Hedron Crab, Faithless Looting, and Golgari Grave‑Troll are old news with regard to enablers, though the updates featured in this list are what I believe transform Dredge from an obscure archetype to a serious tournament consideration. 
The most obvious update is Prized Amalgam. I'm sure that many players had the idea to pair Prized Amalgam with Bloodghast as soon as they saw the card, and this interaction has proven to be very powerful. It's also worth noting that recurring Prized Amalgam with Bloodghast also gives you a zombie on the battlefield to start casting Gravecrawler from your graveyard, which helps trigger Vengevine. That chain is just as obscene as it sounds. 
Insolent Neonate looks like an innocent card, though it's deceptively powerful. It doesn't pack quite the same punch as, say, Ideas Unbound, but there are subtle ways in which it is better. Only costing one mana and being a creature to help recur Vengevine are two major points in favor of Neonate. Where Insolent Neonate really shines is when you have a Golgari Grave‑Troll or a Vengevine in your hand. The way Insolent Neonate is worded enables you to discard Grave‑Troll to activate the ability to draw a card, and since you now have a Grave‑Troll in your graveyard, you're able to dredge it right back instead of waiting to replace a different draw. With regard to Vengevine, you can cast the Neonate as your first creature for the turn, use it to discard Vengevine from your hand, and then cast a second creature to recur that Vengevine. 
Gather the Pack isn't out of Shadows over Innistrad, though it's a card that to my knowledge hasn't yet made it in Modern. I've seen Dredge lists that feature Tome Scour, and while Gather the Pack costs twice as much mana it does a lot more for the deck. Being able to trigger Vengevine is huge, and a self-mill effect that can find one or both creatures to do so is extremely powerful. One thing to remember when casting Gather the Pack is that you don't have to take anything, and sometimes you'll just want to put all five cards into your graveyard. Having a Bloodghast in your hand is often worse than having it in your graveyard. I've put in a good number of games with this build in recent days, and initial testing is very promising. Fair decks like Jund realistically don't stand a chance, and you are generally just too fast for Tron to compete. The Abzan Company matchup is all about whether they can combo you before you kill them or apply enough pressure to start chump blocking with combo pieces, though Darkblast and Conflagrate out of the sideboard make post-board games more favorable. On the topic of sideboarding, it's important to remember to sideboard light. This is an engine deck after all, and while the deck can goldfish some turn three kills, over-sideboarding will take away your strategic edge if you're not careful. Some of your opponents will have Rest in Peace, and a seven card hand with that card will probably just beat you, though other hate cards like Relic of Progenitus are very much beatable. Dredge isn't a deck for the faint of heart, though I think you'll be surprised by the power level and consistency of this list. With Modern being so flush with decks playing an honest game on the battlefield, this a great window for a graveyard deck to take a tournament by surprise. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Dredge had a breakout performance this weekend, and I truly hope to see Bloodghasts beating up on Jund and Abzan at #SCGINDY. — Ryan Overturf, @RyanOverdrive |
0 comments:
Post a Comment