Peebles Primers — Green/Black Dredge

Now that Magic Online is back to its usual self, I am back to my usual self as well, running queues all day out here in the desert. After I bought up Groundbreakers and Timbermares and started hitting events with Mono-Green Aggro, it became apparent to me that the deck had taken a huge hit in power. One string of first-round exits later, I was looking for a new deck.

One deck that had caught my eye many months ago was the Green/Black Dredge deck that killed people with huge Trolls, huge lands, or huge Angels. At the time, I dismissed it, partially because I didn’t want to acquire the cards and partially because it seemed like a fluke. In one of my post-PC MGA queue runs, though, I hit the Dredge deck. I laughed when he cast, of all things, Green Sindbad on turn 2, but I stopped laughing when I realized you didn’t have to discard the card if you dredged it. [Fa’adiyah Seer, for those playing along at home. – Craig.]

Green Sindbad let the Dredge deck draw two cards a turn. Suddenly it seemed like it might really be worth trying this creation out. I dug through my clan forums to find the list that one member had gotten off of the original creator, Brian Fulop. In its untuned, pre-Planar Chaos state, the list was:

4 Greenseeker
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Angel of Despair
2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
2 Bogardan Hellkite

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Life from the Loam
2 Darkblast
2 Nightmare Void

4 Delirium Skeins
4 Dread Return
1 Smallpox

4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Llanowar Wastes
2 Golgari Rot Farm
6 Forest
3 Swamp
3 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
2 Ghost Quarter

Sideboard:
2 Darkblast
1 Smallpox
4 Firemane Angel
4 Shadow of Doubt
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Indrik Stomphowler

At first, the only thing I was worried about was fitting in four Fa’adiyah Seers. The two Elves of Deep Shadow were very unimpressive, and the one Smallpox was very random. That gave me three slots, and I moved one Nightmare Void to the sideboard for the fourth Seer, dropping the sideboarded Smallpox as well.

I started running queues with the deck, and as I did so I started to realize that my sideboard wasn’t as good as it could be. There was basically no reason at all to have four Darkblasts after sideboarding; they’re only coming in against Boros and MGA, and there are certainly better cards for those matchups. One card that’s been floating around PEs for a while is Blazing Archon, so I replaced the two Darkblasts with two Archons.

Next up was Tormod’s Crypt. This being a Dredge deck, the opening seven and then one or two draw steps were really all that you got out of your deck before you started dredging Trolls or Imps every turn. When my graveyard hate is going to be in my opening hand anyways, I see absolutely no reason to run Tormod’s Crypt over Leyline of the Void. Even if you do happen to draw it on turn 2 or 3, you are certainly able to hard cast it.

Eventually I decided that I liked Blazing Archon so much that I wanted to run more than just two of them. It occurred to me that in every matchup where Firemane Angels were coming in, Archons were too. In addition, I would usually rather dredge past an Archon than an Angel, so I cut one Firemane Angel for the third Blazing Archon. With three of them in the deck, it’s much easier to hit one in a relevant timeframe against decks that are threatening to kill you as fast as possible, such as MGA.

I also toyed around with another card that ended up not making the cut: Traitor’s Clutch. The Clutch let me beat decks like Angelfire very easily, since Shadowing up a Svogthos usually ends the game then and there, even when they have their Sacred Mesa online. However, sometimes it would run into Remand, and it just didn’t seem to be worth the space it needed. In the fight of cards that are applicable in very narrow situations, Leyline of the Void won out over the Clutch and a fourth Firemane.

With the Seers in the maindeck and the sideboard ready to fight the big decks, the list was:

G/B Dredge

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Standard

Creatures (25)

Lands (21)

Spells (14)

Sideboard

Matchups

Dralnu du Louvre (Favorable):
The gameplan against control usually comes in two phases. In the early game, you’re trying to get your lands and/or dredgers going with Greenseeker and Fa’adiyah Seer. Ideally you’ll have a Delirium Skeins, but it’s not necessary. You want to dredge as much as you can, as fast as you can, so that you can hit both your Nightmare Void and a copy of Life from the Loam. The Void will strip their hand out, and then Life from the Loam will bring back Svogthos. The only way for a stock Dralnu list to beat Svogthos is by chump-blocking with Bat Tokens, so dredging into a Darkblast can contain that potential solution. If you can’t contain their Vampire, you’re going to have to clear the way for a Dread Return on Akroma. If you can get Akroma into play, they will have to cast Damnation, at which point you can go back to winning with a very angry land.

Extirpate can complicate things a little bit, but it is usually only a small speed bump. Oftentimes, they will remove all of your Grave-Trolls, since they’re your best dredger and a legitimate threat late game. Sometimes they’ll hold it as a Dread Return counterspell, killing all of your Akromas after you sacrifice your board. The real danger, though, is that they’ll get every copy of Svogthos out of your deck. This requires that the Dralnu player both realizes that the card is the threat, and that you mill a copy before you can play one.

The sideboarding plan for this matchup is extremely straightforward: you swap one Darkblast for the Nightmare Void. The reason for leaving the second Darkblast in, as opposed to bringing in a "lucky" Leyline or Shadow of Doubt is that it can stop a Vampire from halting your offense. It is fairly common for the Dralnu player to have to drop the Vampire and immediately block with one of the tokens. A Darkblast after combat leaves them with no bats, and no way to beat Svogthos.

Dragonstorm (Very Close, slightly Favorable):
There are Dragonstorm draws that you simply will not beat. Sometimes they will suspend a Bloom, take a full hit from Delirium Skeins, and still go off on turn 4. Sometimes they won’t do anything until they Remand your Skeins or Nightmare Void, and then they’ll go off the next turn. On the other hand, when they’re not going off on turn 4 or 5, you have a very good shot at winning the game. Stinkweed Imp essentially forces them to kill you with Hellkite triggers, which means they can’t just ritual out a Hellkite and swing three times. Delirium Skeins is often more potent than usual, since suspended Lotus Blooms reduce their hand size to the point where you might actually Mind Twist them, or will at least knock them down to just a card or two. Nightmare Void will lock the game up if you can get to the point where you have time to cast it. Eventually you’ll be able to bring back a Troll or a Svogthos, and kill them in one hit.

Another path to victory, as opposed to the long grind, is to reanimate an Akroma as early as possible. She still won’t stop them from Storming you for twenty, but she will end the game, usually just two turns later, and the only way for a Dragon to get past her is if they have a Gigadrowse to lock her down for a turn.

You sideboard in the Nightmare Void and all four Shadow of Doubts for the two Darkblasts, Angel of Despair, and one each of Life from the Loam and Fa’adiyah Seer. Many versions of Dragonstorm run Gigadrowse these days, and a lot of the time they have no reason to board it out against you, especially since it stops Akroma from killing them, so Shadow of Doubt isn’t going to make this matchup into an auto-win. On the other hand, it is usually going to slow them down considerably, and with Skeins and Nightmare Void on the job, that’s exactly what you want. The Darkblasts are very obvious cuts, and the Angel is just a Hellkite that can’t burn them out. You trim one copy of Life from the Loam and Seer because they are slow cards. Either the game will end before you can get set up, or you’ll make the game last forever, in which case you don’t need the full set of either.

Kyoto U/R Tron (Even):
When you lose to U/R Tron, it’s going to be to a Demonfire for the better part of twenty; Sulfur Elementals and Hellkites do not do a very good job of getting past Grave-Trolls and Stinkweed Imps. Luckily, the Dredge deck packs a couple of Ghost Quarters, so keeping them off of lethal Demonfire shouldn’t be too hard once you dredge past a Life from the Loam. On the other hand, your twelve utility guys are not going to stick around too often against this deck, so make sure that you’re not just running them out there for no reason, or you’ll be very unhappy when your BoP and Seer die to Electrolyze.

Your plan for actually winning the game is pretty much the same as it is against any control deck: attack with Svogthos or Grave-Trolls. They might have a handful of chump-blockers, but eventually they’ll run out of idiots and your 20/20 land will take it home. As usual, if you can resolve a Dread Return on Akroma, that will do the trick too. They can get their Tron online and then bounce her with Repeal, but if you’re being vigilant with Ghost Quarter, then they’re probably not going to have time to do that before she swings three times.

Sideboarding gives you the extra Nightmare Void as well as two Indrik Stomphowlers. The only targets that they would have if your opponent failed to sideboard would be Signets, which are more than fine to blow up. However, there’s an extremely high chance that they’ll be bringing in Serrated Arrows and Annex. Arrows are yet another way to kill off your very-powerful utility creatures, and Annex is an answer to Svogthos. To make room for these three, take out the two Darkblasts and one Bogardan Hellkite. Hellkite doesn’t have much to hit other than the face, but it’s always nice to have one in the deck so that you can end the game a turn early with a Lava Axe.

Boros (Close, but Favorable):
Your utility guys will be dead almost as soon as they hit the board, assuming your opponent wants to win the game. They will have some combination of Rift Bolt, Sudden Shock, Seal of Fire, Lightning Helix, and Icatian Javelineers, so it’s certainly a good idea to throw back the one-land Birds hand. Your goal is to stem the bleeding as much as possible with Darkblasts and Stinkweed Imps, until you can Dread Return a Hellkite for the Plague Wind or an Akroma to lock the game up in two turns. There is a very real danger that they will put six power on the table and then shock your Imp every turn until you’re dead, so upgrading to massive Trolls for blocking duty is recommended.

You get to bring in three Firemane Angels and three Blazing Archons to shore things up for games two and three. It’s pretty obvious what Blazing Archon does, but Boros can still burn you out or throw a handful of spells at the man himself and then swing for the win. That’s just the problem that Firemane Angel fixes, bringing you out of burn range and eventually putting the game completely out of reach with an Archon on the table. Cuts to fit these six in are the Nightmare Void, two Akromas, the Angel of Despair, one Life from the Loam, and one Seer. Void and Loam are both too slow to affect the game under normal circumstances, and the Seer is your least important utility guy, so he gets the trim. The Angels come out because they don’t stop you from getting run over by four tiny idiots nearly as well as Blazing Archon.

Angelfire (Unfavorable):
This deck contains all of the bad (for you) parts of the other control decks. Demonfires to burn you out, Sacred Mesa to lock out your fatties, threats that fight through Stinkweed Imps, burn to kill your utility guys, and so on. Game 1 is an incredibly uphill battle. You have exactly one way to kill a Sacred Mesa, and if one of those comes out then you’re not going to be able to win unless you get very lucky. Unlike Skeletal Vampire, Sacred Mesa does not go away when they Wrath your Akroma, so you can’t just shift back into Svogthos mode after they clear out your Angel. There isn’t a single stock Angelfire list that I know of, so I’ll mention a handful of cards that you might want to worry about. Crovax, Ascendant Hero is a nightmare for you. He completely shuts off your utility guys and he turns off Stinkweed Imp’s combat ability. Boom / Bust isn’t the world’s worst deal for you, since you’ve got Life from the Loam, but going down to zero permanents against a squadron of Lightning or Firemane Angels is still going to lose you the game.

After sideboarding, you’ve got an extra Nightmare Void and two Stomphowlers. Don’t be afraid to kill Signets with the Indriks, since they are relatively hard for Angelfire to kill, outside of a Wrath. Taxing their mana and forcing a Wrath is a great way to clear a path for a reanimated fatty to take the game out fast. Make sure, though, that when you destroy a Signet you aren’t about to lose to Sacred Mesa. Take out the Darkblasts and one Hellkite for these three.

R/B Storm (Unfavorable):
The Ignite Memories / Empty the Warrens storm deck is usually thought of as a worse version of Dragonstorm. Against the Dredge deck, though, it’s much better. The way that you beat Dragonstorm was by hitting their one kill card with Skeins and Nightmare Void. R/B Storm, on the other hand, has as many as twelve cards that will kill you (Ignite, Empty, and Infernal Tutor), and Dark Confidant to make your hand destruction much less effective. In addition, Ignite Memories is very scary, since it’s not too uncommon for you to have one of your eight-drops in your opening hand without a way to get rid of it. If you know that an Ignite is about to come your way, do everything you can to fill your hand with lands from Life from the Loam. Empty the Warrens is something that you might be able to defend yourself from, though even a Hellkite and two Stinkweed Imps won’t stop you from dying to an Empty for 26 goblins.

Sideboarding is a little strange. You want both Darkblasts and you want both Nightmare Voids, which is certainly not standard. You also want the Archons. Ignite Memories doesn’t care if it’s revealing Akroma or Blazing Archon, but Empty the Warrens would much rather see the Angel. The two Akromas and the Angel of Despair are easy cuts for the Archons, so you’ll need to trim another card to fit in the second Nightmare Void. Usually I would say that Life from the Loam is too slow against a combo deck, but it provides defense from Ignite Memories. As such, I recommend that you trim one Fa’adiyah Seer, though if you really want all four of them you can leave one Blazing Archon on the sidelines.

Mono-Green Aggro (Very Favorable):
This is the dream matchup. Darkblast is absolutely amazing if you get it early, and Stinkweed Imp is extremely hard for them to fight through. Grave-Trolls block and kill everything, including Spectral Forces, while Akroma and Hellkite will both end the game within a turn or two of arriving from the graveyard. MGA is more deadly than ever, though, so don’t expect to win games where you’re on the draw and your first play is a Stinkweed Imp. Timbermare is the usual way that you lose when you have a good draw, since it forces through the last five to nine damage the MGA player was looking for. Fortunately, Timbermare is not a universally played card.

With Stinkweed Imps and Grave-Trolls holding the fort down, the usual way to lose is to a landwalker. A Dryad Sophisticate wearing a Moldervine Cloak or Blanchwood Armor is a serious threat, so look for ways to protect against that series of plays. Ghost Quartering your own dual land is almost always worth it when it means that you can pick off their unblockable 5/4. If that’s not an option, you’re going to need to dig as fast as you can for a Hellkite or Angel of Despair to reanimate. The Angel is preferable, since Might of Old Krosa won’t save the Dryad from regular destruction, but if Hellkite is all you can find, then so be it.

Sideboarding gives you three Archons, in exchange for the Akromas and one Life from the Loam. In all but the rarest of circumstances, an Archon on the table against MGA is a win, assuming you don’t run it into a Stonewood Invocationed Scryb Ranger. Unless they’re packing Squall Line, and have cobbled together eight mana, Archon will always go the distance.

Note: In all of those matchups, I never once brought in Leyline of the Void. Its primary purpose is as a small shot to just auto-win the mirror match, but on Magic Online you run into every deck you can possibly imagine. Sometimes it’s a straight-up Reanimator deck, sometimes it’s Solar Flare, and sometimes it’s someone trying to recreate Aggro Loam with Stormbind and Mindless Automaton. If you think that having two Leylines for the mirror and random decks doesn’t make sense, then I would cut them for the fourth Firemane Angel, and then either a second Nightmare Void or a single Traitor’s Clutch. The Clutch can let you punch through Sacred Mesa and Skeletal Vampire, though it is vulnerable to Remand.

Magus of the Bazaar?

Bazaar of Baghdad fuels the Eternal versions of Ichorid, and I’m already running a two-mana utility creature, so why don’t I have Blue in my deck? The attraction of Blue cards is that you gain the new Bazaar as well as actual Sindbad and Compulsive Research. The short answer is consistency. Fulop went through a number of splashes in all of his pre-PC versions, from Blue for Thought Courier to Red for Stormbind. He found that you ended up losing more games to your mana than you won with your better cards.

Still, a Magus of the Bazaar deck won the second Standard 2x after the Planar Chaos release events ended, so I figured I would try it out for myself. In one game, fifty-five of his sixty cards were shown, and those fifty-five included only two Grave-Trolls and one Akroma. After making sure that he had four Trolls and two Akromas, Fulop and I started deciding what his last two cards were. The deck that we came up with was:

G/B/U Dredge

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy

Test deck on 03-25-2007

Standard

Creatures (30)

Lands (20)

Spells (10)

Sideboard

I played this deck in one PE and a handful of queues, and it just seemed terrible to me. My foremost issue with this decklist is that it has zero Greenseekers in it. Greenseeker lets you start dredging instantly, and at the same time makes sure you hit every land drop you need to until you can start Loaming back your drops. The next major weakness I felt was that it had only ten cards with Dredge, as opposed to the fourteen in my Green/Black version.

The mana was also giving me headaches. With zero basic lands and no maindeck Darkblasts, the deck was just asking to get manhandled by a Dryad Sophisticate. In fact, with so many sources of pain from the mana, the deck was just asking to get manhandled by any aggro deck. I assume that this is why the creator of the deck ran their Firemane Angels in the maindeck. But with such concessions to aggro such as Wall of Roots and Firemane Angel, the deck just didn’t have room for the cards that I liked the most.

Zur’s Weirding out of the sideboard did get me a little bit excited, though, since you can freely dredge through Zur’s restriction. The Weirding really didn’t give you that much more of an edge against Dragonstorm, though, so it didn’t seem worth it to me. Finally, Magus of the Bazaar really just wasn’t that great. I know it sounds ridiculous that it could be anything other than amazing, but really it’s only amazing at getting your deck into your graveyard. Unless you can dredge Life from the Loam for your turn, return three lands, and then tap the Bazaar to dredge two spells and pitch the three lands, you’re not replicating the functionality of Fa’adiyah Seer. You are dredging many more cards into your graveyard, but without Ichorid and Cabal Therapy, your graveyard can only do so much.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.

Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM