Standard Dredge

User avatar
Guardman
A Dog's Dream of Man
Posts: 1725
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: he / him
Location: In a Turn-Based World

Post by Guardman » 3 years ago

With Demonic Embrace, Silversmote Ghoul, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath I figured it was time to try and build a dredge deck in standard.


Standard Dredge
Approximate Total Cost:

I spent most of last night playing through a ton of different versions of this deck on Arena. Most of them sucked. This is what I am currently planning on testing some more.

Some notes on testing I've found:
  • The mana base is as bad as it looks. But despite that I don't think the deck can afford to play more non-basics. Fabled Passage is the all-star land of the deck since it can be looped with Glowspore Shaman and goes to the graveyard when cracked.
  • The bad mana base is also why only three Merfolk Secretkeeper // Venture Deeper as with only five untapped blue sources it is unlikely to get the dream draw of turn 1 Venture Deeper into Creeping Chill & Silversmote Ghoul (I did get it once though, it was nice).
  • The deck is grindy, not explosive like other dredge decks. The lack of Prized Amalgam and another turn one mill play like Stitcher's Supplier is a big reason why. They are also the reason no Narcomoeba (a free 1/1 flyer just isn't worth the slot against most decks).
  • Ashiok, Dream Render and Tamiyo, Collector of Tales are the two highest variance cards in the deck. In some games they absolutely dominate. In others they are just overcosted self-mill. I've seriously considered replacing them with either more removal or Skull Prophet (and maybe even Excavation Mole).
  • Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is still incredibly powerful, but almost all decks are prepared for him now (even when wearing a Demonic Embrace).
  • Something I do want to include is more self-discard. Too often I have Silversmote Ghoul in hand when I would prefer them in the graveyard. The one I am thinking about is possibly Ghostly Pilferer.
  • Deathless Knight is a little hard to cast (but no more than escaping an Uro), but is super easy to recur and some decks just can't hand a 4/2 with haste every turn.
  • The deck has problem dealing with evasive and/or large creatures (very removal light with situational removal). It can also get overrun pretty easily. The problem is finding the right removal package for the deck (and finding space for them). Assassin's Trophy is the catch-all, while Mogis's Favor is the removal from the graveyard. I've tried Polukranos, Unchained, Pharika's Spawn, Eat to Extinction and Casualties of War. Casualties was too slow. the deck can't handle anymore escape cards (and Polukranos is expensive). Eat to Extinction was the best, but a little slow and has a bad habit of being milled.
  • Mire Triton is an all star. That is all.
  • I get the feeling this deck might be much better in Best of Three rather than Best of One as their are a ton of great options for specific match-ups available to the deck (like Chainweb Aracnir against decks with a bunch of flyers).
Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

User avatar
Command
A Causal Tryhard
Posts: 5
Joined: 3 years ago
Pronoun: she / her
Location: The Oracle

Post by Command » 3 years ago

I can see this deck playing more shocklands to help with the casting costs, and leave 3-4 basics for Fabled Passage, as you have enough lifegain to offset the life loss.
Tryharding games without truly trying.

User avatar
Guardman
A Dog's Dream of Man
Posts: 1725
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: he / him
Location: In a Turn-Based World

Post by Guardman » 3 years ago

Command wrote:
3 years ago
I can see this deck playing more shocklands to help with the casting costs, and leave 3-4 basics for Fabled Passage, as you have enough lifegain to offset the life loss.
I really want to play more shocklands, but there are two problems I've found:

1. The deck has a lot of lifegain, but aggro is still, by far, its worse match-up. Adding more shocklands would probably make the match-up worse.

2. Unlike other decks that can play 3-4 basics with Fabled Passage, I don't think this deck can. It mills so many cards, that if I draw a Fabled Passage mid-to-late game, I often only have one or two basics left in the deck. If I go down to 4 basics I could see a lot of situations where I have nothing to fetch.

I could see maybe adding a Watery Grave or Overgrown Tomb for a swamp, but that is probably it. After playing the deck a bunch, even in ranked, against some of the top decks, I think the mana base is just something the deck has to accept and learn to live with.

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “Developing Decks”