end, ended up 38. of 109