Originally I was going to write an article about why I was going to play Dredge tomorrow. I mean, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? That’s actually how I won my first PTQ. I was testing my U/R/W deck (this is back when I just wanted to play these ponderous control decks to prove how much cleverer I was than the other guy), and I just wasn’t winning, so quite late into the night I made a B/R Necropotence deck with Thawing Glaciers, Withering Wisps, and Pillage and took second in the PTQ, losing to the great Erik Lauer in the finals.
The reason I was going to write this apocryphal article about why I was going to play Dredge was my disillusionment over the PTQ last week. I made what I thought was the best pre-Morningtide deck after the New York PTQ dominated by Doran, but I didn’t have a PTQ to play it in. Then I insisted that we hold the deck forever and wouldn’t let anyone else play it even though they were travelling to PTQs hither and thither. I had Chapin working on the deck and he grudgingly conceded that it was probably the best deck – better than Next Level Blue, even – but was frustrated that I wanted to hold it all the way to Grand Prix: Philadelphia, which in hindsight was probably unrealistic.
Similar decks started to creep up in Top 8s around the country and I realized we were never going to hold the deck so Josh, Asher, and I decided to play it last week. I knew I was going to be bad against Countryside Crusher plus Devastating Dreams… That’s what eliminated both Josh and myself. Asher inexplicably lost to Affinity playing for the Top 8 in another PTQ.
Looking back at my non-wins, I didn’t play very well. I got frustrated during a series of illegal plays that my opponent made during extra turns and left him on one life with three Islands in play and no hand instead of killing him (I had to execute correctly with my Top, which I failed miserably to do). I passed against Goblins knowing that my four-five-six curve was just perfect and that I could only lose to his freshly played double Piledriver if he topdecked Warchief (I had successfully Therapied Warchief the previous turn and liked my chances)… He of course topdecked Warchief; only after reflecting a little while did I realize I could have just taken two points of Ringleader damage and killed one of his fresh Piledrivers at the end of his turn and preserved between 11 and 19 life, more than enough to win.
My god.
I was just “playing cards.”
Was it rust?
When I was designing Kuroda-style Red and Napster, Josh’s Red Deck Wins, and the B/G from Playing Fair, I was playing hundreds of games a week. In the past couple of years I had become spoiled by the ease and fun of MTGO, but the past couple of weeks I hadn’t even been playing MTGO. No Morningtide meant little incremental incentive when I already liked my deck.
Damn it.
Just “playing cards.”
Wow.
My objection to Dredge as a PTQ deck has always been that it didn’t allow a more highly skilled player to leverage his abilities. Sure, you win the first game 80% of the time, but the sideboarded games in aggregate don’t really reflect your abilities. You can come up with an innovative sideboard, sure, turn a couple of tables maybe, but if you hack and slash through nine rounds of PTQ in the Northeast, you are talking about facing maybe 30 hate cards, any one of which going unopposed will mean the game. If you miss just four out of 30, that’s game boys… And there are the games that you lose “fair and square,” too…
On the other hand,I could be that donkey. You know which donkey I am talking about. The one who is just playing cards, but whose deck is carrying him. Why not me?
Bah.
I worked on a bunch of different decks this week, leading up to this article. I really and truly entertained the notion of playing Dredge. I playtested with my old Dave Price Fan Club teammate Tim McKenna; he sure beat me left and right with his Dredge deck, and taught me how which sideboard cards work (and reminded me that I had to draw them).
Here is a deck that I seriously considered playing:
1 Draco
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Cabal Therapy
1 False Cure
4 Kokusho the Evening Star
4 Insidious Dreams
1 Mortify
2 Akroma’s Vengeance
4 Beacon of Immortality
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Wrath of God
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
4 Godless Shrine
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
1 Snow-covered Mountain
5 Snow-covered Plains
2 Snow-covered Swamp
2 Temple of the False God
1 Windswept Heath
Sideboard:
4 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Extirpate
2 Tsabo’s Decree
3 Mortify
2 Akroma’s Vengeance
The main thrust of this deck is that it is a MWC Onslaught Block deck, but splashing Draco-Explosion for the faster kill. I initially tried the Martyr combo in this deck, but I had a lot of non-White cards which made it even more awkward than a six mana upkeep effect normally is. Kokusho (specifically with Cabal Therapy) gives the deck a nice out against Ideal; they go for Ideal into Form of the Dragon, you show them exactly what a Dragon looks like at five life.
The deck was quite bad initially against Dredge, so I went all in on the sideboard as you can see. I tried a couple of “faster” versions with Orzhov Signets and whatever, but I really missed the Akroma’s Vengeance, which is my catch all in decks like this (incidentally the great Pat Sullivan says that he and I both have wide groups of cards that we flag as default to do multiple jobs… Guilty). I never got to beat up on McKenna, but after the eight pack went in I was fine against Dredge.
I only won with Beacon of Immortality plus False Cure in maybe one match. It was against Heartbeat… Pretty interesting, actually. If you have Beacon of Immortality in hand they actually have to kill you with Deep Analysis, so you can win some sloppy games.
Ultimately, I laid the deck out and was a mite horrified at the number of sixes and sevens… Went with leaner mana requirements at the end.
Creatures (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (25)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Wrath of God
- 4 Insidious Dreams
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 2 Akroma's Vengeance
- 1 Decree of Justice
- 1 Erratic Explosion
- 4 Lightning Helix
- 1 Mortify
Sideboard
This deck was pretty good, but…
Asher started gaming with this bad Red Deck he had gotten off the Internet. He beat me in three matches in a row, close ones all… Okay, they were mostly blowouts. Young Asher had not enough cards and ended up having a stack of Cryoclasms and Molten Rains that just disassembled YT despite the fact that I was winning most of the first games.
Okay, the fish… Here are the fish (first version):
Creatures (8)
Lands (22)
Spells (30)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Glacial Ray
- 2 Flames of the Blood Hand
- 4 Incinerate
- 4 Lava Spike
- 4 Magma Jet
- 4 Shrapnel Blast
- 4 Rift Bolt
Sideboard
I love Sensei’s Divining Top, and I love Top plus Shrapnel Blast more than anyone except maybe Josh… But I’m not 100% on it yet. Josh said that the Top, Mogg Fanatic, and Lava Spike don’t make best friends.
Lava Spike is a card that has been played a fair amount for three in this format. I elected to pair it with Kamigawa Block teammate Glacial Ray. This combination has been pretty potent, actually. You like Lava Spike just because it does three for one mana (putting it ahead of the curve on the Philosophy of Fire), but with Glacial Ray, it becomes a decent test spell… and devastating if it resolves even once.
The rest of the deck is pretty straightforward. The only card that I was super excited about initially was Martyr of Asher (not surprisingly Asher’s favorite), but that card has been under-performing versus Dredge for me. They just keep getting back a 15/15 Golgari Grave-Troll or hasting in with Akroma (or McKenna resurrected Wonder, of all cards), which are all obviously miserable.
I was never too into the Spark Elemental… The card that feels missing is Keldon Marauders.
Owen Turtenwald asked me this week if I was serious about playing a straight burn deck in a PTQ. I don’t know if I’ve communicated how badly I played last weekend with a difficult and intricate mid-range deck. It’s not just that I made some mistakes… I really made the mythical “mistake a turn” numbers in some games.
For example, on my first turn in a fun game against MikeyP I could have played either Wooded Foothills or Bloodstained Mire; not thinking, I played the Mire. That’s horrendous! You are just turning Black mana into Green mana instead of vice versa. Or did you not see the mistake there? Even when you read either as “Overgrown Tomb” the two lands are not interchangeable.
“Josh said I didn’t deserve a deck that good,” I told him. And when you can’t play to leverage your abilities… Well, drawing Shrapnel Blast ain’t a terrible way to go about it.
LOVE
MIKE