Another tournament day, yay!
I started the day with my standard routine. Woke up early in the morning (7:00 am), had a shower, prepared my family’s breakfast, drove them all the way to grandma’s and headed to Olympia right on the other side of the town, after picking up Artur that happens to live quite close to grandma’s. After a total of 90 minutes driving I was ready for an awesome day of Classic Legacy!
When we arrived, we met some usual suspects and had a nice talk about how the format was going and some good old memories, this has to be the best part!
When Olympia opened, roughly at 9:30, we had a nice breakfast and we were ready to start it all.
Today we were 7 brave souls that met to have a great day playing our beloved hobby and a format we all enjoy. It’s good to see that the number of participants is quite consistent with the first one (we were 8 in January), and it was even better to see some different faces!, this gives a good sign of increasing the player pool! We are expecting to have even more participants in March and I am excited for that.
The overall metagame breakdown was as follows, in final ranking order:
- Artur Sánchez – Thopter top
- Alex Mateu – UR Dreadstill
- Iñaki Puigdollers – The Perfect Dredge (TPD)
- Lluís Cortès – Naya Zoo
- Albert Domenech – UW Countertop
- Sergio Cortijo – UB Merfolks
- Ernest Vallés – Burn
It’s great to see such a huge variety of archetypes and the appearance of bolt decks! 🔥
Lluís, the organizer, proposed to make 3 rounds of swiss without him playing to avoid having any byes, but we all encouraged him to play, even though it meant skipping some rounds for some of us. We wanted him to play as well! So we ended up doing 4 rounds of swiss and top 2.
You can find the complete deck lists here.
As you have seen, this time I decided to play my own take on Dredge (The Perfect Dredge). After writing an extensive article on the whole theory behind the deck, I really wanted to give it a go and “learn-by-doing”. Even though I was very confident in my build and the theory behind it, there were some loose ends that required to be tested. More concretely, I wanted to see how useful Firestorm would really be? Would I be missing Bloodghasts for the grinder match-up? How bad would it impact the Mulligan playing a full set of Cephalid Coliseums? Those were some questions that I couldn’t answer without shuffling the deck up in front of real opponents.
The rounds
With all that, I headed directly to the first round.
Round 1: Alex Mateu – UR Dreadstill
Oh! How lucky! First round and I have to face, not only one the MtG players I respect the most but also the one that spent countless hours discussing the ins and outs of the exact same deck I was playing before writing the article. Yay!
I also think this is not a great match-up for Dredge. The fact that he has a quick “combo” out means he can close the game quickly while tempo-ing me out of the game. Note that Phyrexian Dreadnought can also easily remove my bridges for 1 generic mana, just in case I got a lucky Dredge with several bridges early on.
Game 1 was defined by me failing to identify the archetype my opponent was playing on time. My first impression, and knowing Alex’s taste, was that he was on Faestalker after seeing his Volcanic Island. However, next land he played was Mishra’s Factory, which made me think he was on Next Level Faeries so I blindly cast Cabal Therapy naming Tarmogoyf, and failed… Well, I was very wrong. By turn 3 he just landed a Dreadnought and closed the game very quickly.
We meet again you damned shrimp! I still remember you from Premodern.
Game 2 I sided as if I was playing vs Canadian Threshold, but with a twist because I wanted to have access to Chains in case he landed an early Dreadnought.
-4x Breakthrough
-2x Dread Return
-1x Sphinx of Lost Truths
+2x Tireless Tribe
+2x Chain of Vapor
+3x Ancient Grudge
Note that you can download my complete sideboard guide from my TPD article.
I can’t really remember much about the game, but I think he resolved a Tormod’s Crypt which I circumvented quite easily and ended up overloading the board with Zombies before he had the opportunity to deploy his massive threat.
Game 3 I kept the same sideboard plan as above, this time being on the draw though, and this is a big deal in this particular match up. This was a longer game than game 1, but the whole story repeated. I did fail some critical Dredges, seeing no action (Narcomoebas/Bridges from Below/Cabal Therapy) in the important turns and Alex managed to do his thing and let the Dreadnought take over my life.
Result: 1-2 (0-1)
Despite losing, I felt fine about the game. It could have gone either way in game 3, but he was playing tight and I failed to Dredge “properly” in some important turns which sealed the deal in his favor.
Round 2: BYE (1-1)
My good old friend! 🤣 At least, this a allowed me to chill and see some nice Magic games.
I decided to sit and watch the game between Alex and Artur and, Oh boy! I happened to see a great example of what’s the spirit we love in our community.
Alex managed to win a long and grindy game 1, as you can expect from a countertop mirror, and also a pair of very reflexive players. Alex was ahead of the match 1-0.
At some point in game 2, where neither player was having a meaningful board state to win the game, Lluís announced that there were only 8 minutes left. Right after this, Artur managed to resolve an Ensnaring Bridge with an empty hand while Alex was having his full grip of conditional countermagic (none of them really good answers for the Bridge). After pondering a bit, Alex decided to scoop and move to game 3.
Let me recap a bit. At this point, Alex was ahead 1-0, with only 8 minutes left on the clock. Artur had no threats on the board and an empty hand and Alex had a full grip of conditional countermagic. Alex also knew he had no outs to the Bridge, his miser Engineered Explosives were in the graveyard already. Alex had 2 options:
- Drag the game for the remaining 8 minutes, knowing he won’t be able to deploy anything meaningful but with the ability to prevent Artur from doing so and legitly winning the match 1-0
- Concede the game and move on to game 3 trying to win the match as Garfield intended!
And he decided on the second option! He said we are here to play Magic and he had no chances to win the game 2 by “playing Magic” so he felt it was unfair to win the match like that. This is the spirit we love! 🍻.
For the record, the match ended up in a draw.
Round 3: Albert Domenech – UW Countertop
I felt quite comfortable in this match up. I think Dredge has an edge vs slower countertop variants. However, I knew he was playing main deck Moat and if he managed to resolve it, that would mean a game win for him. Luckily, I managed to hoard an army of zombies, after Albert played 3 Swords to Plowshares in the first 3-4 turns, lol!, but even though he pondered, spinned the Sensei’s Divining Top and fetched hard, he did not manage to find the Moat and the brain eaters took the game.
My sideboard for Game 2 was my standard countertop sideboard, also with a twist, though, to have some outs vs his Moat.
-4x Breakthrough
-2x Dread Return
-1x Sphinx of Lost Truths
+3x Chain of Vapor
+2x Tireless Tribe
+2x Ancient Grudge
He opened his game 2 with the only Tormod’s Crypt in his deck, but I forced him to crack it quite early, threatening him with some number of Ichorid and Narcomoebas. I also opened the game with an early blind therapy, turn 2 if I recall correctly, naming Moat and succeeding! phew! that was lucky! Some turns after I build up a big boardstate and after naming Wrath of God with my Cabal Therapy I pass the turn and win in the turn right after.
Result: 2-0 (2-1)
Round 4: Sergio Cortijo – UB Merfolks
In January, Sergio was saying he had no idea how to play or beat Dredge. I remember he said it was quite obscure to him and that kind of cursed him in January losing to his Dredge opponents. However, this time it was different! He said he read my article and felt ready to play against Dredge… lucky me! 🤣 At least I am happy it has been useful for someone.
Game 1 Sergio started off with a Cursecatcher, if I recall correctly. He also FoWed my first enabler, a Putrid Imp, AND Wastelanded my only land after a mulligan to 6. Geez! That’s quite a tough start. After considering my options, I felt that my best chance was to slow play the game, given that he was quite low on pressure, I think he failed some critical land drops after his turn 2 Wasteland which bought me enough time. So I decided to go with the DDD plan! What is DDD?, well simply enough: Discard, Dredge, Discard. And so I did, after a couple of draws I ended up with 8 cards in hand allowing me to discard a Golgari Grave-Troll at the end of my turn to start the Dredge machine the turn after.
Some turns later he presented some real threats but I also managed to deploy some Zombies that allowed me to race him and ended up winning the game.
My sideboard plan was the standard Merfolks’ sideboard but again with a little twist to have some answers to his Engineered Plagues that could become problematic if the game dragged along.
-4x Breakthrough
-1x Careful Study
-2x Dread Return
-1x Sphinx of Lost Truths
+3x Chain of Vapor
+2x Firestorm
+2x Tireless Tribe
+1x Ancient Grudge
Game 2 was a complete disaster for me 😅.
I mulliganed down to 4 cards only to meet a Force of Will to my enabler followed up by a Wasteland! Sounds familiar? Well, the difference was that this time I was left with 3 cards in hand, so the DDD plan was far from viable.
I tried to recover but when I could start Dredging, Sergio already had a bunch of angry fishes beating my face down.
Game 3 I started with a full grip (no mulls always feels like a boss! 😎) and he mulled to 6 as far as I remember. It was a game with a lot of back and forths. I can recall I gained some time by Cabal Therapying away a couple of his lords (a Lord of Atlantis and a Merrow Reejerey).
At some point in the game he had 3 Cursecatchers that were really putting some pressure on my Bridges from Below. At some point in the game where I had 3 Bridges in my graveyard, Sergio noticed I was not going to give him the opportunity to kill any of his Cursecatchers. So he decided to play a fish and FoW his own fish, only to sac a Cursecatcher targeting his own FoW and be able to remove my 3 Bridges from the graveyard. What a play! 👏 However, I was keeping the last Bridge in my hand, fearing something like this could happen. So after discarding my 4th Bridge we ended up trading some damage but I managed to win the race while being at 4 life. That was close!
I have to say that Sergio played the match-up very well! It seems reading the article was somewhat useful.🙂
Result: 2-1 (3-1)
I ended up with 9 points, classifying as 3rd in the ranking, right below Alex and Artur that both had 10 points. Remember that game 2 that ended up in a draw between them? Well, they went undefeated in all their other matches, so that was a well deserved final! And congrats Artur for the win and the awesome playmat!
Parting thoughts
I had an awesome time, as always, playing my favourite format. Great Magic and even better people! I am looking forward to meeting them again in future events.
Regarding the deck, the only conclusion I came to was that Firestorm felt underwhelming even vs Merfolks, where it was supposed to shine. I’m not 100% sold on the card, but I think it’s early to say it does not belong to my 75. I want to give it some more time to gather some more data.
I also felt that maybe Bloodghast would have been a great addition in some match-ups, specifically vs Merfolks where I felt I needed to build a board a bit faster. I might include them at some point to gather some real data of them in action.
The last thing I confirmed is that Cephalid Coliseum really polarizes the deck towards blue. I made at least 2 or 3 mulligans because I drew it as my only land without any meaningful blue card to be played. It feels hard to replace Coliseums, they play so many different roles. That makes me think I want to give Hapless Researcher a try.
Yes, I know it feels so “meh” on paper, But I think this is the kind of card that can really move the needle in so many different game states:
- He is an enabler and a draw effect costing just U, hence reducing the number of mulligans.
- He can replace the small Dread Return package as a more timely draw effect. I felt that the Dread Return into Sphinx of Lost Truths was good but a tad too unreliable as a draw effect.
- He can activate Bridges even at instant speed.
- He can be sacrificed to Cabal Therapy.
- He can chump block any creature without the risk of killing it, because you can sacrifice it before damage is assigned. This will activate my Bridges and prevent them from being exiled if, for instance, I am blocking a Cursecatcher, Dark Confidant, Goblin Lackey, … you name it.
All those small pieces add up and make me feel it is, at least, worth testing it at some point in the future.
That ‘s all folks!, hope you enjoyed the report. As always, I am happy to hear any feedback or discuss any ideas in our social media forums.