From The Lab — Road to Regionals: Dragonstorm, Dredge, and Zoo Testing

Here we are back at the pit, where Blue and Green has been slugging it out toe to toe for the past month.

Yes, that’s right. I’m finally going to cover Future Sight Blue, and….

Yes?

What is it?

A message from the management, you say?

Stop cowering and give it here!

Dear Prof,

In case you are not aware, being from that quaint little island with funny accents, bad teeth, and delusions of mediocrity as you are, the U.S. has their Regional qualifiers this weekend. So rather than continue your set review of a set that’s been out for two months already WHY DON’T YOU GET WITH THE PROGRAM AND TALK ABOUT STANDARD!

Yours sincerely,
The StarCityGames.com management.

…

…

…

Dan, torch the pit!

Several thousand incinerated Elves, Beasts, Wizards, Illusions, Squirrels and Wombats later…

Ah, Red. Nothing beats Red. Now where are my marshmallows?

A bunch of you out there have Regionals tomorrow (or Sunday, I don’t keep track of these things). My suggestion last week was to take Dragonstorm, as it’s the most powerful deck in Standard. Apparently that’s not enough. Some of you actually want pointers on how to play the deck. So this week, with the kind help of Spraggle and uber-judge Nick Sephton, I assembled the Hellkites of the Apocalypse and ran a three-way test session against two archetypes that have both received a shot in the arm from Future Sight.

The main deck for Dragonstorm is fairly inflexible. A couple of extra slots can be generated by cutting a Hunted Dragon, land or maybe a Gigadrowse. I’m not exactly sure what you’d play instead though.

The sideboard is a little interesting. Martyr of Ashes is recent tech I noticed after flicking through the forums. It doubles up as both a nice answer to Aggro decks and Dredge decks.

I’m not sure on the anti-control package. Some are talking about Empty the Warrens, and Zac Hill mentioned Riptide Pilferer in his article last week. I’ve always liked a Teferi of my own to be honest (or theirs, if there’s a Word of Seizing available). Detritivores might have a role if fighting over storage lands becomes important.

Other options include Extirpate to beat Project X, and Trickbind/Shadow of Doubt for the mirror. A lot will depend on what matchups you expect to face in your local area.

Now we have the newcomers, which are actually variations on various old decks from the past. The first is the much-hyped turbo-charged Dredge deck:

Dredge received some major additions from Future Sight in the form of Bridge from Below and Narcomoeba. Throw in Dread Return and Flame-Kin Zealot, and all of a sudden the deck is rushing you with 21 power worth of brain munchers from as early as turn 3.

Mike Flores took a bit of flak last week after testing the deck, which he hates, against Heezy with a Gruul deck. In an attempt to stave off the inevitable flames I’ve taken Dredge evangelist cromulantkeith’s latest listing from the forums (as of Monday this week) with the minor change of an additional Life from the Loam. As cromulantkeith has put in a lot of work with the deck and is currently reaping the rewards with a very big scythe in MTGO 8-mans, it makes sense to start with this listing (I didn’t have Frank Karsten’s listing at the point when I tested these games).

Finally, we have a blast from the past… the small fury animals are back. Zoo, with new beatstick Tarmogoyf, took a couple of slots in a German Regional. I tinkered with those listings and came up with:

Like most pundits, I added Savannah Lions. Deserts and Sulfur Elemental have declined in popularity and so the ever-efficient one drop gets to savage a new era of unsuspecting control decks.

Zoo’s scary new friend is Tarmogoyf, and boy can he get big quickly. It’s easy for the deck to get instants, sorceries, enchantments, creatures, and land into the graveyard. Quite often the Tarmogoyf is going to come in as 3/4, and possibly even bigger.

The other Future Sight addition is Horizon Canopy. This not only pumps the Tarmogoyf, but also gives the deck a means to cycle excess lands into cards once they are no longer needed. Sure they’re painful, but with 8 two-power one-drops and 12 (usually) three-power two-drops, the Zoo deck is more than capable of dishing out more than it receives.

The sideboard is a little unfocused at the moment while I try and work out which of the options are best. While some people like Call of the Herd, I’ve always been a fan of Hunted Wumpus in mirror situations. He’s just enormous. I’ve seen people also suggest Griffin Guide, which I might also try out at some point.

Saffi Eriksdotter gives some on-board Wrath recovery (as well as putting a spoke in the Project X combo), while Giant Solifuge is the guy you follow with.

Riftsweeper is the new anti-suspend tech. Munching Lotus Blooms before they hit play is his role.

The testing I did consisted of six game sets. The deck mentioned first goes first, and then after that they alternate.

Dragonstorm versus Dredge

First off, I thought I’d kick off with the battle between the two combo decks. I don’t normally like testing decks on my own, but figured this would just be a simple non-interactive race between the two decks (before boarding anyway). The goal for both decks is to try and go off the fastest. From what I’ve heard this should favor the Dredge deck, as it’s faster.

Game 1 was messy and I thought I’d go into greater detail on this one as an example of what happens when combo decks don’t quite do their thang.

Dragonstorm mulled to five and kept a hand of two land, Telling Time, Lotus Bloom, and Dragonstorm. As five-carders go, this is pretty good. Dredge also had a spicy hand of double Drowned Rusalka and Golgari Grave-Troll.

To start with, this felt like it should be a blowout for Dredge. The first Drowned Rusalka sac’ed on upkeep to dredge a Troll, hitting another Troll to dredge in draw step.

Then it got messy as the Dredge deck failed to hit a Narcomoeba or Bridge from Below. On turn 3, Dredge has a tough choice after dredging in the draw step. It turns over two Bridge, but no Narcomoeba. Turn 4 is critical for Dragonstorm, and a Lotus Bloom was about to unsuspend. Generally you have to assume Dragonstorm can kill you on the following turn, even with a mull to five.

The play I took was to sac the Rusalka, discarding Dread Return and dredging a second Imp. This finally nets a Narcomoeba. The play here is to Dread Return for the Rusalka. This would give two tokens and with two blue mana the Dredge deck can activate the Rusalka, sac’ing first a token and then itself to hopefully dredge enough cards to find a second Dread Return and enough Narcomoebas to “go off”.

Remand stops this plan.

Now Dragonstorm is staring down the barrel. A good dredge, and the Dredge deck can still kill on the next turn. Dragonstorm has an unsuspended Lotus and Rite of Flame, but can only get up to 8 mana. Telling Time finds Sleight of Hand, which finds a second Rite. Dragonstorm can go off next turn, but needs to draw a spell to be able to get the clean kill.

Dredge is out of steam and has to resort to casting Stinkweed Imp.

Dragonstorm goes off for three and shoots the zombies while leaving the Imp intact. Dredge dredges a Darkblast and makes a second Stinkweed Imp. The imps take down two dragons on the following attack step. This nets four zombies, but the dragons dying removes two Bridges.

It’s not too bad for Dredge. Although a Gemstone Mine was lost in casting the second Imp, meaning it can’t just dredge and recast an Imp, dredging hits Dread Return. Narco can attack for eight and then Dread Return back an Imp to hold off the last Dragon.

Or it would have, if Dragonstorm hadn’t just topdecked Remand.

For a matchup where I expected minimal interaction, this was a surprisingly interesting game. When you have two fast combo decks there is always the fear of the other going off, which sometimes forces players to try to go for it before they’re quite ready. Being able to hold your nerve and also being able to pick up on cues from your opponent as to how ready they are is vital in this kind of matchup. I suspect it could have gone differently had I kept the second Rusalka in play and waited to hit a Narcomoeba.

1-0

Game 2 was fairly pitiful. Dredge mulliganed and kept a one-lander that had everything else. It didn’t draw a second, and tried to kick-start the engine the hard way by discarding a Troll. Dragonstorm is equally pathetic and eventually beats its crippled opponent with a hard-cast Hellkite.

2-0

Another mulligan for Dredge. It doesn’t get the third turn kill, and Dragonstorm goes off on turn 4.

3-0

A comical game. Dredge can’t hit a Bridge, and after mulliganing Dragonstorm can’t find Dragonstorm to go with the Rituals in hand. Dredge eventually wins by milling virtually all of its library and getting the third Dread Return to stick after the first two are Remanded. This is on turn 6 or 7.

3-1

Dragonstorm mulligans to oblivion (4) and Dredge gets the dream turn 1 Magus of the Bazaar. From there it still makes a bit of a hash of it and can only kill on turn 5 after going through 50 cards in search of the first Narcomoeba.

3-2

More mulliganing to oblivion. Dredge ships back a hand of no dredgers into a one Troll, five land hand. This also goes to Paris in favor of a one-lander that also has Troll and Drowned Rusalka. Obviously the best I can dredge is four Simian Spirit Guides, and Dragonstorm gets the clean kill on turn 5.

4-2

What a mess. I don’t know what I can conclude from that debacle. It seemed more about which deck lost rather than won. Both decks seem like some crazy hissing goblin contraption. It could vaporize an entire army, or just as equally blow up in your face.

I know some people would argue these are fairly freaky, and probably not typical of normal games. Both decks mulliganed to death in a couple of games, and the Dredge deck had some absolutely diabolical dredges where it couldn’t hit either a Bridge or Narcomoeba in something like forty cards.

Hey Prof, these games look weird. Why don’t you put them down to freak chance and start again?

Uh, newsflash. They happened. I shuffled the hell out of the decks and these are the draws they gave me.

Other newsflash. You get these kind of draws in tournaments as well.

But it screws up the percentages for testing…

Sure, feel free to ask your opponent in the next tournament if he’d ever so kindly scrub out that “one” next to his name because your deck gave you a “freak” draw that “shouldn’t count.”

I’m just going to report the games as they happen. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

To be honest, I was a bit alarmed by this. Dredge got nowhere near the third turn kill and Dragonstorm only managed two really clean kills (turn 4 and turn 5) in six games. Personally I love combo decks, but on the strength of that set I’d be seriously worried about either deck’s consistency.

Now onto sideboarding.

Originally I was expecting neither deck to have anything to bring in. Then I read about Martyr of Ashes. This is a nasty bit of tech for Dragonstorm, as it fizzles their Bridges. To combat this I chucked out the Lore Brokers in favor of extra Darkblast. I think I brought in a single Blazing Archon as well.

These matches were also played solo after Spraggle and Nick had left. I couldn’t do a full set as it was four in the morning, and I do actually need to sleep at some point.

Game 1, and this was all about Dragonstorm managing Dredge’s Bridges, with first Martyr and then suiciding its own Hellkites. Dredge nibbled with some Narcomoebas, but wasn’t fast enough to stop Dragonstorm setting up a clean kill with the remaining Hellkites and Hunted Dragons.

1-0.

Turn 1 and turn 2 Thought Courier for Dredge plus Grave-Troll equals straight up third turn kill. Wow, I’d been playing the deck all day and was beginning to doubt it was even capable of it.

1-1.

Martyr of Ashes is a star from the board. It quaked two early enablers, and that was the end of Dredge for this game.

2-1.

The Martyr showed its face in next game as well, but wasn’t able to win it despite taking out two Bridges, as Dredge got the engine going and eventually overwhelmed the dragons.

2-2.

Unfortunately I ran out of time for the last two games, so this set is a little short.

I’m not sure what to conclude in this matchup. In theory before boarding, if both decks do what they’re supposed to, on paper it’s supposed to favor Dredge as it kills quicker. Unfortunately “on paper” means squat in the real world. The games are probably going to go to whichever combo doesn’t misfire spectacularly, so saying one deck has a X% over another isn’t really a cast-iron guarantee.

Bring a goat and a sacrificial knife is my advice.

After boarding, I really like the Martyr for Dragonstorm. That’s a nasty piece of disruption, and I’m not sure how Dredge combats it. The big problem the Dredge deck has is that including it doesn’t really hurt Dragonstorm’s combo. They just replace Gigadrowse, which is less than impressive in this matchup anyway. Having to deal with the Martyr can often just slow Dredge down enough for Dragonstorm to fire off its namesake.

I quite like Dragonstorm keeping Remand in for this matchup as well. Managing the Bridges with Martyr forces Dredge to try and Dread Return the Archon. Remanding a Flashbacked Dread Return after they’ve just sac’ed three guys is fairly brutal.

That was my impression in any case. I appreciate I’m more familiar with Dragonstorm so I’d be quite interested to hear from the Dredge side.

Zoogoyf versus Dragonstorm

I drafted Spraggle in on Dragonstorm for this one, as we spent the afternoon down the pub. Although I get to be all nostalgic about Savannah Lions and Lightning Helix, my gut tells me this is fairly bad for the small animals. Dragonstorm is usually a turn quicker, and there isn’t a lot Zoo can do to disrupt them other than trying to make them dead first.

Game 1, and Zoo mulliganed into a no-creature hand. Yes, this is awful against Dragonstorm, but in a tournament situation I wouldn’t necessarily know I was playing against that deck. After mulliganing this would be where you cross your fingers and hope your triple burn hand is up against another aggro deck. Fortunately I draw a Scab-Clan Mauler off the top after suspending a Rift Bolt. Unfortunately, Dragonstorm’s Gigadrowse buys them enough time to go off on turn 5.

0-1.

Both decks mulliganed and Dragonstorm can’t cast nine mana spells without any kind of acceleration.

1-1.

For me, the third game was the most interesting of the set, as it highlighted the power of the new addition, Tarmogoyf. Without it I think the Zoo deck would have lost, as Dragonstorm had one of those Hellkite-only hands that sometimes still win because a 5/5 flier with “come into play, kill your guys” is sometimes all you need. When you have a 5/6 (thanks for sac’ing that Lotus Bloom) Tarmogoyf, this actually isn’t the case. Not often you seen Hellkites chump-blocking.

2-1.

Game 4 is the reverse of game 2. Dragonstorm has all the acceleration in the world, and just can’t dig to anything to use it on.

3-1.

Going first is key for Zoogoyf, as Dragonstorm can’t quite find enough rituals and dies a turn before it would go off.

4-1.

A slow start for Zoogoyf and Dragonstorm kills on turn 6.

4-2

I love Dragonstorm, but my god can it be a frustrating deck sometimes. Consistency won out over power in this set, but again this is no guarantee. In theory Dragonstorm is the faster deck, but reality is making unwelcome intrusions at the moment.

This is a classic percentage matchup. On paper you know one deck is capable of the faster kill, but the missing question mark is how frequently it can do it.

Again, it’s with the goat and sacrificial knife. Or maybe a virgin.

Hell, just bring the knife. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of virgins at the tournament site anyway.

Badda badda Ba-doom.

Silence followed by a tumbleweed rolling by.

Sigh. I suppose it was fairly obvious.

Tarmogoyf proved its worth for me in the 3rd game. Key games like that are important signals as to whether a card should be in the deck or not. 4-2 is better than 3-3, so Tarmogoyf earns its minion for lunch this week.

Come here, Spraggle…

Onto boarding, and it’s those techy Martyr of Ashes again. Dragonstorm brings them in, as well as the three Repeal, and throws out the four Remand, a Hunted Dragon, and two Gigadrowse.

That’s what we did. On reflection you probably keep both Hunted Dragon, as straight-up casting the Hunted Dragon isn’t so bad when you’ve got a Martyr on hand to mop up those pesky knights.

Zoo brings in the equally techy Riftsweepers. Dragonstorm often needs a turn 1 Lotus Bloom for the fourth turn kill and shuffling them back into the library is actually nastier than just killing them, as it gives Dragonstorm another late game dead draw.

Game 1 and Martyr shows her worth by taking down a Kird Ape and two Scab-Clan Mauler. Are you watching and taking notes, Pyroclasm?

It’s not enough though, as Zoo has the nuts and unloads enough burn straight to the face to take the game.

1-0.

Oof. Another mulligan to oblivion (4) for Dragonstorm.

Ah, but of course we should discount this as draws this bad never happen in real tournaments. And in reality, Red decks are too underpowered to ever beat real decks. The wins they actually pick up are actually existential anomalies and just figments of your imagination.

2-0.

Martyr is brutal. This time she wrecks the board and the Hellkites of the Apocalypse mop up.

2-1.

Martyr again. She kills a Kird Ape and Scab-Clan Mauler and this buys enough time for a Dragonstorm for two to take the game.

2-2.

Triple Lotus Bloom into fourth turn Dragonstorm. Aggro isn’t beating that even if it does go first.

2-3.

Martyr again buys time to set up a Dragonstorm for three on turn 6.

2-4.

Big kudos to whoever originally suggested Martyr of Ashes for the sideboard of Dragonstorm. This is a fantastic sideboard card. The main strength Aggro decks have against Dragonstorm is that although they can’t really do anything about the turn 4 kill, they can play the percentage game. Dragonstorm isn’t always going to kill by turn 4 or even 5, whereas Aggro decks do.

Martyr is vicious. You generally save her for turn 3 where you can make and sacrifice her in the same turn. This is usually good enough, as wiping out all of Zoo’s creatures buys the Dragonstorm deck time to find the pieces to go off.

Because of this I don’t really fancy the Riftsweepers. The theory behind them is that they reduce the percentage chance of Dragonstorm’s crucial turn 4 kill by taking out Lotus Blooms. However, if Dragonstorm has access to a mini Wrath of God the race becomes less important.

While I haven’t tested it, it might be worth trying out a land destruction sideboard package of Stone Rains and Cryoclasms. You still lose to Dragonstorm’s perfect draw, but it might give you more of a chance of fighting their mediocre ones by mana-screwing them.

Dredge versus Zoogoyf

Now it’s Spraggle’s turn to take on the Zoogoyf deck, as I try and get my head round the Dredge deck. One of the criticisms levelled at Mike was he took the wrong role by trying to combo out as fast as possible against Gruul. Apparently the better game plan in matches against Aggro decks is to use Stinkweed Imp to hold the fort and go for plan B of enormous Trolls.

So my plan here revolves around Stinkweed Imp rather than Bridge from Below. If I get zombies off the Bridge, great, but most of the time I have to assume it’s now a support card rather than the focus of the deck.

Game 1 goes exactly to plan. Stinky holds them off until big Trolls come out to beat the small animals to death.

1-0.

Game 2 doesn’t. Rusalka’s keep the Bridges out of the graveyard and the Trolls are just too slow.

1-1.

I screwed up game 3 by not mulliganing to five cards. I don’t have a Green source for Life from the Loam and don’t hit a third land for Stinky.

1-2.

Both decks mulliganed again. A Lore Broker goes up in flames and the deck can’t set Imp into Troll fast enough in the face of Watchwolf and Tarmogoyf.

1-3.

This was another one of those games that makes me think Dredge just straight up hates me. I was able to hold off Zoo with Stinky, but my dredges were flat out horrible. I can’t hit Dread Return and only find one Bridge. Zoogoyf builds up an army and eventually overwhelms me when a dying Gemstone Mine (I think I might really dislike the Mines in this deck) leaves Dredge crippled.

1-4.

Dredge wins. Or rather Zoogoyf is horribly screwed and doesn’t put up much of a fight. Dredge wasn’t exactly emphatic in its victory either.

2-4.

I think this might be a nastier matchup for Dredge than Gruul. Combo plan A is virtually impossible because it’s easy for Zoo to kill one of its creatures to remove the Bridge. Plan B takes it back to pre-Future Sight dredge decks (although free Narcomoebas aren’t completely ineffectual) and the Zoogoyf deck is running enough burn to keep Stinkweed Imp from ever getting in the way.

I found myself hampered by the low land count and both Gemstone Caverns and Gemstone Mines. The Caverns because they usually only tap for colorless, and the Mines because they die at inopportune moments. I felt hampered by the manabase a lot when I tried to switch to a more attrition-based strategy.

Sideboarding Dredge is a nightmare because there are so many pieces that are vital to how the deck works. With Leyline of the Void or Tormod’s Crypt potentially lurking in every sideboard I almost feel obligated to bring in Krosan Grip. I also want Darkblast and the Archons, but what the hell do I take out?

At this point it was past midnight, and I was puzzling it out at my house with Spraggle and Nick Sephton.

The truth is the Dredge deck is very hard to play and even harder to sideboard. Both Nick and I were playing the Dredge deck, and we failed to agree on virtually any of the plays and still didn’t know afterwards which person was right.

My first suggestion was to take out the Bridges and combo, but that’s awful as it turns you into a bad pre-Future Sight version of the deck. Too slow to do anything.

I won’t include that savage drubbing.

The other plan is to work round them removing the Bridge by boarding in Leyline of the Void. That way their creatures never hit the graveyard. I think we opted for the Leylines, Grips, Archons, and Darkblast and took out most of the enablers as they just go up in flames in any case. Instead of kick-starting the engine by using an enabler to discard a Troll, you get it going with Darkblast instead.

In theory.

Zoo kicks out some Brute Force and cackles manically as it brings in a pair of Jotun Grunt.

Game 1 and the combo deck curse continues with another mulligan to four.

Unclean! Unclean!

Don’t let me near the combo decks. I’m turning them into muck at the moment with just one touch of my calloused finger.

Dredge has fun messing around with lands. Zoogoyf has fun ripping Dredge’s arms and legs off.

0-1.

Game 2. I remember Grunts from Columbus. They’re pretty mean on graveyard-based strategies.

0-2.

Vindication for Leyline. First turn Leyline worked an absolute treat. Dredge dredged three untouchable Bridges and Dread Returned an Archon to finish the game.

1-2.

Another mulligan to oblivion for the Dredge deck. With Zoogoyf mulliganing as well, I think that makes a combined total of 8730573 billion mulligans for the day.

1-3.

Dredge just couldn’t get the engine online fast enough. While it managed to Dread Return an Archon, it was on low enough life that Zoogoyf simply needed to topdeck a burn spell in four draw steps to win. Char appeared in draw step number three.

1-4.

Both decks mulled to five, making that a combined total of 49482750278945 billion mulligans. For a combo deck, Dredge actually mulligans pretty well. Generally it uses the graveyard as its hand, and so any opening hand that features a dredge card and way to get it into the graveyard is fine.

Zoogoyf? Not so good with the five-card opening hand.

2-4.

The strategy I liked most was dropping the first turn Leyline to protect the Bridges. Zoo’s plan of burn your Imp and charge is considerably weaker when you keep spawning Zombie tokens to replace every dead monster. Mulliganing just becomes hellish though, as there seem to be so many separate pieces you want to see in the opening hand so you don’t really have the luxury of mulliganing aggressively to the Leyline.

To start with I insisted we board the Krosan Grip. My reasoning was you need something to kill Leyline. I’m starting to come to the conclusion there just isn’t space. If they’re prepared to board in a Leyline they can’t cast normally and mulligan until they see it, then just shake their hand and sign the slip. Unless Dredge becomes heavily dominant, I don’t think most decks have the luxury in such a diverse field of being able to do this. If you have to fiddle about waiting for Grip against an aggro deck, you’re probably dead anyway. I think I’d probably just take the chance and leave them out unless I actually see the Leyline. There’s so many other cards you need to bring in.

Enablers or no enablers is also a nasty choice. Nick was convinced we’d brought in too many targets and left out the engine. As I never saw a Blue wizard live long enough to ever actually activate, I’m not sure there’s much point to the Magus of Bazaar, Couriers, or Brokers (Rusalka is fine though) after boarding. However, Spraggle did point out it was much easier to set Stinkweed Imps on fire with no wizards to distract him.

To be honest, I’m uncertain on this one. Without the enablers the deck just feels too slow, but even when they’re in the deck you don’t get to use them as they go up in flames before they ever activate most of the time.

Final Conclusions: Dragonstorm

Martyr of Ashes is wonderful. Put four in your board right now.

The consistency of the deck scares me. If you believe you’re a better player than the majority of your Regionals field, you might want to play something that actually puts your fate in your own hands. No amount of skill will save you if the deck has an off day.

I might be tempted to repay a visit to the Cult of Grozoth just to improve the chances of getting that Dragonstorm, especially in a more aggressive field.

Other than that, play Martyr of Ashes in the board.

Oh, and play Martyr of Ashes in the board.

Final Conclusions: Zoogoyf

I was very impressed with how this deck played. Both Tarmogoyf and Horizon Canopy are really good additions. About halfway through our testing I suddenly remembered Giant Growth was still actually legal in Standard, which meant I couldn’t for the life of me work out why the deck was running Brute Force instead, especially as the deck is far more greedy for Green mana (Forest for Kird Ape, Horizon Canopy). In an aggro field, the Giant Growths are fine. If you expect something different then they might want to be the 4th Rift Bolt and 3rd Scorched Rusalka.

The sideboard is still a mess. I’m trying to think of when I’d actually want to board either the Hooligans or Ronom Unicorn in. There’s probably a perfectly good reason, especially when the metagame is about fifteen different decks. What I’d like to try is boarding in eight Stone Rains. Turn 1 2/3, turn 2 3/3, followed by a Cryoclasm or Stone Rain is probably a wrecking ball against non-aggro decks.

However, slamming a Stone Rain when your opponent is on three life is infinitely less exciting than a Lightning Helix.

Final Conclusions: Dredge

Flame shields at the ready for this one. I don’t hate the deck. I really want to love it. But. I. Can’t. Get. The. Damn. Thing. To. Work. For. Me!

After actually trying to play the deck I do have a bit of sympathy for Flores (somebody please shoot me now!). However, I don’t think the deck is total rubbish, and I’m almost certain in the hands of someone who really knows what they’re doing with the deck then they’re probably going to make it sing.

For me, it makes funny farting sounds then disassociates into a steaming pile of mush.

The deck looks phenomenally difficult to mulligan, sideboard, and even play optimally. If you haven’t made up your mind yet what to play for Regionals, then I would not recommend playing this deck. If you do, you’ll be languishing on the bottom tables and trying to work out why other people playing the deck are smashing the tournament.

The answer: they’ve been playing it solidly for the past month and have worked out exactly which game plan to switch to for each matchup.

I’m really not certain about the listing I had. I think I would have preferred more lands (and definitely not ones that just keep fecking dying!). I think I might try and start again and build it differently. I’ll probably inevitably end up with something similar to cromulantkeith’s listing at the end in any case, but during the process I might have figured out how deck actually plays.

Anyway, that’s a long look at three of the decks you might expect to see or play over the weekend. I hope this has been useful.

Thanks for reading.

Prof