[Free Article] Dredge by Carrie Oliver

[tito del monte]

I wasn't able to post this in the Articles forum, so though I would post here. It's a couple of weeks old - but I was holiday and missed it. Anyway, as I don't think Carrie uses the Mana Drain, I thought I would link the article here for the community to read.

Carrie is a very impressive English player who has gone from Duels of the Planewalkers to the Pro Tour in two years. She was attending Bazaar of Moxen to play Legacy, but the TMD's very own Joe Brown lent her Vintage Dredge, which she had never played before. After goldfishing it for an hour or so, she promptly went 5-2 in a 180-person trial! It was very cool to witness.

The sheer quantity of hate in the main event I think stopped her repeating the performance but she has written a great piece about the deck, aimed at getting people interested in it as a realistic Vintage deck to own and play. I'm sure a lot of you who are experienced Dredge pilots will find it an unsurprising read, but as it's rare to see someone pick up Vintage afresh - and get a kick out of playing Dredge - it definitely deserves some clicks from the community!

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/carrie-on-eternal-adventures-part-ii-vintage/

(Mods feel free to move to Article Discussion if appropriate)

[nataz]

I found it charming. It's nice to see someone saying nice things about dredge instead of just auto-complain. Good on her for trying out vintage and having fun.

Looking at the comments, all I can think of is "haters gonna hate".

[tito del monte]

Nice one Nataz - and I fully agree. It's almost like having played for such a short time, she's actually not had long enough to build the same pre-conceptions about Vintage or indeed Dredge that others have gotten into their heads. I think that makes it a really positive read and I'm glad it got exposure on a site like Channel-Fireball.

It does also make you wonder how newer players might approach Vintage if they only had the opportunity to. Hopefully, we might soon find out, online at least.

[Guli]

I found it charming. It's nice to see someone saying nice things about dredge instead of just auto-complain. Good on her for trying out vintage and having fun.

Looking at the comments, all I can think of is "haters gonna hate".

Playing against dredge is one of my favorite match ups. I don't understand the complaining people.


Thanks for writing the article! Good presentation of the archetype.

[Meddling Mike]

I disagreed with some of her evaluations. I'm not sure about the exceptions she's pointing out for Serum Powder. Losing bridges hurts, but I think even losing two you can get away with it. Maybe the fact that her build isn't running Dread Return changes that equation to be a little more dependent on Bridges.

One thing I did learn over the weekend was what to name with the blind guess. If you have several Therapies, your opponent will expect you to guess wrong for the first one. As such, it is a good idea to name an instant-speed card, as they will cast that in response to the second one when you “know” their hand. A particularly good example is Brainstorm, as this is particularly good at ensuring you also can’t get anything with subsequent Therapies as they can hide useful things you know about. I tended to see Mystical Tutor a lot, and of course couldn’t take it the next time around.

It just seems awful to be naming restricted cards when you're going in blind. My fallback has always been FoW, but again, that makes a little less sense if we're not forcing through a Dread Return, but at that point why not just name Ancestral Recall/Time Walk/Tinker or any of the other higher impact cards your opponent could have?

This leads to a whole separate rant about how much I hate Dredge decks that don't have Dread Return. Vintage is too fast and there's not enough main deck graveyard hate where you shouldn't have it.

[vaughnbros]

I enjoyed reading this article.  Its nice to hear about someones first time playing real magic.

I disagreed with some of her evaluations. I'm not sure about the exceptions she's pointing out for Serum Powder. Losing bridges hurts, but I think even losing two you can get away with it. Maybe the fact that her build isn't running Dread Return changes that equation to be a little more dependent on Bridges.

Personally I think there is only 1 exception to using serum powder and that's if bazaar is already in your hand.  It's a gamble either way though \whether you exile bridges to powder or don't.  You may miss seeing bazaar if you don't and you may have ended up needing those bridges if you do.

One thing I did learn over the weekend was what to name with the blind guess. If you have several Therapies, your opponent will expect you to guess wrong for the first one. As such, it is a good idea to name an instant-speed card, as they will cast that in response to the second one when you “know” their hand. A particularly good example is Brainstorm, as this is particularly good at ensuring you also can’t get anything with subsequent Therapies as they can hide useful things you know about. I tended to see Mystical Tutor a lot, and of course couldn’t take it the next time around.

It just seems awful to be naming restricted cards when you're going in blind. My fallback has always been FoW, but again, that makes a little less sense if we're not forcing through a Dread Return, but at that point why not just name Ancestral Recall/Time Walk/Tinker or any of the other higher impact cards your opponent could have?

If you have multiple therapies to work with, I might have to agree with her on this one.  Naming an instant speed tutor with your first therapy is the only chance you are going to have to grab that card.  All the others should be able to be grabbed with subsequent therapies.