BrassDredge at Hadley Grudge Match

[Ravager Sam]

 

G3 on the play against shops: Ancestral Recall + Appropriate land = Game Over (assuming you have a dredger to discard...and multiples to sure it up while you are at it).

You can win so many games against shops without using either Bazaar or your graveyard; throughout my reports I've cited games where I won with A. Recall, won without Bazaar, won without dredging, and won by wiping their board for the low cost of 2 mana. Keeping a 7 card hand with a dredger or 2 (especially with some mana/anti-hate) isn't a terrible idea game 2 against shops - you don't have chalices and a turn 1 needle can ruin your day.

Saying that, do you agree with the number of Golgari Thugs in Andy's list?

It's fine; in my last version of the deck (complete with reacquired Recall) I did exactly that with -1 Thug, +1 Recall.

[nineisnoone]

I'm happy with the list for the most part, but there's room for work.  I expected a very diverse meta, with about an even mix of "The big six" (tez, oath, tps, stax, fish, mirror).  The points I wanted to hit while building were:

1. Don't mulligan out of game one
2. Don't lose to Wasteland
3. Don't lose to the mirror

Lion's Eye Diamond and Ancestral were attempts to solve problem 1, Ancestral I'm happy with but LED was a failure.  I'm still looking for a good answer to this problem before I go around calling myself a dredge player.

I would think Chalice of the Void would be your best bet for the first.  Chalice for 0 can at least buy you sometime if you don't have a Bazaar.  No other card is going to replace Bazaar, but Chalice can be played on it's own which is better then any spell requiring mana.

I actually kind of thing running my own Strip/Wastes is a decent idea for the last two.  Again, they also can give you something to do if it's the last card you have.  Obviously, it's great in the mirror.  Most fish decks are like three colors with low basic counts and need multiple colors.  I don't think there is too much Tarmogoyf either so the clock isn't that fast.  Might not be that great since Noble can help them out a lot though.  Against Shop decks you can almost hurt them as much as they hurt you, especially if you drop Chalice @ 0.

[Adan]

Mulligan out of game 1 isn't necessarily an auto-loss. That's what I have learned during the big tournaments, the more important thing to consider is: Never scoop! The game is only over when your lifetotals are at 0.

If your opponent plays a slow controldeck or something, you still have the chance to rip a Bazaar or even draw yourself up to 8 cards and go for DDD. Everything happened already a few times during the (approx.) 2 years I'm playing Dredge now.
But hey, what do you cut for an Ancestral Recall? I got my hands on one for a good price and now I'm looking for a way to include it into my maindeck (I still think the maindeck has got some loose slots, however, they are inevitable since the sideboard is very tight now due to the uprising of Jailers again and you need to squeeze a few Sb cards into the main).

I just have problems to free up 1 slot for AncRecall. I don#t want to cut a Chalice or a Leyline either since I want to maximize the odds to have them in my opener.

[Adan]

Maybe you could try a singleton Thoughtseize for #1, since you can use it on yourself to discard a dredger and it can be disruption the rest of the time?

This list runs 4 Thougthseize SB: http://morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1322

The 2 big questions that come to my mind:

1) WTF?!
2) UNMASK ANY1??? SRSLY!

[Troy_Costisick]

Maybe you could try a singleton Thoughtseize for #1, since you can use it on yourself to discard a dredger and it can be disruption the rest of the time?

This list runs 4 Thougthseize SB: http://morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1322

The 2 big questions that come to my mind:

1) WTF?!
2) UNMASK ANY1??? SRSLY!

Maybe they didn't like the card disadvantage of UnMask.  Actually, Thoughtseize isn't all that unreasonable given the number of rainbow lands.

[Adan]

Maybe they didn't like the card disadvantage of UnMask. Actually, Thoughtseize isn't all that unreasonable given the number of rainbow lands.

But then they are playing a deck based on Bazaar of Baghdad? Makes no sense. On so many levels. You might have enough lands, but Unmask'ing a counter and then nuking a Leyline with Chain/Claim is huge. Or bouncing something with Chain, then Unmask'ing it. Thoughtseize is clunky in compairison to Unmask in all these scenarios. Except if you are mulling to 3 or something, but even then Unmask is better since you will most likely lack the land to cast Thoughtseize whereas it is easier to dig up a black card to pitch and play Unmask 4free.