"We noticed people are coming to different conclusions than us due to our incompetence. Therefore we have decided to censor information so you have to take what we say as truth." -Wizards

This card is broken. Removes Stony/Rod and stops all counterspells.

In my opinion, meaningful decisions beyond the mulligan step for both players is what is important, not necessarily interactivity.

@ChubbyRain You stop it with your facts! They disagree with my preconceived notion that Gush is not broken. You need 2 islands in play to even cast it....

Deck wins 0 major tournaments and we are discussing restriction?

@chubbyrain1

Look, I've been where you are, and its not fun. Lets just try to have a little more fun on here. You are a really good person so I hate to see how upset you get in these discussions. It would be nice if you (and some others) could take these discussions a little more casually. This is a game and a format that we all love! I think we should be able to just have a conversation, and not try to constantly "prove" our points.

Brian did spend those hours writing very thoughtful opinions on the B&R list, and it just turned into one of the worst flame wars that I can recall. So I personally have no desire to spend hours writing another similar article to get attacked immediately by someone that stops reading on the first couple of sentences of my post. The last article that I spent a couple weeks on (collecting data and writing) that I posted here (wasn't even about the B&R list, it was just about dredge) even received the same vitriol. So I haven't had a ton of desire to spend all that time to get a bunch of very negative responses. When Calvin's site was still up and running, I did enjoy writing there though and this site used to be fun to write on. Its disappointing because the community can be a lot of fun in person, but for some reason this forum seems to bring out the worst in people.

Take case and point this discussion here, where Protoaddict basically says: "Hey, why don't we come together as a community and create a better format that works for everyone?" and everyone is going to come in here and tell him that his idea is terrible.

Since the spoiling of a number of these cards on Modern Horizons I, I have been working on a few different iterations of Dredge and was finally able to get some live tests in matches this weekend with their release late last week. In sum, there have been multiple major printings that were just released from Modern Horizons I that will have long term implications on how Dredge is played from here on out.

I finished 21-14 last weekend (for a match win % of 60%) on slightly different variations of Pitch Dredge (for reference I will put one of the lists at the bottom), but for the most part my goal was to accumulate some data on how the deck functions in the current meta to give a reference point on where the deck needs to improve. I feel like getting a fairly decent sample of 35 matches (90 games) in a short time frame should be able to paint a pretty good picture of where the deck is right now. You can find the full list of splits here, along with some of the raw data, but I am going to focus on some of the biggest results.

Highlight of the weekend was winning under this game state:

Every game win was with a hand size of 5 or more, and there was not a big difference between game 1,2,3 or even hand size 5,6,7 here. This highlights the importance of the incoming London mulligan in about a month, and the need for Serum powder (even after that rule is enacted). The deck needs cards in hand to survive all of the pitch spells, and that means maximizing that number. Problem here is that there isn’t really any new cards that address this issue. Its basically just keeping Serum Powder in the deck list after the new rule change. This hand size problem is co-dependent on the pitch spells in the list as the win % is dramatically higher with 2 or 3 pitch spells than with 0 or 1.

The hate pieces to look out for.

The expected value of Tormod’s crypt in a game 2/3 is 0.473 followed by a distant second of Leyline of the Void and Strip effects at 0.200, then third Ravenous Trap at 0.145. Win %’s against these most frequent hate pieces are, well, not good. I only won 3/9, or 33.3%, of games against Leyline of the Void despite running both Force of Vigor and Wispmare/Nature’s Claims. Against Ravenous Trap (42.9% win %) and against Tormod’s (38.1% win %). These are not really what you want to see as a Dredge pilot and kind of highlights the problems with the current deck list as the deck was not winning at a good rate at all against these hate cards.

Quite frankly, I’m not sure much can be done against Leyline of the Void given the constraints of the deck. However, against Ravenous Trap and Tormod’s Crypt there is 1 card that shuts these out: Leyline of Sanctity. Of all the changes that I will suggest here, this has to be the #1 thing, add 4 of these to your deck.

Some additional options: Ancient Grudge (for Tormod’s Crypt), Misdirection (for Ravenous Trap), Unmask (on the play against Tormod’s or against Ravenous Trap), mana source to actually cast Cabal Therapy.

Containment Priest (25% win %) and artifacts, like Grafdigger’s Cage (50% win %) and Ensnaring Bridge (20% win %), are certainly still threats too, they are just not as frequent so it may be worth eschewing for the more commonly played hate cards.

Game 1 win % is not actually all that high. I finished 63% in game 1. Losses were mostly due to strip effects (only winning 6/11, or 55%, of game 1s against these), but also losing to things like mull to oblivion, 3/35 to opposing storm hands (mentor or tendrils), the dredge mirror, vault+key, tinker, oath. All of these are what I’d call “usual suspects”, but when people discuss Dredge, I feel like these are seen as the exceptions than the norm, but all added up there are a lot of exceptions that drag down the deck’s win %. One thing that may be able to correct this is trying to tune the main deck to beat these strategies.

Options for beating Strip effects game 1:

Direct answers (e.g. Noxious Revival, Petrified Field, Life from the Loam):
All of these are ways to get back your Bazaar of Baghdad. Noxious revival is the fastest, but is the most unreliable (if your opponent has a sphere). Loam is the most reliable, but is the slowest (you can get it from your graveyard, but you also need mana).

Indirect answer (Adding a higher density of graveyard cards and Dredgers):
This helps because even if your Bazaar gets stripped, you can win through a slow-dredge assuming you can chain Dredgers together and actually hit good graveyard cards. The major issue here for a Pitch Dredge list is that none of your pitch cards are also graveyard cards so inherently your have already reduced your density of graveyard cards.

Beating fast openers from opponents (e.g. mirror, storm, tinker, vault+key):

I’ll add another split here is that the deck has relatively bad matchups against storm / outcome decks. Despite running an absurd number of pitch spells to try to match up well against these decks, the deck still had some difficulty beating them. Game 2/3, you have to fight their speed and their hate leaving only a 36.4% win % in game 2/3s against outcome decks.

Add more “free” spells that actually impact these decks (e.g. Unmask, Mindbreak Trap):
Unmask is the one that I think is pretty big here as it is flexible enough to hit almost any hate piece, their win conditions, or even a mana source after you’ve already seen what their hand hinges on.

Add more speed (e.g. More dread returns, Gitaxian Probe, Fatestitcher/Lion’s Eye Diamond/Black Lotus, Vengevine/Basking Rootwalla/Hollow One):
Turning Dredge back into a consistent turn 2 deck can make a big difference in these match ups (instead of a turn 3-5 deck). Grinding out wins just doesn’t really seem to happen in the current meta as I had 0 wins after turn 8, and a majority were on turn 3 (pre and post board). Cashing out some of the later game grind cards (like Acorn Harvest that I was testing) for some of these earlier game one can make a big difference.

This leads me into the next set of cards where we can discuss what to cut from the list.

6-4 in games (3-1 in matches) against the mirror without getting any Dredge hate in the mirrors, and even overcoming some opposing hate in those matchups. Its interesting to me how the trend has been for Dredge decks to add more mirror hate, when I think in all my experience I have never noticed it making much of a difference. Anyway, here is some actual data to support what I have experienced. Most of my opponents here had Steve’s 7 hate pieces, and yet I came out with the better record. For those of you looking for deck space, getting somewhere between 4 and 7 cards by cutting these makes a lot of sense. If you want to still have a good mirror %, I’d advise going to the above and adding more speed as this will play into other bad matchups than just the mirror.

Game 2 and 3, I won 50% of games against Grafdigger’s cage and 75% of games against Deathrite shaman, in addition against Blue control lists the deck posted an over 50% match win % (53.8%). This is to say that Mental Misstep doesn’t seem all that important. It might be better to find other blue cards if that is the main goal of the card.

Winning the game was mostly done on the backs of free creatures (over 70% of the wins). This highlights the importance of keeping your free creature count high, but also highlights the lack of importance of winning with Cabal Therapy + Dread Return. When we look for where to find space, I think that these cards could be trimmed down (and potentially cut in Cabal Therapy’s case), in favor of some of these other options.

One of the deck lists used:

Combined your tables, and added a corresponding column to see how deck are performing compared to their metagame presence...

Unsurprisingly, Shops and Mentor are far exceeding their metagame percentages, while everything else ranges from around 0 to massive negative.

@botvinik

Hogaak can.

Hogaak and Ghast are going to do better against opponents with creatures since you can trade freely and block. I think Ichorid is fine just by itself and doesn’t really need Bridge. I guess you could go combo off Bridge with Hogaak though that seems like it would give you strong closing speed.

I’d definitely cut the blue as the count problem is restrictive, after 4 Vigor and 4 Unmask, you are left with 6 other slots to work with if I added correctly.

In the mana base, I’d think about trimming the weaker 4-ofs to fit at least 1 Portal and maybe a Dryad arbor to cast Loam.

I assume the strategy is to max land destruction strategy.

Bloodghast is probably your best card with the extremely high land count and Loams. It’ll recur every turn.

Riftstones should find a way into the main deck. So that you can play Loam in game 1.

I’d probably cut the Blue entirely. Your count is only at 14 and you don’t seem to want Narc. Not have you chosen to play Amalgam. For disruption you can add Unmasks, Force of Vigor that fit the game plan of destroying your opponent’s mana base. You have the black count and can get the green count easily (already have Once upon a time and Loam). Particular smashing two Moxen with Vigor or taking 1 with Unmask can be crippling when followed up with multiple Strip effects.

Bridge is underwhelming. I understand it combos with Ichorid, but that’s it. There should be a better option to give the deck more recursive power. I’m just not sure what that card is. You do have access to mana.

Sideboard, I would strongly consider Null Rods. With your land destruction it’s a legitimate lockout plan. They also turn off Tormod’s, Ballista and other pesky artifacts.

In terms of matchups, the Mirror Match is probably going to be bad. Any other deck that can deploy threats fast may also be bad. I would look at some way to get bigger threats on the table from the GY. Dread Return may need to space in here (with Griselbrand or something else independently good?) to close out games.

@john-cox

I’m gonna buy a lot of happy meals, if so.

Good. MTG has reached Monopoly status.

@blindtherapy

They trained quite a bit to use the daggers, and obtained them during the quest.

@blindtherapy

0 to play and 0 to equip is the only acceptable cost for the one Ring. From a lore perspective a random hobbit can use it so that is where the cost needs to be.

What other buffs does it need?

It needs to be templated to combo with Hobbits, which should all have an ability to negate negative status effects.

My only request is that the One Ring is so powerful and format breaking it starts on the restricted list.

Legendary Artifact - Equipment
Indestructible

Equipped creature gains unblockable and shroud.

At the end of each turn, if creature is not a zombie, put a +1/-1 counter on creature.

If creature dies while equipped and it is not a zombie then return as zombie and equip.

Whenever equipped creature deals damage to an opponent gain control of an artifact they control.

Anything is better than the trash they’ve been printing.

@botvinik

The 1 spell a turn guy is even worse. If I played this again, I’d definitely try to get more removal in. Maybe a board sweeper (firespout?)