I'm looking at a sideboard along the lines of:

4 Cavern of Souls
2 Mana Confluence
4 Wispmare
3 Ingot Chewer
2 Spinning Darkness

Reasoning: Leyline has seen a big uptick, particularly in decks like Xerox that can use countermagic to defend it. Wispmare/Cavern gives us uncounterable removal, and once we're on Cavern we're kind of locked into Ingot Chewer (I would prefer something like Shattering Spree if the mana worked, not to mention the obvious Nature's Claim or Fragmentize)

What do you think?

Is Spinning Darkness even playable anymore? Decks that play Priest probably also play Lavinia, and that just makes me sad lol

Wispmare and Ingot Chewer are both elemental, it's a good point for cavern.

If we want some flexibility we can try Flamekin Harbinger. But that don't feel very good with Mana Confluence.

Harbinger is really nice, it boosts the effective count beyond 4. Could help make up for the drawback of Wispmare and Chewer only hitting 1 type each

Only downside is that it's likely to take another turn and/or another land, so it does open us up to Wasteland somewhat

I was looking at something like Mana Confluence to be able to cast Cabal Therapy, but we could run Unclaimed Territory or a 'normal' rainbow land like Gemstone Mine or Forbidden Orchard

Orchard in particular is kind of interesting as an anti-Oath hedge

@msg67183 said in Cavern of Souls sideboard:

Is Spinning Darkness even playable anymore? Decks that play Priest probably also play Lavinia, and that just makes me sad lol

Main alternative in this kind of list would be Dismember, right? I would prefer to rely on Unmask and counterspells to deal with Priest over that, I think

@ajfirecracker What about a Dismember and Death's Shadows in the deck? Could be a very quick clock and provides removal.

I think I'd just run 8 removal spells rather than a 2 card combo to push one of 4 spells through. Your odds of drawing 2 removal out of 8, even with 1 being countered, is greater than you drawing a cavern and a wisp. It'll really suck when you cavern a wisp and they mindbreak trap it :p.

This is an interesting unorthodox idea. Do we have a critical mass of Elementals we can easily cast for one, maximum two mana? Other than Wispmare and Ingot Chewer, there are only a few others that I see can be useful - Shriekmaw and Flamekin Harbinger. (There is also Spark Elemental that can make zombie tokens, but this is a different approach you tried already with Shifting Wall and Walking Ballista. And since we are talking about fighting Leyline of the void, making tockens strategy doesn't work any way.)

So it looks like if we want to use Cavern of Souls, we lock ourselves in a scenario "wispmare or bust." And this is assuming that we already have Cavern. And since we expect to face Leyline, we can't really maximize our chances of getting Cavern with help of Petrified Field. So, kind of the entire structure falls apart.

On a different note, but similar in spirit, why then not to use Reverent Silence with several Bayous and Tropical Islands? This way we can have more "disenchant" or "boomerang" effects than they counterspells. Just an impromptu idea.

Yes it's Wispmare or bust, but most Dredge decks are only playing 4-5 answers to enchantments and 6 mana sources right now. I don't see how we're that much worse off going for something like this

Since you mentioned it, the 0/0 plan is/was pretty good, but it depends on the hate being played mostly being Cage/Priest, which is not really true at the moment

I'm looking at this list now:

Dredge stuff:
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Golgari Thug
4 Narcomoeba
3 Ichorid
1 Prized Amalgam
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below

Disruption:
4 Force of Will
3 Mindbreak Trap
4 Mental Misstep
4 Unmask
2 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Vengeful Pharaoh
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Chalice of the Void

Resilience:
4 Petrified Field

Sideboard:
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Mana Confluence
1 Mountain
4 Wispmare
2 Flamekin Harbinger
2 Ingot Chewer

The idea vs Containment Priest would be to Unmask it, Force it, beat before it can be played, or simply dodge the opponent drawing it at all.

The idea of the Mountain is that vs artifacts you want to blow up Wasteland is a big factor and typically your graveyard is active so you can Petrified Field for it. On the other hand, vs Enchantments your graveyard is not active and Wasteland is not as big a factor.

Edit: Changed 1 Ichorid to 1 Prized Amalgam to up the blue count. Changed 2 Unclaimed Territory to 2 Mana Confluence to be able to cast Cabal Therapy. These could be any rainbow land and I don't know which.

I... don't hate this?

Uh oh, something has gone horribly wrong

Its an okay board plan for a Manaless Dredge deck. Having uncouterable answers to hate is great. On the other hand, having to guess exactly what hate pieces your opponent is playing is not great.

Just a note on one of the comments, dismember is also a poor answer against Lavinia because you need 3 lands in play to cast it. Reality is if your opponent casts both Lavinia and Contaiment Priest before you do anything, it was a pretty rough game. Spinning Darkness is superior as it only takes 1 card to remove the Priest, not 2 that dismember requires.

Agreed, re:Lavinia / Containment Priest, but I'm not sure if that's an argument for running Spinning Darkness or for running no creature removal.

Regarding guessing what anti-hate to bring in, there is some decent separation by archetype at the moment. Xerox is pretty heavy on Leylines, Oath can't run Cage, and so forth. Additionally, Flamekin Harbinger helps mitigate the split somewhat by fetching whatever they happen to have.

I wonder if it would be worth running a random UB elemental to tutor up as a pitch card. I think that's just going too deep, but part of me wants to make Muldrotha, the Gravetide Vintage "playable"

I've seen a certain World Champion Dredge player try this board configuration before with the Harbinger, and to say the least he didn't keep running the deck very long. Its too much set up just to kill 1 anti-hate piece. The format is so much faster now since I've seen that list too. I think you just have to take the gamble with a SB like this and hope that your opponent doesn't pull out something unexpected.

Muldrotha is definitely playable, but not really in these lists. There is a really nice infinite loop with it, lotus and animate dead that allows you to recur all your non-land permanents if I can ever make it to a paper event (or MODO actually learns how to fix the no looping issue).

Did Mark have Cavern? Flamekin and Wispmare both get a lot more attractive when you know they'll resolve

@ajfirecracker and @vaughnbros I am fairly certain that Mark's username for TMD is @womba , but I do not know if he is active on it.

@ajfirecracker Pretty sure he had 4 of both, 3-4 Harbingers, and 4 Cavern.