As you may have seen, this weekend’s Grand Prix results were quite interesting. In one format, the last winner’s strategy was completely unhorsed, with quite a shift between Guillaume Wafo-Tapa Pro Tour-winning Blue/Black control deck in Yokohama and Tomoharu Saito’s Mono-Red aggro claiming top prize in Strasbourg. The unexpected won, despite the hype following the Pro Tour, showing the format can be mutable… or at least it’s a little bit different when shorter round lengths have to be accounted for, as that changes the control decks from their “ideal” slow and patient configuration to something that has a better chance of avoiding unnecessary draws. In another format… the best deck won, despite the hate, and while it seems Chicken Little cries for the pre-emptive banning of Flash were unfounded, an argument could be made that the only reason non-Flash decks made the Top 8 is because Flash was not played to its proper percentage share that its strength in the format deserves.
My plan for the upcoming weeks is to have a more thorough treatment of the Legacy Day 2 results, and “The Week That Was” author Brian David-Marshall has graciously consented to let me at the big box of decklists being sent from Columbus to the Top8Magic.com offices once they have arrived. I had hoped to present a mathematical analysis of Hulk Flash on Day 2 in Columbus this week, to weigh the numbers carefully and before the June 1st deadline for the DCI to nominate cards for banning and restriction, but such was just not possible in time for this article to be processed. As of Tuesday night, the decklists still have not arrived, and with my deadline creeping down towards zero there was nothing to be done. With luck this can be commented on next week; if not, a post-Regionals wrap-up and moratorium on the Legacy metagame in Columbus will be scheduled here on Magical Hack once the Regionals rush for information has run its natural course on June 9th.
That said, it’s time to knuckle down and look at Standard. After all, if Michael J. Flores’s article from last week is going to be the ultimate gospel preached to mages everywhere, there are going to be a lot of unnecessary casualties at Regionals. Magic is a game of informational warfare, where knowledge is power and more knowledge is more power. (Note to self: Just because Mark Rosewater dredges up Roseanne every third column doesn’t mean I have the right to drag other terrible sitcoms like Home Improvement out into the light. End note.) Flores is certainly on the right note, to be looking at the recent Block Constructed results for inspiration or information about how Time Spiral and Planar Chaos interact together before taking those two sets and marrying them to Ninth Edition, Coldsnap, and Ravnica Block. However, looking at those cards neglects Future Sight, the most important motivators of the format change, and doesn’t necessarily apply those cards backwards in sufficient context to show us what you get when you take all the possible moving parts from the different sets and plug them in together.
Marrying a Black-based control deck and two of Guillaume Wafo-Tapa creations, Dralnu du Louvre and his Block Constructed trophy-winner, will get you an interesting and powerful board control deck, as seen last week in The Obvious And Difficult Combinations. Admittedly, in a control fight these decks are likely excellent, as they prepare many of the best tools with all of the best card drawing and consistency engines, using existent cards like Clutch of the Undercity in a way that was all but unseen previously, even as a Mystical Teachings target. However, there is one very broad problem with Mike’s deck…
… it assumes we are looking at a control metagame for Regionals.
Allow me to introduce to you the Standard format’s 800-pound gorilla in the room, a deck currently being called “Under The Bridge”. I first caught a whiff of the deck just a few days after the Future Sight pre-release on the StarCityGames.com forum, championed by a forum-poster named “CromulantKeith”. Certainly, some elements are incredibly vulnerable to disruption by “anything that can kill a creature”, but if you’re not killing a creature until turn 3 (like Flores isn’t), that disruption just won’t disrupt enough. Much like Stephen Menendian manaless Ichorid deck, beginning to assemble the “combo” by going through the Dredge motions has a nasty habit of assembling all of the pieces in a self-perpetuating cycle. While nowhere near degenerate, which is about the right word to call the Ichorid deck in Vintage now that we’re past the May 20th deadline, it certainly fills a niche in the Standard metagame as a second strong combo deck. While Mike’s control decks likely beat Dragonstorm rather soundly, because of the way combo Dredge decks work and the speed at which their relevant pieces enter play, the ability to beat Dragonstorm combo doesn’t interact with Dredge “combo” at all.
As the calendar turned to the 20th and Future Sight became legal, the following two decks made Top 4 of events played out online, and I’m told one of the two was a repeat winner:
Deck #1, by sui_slush
3 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Llanowar Wastes
2 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
2 Breeding Pool
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Underground River
1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Llanowar Mentor
4 Greenseeker
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
2 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Narcomoeba
3 Think Twice
3 Life from the Loam
4 Bridge from Below
4 Delirium Skeins
4 Dread Return
Sideboard:
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Nightmare Void
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Krosan Grip
4 Darkblast
Deck #2, by Volrath89
1 Snow-Covered Island
4 Snow-Covered Swamp
5 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Llanowar Wastes
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Bridge from Below
4 Dread Return
3 Life from the Loam
4 Delirium Skeins
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Greenseeker
1 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Llanowar Mentor
3 Street Wraith
4 Narcomoeba
2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Sideboard
4 Darkblast
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Phyrexian Ironfoot
3 Ancient Grudge
… And on the 20th, I played in a Future Sight-legal (duh!) Standard tournament… which was won by a U/B speed Dredge deck, previously unseen on the online tournament circuit but apparently popular on bulletin boards everywhere, as well as the only deck you could find to test against on Magic Workstation. It used Blue dredge enablers like Magus of the Bazaar and mana acceleration effects to play them turn 1, currently known as “Under The Bridge” in the thread for that deck here on StarCityGames.com… but called “Narcolepsy” for a while, which is what the tournament-winner of this 20-person Standard mash-up called his deck. The face of Standard is changing away from what it looked like on just the 19th, because 12:01am on the 20th heralded quite a different format. Because all the “cool kids” are doing it, and I’m usually last to jump on the “cool” bandwagon, this week we’ve got an interview about that deck with its creator (… at least here in the StarCityGames.com Games forums; it likely birthed itself all around the world more or less simultaneously), “CromulantKeith”.
Magical Hack: Hi CromulantKeith… so we can stop referring to you as that, what’s your real name, and where do you play?
Keith: My name is Keith St. Jean and I’m a nuclear engineer in Canada, near Toronto. I have a small playgroup of talented players, but I play mostly online where I have several accounts over 1800 rating (not that rating matters that much). I’m married with a kid now, so online play is the most practical avenue for me.
I was also in on the ground floor of Dragonstorm deck design in the StarCityGames.com forums. I was there when people still thought it was a "cute but fragile" deck. Dredge is the new "cute and fragile" deck.
MH: A lot of people were banging on with Dredge decks right after Future Sight was released, and at the start of the month you jumped into the Bridge / Dredge discussion in the forums here on StarCityGames.com. You were an early innovator of the super-speed version, suggesting the inclusion of not just free dredgers like Street Wraith but also acceleration like Simian Spirit Guide, and that version seems to have been adopted three weeks later by the discussion group as the “standard” Blue/Black Dredge list. What led you to the aggressive-speed concept prior to joining that list?
K: I was tossing around with ways to combat the deck’s general failings. The big problems I was running into were Leyline / Crypt / Extirpate graveyard hate and having my enablers killed off. Then I started looking at most Tier 1 decklists floating around… they contained mostly two- or three-mana creature-kill cards, and in general very few ways to interact on turn 1. In my playtesting I also noticed that even if my enabler died, if it activated even once, I usually could win the game.
The logical conclusion was to build a version that reliably puts out an enabler on the first turn. I believe the innovation of Simian Spirit Guides and Gemstone Caverns was one of the catalysts that really got the ball rolling on the U/B speed dredge deck. While I don’t claim it is the best version of the deck (as each version is better at doing different things), it plays radically different from most conventional lists.
The deck is now pretty tuned and is one of the scarier things you can expect at Regionals. Be prepared for it, or lose (and sometimes you’ll just lose to it even if you are prepared for it!).
MH: Now that Future Sight tournaments are starting to rattle in, solid results are starting to assemble for Dredge builds in both online and paper tournaments. The first publicly-known decklists are for Black/Green Dredge decks, but your conception of what the Dredge deck should look like seems very different than theirs. Could you share the decklist you would play if Regionals this weekend, and explain what design philosophy sets it apart from the Black/Green decks that seem to be descended from the “fair” Dredge deck played before Future Sight?
K: I’m glad you mentioned the word "fair." That’s exactly what most dredge decks are. My list is entirely "unfair" which is quite evident once you shuffle it up:
U/B NarcoBridge (SSG speed version)
Enablers
3 Drowned Rusalka
4 Lore Broker
4 Magus of the Bazaar
4 Thought Courier
Dredge
1 Darkblast
2 Life from the Loam
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
Combo
4 Bridge from Below
3 Dread Return
Rest
2 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Narcomoeba
4 Simian Spirit Guide
Land
4 Gemstone Caverns
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
4 Breeding Pool
4 Watery Grave
Sideboard
4 Boomerang / Wipe Away / Krosan Grip
3 Darkblast
1 Drowned Rusalka
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Underground River
1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
1 Blazing Archon
This version is what I would play if Regionals were today. The list has come a long way, and has many changes. This particular list is tuned for a Gruul / Aggro metagame with fifteen enablers maindeck.
My recent innovation was to split the Darkblast slot into 1 Darkblast, 2 Life from the Loams, and add in a Svogthos. This allows the deck to go into Plan B mode against Gruul and Dralnu: against Gruul, you start hard-casting Trolls in long games, and against Dralnu you win through Svogthos if Plan A fails.
In an unprepared field, I would move 3 enablers to the sideboard and put in 3 Street Wraith for even more speed. In fact, at one point I was playing a version with 4 Street Wraith and 3 Edge of Autumn, which was basically the fastest version this deck can take on. However, the cat is out of the bag on this deck, so I’ve already moved to a slightly slower version (it is not as much of a glass cannon anymore).
Typical turn sequences:
This deck can do some ridiculously unfair plays. The best thing most B/G or G/U/B lists are can do is turn 1 Greenseeker, turn 2 activate Greenseeker, dredge for 6, play a land, play a second Greenseeker, go. The U/B list has crazy turns like:
Turn 1 Land, SSG, Magus of the Bazaar
Turn 2 Activate Magus, dredge for 6 in draw phase, turn 2 Thought Courier
That will almost always yield a turn 3 kill.
Just the other day I had the following play:
Turn 0 Gemstone Caverns
Turn 1 Land, 2 Simian Spirit Guide, 2 Magus of the Bazaar
I won that game on turn 2.
… or just yesterday, I had the following game in my version with Street Wraiths (shield your eyes if you are weak in the stomach):
Turn 1 Land, SSG, Magus
Turn 2 Activate Magus during upkeep drawing Golgari Grave-Troll and Bridge from Below, discard the Grave-Troll and two Bridges.
Dredge Troll in draw phase, revealing Narcomoeba, Bridge from Below, Golgari Grave-Troll, Flame-Kin Zealot, 2 random cards. Cycle Street Wraith, dredge Troll revealing Bridge from Below, 2 Dread Return, Flame-Kin Zealot and 2 random cards.
I was out of dredgers. Good thing I have a Drowned Rusalka in hand. Play a land, play Rusalka, sac Rusalka (generating 4 tokens) discard Troll, dredge Troll (Rusalka discards then draws, which is very key) revealing 2 Narcomoeba, Dread Return, Golgari Grave-Troll and 2 random cards.
In play: 1 Magus, 3 Narcomoebas, 4 Zombie tokens.
In grave: 4 Bridges, 2 Flame-Kin Zealots, 3 Dread Return, 1 Golgari Grave-Troll, others.
Still turn 2: Flashback Dread Return sacrificing Magus of the Bazaar, 2 Narcomoebas (generating 12 tokens, 16 total now) for a Flame-Kin Zealot, flashback another Dread Return sacrificing Narcomoeba, Flame-Kin Zealot (+8 tokens) and 1 token (23 total tokens now) for the other Flame-Kin Zealot, attack with 15 4/4 zombies, 8 3/3 zombies and a 3/3 Zealot for 87 points of damage. On turn 2. My opponent had a great hand though, he did the “Mountain – Kird Ape – start sideboarding” play.
That was probably the most degenerate hand I’ve had in over 500 playtest games, so don’t expect that often, but man was it fun. B/G and B/U/G versions simply don’t get to experience those kind of games that my U/B Simian Spirit Guide version can do.
On the different versions:
In a general sense, there’s basically 3 different ways you can take a dredge deck: U/B speed (above), B/G "fair", or B/U/G. The cards that characterize each version (in my opinion) are:
U/B speed: Simian Spirit Guides, Gemstone Caverns, Blue enabler suite.
B/U/G: Green enablers, lack of Simian Spirit Guides and Caverns.
B/G: Discard spells such as Delirium Skeins, and of course the complete lack of Blue enablers (including Magus!) and SSGs / Caverns.
Comparing at first the Blue and Green enablers:
Blue enablers all cost 2 (except for Rusalka which essentially costs 2+). Green enablers are cheaper, but they are actually slower (if you can believe that). They all have mana activations, which means you can’t go Turn 1 Greenseeker, activate during turn 2 upkeep, play turn 2 Blue enabler.
The Green enablers also don’t draw you cards, they only let you discard dredgers. This is key, and is where the "speed" in "U/B speed" comes in. The Green versions can only dredge 6 cards a turn (draw phase). It’s not uncommon for U/B to have dredged 12-18 cards on turn 2 and 45-50 cards on turn 3. It is much more explosive than most lists floating around.
I believe the G/B "fair" version will be outclassed by the new generation of dredge decks, which simply don’t play fair.
People playing Regionals need to be able to interact with a turn 1 enabler, or face losing on turn 2 or 3.
MH: Now, let’s talk matchups… going into Future Sight, the big three decks were Dragonstorm, Dralnu du Louvre, and Gruul. How does your deck stand up to those three matchups? Are any of them particularly bad matchups, or especially good ones? It seems that decks that are unaware of Bridge-based strategies are destined to lose to it, and quickly; has this proven true in your testing so far? Who’s the faster combo deck, you or Dragonstorm?
K: My version of the dredge deck (U/B speed with Simian Spirit Guides and Blue enablers) is absolutely the most violently punishing deck to an unprepared metagame. The B/U/G and B/G versions are much slower and they allow the opponent to get back into the game – however, they are still punishing. Against the U/B SSG version, if you can’t answer a turn 1 Magus of the Bazaar, you might as well start sideboarding.
The U/B speed version has an exceptional matchup against Dragonstorm. Game 1 must be on the order of 80%. We are simply 1-2 turns faster than them, and they have no means of stopping turn 1 enablers. Post-board, the matchup can get closer. They typically bring in Martyr of Ashes and Tormod’s Crypts. This allows them to interact with us on turn 1-2. Games 2 and 3 are a little closer, but I find the UB speed version is still a heavy favorite. The fact that game 1 is so heavily in our favor means that we typically only need to win 1 of the last 2 games to win the match.
G/U/B versions have a much worse Dragonstorm matchup, I would say somewhere around 50/50 pre board, and 40/60 post board.
Overall, the matchup is heavily in U/B dredge’s favor since we are simply much faster than them.
Dralnu
The Dralnu matchup can vary intensely based on how prepared they are. Most Dralnu lists right now run only one maindeck Extirpate that they fetch with Teachings. The problem is, Teachings is too slow. However, some Dralnu lists are main-decking Leyline of the Void, or 4 Extirpate. These versions are extremely difficult to beat. Against unprepared Dralnu, the matchup is around 75/25 in Dredge’s favor, but against a prepared version, it reverses to 25/75, favoring Dralnu.
Against an unprepared build, you just try and combo out as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter if they counter your Dread Return as they must generally have Damnation in hand or they are dead to Zombies.
Against a prepared Dralnu list, you typically want to cast dread return on your Trolls, not on Zealots. If they are holding extirpate, then you put them in a bind with that play. If you return a Zealot they can Extirpate your Bridges in response, and you get a 3/3 hasty Zealot. If you Dread Return a Troll, then you get either a 20/20+ Troll or a hoard of Zombies. Neither is fun to deal with. Both force them to have Damnation or lose.
That’s Plan A. Your Plan B against Dralnu is to get Svogthos going, as he’s a giant uncounterable, un-Wrathable threat. G/U/B versions can execute this plan better and have slightly better matchups against Dralnu.
Post-board you can try and fight Leyline of the Void with Boomerang, Wipe Away, Krosan Grip, Seal of Primordium or Naturalize, but that’s an uphill battle to say the least.
Gruul
The Gruul matchup is very similar to the Dralnu matchup in that there are versions of Gruul which are auto-wins and there are other versions which are much more difficult. The difficult versions are Gruul lists which pack 4 Shock, 4 Seal of Fire, and 4 Rift Bolt, as they are all ways that Gruul can interact on turn 1. Versions that run only Volcanic Hammer, Char, and other more expensive burn spells are typically byes.
Game 1 against Gruul, the U/B version is much more lethal than other versions, because 1 enabler activation is generally the game. So an unanswered turn 1 Magus is devastating. You almost auto-win when they try and race with Kird Ape into Mauler into Cloak. Against unprepared Gruul versions your gameplan is simply to combo out on them as fast as you can.
Against prepared Gruul versions packing lots of one-mana burn spells, you want to keep playing out your enablers (15 maindeck enablers in my version to combat this) and let them spend their burn on your enablers. They will lose all their reach doing this. They must keep their mana open to kill your enablers, and generally can’t cast threats. Because of this, the matchup actually plays similar to a control on control matchup. If you can activate enablers, you want to avoid dredging, and simply draw into more enablers / land. You want to fight card advantage with them. You filter your non-enablers for enablers. During your draw phase you want to draw, not dredge.
Typically turn 3-4 against a prepared Gruul matchup will have both decks low on cards, and almost full on life. They may have a Kird Ape or two. At this point, you want to start dredging Stinkweed Imps to block their creatures. Eventually you’ll hit Life from the Loam, and you can Loam yourself up to five lands. At that point, you start dredge-casting giant Trolls. It doesn’t take long for them to crumble.
As with most matchups, the way you play it will go a long way to winning it. If you try and dredge-out against a prepared Gruul version, they will punish you. They will kill your enablers and you will be left with a bunch of Trolls in your hand, and only two lands in play. However, if you try and out-draw them, go into Imp mode, then finally into Troll mode, you will probably start seeing more wins. Sideboarding is also completely different against each version of Gruul. Against unprepared versions, you want to increase your speed. Against prepared versions, you actually should be taking out SSGs (!!) and adding in some lands and more enablers to further flesh out your mid-game plan.
Overall, against unprepared Gruul the U/B speed dredge probably is a 80-20 favorite. Against a prepared Gruul list sporting twelve or so one-mana burn spells, it’s a coinflip, 50-50 – maybe slightly better if you know how to play the matchup.
MH: You’d think some of the new cards, like Yixlid Jailer, are especially nasty and would put a damper on the Dredge strategy. Have you found any of the cards from Future Sight to be difficult for your deck, like Tolaria West letting Blue decks play Tormod’s Crypt main-deck? Have any old cards showed up with new life to have an impact on your deck?
K: Those two are the main hate coming out of Future Sight, but they aren’t that bad. Jailer can be tough, but you can always Darkblast him. He doesn’t even remove your Bridges from the game when he dies… and knowing tricks like this goes a long way in some games. Tolaria West isn’t as much of a problem since that solution is a turn 3 solution at the earliest. Tormod’s Crypt is also a lot easier to play around than Leyline of the Void. I could write volumes on playing around Crypt with Dread Returns and more importantly big Rusalka turns (dredging 24+ in one turn with a Rusalka).
That being said, it can still put a hamper in your strategy, but it’s nothing too bad. They’ll still have to deal with that Magus who is single-handedly allowing you to dredge for 18 per turn.
Overall the single scariest card is a Turn 0 Leyline of the Void. There just isn’t a good way to fight that battle. At best, you can cast a turn 2 Wipe Away and you have 2 turns to win. At worst, you can try and Naturalize it on turn 2 (or 1 with an accelerant) and they’ll counter your spell. For that reason, I personally prefer Split Second solutions (Krosan Grip or Wipe Away).
Turn 0 Leyline isn’t unwinnable, but it’s darn close.
MH: Considering that your build of Dredge is generally accepted to be the fastest version around, and we recently saw at Grand Prix: Columbus that it was not the fastest Flash decks that were played but the most consistent Flash decks that were played to great success. With Spirit Guides and Gemstone Caverns not proving good enough in the Legacy format, in favor of a consistent version instead that takes a little longer but spends fewer cards recklessly to get to the end result, are you still confident that these acceleration effects are worth playing? Is there a slower but “more consistent” way to build your Dredge deck?
K: I have no doubt that in the long run, the Simian Spirit Guide version will not be the best version of the deck. However, right now I don’t feel people are adequately scared of Dredge. They are thinking that simply adding 2-3 Crypts to their sideboards is enough. It may be enough to beat the slower versions, but the U/B version is very punishing to unprepared decks. You can generally play around Crypts by forcing them to Crypt away a single Bridge. I’ve even won games through 3 Crypt activations, although that’s rare… on both sides.
For that reason, I feel the U/B “accelerated” version is what you want to play (for now). The ability to severely punish bad draws, in a way that not even Gruul can do, is what I like about it. The U/B version says "how good is your opening hand? It better be darn good." The other versions don’t do that.
A few months from now, who knows? I’m sure that resiliency will be the better avenue to take. But I would avoid warping the deck too much to beat the hate. This isn’t the same as Gruul fighting Hierarchs, or Dragonstorm fighting Teferi and Rewind. The hate against Dredge decks is much more punishing and much less forgiving. So if the hate starts popping up en masse, then what are you doing playing Dredge trying to fight through it? Just pick up another deck and keep your Dredge list on the shelf, ready to punish opponents when they let their guards down.
MH: Is there anything else you’d like to add or discuss that I might not have pointed at you, before we conclude this interview and look at the deck from another angle?
K: I have probably playtested this deck close to thousand goldfish games, and by banging it up against the big boys (Dragonstorm, Gruul, Dralnu, Hatching Plans storm, etc). I’ve learned so much from playtesting that you simply cannot express to someone through words.
My biggest recommendation is that people playtest, playtest, PLAYTEST. Don’t mess with a list that has so much playtesting behind it unless you know what you are doing. I could probably write an entire article on the subtle choices between all the enablers (including spell versions, and why they under-perform), Dredge options (Golgari Thug, Life from the Loam, and Darkblast), variations on the lists (U/B, G/U/B, B/G). All the minor subtle changes drastically influence how the deck performs. You can change this deck from aggro / combo to control / combo to pure control, and all looks like Dredge. If you playtest the deck enough, you can tune it very effectively towards different expected metagames and stay a step ahead of everyone.
I’ve played Magic since Beta. I’ve played with Academy, Necro, Trix, Pros-Bloom, and many others. I can honestly say that this deck offers more edges to experienced pilots than most decks I’ve ever played. It’s not as lethal as those decks, but the success of the deck varies exponentially with the experience of the pilot. You need to know when to go for Plan A, when to switch to Plan B, and many times where you need to alter your game-plan on the fly. Knowing how to mulligan and how to play each matchup is vital to making this deck work. Mulliganing in particular is very important, as you must do it very aggressively.
Overall, this deck is a blast to play. I love the deck if only for the fact that it lets you play a game of Magic that is drastically different from what you are used to in standard these days. Thanks for the interview!
MH: And thank you, Keith, for sharing all of that information with us.
…
From this new lens on Standard, let’s take a look at Mike’s deck again:
| Flores Winner Winner Chicken Dinner | Dan Bock Deck Wins |
|
4 Lands
|
|
|
2 Lands
|
|
|
4 Lands
|
|
|
2 Lands
|
|
|
4 Transmutes for Damnation
|
|
|
1 Extirpate ZOMG!
|
|
|
3 Lands
|
|
|
4 Remand
|
4 Remand
|
|
4 Repeal
|
4 Lands
|
|
2 Lands
|
|
|
2 Lands
|
|
|
1 Cantrip
|
|
|
1 Land
|
|
|
1 Land
|
|
|
2 Land
|
|
|
4 Land
|
|
|
4 Land
|
|
|
4 Land
|
|
|
1 Urza’s Factory
|
1 Land
|
|
3 Land
|
|
|
2 Land
|
|
|
1 Land
|
|
|
Sideboard:
|
Sideboard:
|
|
4 Land
|
|
|
3 Extirpate ZOMG!
|
|
|
2 Land
|
|
|
2 Land
|
|
|
2 Land
|
|
|
1 Land
|
Do you think Dan Bock’s deck would have had a better matchup if he cut some lands for some Wrath of Gods? So far, the deck Mike is talking about playing for Regionals compares favorably against a fast Dredge deck… when comparing Mike’s deck to a deck of 60 lands. To say Mike’s deck is too slow and picking all the wrong fights in this matchup is something of an overstatement, because as masterful as Flores’s deck may be against many other decks packing Watery Grave, it seems he is not actually prepared for what is likely to explode as one of the most-played archetypes at Regionals… and this is not a trick of me accidentally believing my own press, as has been known to happen with certain other writers at specific other times.
Hopefully as the glaciers start to melt as the format shifts from the “known” metagame established after Planar Chaos became legal to the “unknown” metagame in which decks like Bridge-Dredge can thrive and prey upon the unprepared, the metagame being spoken about for Regionals will shift accordingly. In the meantime, I’m curious what Mike is discussing playing in his article above mine today, because I am told his U/W Bonus Deck from last week couldn’t even beat a Dredge deck that mulliganed to 4.
Until next week, I’m poking fun at Flores, so you don’t have to.
Love Mike… but wait until the cards are legal on MTGO before you believe his playtest results.
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com