IPA IX is nearly upon us. For most other IPA tournaments, I have qualified playing in some strange format. If I remember correctly, I qualified for one playing Extended Vanguard (Akroma Avatar Affinity), another in Standard Vanguard (Oni of Wild Places Combo), and a third playing a real format, CBS + Ravnica Standard (Boros).
Without any goof-format qualifiers being run, I had to try to qualify for this IPA like an honest human being. I missed one Top 8 playing Fujita’s Deadguy Boros (Extended), I two more playing G/B Dredge (Standard), and a fourth playing Sealed. Despite the fact that I was absolutely tearing up queues with G/B Dredge, I finished the two PEs at 2-2 drop and 1-2 drop.
Not one to give up, I fired a third Standard Premiere Event in there this past Monday.
Standard 2x IPA QT (#940070)
I join the tournament with my updated G/B Dredge list:
Creatures (25)
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 1 Angel of Despair
- 2 Bogardan Hellkite
- 4 Greenseeker
- 4 Fa'adiyah Seer
Lands (21)
Spells (14)
The one change that I’ve made is fairly minor-looking, but is actually a dramatic improvement. I cut the two Golgari Rot Farms for a sixth Forest and a third Ghost Quarter. Ghost Quarter + Life from the Loam is very powerful against all of the control decks out there right now, so I wanted to increase my chances of dredging into this combination. The Forest was added to help reduce mulligans, since the primary reasons for mulligans with this deck are no dredgers and no Green mana.
Rot Farm was always good against Faith’s Fetters, allowing you to rescue a Svogthos, but Ghost Quarter accomplishes the same thing when you have Life from the Loam going. Since one of your most powerful tools against control decks is Loam, you should have it available anyway. The Ghost Quarter plan sets you back a mana, but running Rot Farms into Annexes and Stone Rains sets you back two. With Magnivore rearing its head again, these cards are even more popular than they used to be, so the Rot Farms are simply too risky to play.
The tournament fired with ninety players, so we got ready for seven rounds.
Round 1 versus DavidEubanks (G/B Dredge)
Game 1:
I win the roll and keep Birds, Stinkweed Imp, Dread Return, Life from the Loam, and three lands. We both start with a Birds, so I get my engine running with Loam for zero lands. He drops two Greenseekers, confirming my suspicions that we’re playing the mirror match. With this in mind, and with a lucky dredge on my Loam, I go straight for turn 3 Akroma via Dread Return. He has an Akroma of his own in the graveyard, but hasn’t dredged into a Return, so my Akroma takes him to eight before he can simply hardcast a Return. He flashes it back immediately and starts bashing me. I start to dredge Imps, and when I’m at eight I have three guys to Flashback my original Dread Return, stalling the board. He plays a 4/4 Golgari Grave-Troll, and has a Svogthos to go with it (though he’s one mana short of activating it). I start playing my own Trolls, and I leave a Ghost Quarter open to discourage his Svogthos from attacking. Eventually, I ram all of my Trolls into his. My Trolls are considerably larger, and I have mana open to regenerate, while he doesn’t. After killing his side, I use a Darkblast to clear the way for my fatty horde.
Sideboarding:
I bring in two Leylines, two Indrik Stomphowlers, and two Blazing Archons for the four Delirium Skeins, Nightmare Void, and one Bogardan Hellkite.
Game 2:
I mulligan on the draw, and keep Fa’adiyah Seer, Indrik Stomphowler, Blazing Archon, and lands. I keep this hand because it has the capability to beat a turn 0 Leyline from my opponent, and because some luck will let me use my Archon to trump an Akroma. Luckily for me, he doesn’t have a Leyline in his opening hand, if he has them at all. I draw a Life from the Loam, and use it and Seer to start flipping my deck on turn 3. I dredge Imps on turns 4 and 5, and use them to Flashback a Dread Return on Akroma. My opponent, meanwhile, has been unable to start dredging, after opening with Birds of Paradise and a Seer of his own. An untapped dual land from him on turn 1 means that my Akroma only needs three attacks to be lethal, and while he has three creatures in play and a Dread Return in his graveyard, he can’t find an Akroma to kill my own before he dies.
Thoughts on the match:
The mirror match is almost always decided by an Akroma, one way or another. In game 1, we both had great Akroma draws, but didn’t have a way to get her back into play after the initial volley. Trolls and mana become the big thing when Akroma isn’t an issue, since the player who can attack first will usually be able to kill his opponent’s Trolls. At a certain point, the Akroma becomes much less valuable, since sacrificing three 12/12s to get a 6/6 back will just leave you dead to the counter-attack.
After sideboarding, Akroma remains the usual path to victory, but potential sideboard hate complicates things. If one player has an unanswered Leyline of the Void, they essentially win by default. The player with the Leyline gets to make all the Trolls and Akromas he wants, while the other person is stuck playing 1/1s and 1/2s. This is the reason that I kept my hand in the second game. Seer made it very likely that I would hit five mana on turn 5, if I had to, while the Stomphowler gave me a chance to beat a Leyline. The Archon in my hand doesn’t do much without a Greenseeker, but with Seer and Life from the Loam, you can get up to eight cards in hand fairly easily. Since Indrik beats Leyline and Archon beats Akroma, I decided that this six was better than a random five.
This is not to say that this deck can’t mulligan to five. I have mulliganed to two cards, on the play, and nearly won the game. When I say I “nearly won,” I mean that I put the game-winning spell on the stack, but my opponent had Remand Number Three to stop it, despite having drawn only one quarter of his deck. This deck mulligans extremely well, since all you need is a way to start dredging. A four-hand of Forest, Greenseeker, Golgari Grave-Troll, and Dread Return is better that most seven-card hands. Do not be afraid to mulligan when your opening hand doesn’t have the cards you need.
Round 2 versus _LondoMolari_ (U/R Tron)
Game 1:
I win the roll and keep a hand of two Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, Angel of Despair, and lands (including a Ghost Quarter). I start Loaming on turn 2, and he starts attacking with Sulfur Elementals on turn 4. Because of his fast creatures, I can’t just go directly for the Strip Mine plan. I start to drop Grave-Trolls to hold off his 3/2s, but he has Remands and Repeals to get me to six. I Flashback Dread Return on Bogardan Hellkite, wiping his board and setting up for the Svogthos + Dragon win on my next turn, but he simply untaps and Demonfires me out.
Sideboarding:
I bring in two Indrik Stomphowlers and one Nightmare Void for the two Darkblasts and one Bogardan Hellkite.
Game 2:
I keep Birds, Greenseeker, Akroma, Hellkite, and some lands including Ghost Quarter on the play. I drop the Seeker on turn 1, and pitch Akroma in my upkeep of turn 2. I draw Life from the Loam for my turn, drop Birds of Paradise, and he Demonfires my Greenseeker away. I use Loam to start dredging my deck, and hit a second Ghost Quarter. My opponent has already played an Island, and discarded another to Compulsive Research, so I start Strip Mining him every turn. Because I have two Ghost Quarters, I only need to dredge Loam every other turn, and can dredge Nightmare Void on the others. In the face of infinite Strip Mines and infinite Coercions, my opponent concedes.
Game 3:
I mulligan and keep a hand of Indrik Stomphowler, Delirium Skeins, Ghost Quarter, Svogthos, and two other lands. I topdeck Greenseeker on turn 1, but he Repeals it on his turn. I drop it again on turn 2, and he Repeals it again on his turn. This leaves him open to Delirium Skeins, which takes him to one card in hand with three lands and a Signet in play. He draws and passes, and I Nightmare Void him, seeing Spell Burst and Tidings. I take the Tidings. He draws, plays a land, and passes. I cast Indrik Stomphowler, killing his Signet, and start to cast Nightmare Void every turn. He concedes.
Thoughts on the match:
Sulfur Elemental, despite being the direct cause for my opponent’s victory in Game 1, is not very good against the Dredge deck. They do chump-block Troll and Svogthos even when you don’t have Teferi, but they rarely do more than three points of damage. Stinkweed Imp isn’t often worth fighting over, and running your creature into it is exactly what the Dredge deck wants. Troll is often worth fighting over, but when it sticks, no amount of 3/2s will take it down.
The Strip Mine plan is your single most potent weapon against Tron decks right now. Despite the fact that I didn’t know that my opponent was playing U/R Tron when we started Game 1, Life from the Loam + Ghost Quarter went a long way towards convincing me that the hand was worth a keep. Life from the Loam on its own represents a way to start dredging, and a Loam alongside a Troll represents a stream of massive threats. This hand was a very good one against control, but fairly poor against aggro. Red/Green Aggro could easily have five power in play before I have a shot at playing an Imp, and a few Seal of Fires later I’d be dead.
Luckily for me, control is dramatically more popular than aggro in Magic Online Premiere Events. Right now, a good control hand is much more powerful than a good aggro hand against an unknown opponent. Mono-Green Aggro does still exist in small numbers, but even if you are unlucky enough to run into it, your post-sideboarded games are so amazingly in your favor that you can afford to take the risk. After all, you can’t mulligan into a hand that’s good against every deck out there every time.
Round 3 versus ShaolinSaiYuk (U/B Control with Dark Confidant)
Game 1:
I win the roll yet again, and keep Greenseeker, Birds of Paradise, Fa’adiyah Seer, Delirium Skeins, Nightmare Void, Ghost Quarter, and Swamp. Why did I keep this hand when I can’t cast any spells? There are two options here: I’m stupid or I misclicked (which is another way of saying I’m stupid). I claim that it’s the second option, but either way this hand is a definite mulligan. I do nothing on turns 1 and 2, and he drops an Island and a Dreadship Reef, charging it up at the end of my third turn when I don’t play a land. In the face of no spells in three turns and only two lands, he uses his Reef to play a Confidant. I rip a Forest off the top, and drop my Birds. He swings, plays a land, and passes. I play a Greenseeker and a Delirium Skeins that, surprisingly, resolves, taking him to four cards. He swings again, and I decline to block. I start Nightmare Voiding him on my turn, which he counters, and I drop a Fa’adiyah Seer that blocks and kills Confidant on his next turn. I Nightmare Void him again, and he uses a Rewind that Confidant revealed to stop it, then casts Mystical Teachings for Teferi. I Void him again, he responds with Teferi, and I leave him with just lands in hand. He flashbacks his Teachings to get a Skeletal Vampire, and then plays it. I Void him yet again, making sure that the coast is clear on my next turn for Dread Return on Akroma. He swings with Teferi, Skeletal Vampire, and two Bats. I chump-block the Vampire with my Birds, and go to eight with him on eleven. I attempt to Dread Return my Akroma for the win, but his draw step had given him a Rune Snag.
Sideboarding:
I bring in one Nightmare Void. Usually I would take out one of my Darkblasts, leaving one in to deal with Skeletal Vampire bats. However, because he had Dark Confidant, I wanted both Darkblasts. Without the obvious choice as a possibility, I cut the Angel of Despair, since it’s the least attractive Dread Return target in this matchup.
Game 2:
I mulligan on the play and keep Overgrown Tomb, Greenseeker, Golgari Grave-Troll, Life from the Loam, Delirium Skeins, and Dread Return. I play the Greenseeker and pitch my Troll in my upkeep. The first Troll dredge reveals another, so I don’t use my Greenseeker after he drops a Dark Confidant. On my third turn, I Loam back three lands, including Svogthos. He swings with his Confidant, and I happily accept the trade, pitching a Troll in the process. I drop a Skeins on turn 4, and it resolves, leaving him with two cards and me with Dread Return, Troll, and two lands. The Grave-Troll runs into a Remand on turn 5, and then Svogthos hits him to nine on turn 6. He drops a Teferi on my endstep, and leaves it back to block. I go for Dread Return on Akroma instead of just swinging, and he has double Rune Snag to stop it. He flashes out a Confidant, but doesn’t hit another counter to stop a 12/12 Troll from resolving on my next turn. Bob takes him down to three life, and he concedes to my two threats and Darkblast.
Game 3:
I keep two Birds, Loam, Nightmare Void, Svogthos, and two Forests. He has a turn 2 Last Gasp for my first Birds, but I have the second one so that I can still play a turn 3 Nightmare Void. Over the course of many uneventful turns, I Void him down to just a Teferi in hand, and Loam back a Svogthos. He drops his Teferi, and then flashbacks a Teachings to get Dark Confidant the next turn. I start to attack with a Svogthos and my two Stinkweed Imps, but he has a Sudden Death to make my land small enough to block and kill with Teferi. I decide to sit back on my second Svogthos, and let my Imps and his Confidant kill him. A few turns later, the Confidant puts him to two life, and he doesn’t have any way to get rid of his Bob and my Imps without letting Svogthos swing for the win.
Thoughts on the match:
I really don’t know what to say about Dark Confidant. On the one hand, it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of cards like Nightmare Void and Delirium Skeins. On the other hand, it’s being played in a deck that also includes Mystical Teachings, Rewind, Teferi, Skeletal Vampire, and many other generally slow cards. Both games that I won, Confidant did a dramatic amount of damage to him, allowing me to win with such stellar cards as Goblin Sky Raider.
Still, Confidant made many of the usual control strategies much weaker. Running a Troll into a counterspell every turn until they just run out of them doesn’t work nearly as well when your opponent is drawing twice as many cards as you are. Ramming a Svogthos into them every turn similarly doesn’t work as well when your opponent can draw both a chump-blocker and an action spell if he gets lucky.
Round 4 versus Mamut Mamutowicz (U/B Pickles)
Game 1:
I, again, win the die roll and keep Greenseeker, Golgari Grave-Troll, Delirium Skeins, Dread Return, and lands. I pitch the Troll in my upkeep as usual, and then he Repeals the Greenseeker on his turn. I dredge my Troll and Skeins him down to four cards, pitching the Greenseeker, since I won’t have a good turn to get the Seeker back online. He drops a land, and I go for Dread Return on Akroma, but he has a Rune Snag to stop it. He drops another land. I have only a Grave-Troll to dredge, and only four lands in play, so I take a blind draw and hit a Fa’adiyah Seer, which resolves. He drops a Teferi, but another blind draw and a Seer activation gets me the fifth land I need to start dropping Trolls. He flashes a morph into play on my endstep, but still only has five lands. I drop another Troll, and then on my next turn use Fa’adiyah Seer to protect a double Darkblast on his morph, at which point he concedes.
Sideboarding:
I go with the standard U/B Control sideboard plan, and swap a Nightmare Void in for a Darkblast.
Game 2:
I keep Greenseeker, Stinkweed Imp, two Skeins, a Dread Return, and two lands. I activate Seeker on turn 2, but opt for Skeins on turn 3 instead of activating my Seeker. He has a Remand for it, but doesn’t have one for it on turn 4. I pitch a Troll to Greenseeker on turn 3, and then cast Dread Return on Akroma, which resolves and puts him to thirteen. He untaps, drops a land, and casts Damnation. I have a Troll in my hand from the previous turn, and a Svogthos with four lands in play, so instead of dredging another Troll, I go for the blind draw. I hit a land, and that lets me activate Svogthos and swing for fourteen.
Thoughts on the match:
When sideboarding against a U/B Control deck, you usually leave one Darkblast in to kill Bat Tokens from Skeletal Vampire. I doubt that he had Skeletal Vampire in his deck, so why did I leave one Darkblast in? The double Darkblast turn is a little bit risky, but the payoff for hitting a Shapeshifter or Brine Elemental is so large that it’s worth potentially running into a Fathom Seer.
Pickles decks are simultaneously better and worse matchups for you than a regular U/B Control deck. Their cards are, in general, less effective against you, and their morphs often have to chump-block Trolls and lands fairly early on. On the other hand, you really have no way to break out of the lock, so if they can assemble it they essentially auto-win the game.
Every so often you can break their lock with an Akroma. If they tap out to put the lock in place, you can flashback a Dread Return and hit them for six. Many times this will be enough to kill them, but it will also often not be enough. The problem, then, is that their lock implies a way to kill Akroma; they can simply flip their Shifter into Akroma and kill her. Still, if they don’t have another Shapeshifter, this will give you time to get back in the game.
Round 5 versus larrosa (Solar Flare)
Game 1:
I obviously win the die roll, and I mulligan and keep Loam, two Dread Return, and three lands. I Loam for zero on turn 2, and he drops a Signet. I Loam for Forest and Svogthos on turn 3, and he drops a Court Hussar. Even with the Hussar, he doesn’t have a third land, so he passes. I dredge Loam again, and cast a Dread Return on Fa’adiyah Seer. He rips a land and Persecutes me for Black, hitting my backup Dread Return. I start flipping my deck with the Seer, and grabbing all the lands I’ll ever need with Loam, while he casts a Compulsive Research into a Castigate on my Grave-Troll, leaving me with Swamp, Ghost Quarter, and Bogardan Hellkite. I dredge and play a Troll, pass, and he Persecutes me for Red. I presume that this was so that he could Body Double my Hellkite on his next turn, since the only creatures in my graveyard at that point were 1/1s and 1/2s. I Seer an Imp on his endstep, dredge an Imp for my turn, and then Seer a Troll. I drop an Imp and activate Svogthos, who is a 14/14 with him on eighteen. I sacrifice the Seer, the Troll, and the Imp to flashback Dread Return, pulling up a Hellkite. This kills his Court Hussar and domes him for two, and also makes my Svogthos a 16/16, which swings and kills him.
Sideboarding:
I sideboard in a Nightmare Void and two Indrik Stomphowlers for the Darkblasts and one Bogardan Hellkite.
Game 2:
He mulligans to six on the play, while I keep Birds, Akroma, Loam, Nightmare Void, and lands. I drop my Birds on the first turn, and he Castigates me on his second turn, taking my Nightmare Void. I play a Fa’adiyah Seer on turn 2, and then play Loam for zero, Seer it back, and play Loam for Ghost Quarter on turn 3. He casts Damnation to kill my Birds and Seer, and I drop an Imp and Ghost Quarter his Dimir Aqueduct. He plays a Faith’s Fetters on my Svogthos, and I Loam back two Forests and Ghost Quarter, dropping the GQ into play. He doesn’t make a play, so I dredge Loam, tap Svogthos for mana, Ghost Quarter my own Svogthos, and then Loam back Svogthos and two Ghost Quarters. I drop the Svogthos into play, but on his turn he plays a Ghost Quarter of his own. I play a Grave-Troll, which he Remands. On his turn, I kill his Ghost Quarter with my own, but he responds by killing my Svogthos. I Loam back my Svogthos yet again, and drop a 10/10 Troll into play. I swing with my Troll, and he Mortifies it. Instead of just playing a fresh one, I use my mana to regenerate my Troll down to 9/9 and drop a Stinkweed Imp, leaving Ghost Quarter up to stop him from gaining life if he has another Fetters for my Svogthos. He casts Mortify on my Stinkweed Imp and Body Double on my Akroma, taking me to thirteen. Because of the Mortify, I can’t just activate Svogthos and flashback Dread Return to kill his Body Double, so I attack him to six and drop a 16/16 Troll. He has a Fetters for my 16/16, taking him back up to ten, and hits me to seven. I dredge a Stinkweed Imp and attack with my Troll. He doesn’t block, going to one, so I drop the Imp, activate Svogthos, and sac my land, my Imp, and my Fetters’d Troll to Dread Return a Bogardan Hellkite. He doesn’t have Remand, so I dome him out. Even if he did, his next attack would only take me to one, and then my backup Svogthos would tag-team with the 9/9 Troll to kill him.
Thoughts on the match:
Body Double is extraordinarily frightening when you’re playing against Solar Flare. If you start off with some combination of Birds, Greenseekers, and Seers, they can simply copy a Hellkite, kill your side, and put a threat into play. In that situation, and really any other, they can just copy an Akroma and start kicking you in the head with it. Luckily, I don’t remember seeing any decklists with more than two copies of this card, so there’s a decent chance that you won’t have to deal with it.
Solar Flare is also the only deck that I know of that packs Faith’s Fetters. Fetters is essentially ideal against the Dredge deck, since it “kills” Trolls and Svogthos without letting you simply Dredge them back. You do still have Ghost Quarter + Loam to turn your Svogthos back on, but that takes two turns, at least, to pull off. Fetters (along with Signets) is the reason that you sideboard in Stomphowlers; your opponent might be counting on a Fetters to hold of a massive Troll, only to find that Troll coming straight at them on your next turn.
Still, Solar Flare is a slow control deck, and they often don’t have more countermagic than a handful of Remands. Without the resistance of serious counterspells, you can clear their hand out fairly easily. Their answers to your threats may be better than a regular control deck’s, but your threats are going to have a much easier time making their presence known.
Round 6 versus UMPlayer (Unknown) – ID
Round 7 versus midget man (Unknown) – ID
Quarterfinals versus Mamut Mamutowicz (UB Pickles)
Game 1:
It may surprise you to learn that I won the roll. I keep Birds, Seer, Loam, Dread Return, Overgrown Tomb, Swamp, and Svogthos. I lead off with Birds, but Seer runs into a Spell Snare. Loam hits a Remand on turn 3, but I simply play it again. On turn 4 I Dread Return a Seer, since he’s tapped to one from an Aqueduct. He casts Mystical Teachings for Teferi, Rewinds my Dread Return on Akroma, and Rune Snags my flashback. I hit him to eight with a Svogthos, and he drops Teferi into play. Knowing that a Svogthos attack does nothing, I drop a 14/14 Troll, while he flashbacks the Teachings for Brine Elemental, and then endstep morphs it. He flips it up on his turn with a dual land, so I can draw a one-drop to flashback Dread Return on Akroma and kill him, but there’s only one left in fifteen cards. I miss, and he completes the lock with a Shapeshifter. I continue to miss for enough turns in a row that he assembles enough action to protect his lock and kill me.
Sideboarding
I again brought in one Nightmare Void for one Darkblast.
Game 2:
I keep two Seers, Loam, and four lands while my opponent mulligans to six. He doesn’t have the Spell Snare for my Seer this time, and drops a Dimir Aqueduct. I Loam for zero, drop a land, and then pass the turn. My hand at this point is another Seer, another Loam, a Ghost Quarter, and a Golgari Grave-Troll. I know that he might have Extirpate, but I decide that I want him to use it on my Loams and not my Trolls, since a double Seer hand really wants to have access to the best dredgers. He goes for it when I activate Seer on his upkeep, Extirpating my Loams and burning for one. I whiff on a dredger with Seer, drop a second, and Ghost Quarter his Aqueduct. I whiff twice on my next turn, and he Repeals one of the Seers. My Troll runs into a Remand, and Seer misses yet again. My Seer replay gets Rewinded, and my Skeins gets Rewinded too, at which point he flashes out Teferi, untaps, and Repeals my Seer. I go to Nightmare Void him, and he flashes out a morph. The Void reveals that he only has lands in hand, so I replay my Seer. He draws, taps two Islands, unmorphs Fathom Seer, and drops another morph. I dredge an Imp for my turn and use my Seer to get back Nightmare Void. I play one Imp, but he Rune Snags the second. He drops a land and passes, so I dredge Darkblast. I Void him, seeing only lands again, and then double Darkblast his morph, which turns out to be a Brine Elemental he can’t flip. He draws and plays a land. I dredge an Imp and play a Troll. He responds with a morph, unmorphing his topdecked Shapeshifter to draw two cards, but the Troll resolves. He casts Think Twice on my endstep, and then turns his Shifter face down. I Seer back a Troll and dredge Nightmare Void for my turn. I attack him to eight, and play another Troll, which he Rewinds. On my endstep he casts Teachings for Brine Elemental and morphs it into play. He assembled the lock, but I still have Dread Return for Akroma to kill him…or so I think. Unfortunately for me, the Extirpate that I got him to use on my Loams wasn’t his only copy, and when I Ghost Quarter his one untapped storage land, he Extirpates my Dread Returns. With no way to break out of the lock, I concede.
Thoughts on the match:
I had been getting a bit lucky all tournament long, so I can’t complain too much about the luck my opponent experienced in our second match of the night. I won six die rolls in a row, though I lost three of those games, and hit my (relatively high-percentage) blind draws fairly regularly. Still, nothing stings like being knocked out of the Top 8 by a topdecked Shapeshifter into a Mystical Teachings for the lock.
The thing to pay most attention to, probably, is my decision about when to try to dredge Life from the Loam with Seer in Game 2. If I activated the Seer in my mainphase, I would have dredged three cards. Assuming that he had Extirpate in his hand, and assuming that he wanted to hit Loam, then I would have Loamed back a land and still run into Extirpate with this play. The play that I went for, I think, made him more likely to play the Extirpate even if he wouldn’t usually. In other words, either play gets my Loams Extirpated if he wants them gone, but my play makes it more likely that he gets my Loams even if he doesn’t really, since it lets him believe that he’s cutting off my dredge outlets, even though I have a Troll in hand, and two Seers to flip random cards along the way.
Either way, his having the Extirpate was very bad for me. I didn’t have a Svogthos in my hand and I wasn’t going to be drawing any cards after turn five, so no Loams meant that he didn’t have to deal with my man-land. That meant that he had more time than usual to set up his combo, and since he topdecked his way out, that bought time essentially won him the match. I find it unlikely that there was any series of plays that would have let me get to the point where he doesn’t Extirpate my Loams, but perhaps I should not have been so excited about “forcing” him into doing it.
Thoughts in General
Dredge is, I believe, a very strong choice right now. There are certain categories of decks out there right now: U/B Control, Tron Control, Three-Color Control, Burn-Spell Aggro, Discard-Spell Aggro, Green Aggro, and Storm Combo. The general strategy of the deck makes it strong against U/B Control, while that plus the Strip Mine plan makes it strong against Tron and Three-Color Control. Discard decks are amazingly good matchups, since you want your cards in the graveyard to begin with, and since The Rack versus Life from the Loam is not a very fair fight. Green Aggro may kill you on turn 4 on the play if you don’t have an Imp to stop them, but outside of the best draws from them, you should have no trouble reanimating a Hellkite or Archon to shut them down. This basically leaves Burn-Spell Aggro and Storm Combo as matchups that I would not automatically characterize as “favorable.”
Red/Green Aggro decks, such as the Top 8 list from GP: Kyoto, have many good things going for them against you. They are amazingly fast, and they can just clear out your Imps and swing for five. They have a fairly large amount of burn, so even if you stuff their attack plan, they can just Char you out from what might seems like a high life total. After sideboarding, things get better for both of you. You have Archons and Firemanes to stop their attack plan and their burn plan, but they have Tormod’s Crypt to stop your whole deck’s plan. If you can avoid the Crypts, you’ll have a decent shot at pulling it out, but winning the die roll gives either one of you a massive leg up.
Storm Combo decks basically just kill you on turn 4 or 5, or roll over and die. You’re not going to stop them from Dragonstorming on turn 4 unless you hit them with a Skeins… twice… on the play. On the other hand, their own deck might stop them from Dragonstorming on turn 4, so you might just manage to Void them out when they can’t find their combo piece.
There’s also the fact that the Dredge deck is a combo deck itself. There will be games where you mulligan into oblivion, looking for a why to start your engine. There will be games where all you need to do is dredge past one Dread Return, but there aren’t any in the top forty cards of your deck. There are things that can go wrong in even the best matchups, but that doesn’t mean that these things will go wrong every time. Even the best decks can fizzle out from time to time.
I am not saying that Dredge is the best deck in the format. However, I am saying that I believe it to be a great choice in the current metagame. If more burn decks come on to the scene, or everyone decides to play four Leylines and four Crypts in their sideboard, then it will probably be time to switch to something else. Right now, though, you can join a PE and play five control decks in a row.
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