Meadbert Manaless Ichorid Primer

[Beralt]

Meadbert,

In rereading your post I see that you mention witness and removing 9 cards initially when sideboarding (the Dread Return targets and their artifacts) . My count is the 3 Sharuums, LED, Lotus, 2 Altars = 8 - did an earlier version run Eternal Witness as an additional Dread Return target?

Curious what you do sideboard in the mirror?

[meadbert]

I meant 3 Sharuums, 2 Altars, 2 Dread Returns, Lotus and LED.

This list will lose to the mirror because it does not run Leyline so there is no great strategy.  I would say board in Chain of Vapors and that is it.  Probably pull out 1 Altar, 1 Thug, 1 Oboro and maybe a Fatestitcher, although I am not sure that is right.

[Mantis]

I was planning on running Oath next sunday but after seeing this deck, I might just go for it. The deck flows really well, is more explosive than traditional Dredge and I had the feeling I had an easier time dealing with hate. The only thing I have always found hard with Ichorid are the sideboarding plans: I would really appreciate it if you could write down your sideboardplans against Stax, Oath, Tez and Fish. Thanks for yet another awesome deck Bert!

[Womba]

This is an interesting idea for ichorid however, did anyone test this thing yet post board vs ANYTHING?

Without the ichorids you are incredible slow, especially since you board out all of your gas for games 2 and 3. I found this build to actually have harder match ups games 2 and 3 than more traditional builds with your proposed SBing, also your attackers do not even come online right away. Game 1 almost any ichorid type build can win, but the real trick is finding a build that is good games 2 and 3 and I just have not seen it at all with this build. The problem is you don't make a big clock before or after the hate can hit, your ghasts only have cabal therapy sac outlets that you need to dredge into and you sided out most of your gas to get to hit them. Game 2 and 3 you will find yourself stuck there with 1-2 ghast if that, with one bridge on average, sure you have FoW protection or something but given the speed of the other decks in the format and how fluid they can run with hate in their decks game 2 and 3 its like you break up synergy your deck had and you turn it into a really slow aggro deck. If anything I would consider SBing in ichorids but then again I think you should be trying to make a different build of this altogether.    

[jaeppel]

hey meadbert, i really like your work on the new dredge.dec.  I have a couple of questions though.  What are your thoughts on timevault as a sharuum target?  Its probably win-more, but i see it as a way better use of 4xstitcher than simply reusing bazaar.  Untapping vault untaps bazaar too, obv.  Taking just 2-3 consecutive turns with this build should win, there isnt really the need to go infinite. 

Running a full set of Undiscovered Paradise rather than fetches (which was my plan) is simply brilliant.  Self-bouncing lands go a long way to keeping ghast online.  that was the one difficulty i saw in ghast-dredge, hitting enough land drops to keep ghasts online.  The paradise/oboro configuration solves this problem nicely.

@womba, i tent to agree, that ichorid is beginning to miss his namesake dec.  Leaving out ichorid leaves behind a huge utapped resource: all of the crappy black creatures you need to dredge through.  in traditional dredge, most everything in the yard was serving a function.  Without ichorids, the imps and thugs dont do much once you hit the trolls.  I just like using as many resources as possible, leaving behind a stack of black creatures in the yard just makes me say, hey, where's my ichy?

It would be an entirely different build, but i think a version using ghast AND ichorid could be a strong contender.

[meadbert]

This is an interesting idea for ichorid however, did anyone test this thing yet post board vs ANYTHING?

Without the ichorids you are incredible slow, especially since you board out all of your gas for games 2 and 3. I found this build to actually have harder match ups games 2 and 3 than more traditional builds with your proposed SBing, also your attackers do not even come online right away. Game 1 almost any ichorid type build can win, but the real trick is finding a build that is good games 2 and 3 and I just have not seen it at all with this build. The problem is you don't make a big clock before or after the hate can hit, your ghasts only have cabal therapy sac outlets that you need to dredge into and you sided out most of your gas to get to hit them. Game 2 and 3 you will find yourself stuck there with 1-2 ghast if that, with one bridge on average, sure you have FoW protection or something but given the speed of the other decks in the format and how fluid they can run with hate in their decks game 2 and 3 its like you break up synergy your deck had and you turn it into a really slow aggro deck. If anything I would consider SBing in ichorids but then again I think you should be trying to make a different build of this altogether.    

There are a lot of good points brought up in here.  The trouble with Bloodghast is not getting him into play from the yard, but actually getting him into the yard from play to trigger Bridge.
Darkblast is one obvious solution that I totally left out.  I am not sure how folks willl start boarding, but now that there are zero cards that answer both Leyline of the Void and Ravenous Trap, my intuition tells me that sideboarding plans will try to run a combination of both.  For that reason I actually expect Yixlid Jailer to be used less often.  Darkblast also hits Welder and Dark Confidant so maybe I should include it, but I really wanted 7-8 answers for both Ravenous Trap and Leyline of the Void.  I am not thrilled with Echoing Truth, but I do not see many other options.

My hope is that because of Ravenous Trap, Dredge sort of falls off the radar a bit and folks stop dedicating half their sideboard to dredge. 

Also, to be fair I should point out that Vroman originally suggested Undiscovered Paradise!

[Womba]

 If you want to dedicate your SB spots for Leyline and trap I would suggest something like this:

4 Force Of Will
2 Wispmare
4 Chain Of Vapor
2 Misdirection
3 Ichorid

The Chains and Wisps allow you one mana outs vs and opposing Leyline, FoW and Misdirection allow for outs against Ravenous traps as well as helping vs other cards (Target yourself with Recall, ect.). I really think you need to have Ichorid in your SB for the deck to be effective games 2 and 3, essentially your going to be boarding in about 12-15 cards a game but the Ichorids really help trigger your bridges games 2 and 3 and you could readjust game 3 if they don't have Leyline. If you want outs vs Jailer you could cut a Wispmare or Misdirection and add Darkblast or contagion if you wanted.   

[Mantis]

I played this meadberts exact 75 to a 3-2-1 finish. Lost one match because of double mull to 1 game 2 and 3, and the other match was against Storm that had Leyline g2 and g3 after beating him game 1 with a mull to 1. The draw was because of mulligan to 1 and basically a fairly lucky opponent. I did not have the feeling I lost any match due to playmistakes and people watching me could attest to that, I just received the bad end of statistics (ie bad luck), otherwiste the list felt fairly amazing and when my I drew Bazaar and my opponent didn't overload me with hate I could cruise to victory easily everytime. The list just flows really well.

I went with a slightly different sideboard plan against Tez and sided out 2-4 Fatesticher, 2-4 Bloodghast, 1-2 Sharuum (depending on the time left), 1 Lotus, 1 LED, 1 Altar of Dementia and 0-2 Golgari Thug. I actually kept in 1 Sharuum + the Possessed Portal and that won me two games. If we were about to run out of time I would keep in 2 Sharuums and the Altar in order to wrap things up quickly. Sideboarding out Fatestitchers was almost certainly a big mistake, the reason is that against Leyline, you often have just a short time left before either they win the game, they find more hate or they recast Leyline. Stitcher helps to dredge an inordinate amount of cards into your graveyard, example: Chain of Vapor on Leyline EOT, Bazaar after that and discard some dredgers, in upkeep dredge, drawstep dredge and then in mainphase use Stitcher to end up with 20-30 cards dredged. Another idea is to play play Ancestral Recall and somewhere in the 75, it works very well with dredgers and it helps you dig for answers to their hate g2 and g3.

I wasn't fairly impressed by Bloodghast, however either Ichorid or Bloodghast is probably needed and I can't say which one would have been better for me. I don't think the difference ever mattered and if it did, most certainly in favor of Bloodghast. I really need to test this more to make up my mind.

Despite my fairly disappointing finish and breaking my streak of 3 T8 appereances, the deck was a blast to play and really powerful. I will likely play this again in the future but have a better worked out sideboard plan plus better preparation.

[meadbert]

I am actually curious about how the losses to Long + Leyline post board went.  Where you unable to find answers to Leyline?  Were you able to find answers, but then they raced you?

[Mantis]

His storm deck was some kind of Confidant/Storm hybrid with Rituals but not Drains.

Game 1: I have to mulligan to 1 because I am unable to find Bazaar. I topdeck it at turn 2 or 3 however and proceed to dredge a bit. He has a Dark Confidant and has played Gifts for Lotus/Recall/Demonic and Will with Voltaic Key on board so I have to give him Lotus + Recall. I manage to Cabal Therapy him twice and get Sharuum + Possessed Portal out which he has Chain of Vapor for, unfortunately. He finds Time Vault and proceeds to take extra turns, eventually he plays Vamp but to his big dismay he discovers that his Y Will and his Tinker are both in his graveyard, he finds Timetwister plays it, finds nothing and eventually flips Inkwell and I win.
Game 2: He has turn 1 Leyline and kills me on turn 2 with Helm of Obedience.
Game 3: He again has turn 1 Leyline, I play my Bazaar and he plays Ancestral Recall but while doing so he accidentally drops a Force of Will on the table. I have Cephalid Coliseum, Chain of Vapor, and Force of Will in my hand. I decide to let it resolve and decide to dig for another blue card to trump his FoW. I manage to find an Echoing Truth and get another Coliseum on the table. My hand is now: Chain, Fow, E Truth and I have 2 blue lands + Bazaar. I can't remember exactly what happened but I know I have one turn to live and have to take action. Bazaar is tapped EOT and I Echoing Truth his Leyline, he Forces and I Force back. It resolves and my opponent and I weren't sure wheter or not the Echoing Truth gets RFG-ed, the judge informs us it does. In my upkeep I activate Bazaar find Stinkweed Imp + another card, so 2 cards in graveyard. Dredging Imp would leave me with 1 card short of Threshold and I am unable to activate Cephalid Coliseum, the top of my deck yields nothing and it's gg. How ironic, my opponent didn't want me to call a judge because he was fine with the E Truth ending up in the yard as he wanted to hurry up and avoid a draw (we were close to time), if that were the case, I might have just stolen the game and snuck into T8 instead of him (I was 3-1 at the time and he was able to draw in).

EDIT: If you are interested, I could make a tournament report tomorrow. I will definately play this deck again, it was a blast and I think if I truly master it the way I mastered Shops and have a little bit more luck with mulligans this deck could give me some high finishes.

[PhilipJFry]

I am pretty sure that E-Truth should end up in your yard, as, at the point it is trying to go to the yard (after spell resolved), there is nothing in play sending it anywhere else.

It resolves and my opponent and I weren't sure wheter or not the Echoing Truth gets RFG-ed, the judge informs us it does. In my upkeep I activate Bazaar find Stinkweed Imp + another card, so 2 cards in graveyard. Dredging Imp would leave me with 1 card short of Threshold and I am unable to activate Cephalid Coliseum, the top of my deck yields nothing and it's gg. How ironic, my opponent didn't want me to call a judge because he was fine with the E Truth ending up in the yard as he wanted to hurry up and avoid a draw (we were close to time), if that were the case, I might have just stolen the game and snuck into T8 instead of him (I was 3-1 at the time and he was able to draw in).

[Mantis]

We had a big dispute afterwards with some people who all thought the same and if so that might very well have costed me T8 so that would be a big shame. The judge however was very determined, but I'll post it in the rules forum and let you know what the answer is here.

[meadbert]

Echoing Truth definitely goes to the yard.  Game 2 there is nothing to be done.  Leyline + turn 2 win is just not winnable.

Game 3 it sounds like you at least had the tools you needed to win and maybe you should have if the rules were right!  One question I pondered was whether Unmask should be dropped so we can run 11 bounce spells (including some Boomerangs.)

This leaves us wide open to Ravenous Trap, but reloading is pretty quick where as Leyline is a lock.  This depends on how the hate shakes out over the next few months.  Also the extra bounce spells (along with keeping Sharuum around) make Force of Will much easier to play!

EDIT:  As always I love to read tourney reports and I will surely read the whole thing!

[Mantis]

Probably common knowledge to every Ichorid player out there, but anything with Dark Rituals, Tendrills and Leyline sideboard is a hard matchup. Their hate only seeks to buy minimal time as they can be quite explosive, furthermore they can just replay their Leylines with the help of Rits. Slower control decks are much easier, not only do they often play various other hate (Jailer, Crypt, Neede, Trap) all of which you can FoW or Therapy/Unmask out of their hand, they are just a lot slower and usually give you at least 4 turns which is plenty time to kill them, chain some Therapies or Possessed Portal.

About Ravenous Trap: I actually played around Ravenous Trap when I could, such as not activating my Bazaar in my upkeep when it wasn't necessary and dredge in my drawstep, then play Therapy. Obviously, there are times when you need to play headfirst into it, but playing this way definately helps. I did not like Unmask too much and didnt often side it in. I am sure there are other tricks to play around it, but with the limited number of games I played Ichorid (like 10 before the tournament) I couldn't figure them all out. And I concur, Trap is a minor speedbumb compared to Leyline of the Void, as is all other hate in fact.

The sideboard: I never felt like I had too little bounce, as with 7 copies(perhaps 8 or 9 is the right number, testing ensues! Into the Roil maybe?) finding it wasn't really that hard, winning afterwards sometimes was as I left my opponents undisrupted for too long. A way to fix this is Chalice of the Void, typically we will win game 1 then either win or lose 2, if we win good if we lose, we are on the play game 3. This would mean that if they don't have Leyline as hate we might get away with boarding in just 4 Chain, 4 Force and 4 Chalice. Given this plan and assuming we are on the play:
- Yixlid Jailer takes two mana to get going which means they get to play it after we have activated Bazaar twice and probably have a Therapy for it already.
- Tormods Crypt gets countered.
- Ravenous Trap loses a lot of its impact since it's primarily used as a tempo card and Chalice hammers that tempo away.
- Extirpate is a card I have never feared all that much.
- Wasteland is still effective, but since both Wasting and not being able to play Moxen takes them back so much, we might get away with just using our drawphase to dredge.

Unmask is probably the first card on the cutting block to make room for Chalice, but like you said all depends on the impact of Ravenous Trap.

I will likely cut a Bloodghast in the maindeck to make room for Ancestral Recall and be able to find the hate better postboard and helps shore up extreme mulligans, while being an excellent dredge enabler. Against Vroman Oath this allows us to win with Altar of Dementia if that ever comes up..

[meadbert]

Altar already beats Vroath since you can just activate it after they Krosan Rec but before they draw and deck them as usual.  Now if they have Ancient Grudge along with mana to use it, Krosan Rec and play Yawg then that may be a different story.

One of the things I like about Altar is its flexibility.  A lot of hate cards stop you by making you pay upkeep for creatures or pay for the right to attack or they prevent you from attacking (Moat, Ensnaring Bridge.)
Altar dodges all of these.  Mostly I worry about Platinum Angel.

Back to Vroath.  It is a really good matchup since the maindeck has close to 0 relevant disruption and a slow clock.  Fatestitcher dredge generally wins the same turn you bring out your first creature so for them to win preboard they basically need to have Mox, Orchard, Oath on the play, then they can name black and go infinite.  That is tough to pull off.
The board that Vroman proposed is somewhat weak against Dredge considering the already weak main deck.

[Mantis]

Okay sure, I forgot about just doing it in the upkeep. Still, that doesn't really take away anything of Recalls biggest selling points.
Furthermore I was wondering about your thoughts on Chalice and Ancestral in general as I kind of like my theory, although it has to be seen whether or not this works out in practice.

On a different note, I'll do a tournament report despite my mediocre performance and without notes, hopefully I'll have it finished by today as otherwise the memory probably starts to blur.

[Daedalus]

At the same tournament Mantis was at, I also joined in with my own build of 'Ichorid' with Bloodghast. For the fun of it, I created a transformational sideboard to include the new Dark Depths / Vampire Hexmage combo. Although I managed to surprise some people, and have them open with Leylines, Tormod Crypts or Needles on Bazaar, the combo still was too slow and fragile (as I had expected it to be). Here's the list I played:

   // Lands
4   Bazaar of Baghdad
2   Dakmor Salvage
4   Verdant Catacombs
1   Dryad Arbor
3   Bayou
   //\\
   // Creatures
4   Golgari Grave-Troll
3   Golgari Thug
4   Narcomoeba
4   Stinkweed Imp
4   Bloodghast
1   Flame-Kin Zealot
2   Cephalid Sage
   //\\
   // Spells
4   Serum Powder
4   Bridge from Below
4   Cabal Therapy
3   Dread Return
4   Unmask
1   Lotus Petal
1   Black Lotus
3   Crop Rotation
   //\\
   // Sideboard
3   Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4   Vampire Hexmage
4   Dark Depths
1   Demonic Consultation
3   Spoils of the Vault

As you can see, I included crop rotation; it has nice synergy with Bloodghast, can fetch one part of the combo post-board and allows you to search an extra bazaar the second turn. In my gold-fish experiments, it also helped to improve the mulligans by improving your odds to have an extra 'virtual' bazaar (although this is tricky, when your opponent plays FoW)

Some remarks on the tournament:
Preboard, I managed to win three out of six games on the second turn. Bloodghast was a huge factor in these games, as I managed to return one or more with my second land drop, to enable a game-winning dread return.
Two games, my first bazaar got wasted. Here, Bloodghast again was quite good, as I could just dredge with my black creatures instead of pondering whether to remove them to Ichorid or not. One remarkably play was in my last game, where I managed to hardcast a Cephalid Sage, using Lotus, paying one extra mana for the daze of my opponent and then next turn pay two mana for the spell pierce my opponent fired at my Dread Return
The only game I lost preboard was when my opponent double Jester Capped me on his second turn, removing my Narcomoeba's (last one in hand) and Bridge from Below (last one removed with Serum Powder), followed by a Chalice on 1 and 4... Hurrah for Metalworker.

My sideboard games were less succesful. I already figured this from some test games, but tried it anyway. I don't want to go into much details, but it comes down to the fact that a 20/20 flying, indestructible guy just doesn't cut it in Vintage. In three games, I got the big dude out, one game I had to sacrifice him to a Warren Weirding, another game my opponent topdecks an Ensnaring Bridge to which I had no answer, but one game I actually connected and won the game (My opponent opened with a Needle on bazaar , I topdeck a Black Lotus, Unmask him to discard Swords to Plowshares, play Hexmage w/ Lotus, drop Dark Depths and create the token. He drew a new swords to plowshares but did not have the white mana to use it).
Two other games I won postboard, but without Marit Lage; the first by going aggro with Bloodghasts and Golgari Thugs, backed up with Unmasks and Therapies. The other by switching back to the pure dredge build, to which he had no answers anyway (minus 6, Worldgorger Dragon with Tez sideboard).

I do think that Bloodghast has potential and I liked playing with it better than playing with Ichorid. However, I have to go back to the drawing board for my sideboard strategy. This can be a 'traditional' build with Reverent Silence, Emerald Charm, Dark blast, Oxidize and the alikes, or a blue build with Chain of Vapor, in which case the maindeck will be similar to the list by meadbert.

Gerwin

[CowWithHat]

Has it been decided that sphinx of lost truths isn't as good as cephalid sage?

[meadbert]

I did a ton more testing of sideboards today and ultimately decided that I had it right the first time.  Unmask is still really good and thus it does belong.  Although I ideally want more bounce and although I might go to 9-10 bounce if they all cost  , when you consider that it is turn 3 before you can pay for Echoing Truth or Boomerang, then running 7 is fine.  This is especially true since you can frequently protect with Force or Unmask.  I have partially reconsidered my sideboarding strategy.  I still take out all but 1 Dread Return of the Dread Return package, but I leave in 2 Fatestitchers now because with so many lands those are useful.  I also leave in all 10 lands.  I dropped down to 2 Thugs and 2 Imps since as you fight through hate you frequently find a dredger even with only 8 in the deck.  I wanted a 9th and 10 Dredger but do not know what else to drop.

One card I am considering changing is the second Oboro.  I wonder if Seat of the Synod might be better.  Basically when you Dread Return Sharuum if there are no other Sharuums in yard you frequently want Lotus or LED, however returning Seat (and triggering all of those Bloodghasts again) is pretty good since you can then bring out all of your Fatestitchers.  The draw back is that Seat cannot bounce itself.  I am considering going -1 Oboro, +1 Seat.

[Beralt]

I like the Seat over the additional Synod, it's similar to my earlier suggestion of fitting in a Dryad Arbor as a Dread Return target.

As to the sideboarding strategy, I like the idea of keeping a single Dread Return.

[froz3nn]

I did a ton more testing of sideboards today and ultimately decided that I had it right the first time.  Unmask is still really good and thus it does belong.  Although I ideally want more bounce and although I might go to 9-10 bounce if they all cost  , when you consider that it is turn 3 before you can pay for Echoing Truth or Boomerang, then running 7 is fine.  This is especially true since you can frequently protect with Force or Unmask.  I have partially reconsidered my sideboarding strategy.  I still take out all but 1 Dread Return of the Dread Return package, but I leave in 2 Fatestitchers now because with so many lands those are useful.  I also leave in all 10 lands.  I dropped down to 2 Thugs and 2 Imps since as you fight through hate you frequently find a dredger even with only 8 in the deck.  I wanted a 9th and 10 Dredger but do not know what else to drop.

One card I am considering changing is the second Oboro.  I wonder if Seat of the Synod might be better.  Basically when you Dread Return Sharuum if there are no other Sharuums in yard you frequently want Lotus or LED, however returning Seat (and triggering all of those Bloodghasts again) is pretty good since you can then bring out all of your Fatestitchers.  The draw back is that Seat cannot bounce itself.  I am considering going -1 Oboro, +1 Seat.

Seat sounds decent, but what about dakmor salvage. It only dredges for 2, but it does get back your bloodghasts when you are already in a mode where you arent drawing anymore cards. For the SB, what do you think about nix. It counters rav trap, and crypts if your opponent holds them back and doesnt drop them turn 1. Between forces and nix post board, you would surely have enough blue cards to make force super reliable. However, you start running out of room in the board for bounce spells. Also with nix, you could counter something like a lotus just to stem the bleeding and give you and extra turn or 2.

[meadbert]

Nix does not play well with Fatestitchers.  Basically in order to keep Nix up you cannot use your  mana to pay for Fatestitchers.  Also, as turn 2 begins you presumably want to either dredge for your draw step or Bazaar on upkeep.  Either gives your opponent a chance to play Mindbreak Trap.  Also if they had Tormod's Crypt they would have presumably played it on their first turn.  The result is that in order to use Nix you would have to drop a mana land on turn 1 and wait till turn 2 to drop Bazaar which is almost as bad as getting Crypted to begin with so that is not a viable strategy.

Dakmoor Salvage is decent and I could see maybe running 1, but it does not pay for relevant spells in a timely manner so in general it is bad.  I can see a case for wanting a land to draw occationally so as a 1of it might be decent.

[Mantis]

You just won game 1, it's game 2 and you are on the draw. Would you keep this? (Your opponent is playing a Drain deck)
FoW, Chain of Vapor, Echoing Truth, Fatestitcher, Golgari Grave Troll, Cephalid Coliseum, Undiscovered Paradise.

Would anything change if the Fatestitcher was a Serum Powder?

Reason to keep it:
Draw, discard Grave-Troll, dredge in your next turn this gives you Threshold combined with the Fow/Chain of Vapor you are giong to play and on turn 3 you can activate Coliseum if you had the fortune of dredging into another dredger. It has all the protection you could ever ask for + the mana to cast it.

I am contemplating keeping hands like this as I have found myself dying to mulligan to 1 way too much (does somebody know the odds?). Additionally I die when I have Bazaar but no lands/bounce to combat their hate. Before I just mindlessly mulliganed towards Bazaar but I don't think this is necessarily correct when hands like the above one present themself.

Tidbit about the sideboard:
I currently have 4 Leyline of the Void in the place of 4 Unmask because they are fairly strong against Stax and obviously nutty in the mirror but I also frequently board them in against creature based decks that try to remove the Bridges by sacrificing creatures. I never found room to board in the complete 15 cards, so figured I might just concentrate on matchups where my other boards cards don't necessarily cut it.

Another thing I was wondering about: what do you guys board out?
I usually do something like this (against Drain type decks, against Fish or Stax I really keep in all 4 Bloodghasts and board out some Stitchers).
-2 Sharuum, -2 Golgari Thug, -2 Bloodghast, -1 LED, -1 Black Lotus, -2 Dread Return, -1 Altar of Dementia
+4 FoW, +4 Chain of Vapor, +3 Echoing Truth

I really like to keep in as many Fatestitchers as possible. Often, the board state looks like this: Leyline of the Void on their side and Bazaar + land on your side, you play Chain of Vapor EOT, activate Bazaar EOT, activate Bazaar in upkeep --> dredge, dredge in drawstep. The problem is: you do not always have Grave Trolls, sometimes there is only 1 Stinkweed Imp and you dredge 10 cards and really need to hit Moeba + Therapy to get rid of their Leyline otherwise they hardcast it next turn again, Fatestitcher helps a lot in this respect as it allows you to go nuts in the limited window of time you are granted.

[meadbert]

I would not keep that.  You cannot use Force for a turn 1 threat since you will lose your discard.  Also, you are missing your turn 1 Land Drop for the same reason, thus you cannot even play Chain of Vapor after your first turn.  Going for turn 2 Chain or Force and then turn 3 Dredging is not terrible, but not better than a typical hand of 6.

If you had Serum Powder then it is not even close.  You definitely mulligan to 7.

[meadbert]

I had a new idea.  Basically I was reviewing notes I had about TurboGush and saw that I had a huge issue with removal against Flash.  The issue is that I wanted to remove Leyline of the Void, but frequently had one of my own out and did not want to bounce both with either Echoing Truth or Chain of Vapor.  I toyed with Ray of Revelation, but if countered flashback was not helpful since Leyline RFGed it.  It was not terrible but worse than even something like Quiet Purity.  The solution?  Steal Enchantment!  That sucker left me with 2 Leylines in play messing up my opponent and left him with nothing.

Now that there are more mana source perhaps that could be used in this list.  The   casting cost works as well as Echoing Truth since all mana sources produce blue, and Steal Enchantment not only trumps bounce but also removal by giving us control of Leyline to mess them up.  It could also be handy in the mirror although it may be too slow there.  Steal Enchantment answers Wheel of Sun and Moon although not Planar Void.  It does not address Needle and Crypt and a few other guys, but I find blowing through Crypt is fine and Needle is not bad in a deck with Colliseums as a backup.  I just had this idea tonight so I have not had time to test much yet.

EDIT:  Further testing has demonstrated Steal Enchantment to be inferior to Echoing Truth.  Mostly this is because of Yixlid Jailer and Planar Void.
Perhaps in a different meta, it might make sense, but not right now.

[Stormanimagus]

@meadbert- I am curious as to why you've gone the Bloodghast route. It seems fine in Legacy, but perhaps too slow in Vintage. If one does take the deck that direction, however, I do, whole-heartedly agree with Undiscovered Paradise .

Secondly, Why so many slots devoted to the Sharuum/Altar Combo? Why go that route at all? Doesn't a single Dread-Returned Iona also lead to a pretty rock solid win if you aren't stupid and name the wrong color? Iona is only 1 slot (perhaps 2 if you want redundancy and consistency) whereas your current config uses 5 slots on the combo. Those extra 4 slots could go towards Breakthrough or other hate no?

-Storm

[meadbert]

Bloodghast is faster than Ichorid since any that are Dredged turn 2 also come out turn 2.  Bloodghast speeds up the deck.

Altar Sharumm wins now and through a lot of hate (eg: Ensnaring Bridge)

Iona cannot name Artifact and thus suffers from random losses to Vault/Key.  Breakthrough is not needed since Fatestitchers are basically better.

Other hate would be a good idea, but I hate passing the turn and if I can win 70-80% on turn 2 then that is what I should go for.

[Stormanimagus]

Bloodghast is faster than Ichorid since any that are Dredged turn 2 also come out turn 2.  Bloodghast speeds up the deck.

Altar Sharumm wins now and through a lot of hate (eg: Ensnaring Bridge)

Iona cannot name Artifact and thus suffers from random losses to Vault/Key.  Breakthrough is not needed since Fatestitchers are basically better.

Other hate would be a good idea, but I hate passing the turn and if I can win 70-80% on turn 2 then that is what I should go for.

Do you really win 70%-80% of the time on turn 2 with this build? That's not inflated at all? If that is true then I rescind my argument and I'll start testing this build immediately. I do not say this sarcastically, if there really is a 70%-80% turn 2 kill then I'd like to know how those games play out such that it is that fast a kill.

-Storm

[meadbert]

I have not add the new cards to my simulator, but 70%+ seems correct to me.
Basically you need to mulligan to Bazaar, hit a dredger on turn 1 and then have that second land.
If you do those 3 things you win over 90% by turn 2.

Sometimes you can win turn 2 even without the turn 1 Dredger if you get luck with what Fatestitcher Dredges into or if you have Lotus or LED.

EDIT:  This is not a large sample set, but I just goldfished 10 hands and won by turn 2 9 times.  The only loss was a hand of 3 with Bazaar and Thug, but no other land.  That hand won on turn 3.

[Ravager Sam]

I played the following list at the philly open and made a top 8 finish out of about 70 people:

4 Bridge from Below
4 Bloodghast
4 Golgari Thug
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Fatestitcher
4 Serum Powder
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Narcomoeba
4 Stinkweed Imp
3 Sharuum
3 Dread Return
1 Altar of Dementia
1 Possessed Portal
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Oboro
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

Board:
4 Chain of Vapor
3 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
4 Unmask

Quick Synoposis of the tournament:

Round 1: Ted playing TPS
G1 -> Mull to 5 and win on turn 2.
G2 -> He gets leyline, leyline, jailer, needle on bazaar.
G3 -> I am able to sneak through a turn to get strip his hand with therapies and make a good number of zombies.

Round 2: Stax
G1 -> Win t2 off a mull to 4
G2 -> He REBs my attempts at chaining his leyline
G3 -> See game two

From the 1-1 start, I won out:

Round 3: Mono Blue Control

G1 -> Win turn 2 after serum powdering to 6.
G2 -> He really didn't have enough hate and I'm able to win with zombies in a relatively easy fashion.

My first three rounds were all chill, but from this point on, I felt like my opponents were going to flip tables on me, except for my loss in t8.

Round 4: Vroman (Sam Remy lol) playing hexmage depths

G1 -> Win t2 off a mull to 6, I believe
G2 -> He eventually decks himself by using Divining Witch naming Tormod's Crypt (to stop my would be lethal assault next turn with my zombies and bloodghasts in GY).  I got out zombies and was beating him till he was low, but I had narcomoeba so he couldn't attack with the 20/20 for the win.

Round 5: Tezz

G1 -> My slowest win yet, and it was t3
G2 -> He gets me with his hate
G3 -> My dread returned grave troll was bigger than his leviathan, and I attacked for 23 (6 zombies and grave troll) while he was at 19 so he needed to block the troll to get another turn.  I was at 1 life when this game ended.

Round 6: Tezz

G1 -> Win t2
G2 -> His hate > me.  He resolved some leylines and needles and enough to get there.  I misplayed here that cost me the game -> I forgot a bloodghast trigger that would have enabled me to cabal therapy the leyline I had EoT chained.  He then crypted me and dropped leyline.
G3 -> He eventually misplayed here when I forced his merchant scroll, he let that resolve when he could have topped into a mana drain and won with mystical tutor -> tinker.

Round 7: Draw

Top 8:
G1 -> It was my slowest t1 win of the day, and that was t4.
G2 -> He had a very good board against me, a lot of 1-ofs (jailer, crypt, trap) and like 3 relics.  This game he got 2 relics and a ravenous trap.
G3 -> In this game, he got 2 relics and wrecked me.

Relevant notes:

Possessed Portal versus Altar of Dementia was never significant
Seat of the Synod never mattered
I didn’t activate oboro
I only used serum powder once, as I only had it once without a bazaar
The matches were all really intense and quite fun -> so much better than standard
I didn’t cast unmask all day
I had my opponent hardcast force of will on my stinkweed
The one game I faced a jailer, I was beat from 20 to 0 by that jailer
Force of will was good, I don’t know if it was *that* good
Bloodghast is awesome
People boarded in extirpate (round 5 and Vroman), but they never played it

Overall, I would say the sharuum engine works really well game one, but did it really matter that I won 2 turns faster than normal dredge? No, of course not.  That being said, this version is fine and dandy and all that, but it’s not necessary; it’s all win-more.  The whole engine comes out post-board, and you are left with a sub-par pile of cards that eventually wins by attacking with just enough zombies to win over the course of a long and drawn out game.  I am going to change the deck a lot for next time (bye-bye sharuum engine), although this was an incredibly enjoyable deck to pilot.  In the end, I walked out of there with all foil: playsets of bridges, narcomoebas, and stinkweed imps, 2 dread returns (already got 1), and 2 fatestitchers.