The very hard matchups for Dredge are going to be decks that aim to kill on about turn four that are more difficult to disrupt than Burn. The real gem for this matchup out of Dredge is Collective Brutality, and given the texture of that matchup, it's not surprising that Ketter boarded up to three copies of the Burn-crushing haymaker. One might point to sideboard Gnaw to the Bone as an answer, though Burn is able to power through Gnaw with Skullcrack fairly consistently. Most games that Infect wins against Dredge involve Blighted Agent, and reach is the generally going to be the name of the game for beating Dredge.Īs such, it's not terribly surprising that Burn is a pretty tough matchup for Dredge. Narcomoeba provides Dredge with blockers that can make it difficult for decks like Infect and Affinity to punch through in time, though if you're playing a deck with a fast clock that can largely ignore the combat step, you should be relatively favored against Dredge in game one. Hate cards certainly can crush Dredge in Modern, though there are more pre-sideboard strategies that matter. In Modern, I believe this matter to be slightly different. In those formats, beating Dredge all came down to your sideboard plan, given how difficult it was to interact with the deck in game one. Given that it just takes one looting effect to get going and that Life from the Loam and Faithless Looting can fairly reliably facilitate at least some dredging once you start, Dredge is able to mulligan fairly aggressively and doesn't have to ask a lot of a starting hand.įor players who played during the time of Dredge in Extended, or when Dredge was a real contender in Legacy, we know what we're dealing with. These creatures can either win the game on their own, or the deck can utilize Life from the Loam to set up large Conflagrates to kill opponents on as high as ten life. This deck wants to get to work discarding its cards and milling itself as early as turn one, and to convert this into a large quantity of generally unassuming creatures very quickly. There was very little deviation in Dredge lists in Milwaukee, and you can expect a Dredge opponent to be playing something close to this: It's all about consistent Prized Amalgams, Bloodghasts, and Conflagrates now. Dredge was really looking for something that could make the deck faster, though a two-mana tool with this level of power and consistency was more than enough to get everybody on the same page. The archetype had pretty divided camps, and nothing to rally around as the consensus best build. You would see Bridge from Below in some lists while being absent from others, and for a time even Hedron Crab and Vengevine were seeing fringe play. With nine Dredge decks in the Milwaukee Open Top 32, ignoring the deck would be irresponsible.ĭredge lists saw some serious fluctuations for a while, and there were somewhat varied plans and enablers.

For today's piece, I'm going to break down exactly what the Dredge deck is up to, and what we as players can do to beat it. I mean, if we could get Treasure Cruise back that would be great, but I aim to make the focus of my articles more pragmatic. I don't really care too much or do any speculating on banlist changes. To be clear, once again, this is not an article about banning anything. As lists got more streamlined the deck gained steam online, and now with the addition of Cathartic Reunion we are looking at the making of a new boogeyman. From there it didn't take long for Grave-Troll decks to start popping up in 5-0 league decks and some premier finishes, though Dredge decks were still far from dominant in Modern. For about a year we heard little from the Zombie hoard, until the release of Shadows over Innistrad brought us Prized Amalgam and Insolent Neonate. When they unbanned Golgari Grave-Troll in Modern, we all knew it was only a matter of time.

Modern dredge primer