One Step Ahead - Dredgevine in Minneapolis *2nd*

Very few times in my life have I been as successful with a deck on Magic Online as I have been with Pyromancer’s Ascension. There are a few decks where I’ve gone on absurd runs, being up 100 tickets at the end of each day with a record in the region of 25-2. At some point, I may even copy PV’s article on the best decks I’ve ever played. In the meantime, there is Pyromancer’s Ascension.

My preparation for Nationals was to play Ascension for a day and make about 100 tickets. The next day I would blow my brains out in the M11 queues. Then I would repeat the process. I went 2-2 at Nationals, but it very easily could have been 3-1, or even 4-0, had I had the Polymorph sideboard.

Still, post Nationals, I knew that I didn’t want to run Ascension at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Minneapolis. Playing the deck is a mentally draining process, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself through that over nine or ten rounds. Thinking back to Grand Prix: DC, and how easy it was to just attack with Vengevines and Bloodbraid Elves, made me want to go down that route again. Beatdown gets a bad rap nowadays, but I had an urge to go back down that route.

Ochoa’s and Brad’s Dredgevine list from Nationals was alright, but it had some problems. The first that I saw was that there just wasn’t enough to “dredge” into. You could have Hedron Crab going, but brick a bunch and lose. I wanted to turn Hedron Crab into a true card drawing engine. Missing is unacceptable, especially since there are plenty of graveyard-friendly cards in Standard right now.

I turned to my old friend Sedraxis Specter, and from there added Bloodbraid Elf and Cunning Sparkmage. Ancient Ziggurat, while not good with Unearth, was what brought it all together. After all, without Ziggurat, you can’t cast Specter on turn 2.

First, the list I played:

Dredgevine

Gerry Thompson

2nd Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 08-29-2010

Standard

Creatures (36)

Lands (24)

Sideboard

Ignore that sideboard for the most part. The maindeck was solid, though. I don’t think I’d change a card.

Andrew Lipkin and I played some heads-up queues on Magic Online in order to prepare for the tournament, and it went well. We won far more than we lost, and we figured out things like Bloodbraid Elf plus Unified Will isn’t a combo.

Extractor Demon is great, but you don’t need a bunch of them, especially without Looters to pitch them to. You see enough cards in a game to find one, and you very rarely need multiples, so it was an easy cut to fit in the Aether Adept. Baneslayer Angel was a huge problem, and Adept usually bought you the time you needed to alpha strike them twice.

The sideboard was a mess. We had a list of various cards that we could’ve played, and in the end I chose rather poorly. Disfigure over Doom Blade was because of RDW, and because it kills both Sparkmage and Fauna Shaman from Naya. The real problem was Linvala, so I should have played answers to that card, especially considering it’s in Mythic, Naya, and some Soul Sisters builds.

Cunning Sparkmage was a problem, but it wasn’t nearly as bad for our four-color deck as it was for Ochoa’s Looter deck. In addition to removal and Pithing Needles, we had our own Sparkmages. Our guys were also a little bigger, so there was no huge need to worry.

Pyroclasm effects are great against this version, although you can play around them to an extent. Post board, you usually take out Doppelgangers against Control. They are going to get blown out by board sweepers before you can get value out of it. The post board games especially are attrition based, so Doppelganger, while normally good when you’re in a race situation, isn’t quite as valuable.

The tournament was 240 players, so that meant a light nine rounds. One 7-2 could make it if things went right (cue foreshadowing). Thanks to Tim Hunt and Forest Ryan for providing me and Andrew with most of our decks!

Round 1 and 2: UW Control

I predicted that this matchup would be rather easy. However, as I went to sideboard for game 2, I realized I didn’t have much for them, which was probably a mistake. Unified Will would be excellent, but it doesn’t play well with Bloodbraid Elf. I tried to minimize the amount of things I could BBE into that wouldn’t be a creature, so I could keep my Vengevines strong, and thus I didn’t sideboard much. Pithing Needles are almost always good against them, but the mileage of Nature’s Claim may vary.

I lost a game in each match to Baneslayer Angel, although those games were really close.

Round 3: UG Tokens

In game 1 I kept a sketchy hand, but he couldn’t find Overrun, Eldrazi Monument, or Beastmaster Ascension to punish my slow draw. After realizing that he probably had few outs to my problematic cards, I resolved to mulligan more aggressively.

Second game I had a quick Sparkmage, but Jace found him a Pithing Needle that he had enough foresight to bring in. Still, his puny guys didn’t compare well to my Vengevines, and thankfully he never saw another mass pump effect.

Round 4: Soul Sisters

I mulliganed to five, but quickly made up for that with Fauna Shaman. While he was gaining a decent amount of life and drawing some cards with Survival Caches, I was hitting him for about 20 a turn. With no Pridemates or Ascendants in sight, he fell eventually.

Second game, he led with Soul Warden and followed that up with Ajani’s Pridemate and a backbreaking turn 4 Linvala. I chumped his large Pridemate with my freshly cast Fauna Shaman, keeping my Crab around, but I regretted it.

On turn 5, he cast another Linvala. I calmly informed him that they were both dead, and went on to win the game a few turns later. I was going to play a couple turns and concede, but thankfully I played on.

Round 5: Soul Sisters

Game 1 was close. He peeled a Ranger of Eos with an empty hand which allowed him to gain life and get a key fifth Soul Warden. With those, it was nearly impossible to keep him lower than 30, so I couldn’t really attack into his double Serra’s Ascendant.

I had two Hedron Crabs in play with four land, and I started eyeing up his library. Sadly, I never got the chance to go for the decking plan, as I drew a solid string of useless creatures. I peeled a fetch land the turn after he started attacking and managed to Survival all but one creature out of my library. If I peeled another fetch land, I think he was dead, but he had an Elspeth to get through those last points.

Second game I kept Hedron Crab, Fauna Shaman, and perfect mana with multiple fetch lands. I considered not playing Crab on turn 1, but my deck is all creatures, so the odds of drawing one are incredibly high.

Other people commented that this was a bad keep, including my opponent, but that is ignorant. First of all, this is not a normal deck. Second, I was playing versus a pretty bad deck, in that he can’t kill my creatures. I had two great creatures for the matchup, and if I draw a single creature, I am confident that I win that game. Remember, Bloodbraid Elf brings back Vengevine all on its own. This isn’t Ochoa’s Dredge deck.

Anyway, he curved out perfectly with Soul Warden into Pridemates, and on turn 5, I showed him the five lands I had in my hand.

Round 6: Jund

It’s about here where my tournament starts getting tough. My opponent this round is Adam Gunderson, the man who got me into Magic. While you might not have heard his name or be threatened by his goofy exterior, the man can game. He’s made multiple Top 8s in the last few months, including an MMS and multiple PTQs.

Game 1 I killed him turn 4. Naturally, I had to rub it in by telling him it was the best draw I had all tournament, which was true.

Second game was going well until he dropped Siege-Gang Commander. That and Grave Titan can be pretty scary, since they give the Jund player a ton of card advantage that they wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m more than fine with trading one-for-one over and over again, but those cards just tend to kill you.

He kept it incredibly tight, and while I probably could have drawn a few different cards to kill him, he went for the throat to give me as few turns as possible.

Adam stabilized game 3 relatively early with multiple Thrinaxes, which is one of the best cards against Dredgevine. However, that just meant that I had to take things to the air with a hardcast Extractor Demon. He could kill it, but the unearth would get him, so there was nothing he could do.

Round 7: Naya

This round was against another local ringer named Josh Day. Again, don’t just assume that because you haven’t heard of him, he isn’t any good. I can almost guarantee that if you play Magic Online, you’ve lost to him at one point or another.

He was gaming with John Penick “Wooly Doctars” deck that he and Bobby Graves played at Nationals. Their deck featured Ancient Ziggurats along with Wooly Thoctar to ensure constant pressure and good cascades. All that they had to cut was some of the crappy tutor targets which are unnecessary anyway.

I got crushed first game, despite playing a turn 2 Sedraxis Specter. Soon he was empty handed, but had two Fauna Shamans, and unlike me in round 5, he figured out how to draw a creature to kill me while I missed some land drops.

Second game, I Sparkmaged his Birds on turn 2. Without it, he was stuck with only Green sources.

In the final game, I think I played pretty badly. I didn’t play Noble Hierarch turn 1 in order to have a creature for Fauna Shaman, which was correct. Then I tutored up a second Fauna Shaman, presumably to get the engine going, but I only had one Green source. Fast forward a little, and I’m being attacked by a five-power Vengevine when I’m at nine. I decline to block with a Fauna Shaman, as I think that I’m going to need that to swarm him.

Next turn he cascades into a Knight of the Reliquary, and suddenly I have to be very careful. I knew that I needed to Survival for a different colored creature, presumably Cunning Sparkmage. But then he blocked with his Knight, which gave me concern. Clearly he was up to something. I didn’t put him on exactly Sejiri Steppe in hand, but it seemed like it was something like that.

Regardless, I needed to get Sparkmage to start shooting down his team so that I could alpha strike for the win. Facing down lethal, he conceded, and then started explaining his master plan. He did have the Steppe in hand, and hoped that by blocking with his Knight I’d be careless. His plan was a little sketchy because tutoring for Sparkmage was a pretty clear line of play that I needed to make, which consequently also shot his plan to hell.

Josh still had an out. He had a Linvala that he could have played, but I think that I only would have shot something if I needed it to kill him on the next turn. If I don’t shoot something there, I’m still dead to Linvala, Steppe, and Hierarchs on the next turn.

Sitting at 6-1 was nice, and the tournament wasn’t about to get any easier.

Round 8: DJ Kastner with Uwr

DJ, or Don as he would prefer to be called now (seeing as how he’s not 11, or on Full House), is another ringer, although this time from Michigan. I caught a glimpse of his deck, but didn’t quite have an idea of how hateful it was.

I briefly entertained him with the notion of drawing, but we didn’t know how good our tiebreakers were. Plus, he seemed to think it was a good matchup, which totally threw me for a loop. Most UW decks should be easy, but I guess most UW decks don’t have every removal spell under the sun, Ajani Vengeant, cheap sweepers, and Relic of Progenitus.

I annihilated him game 1, which again left me wondering how he could possibly consider this a favorable matchup.

Games 2 and 3, every threat I played died. Overall, it was kinda close, but not really.

Round 9: Jason Ford with Wrapter Mythic

The standings after Round 8 looked like this:

1 Babar, Zee Shan – 22 – 74.8512 – 82.3529 – 67.1508
2 Paul, Ryan – 22 – 61.6071 – 87.5000 – 54.6378
3 Kinsella, Dana T – 21 – 73.9583 – 68.1818 – 64.9687

4 Patraw, Blake – 21 – 66.5625 – 75.0000 – 60.0327
5 Kastner, Donald – 21 – 65.4018 – 71.4286 – 59.1556
6 Ellis, Ian J – 21 – 63.5417 – 70.0000 – 55.7299
7 Bernal, Joe w – 21 – 54.9107 – 71.4286 – 51.8765
8 Weichel, Jordan T – 21 – 50.5208 – 77.7778 – 50.1201
9 Ford, Jason – 19 – 50.5952 – 75.4386 – 49.9422
10 Thompson, Gerry – 18 – 64.1369 – 61.9048 – 60.3255
11 Meyer, Justin R – 18 – 62.7679 – 66.6667 – 59.9592
12 Gunderson, Adam S – 18 – 61.9792 – 73.6842 – 54.4517

As it was, the Top 8 was a mortal lock. In theory, Jason could end up with better breakers than Jordan, but it wasn’t likely. The 7th and 8th seeds decided to play it out, so that meant if their match finished, I would make Top 8 at 7-2 if I won. Interesting, to say the least.

If they drew, I would concede to Jason to give him a shot to get 8th, but in this case, I had to play it out.

I don’t exactly remember game 1, but game 2 he mulliganed to four and I mulled to five. I kept a one-lander with Fauna Shaman and developed nicely, while he struggled but eventually landed a Linvala. My Shaman was active for too long though, and despite most of my dudes being neutered, a mob of Vengevines and Vengevine wannabes took him down.

I figured out that Joe Bernal did me the favor of opening up a slot in Top 8, and the math looked good for me. I didn’t want to get too excited in case I missed, but I was pretty sure I made it. A few nerve wracking minutes later, and they announced the Top 8.

My first matchup? The man that was responsible for getting me into Top 8 in the first place: Joe Bernal, playing Jund.

In the first game, he missed some land drops, and by the time he started casting real spells like Bloodbraid Elf, he was dead to my unearth Lava Spikes.

Turn 2 Sedraxis Specter punished him in game 2, forcing him to discard all of his crappy Doom Blades. After Specter started picking apart his hand, Crab started getting to work. With the ground clogged up, winning from there was simple.

Top 4: Jund, again

I started with turn 1 and turn 2 Crabs that eagerly got to work. By turn 5, I was attacking with all four Vengevines with plenty of unearth stuff for backup.

Game 2 went long. I got hit with two board sweeper Jund Charms, and another one to clear my graveyard, but I still managed to fight on. In the long run, it didn’t matter as long as he didn’t have any way to actually finish me off. Vengevines held off his ground guys, and eventually I burned him out with unearth guys.

Finals: Jund… Again… But this time played by Ian “The Warrior” Ellis

Ian is a good friend of mine, but I hadn’t really gotten to know him until we shared a flight back from the StarCityGames.com Atlanta Open. Who would have thought that a few months later we’d meet in the finals of another SCG Open? Either way, we were both walking away satisfied. We split the money and the points didn’t matter. Both of us would be happy to see the other win, and there was nothing at stake.

And with that in mind, I should have mulliganed my hand game 1. Instead, I was a little too slow, but again, I could have beaten anything other than a giant threat like the Grave Titan he played.

In the second game I cast Bloodbraid Elves on turns 3, 4, and 5, while The Warrior tried to play catch-up. He couldn’t.

In the final game, my luck ran out. I got Pulsed, Jund Charmed, and then went all in to put him to one, but couldn’t close. I needed to a draw a creature in the two-turn window I had, but missed, and that was that.

Still, splitting the finals was about the best I could have asked for, especially after being 7-2.

In retrospect, I’m incredibly glad I played the deck that I did, but it could have been better. I knew going in that my sideboard was a little loose, but I couldn’t think of anything stronger. The plan against Naya was awkward, since you wanted to stop their Sparkmages and Linvalas, but didn’t have enough answers.

I’ve got a little tournament this weekend, but tech wants to be free. This is what I would play now:

Dredgevine

Gerry Thompson

Test deck on 09-05-2010

Standard

Creatures (37)

Lands (23)

Sideboard

I considered Maelstrom Pulse over Doom Blade, but that would require you to side in another land. Cutting a land and having four Ziggurats makes a three-drop very hard to cast, but it also gives you game against UW.

Fatestitcher might be better than Aether Adept, but I’m not entirely sure.

Vithian Stinger is something I wanted to add, but Sparkmage is a better natural draw. At least this way you can Needle theirs (or their Knights so they can’t Bojuka Bog you) and still have some pinger action.

Unified Will is something that I think you need, despite the Bloodbraid interaction. Against decks like UW and Valakut, you can afford to side down to one Bloodbraid to compensate.

I feel like there should be an Acidic Slime or Qasali Pridemage in the 75, but there isn’t anything I want to cut.

That’s almost it for me, but before I go, just let me say one thing: Sneak Attack is a bad deck in Legacy.

GerryT