Continuing the success of the previous two seasons, Mmogg started the third season of the Classic League on October 24th. The league had a total of 33 participants with six rounds of swiss with a cut to the Top 8.
I decided to take a slightly different approach to Dredge with my deck choice for the league. Innistrad had just been released on MTGO, so I expected to see lots of Snapcaster Mages. Additionally, the recent success of Dredge prompted me to decide to maindeck four Leyline of the Void to try and steal as many matches as I could by simply having access to the best anti-graveyard card printed. This is important because all the decklists are made public at the outset of the tournament to curtail cheating, so I would know right away if I should mulligan to Leyline or not in Game 1.
This conscious decision was to forego the explosiveness of Sun Titan Dredge for a more resilient deck that would be better suited for the rigors of a long league. With that game-plan in mind, I sleeved up the following deck:
Classic Dredge by enderfall
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Dredge Decklist
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.My main computer was still broken when the league started so I was forced to play Round 1 on my shoddy laptop without recording software. I’ve taken the liberty to provide as close to a written play by play as possible after taking notes during the match and watching the replays (which miraculously were all saved on MTGO!).
Round 1, Paired with jagr6688 with a Snapcaster Mage control build. Game one should be a breeze as my opponent has no maindeck hate and only two Wastelands and a Strip Mine to slow me down. Unfortunately, a bit of bad luck struck as I lost the die roll, and I had to mull down to two without any Bazaar of Baghdads. I ended up finding a Bazaar at nearly the last minute, keeping a two-card hand of Bazaar and Narcomoeba.
Here were my hands that I pitched in case people were curious:
Hand 1a:
2x Serum Powder
Bridge from Below
Ichorid
Dread Return
Chain of Vapor
Noxious Revival
Hand 1b:
Stinkweed Imp
2x Bloodghast
Undiscovered Paradise
Golgari Grave-troll
Golgari Thug
Chain of Vapor
Hand 2:
Gitaxian Probe
Golgari Grave-Troll
Bloodghast
Narcomoeba
Leyline of the Void
Bridge from Below
Hand 3:
Dakmor Salvage
2x Narcomoeba
Leyline of the Void
Undiscovered Paradise
Hand 4:
Bloodghast
Golgari Grave-Troll
Stinkweed Imp
City of Brass
Hand 5:
Bloodghast
Grave-Troll
Undiscovered Paradise
My opponent plays Underground Sea, go. I draw a Golgari Thug, play Bazaar and activate, drawing a Gitaxian Probe and a Grave-Troll. I discard the Thug, Troll, and Narcomoeba in order to cast Probe and dredge the Troll (Bridge, Imp, Leyline, Zealot, and two other cards, which I can’t recall hit the graveyard). I see my opponent’s hand is Mystical Tutor, 2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Dark Confidant, Brainstorm, Mana Crypt. At the end of turn, my opponent casts Mystical to find a Demonic Tutor. On their turn, they drop the Crypt and cast Demonic Tutor. Next, they drop Wasteland, targeting my Bazaar and pass the turn. On my Turn 2, I activate Ichorid, exiling my Thug and dredge with the Stinkweed Imp to find double Cabal Therapy, Bloodghast, Undiscovered Paradise, and Chain of Vapor. Knowing my opponent has some powerful draw spells, I flashback the first Therapy after having attacked with the Ichorid, targeting Jace, and passed the turn. I could have used the second Therapy, but I wanted the zombie token that I received. Having known that their hand was only Brainstorm and Confidant, there was more value in getting Jace since all they needed was one more land to cast it and start getting value. Letting Confidant resolve at least buys me a turn and hurts them further with the Crypt in play. My opponent lost the flip to Mana Crypt, bringing them down to 14, then drew for the turn, and cast Dark Confidant. They missed the land drop and have locked up their mana for the Brainstorm, so I felt like I was in good position to perhaps pull out the match if I found something useful in my dredging next turn. On my next turn I decide to not activate Ichorid since my opponent has a blocker and there is no sense in needlessly blowing up my Bridge, and worse, any additional Bridges if I happen to dredge into them. For my draw, I dredge another Stinkweed Imp and find Bloodghast, Narcomoeba, Ichorid, Grave-Troll, and another Therapy; just about the perfect dredge! At that point I could have double Therapy’ed my opponent, naming Brainstorm and then whatever card they had drawn for their last turn, but I wanted to keep my Narcomoeba, as it has evasion and the Crypt and Confidant would keep lowering my opponent’s life total. Passing the turn, my opponent flips up a Polluted Delta with Confidant and loses the coin flip for Crypt yet again, lowering them to 11. Things were going well until my opponent cast Brainstorm during their first main phase, finding a Tinker for Blightsteel Colossus and passing the turn. In a last-ditch effort to pull out a quick win, I activated one Ichorid during my upkeep, pitching the other Ichorid so that I would have three creatures in case I dredged into a Dread Return. Naturally, I mis-clicked and drew for the turn instead of dredging my Grave-Troll. Trying to recover from that mistake, I knew I had one more turn as I could block Blightsteel with a Zombie token, bringing me up to 9 poison counters. Knowing that my Ichorid would bite the bullet this turn anyway, I cast a Therapy for value to see if my opponent had drawn into Force of Will to stop a potential Dread Return on the following turn. His hand revealed Jace and Duress. I attacked with my Narcomoeba to bring the opponent down to 9 and passed the turn. Confidant revealed a Sol Ring, bringing them down to 8, enough for me to still eke out a victory if I could still find a Dread Return. After attacking with Blightsteel, they passed the turn. During my upkeep I activated my last Ichorid in the graveyard, exiling a Bloodghast, and dredged my Grave-Troll as I intended last turn. Unfortunately, I could not find a Dread Return and was dead in the water.
In Game 2 I keep a great had of Bazaar, Leyline, Powder, Grave-Troll, Thug, Imp, and Therapy. I drop Leyline and Bazaar and pass the turn. A quick Wasteland on my Bazaar on my opponents turn causes me to activate the Bazaar, where I draw Elesh Norn and Bloodghast, discarding Grave-Troll, Bloodghast, and Serum Powder. I dredge the Grave-Troll finding a Bazaar, Emerald Charm, Petrified Field, Thug, Grave-Troll and a Bridge and pass the turn. My opponent plays Tropical Island and passes the turn. Needing a land or a Bazaar, I draw for the turn instead of dredging. I was lucky enough to find a City of Brass, which I play, triggering Bloodghast. With the Bloodghast in play and the City available for black mana, I hardcast the Therapy from hand, goading out a Mental Misstep after the opponent had Brainstormed in response. I flashback the Therapy, naming Dark Confidant. I whiffed and saw a hand of Mana Drain, Force, Duress, Misty Rainforest and Polluted Delta. On the next turn, my opponent drops a Rainforest and fetches out an Underground Sea to cast their Duress, which whiffs as well, and they pass the turn. Drawing for the turn again, I draw a Bloodghast, attack with my Zombie token from last turn and pass the turn. My opponent does nothing but play a Delta and passes the turn again. Drawing again for my turn, I find an all-important land, an Undiscovered Paradise, which I promptly play, triggering the Bloodghast again. With a Bloodghast in hand, I hardcast it knowing that it would get Mana Drained. Since I had the Paradise coming back for another land drop next turn, I was not concerned about this as it would trigger the Bloodghast next turn. I attack with my lonely zombie token and pass the turn, having brought them down to 13. After cracking the Delta, my opponent dropped to 12 and played a Volcanic Island passing the turn unable to do anything with the extra mana from Mana Drain. Having found the two critical lands, I dredged for the turn with my Grave Troll, finding 2 Bridges, 2 City of Brass, Leyline, and Powder. Having dropped the Paradise to trigger the Bloodghast, my opponent conceded.
Game 3 I open with a hand of 2 Leyline, Powder, Bridge, Revival, Salvage, and a Grave-Troll. Having no removal or Bazaar, it was an easy pitch for the Serum Powder. My next 7 was: 2 Thug, 2 City, 2 Paradise and a Bloodghast. Again, no Bazaar and no hate, so I threw that back as well. My next 6 were: Powder, Leyline, Firestorm, Thug, and Grave-Troll. Again, no Bazaar, but despite the removal spells, there was no mana to cast them so I threw it back using Serum Powder again. My next 6 come up with a playable group that consisted of: Darkblast, Revival, Paradise, Ichorid, Imp and Powder. Having a land to cast the important Darkblast against my opponent’s Yixlid Jailers, as well as a way to bring it back with Revival in the face of a quick Jailer, I thought that it wouldn’t get much better than this. My opponent leads off with Underground Sea and passes the turn. I draw a Salvage, play it and my opponent casts Brainstorm at the end of my turn. A quick Volcanic Island into a Jailer is a tough break, but I have the cards to deal with it! For my turn, I draw a Bloodghast and play the Paradise. With my opponent tapped out, I cast the Darkblast with hopes that they don’t have a Mental Misstep or a Force. No such luck, as it’s quickly countered with a Misstep. Worried of my opponent drawing another Misstep, I cast the Revival to get the Darkblast back from the graveyard, placing it on top of my library. My opponent untaps and plays a Senseis Divining Top and activates it with the second land. After attacking me with their Jailer, they pass the turn. I drew the Darkblast that I put on top of the library and cast it again; this time, it was countered by Force of Will, pitching a Mystical Tutor. With nothing else to do, I passed the turn. My opponent then attacks with Jailer again and uses their Top to draw the top card of their library. A quick Duress taking my Serum Powder, followed by a Rainforest, ends their turn. For my turn I draw another Bloodghast, hardcast one, and pass the turn. My opponent then plays their Top, activates it to sort their top three cards and attacks with Jailer. At this point, I’m at 12, and my opponent is at 17. I draw for the turn and pull an Ichorid. I attack with my Bloodghast and cast the second from my hand, bringing them down to 15. After passing the turn, my opponent plays a quick Tinker, and I’m dead in the water unless I topdeck my last Chain of Vapor. With a 1 in 37 chance, naturally I draw Bridge from Below and have to concede.
So, Tinker got the best of me in Round 1; hopefully that is not a prelude to future problems. Rounds 2, 3, 4, and 6 were recorded (Round 5 was a scoop after Cownose and I had a small scheduling mishap over the Thanksgiving holiday), and here are the results:
Round 2
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.Round 3
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.Round 4
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.Round 6
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.All in all, the deck did not perform as I had hoped. I was able to manage two official wins against decks that I would expect to beat, but Tinker and Workshop ultimately doomed me. As of this writing, I had not received the final results, but I expect to finish in the 13-16 range when all is said and done.
In hindsight, my build was not as optimal for the metagame as I had hoped and I would probably have been better off running the Sun Titan Dredge list with four maindeck Leylines instead of my “resilient” version. The Top 8 appears to be a mix of Shop and GWx Hate Bears decks with an Oath, Sun Titan Dredge, and Landstill deck thrown in (though the results have not been finalized at the time of this writing).
Going forward, Mercadian Masques Block will certainly change the metagame for the next iteration of the Classic League. Workshop decks will have a clear bulls-eye on them as they stand to benefit the most from the new cards in Masques Block.
Next time out I’ll be providing my thoughts on Masques Block drafting with a video or two, depending on how they go. There is next to nothing on the Internet on strategy for Masques, which makes it difficult to predict what the best draft strategy will be. Those who were fortunate(?) enough to play in paper when the block was released may stand to benefit if their memory serves them well, though the “block pack” format will certainly throw some strategies for a loop, as you can not depend on a steady and even supply of cards from each set, as one normally would expect. Theoretically, one could see a typical draft where something near 50% of the cards are from Masques (due to the fact that it’s a much larger set than either of the other two in the block), with only 25% each from Nemesis and Prophesy. How that impacts typical Masques Block strategy remains to be seen.
enderfall
Follow me on Twitter: @enderfall
Member of Clan Magic Eternal
You might wanna consider discarding Grave-Trolls as the first thing (the more the merrier) so you can start dredging instead of discarding stuff like Darkblast, Bloodghast, Serum Powder etc. that don’t really do much in the grave. 2x Grave-Trolls means 18 cards of dredging each turn, 0x Grave-Trolls means 0 cards of dredging (obviously).
In round 1, when you pondered upon Chain of Vaporing his Hermud Druid when you had a Leyline in play I was very close on hitting the screen (since he can sac a land and vapor your Leyline). Which is also why you probably should’ve boarded them out as the first thing in game 2 and 3 (also because they don’t really do much against him).
Your mulligan reasoning in round 1 wasn’t very streamlined (which is probably due to you didn’t *really* know what you were doing or what your strategy was). You mulliganed a hand with 2 Leylines, because it didn’t include a Bazaar, then you drew a hand with a Bazaar in it, but chose to throw that one back again because it didn’t include a Leyline?!? If your strategy is to mulligan into *both’ a Leyline *and* a Bazaar, you probably should’ve just conceded since the odds of doing that are pretty bad (even though you succeded in doing just that)
On a different note:
First off I wanna thank you and MTGO Academy for bringing some Classic content which is hard to find. I really appreciate it, which is also why I keep coming back and why I’m even bothering commenting. But…and this leads me to the second ‘off’
Please please please learn the basics of the decks you are playing. I’m not saying you need to win a bunch of PTQ’s and become the new superstar, but the mistakes you’re making are so grim that I can hardly sustain watching round 1 of your videos.
I’m not writing this to just to throw up bad energy, but because I miss some quality and entertaining Classic content on the net and because I can imagine that you want people to watch your videos and be satisfied (else you wouldn’t be bothered posting them)
Generally, you’re using Bazaar incorrectly. You should use it in your upkeep with Ichorid triggers on the stack, so that you dredge before choosing to RFG a black creature. This way you also guarantee that you can dredge on your draw step. You also tend to discard the wrong cards (irrelevant cards should generally be discarded last, especially in game one). You should aim to always have 2 good dredgers in your yard when your turn begins.
Despite this, I must compliment you on the mull you made against the Hermit deck where your 7 is Bazaar + 6 uncastable cards/dredgers. I think many would have kept that hand, even though it’s not going to win the game.
Hey guys, thanks for your comments. I’m going to have to watch the games over again to see where I was using Bazaar incorrectly, which I can’t do tonight because I’m on a business trip and the hotel internet is absurdly slow on my wife’s cheap netbook (long story!). I admit that I missed some upkeep triggers because I had not set my stops correctly (a symptom of playing a tournament spanning 6 weeks and playing games without Dredge decks in between rounds). Generally I fully understand how to use Bazaar, considering I wrote a two article primer on the deck. Also, I would only keep Grave-Trolls back if I was concerned with having them hated out by a relic or crypt or the like. But again, I’ll need to watch the games again to see if I did make a mistake.
That being said, I am the first to admit that I am NOT LSV, or Owen Turtenwald, or PVD. I’m just a guy who enjoys Magic and more specifically, Classic. There is not an awful lot of Classic content out there and I like sharing these with the community to help show how fun Classic is. I explained as much in Unlocking the Vault #1. I continue to try and get better, and perhaps one day I will play flawless Magic. I apologize if these videos are not up to par with those of the Pro’s and I will continue to try and get better each and every day.
I’ve watched the entire set of matches over again and want to share my thoughts, as I had promised. My mulligan strategy in Round 2 was quite sound, I believe. I clearly stated prior to the start of game 2 that I was not sure how xkorpio would sideboard for the round as he has the anti-leyline package in Lab Maniac available to him. If he boards out the dread return package, then my opening hand of 2 leylines and chaff would be suboptimal at best. So then I decided to mulligan down until I found a bazaar, which didn’t matter since he had turn 2 hermit druid online against essentially an empty board. For game 3, I knew it was a strong possibility that he would leave in the dread return package and thus I didn’t keep a hand that consisted of a single bazaar and some dredgers (i.e. – no hate) thus leaving me open to the exact same problem I had in game 2. So I mulliganed and found a hand of no hate and no bazaar, an obvious mulligan again. I then drew into a hand that just happened to have both a bazaar and a leyline, though I was mainly looking for just the leyline, the bazaar was simply a bonus. I don’t know how else I should have mulliganed there. I had a plan, and while I may not have articulated it as well as I could have on the video, the plan worked exactly as I drew it up and I pulled out a hard fought game 3 against a great player in xkorpio.
As for the Chain of Vapor’s, I knew that xkorpio had a Stern Proctor in his hand that he could cast the following turn and win, so long as he had hit his land drop. The Chain was a last ditched effort to try and out tempo him as even if he decided to chain my leyline in response, he would have 1 land in play, a useless proctor in his hand, and a full two turns before hermit druid could be online. I also had the darkblast available to dredge up the following turn to kill the hermit druid for when he recast it. The fact that his deck is so land light was a major factor in my thought process, but I certainly would have done the same thing over again if the situation presented itself. Was it clunky? Possibly, but it would’ve worked out fine, even if he decided to chain my leyline in response. In the end, he missed the land drop, as I had hoped for, and thus guaranteed myself another turn.
Thanks for pointing out my miss-use of Ichorid and Bazaar. The correct play as you mention is to activate the Bazaar with the Ichorid Trigger on the stack to hopefully dredge into something of value to the Ichorid (i.e. a Thug).
Again, I appreciate all the feedback, as there are things that I miss, even after watching the videos again in order to edit them. This feedback is certainly useful for me to grow as a player, and I truly appreciate it!
You still didn’t address your discard misplays. You should always discard your dredgers to have guaranteed dredges for the bazaar. R3G1 you discard a bridge from below instead of a second grave troll. The bridge doesn’t matter since you can discard it during the upkeep bazaar, but it’s essential to have that second dredger in the yard.
Thanks for the content!
In round 6, your obsession with resolving dread return game 1 doesn’t really make any sense. You could easily have beat him down with damage if you’d just ignored the sphere effects and concentrated on chaining bridge activations into a mass of zombies and chumping with narcomoebas. Drawing Masticore when he did was fortuitous for him, but you enabled the situation by allowing him to remove your two bridges earlier by blocking the lodestone, which there was ultimately little reason to do.
Also, you suggested that your hermit druid opponent was boarding into a lab maniac plan, and then don’t side in Firestorm, which auto-wins against that plan while also answering hermit druid and setting up your dredging.
In general, coming from legacy dredge I don’t understand the removal of careful study which seems to make you immensely dependent on mulliganing into oblivion for bazaar/vulnerable to wasteland, but if that’s what the format has determined is best I guess I’ll believe it.
so for everyone giving mr enderfall crap about discarding the wrong stuff. Yes these are mistakes, but give the guy a break, and on top of that, it is not always correct to be discarding all your dredgers. There are certainly games and scenerios where you don’t want to discard all your gas to just get your graveyard removed. Just saying, the only real way you can lose g1 with this deck is if you overextend into graveyard removal.