I tested out cutting 1 Darkblast 1 Cathartic Reunion for 2 Shriekhorns and I wasn't overly impressed. Although it's a one drop and it seemed like going up to 10 one drops would allow the deck more consistency and less need for mulligans, but I found I couldn't really keep hands where it was my only 1 drop.
For example, if you open with a hand of 2 lands, Shriekhorn, Cathartic Reunion, and 3 other cards but none are large Dredgers. If you keep that hand and Shriekhorn finds you either Stinkweed or GGT (49% of the time it will happen), it looks really good and you're likely to have a very explosive turn 2. But if you don't it could be a one of those games where the deck just fails.
Shriekhorn is at its best when all your big Dredgers are in the library, so the chance of milling them of the top is the highest, Insolent Neonate and Cathartic Reunion want them in your hand so it can dredge them and Faithless Looting want them in your hand or top of library.
I don't think I can construct a 7 card opening hand that consists of just Shriekhorn as my one drop and keep it, so I don't really think it's increasing the consistency of the deck with regards to mulligans.
What I do think Shriekhorn is pretty good at is:
1. It's ability to increase the consistency of the engine once the engine is going. When you dredge Life from the Loam and hit the Amalgam but not the Narcomoeba, you can mill another 2 and possibly hit a Bloodghast or Narcomoeba to keep it going. I don't think the engine so to speak is that fragile that it needs a card like Shriekhorn to keep it going.
2. It does have the ability to turn on the engine completely by milling into Dredgers when you have no other way of getting Dredgers into your graveyard but to that I say you should probably mulligan those hands.
I then tested just a singleton Shriekhorn and put the Cathartic Reunion back in. I tested a bunch of games where I included the Shriekhorn in my opening hand and drew 6 other cards, but I wasn't keeping hands with just Shriekhorn as a way to get Dredgers in the yard so it's hard to say if Darkblast would have been better.
The last complaint I had about Shriekhorn was it added just another layer of decision making to what I find a pretty intensive triggered ability deck. Knowing to activate Shriekhorn in response to the Narcomoeba Trigger or waiting until the endstep until the Prized Amalgam triggers to possibly get an additional Prized Amalgam, it was just too much. I already have to keep track of when to play my lands and whether I should play my land post combat or post combat, or holding up a fetch land for my opponents 2nd main. etc. All of these triggers and it's easy to forget the Shriekhorn.
I'm going to a couple 2k's in a couple weekends and I'm going to try Destructive Revelry in the side. In the past I was constantly siding in Nature's Claim and if my opponents didn't see any hate cards Nature's Claim seemed to rot in my hand while we raced each other, and the 4 points always seemed to be relevant. At least with Destructive Revelry you use it to turn a 2 turn race into a 1 turn race or potentially finish them off.
Also Destructive Revelry is pretty good against Worship.
Obliterate is actually really good, but people eventually catch on and stop dropping lands when they don't need to. It's also tough casting obliterate into 2 open mana, because you can just lose the game right there if
I've been running Nature's Claim in the sideboard, and had been considering a 2-2 split with Natural State, but I didn't like how Natural State couldn't hit Leyline. What i'm now considering is Destructive Revelry.
In games where our opponents are bringing in artifact and enchantment hate, we are a far less explosive deck. They either get us with a T0 Leyline which just forces us to draw for an answer or by casting Narcomoebas, Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts both effectively slow us down several turns (or completely). With a T2 RIP our opponents may have exiled a decent portion of our payoff cards: Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts, so even when we do find an answer to a RIP our payoffs will be reduced. In both these cases I think I'm happy to pay RG for a Destructive Revelry as hitting 2 mana isn't as difficult when we don't dredge and draw off the top.
I played my first tournament with Dredge on Saturday, I'm a long time Dredgevine player so I didn't find the deck particularly hard to play but there are a lot of decision trees. I was playing fetch/shock manabase but decided at the last moment to squeeze in 3 Gemstone Mines (basically replacing some Scars fast lands) and I really liked the Gemstone Mines. That leads to my first question: Why would someone play Mana Confluence or City of Brass over Gemstone Mine if they ran 3+ copies of Life from the Loam?
I get where you're coming from but personally I think the banner should be a tribute to the core of the deck. If we nod to every build the hammer will be clunky and overfilled. There's only so much space and I think it would be better to stick to the roots
I agree it could get clunky in the image and simplicity usually is better, but a lot of lists don't play Reckoner anymore.
Hey guys, I got the green light on updating the primer. I'll be rewriting it from scratch, and it'll probably be completed after the weekend. It's a lot more work than I expected, and I might need some help/feedback on some of the matchup guides.
I even made a cool looking banner for us, check it out and let me know what you guys think.
The banner looks great, but if I could suggest one thing it would be is to include some other staples of the archetype, 80% transparent on the image of blood moon, such as Pia & Kiran, Stormbreath, Demigod of Revenge. It would just be nice as a tip of the hat to the fact there are many different builds of Skred.
Those decks aren't running Gravecrawlers or Vengevine, so they aren't Dredgevine, but rather Dredge. I like Dredge but they completely fold up to well timed graveyard hate, while Dredgevine only partially folds up.
lately i've been underwhelmed with lotleth troll, it's normally in the graveyard doing nothing or the game is already on our favor for it to have an impact. i also observed that while watching twoo's dredge swarm video and he normally chooses the troll when siding out cards.
i've replaced the playset of lotleth troll with stitchwing skaab and satyr wayfinder.
i'm really happy with the performance of those two. satyr wayfinder with 2-cmc is easy to cast to trigger vengevine, acts as graveyard enabler and also helps us finding our land, playing with 19 lands, the wayfinder really helps.
For stitchwing skaab, its a graveyard enabler, amalgam trigger and also a zombie.
i haven't miss lotleth troll since the switch.
Watching most of those videos, I think he made a mistake siding out Lotleth Troll in a lot of those matches. I'm not sure how you justify your claim that "Lotleth Troll is normally in the graveyard doing nothing." Sure, Lotleth Troll is terrible in the graveyard, I'll give you that, but if you've already dredged multiple times it's likely a moot point that Lotleth is in the graveyard as you've likely chained or will chain Bloodghasts into Amalgams into Gravecrawlers. Satyr Wayfinder is equally as bad in the graveyard as Lotleth Troll. Both creatures are enablers for the deck, one mills (and oftens draws a land) and one discards card(s) from your hand. If you prefer the enabling that Satyr Wayfinder brings to the table that I can understand, even if I disagree with your opinion.
I like Stitchwing, he's better in the graveyard than Lotleth Troll, but I'm not sure what your manabase looks like. If you're running the mana confluence/city of brass/gemstone mines manabase maybe Stitchwing is a good inclusion.
ground seal can only protect you on some hate cards (ex. scavenging ooze) but the deck can go under those hate even without ground seal, the most annoying hate card for dredge is probably grafdigger's cage and rest in peace and ground seal can't protect you against those 2.
btw, I got an enjoyable game against an 8-Rack deck (budget no liliana).
Game1: win, easy game
Game2: loss, turn 2 grafdigger's cage and a surgical extraction on my nature's claim
Game3: suspense game, opponent got a turn 3 grafdigger's cage, I almost conceded but decided to push the game just for fun. I played a turn 5 golgari grave troll (w/ 9 counters) and got the win.
Your Game 3 story, shows why Rest in Peace is a far better hate card than Grafdigger's Cage.
Golgari Grave-Troll is completely blanked by RiP. Even if GGT beatdown is a last resort, it's an option.
While you're using Looting and Neonates to dig for answers to Grafdigger's Cage you're setting up future turns. You can just sit on the answer building up a better graveyard until you EOT take out the Cage and flood the board with Zombies and Vengevines.
When you're digging for answers for an RiP you're basically just hemorrhaging cards, and if you do find the answer, you're looking at a game where you have 2 cards in hand and no graveyard and those games are hard to win.
The problem I have with Stitchwing Skaab is that it really stresses the blue mana in a Fetch/Shock mana base. I think the only way to run Stitchwing is if you run more blue shocks (which stresses you in a different way) or if you run the mana confluence, city of brass, gemstone mine mana base. It might be possible to also just run more copies of Life from the Loam (to get back the milled Watery Grave), but I'm not sure I want to increase the number of Life from the Loam (a flex card) just to be able to run a Stitchwing Skaab (another flex card).
I really liked Satyr Wayfinder, it was really awesome when Dredgevine was essentially a Green/Black deck that splashed red for Faithless Looting. I feel that with the addition of Insolent Neonate, the deck is more of a Red/Black that splashes some green spells. Essentially the Neonate replaced the Wayfinder for 1 mana less. If I was going to build a Sultai Dredgevine list I would probably include Hedron Crabs and Wayfinders to take the place of Faithless Looting and Insolent Neonate.
Who exactly is running Obliterate in the sideboard? Is the plan to play a Koth, and then eventually -2 into 8 mana to cast Obliterate, and then slowly tick up Koth? Against what deck would you want Obliterate to come in?
Leyline is hardly a you lose the game card. If it starts in play you can somewhat play around it: Lotleth Troll is still a reasonable beater and you can't forget that your opponent sided in 3+ copies of Leyline, the rest are almost certainly dead draws. If they sided Leyline in and didn't see it their opener we can easily get a pretty large board before they can even hope to cast it.
Faithless Looting helps dig for answers and Maelstrom Pulse use to be included in a lot of Dredgevine sideboards, maybe it's time to go back to it.
I've for a while liked splashing black, not necessarily for Terminate, but for Kolaghan's Command in the main and Slaughter Games in the side.
Lately I've been reconsidering the white splash. Specifically for the 5 card Nahiri Package. There are a lot of things that I really like about Nahiri specifically in Skred:
There are a lot of match-ups that in game 1 Blood Moon is a dead draw, and I won't know it's a dead draw until it's too late, a Nahiri allows me to filter away these dead draws in search of relevant cards.
Blood Moon is an excellent card that can completely drive a wrench into the gears of many different decks but it can't win games unless you have a clock, and the Nahiri package presents a clock, especially if I have a Blood Moon in play constricting your mana.
Nahiri is another removal spell and it doesn't rely on damage, which Skred sometimes struggles to do.
White gives a lot more sideboard options than mono-red.
There are quite a few variations of Dredge and Dredgevine lists running around right now. There is Dredge with a reanimator package, we have Dredge with Bridge from Below, we have Dredgevine without Vengevine, we have Dredgevine without Dredge, we have 4-colour Dredgevine with Hedron Crabs, we have Jund Dredgevine + Prized Amalgam. By no means is there a consensus best version of either Dredge or Dredgevine so that gives me a lot of hope going forward that over time the decks' performance will improve as more people test with it.
I will say that the reason I'm on Dredgevine as opposed to Dredge is that in the worst case, against very heavy graveyard hate, Dredgevine can just turn guys sideways as a mediocre aggro deck and have a chance of winning the game through the hate.
When Dredgevine has to start packing hate for Dredge decks I think that's the sign for me to put the deck down for a while and play something else.
For example, if you open with a hand of 2 lands, Shriekhorn, Cathartic Reunion, and 3 other cards but none are large Dredgers. If you keep that hand and Shriekhorn finds you either Stinkweed or GGT (49% of the time it will happen), it looks really good and you're likely to have a very explosive turn 2. But if you don't it could be a one of those games where the deck just fails.
Shriekhorn is at its best when all your big Dredgers are in the library, so the chance of milling them of the top is the highest, Insolent Neonate and Cathartic Reunion want them in your hand so it can dredge them and Faithless Looting want them in your hand or top of library.
I don't think I can construct a 7 card opening hand that consists of just Shriekhorn as my one drop and keep it, so I don't really think it's increasing the consistency of the deck with regards to mulligans.
What I do think Shriekhorn is pretty good at is:
1. It's ability to increase the consistency of the engine once the engine is going. When you dredge Life from the Loam and hit the Amalgam but not the Narcomoeba, you can mill another 2 and possibly hit a Bloodghast or Narcomoeba to keep it going. I don't think the engine so to speak is that fragile that it needs a card like Shriekhorn to keep it going.
2. It does have the ability to turn on the engine completely by milling into Dredgers when you have no other way of getting Dredgers into your graveyard but to that I say you should probably mulligan those hands.
I then tested just a singleton Shriekhorn and put the Cathartic Reunion back in. I tested a bunch of games where I included the Shriekhorn in my opening hand and drew 6 other cards, but I wasn't keeping hands with just Shriekhorn as a way to get Dredgers in the yard so it's hard to say if Darkblast would have been better.
The last complaint I had about Shriekhorn was it added just another layer of decision making to what I find a pretty intensive triggered ability deck. Knowing to activate Shriekhorn in response to the Narcomoeba Trigger or waiting until the endstep until the Prized Amalgam triggers to possibly get an additional Prized Amalgam, it was just too much. I already have to keep track of when to play my lands and whether I should play my land post combat or post combat, or holding up a fetch land for my opponents 2nd main. etc. All of these triggers and it's easy to forget the Shriekhorn.
I'm going to a couple 2k's in a couple weekends and I'm going to try Destructive Revelry in the side. In the past I was constantly siding in Nature's Claim and if my opponents didn't see any hate cards Nature's Claim seemed to rot in my hand while we raced each other, and the 4 points always seemed to be relevant. At least with Destructive Revelry you use it to turn a 2 turn race into a 1 turn race or potentially finish them off.
Also Destructive Revelry is pretty good against Worship.
If what? They can't counter it.
In games where our opponents are bringing in artifact and enchantment hate, we are a far less explosive deck. They either get us with a T0 Leyline which just forces us to draw for an answer or by casting Narcomoebas, Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts both effectively slow us down several turns (or completely). With a T2 RIP our opponents may have exiled a decent portion of our payoff cards: Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts, so even when we do find an answer to a RIP our payoffs will be reduced. In both these cases I think I'm happy to pay RG for a Destructive Revelry as hitting 2 mana isn't as difficult when we don't dredge and draw off the top.
I agree it could get clunky in the image and simplicity usually is better, but a lot of lists don't play Reckoner anymore.
The banner looks great, but if I could suggest one thing it would be is to include some other staples of the archetype, 80% transparent on the image of blood moon, such as Pia & Kiran, Stormbreath, Demigod of Revenge. It would just be nice as a tip of the hat to the fact there are many different builds of Skred.
Those decks aren't running Gravecrawlers or Vengevine, so they aren't Dredgevine, but rather Dredge. I like Dredge but they completely fold up to well timed graveyard hate, while Dredgevine only partially folds up.
Watching most of those videos, I think he made a mistake siding out Lotleth Troll in a lot of those matches. I'm not sure how you justify your claim that "Lotleth Troll is normally in the graveyard doing nothing." Sure, Lotleth Troll is terrible in the graveyard, I'll give you that, but if you've already dredged multiple times it's likely a moot point that Lotleth is in the graveyard as you've likely chained or will chain Bloodghasts into Amalgams into Gravecrawlers. Satyr Wayfinder is equally as bad in the graveyard as Lotleth Troll. Both creatures are enablers for the deck, one mills (and oftens draws a land) and one discards card(s) from your hand. If you prefer the enabling that Satyr Wayfinder brings to the table that I can understand, even if I disagree with your opinion.
I like Stitchwing, he's better in the graveyard than Lotleth Troll, but I'm not sure what your manabase looks like. If you're running the mana confluence/city of brass/gemstone mines manabase maybe Stitchwing is a good inclusion.
Your Game 3 story, shows why Rest in Peace is a far better hate card than Grafdigger's Cage.
I really liked Satyr Wayfinder, it was really awesome when Dredgevine was essentially a Green/Black deck that splashed red for Faithless Looting. I feel that with the addition of Insolent Neonate, the deck is more of a Red/Black that splashes some green spells. Essentially the Neonate replaced the Wayfinder for 1 mana less. If I was going to build a Sultai Dredgevine list I would probably include Hedron Crabs and Wayfinders to take the place of Faithless Looting and Insolent Neonate.
Faithless Looting helps dig for answers and Maelstrom Pulse use to be included in a lot of Dredgevine sideboards, maybe it's time to go back to it.
Lately I've been reconsidering the white splash. Specifically for the 5 card Nahiri Package. There are a lot of things that I really like about Nahiri specifically in Skred:
I will say that the reason I'm on Dredgevine as opposed to Dredge is that in the worst case, against very heavy graveyard hate, Dredgevine can just turn guys sideways as a mediocre aggro deck and have a chance of winning the game through the hate.
When Dredgevine has to start packing hate for Dredge decks I think that's the sign for me to put the deck down for a while and play something else.