by Shawn Petsche

Although many archetypes will rotate out of Standard very soon, a few will remain.  The main pieces of Dredgevine will still be present and Shawn takes a look at the new tools it gains from Scars.  With an initial decklist included as well, this article definitely packs a lot of punch!

Full disclosure: shortly after writing this article, I discovered that Matt Nass had brewed up a very similar list to the one I've proposed below. That. Just. Blows. On the upside, hopefully it lends some credibility to what follows…

Standard Deviation
"In violent and chaotic times such as these, our only chance for survival lies in creating our own little islands of sanity and order, in making little havens of our homes."

Ian Baker's recent article, A Farewell to Cards, warned against the act of snap-praising or writing-off cards without having actually played them, let alone played them in the context of a new environment. He also noted that the upcoming Standard rotation is most likely going to be affected far more by the amount of cards leaving us than the amount joining us. I think he was absolutely right. That said, I'm going to be my typical stubborn self and spend my time this week focusing on a few new cards entering the format and talking about them without having played a single game with them.

First, the obligatory decklist:

The Return of the Curse of the Creature's Ghost
"The average thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

It's a pretty standard Dredgevine list, but sees a few new additions including three Scars of Mirrodin cards.

Darkslick Shores
As you may have guessed from its appearance on the list, I feel as though Darkslick Shores is an upgrade on Drowned Catacombs for B/U/G Dredgevine. With the deck running Birds of Paradise and Lotus Cobra, it needs to hit early green more than any colour, and thus we need to tip the scale towards Forests. As the deck has a low curve, it seems reasonable to ensure the 1 and 2 drops come fast and consistently, regardless of their colour. Likewise, I feel as though Darkslick Shores will reduce the number of turn 1 fetch land plays, allowing the fetch lands to be rolled out later with Hedron Crabs or when the colour requirements are in clearer view (double black for Necrotic Ooze, blue or green for Fauna Shaman or Cryptologist activations respectively). That said, the addition of more mid-game cards like Masticore and Necrotic Ooze may prove the Shores to be not quite the Edenic lands I expect them to be.

Molten-Tail Masticore
As many have already written, the Masticore seems like a perfect (or maybe just an obvious) fit for Dredgevine. The deck will lose its 5th-8th looters when Merfolk Looter rotates out with M11. Though the Masticore isn't exactly a looter per se, a 4/4 regenerator for 4 who has to pitch the creatures you want in your graveyard anyway seems comparable; a worthy substitute, if not an upgrade altogether. Most importantly, since the deck runs 36 creatures and an engine built around a self-mill and looting strategy, there'll be no shortage of targets for the Masticore to start pinging creatures or players for 4 each turn. It's this ability that reduces the chance of whiffing on Hedron Crab mills.

Necrotic Ooze
"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish in the Palaozoic time
And side by side in the sluggish tide, we sprawled in the ooze and slime."

Ahhh, the truth comes out. You see, this article isn't just about the survival of a deck I enjoyed playing pre-Scars, it's also, in some ways, about the survival of my love of Ooze cards and general jankiness.

Necrotic Ooze is particularly synergistic with the Dredgevine strategy. For one, like the Masticore, it turns whiffed Hedron Crab mills and sub-par Cryptologist loots into potential gains. If you miss out on Vengevines, the Ooze can potentially tap for mana (Birds of Paradise) or tutor up a creature (Fauna Shaman). If the increased chance of laying a Fauna Shaman (real or virtual) on the board wasn't enough, then how about this: if there's a Molten-Tail Masticore in the yard, the Ooze can also ping your opponent or his/her creatures for 4…without having to discard a card during each upkeep. This is key considering Dredgevine's complete lack of removal. At 4/3 instead of 3/4, and likely Ooze-ing it up in a Lightning Bolt-heavy environment, the real secret of the Ooze may be that it can potentially regenerate itself for 2 off of the Masticore as well.

And here's where we take a quick detour into jankville thanks to the Ooze. Dredgevine is a pseudo-combo deck working off of virtual card advantage. It has the ability to tutor up its combo targets (every non-land card in the deck is a creature card, and thus every card is fetchable by the Shaman) or set up an insane virtual card drawing engine off of the Hedron Crab (there are now plenty of graveyard-friendly cards in the deck, so every mill or loot is a step closer to actual card draw). Knowing this, and with the addition of the Ooze to the deck to take further advantage of graveyards, why not add a couple of silver bullet creatures to the list?

My instinct is that two bullets or two copies of a single bullet is the right number. Unlike other decks running silver bullets off of the Fauna Shaman engine, having one in your opening hand is generally fine in this deck, as you're happy to be able to discard it and let the Shamans stick with the established tutor-a-Vengevine plan. So, the question is begged: what activated ability can Necrotic Ooze mimic that the deck can make best use of? We've got the gun, what's the ammunition we load into it?

I'd say Gigantomancer…

"What the fuck does that card even do," you ask?

Gigantomancer
"All life is driven by an indomitable will to survive. I simply turn that into something more…tangible."

"It makes everything a fucking 7/7 beatdown," I answer.

Dredgevine might be a combo deck, but it's an aggro-combo deck. Gigantomancer seems like a perfect combo piece to allow for you to turn your creatures sideways to full effect. As the deck runs 36 creatures, most of which do a poor job of attacking and defending, Gigantomancer gives the option to completely turn the tables when your board becomes otherwise combat-obsolete, transforming a sea of 0/1, 2/1 and 2/2s into 7/7 monstrosities. Birds of Paradise as a 7/7 flier? Not quite an Eldrazi Conscription'd Bird, but not far off either…

Just Flippin' Cards
"Every man, even the most blessed, needs a little more than average luck to survive this world."

It seems to me that, despite the loss of Extractor Demon, the pre-Scars Dredgevine's broken draws and general inevitability might be able to survive yet thanks to Gigantomancer. It would not be implausible to see an attack for 28+ on turn 4 or 5 without actually seeing a Vengevine hit the board. That's just exciting to me.

In Dredgevine's later, pre-Scars days, Gerry Thompson started tweaking the list for greater and greater consistency in terms of the cards hitting the graveyard. That is what the above list attempts to do as well – to exploit new cards like Necrotic Ooze and Molten-Tail Masticore instead of the Unearth mechanic of cards like Sedraxis Specter to help maximize the power and solidify the consistency of its core synergies.

Though I've settled on Gigantomancer as the Ooze's partner in crime for now, it's worth looking at other potential targets as well…

"Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity."

Sphinx of Magosi
The Sphinx would give the deck even more card advantage and, a turn after the Ooze came into play, take it out of Bolt range. A +1/+1 counter and a card seems aggressively costed at 3 mana, but I think I'd prefer the combo to affect the board a little more proactively. Still, I do love me some card draw…

Vengeful Archon
Having faced this asshole at GP Portland in M11 Sealed, it's safe to say that the ability itself is quite broken, just perhaps not as is on the diva-like, 7 mana, triple white-costed body it comes attached to. Would you play this creature if it was a 4/3 for 4? I think I would. That said, the stall tactic strategy of the Archon seems a little less synergistic with Dredgevine's "ignore the opponent and win" strategy than Gigantomancer.

Geth, Lord of the Vault
I have to admit that I'm intrigued enough by this guy to consider him despite the fact that Dredgevine doesn't have enough removal or solid blockers to expect his activated ability to fire without the help of Hedron Crab's mills. That said, its happened often enough that I've had to switch the target of Crab mills from myself to my opponent that, in some matches, this could actually be a viable strategy that could get out of hand quickly. Geth's ability is powerful enough that I'm going to file it under "Revisit."

Pestilence Demon
Pestilence Demon is probably not ideal. First, your own creatures are pretty low on the toughness index, and second, its activation requires black mana, making anything above three damage pretty unlikely. Still, with Vengevines, Oozes and Masticores, a Pyroclasm every turn is worth not outright dismissing.

Reckless Scholar
That's a lot of work for another looter. Any good prospector must sift the gold from the sand, indeed!

Soliton & Mul Daya Channelers
Before you say it, I've already thought of it – if you bin these two creatures with a Necrotic Ooze on the table, you've got infinite mana, right? Nope – the Ooze can not gain the tap ability of the Channelers, as that ability is granted as the result of a static ability (the same reason you can put Cryptologist level counters on the Ooze, but can't tap him to loot). Too bad, as the upside to this combo would be that the Channelers are also just straight up playable in the deck; 36 creatures would ensure that it'd be a 5/5 beater or mana fixer for an otherwise unstable mana base. 20 mana for 5 Molten-Tail Masticore activations and 20 damage seems good, as does a near-infinite chain of Fauna Shaman fetches. But yeah, it just doesn't work.

Myr Propagator
The important thing to note is that Necrotic Ooze wouldn't be tapping to make 1/1 Myrs, he'd be tapping to make 4/3 Necrotic Oozes. Seems efficient enough…

Kuldotha Phoenix
There was a moment when Jared Maguire and I were discussing Memnite and Trinket Mage as Bloodbraid substitutes for Vengevine recursion. If you're going that far, and add Grindclock, you might be able to support the Kuldotha Phoenix in this deck, considering it's already synergistic with Molten-Tail Masticore. It'd be clunky, though…which may just reveal the fact that I'm less interested in the Phoenix as a potential Dredgevine card than I am in him as a segue…

There's been a lot of debate over this card recently. Many (read: Jay Boosh) see the card as "terrible." I prefer to see it as a potentially very powerful card. Just perhaps not yet.

The Full Story
"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up."

Gigantomancer, Sphinx of Magosi, Vengeful Archon, Geth, Lord of the Vault, Pestilence Demon, Mul Daya Channelers, My Propagator, and even Kuldotha Phoenix.

A list of bulk rares that have largely been dismissed from Standard play. They have abilities of varying power levels – though mostly impressive – and severe drawbacks that have kept them from really shining.

What a deck like the newly proposed Dredgevine list (or potential variations on it) does is attempt to show them in a new light; to give a potential context in which they could become powerful additions to a deck. Afterall, Knight of the Reliquary shockingly didn't see much play until some time after the introduction of Lotus Cobra, fetch lands and eventually the Sejiri Steppe technology.

I've been reading the Scars of Mirrodin set reviews, most of which understandably break down individual card's strength in a vaccuum or compare them to the cards they may be replacing. But what I am far more interested in hearing is intelligent, thoughtful and creative discussion of some of the 249 cards we've just been granted access to. Not to know that they "don't work," but to discover the conditions within which they might work…to see the potential in the cards.

There's a reason my above list doesn't even bother listing a sideboard. The truth is that this Dredgevine list's success doesn't rely solely on the consistency and power-level of its cards and draws. It relies equally on whether or not the new Standard environment continues to pack serious graveyard hate (Nihil Spellbomb, Leyline of the Void, Bojuka Bog) and whether new card interactions, archetypes or the overall meta render it completely under-powered and/or ill-equipped. Is Leonin Arbiter going to see serious play, for example? Will it see enough play to warrant more sideboard slots than 4 Doom Blades? Simply, the deck's success, like the success of any given card, depends on what other cards are going to be played.

So you see, though looking at it from a completely different perspective than Ian "The Doctor" Baker, I actually completely agree with him.

…or maybe all of this is just the Johnny in me trying to survive a transition into a more competitive Broken City environment, savouring the precious moments of a new set, when deck-building is an endeavour of near-limitless possibilities. Really though, who cares? The point is that most of the card and deck ideas'll hit the graveyard. Some of the better ones might rise from it. Better to play them out and let them die than to never shuffle them up.

The T.O.

This article is brought to you by the Broken City School of Magic.

Kar Yung Tom

Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.