First of all, you should blatantly ignore your opponent for the first several turns if your playing dredge
Secondly, there's this great card called Gnaw to the Bone and Faithless Looting
Thirdly, have you ever gotten down to single digits turn three, then rape face with several Vengevines, a Haakon, and some Nameless Inversion? Gravecrawlers hard to cast? Look, I came here not to advocate Dredgevine, I need to be involved with other decks as well, but if you want to play with something like this, splash Blue and red, toss in some dredgers, a Hedron Crab or two, and you have a mediocre dredge, with a pilot who doesn't know how to drive the deck
Also, do you know how painful four Vengevines are turn 2?
As for rites, You run several rainbow lands, I prefer City of Brass, but if your going more combo oriented than my all in beat down style, Gemstone Mine and Trade Routes is awesome as well.
I think as compared to Modern Dredge which has shown some extreme resilience to major archetypes (Tron is basically a bye for us if we get going faster than they do) and is just in general a better deck, barring a Rest in Peace on the field
All right, I'm goldfishing your list on TappedOut 10 times and seeing how much damage I can put onto an opponent in 5 turns, always mulling to a Dredge enabler like Looting, Hedron Crab, or Magus of the Bazaar:
(Start with Hedron Crab): 0 damage (Haakon stranded in hand, Gravecrawler in graveyard, one Vengevine in graveyard, no Bloodghasts seen)
(Start with Crab): 10 damage (double Gravecrawler beatdown from hand, no 2nd land seen, therefore self-milled nothing)
(Start with Magus of the Bazaar): 2 damage (1 Bloodghast seen, flashed back Faithless Looting on Turn 4, couldn't get Vengevines or other stuff out)
(Start with Crab and Magus): Overkill (3 Vengevines on Turn 4)
(Start with Crab and Magus): Overkill (2 Vengevines, 3 Bloodghasts, and 2 Gravecrawlers on Turn 4)
(Start with Magus): 22 damage (hardcast Jarad from hand, 1 Vengevine on Turn 5, had 2 Bloodghasts chipping away)
(Mull to 4, pray, get Turn 2 Magus): 10 damage (Turn 1 Gravecrawler, got a Bloodghast and a Hedron Crab later)
(Start with Crab, then Magus): 16 damage (3 Vengevines on Turn 5, got 2 Bloodghasts out)
(Start with Magus): Overkill (3 Vengevines on Turn 4--pretty impressive for no Dredge cards in opening hand and 1st Dredge card hit being Life from the Loam--I did get a Crab later, though)
(Start with Looting and Magus): Overkill (3 Vengevines on Turn 4, some Bloodghasts along the way)
So, in 10 tries, it KOed by Turn 5 only 5 times. That's pretty darn inconsistent. Admittedly, the critical turn does seem to be Turn 4 more often than Turn 5, which is a plus, but all-in Dredge needs to be more consistent than this to survive in Modern, given the pretty savage graveyard hate available.
I also never got Vengevines on Turn 3. How often was that happening for you?
In testing, I found Jarad impossible to cast on 4 lands a couple of times already (he hates basic Islands), and given the number of fetchlands in the deck, it cried out for a Blood Crypt to cast Looting more easily. I got Haakon stranded in hand with no way to discard him once, which sucked. Rebuild the mana base and I may be able to get faster and more consistent Vengevines with Skaab Ruinator.
You play this deck in Modern because I've tried Modern Dredge and, believe me, that deck cannot reliably revive enough Vengevines to win in time. It also has mediocre aggro otherwise with Bloodghast, Gravecrawlers that are hard to cast from the graveyard, and one Skaab Ruinator. (Jarad costs too much and Haakon, Stromgald Scourge cannot be cast if trapped in hand, so Ruinator is the best option.)
Yeah, Unburial Rites is dandy, but it's even harder to cast that card in Dredge than to revive Vengevines. Playing 1 white mana source while needing a mana base of fetches and shocks to sustain Hedron Crab pretty much sucks.
I'm playing Fauna Shaman, and I splashed white for Tidehollow Sculler, Squadron Hawk, Ranger of Eos, and sideboard cards. Tidehollow Sculler is awesome in my build, as Fauna Shaman ends up searching for it very often and its hand-mugging is very valuable. And it's a Zombie!
Squadron Hawk is nice Fauna Shaman fodder and is pretty good at reviving Vengevine, but I find it does detract from the deck's fast aggro strategy. Ranger of Eos is a pretty good 1-of for grabbing 2 Gravecrawlers.
My other creatures are Birds of Paradise, Bloodghast, and Lotleth Troll. I tried Slitherhead as a 2-of and found it underwhelming in Modern. Fauna Shaman may be a Tidehollow Sculler machine, but Lotleth Troll brings the true explosiveness to the deck. Pitching Bloodghasts, late Gravecrawlers, and Vengevines to this guy in the same turn is great.
I tried Grisly Salvage, but I eventually cut it down to a 2-of because it was quite slow and it didn't always mill the stuff I wanted. It did help me dig to okay creatures, though.
I'm currently using the 2 Salvages and 3 Abrupt Decay as my only noncreature spells in the maindeck, but with Valakut on the rise, I'm reconsidering this decision. This deck has a startling ability to not get the kill on combo (be it Twin, Storm, Scapeshift, or Pod) on time, and I may have to swap the Decays for the boarded targeted discard. Abrupt Decay does take care of graveyard hate permanents, though.
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All right, I'm goldfishing your list on TappedOut 10 times and seeing how much damage I can put onto an opponent in 5 turns, always mulling to a Dredge enabler like Looting, Hedron Crab, or Magus of the Bazaar:
So, in 10 tries, it KOed by Turn 5 only 5 times. That's pretty darn inconsistent. Admittedly, the critical turn does seem to be Turn 4 more often than Turn 5, which is a plus, but all-in Dredge needs to be more consistent than this to survive in Modern, given the pretty savage graveyard hate available.
I also never got Vengevines on Turn 3. How often was that happening for you?
In testing, I found Jarad impossible to cast on 4 lands a couple of times already (he hates basic Islands), and given the number of fetchlands in the deck, it cried out for a Blood Crypt to cast Looting more easily. I got Haakon stranded in hand with no way to discard him once, which sucked. Rebuild the mana base and I may be able to get faster and more consistent Vengevines with Skaab Ruinator.
Yeah, Unburial Rites is dandy, but it's even harder to cast that card in Dredge than to revive Vengevines. Playing 1 white mana source while needing a mana base of fetches and shocks to sustain Hedron Crab pretty much sucks.
I'm playing Fauna Shaman, and I splashed white for Tidehollow Sculler, Squadron Hawk, Ranger of Eos, and sideboard cards. Tidehollow Sculler is awesome in my build, as Fauna Shaman ends up searching for it very often and its hand-mugging is very valuable. And it's a Zombie!
Squadron Hawk is nice Fauna Shaman fodder and is pretty good at reviving Vengevine, but I find it does detract from the deck's fast aggro strategy. Ranger of Eos is a pretty good 1-of for grabbing 2 Gravecrawlers.
My other creatures are Birds of Paradise, Bloodghast, and Lotleth Troll. I tried Slitherhead as a 2-of and found it underwhelming in Modern. Fauna Shaman may be a Tidehollow Sculler machine, but Lotleth Troll brings the true explosiveness to the deck. Pitching Bloodghasts, late Gravecrawlers, and Vengevines to this guy in the same turn is great.
I tried Grisly Salvage, but I eventually cut it down to a 2-of because it was quite slow and it didn't always mill the stuff I wanted. It did help me dig to okay creatures, though.
I'm currently using the 2 Salvages and 3 Abrupt Decay as my only noncreature spells in the maindeck, but with Valakut on the rise, I'm reconsidering this decision. This deck has a startling ability to not get the kill on combo (be it Twin, Storm, Scapeshift, or Pod) on time, and I may have to swap the Decays for the boarded targeted discard. Abrupt Decay does take care of graveyard hate permanents, though.