Shouta Yasooka Control Dredge
"Control Dredge" by Shouta Yasooka
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This version of Dredge doesn’t pack Serum Powder or as many dredgers for consistency, but instead runs Force of Will and additional lands. Ichorids are swapped out for the smaller yet more relentless Bloodghasts. Undiscovered Paradise is favored over City of Brass for its ability to recur Bloodghast each turn.
It’s not cut and dry which one of these decks is superior, since each one has its strengths and weaknesses. There’s no denying the power of dredging out and attacking with a load of hasty zombies on turn two, but there are plenty of situations where having Force of Will can totally save your butt. Dredge templating comes down to play style, your opinion of the metagame, and (as always) card availability. Force of Will is expensive and one major benefit of Dredge is that traditionally the deck runs zero copies – of course all of this changes if you run the Yasooka deck.
Let’s Get Down To It
As you can see from the examples above, Dredge decks can be built in a variety of ways. Some versions are more straight-up combo, some pack more maindeck resistance, some are slower and play the Control route. Generally the faster the deck, the easier it is to hate out. Now that I’ve briefly covered what we’re up against, let’s talk about different ways to attack Dredge. I’ve worked out a list of high level strategies, which I’ll run through now. Each item in this list contains a number of examples that can be used to implement the strategy. Some strategies are more effective, some are not so strong. Some are easy to implement, and some are highly unlikely. Hopefully this list will give you a decent idea of the breath of options available to you in your wars against Dredge.
From one point of view, this list may boil down to “play a lot of sideboard hate.” I understand this thinking, but there really are many more subtle ways to go about the implementation of hosing Dredge. My hope is that this type of categorization helps players understand exactly what their hate is accomplishing while also providing some potential inspiration for new and creative solutions.
Time to get started!
Clear Out the Graveyard
Dredge is a deck that relies on the graveyard to operate. One of the easiest ways to attack the power of the deck is to clear out huge chunks of the graveyard. Tormods Crypt is the most old-school (and cost-efficient) example, but Relic of Progenitus has seen a decent amount of play since its release in Shards of Alara. The cantrip is very valuable, and the ability to “slow roll” your graveyard hate can occasionally be a strong option if you’re facing a slower build of Dredge.
One of the most exciting options for this strategy is a new one from Zendikar: Ravenous Trap. Tormods Crypt and Relic of Progenitus obviously must be played at sorcery speed, so there’s some opportunity for the Dredge deck to play around this hate. Ravenous Trap requires some dredging to “trap” your opponent – it comes out at instant speed and is a lot more difficult to play around. Smart Dredge players will have Ravenous Trap in mind, but instant speed makes all hate tougher to dodge.
I just found this article. Very clever! It’s easy to think of Dredge as “oh, I’ll just sideboard in Leyline of the Void and Tormods Crypt and be done with it”, but no. I’ve heard the archetypes described as aggro/control/combo/dredge just because fighting dredge’s array of triggered abilities is so different than anything else in Magic.
In particular, I needed to be reminded that Bridge from Below has a self-destruct clause. I never thought that Mogg Fanatic could do that to Dredge.
I think that more people forget about the Bridge From Below self-destruct clause than you’d think. I watched a game in the tournament practice room recently where someone went down hard to dredge when they could have suicided their Grim Lavamancer to clear out the Bridges. Need to keep your eyes open!
Dredge was always somewhat a mystery for me. I only saw cards moving into and then out of the graveyard but never really took the time to understand how they perform nor how to fight them. This article makes everything much clearer.
Great job, Steve!