I've been playing around with every build of dredge i can find to figure out which version i like best. I'm currently testing a version that's a little different. Let me know what you think.

4 bazaar
4 city of brass
4 undiscovered paradise
2 petrified field
1 dakmor salvage

2 nature's claim
4 serum powder
4 cabal therapy
4 bridge from below
2 dread return
*3 unmask
*2 crop rotation

4 blood ghast
2 ichorid
4 golgari troll
4 stinkweed imp
2 golgari thug
1 darkblast
4 narcomoeba

1 flame-kin zealot
1 sphinx of lost truths
1 terastodon

The unmasks and the crop rotations used to be x4 carefull study and x2 breakthrough, but I thought just finding bazaar would be better...at which point I needed to add more protection for counters. I would like to add the 4th unmask but I'm not sure what to remove..what do you guys think? Maybe crop rotation is horrible but I just hate mulling into game loss, and if I could i would run 6-8 bazaars so crop rotation seems like the next best thing. Then again maybe I just need to accept that there will be times that I just lose due to bad draws. thoughts?

So this topic is to discuss the best way to abuse lodestone golem. Do you think he best fits into a red and black shell, mono red shell, 5C shell or a MUD shell.

Personally i think he best fits into 1 of 2 shells   1. MUD and i think he is explosive in this deck and a serious contender for reaching the top 8 in a tourney or   2. mono red stax. I think this deck best capitalizes on the ups and downs of the golem. Obviously the one big down side to him is that artifact mana still comes online as planned. But with chalice and null rod it negates this down side.

As  of right now the deck that i am testing is

Mono red stax

x4 goblin welder
x2 gorilla shaman
x1 platinum angel
x4 lodestone golem
x4 thorn
x1 trinisphere
x4 smoke stacks
x3 tangle wire
x3 chalice of the void
x3 crucible
x3 null rod

x5 moxen
x1 lotus
x1 mana crypt
x1 mana vault
x1 sol ring
x4 wasteland
x1 stripmine
x4 workshop
x1 tolarian academy
x3 barbarian ring
x3 mountain
x3 bazaar

I love how well the deck is running so far, and the golem is a beast! I`ve always felt that workshops other than 5c needed a way to kill them quicker. I can`t tell you how many times i have ended up going to time in a match and not getting my win even though they were locked out but didnt concede.

Do you guys think that with all of the new toys from Worldwake that stax will continue to be a power house or do you think that fish will gain more popularity and lower the % of tezzeret deck. I`m excited to see how this all plays out. Let me know what you think

i will be playing this in a lotus tourney tomorrow. i will take quick notes and let everyone know how it goes.

next weekend i have a lotus tourney and i'm thinking about playing r/b stax again. the biggest concern i have with the deck is confidant flips. at the last tourney i lost 3 games 1 of which lost me a round keeping me from the top 8. yes i was playing a few higher costing cards and maybe i just hard bad luck, but that could happen to anyone. one of the things that i think is important to realize with this deck is why play r/b stax than 5c stax? and the answer comes in the combination of bazaar and confidant. creating solid card advantage in a deck like stax increases your chance to lock them out by a lot. with this in mind it has recently come to my attention that once you have achieved this roll with confidant that he could be sacrificed to smoke stack while you could continue to inflict damage through welders or b-ring.once i realized this i have been finding the damage i take to be a lot less critical. the only difference i have made to the deck from your list is that i am not running chalice #4, instead i added a demonic tutor. if i thought there was room i would add in the other tutors also as finding stripmine just ends so many games. i am going to continue to test this deck as time gets closer to this tourney and will keep you informed. i am also skeptical about thorn/sphere. in a field with occasional goblins, fish, g/w aggro ish and other decks that run creatures that could cause you a bit of trouble. i continue to go back and forth between these two without ever really deciding on either. 

i didnt really like having both null rod and chalice since they both fill a similar roll. so i added a pithing needle instead as it can be used to hit other stuff as well. for a reference this is the list i am working on

5 mox
1 lotus
1 sol
1 crypt
1 vault
1 memory jar
4 workshop
3 wasteland
1 stripmine
4 badlands
1 bloodstained mire
1 urborg tomb of yawgmoth
1 tolarian academy
3 bazaar


4 smokestack
3 tangle wire
3 crucible
4 sphere
2 thorn
1 trinisphere
3 chalice
1 pithing needle
4 welder
1 gorilla shaman
3 ghast
1 karn
1 vamp T
1 demonic T

so ive been testing this version of Stax out and im really enjoying it...enough that i went out and bought 3 foil ghasts. ramping stax up to 2-4 doesnt seem to be to big a problem. the only thing i dont like is that he cant block...but i guess you cant have it all. i will continue to test this version and see how it goes as i have a lotus tourney at the end of nov.

i think this is interesting. i don't know how smooth the deck runs but i would make the following changes

-1 bloodghast (4 seems like over kill)
-1 null rod
-1 smokestack
-1 crucible
-1 bazaar

+1 mana vault
+1 urborg tomb of yawgmoth (maybe even 2)
+1 vamp tutor
+1 demonic tutor
+1 gorilla shaman

 ICBM Open Day 2:
2. Jerry Yang

this deck looks to be very similar to my deck with the inclusion of time vault/ voltaic key. the only other difference is sphere -> thorn and then 2 pithing needle -> 1 dark confidant and 1 gorilla shaman. what do you guyz think of this list? i can see the merit in running chalice which is a card i love but i have found pithing needle to be very affective. out of the top 4 deck i would expect to see 1.tez 2. fish 3. workshop 4. dredge the only deck it doesnt really affect is fish but even then i can name delta/strand game 1 to hit their land base and then there's 2 cards to SB out game 2/3.

between having 4 welder and 3 crucible i have rarely found a game where entomb was useless. i had thought about adding in something that could be used regardless of welder/crucible like finding room for a darkblast main deck. as i don't need another card to use it and with all of the confidants running around it might come in handy...

so quickly in the last tourny i want to i ended up coming 9th with a r/b stax list that i wasn't overly impressed with. then just after that crop rotation became legal as a 4 of and i instantly switched to r/g stax to a list i was very confidant in. i tested this a while and as much as i loved the higher than normal chance of a lock down and the random ridiculous first turns i missed the card draw that those little critters we call "bob"s gave. so eventually i found my way back to r/b stax but was trying to find a way to improve on the list.

 i randomly was looking through my dragon cards at the same time and saw entomb and right away i thought about the comparisons to crop rotation *with a crucible in play* and a tinker *with welder in play*. so i came up with a list the included sundering titan as the main robot, but still found times where the life loss from confidant to be to much. that's when i thought about sphinx of the steel wind. the deck has been preforming very well, so here's the list

1 lotus
5 mox
1 mana vault
1 sol ring
1 tolarian academy
4 workshop
3 wasteland
1 stripmine
4 bad lands
3 bloodstained mire
1 barbaian ring
2 urborg tomb of yawgmoth
1 bazaar
-28-

4 goblin welder
1 gorilla shamen
3 dark confidant
1 sphinx of the steel wind
1 duplicant
4 smoke stacks
3 tangle wire
1 trinisphere
4 sphere of resistance
3 crucible
2 pithing needle
1 vamp tutor
1 demonic tutor
2 entomb
1 sensie's divining top
-32-

SB
2 REB
1 pyroblast
2 rack and ruin
2 ingot chewer
3 yixlid jailer
1 darkblast
2 tormods crypt
1 pithing needle
1 duplicant


at my local tournies there is usually several tezz, several workshop, several fish a couple ritual combo, a couple dredge sometimes lorescale coatl, 1 goblins sometimes merfolk and 1 oath, sometimes bomberman and g/w aggro *tarm, glowrider/knight/thorns*. its a pretty diverse field but mostly featuring tez, workshop and fish.

a couple of notes.

1. at first i wanted to fit in another top but with how often i found i was entombing for sphinx i found another top was irrelevant.
2. i like the use of pithing needle more than null rod. i dont get hurt, it still hits time vault/top/what ever else you need it to but it also hits things like deltas/strands/opposing g.shamens/BAZAARS/necro/bargain/etc sometimes crippling your opponents mana base just seems like the best bet, they also help with game 1 dredge.
3. i wanted to fit in a second bazaar just in case i find that i'm holding the sphinx in hand as a discard outlet. not sure what i can do to make room.
4. i'm still working on the SB ive been thinking about finding room for 2 pyroclasm just for against random aggro.

let me know what you think and what you think can be done to improve it.

so what exactally is the advantage of no  dragon opposed to regular dragon? ive been trying all kinds to find 1 that works the best and i'm currently testing

3 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
3 underground sea
2 bayou
4 bazaar
2 swamp
5 mox
1 lotus
1 sol ring
1 urborg tomb of yawgmoth
-24-

4 animate dead
3 necromancy
4 entomb
4 WGD
1 oona
4 duress
3 pact of negation
1 crop rotation
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 brainstorm
1 ponder
3 deep analysis
3 impulse
1 vamp. tutor
1 demonic tutor
1 yawgmoths will

the deck seems to run a lot smoother..other than "always having a bazaar" how is it better than the above list?

ancient grudge is in against tezz and stax, in my meta there is a fair amount of stax/workshop aggro. in our last tourny 2nd, 3rd and 5th place all went to workshop.deck. with the amount of 0/1 casting cards the dmg i take from confidant doesnt seem that bad and on the occasional time i did flip a WGD or something i was usually able to just go off that turn anyways. i just found that often enough i wanted to bazaar again for the secod turn in a row and didnt have the cards to pitch for it while holding combo pieces. with confidant i'm drawing 4 a turn and pitching 3. i could see myself taking them out but i'm not really sure what i would want to replace them with. i think the deck is lacking card draw from removing blue..i tried night's whisper but dark confidant just seems to do a better job while still able to block.

this is the list ive been testing

3 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
4 bayou
4 bazaar
3 swamp
5 mox
1 lotus
1 sol ring
1 urborg tomb of yawgmoth
-24-

4 animate dead
3 necromancy
3 entomb
4 WGD
1 oona
4 duress
3 thoughtseize
2 crop rotation
4 dark confidant
2 s. divining top
1 vamp. tutor
1 demonic tutor
2 ancient grudge
1 life from the loam
1 yawgmoths will
-36-

3 xantid swarm
2 pithing needle <-- should this be t. crypt? as it hinders my own bazaars...
4 leyline of the void
3 yixlid jailer
1 ancient grudge
2 naturalize
*still working on SB*

the deck has been working very well. i am slightly worried about not running U for counterspells in the new meta. do you think being consistantly explosive is reliable enough? tezz will be fining its pieces easier with tutors and stax will be able to lock us out easier.

i was thinking muddle the mixture should deffinitally be in here to help the combo get going.

i always found that the rituals helped me reach storm without a problem and fuled my tutors, i found if i was trying to combo off early game i didnt always have the BBB to tutor and cast trendils. maybe after having taken necropotence and bargain out these become less needed? if you were to remove rituals what would you put in the open slots? and what did your list look like?

maybe open slots
+2 muddle the mixture

-3  dark rituals
+1 chain of vapor  -vs null rod/meddling mage/cannonist
+2 serums visoin  ??? help set up your hand

i would still like to keep the 2 cabal rituals just in case i need the extra black to go off. but thats only 2 slots

i am interested in the inclusion of tidespout tyrant. he would give me an additional creature to attack with if needed, the boomberang effect would help vs. aggro. if i were to add him i think i would want 2 witness and 1 tidespout, going 1 and 1 would limit my ability to potentially combo off with witness. did you run brain freeze instead of tendrils? with this you would need less black, free up the last 2 ritual spaces and wouldnt need to worry about running your resources to thin going tendrils with witness and brain freeze with tidespout. for the record i do preffer tendrils over brain freeze...but if brain freeze were to prove more effective i might change the deck around for the inclusion.

i'm slightly worried about the fish matchup. it seems that they have a lot against you with meddling mage, null rod, cannonist, stifle, wasteland/strip mine. you might be able to win game 1 simply because they don't know whats going on. at that point do you think it would be wise to have a angel/dragon oath SB to attempt game 2/3?

ok since coming back to magic about 8 months ago all i have been playing is workshops. i want to start getting cards for my next deck and i was unsure of what to play. then i remembered a deck that i used to play and it did VERY well. i lent it to a friend at 2 tournies and he won a mox and a lotus in these tournies. i once saw a combo oath deck that made top 8 in europe and i instantly fell in love. so i tweaked it over and over until i had a deck that i felt was complete. now some 4 years later i'm woundering if this deck could work again. my comments on the deck before i start

1. with the restriction of brainstorm, and not having access to ponder and the likes this deck looses a lot of consistancy.
2. with so many decks relying on graveyards this deck will get hit with random SB hate
3. once you start to combo it becomes easy to win
4. with null rod being so dominant will my mana base be hurt to much? add extra basic lands?

1 lotus
4 mox
1 lotus petal
1 mana crypt
1 sol ring
4 forbidden orchard
2 trops
3 seas
2 delta
1 strand
1 tolarian academy
1 island

4 oath
2 eternal witness
1 trendils
1 yawg win
1 krosan reclamation
1 demonic tutor
1 vampiric tutor
3 dark ritual
2 cabal ritual
2 cabal therapy
3 duress
4 fow
3 pact of negation
1 time walk
1 ancestral recall
1 chain of vapor
1 merchant scroll
1 brainstorm
1 ponder
1 rebuild
1 mystical tutor

2 open slots  ???
-tinker
-memory jar
-slight of hand
-impusle
-mis-D
-regrowth
-imperial seal
-nights whisper
-windfall
-intuition
-negate
-ancient grudge
-deep analysis
-sensei's top
-hurkyl's recall
-gush

basically once you oath and get a witness you can grab any tutor for will, a time walk to attempt #2 or just grab will. flashing back cabal therapy allows you to try again next turn after stripping their hand and is a free spell. I added in the pact of negations because you really need to protect your will. i just don't know if this has enough power to push through a heavy combo/control & control meta. with tezz being at the top is 3 duress, 2 therapy, 4 fow and 3 pact enough to protect this combo? and do i need a back up plan...beatting down with a witness doesnt seem as good nowdays when there are more creatures in the format.

maybe adding in red would help with this like TPS for
1 wheel of fortune
1 ETW

over all do you guys think this deck can be tuned to do well in the enviroment? or at this time does this deck just get hated out to much?

so i have been fooling around with several different builds of aggro shops trying to figure out what works best. then the other day i check some new tourney results only to find that...it would appear that people are 1. starting to get board of tez and less people are playing it  2.people are realising that shops just pack to many threats for most tez build to deal with  3. it's just a coincident that this is happening all over...      If it is true that workshops are being played more there were a few things i wanted to change in my deck. so this is what I'm currently thinking

4 workshop
4 wasteland
1 stripmine
1 tolarian academy
*6  mountain
1 lotus
5 mox
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
1 sol ring

4 juggernaut
4 goblin welder
3 gorilla shamen
3 solemn
*3 magus of the moon
2 triskelion
*1 duplicant

4 chalice
4 thorn
1 trinisphere
4 sword of f/i
1 memory jar
*1 wheel of fortune

SB
3 rack and ruin
2 duplicant
3 ReB
1 gaea's blessing
2-3 pithing needle
4-3 tormod's crypt

so obviously the * are the cards that I'm not 100% on right now. starting off with
*mountain-  most people would remove 2 for ancient tombs, but as we all know finding that initial red is huge. if i were to take a few red cards out i would feel better about switching in the tombs

*magus of the moon-  i found when i splashed other colours this was the first creature i wanted to replace and never missed. I'm wondering if there might be another card that could work better here...*hopefully colourless so i don't need red so much*  maybe magus is the best choice though...it's good against tez, fish, stax if workshops become big again and landstill. maybe this is enough to give it the spot.

*duplicant-  is 1 duplicant MD to random? not sure if this should be another trike or maybe sum cheap trick. i figured it would help my oath game and is usefull vs random tinker -> DC or inky

*wheel of fortune-  i always have a hard time with this card, i love drawing more cards while my opponent is under chalices and thorns/3ball but this sometimes backfires. dumping random artifacts into the grave for welding is a nice back up plan..but would this also be better as a cheap trick like S. top? I've been playing S. top in aggro workshop for a long time and sometimes i feel i would rather just drop another stall card or creature. this card does help mid/late game and helps with consistency

overall I've been enjoying how smoothly it has been running and i hope that stax becomes more powerfull as it is a favourable match. <-- if stax does become commonly played do you think that crucible would be worth running SB or is this just over kill?

So i finally decided to take 5 minutes a sign up here...i check this site out EVERYDAY and never took the time to sign up *lol* (FYI- my name is jason whealtey i'm 22, a chef and i live in vancouver canada)

I've been playing every possible combination of workshop aggro & Stax you can think of over the last 8 months. Even though i like the idea of Stax better i find that workshop aggro just does the job better. I am going to try and quickly sum up a lot of the things that I've discovered/thought about over the last little while

Starting off, these are the decks that i am expecting to see more than any others 1. Tez 2. Fish 3. CS 4. TPS 5. Dredge and of coarse my most hated match up 6. OATH. I can't remember a time when oath didn't run over shops. Basically i will eather devote a lot of my SB to it or...just pray that i get a god hand and they get mana flooded. With so many solid decks, and oath not being very popular, i think i will go with the second choice.

Now i know that a lot of you that play mono red workshop aggro do it because it is 1 of the best choices to play with a 10 proxy limit. 1 lotus, 5 mox & 4 workshop = 10. This is also how i stated out, as i continued to play i discovered that 1. I loved the theory behind stalling/disrupting your opponent just long enough to slip in a win. and 2. that workshop aggro like stax starts to run out of steam in the mid/long game. Now with this in mind i started thinking, what if i splashed a colour to try and get some card draw. My first thought was splash blue. It would give you master of etherium, ancestral & timewalk in the MD. I could add augury adept for card draw/ life gain which would help vs TPS and random aggro. but i didn't like the  on augury which meant i would have to replace off colour moxen with mox diamonds. it ended up being to hard to get  when needed to make it worth while. My second choice was black giving me dark confidant and possible vamp/demonic tutors. This idea i liked. Through a lot of testing i decided that the tutors just weren't worth while. In my original build i ran 3 dark confidant and 2 S. top. After coming 9th in a tourney *just short of top 8* and gaining a lot of valuable info i changed my deck slightly. I upped to 4 dark confidant and have never looked back!

There are several little things that i am not 100% sure about within the deck.
1. I would love to run null rods MD to battle Tez. but this shuts down my trikes and Tops. Now i have come to the conclusion that with as many creatures as i am running i do not NEED the tops. I have only once had my life total worry me with confidants. This also shuts down my swords, this sort of worries me. Without having the ability to make my creatures bigger goyfs pose a bigger problem. It all depends on if U/b/white or U/b/green becomes more main stream. Without swords my nearly impossible oath match up now becomes even harder.
2. gorilla shamen  //  viashino heretic. I continue to go back and forth between these. I love that gorilla shamen only costs  to cast VS.  . But blowing up anything bigger than a mox/key/time vault/null rod becomes way more realistic when using a heretic. There's no way you could blow up a robot with a shamen.

As of right now this is the list that i use
-mana-
4 workshop
4 wasteland
1 Stripmine
1 Mox p       *i took out 1 mox and replaced it with a mountain so null rod hurts me less and to round out my mana base*
1 Mox s
1 Mox r
1 Mox j
1 Lotus
1 Sol ring
1 Mana crypt     * i never liked mana vault so i replaced with with a badlands to help round out my mana base*
4 Badlands
3 Mountian
1 Swamp
1Tolarian academy

-stall-
1 Trinisphere
4 Thorn of amythist    * i also found that i was being locked under my own sphere to often*
4 Chalice of the void
4 Sword of fire & ice

-creatures-
4 Dark confidant
3 Goblin welder
4 Juggernaut
3 Magus of the moon
2 Triskelion
3 Gorilla shamen / Viashino heretic
3 Solemn simulacrum

I have been trying to figure out an ideal SB. So far it looks like this
2 Pithing needle  (fish/tez)
2 Duplicant  (oath/tinker->colossus)
3 ReB  (oath/fish/tez/TPS)
3 Extipate  (fish/dredge/tez/oath)
4 Leyline of the void  (dredge/tez/tps)
1 Gaea's blessing  (grindstone)

other cards i have been thinking about
Rack and ruin (stax/tez)
Ingot chewer (stax/tez)
Tormods Crypt (dredge/tez/TPS)
Diabolic edict (oath)
Yixlid jailer (dredge)

What do you guyz think? I really like the black splash and think it adds a lot of consistancy to the deck.