Waterbury 14.5 4th Place w/Dredge: even a broken clock is right twice a day

TLDR Version: I played Dredge, I made top 4 losing to Bill Copes with Aggro Shops twice, once in the swiss, once in top 4. Leyline of the Void MD was not good, I'd like to make the deck more resilient to strip effects, more petrified fields or breakthrough maybe.

Preamble: Why Dredge Mike?
I had made plans to attend the latest Waterbury tournament after seeing the announcement. I have been working weekends lately and I felt Waterbury was finally an event clearly worth taking a day off from work for, so I made the necessary arrangements to attend. It immediately occurred to me that this tournament would be starting at 11 AM at the latest and was nearly 3 hours away and I would have to get up much earlier than I usually do in order to attend. I imagined myself half asleep attempting to reason out the win with the Bob Tendrils deck I have been playing lately and decided I wanted to play something a bit less taxing on my mental faculties. The clear choice was Dredge. I had always kept dredge together in the event that somebody needed a loaner and to add some options to my Vintage gauntlet. Also, the deck is super cheap to build. I always thought the deck to be very competitive, but vulnerable, and I had never played it in a tournament. I took my list from Brassman and made some slight adjustments. No LED Maindeck or encroach in the SB, in their place I had a Golgari Thug MD and 3 Pithing Needle and a Darkblast in the board. I had made plans to drive to the tournament with Brassman and Outlaw and we were off.

Pretty much every Dredge list you've ever seen +/- 3 cards:
3 Leyline of the Void
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dread Return
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Nature's Claim
3 Darkblast
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Bloodghast
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Narcomoeba
2 Ichorid
2 Golgari Thug
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Petrified Field
2 Dakmor Salvage
2 City of Brass
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Serum Powder
1 Ancestral Recall

SB:

1 Leyline of the Void
1 Nature's Claim
4 Chain of Vapor
2 Wispmare
3 Pithing Needle
1 Darkblast
2 City of Brass
1 Ichorid

Round 1: Alex with Oath

Game 1: He wins the roll, I keep a bazaar hand. He opens with a land, maybe a ponder or a preordain, and passes. I play my turn 1 bazaar of baghdad and pass back. He plays mox, land and casts tinker for Blightsteel colossus. I am not able to win on my turn, but I do get a few zombie tokens into play off cabal therapy on my bloodghast. He attacks and kills a zombie and giving me 9 poison counters. Unfortunately for him he does not have the Steady Progress for the win and I untap, replace some draws with dredges and I believe there was a flame-kin zealot involved.

Sideboard In:
2 City of Brass
2 Wispmare
4 Chain of Vapor
1 Nature's Claim

Sideboard Out:
2 Petrified Field
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Golgari Thug
2 Ichorid

Game 2: He is on the play, I keep a hand with Bazaar of Baghdad. He plays a fetchland and two moxes and pops the fetchland. After finding the land but before shuffling he taps his mana for blue and his moxes and then touches his mox pearl as though he is going to do something with it other than tapping it. He stops for a moment, then untaps the moxes and says that he will preordain and begins to shuffle his deck. I start to wonder if he actually does have the Tinker and is not playing it for some inexplicable reason OR this is a really convincing head game that he's playing. I have multiple therapies available that turn so I take the bait and cast Cabal Therapy on my turn naming Tinker. Lo and behold there is the Tinker in his hand. I'm extremely surprised he did not get his turn 1 Blightsteel, but I move on. I think I therapy multiple times to really kill his hand early on and he is not able to do anything relevant. The game ends shortly thereafter. I find out that he had intended to play the tinker, but sideboarded out his Blightsteel Colossus.

Matches: 1-0
Games 2-0

I do a bit of scouting between rounds and find a pretty diverse metagame with Oath of Druids, various flavors of workshops, Dredge, Gush Combo and Tezzeret.

Round 2: Jason playing Control

I can't remember too much about how these games went down. Looking at e score sheet I kept it seems like I cast cabal therapy alot and used nature's claim on something at some point, I think it was in response to vault key being assembled. I only see two sets of life totals and I know I got the match, so I'm going to guess that I won this 2-0.

Matches: 2-0
Games: 4-0

Round 3: Bill Copes playing Shops
Game 1: I think in this game Bill had a ton of fast mana and dropped two Lodestone Golems on me turn 1. I think I was able to race this game and won thanks to a Bazaar of Baghdad after the first one got hit by a wasteland.
Game 2: I get hated out in this game by Ghost Quarter and Bujoka Bog I think. Precursor Golem provides the necessary beats. I had no chance here.
Game 3: We both Mulligan down pretty low, I think he stops at 5 and I go down to 4. My 4 card hand includes an City of Brass or Undiscovered Paradise and an Ancestral Recall. I figure that the 3 that I'm going to see off Ancestral and the other cards I'm going to have make this preferable to another mulligan to 3. I cast the ancestral on my turn and don't see the Bazaar, Bill draws a card and passes. We both continue this way for a bit. I eventually get up to 8 cards, discard a grave troll from hand and get the dredging going the hard way. Of course the first card flipped off the dredge is indeed a Bazaar of Baghdad. Bill is able to get a workshop and other mana on his end and drops a Bujoka Bog to substantially set back my already slow dredging plan.

I can't recall if this is exactly the order of how these games went down, but I'm pretty sure it was a 2-1 win for Bill. Maybe I'm sort of blending games 2-3 together here and I actually lost game 1? I seem to remember a situation where I was hoping to hit some Narcomoebas off a Dredge in the hopes of buying a turn, but I can't remember if it was Lodestones or Precursor Golems that were beating me down. Maybe Bill can shed some light on this one.

Matches: 2-1
Games: 5-2

Round 4: Eastman playing TurboTezz?

I think I won this Match 2-0. I don't believe either game was close. I make a slight misplay involving a second Cabal Therapy where I could have named the Voltaic Key I knew was in his hand rather than the tinker I knew was in his hand because I didn't think about the fact that I would be Dread Returning an Iona naming blue later that turn. This left him with a chance to topdeck Time Vault for the win. Unfortunately for him he is not Rich Shay or a resident of Christmasland and we move on to the next game. I think Game 2 was a pretty big blowout, he is able to evoke Ingot Chewer to remove my bridges, but there were more where that came from and Dave concedes in frustration. Having been on the other side of the coin before I can certainly sympathize.

Matches: 3-1
Games: 7-2

Round 5: Nichol playing Noble Fish/Selkie Slam?
All I seem to remember about this match is that I made a very large number of misplays both games. Mostly missing triggers for Ichorid, dredging back grave trolls rather than the darkblast to kill her Hierarch/Selkie, not properly considering the ramifications of losing my bridges when I did attack into/block/Darkblast her creatures. I also forgot to play out my Leyline of the Void the one time I actually got it in an opening hand that I kept, although given the matchup, this was probably for the best. It would have done very little and tipped her off to my deck. Instead she played a turn 1 Null Rod and Pridemage on turn 1. Both are pretty meh against me. Fortunately for me, her deck didn't really have the tools at hand to take out my graveyard or kill me, eventually a bunch of zombies get there. I think game 2 was a little bit better played because I recorded no life total changes, so I probably won in 1 turn off Flame-Kin Zealot. I remember her having a Relic of Progenitus that I bounced to her hand on her end step and then casting Cabal Therapy to get rid of it the following turn and being very proud of myself for actually making a good play in a match where I had made a ton of mistakes.

Matches: 4-1
Games: 9-2

Round 6: ID

Matches 4-1-1
Games: 9-2

Top 8: Adam Levesque playing RG Beats

I don't remember too much about this other than the fact that I was extremely shockimpressed to see RG Beats making a top 8 appearance. I told him Dave Feinstein would be proud. He asked me who Dave Feinstein was. Clearly there needs to be a renewed push for Feinstein awareness. TO DAVE FEINSTEIN!!!

Game 1: I recall him opening game 1 with Lotus, land, double Tarmogoyf and that not being nearly enough to get the job done as I ruin him before he can really do anything.
Game 2: I believe I lose a game to wastelands and Magus of the Moon to really seal the deal. There were quite a number of times to day where I lost to strip effects and without some good hands with Petrified Field or a second Bazaar of Baghdad I probably would not have won.
Game 3: I think game 3 was a complete blowout in my favor where I hit his hand for just about everything of relevance

I again made misplays where I didn't properly consider the negative effects of killing his creatures and getting my Bridge from Belows removed. I was glad to get out of this match with the win. I suppose it's good that Dredge is a fairly forgiving archetype.

Matches: 5-1-1
Games: 11-3

Top 4: Bill Copes playing Shops

I offer Bill a 50/50 prize split prior to the match and he accepts. This is nice as it takes the edge off. I was especially happy given the way the match panned out.

Game 1: I mulligan into oblivion for the first time today. There was a decent possibility of me mulliganing into oblivion the first time I played Bill, but Ancestral was enough to keep me from attempting to do so. I see no Serum Powders whatsoever and mulligan into one card that is not a Bazaar of Baghdad and I lose horribly. I guess that's the risk you take when playing this deck.

Game 2: Pissed off about the way game 1 went I jokingly demanded that my deck provide me with multiple bazaars and answers to all his threats. I believe that's how this game went down and I won quickly.

Game 3: I think I get completely blown out this game as he opens with wasteland to play pithing needle naming Bazaar of Baghdad and has some pretty good follow up behind it. I recall having the Nature's Claim and the Undiscovered Paradise, but not the second mana I needed to cast it through Sphere of Resistance.

Matches: 5-2-1
Games: 12-5

Summary:
On the day I lost only two matches, both of which were to Bill Copes. I hated Leyline of the Void in the deck as it did absolutely nothing all day. It was only in my opening hand once all day, and even if it had been it would not have been good. I can't think of a single time where any graveyard recursion was used on me whatsoever. No mirror matches and no Yawgmoth's Will. The biggest problem with this deck is the vulnerability to strip effects. I think it's possible that I may simply not know how to properly deal with the situation once I don't have a Bazaar because of my inexperience with the deck, but with my options being to draw until I get Bazaar or a Petrified Field or doing the slow dredge kill neither option seems to be particularly appealing to me. I was thinking that perhaps something like Breakthrough would get the job done as I can cast it off my other mana sources and get the explosiveness of up to two Bazaar activations and at the same time get all my dredgers/bridges/etc. into the graveyard. The other approach I might take is just to add more petrified fields to the maindeck. I can think of at least two occasions where I would have been dead in the water without one. One of the things I must admit I LOVED about this deck is how much it scared opponents. Nobody passed the turn to me without a distinct look of fear in their eyes. I can't say I've ever experienced that kind of anxiousness from my opponents from any deck I've played.