On January 9, 2017 I woke up to heartbreaking news. My long term partner, Dredge, had gotten struck by the banhammer. We had just had a fantastic holiday in Rotterdam, where we top 8’d the World Magic Cup together. We couldn’t have been happier. And while there had been signs of disgruntlement in the air for a while, I didn’t realize just how much people hated her until the day of the accident.

Image Copyright: Wizards of the Coast

At first, I feared that the blow had been fatal. But it turns out that while 《Golgari Thug》 is significantly worse than 《Golgari Grave-Troll》 was, it is more akin to having a prosthetic after losing a leg than losing the leg completely. Thus, slowly, we began the recovery process together.

I’m not going to lie, the beginning was hard. I had to adjust my expectations of her abilities quite a bit, as she couldn’t do all the stuff she used to be capable of. But as I started taking her new shortcomings into consideration, I found ways to mitigate them significantly. She might not be the supreme queen of the format anymore, but make no mistake, she’s definitely still a force to be reckoned with. She still suffers some splash damage from people playing graveyard hate for Storm and 《Death's Shadow》, but overall the amount of hate seems to be decreasing and good matchups are becoming more popular.

One of the biggest differences between now and pre-ban is that nowadays she gets tired more easily. She doesn’t really have the energy and perseverance to grind through a longer game. What made Dredge the best deck in Modern last year is that it could transition from an amazing early game of putting a bunch of resilient power into play on turns 2-4, to a great mid-/late game of hard casting huge 《Golgari Grave-Troll》s. The Trolls also provided a way to handily win through one of the most common hate cards, 《Grafdigger's Cage》.

Now she only has that first part of the game plan, putting a bunch of resilient power into play on turns 2-4. Fortunately, that’s the much more important part. And while you can’t start casting the Trolls anymore, 《Conflagrate》 is enough of a follow up to win the game in the vast majority of the cases. But when playing, you really do have to take into account the fact that nowadays if you want to win, you must do so quickly.

The loss of 《Golgari Grave-Troll》 does also weaken the first part of the plan. Dredge 4 is simply much less than dredge 6. I know, that’s kind of an obvious statement. But most people don’t really understand just how much less it actually is. See, when you start dredging, you have to hit multiple different things to actually get the payoffs. First of all, you need to hit another dredger to be able to continue the chain. I’m a blue mage at heart so I never thought I would say this, but it sucks when you have to draw more cards!

Then, in addition to the dredgers, you need to hit both the 《Prized Amalgam》s and the 《Narcomoeba》s or the 《Bloodghast》s. 《Prized Amalgam》s don’t do anything at all without the other two, 《Bloodghast》s are usually quite slow, and 《Narcomoeba》s are very small. Add all of this together, and it means that you really have to hit a bunch of those together to win the game. Also, against many creature decks you really need to find an early 《Conflagrate》 to keep the board from getting out of control. For example, against Affinity there’s a world of difference in whether you cast 《Conflagrate》 before or after they are able to activate 《Steel Overseer》.

Now, let’s consider one of the simplest possible scenarios: playing a turn 1 《Insolent Neonate》 and cracking it. The way the math works is that the odds of hitting another dredger, an 《Prized Amalgam》 and a 《Narcomoeba》 to get a turn 1 《Prized Amalgam》 into play are much, much less with 《Golgari Thug》 than with 《Golgari Grave-Troll》. In fact, I coded a script that simulates the situation. Assuming that all the other dredge cards, 《Narcomoeba》s and 《Prized Amalgam》s are still left in the deck (and that my script is correct), the odds are about 2.7% to 9.5%. So you’re more than three times as likely to find at least one of each on the turn 1 dredge if you have a 《Golgari Grave-Troll》 than if you have a 《Golgari Thug》. That’s huge!

One of the practical implications of this is that, on average, you need to dredge more times per game to win. This is probably a good time to show you the updated deck list:

The gold standard for the discard/draw effects used to be 4 《Insolent Neonate》, 4 《Faithless Looting》 and 4 《Cathartic Reunion》. Most dredge pilots are still running the same configuration. Depending on the metagame, people have also played some amount of 《Collective Brutality》s in the main deck. But remember: you need to be fast, the one dredge from 《Insolent Neonate》 isn’t likely to get you very far anymore, and you need to dredge more times per game to win.

This means that I strongly believe it’s time to bring back 《Tormenting Voice》. I haven’t seen anyone else play them after 《Cathartic Reunion》 got printed, but I heartily recommend digging them up from the dusty drawers and playing with them once again. 《Cathartic Reunion》 is like Buzz Lightyear and 《Tormenting Voice》 is like Woody, who has been left to the sidelines after his fancier rival has stolen the spotlight. But remember, by the end of Toy Story, Buzz and Woody become a team and start working together.

Playing 《Collective Brutality》 instead of 《Tormenting Voice》 is defensible as well, but I believe that 《Tormenting Voice》 is better in the main deck. 《Tormenting Voice》 is always going to be good, whereas 《Collective Brutality》 is often hit-or-miss. When 《Collective Brutality》 is better, it’s usually only a little bit better, whereas when it’s worse it’s a lot worse. That said, there are certainly matchups where 《Collective Brutality》 shines and if those become a bigger part of the metagame I could see moving them to the main. Or rather: if the decks against which 《Collective Brutality》 is weak become less popular. This includes Eldrazi Tron.

To keep or not to keep, that is the question

When things go well, Dredge never draws a card after turn one. Because of this, your opening hand has to have all the pieces you need to get the ball rolling. This means that your mulligan decisions are very important. In an optimal case, your opening hand includes the following:

There are very few cases where I would keep a seven card hand that is missing one of those elements. Cases where your seven card hand only has a 《Insolent Neonate》 as a draw/discard effect are also often mulligans. However, as you go deeper, you have to be willing to make some sacrifices. Especially when you’re on the draw and have the scry, you can keep a wider range of hands. You have to mulligan quite aggressively with the deck, but the good news is that you can also win with very few cards. Having the right cards is much more important than having a lot of them. At a World Magic Cup Qualifier that I won last year, I had to mulligan down to three in the deciding game of the quarterfinals and still won. The hand had two lands and a 《Tormenting Voice》, and I managed to scry into a 《Golgari Grave-Troll》.

Let’s go through some sample hands to see how this works in action:

Hand 1

My answer

Hand 2

My answer

Hand 3

My answer

Hand 4

My answer

Sideboarding

While some of the weaknesses of Dredge are new and can be worked around, the biggest flaw the deck has is built so deeply into it’s core that it can’t be fixed: It is worse at sideboarding than probably any other deck in Modern, for multiple reasons.

The first one is that advancing your own game plan is usually much more important than the sideboard cards. Regardless of whether you have a sideboard card in hand or not, you still need to have the pieces to get your own engine started as well. Otherwise you risk giving them too much time. Even if you can sometimes dig for the missing pieces, it’s often going to make you too slow.

The second reason is one that was already mentioned earlier: you don’t really draw any cards during the game. For your opponents it might be enough to draw their 《Rest in Peace》 on turn 4 after they have digged for it with a 《Serum Visions》. You don’t have that luxury. What you open with is usually what you have to get by with. The only exception is when they have an early hate card and you don’t have an immediate answer, in which case you can try to find one with the draw spells.

The third reason is that you can’t really board much out in most matchups. All the cards in the main deck are there for a reason, and cutting them means that you’re going to be worse at executing your own game plan. This is very much related to the first point, and also the reason why I think it’s often wiser to just try to race other combo decks than dedicate a bunch of 《Thoughtseize》s and what not to try to fight them by disrupting them.

Thus, the best sideboard cards in my mind are cards that either advance your own game plan while disrupting them, or ones that you can find by dredging. The first category includes 《Lightning Axe》 and 《Collective Brutality》. Usually when those are good, you can just switch 《Insolent Neonate》s and 《Tormenting Voice》s for them. The other category includes cards like 《Ancient Grudge》, 《Gnaw to the Bone》 and 《Tectonic Edge》. Since you can find 《Tectonic Edge》 in most games and recur it with 《Life from the Loam》, I think it improves your win percentage against TitanShift more than a card like 《Thoughtseize》 would. It is also nice against 《Celestial Colonnade》 decks and Tron.

However, you unfortunately need to have some answers for your opponents hate cards too. 《Leyline of the Void》 and 《Rest in Peace》 are simply too powerful that you shouldn’t try to ignore them completely. That’s why you need the 《Nature's Claim》s and 《Abrupt Decay》s as well.

Sideboarding with Dredge is more of an art than an exact science. Finding the right balance between speed and resilience is always hard. It also depends on what kinds of hate cards the opponent has in his or her deck and how much. Before picking up the deck, you should definitely do some research into what are the most common anti-graveyard options in different matchups. As for what you can take out, here are some general guidelines:

As you see, the list isn’t very long. Even with these cards, you often need to be careful not to board out too many of them.

Take it slow

Even though I said earlier that in order to win you need to be fast, there are a couple of exceptions to that rule. Sometimes it’s better to slow things down a bit.

One such case is against UW Control. As they often run 《Detention Sphere》s and 《Path to Exile》s, your threats only have one life. In order to not run out of threats, it’s often better to intentionally dredge smaller bits in order to not hit too many 《Prized Amalgam》s. You don’t really care if they use a 《Detention Sphere》 on 《Narcomoeba》s, and 《Bloodghast》 is a may so you can and should sometimes decline to bring it back, but 《Prized Amalgam》 is not a may effect. If it triggers, you have to put it into play. Therefore it’s wise to avoid situations where they can catch more than two 《Prized Amalgam》s or 《Bloodghast》s with a 《Detention Sphere》. The difference between two and three is huge here. Two you can almost always survive, three sometimes not. It’s an extremely favorable matchup and that is one of the ways you can actually lose.

When you slow down, 《Tectonic Edge》 is actually surprisingly important. As the games go long and they exile your first threats, 《Celestial Colonnade》s can be very problematic. 《Tectonic Edge》 is very valuable in controlling their 《Celestial Colonnade》s and preventing stuff like 《Snapcaster Mage》 into 《Cryptic Command》.

Another such case is when your opponent has 《Relic of Progenitus》. It’s one of the easier hate cards to beat, as you don’t actually even need an answer for it. The most common way to beat it is when you have two draw/discard effects. You use the first to get your engine rolling but hold the other one back. 《Life from the Loam》 and flashbacked 《Faithless Looting》s are great at letting you do the slow first part.

Then when you hit your first 《Prized Amalgam》 and 《Narcomoeba》/《Bloodghast》, they either have to give you your payoffs or pop the 《Relic of Progenitus》. Almost always they choose the latter one. Once they pop it, you can use the second draw/discard effect in your hand to get the engine back online again, and this time you don’t need to hold back. 《Tormenting Voice》 and 《Cathartic Reunion》 both get you back in the business right away. When they pop the 《Relic of Progenitus》 the cards you dredged are back in your hand, so if you have the 《Cathartic Reunion》 you also automatically have a dredger or two to discard to it!

The third case where you need to slow down is a bit different from the others. It comes up specifically when your opponent is playing 《Anger of the Gods》. 《Anger of the Gods》 is pretty much the only reason to ever NOT put 《Narcomoeba》 into play. The best way to beat 《Anger of the Gods》 is to trigger a 《Bloodghast》 on your opponent’s turn by cracking a fetchland. That way the 《Prized Amalgam》s come back into play on your opponent’s end step, and then you can attack them for enough so that 《Conflagrate》 and remaining 《Bloodghast》s can finish them. Just remember to get back the 《Bloodghast》 before the opponent’s end step, as if you do that the 《Prized Amalgam》s actually come back in your end step, and you miss a whole turn of attacking! Same logic applies to cracking 《Insolent Neonate》: you should do it in your opponent’s second main phase so if you hit a 《Narcomoeba》, the 《Prized Amalgam》s come back on the same turn.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Dredge is in a good place right now and I’ve had great results with it lately. Various creature decks have become quite popular and 《Conflagrate》 is amazing against them. Also, the hate cards that most people seem to play now are the ones that you can actually beat, like 《Relic of Progenitus》. 《Rest in Peace》 and 《Leyline of the Void》 are much less common than they were a couple months ago.

Last year Dredge was the top dog even when people brought the best hate cards. That’s not the case anymore. If people start packing those, it’s time to move on.

There are a lot of combo decks in Modern. The best one is very often the one they forgot to prepare for.