The deck relies more on ‘draw three’ effects and a curve: turn one any enabler, turn two Cathartic Reunion//Thrilling Discover and turn three escaping Ox of Agonas. That’s why the current build of Dredge is focused on presenting as much power on turns two and three as possible. The only thing that could be upgraded was how fast we can present meaningful board states. Because of how the deck works, we couldn’t make the deck much more stable – the variance of what we flip in the top twenty cards of the library will always lead to some broken starts and fail rates as well. The flexibility of game plans turned out to be not impactful enough to rely on it. When old ideas were no longer good enough, the only hope for the archetype was to be rebuilt from scratch. There simply weren’t enough arguments to play it in its current form. On the other hand, the traditional build of Dredge was still quite slow, fragile to the hate and had a higher fail rate than other options available in the format. It was either for zero mana (like Endurance), or the game ended when it entered the battlefield (Dauthi Voidwalker or Sanctifier En-Vec are good examples of that). Graveyard hate cards were overpowered compared to what graveyard decks could present. But after the biggest jump in format’s power level – the release of Modern Horizons 2 – Ox alone wasn’t enough – other decks were faster, more stable, and less vulnerable to hate. Still, the card let Dredge survive the rise of the power level of the average Modern deck, even if it worked horribly with Life from the Loam + Conflagrate engine. Sure, we got Ox of Agonas in January 2020, but compared to what the rest of the format got (Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath for example), it wasn’t that spectacular. And that was the end of major changes for the archetype back then. Later, we got Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, but it got banned two months later, alongside Faithless Looting. In 2018, I was even close to abandoning the deck, but the printing of Creeping Chill got the power boost Dredge needed. But it wasn’t as stable and fast, so it was slowly being outclassed by other, new strategies. The deck survived and was still playable thanks to the addition of Golgari Thug. The deck was so busted compared to the rest of the metagame that Wizards had to nerf it a bit. This version was very flexible and could act as a tempo, midrange, or even a control deck, all with chances for a combo draw. Life from the Loam was a centrepiece of the archetype – it helped enable huge Conflagrate shots as well as endless Bloodghasts triggers. It all started in 2016 when Prized Amalgam and Cathartic Reunion got printed. And thanks to my guides, I hope this process will be easier for you.ĭredge in 2022 vs old builds. It took me years to master that archetype. Timing, decision-making process based on flipped cards, fighting through grave hate cards, etc. But it’s also a real challenge to play the deck correctly. This incredible flexibility gives Dredge players a unique opportunity to constantly adapt to what they are up against. This type of play is less and less seen though. For example, it works quite well in some creature matchups thanks to Conflagrate, Darkblast, sideboard creature removal, and spam of blockers. It’s also possible to act as a control deck. In some match ups Dredge can also act as a value, card advantage oriented strategy, which can overwhelm the opponent with generated card advantage. What matters is that you often go so wide that the opponent won’t be able to deal with everything on time. It doesn’t matter that our creatures aren’t the most powerful on their own. In tempo games, Dredge tries to set up a big board quickly and win before the opponent can deal with every threat or execute their game-winning combo. The second one is Burn in the form of Creeping Chill and Conflagrate (assuming you play it). The first one is aggro with recursive creatures – Prized Amalgam, Silversmote Ghoul, Narcomoeba, and Ox of Agonas. Deck has two main ways to pressure the opponent. The more cards we flip from our library to the graveyard, the more threats we can present, so in practice, the main goal is to mill as many cards as possible. Introductionĭredge is an aggro-combo deck that abuses the mechanic ‘Dredge’ to create card and tempo advantage. If you are not familiar with currently played Dredge lists, you can find an example here. If you want to find more Dredge content, including a detailed sideboard guide, check out this link. Welcome to the first part of my Dredge primer! Today, I’ll talk about maindeck card choices – what are the main goals of the deck, why is it built this way, not another, and what are the basic interaction between the cards.
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