Dredge-Dragon

[Flux]

Dredge is something that is worth looking at.  The trouble with it is what deck does it fit the best?  Team Ogre, well mainly Vroman, Ben, and I, have been tinkering around with the following deck:

Team Ogre Dredge-Dragon:

Enchantments
2 Animate Dead
2 Dance of the Dead
3 Necropotence

Sorceries
4 Life from the Loam
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal   

Instants
1 Entomb
3 Darkblast
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Krosan Reclamation 
1 Crop Rotation
1 Ebony Charm

Creatures
1 Eternal Witness
1 Caller of the Claw
2 Xantid Swarms
4 Worldgorger Dragon 

Lands
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
2 Forest
3 Bayou
3 Swamp

Artifacts
3 Null Rod
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus

Tormod's crypt was an issue, so the null rods are a must, not to mention the rods are good against CS, Stax, and Control.  The appealing thing about the deck is the waste/strip recursion.  Dredging into stripmine is so easy and with the life from the loams it creates a soft lock.  The xantid swarms help against control, as do the duresses.  The odd card in the deck is the Krosan Reclamation, which turns out to be fine in the deck in order to get back any of the animate spells that you might dredge away.  Overall the deck is consistant, although I have yet to test against Oath and Combo.

Flux

[Lunar]

3xDarkblast in the MD is pretty hot about keeping welders off-line for good....

ebony charm is also an interesting choice for both the dragon kill via witness or as some form of yard hate against opposing whatevers...heh...

I like this a lot more than the other thing you guys are working on w/ dredge, heh..odd thread to pop this up in though, heh..

[Flux]

I liked the cerebral assassin deck that Vroman made, it was fun to play with.  The problem with the deck is it had trouble dealing with any early threats.  In my opinion, any deck that looses to an early tinker should not be played in type one. The great thing about Dredge-Dragon, is that it can find and recur stripmine, faster than any deck I have ever seen.  Life from the Loam also fuels the combo, and the bazaars, which makes the deck very synergistic.  And yes the ebony charm has been randomly good in certain matchups.  When we decided to make the deck black/green I had to figure out another way to win.  I liked the eternal witness because it can recur an animate spell, be darkblasted, and combo out with ebony charm.  And welders have not been an issue, maybe it is the three maindeck darkblasts? 

Flux

[Lunar]

honestly (and I spoke with robert about this) I didnt like the CA build you guys had going...I will say that it definatly was consistant at dropping portals down, but it was generally too late...im still loving the concept, and a build with better early disruption is being looked over and tested still...

This dragon list is very interesting and I like it as well in concept...ill have to give it a whirl or two, heh...but I was holding out for you guys to fix the CA build...my foil chinese possessed portal is waiting, heh...(well okay..ive got stuff for it in the works too, but I like it when non CA people get interested in CA since it brings a new perspective to the table...)

eck, this should all be in my dredge thread, heh...why does this juicyness keep getting tucked away in random threads? (you should read the stuff on dredge-a-tog buried in the T1T thread on SCG, heh)

[Thug]

Team Ogre Dredge-Dragon:

Interesting at least,

But since the topic-title says "Ichorid" I don't think it belongs here,
I think it could make a fine topic by itself, if you guys want to discuss the deck any further.
(one small question on the deck, why 3 darkblast, it seems excessive, are these just used for Dredging? If so, whats the reason not to a card that dredges more cards?)

---

Koen

[Flux]

Sorry for not posting this by itself, in the future if we come up with any crazy decks I will start a new thread.  It just seemed to me that everyone didn't like the Ichorid deck, so I took the opportunity to show a different dredge deck that might be viable in the metagame.  Yes the darkblasts are in the deck for the dredge mechanic, but they also take care of welders, shamans, cards in fish, cards in goblins, spirit tokens, cards in stompy (that last one might have been stretching it).

The two best dredge cards are darkblast and Life from the Loam.  That is the main reason why these are in the deck and not putrid imp and grave-troll, both of which do nothing for the deck, other than fill the yard.  The idea is to abuse the Life from the Loam stripmine/waste recursion while filling the yard with dragons.  I have thought about including cycling lands, maybe one of each color.

Flux

[cophos]

3 Necropotence

Should be Necromancies I guess.

[Lunar]

thats why the deck is sooo good...3 necropotence is tech!

[Flux]

Well It should be necropotence...but yes it is necromancy.  I thought about adding necropotence, but the problem is you loose the free dredge during your draw step and it costs three black. I would love someone to playtest this against Oath and other combo and let me know how it goes.  Vroman and I usually just test control slaver vs. ubastax.  I could play that match up in my sleep.

Flux

[Lunar]

ill probably be testing it out a bunch this weekend. heh.. I get to test against Oath a ton...Not sure if ill get around to any combo matchups though, heh..ill definatly let you know if I get around to this deck (got a lot of builds in testing right now)

[bebe]

Just as a humorous aside - I tutored a Necropotence to the top of my deck yesterday at a tournament and my opponent played meddling mage and named necromancy. I asked if he meant necropotence juicing the question with a bit of trash talk and then said okay - I'll give you necropotence and on my turn promptly massacred his fish board. Hmmm ... maybe he meant massacre?

[Scott_Limoges]

How has the ebony charm (CO tech) been workin out?

It seems like so much dredge would warrent additional animate spells, to assure you start with an animate in hand.

[Lunar]

7 or 8 seems fine really...Krosan Reclamation actually goes a long way towards helping with this...I am not even so sure that you need to have one in your opening hand or always dredge so much (this can plop into normal-beforedredge dragon pretty easily)

in theory it shouldnt be a problem...but then again I havnt tested this exact build out yet, heh..

[Flux]

Normal Dragon decks run 5-6 animate spells, while this one runs seven just for the problem of dredging away your animate spells.  That is also why I run the Krosan reclamation, so you can get the animate spells back.  I love ebony charm more than ancestral recall in the blue/black version of dragon.  Both help win the game but ebony charm is graveyard hate.

[dicemanx]

Has this list received any testing at all? I ask because I think that relying on dredge is theoretically flawed in WGD. Apart from Bazaar (which is already present in standard WGD builds) you are willing to forego drawing critical spells AND tie up 1G mana to have a random shot at milling a WGD so you can start applying pressure. This sounds like a recipe for disaster. By comparison, that other WGD builds are way more efficient in getting a WGD in the graveyard, and don't have to rely on Bazaar. What do you do if your Bazaar gets Needled for instance? What do you plan on doing if Bazaar is not in your opening hand? You cannot win by milling away a WGD with LftL either - you can only combo off by having a Bazaar in play. This means that even if you have LftL in hand/grave, an untapped Wasteland on the opposing side wrecks your entire game plan unless you get lucky and mill away your win condition creature.

I always love to see new WGD ideas, but this one just seems like a really tough sell.

[Flux]

Dicemanx

Have you tested this deck at all?  I have.  The great thing about the deck is that it doesn't need bazaar in it's opening hand.  Life from the Loam is great at getting wasted Bazaars back, and if I am using 1G mana each turn to deny my opponent from having any mana, I am OK with that.

And if anything the theory behind dredging in dragon is the only reason why this deck was ever made, so why is there a theoretical flaw in dredging a win condition into the graveyard?

Pithing needle is dealt with just as easily as the blue/black version could deal with it, post board.

Flux (Why don't you play the deck before you bash it?)

[meadbert]

So far as I know a maindeck Tormod's Crypt is super rare so there is no need to run main deck Null Rods to deal with them.

That said they do turn off moxes which can combine with wasteland/life from the loam to mana shaft an opponent.

Still, consider dropping the Null Rods and running a Sensei's Divining Top or Two.

It is awesome with Life From the Loam and Bazaar.

With a life from the loam you can look at the top three cards of your library and draw the one you want ... or if you don't see anything you like you can dredge out life from the loam.

This lets you see three cards a turn instead of 1.

With a Bazaar and an empty hand you can use the top to look at your library and have bazzar mill two cards you do not want.

[Flux]

Thanks for the advice.  I like the idea of sensei's divining top.  And I think that you are right about the null rods.  The rods are in there against combo as well, but I don't know how much of a problem combo is, because I have not tested against it.

Flux

[Lunar]

hmm, pithing needle MD in some Gifts builds could pose a problem...this is "solved" after SB for the other decks though, but I would hate always dropping game 1 to gifts...

Top seems like it COULD help get around that problem with allowing you to utilize the dredge feature a bit better and give you an alternate form of drawing.

and to be fair to dicemanx he did say "theoretically flawed" so it could g either way on the dredge...at least though this is something new...time will tell I suppose.

[dicemanx]

I don't think you understood my post. I asked YOU if you tested this deck, because the initial post gave no indication - it seemed more like a theoretical exercise. If you claim that you've tested, then you might like to post things like that (with something more elaborate than a scant "I tested - trust me its good") to give us a bit of a heads-up on whether this approach is even doable, rather than criticize that I have "bashed" your deck. Don't take things so personally please, otherwise you can expect no feedback period.

I thought I explained why this approach is flawed in theory at least. Some initial testing (trust me, you're not the only ones looking at dredge in WGD) also confirmed that the dredge mechanic is just too slow, it doesn't lead to comboing out (you NEED Bazaar to combo), and as I said, you are NOT going to win by repeatedly forfeiting your draw and tying up 2 precious mana so that you can randomly mill 3. You will also have tragic issues if they leave a single Wasteland untapped. Your justification that Pithing Needle is to be handled post SB is very unsatisfactory as well. WGD's main advantage is and should be G1 - it tends to struggle post board, because you have to bring in answers to their hate and dilute your combo plan. WGD is already at a crisis in part because of this card, and your build makes the deck even more vulnerable to it.

Now what is actually interesting about this deck is the potential mana locks it can establish on the opponent via Strip Mine/Waste and Null Rod. However, you plan on resolving Null Rod much with 13 lands that produce mana (5 of which are Waste/Strip)? I think this strategy is very well suited to a deck like Wild Zombies, which I'd argue has just as good of a clock without relying on any one card and without running "junk cards" that WGD has to run.

[Flux]

dicemanx:
I apologize for being so irrational, I am not a morning person.  I have tested the deck against stax and control slaver and it did well against them.  This deck does not win as fast as other builds of dragon, and I should say that after playing with it, it plays more like a control deck, with the land kill and null rods.  you do need the bazaars to combo out, and that is why the life from the loams help you get them into play.  I agree, that dragon should win game one, because it has trouble after sideboarding.  I was trying to find a descent enough build where it could have a more solid plan games two and three.

Wild Zombies is good but I like the idea of winning the turn you go off.