One time our dog Freyalise (half German Shepherd half Rottweiler 100% awesome) in the course of rampaging around the backyard managed to cut her side pretty badly. It wasn't life-threatening but she did need stitches.
As long as she left the stitches alone the vet told us she would heal just fine. But they itched so she kept licking them and reopening the wound risking infection each time. Ultimately the vet had to put one of those plastic cones around her head to save her from herself. She hated the cone—it was always catching on corners and making her crash into things clearly bothering her more than the itchy stitches ever did—but she was stuck with it because she could not resist trying to “fix the problem” of her itchy side.
For a long time I was doing the same thing with my Dredge sideboard.
There'd be this thing bothering me—Relic of Progenitus Tormod's Crypt whatever—and so I'd bring in reactive answers like Pithing Needle Nature's Claim or Chain of Vapor. Ahh that's better! Peace of mind. Now I can beat those cards.
It took me way too long to ask: “Wait am I really making things better with this plan?” Am I cleverly outmaneuvering my opponent's sideboard hate or am I just slobbering all over this minor cut until it festers into a serious infection?
I can't even count how many post-board opening hands I've sent back because I saw a reactive card instead of the combo piece I needed... but just how often did the reactive cards actually save the day?
To answer this I “dredged up” some old tournament reports of mine and Max McCall's. Between us we encountered pretty much every commonly played graveyard hate card in those tournaments—from Leyline of the Void to Jotun Grunt and the many artifacts in between often in multiples—and still ended up with a winning record across our post-board games.
I went game by game and counted the number of times either of us got value out of a reactive sideboard card. The final tally?
Zero.
Between my Day One and Day Two at GP Chicago and Max's winning one event and Top 8ing another neither of us ever used a single reactive sideboard card to get ahead in any meaningful way let alone to actually win a game.
Not even once.
That revelation floored me. Not only did we play all these rounds with these do-nothing cards taking up half our sideboards but even worse we were boarding them in! It was as if we were bringing in blank pieces of cardboard so we could mulligan more—four Spellbooks to begin with and then maybe some additional Darksteel Relics if we were really worried about the opposing hate package. What a beating. You're welcome opponents.
The implication of this was pretty exciting though. If we were doing that well post-board after siding out business for Spellbooks imagine how much better we could do without handicapping ourselves!
Since expunging all those terrible negative-EV anti-hate countermeasures the deck began performing better than ever. On top of that the board now had open slots for more effective proactive cards something Dredge has traditionally struggled to find room for. Imagine that!
This was written before RiP was printed so don't swear by this advice, but it's something to think about
I think more than 1 haunted dead is overkill - it's a dead card in your opening hand and you generally don't want to be discarding more than two cards past turn 2 to non-conflagrate spells, in order to make that card stronger. It's a fine utility inclusion though and seems great in grindy matchups like jund
Maybe pick up playsets of all of the commonly played enablers (goblin lore, tormenting voice, faithless looting, burning inquiry, shriekhorn) - they're very cheap $-wise across the board, and you can experiment with different configurations and find what works best for you. Also 1-of's like Rally the Peasants, Darkblast, Memory's Journey are great to have on hand for when you're tuning your deck
The reason to play Shriekhorn over Tormenting Voice is to allow it to be your turn 1 play. Ideally all of our enablers cost one mana, so we can curve T1 enabler into T2 dredge + another enabler + land drop and set up for a turn 4 kill. Digging six cards deep over three turns isn't ideal, but you can activate Shriekhorn during your T2 upkeep, so it's effectively 4/5ths of a tome scour without the colour restriction. Whether or not that effect is worth the slots is up to you. Personally I play 3 as I find it's a necessary evil, but imo it's the weakest card in the deck by far
@Graycross How would liliana softlock you with Nephalia Academy more than she already does? Academy is a may effect, so you can choose to keep the discarded cards on top if they're important (e.g. combo pieces) or discard it to draw another card instead
You can dredge a dakmor salvage and play it on turn 3 to enable bloodghasts, but in that case it's no better in terms of speed than tormenting voice (and also worse in a way because you can't loam on turn 3 to set up turn 4 loam + conflagrate with the inquiry line)
How much do you guys mulligan on average, and what do you think constitutes a keepable hand? I'm playing a pretty stock version (19 lands, 4 inquiry & 3 Shriekhorn, 2 loam, 3 conflagrate and no rally / rites package) and find that I need to aggressively mulligan down to 4 or 5 to find a hand with the right pieces. Even with 15 one mana enablers, consistency is a major issue for me. Once the deck gets online and hits its second land drop it's very common to kill within two turns though
How have you been finding Simian Spirit Guide in testing? Seems to me that it'd improve your best and rarest draws (a couple of lands, multiple one mana enablers and a dredger or two, which are already set up to kill by turn 4 anyway), but often it would be a dead card in hand and it does nothing in the graveyard. I'm not convinced it'd be consistent enough to make the cut. Imo you'd be better off playing 3 Shriekhorn (or another enabler of your choice) and 1 Haunted Dead instead
4-0ed two local modern events and 5-0ed the constructed competitive league with this version of the deck. I think the sideboard needs some work, but the maindeck is basically there. Match 5 vs Capitano_CL (Chile Dredge Top8er) was a freaking bloodbath in my favor. Shriekhorn is just not as explosive as goblin lore.
Hey guys! I'm getting into ad nauseam with the winning GP Charlotte list (as I'm sure you've all seen before), and the only cards I need are the playset of Pact of Negation, the Boseiju and one more Spellskite. Is it possible to get away with only playing one pact mainboard as a budget consideration until I'm able to pick up the rest? Can't afford more than one atm, and I figure I probably only need one to protect the combo kill if I wait for the right moment. What would you recommend running in the meantime instead? Apologies if this has been asked recently, but I looked on the last ten or so pages and couldn't see anything. Thanks
Just got home from another weekly modern tournament, going 1-3 tonight. (Lost to naya zoo, lost to mill, won against burn and lost to RG zoo. What a meta) Think I'll go back to dredgevine for a while and wait until we get some more pieces to make this version work better (not including haunted dead, it's just a stitchwing skaab sidegrade and that card is only fine in our deck). I love legacy dredge, but just can't make the modern all-in version work properly - we're just missing so many pieces that make legacy dredge the powerhouse it is. The list I played tonight, if anyone's interested:
Hey guys! Just got home from my weekly local Modern tournament and went 1-2-1, which is less than ideal. But overall I'm feeling better about how I played tonight compared to the previous two weeks (misplays everywhere, it was ridiculous). Also I played agains mill in round 3, which was very interesting Garnered a lot of attention in the store
Overall with dredge, since picking it up three weeks ago I'm 16-16 in games, which is decidedly average :/ This version of dredge is definitely much faster and more consistent than dredgevine, which I routinely played well with in the past, so I think it's just a matter of learning the deck inside and out at this point. The list is pretty tight right now but I'm thinking about replacing the 1-of darkblast in the main with the conflagrate from the sideboard, then cutting another card from the sideboard to make space for a conflagrate there. I was playing the craterhoof package in previous weeks and never made it work, but rally the peasants is much more achievable in the enabler-heavy and land-light version I run
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
As you said, the biggest problem with this list is consistency - if you have spirit guides but no other enablers in an otherwise solid hand, you have to mulligan. Imo you can make your build a lot better by turning those 4 spirit guides into tome scours. Also you might like to add one or two life from the loams to make your bloodghasts even better
I've been struggling a lot lately. I essentially had to gut my deck and rebuild it from the ground up. The past month has not been kind to me on MODO. I went 2-2 two weeks ago at WNM: not the best, but still had a ton of fun doing so
My favourite card is definitely Manor Gargoyle. It's extremely flavourful, it's relevant in limited, it's actually a pretty great card and you can pull off some shenanigans with how its ability is worded. Everything about the card is just perfect.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21777_The_Dark_Art_Of_Dredge_Fu.html
The relevant bit:
This was written before RiP was printed so don't swear by this advice, but it's something to think about
Interesting list - I thought bridge combo had major consistency issues, but if it's good enough to win this event I'll have to revisit it
Congrats on the strong finish! How do you plan on adjusting your decklist to incorporate Haunted Dead and Collective Brutality once EMN drops?
4x Bloodghast
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
2x Golgari Thug
4x Insolent Neonate
4x Narcomoeba
1x Phantasmagorian
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Stinkweed Imp
2x Stitchwing Skaab
Land (16)
4x City of Brass
3x Dakmor Salvage
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Mana Confluence
1x Mountain
3x Burning Inquiry
4x Faithless Looting
2x Life from the Loam
4x Tome Scour
Instant (2)
1x Darkblast
1x Rally the Peasants
3x Ancient Grudge
1x Conflagrate
3x Gnaw to the Bone
3x Nature's Claim
3x Thoughtseize
2x Vengeful Pharaoh
My current list, very similar to iostream's list:
4x Bloodghast
4x Golgari Grave-Troll
2x Golgari Thug
4x Insolent Neonate
4x Narcomoeba
1x Phantasmagorian
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Stinkweed Imp
2x Stitchwing Skaab
Land (16)
4x 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
Instant (2)
1x Darkblast
1x Rally the Peasants
3x Ancient Grudge
1x Conflagrate
3x Gnaw to the Bone
3x Nature's Claim
3x Thoughtseize
2x Vengeful Pharaoh
Overall with dredge, since picking it up three weeks ago I'm 16-16 in games, which is decidedly average :/ This version of dredge is definitely much faster and more consistent than dredgevine, which I routinely played well with in the past, so I think it's just a matter of learning the deck inside and out at this point. The list is pretty tight right now but I'm thinking about replacing the 1-of darkblast in the main with the conflagrate from the sideboard, then cutting another card from the sideboard to make space for a conflagrate there. I was playing the craterhoof package in previous weeks and never made it work, but rally the peasants is much more achievable in the enabler-heavy and land-light version I run
As you said, the biggest problem with this list is consistency - if you have spirit guides but no other enablers in an otherwise solid hand, you have to mulligan. Imo you can make your build a lot better by turning those 4 spirit guides into tome scours. Also you might like to add one or two life from the loams to make your bloodghasts even better
What's your current list looking like?