Much Abrew: Dredgeless Dredge (Pioneer)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! I've wanted to build Dredgeless Dredge for Pioneer ever since Bloodghast was previewed for Aetherdrift, and today, the time has finally come! The plan today is to mill ourselves super aggressively and get a ton of free value from creatures that come into play from our graveyard, like the aforementioned Bloodghast as well as Prized Amalgam, Haunted Dead, Narcomoeba, and Silversmote Ghoul! We also got a self-mill card in Aetherdrift that I'm super excited to try in the deck: Dredger's Insight. Its name suggests that it should be good in Dredge; plus, we played it once in Standard and were shocked by just how much life it gained! Do some new Aetherdrift additions mean that Dredgeless Dredge is ready to rise in Pioneer? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Dredgeless Dredge
Discussion
- So, why are we playing Dredgeless Dredge today? In large part, it's because of the new Aetherdrift additions, but there's a bit more to the story. Right now, Pioneer is dominated by Rakdos Demons and Gruul Aggro, and, discounting Izzet Phoenix, there really aren't many graveyard-focused decks at the top of the meta. If you look at people's sideboards, there is relatively little graveyard hate, which is exactly what Dredge wants to see since it is incredibly reliant on having access to the graveyard. Not only is the time right thanks to the powerful new Aetherdrift cards, but the meta also seems like it might be in the right place as well.
- Record-wise, the deck crushed it. We went 7-1 for an 88% win rate, with our one loss coming to a random artifact deck that managed to draw multiple copies of Rest in Peace. We also managed to take down several top decks, including Rakdos Demons and Enigmatic Incarnation. Overall, the deck felt like it might be pretty legit!
- So, how does Dredgeless Dredge work? Well, step one is to mulligan super aggressively. While we occasionally draw the perfect hand and keep seven, in reality, we mulligan down to five a lot. This is because our deck basically comes in two parts: self-mill cards that we really, really want in our hand and then creatures that come back from our graveyard (often for free), which we really, really don't want in our hand. As a result, we mulligan a ton because we're looking not only for specific cards but also to put specific cards from our hand back into our library. This is a deck where a five-card hand with a couple of self-mill spells is way better than a seven-card hand with a bunch of graveyard stuff we don't actually want to cast. If you decide to pick it up, keep this in mind.
- The first half of the deck is self-mill, which includes Stitcher's Supplier, Otherworldly Gaze, Cache Grab, Witherbloom Command, and Dredger's Insight. We want to draw as many of these cards as possible because the more we draw, the faster we fill our graveyard, and the faster we fill our graveyard, the faster we win. Dredger's Insight is by far the most interesting of the bunch. While it looks like a sorcery-speed Cache Grab, because our deck is really good at having creatures leave the battlefield, it often gains us 10 or more life for free if we draw it early, which is wild and sometimes game-winning, especially against aggro.
- There isn't a ton else to say about the self-mill side of our deck, other than that it's usually best to snag a land with Cache Grab and Dredger's Insight, in part because we want our creatures in our graveyard rather than in our hand, and in part because having extra lands in hand helps support Bloodghast.
- The second half of our deck is our graveyard stuff, which breaks down into several related packages. First, we have Narcomoeba, Bloodghast, and Haunted Dead, all of which can come into play from our graveyard in one way or another. The power of Narcomoeba and Bloodghast is that they come back for free, while Haunted Dead costs us two mana and discards two cards. But discarding two cards often actually is an upside in this deck since it offers a way to put copies of Prized Amalgam and Bloodghast that we happen to draw into our graveyard, which is where they really want to be.
- Any of the above cards entering the battlefield from our graveyard will trigger all of the Prized Amalgams in our graveyard to return to play on the next end step, giving us a massive board of free 3/3s!
- The second part of the graveyard package is Silversmote Ghoul and Creeping Chill. Creeping Chill is already busted in the deck since we get to drain for three if we mill it, which means that if we can mill our entire deck (which is our goal), we have 12 free damage and gain 12 free life over the course of the game. Importantly, gaining three life from Creeping Chill means that any Silversmote Ghouls will return from our graveyard to play on our next end step, which in turn will trigger any Prized Amalgams in our graveyard to return on the following end step.
- This plan's biggest upside is that unless our opponent finds some graveyard hate, it's super hard to deal with our board permanently. We can smash our entire team into our opponent every turn to get in damage, even if our opponent has some good blocks, because we know our entire board will just return itself to play anyway, gaining tons of life from Dredger's Insight along the way.
- The final nonland in our main deck is a one-of: Driven // Despair. One thing that occasionally happens with Dredgeless Dredge is that since we don't really play any removal, we end up in a massive board stall that we can't break through. We can cast Despair from our graveyard for just two mana to solve this problem by giving our team menace for the turn; as a bonus, we should get to wipe out most (or even all!) of our opponent's hand!
- Finally, we come to the sideboard, which contains two incredibly important cards in Assassin's Trophy and Pawpatch Formation. The easiest way to beat our deck is with graveyard hate like Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void. Assassin's Trophy and Pawpatch Formation give us answers to these hate cards. As a result, I bring some number of them in literally every single match, just in case our opponent has some graveyard hate in their sideboard, because if they do, it becomes very hard to win since our backup plan is hard-casting two-mana 1/1s and three-mana 3/3s. Pawpatch Formation specifically is great in the deck since, if we don't need to blow up an enchantment, we can draw a card and make a Food token, which we can sacrifice to gain just enough life to return all of our Silversmote Ghouls from our graveyard to the battlefield.
- So, should you play Dredgeless Dredge in Pioneer? I think the answer is an easy yes, at least right now. The deck will get worse if it catches on since people will start playing more graveyard hate. But right now, the deck feels very strong. The addition of Dredger's Insight helps against aggro, while Bloodghast increases its consistency by giving us another good way to trigger our Prized Amalgams and friends. If you like free graveyard value, give the deck a shot! Oh yeah, it's also worth mentioning that it's only $170 in paper and 18 tix on Magic Online, which isn't quite Budget Magic cheap but not that far off!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, options, and suggestions in the comments and you can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
