Between driving up with GerryT and Sean Mangner, rooming with Adrian Sullivan, and meeting Manuel Bucher, Gerard Fabiano, and fellow writer Reuben Bresler for the first time, I had a blast at GP: Chicago. Still, although I finished higher than 1,100 competitors, and although St. Louisan Jack Dobbin also played my Dredge build to an even higher finish, I felt disappointed with my results at the end of the tournament.
After kicking things off with a 5-0 streak of wins (wait, what kind of streaking did you think the title was referring to?), I lost two consecutive matches, then won another two, then found myself after the first round of Day 2 needing to execute a second 5-0 streak in order to make Top 8. You know from the coverage I didn’t make it – sadly, I went on another kind of streak instead – but the story of what happened along the way is more interesting than my final record.
Here’s what I played.
Creatures (28)
- 4 Tireless Tribe
- 4 Putrid Imp
- 3 Ichorid
- 1 Flame-Kin Zealot
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 4 Golgari Thug
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Narcomoeba
Lands (15)
Spells (17)
Sideboard
Obviously I made a couple of modifications between the list I posted last week and the one I ended up playing. I started to write about the reasoning behind these changes, but it quickly became clear that (A) the subject deserved its own article if I was to get all my points across, and (B) I wouldn’t have time to finish both that and the tournament report this week. Thus, I will stick to the tournament report this week and get into the reasons for my changes next week.
Tournament Report
Round 1 — Bye
Man, only one bye. It is pretty lame not being able to get breakfast and hang out at the beginning of a GP, but considering how many players in the room had zero byes, it definitely could have been worse.
Round 2 — Sean Weihe with Merfolk.
The feature match pretty much says it all.
The only thing that doesn’t really come through in the coverage was the turn where I went off with Cephalid Coliseum and he had Cursecatcher out. My initial plan was to Therapy him to bait him into sacrificing Cursecatcher (to kill my Bridges) so that I could resolve Dread Return now that the Catcher was gone.
What I didn’t realize immediately was that he had an AEther Vial that had been sitting on one counter for several turns, telegraphing a surprise Catcher in his hand. Unfortunately, I only noticed this after having cast the Therapy, so I basically threw away my Therapy and my current stock of Bridges, but at least did not lose the Dread Return as well. After I untapped next turn and had mana available, I resolved Dread Return and went on to win, but it was lame to be making mistakes already in my first round.
2-0
Round 3 — Edward Pfender with U/B Counterbalance
After disrupting me a bit early on, Edward produces a game 1 Trinket Mage into Relic of Progenitus, the second maindeck Relic I have had to contend with in as many rounds. However, this time I have some Narcomoebas in play and he does not have much pressure, so I gradually dredge my way back into the game and finish him off despite it.
In game 2 he immediately drops a Pithing Needle on Putrid Imp, which turns out to be pretty funny when I have turn 1 Tireless Tribe. I Needle Relic, but this time he has Crypt. He clears out my ‘yard and then plays Trinket Mage for Crypt Number Two. I don’t have the goods to stop the second one.
I mulligan to five in game 3. He Crypts me once, but I still have a Grave-Troll in hand and a Putrid Imp with which to keep pitching it. He Crypts me again, but since I have only been drawing my Ichorids and Bridges one at a time, I am able to keep going with my Troll. Eventually I pull it out, despite the mull to five and being Crypted twice.
Usually I say “they have to Crypt me twice to beat me, and most players only play enough to do it once,” but after this game I felt tempted to amend it to “if they have two Crypts and I mull to five, they might beat me.”
3-0
Round 4 — Philip King with Mono-Black
I lose the die roll, but crush him game 1 anyway. I am not sure if he will have Relics, Crypts, or Jailers, so I bring in three Needles and three Spellbombs.
He opens game 2 with a mull to six, then uses Serum Powder (uh oh) to keep digging, then mulls to five. Before I declare that I am keeping my opener, he says “I have a before-game effect.”
Great. Leyline of the Void.
I look at my hand, and I see Putrid Imp, Golgari Thug, Narcomoeba, two lands, an Ichorid, and a Dread Return. Well, if I’m going to mise a victory against a turn-zero Leyline, this is going to be the hand to do it. Keep!
He Leylines me and passes the turn with no land drop. Off to a good start…
I play out my 1/1s along with the Tireless Tribe and pair of Pyrite Spellbombs I topdeck. I cash in one of the Spellbombs to draw a card, digging for a fourth land with which to cast the two Ichorids in my hand. Philip plays a Phyrexian Arena, which helps my clock, but delivers him a blocker in the form of Mindslicer. I crash an Ichorid into it, and he blocks to save some damage and RFG my hand. (His had only lands in it.)
He topdecks a Stromgald Crusader and I Spellbomb it and keep beating. Two turns later, my tiny dorks have carried the day! Mise.
3-0
Round 5 — Erik Mynatt with Goblins
In game 1 I kill him on turn 3.
I start with a Needle on Crypt in game 2, while he plays a Lackey. He hits and brings in a free Warchief, then vomits out his entire hand on his next turn, including a Stingscourger on my Tireless Tribe, and punching me for 15 damage. I am still in fine shape, though, as I bring back some Ichorids and make some Zombies next turn; he is dead on the following turn unless he topdecks something to kill me next turn. Unfortunately, his topdeck is Goblin Sharpshooter, which has exactly enough pings in it to finish me off after combat kills many Zombies and many Goblins.
Game 3 I play a Needle on Relic (I forget why I named Relic in game 3 and Crypt in game 2), then play Tireless Tribe, ditch Stinkweed Imp, Breakthrough it back, and ultimately kill him with a reanimated Akroma that holds off an otherwise very scary Piledriver.
5-0
Round 6 — Dennis Tsao with R/W Burn
Dennis starts off game 1 by telling me he likes my articles and expressing some surprise that I would make a big noise about playing Dredge and then actually playing Dredge. Let it never be said that I don’t put my money where my mouth is!
He starts off game 1 with a Mogg Fanatic and a Lightning Bolt on my Putrid Imp. I make some Zombies and Therapy him, seeing Ensnaring Bridge and Enlightened Tutor. I flash back two more Therapies to clear his hand, and win with Zombies a turn or two later.
He keeps a one-lander in game 2, and I have way too many Zombies in play before he finds an Enlightened Tutor for Relic.
Dennis was a nice guy, and I happily wished him luck in the rest of the tournament.
6-0
Round 7 — Mike Solymossy with Ad Nauseam
I open with a no-lander, mull into a second no-lander, and keep at five. My hand is a land, a Careful Study, a dredger, and some junk. Mike wins the die roll and starts by Duressing my Careful Study, sounding the death knell on the game. He kills me two turns later, before I can do anything.
In game 2 he kills me turn 1.
Mike happily informs me that he has managed to dodge Counterbalance entirely so far. I found Ad Nauseam a good matchup in testing, but then again, in testing the turn-1-Duress-your-only-discard-outlet was even more rare than the turn-1 kill. Oh well. I still need to win only one more match to make Day 2.
6-1
Round 8 — Reuben Bresler with Painter’s Servant
We get deck checked, and run some chats about writing about the Magical Gathering Cards on the Interwebs. Reuben turns out to be a very amiable guy, and good times are had.
I have no idea what he is playing in game 1. He casts Gamble three times, but I win anyway. I don’t really remember what happened, except that my notes say “I Therapy him out.” (Admittedly, I won so many game 1s that my notes got pretty embarrassing after awhile.)
Game 2 I make my first epic punt of the tournament. Reuben opens with turn 1 Grindstone and turn 2 Painter’s Servant. I have a Tireless Tribe in play, and the only noteworthy cards in my hand are Stinkweed Imp, Careful Study, and Cephalid Coliseum.
If I pitch the Stinkweed Imp and Dredge it, then pitch it and Coliseum it, I will probably flip half my library. If Flame-Kin Zealot is in the top half, I will likely just kill him on the spot. If not, I can at least Therapy him for Simian Spirit Guide, which turned out to be his third mana source, buying me a turn; after that turn, I would have almost certainly killed him because I would have had a huge Grave-Troll and many Zombies in play.
Instead, like a moron, I get a cute idea into my head: instead of Dredging with my Dredge deck, I will use this Careful Study to dig for a Pithing Needle.
I don’t see it, and he kills me next turn. Take note, friends: when given the choice between (A) killing the opponent and (B) digging for a one-outer, always select option A.
In game 3, he plays turn 1 Painter off an Ancient Tomb, and then a turn 2 City of Traitors plus Grindstone. In other words, literally the stone-cold absolute best draw his deck possesses. I do not happen to have a turn 2 kill this game, nor a Pithing Needle, so I have successfully punted my first match of the tournament. (But not my last, oh no.)
6-2
Round 9 — Mike Turpyn with UBWG Counterbalance
Game 1 is cake, as usual.
In game 2, I bash him with some Ichorids and make some Zombies. He puts an Engineered Plague on Horrors, allowing me to make more Zombies. Then he puts a Plague on Zombies, which slows down my clock. Then he puts another Plague on Zombies, but I’m still okay with Tireless Tribe and Narcomoebas. Then he plays the fourth Plague, naming Illusion. I am down to just Tireless Tribe, but next turn I dredge up a Thug. I am about to dredge up my second Thug and Dread Return a Grave-Troll to smash face in defiance of his four Plagues, but he has two Goyfs at this point and I have to chump one of them to stay alive instead because my Cities of Brass have been wearing on my life total. I think it’s funny that Engineered Plague is so weak against me, he needed to draw all four to beat me with it.
In game 3, I have the read on him for no Crypts or Relics, and board out Needles. He Forces my Imp, but on turn 2 I have a second land to protect Tireless Tribe from Daze. I activate Coliseum and dredge a ton, then Therapy him for Engineered Plague. His hand contains two Plagues and nothing else. A turn later, he scoops.
7-2
Round 10 — Brandon Borowicz with Goblins
You have no idea how happy I am when my first Day 2 opponent leads with a Mountain.
Game 1, I have a slowish start, with one Ichorid, one Narcomoeba, and one Tireless Tribe. He has two Fanatics, which take out my Bridges, but my Tribe holds off his Piledriver until I am ready to Dread Return a sufficiently beefy Grave-Troll without sacrificing my Tribe. He scoops to the Troll shortly thereafter.
I forget why, but something about the way he looks at his opening hand tells me he does not have Relic or Crypt. I play a Needle on Fanatic before dredging and activating Coliseum, but he starts Gempalming his own guys to get rid of my Bridges instead. This is okay, because I have a second Coliseum, which digs me to Akroma and enough Ichorids to get her into play. (This exact scenario – the overload of anti-Bridge suicides – is what prompted the fourth Ichorid and Akroma in my board.)
He has a Weirding for my Akroma, but I have a Narcomoeba buffer and decline to chump with it, so the Angel of Wrath gets him good.
8-2
Round 11 — Douglas Pimm with Mono-Red Burn
More Mountains? Yes!
I smash face in game 1. In game 2, I play Tribe into Breakthrough, reanimating a 13/13 Grave-Troll and six Zombies on turn 2. Therapy reveals nothing relevant in his hand, and he scoops next turn.
9-2
Round 12 — Kai Burnett with Ad Nauseam
In game 1 he keeps a one-lander with Brainstorm, which he casts off Underground Sea. I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is not a brain-dead Counterbalance player, but rather an Ad Nauseam player with lots of artifact mana and rituals in hand.
As I dredge half my deck on turn 2, I am mulling over what to name with Therapy. If he has Mystical Tutor, he will certainly cast it in response (his Underground Sea is untapped), meaning it is probably best to name Infernal Tutor.
This becomes irrelevant when none of my three Therapies turn up in the top half of my deck, and my Flame-Kin Zealot does not either. Awkward.
He goes off and kills me next turn, using Infernal Tutor to fetch Ad Nauseam. This is the second consecutive Ad Nauseam player who has been extremely fortunate to steal game 1 from me, and I am not happy.
I am less happy when he repeats Solymossy’s feat and kills me on turn 1 in game two, knocking me out of Top 8 contention. Fantastic. Now I’m just playing for money.
7-3
Round 13 — Gerard Fabiano with Rock
I win the die roll. My opening hand has a dredger, Cephalid Coliseum, another two land, and Breakthrough. I would consider keeping this against an unknown opponent, but I know Gerard has a fondness for G/B decks, and this hand is absolutely dead in the water to a turn 1 Duress or Thoughtseize. I mulligan it and end up going to five, where I keep land, Putrid Imp, Careful Study, and two Dredgers.
I play my Putrid Imp and Gerard Thoughtseizes me on turn 1. Yaus.
Without the Careful Study, I am forced to dredge out my deck the slow way, but I end up getting through more than half of it by the end of the game. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I don’t see a single Bridge from Below, nor more than one Ichorid, and Gerard’s Plows keep me off the requisite three creatures for Dread Return. This is the only game in which I have ever gone through half my deck without seeing a Bridge, in testing or in sanctioned play, but it sure did cost me the match here.
In the second game, I play a Needle on Tormod’s Crypt, and am surprised when he Extirpates my Bridges after a Breakthrough. I hit him once with Ichorids, my two Putrid Imps, and Narcomoeba, but then he puts down an Engineered Plague on Horror to shut down half my offense. However, I still have five power in the air between my two Imps and one ‘moeba, so I finish him off anyway.
We have very little time for the final game, but I shuffle quickly in between my various mulligans on the way to four cards. I keep Putrid Imp, land, Golgari Thug, and Stinkweed Imp, which is almost perfect for four cards.
I play my Imp and pass. On my upkeep, I pitch Stinkweed Imp, and Gerard Extirpates it. I then pitch Thug and dredge him instead, flipping only lands. Next turn Gerard flips his Top and Extirpates my Thugs as well. I can’t very well recover from this, and Gerard kills me on the fourth extra turn.
It was disappointing to lose the match to my own lack of Bridges in game 1, but at least Gerard was friendly the whole match. I hope to see him again at future tournaments.
9-4
Round 14 – James Allen with UGW Threshold
Game 1 takes awhile, but I eventually get him. In the second, I decline to play a first-turn discard outlet in order to play around Daze, but as it turns out he has two Counterspells instead, and stops my second-turn discard outlet as well as my third-turn repeat attempt. With no enablers available, his Jotun Grunt mops up my slow start.
In game three, I resolve Careful Study on turn 1 and then a Therapy on turn 2. I am not going to name Daze, as if I see one, I will just play around it and cast the Putrid Imp I drew from the Careful Study next turn, so I am not exactly sure what to name. Like an idiot, I do not name Jotun Grunt – the card that beat me last game – and he has it.
What do you call it when your deck hands you the win and you kick it away? Ah yes, a punt.
You need to be dredging more than once per turn to beat a Grunt, and I had access to no such action. The Grunt, along with his two friends, Goyf Number One and Goyf Number Two, beat me down, and I heartily deserved it after such a massive misplay.
Now I’ve gone and punted my way out of making any money at this tournament. Well done, Feldman!
9-5
Round 15: Jordan with UGRW Counterbalance
My notes for game one just say “crush.”
I start off game 2 by playing around Daze with my enablers, but he has double Daze. He also has a backup Force of Will and another blue spell for my next enabler, and a Tarmogoyf immediately after. Meanwhile I have a Pithing Needle which is both useless and which might have been a Careful Study had I not boarded it in. Such is the price of having answers to hate. He beats me down with the Goyf before I can find another enabler.
In game 3, I mull to four and cannot find a dredger. I fold quickly.
9-6
Takeaways
Traditionally, people say Dredge is no good because (A) there is too much hate, and (B) it mulligans into oblivion sometimes. I had one mulligan to four that left me with a bad hand (the other mull to four was a perfectly fine hand), so Theory B was wildly untrue for this tournament. I only lost one match due to sideboard hate – the one against Fabiano, which I would have won 2-0 had there been a single Bridge in the top half of my deck in game 1 – meaning Theory A proved downright laughable.
I was very happy with how the deck played out. I lost several matches due to very improbable occurrences (no Bridges in the top half, no Therapies in the top half, etc.), but anomalies like that are hardly unique to Dredge; occasionally Counterbalance will a million cards and Top a bunch and still be completely unable to find a Counterbalance. Sometimes Magic just gets ya.
Aside from the one brazen punt against Jotun Grunt, I only lost to one Counterbalance deck all day – and he didn’t have any hate for me, just multiple FoWs and Dazes for my enablers, followed immediately by Tarmogoyfs. I did not lose to Goblins or Burn at all, so the rest of my losses were to other combo decks.
You could look at that and say I have a poor combo matchup, but consider how the game losses looked:
Game 1 against Ad Nauseam #1: I mull to five, keep a hand with only Careful Study as a Dredger, and he Duresses it on the play.
Game 2 against Ad Nauseam #1: He has the turn 1 kill.
Game 2 against Painter’s Servant: He has the turn 3 kill on the play, and I punt and do not kill him when I could.
Game 3 against Painter’s Servant: He has the turn 2 kill and I do not.
Game 1 against Ad Nauseam #2: I Dredge half my deck on turn 2 and do not see any of my three Therapies.
Game 2 against Ad Nauseam #2: He has the turn 1 kill.
These are not exactly your typical draws from these combo players. They were invariably a mixture of certifiable God Draws on their part and horribly unfortunate draws on my part (yeah, yeah, and one punt), and while I wish the nearly-useless anti-Yixlid Jailer measures in my board had been Unmasks for these matchups, I think I would have been just fine had the draws not been so horrifically lopsided.
So would I sleeve up Dredge again if GP: Chicago were tomorrow?
Hell yeah. And I’d play better next time, too.
See you next week…
Richard Feldman
Team :S
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