players trying to play too defensively against Dredge. Dredge sort of has inevitability on its side.
So this is pretty interesting to me. Inevitability seems much more appropriate when talking about something like Hulk or Control Slaver. By this I mean that the control elements in those decks allowed them to perform really well in the late game once they hit a threshold of resources. I don't see Dredge in the same light, but maybe I'm misjudging it. Unmask and Chalice just seem like less stable tools than mana drain and force of will.
Looking at the play of using a Force of Will and pitching an action spell like Thirst to protect Pithing Needle, I'm assuming I'll topdeck better than Dredge (once the Bazaar is neutralized). Are you disagreeing with this? Can you elaborate on why you think I shouldn't protect the needle?
What makes Hulk and Control Slaver powerful in the late game is that they can use their mana to chain draw spells together. Also, in Slaver's case they can potentially hard cast Robots. They key here is the draw engine. In the early game, the power of a magic deck is limited by their mana. You may have 7 cards in your hand on turn 1, but you can only spend mana on 1 or 2 spells usually. The rest must wait till later in the game. In the late game this is reversed. Instead of of the bottleneck being mana, you instead find that you have plenty of many, but your hand size becomes the limitation. Draw spells become much more powerful in the late game. Force of Will, Unmask and Chalice of the Void are all mostly useful in the early game because they have free mana costs. They also become slightly more powerful in the late game as Force and Unmask can be hardcast and Chalice of the Void can be cast with X as values other than 0. Still, the reason these cards exist in type 1 is because they are powerful on turn 1. Force of Will is most useful for two purposes. One is to prevent your opponent from winning quickly. The other is to protect a quick win of your own. Force of Will can certainly counter Fact or Fiction or Gifts or a mid/late Yawg Will, but in those situations Counterspell would probably have been the better card since you should have enough mana to play it by then you would rather pay
than pitch a blue card which is likely a powerful draw spell.
Against Dredge, Force of Will is not preventing a quick win post board. First of all even left totally alone Dredge is unlikely to win before turn four. Second, before Dredge goes for the win it is likely to be able to cast at least 1 Therapy and if Dredge is looking to win it will name Force of Will anyway.
The second good use of Force of Will is the more intersting one against Dredge. Definitely countering Chalice of the Void so you can combo out yourself is a huge play. Having Chalice shut off a several Moxen or even a Tormod's Crypt is a total pain. I will say that Thirst for Knowledge partly mitigates this risk since you can pitch artifacts to Thirst for card advantage. Waiting to have 3 lands out seems slow but it is not that slow since Dredge is usually looking at a turn 4 or later win post board. Force of Will on Unmask is not particularly helpful since you now lose Force and a business spell rather than just 1 spell. In order to argue that losing two cards is better than losing the 1, one must either claim that the one hate card was super valuable (which would back up my claim that Tez should run more hate) or that Force of Will + blue card are very weak (which would back up my claim that Force is weak.)
In general the best use of Force of Will is countering that Chalice of the Void, but a Chain of Vapor would usually have been better since it is well worth paying the extra
to avoid pitching a blue spell. For this reason I would never board out Chain of Vapor but keep in Force.
Lets get back to the Needle/Force question. First of all I object to Force even being in the deck, but lets say that it is there. How good of a play is pitching Thirst to Force to protect Needle from Oxidize? First, if Dredge is on the play then he probably already pitched a Dredger and is looking at around a turn 6 win if Needle sticks. This is compared to perhaps a turn 4 win if Needle does not stick. Thus, Oxidize on Needle buys Dredge about 2 turns of speed. That seems pretty awesome and well worth countering. On the other side, what does pitching Thirst to Force cost? First of all I am claiming that you can mostly harmlessly discard Force to Thirst thus Thirst basically reads draw 3, discard 1. What might Thirst draw you? Well Thirst could draw you Tormod's Crypt, Pithing Needle or Relic of Progenitus in which case it was way better than pitching Thirst to Force. If Thirst draws no hate then it just drew 3 business/mana cards which puts you 3 cards closer to your eventual win which basically speeds up the win by 3 turns. So in one case Thirst digs three cards closer to the win while replacing the hate you lost, or in the other case it just digs three cards closer to the win. In either case you are making up ground faster than Dredge has.
If Dredge were on the draw then there is the question of whether they would even bother with Oxidize on Needle since the difference between removing Needle and keeping it may only be a turn. If they do drop a land and go for Oxidize then they have set themselves back to about a turn 7 win so that is much more important play.
Finally I want to address Drain. Drain is mostly better than Force against Dredge. This is definitely true on the play. On the play Chalice is less threatening and Drain is up before Dredge's turn 2 which is in time to cause trouble with their Dread Returns. Even using Walk, Sapphire, Lotus, Petal or Academy to Drain a turn 2 Unmask can be huge. What is nice about Drain is that at worst it counters a Therapy and then that mana can be used to accelerate out Fact, Gifts, Thirst or Tez a turn earlier and win quicker. In the mean time it does not have that wretched cost of pitching a draw spell.
Where control players instincts go wrong is that they test against Dredge a lot pre board and then make decisions on how to board based on preboard games. Drain players discover that Drain is not too relvant and frequently Gifts/Fact never have a chance to get played because Dredge has emptied their hand on turn 2 preboard. Thus the Fact and Gifts get boarded out, and even Thirst seems like too little too late. Instead, Dredge vs Drain games should average over 6 turns post board in which cast Fact and Gifts become some of the best cards in Drain's deck, while Thirst for knowledge is solid too. Even with Chalice out Thirst will have time to do plenty in six turns.
