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If you liked this primer and want to read more high level Dredge content, check out my articles, including Dregde sideboard guide here.

This is an update of the primer that got posted a month ago. While the majority of the article remains the same, I updated a few maindeck card choices and reevaluated some sideboard options. I hope you’ll find this update useful!

Introduction

Dredge is a combo-aggro deck that abuses the Dredge mechanic to create card and tempo advantages. The main goal is to mill as many cards as possible as fast as possible, since the more cards we get into the graveyard, the more threats we can present. Nowadays, the deck is focused mainly on noncombat sources of damage, such as Creeping Chills, Lava Dart, and Conflagrate, supported by a playset of Arclight Phoenixes. It can deal something around twenty five damage as early as turn three, and can potentially generate more damage later if needed. In some matchups Dredge can also act as a card advantage-oriented strategy, which can overwhelm the opponent with persistent threats that keep coming back and eventually finish the game, regardless of how much removal the opponent has. The last possible role Dredge can take upon is that of a control deck. It works quite well in some creature matchups thanks to the Life from the Loam + Conflagrate engine and Lava Darts, even better with Artist’s Talent at the max level. This approach is less and less common though.

While the deck is very linear, it’s not without its challenges. Sequencing your spells can be tricky, and playing around both graveyard hate and interaction like countermagic or discard is oftentimes tough. It’s easy to let the cards flow and see what happens, but the real challenge starts when you want to play the deck with a higher degree of proficiency. Timing, decision-making process based on flipped cards, fighting through hate cards, etc. took me years to master. And thanks to my guides, I hope this process will be easier for you.

Why should you play Dredge?

If you want to play Dredge because it might be the best deck in the format, I have bad news for you. It’s not 2016 anymore, when doing anything even remotely broken was enough to win tournaments. Nowadays everybody, even the slower decks, has a proactive plan that will swiftly obliterate stumbling opponents. Another problem is that graveyard hate is much better than graveyard threats. That’s why if Dredge is close to becoming a tier one deck, it will instantly be hated out. Our fate is to be a solid tier two strategy at best, mostly when there isn’t that much graveyard hate and the metagame is soft to it.

Even if it’s likely that Dredge won’t ever be tier one again, it offers a unique experience and play patterns that can’t be replicated by any other deck in the format. Its high-variance nature is also something that can be seen as a reason to play the deck if that’s what you’re into. It mulligans quite well and it really doesn’t matter if you start with seven or five cards. As a result, you’ll have a lot of looks for your broken openings, and when you get one of them, some games will end instantly. This ability to overwhelm the opponent lets Dredge win some percentages of games even versus its worst matchups.

Dredge best and worst matchups

In my opinion, Dredge shouldn’t be considered a deck that can be reasonably picked up for any given event. It’s better used as a solution to certain metagames. As a rule of thumb, Dredge is a good choice if the majority of decks let you play at least four turns and the graveyard hate is low. There are some potential extra upsides, such as Lava Dart having a lot of targets or Creeping Chills lifegain being relevant, but those are rather minor and shouldn’t be taken into the account if the core conditions haven’t been met. For example, Dredge is a good choice if your metagame is flooded with control and midrange decks without too much graveyard hate. On the other hand, I would avoid it in metagames filled with combo decks like Amulet, Goryo, Neobrand, etc., or if players opt to play maindeck hate. 

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Card-by-card analysis

I divided the maindeck into four sections: dredgers, enablers, payoff and lands.

Dredgers

The archetype is all about, well, dredgers. It’s the most efficient way to self mill and the more cards we go through in early turns of the game, the better our chances of finding enough Phoenixes and Chills to threaten lethal. The biggest power of Dredge is chaining dredgers, so if everything goes right, we never have to naturally draw cards. This means that we both decrease the chances to draw our payoff cards and increase the likelihood of putting them in the graveyard.

Nowadays, there are four playable options. Three are in the deck, the last one can be added in very specific metagames:

• Stinkweed Imp. The best dredger we have left in the format. Outside being the highest Dredge value, it’s also a relevant creature to cast. A repetitive, quasi-deathtouch threat can stop opposing aggression all by itself, and flying lets us break through board stalls. Always play four copies, never board it out.
• Golgari Thug. It’s been a necessary evil ever since Golgari Grave-Troll got banned. Most of the time, it will act as a Dredge four card with no other text, but don’t forget it’s a creature that can chump block and has a relevant text when it dies. Note that its trigger is not a ‘may’ ability, so don’t cast it if your dredge chain is broken and you want to restore it while not having any other creatures in a graveyard to target. In that case, Thug will target itself and you’ll draw a blank instead of a possible enabler. It has additional utility against Mill, because after the opponent mills us, we can kill Thug in the upkeep to prevent decking.
• Life from the Loam. In terms of enabling dredge chains, Loam is the weakest card from this section, but it does much more than just being a dredger. It creates card advantage, which means our Conflagrate is far more deadly. It secures land drops, making multispelling in later turns much easier and flashbacking multiple Lava Darts in mid game is more manageable. It’s a dredger that can bin itself – super important in longer, low-resource games. It’s also a sorcery that works beautifully with the Arclight Phoenix engine. After serious testing I’m pretty sure that Loam should always be played as a 4-off and if you want to play eleven Dredgers, Golgari Thug is a much better cut instead. 
• Darkblast. The last playable dredger we have access to. Nowadays, Loam takes its spot, but I can see the metagame shifting in a way that enables Darkblasts to become a playable card again. Why is it good? Killing opposing one drop while starting our dredge chain is a great tempo swing. It gives us more turn one plays – something the deck desperately needs – and it’s also a spell for Arclight Phoenix. Most of the time, it’s used versus decks with x/1 creatures, but it can also finish off creatures after combat. The most common line is dealing with x/4 creatures after they block our three power attackers. You can also kill x/2 creatures by casting Darkblast on your upkeep, dredging it and casting it again. In the past, it was used to kill our own creatures – Golgari Thug to put Narcomoeba on the top, itself to avoid losing decking or Silversmote Ghoul if you mill a Creeping Chill and have multiple Prized Amalgams waiting for in the graveyard to be returned. However, in this iteration of Dredge, it’s mainly a removal spell.

Enablers

We know that consistently getting more cards into the graveyard is vital for Dredge, but we also need to start the engine somehow. We’re looking for the most efficient ways to put dredgers in the graveyard and redraw as many cards as possible. Remember – our goal is to either chain spells with Artist’s Talent in play, so we can dig for Lava Darts and trigger Phoenixes this way or rely on either cheap enablers and/or Faithless Looting’s flashback to keep going, so in our key turn (either turn three or four) we’ll be able to cast multiple spells and trigger multiple Phoenixes easily. That’s the main reason why some two mana ones that were played in the past (like Cathartic Reunion) aren’t that good anymore. 

Faithless Looting

It’s the best one mana enabler for graveyard strategies in the game and the main reason why Dredge has a chance in the current metagame whatsoever. It does everything – it’s the only one mana card that allows for both discarding and drawing multiple cards (aside from Burning Inquiry, but more on that later), so it helps us find whatever we need, be it a missing land, dredger, or more enablers. Flashback means that we never run out of fuel to keep the engine going. Once you have dredgers in the graveyard, it has a really good ratio of mana to the number of cards you can mill, hence the most broken starts usually involve multiple Lootings. Being a sorcery to trigger Artist’s Talent and Arclight Phoenix makes it even better. Phenomenal card, always play four, never cut it. 

Artist’s Talent

It’s the newest addition to the deck and also the reason why the deck has returned to the meta. It’s a great repetitive enabler, a way to play around hate cards, and an engine that gives a lot of stability to an otherwise quite shaky and random shell. While the card doesn’t look that appealing by itself, it works well with other enablers, Lava Darts and Life from the Loam to rapidly fill our graveyard. Once you start the engine, Artist’s Talent adds Dredge 5 to each spell you cast. So after you untap with it, you’ll most likely be able to cast another enabler and up to three Lava Darts from the graveyard. This means an additional twenty cards milled at the very least, and when you combine it with other selfmilling that has occurred on that turn, it often ends up putting almost your whole library into the graveyard. It’s nearly guaranteed to deck if you have two copies of Artist’s Talent in play – lines like T2 Talent into T3 Talent + a one mana spell is your most common way to kill on turn three. Artist’s Talent can also convert any interactive spell into being an enabler, so it lets us play for example discard spells in the maindeck if needed or more creature removal and they would still count as enablers – this is huge for the existence of Dredge as an archetype in the current, post MH3 Modern where you absolutely need to interact with the opponents’ broken starts – otherwise you’ll get blown out too easily. Talent is also a repetitive way to restore the dredge chain, so it’s quite important in postboard games when you often have to fight through the one-shot graveyard hate.
Artist’s Talent has one last hidden mode – once you level it up to its final stage, it makes both Lava Dart and Conflagrate killing machines, as well as slightly bolsters Creeping Chill. Sometimes this approach will help you overcome situations when graveyard hate is involved, for example when you have to win without Phoenixes because the opponent had Surgical Extraction – upgrading Lava Darts into Lightning Bolts means over twenty damage from noncombat sources, so often enough to finish the game. Remember that if you divide your Conflagrate between multiple targets, the Talent will apply its bonus to each of them, so it’s quite easy to clear the whole board.

Burning Inquiry

Since Dredge’s inception in Modern, Burning Inquiry was tried in every iteration of the deck and for the first time, it looks like its advantages overcame its downsides. The upsides are quite obvious. It draws three cards for one mana, so it can potentially mill fifteen cards, so it’s great for the goldfish potential. The randomness attached to the card at one moment isn’t as symmetrical as it should be – once we have only dredgers in hand, it doesn’t matter what we’ll discard. And for the opponent it can be devastating – imagine forcing an opponent with Solitude + Ephemerate waiting to exile our Phoenixes to draw three random cards and maybe disrupt their combo with random discard. Of course, randomness is random, so sometimes you’ll help the opponent, but since the opponents often play their cheap cards first, so more expensive, and, by definition, more powerful ones stay in hand, it means we have higher odds of hitting something impactful. There’s one huge downside though – since the discard is random, it doesn’t guarantee to bin a dredger, so it shouldn’t be considered a turn one play in my opinion. It’s probably at its best on turn three and onward, since with another one mana enabler in hand, it’s easy to cast them both, convert them to 20-25 cards milled and finish the sequence with one Lava Dart, so it will trigger Phoenixes. Another common line is T3 Loam, play a land you returned, Inquiry, and Dart flashback for flying power. So Burning Inquiry acts as a ‘worse’ Cathartic Reunion, but with an upside of being a one mana cheaper, so we can more often in on turn three.

Red enablers that turned out to be not as good as I thought 

Cathartic Reunion

In the past it was another played looting effect and a main two mana enabler. Discarding two and drawing three cards results in dredging up to fifteen cards in the best case scenario, so it’s a very efficient way to mill ourselves. With the addition of Artist’s Talent and Arclight Phoenix to the deck, Reunion lost its power since it’s not as synergistic with the new engines. Firstly, two mana enabler in the Life from the Loam deck was quite awkward sometimes – it made casting three spells to return Phoenixes much more problematic in the early turns. Secondly, discarding two cards as a cost was also quite bad with Artist’s Talent – if you were discarding your last two cards from hand this way, the Artist’s Talent won’t trigger and you’ll lose Dredge 5 for nothing. That’s why I value one mana enablers higher nowadays. 

Merchant of the Vale/Haggle

I’m not the biggest fan of this card, but I tried it over and over again as a second best turn one enabler after Faithless Looting. It turned out that it was sided out all the time and basically every other one mana option – Looting, Lava Dart, Axe, Thoughtseize or even fetch for a Surveil land – were better. That’s why I eventually stopped adding it to the deck. 

Blue enablers

Adding another colour may look trivial for a deck that is forced to play a lot of fetchlands, but there are two problems. The first one is more damage taken from your own manabase. Some would say that Creeping Chill negates this aspect, but still, it’s better to have more life than not. Another one is the ability to get the colours you need in the early game. Since Dredge is a Life form the Loam deck, securing green is a priority. Sometimes it turns out that it’s hard to get both Stream Vents and Stomping Ground in the first two turns of the game. Blue spells (mainly Gaze) also fight for slots with other enablers or interactive spells like Thoughtseize or Lightning Axe, so it’s a matter of choosing if you want to stabilize your goldfish or to be able to interact in G1 more often and overall have more tools to combat the opponent’s plan. While these reasons can be impactful from time to time, it all comes down to the impact said blue enablers can have. So for example, I would for sure splash blue for Careful Study, but I’m not that high on Otherworldly Gaze or Tome Scour. Let’s analyse why they are worse than looting effects.

Otherworldly Gaze

Gaze should be considered more as a filtering card, so we can have a good turn two with Talent or Reunion more consistently. However, binning dredgers is a primary function of an enabler. And to be honest with you, Otherworldly Gaze is not the best at doing so. For a deck with twelve dredgers, the odds of finding one is 54,5%, which isn’t particularly up to par, and it’s even lower with eleven dredgers. The true power of the card is in what else it can accomplish:

• It lets you keep good one landers. The most heartbreaking thing in Dredge was to see an opening seven with something like two Artist’s Talent, Imp, Thug but only one land, which makes it unkeepable. With Gaze instead of one Talent, it’s okay to use it as a scry 3 with an upside to find a second land. Coupled with the draw step, it digs four cards deep. Good one landers are also keepable with Faithless Looting and Gaze digs one card deeper. With it in the deck, the range of playable hands is increased.
• It can find a Artist’s Talent on turn one to secure an impactful turn two play. It’s especially important in racing scenarios, as well as postboard when we are playing against one-shot graveyard hate like Tormod’s Crypt or Endurance.
• It digs for sideboard cards, so you can choose to draw instead of dredging and react to something problematic.
• It’s an instant – important with Gemstone Caverns in the sideboard and with other one-mana reactive cards.
• It’s an instant that can be cast from the graveyard. Maybe it’s not the best way to spend two mana, but sometimes you don’t have anything better to do anyway. It can trigger Talent//Phoenix, restore a broken dredge chain, etc. It can be useful in postboard games when mid game AT can give you a much needed boost after opposing graveyard hate wipes out your resources.

Tome Scour

In the past, Tome Scour was used as the best goldfish card to fuel fast Ox of Agonas starts. But since the deck doesn’t play Oxes anymore and it relies more on chaining spells for Artist’s Talent/Phoenix and overall being more interactive (for Dredge standards of course), Tome Scour just doesn’t fit anymore. Tome Scour also doesn’t fit to the new payoff spells – with Prized Amalgam + Ghoul package, it was at least possible to flip power on turn one. Arclight Phoenix is impossible to return on turn one, so there’s no need to maximize the amount of flipped cards on turn one. Instead, it’s better to play for example Burning Inquiry and have an option for mill fifteen on turn three. 

Payoffs

Taking game actions is fun, but it’s easy to forget why we are doing this. In the past, the goal was to flip Narcomoeba + Prized Amalgam or Silversmote Ghoul + Creeping Chill. Nowadays, the engine uses not sixteen, but only twelve cards: 

• Arclight Phoenix. A 3/2 hasty flier is miles ahead in raw power compared to other threats we used to play in Dredge. It’s better at offence, thanks to evasion and can play defence if possible. Note that returning it for zero mana is very easy by sacrificing three lands to Lava Darts, but it only works once. Once you do it, it’s much harder to return them for another go. That’s why try to not sacrifice too many lands and instead use Faithless Looting or Life from the Loam as one of the spells to trigger your pigeons. Phoenix is also not that terrible to cast, especially when the opponent is too focused on graveyard hate. Note that they trigger at the beginning of combat, so you can mill as many cards as possible and cast spells even if they are not in the graveyard yet. This means that relying on Phoenixes makes our sequencing much easier, compared to something more time-sensitive like Prized Amalgam.
• Lava Dart. This card wouldn’t be played without Arclight Phoenix – its main purpose is to make sure we can trigger our birds whenever we want. It’s the only noncreature spell in Modern that can be cast from the graveyard for zero mana. The fact it’s also a decent Magic card makes playing four copies of it less awkward. While racing, it’s a fifth Creeping Chill – usually you’ll be able to flashback three copies and deal final points of damage. It’s a fairly solid removal – kills Ragavan, Ocelot Pride, Memnite, etc. If you can afford to flash it back immediately, it can also deal with an early Guide of Souls, Basking Broodscale, Slickshot Show-Off, and many others.
• Creeping Chill. Another free effect we get from Dredging. Great in tempo games, when hitting a couple of them can win the game by itself or at least buy you a key turn to not die to opposing beats, untap and win on the backswing. It’s also uncounterable, aside from Consign to Memory, so it’s extremely important against control decks. In my opinion, this card is a reason that keeps Dredge’s head above water. In the current version of the deck it’s even more important than in previous ones because it’s the best and the most inevitable burn spell available, and we are the only ones who can unleash its power.

Why is this trio better than their predecessors? This engine takes fewer cards, generates immediate effect and can ignore ground blockers. Dredge got to the point where we shouldn’t think about it as an aggro deck with combo elements, but as a peculiar burn deck that tries to go off by putting as many cards as possible into the graveyard, triggering Creeping Chills and attacking for twelve in the air on the same turn. The game ends quite often even before Arclight Phoenix gets a chance to come back from the graveyard – if the opponent goes fetch + shock, they are dangerously close to being dead from Chills and Darts flashbacks alone. There’s also Conflagrate to finish the job. The downside of the current Dredge build is that it’s softer to graveyard hate and that there are more ways to stop us (for example Consign to Memory is quite annoying). Despite those weaknesses, the overall change is for the better.

Conflagrate

Conflagrate + Life from the Loam was a powerhouse in the past and I’m glad we can come back to it. It has three main roles: it’s a removal spell, a powerful finisher and a discard outlet. Flashbacking Conflagrate costs two mana, which makes it an important piece in games when you have access to only two lands. In these scenarios you can flashback only two Lava Darts, which means we need another spell to trigger Phoenixes. While Life from the Loam usually fills that role, opting for Conflagrate instead can speed our gameplan up and help present an unexpected kill.
Since in most games you flip most of your deck and build your hand and use one, big Conflagrate, there’s no need to play too many copies. In my opinion, 1.5 would be a perfect number – you’ll very likely find one and you’ll rarely use the second since the first copy should end the game in one way or another. Sadly we can’t do that, so we have to decide for something. Personally I opt for playing only one copy and rely more on maindeck Lightning Axe, but I can see the metagames where playing two or one main one side could be reasonable. 

Flame Jab

While the deck doesn’t look very appealing, it serves a few important roles:

• I often had a problem of having something with flashback for one mana, so either three lands and Loam/Conflag + two spells wouldn’t force me to sacrifice two lands, so I won’t be able to Loam anymore. Similarly, four lands, Flashback Looting + something for one was quite often a thing.
• Turn three dredge Loam, cast it returning three lands, land drop + 2x Flame Jab = Phoenixes from just one draw step, without using any other resources, so it means multiple Phoenix returns.
• In extreme late game or after Surgical on Phoenixes, it’s a way to deal final points of burn after twelve from Chills and four from Lava Dart’s flashback. Extra points if you also have Artist’s Talent leveled up.

Ox of Agonas – why it isn’t in the deck anymore?

In first iterations of the deck I was playing two copies, then went down to one off. Now I’m not playing any. Why? It always felt like a secondary engine to further our gameplan if you fail to find Artist’s Talent or don’t have enough fuel to keep going. While casting it on turn two was possible, in practice it was more as a turn three play. It rarely attacked since most of the games end after your combo turn after burn + hasty chickens attack, but technically it could act as a secondary threat as well, e.g. if your Phoenixes got Surgicaled or you’re short on damage. Again, in practice, it wasn’t used that often mostly because it was better to cast Faithless Looting’s flashback instead, so you would have one spell for Phoenix already cast. Ox also worked horribly with Loam and Conflagrate. With Looting around and a spell-based engine being a main shell, I don’t see a reason to play Ox of Agonas anymore. Maybe one copy in an extremely Surgical-heavy metagame could be acceptable?

Interaction

Since Artist’s Talent can attach being an enabler to any instant or sorcery, Dredge nowadays can finally play a few interactive spells, so the opponent won’t be able to always goldfish freely. Having a few non-engine slots also makes sideboarding a bit easier since we’ll most often just swap our interaction and premium tempo cards with better answers.  

Lightning Axe

It’s the best removal spell Dredge has access to. While it’s often considered a sideboard option, there are metagames where it’s ok to play a few copies of the card in the maindeck because it’s so easy to find a juicy target for it and to steal a game from the opponent that doesn’t expect it. Lightning Axe is so good in Dredge because it also acts as an enabler – as long as the opponent gives us a target of course, but the majority of the format does, so it’s quite free to say you’ll have a way to use it. The most important targets for it are cheap creatures that have more than one toughness, so Lava Dart and Flame Jab won’t deal with them: Guide of Souls, Basking Broodscale, Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, Territorial Kavu, Slickshot Show-Off, etc. The only creatures it doesn’t kill are: Quantum Riddler, Primeval Titan, Phlage (but they are still in range when combined with Lava Dart) and sometimes Psychic Frog. The rest of the format just dies to it. The ability to play it in the upkeep means that it can restore the broken dredge chain before the draw step.

Thoughtseize

A solid catch-all answer to most problems you can encounter. It’s good against every form of hate that hides in the opponent’s hand – from countermagic, so our powerful two mana enablers can resolve, through Endurance to otherwise very problematic hate cards like Dauthi Voidwalker, Sanctifier en-Vec and Rest in Peace (luckily for us they’re not widely played, but if they will be, discard will be our salvation). It’s also the best answer to the opponent’s combos, so we won’t be as vulnerable as we were in the past. 

Another upside of discard is how nicely it fits our curve. Starting from turn two, we ideally want to spend all of our mana furthering our gameplan, so having a way to get rid of the opponent’s hate card on turn one is excellent. What’s even better, it never truly misses. Even if the opponent doesn’t have a hate card, you can just grab their best card and slow them down. This plan is often used against combo decks when Dredge’s best chance to win is to have a turn one Thoughtseize and hope to get our turn three kill. If you are worried about your life total but want to play discard spells anyway, you can run a couple copies of Inquisition of Kozilek instead. Just don’t go too heavy on it because more expensive cards still need to be answered – Quantum Riddler, Solitude, Scapeshift/Primeval Titan, Goblin Charbelcher, or Karn, the Great Creator are in the meta after all.

Random note: Thoughtseize can target any player, so you can cast it on yourself, discard a dredger and go off with your Lootings and/or Inquiries. It will also count as another spell to return Phoenixes, so sometimes it’s worth doing so.

The manabase

Dredge’s manabase is as straightforward as it gets – it comprises exclusively fetchlands and different types of Mountains. There’s a palace for one exception at best – one Bosseiju that I treat more like a spell than a land most of the time. Mountains are essential to be able to convert all of your lands into Lava Darts flashbacks – if you can’t cast enough spells, your Arclight Phoenixes won’t come back and you won’t be able to finish the game. I’m playing nineteen lands to have decent odds of hitting my first two land drops, so I can cast Life from the Loam and secure all my future land needs. However, if I could choose, I’d almost always opt for having three or more lands in hand because three Mountains opens a possibility of triple Lava Dart to bring back Phoenixes, which speeds up the deck by a lot. That’s why adding an extra land or two to increase the likelihood of this outcome would be beneficial, but sadly it’s hard to find slots for it.
I play eleven fetchlands and eight Mountains. Fetchlands can essentially be a turn one play, albeit a weak one, by finding a Surveil land – useful if you have an otherwise good hand with Artist’s Talent. I can see even slowrolling Looting or Inquiry because the upside of hitting a dredger from the top and bin with Surveil is so high that it’s often worth trying to highroll. I like playing more Mountains than I technically have to because I want to increase the odds of not milling all of my fetchables early on. Two basics allow me to limit the damage from my lands if I want to prioritise that – once you search for Stomping Ground, there’s often no need to get another one. Green is the second colour, that’s why you have more green sources. Black is just a very light splash, and unless you rely on discard hard, you shouldn’t find it too aggressively.
The singleton Boseiju is essentially my sixteenth sideboard card. I would love to play only Mountains and fetchlands, but since I wanted to pack a mix of different hate cards, I sometimes decide to trim one fetch and move one Boseiju to the maindeck. Sometimes it can punish you by not being a fuel for Lava Dart, but the upside of having a maindeck answer to Urza’s Saga or Tormod’s Crypt can be worth it. 

Sideboard options

Dredge sideboard is fairly ordinary in the combo world, as its main use is to neutralise opponents’ hate cards. Their secondary purpose is what regular sideboard cards usually do – answer opponents’ key cards or overall strategy, but it’s less important than their primary application.

When building and using your sideboard in Dredge, it’s also important to understand how sideboarding affects the deck’s main gameplan. Dredge is a combo deck that’s designed to execute its gameplan over and over again. It’s also extremely focused on achieving its goal, which means that we can’t pivot into an entirely different strategy after game one. That’s why our sideboard should always prioritise answering opposing hate cards. If you feel that the hate is covered, or you can just overpower it with what you have in the maindeck, then you can start thinking about answering your opponent’s strategy, but you should always think about how to protect yourself first. There’s also a huge threat of oversideboarding. In my opinion, in Dredge, you should only board in cards that are certainly needed and keep as much of a maindeck intact as possible. On the other hand, with the addition of Artist’s Talent, it’s easier to justify boarding in situational cards, but the opportunity cost of doing so is still severe. Personally, I allow myself a single cautionary slot and quite often add one Boseiju or Ancient Grudge, just in case. Any subsequent swaps should be justified.

Because Dredge is so focused on its own gameplan and its curve is quite compressed, answers have to be as cheap as possible so they won’t slow us down too much. This means that sideboard cards should fall into one of the two categories: either cheap spells to get additional Artist’s Talent’s triggers, or extremely powerful hate cards that shut down entire strategies like Leyline of the Void or Collector Ouphe. Reactive cards that require you to keep the mana open at all times like Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm may look decent in theory, but in practice, you’ll always want to develop your gameplan and tap out for an enabler instead. Playing permanent hate or less time-sensitive answers is a better approach. 

Major sideboard cards

Inquisition of Kozilek

Sometimes having four Thoughtseizes is not enough, so it’s ok to add the second best discard spell to the sideboard. Inquisition can’t discard anything, but it has one big upside – the lack of life loss makes it a great answer to spell-based grave hate cards in aggressive strategies like Boros Energy with Thraben Charms and Surgical Extractions. It’s also a solid answer to Endurance and to other spell-based combos like Storm, Belcher, or Neobrand. 

Disenchants

This is probably the most important part of the Dredge’s sideboard. In any iteration of Modern, there’s always a myriad of graveyard hate and combo pieces alike stapled to artifacts and enchantments. To tackle all those problems, we need disenchants. There isn’t one, best solution to all problems, so I wrote down each one that has a potential alongside their pros and cons:

• Boseiju, Who Endures. It’s probably the most elegant solution since it’s the only disenchant that can be found while you keep dredging – mill it, dredge Loam, get Boseiju back and all of the sudden you have a repetitive, uncounterable way to attack opposing permanents. You can also attack lands, which can be important against Amulet and Tron. There’s one huge downside to it – it costs two mana and can speed up the opponent by giving them extra land. Still, the first copy can nearly always be added to the 75, just as a good catch-all. 
• Nature’s Claim. In the past it was hands down the option available. Sadly, it’s not that powerful when your whole gameplan centres around cobbling together twenty damage, which is why I avoid playing it.
• Pick your Poison. It’s another elegant solution to artifacts and enchantments, while also being an answer to opposing flyers. The obvious downside is sorcery speed. I would only consider playing it if there’s a lot of Zoo in your local metagame. Otherwise, I would focus on instant speed cards. 
• Natural State. One mana instant that can deal with everything but only a few cards: Leyline of the Void, Leyline of the Guildpact, Scion of Draco, and Leyline Binding. Therefore, if I don’t expect too many Leylines or Zoo, I always try to squeeze one or two copies in the sideboard. 

Ancient Grudge

It may not look great, but what matters is its flashback – being able to cast it from the graveyard makes it extremely powerful, and it triggers both Talent and Phoenixes to boot. It’s one of the very few sideboard cards that works well with our main gameplan, which makes it much easier to find than the cards you actually have to draw. Because of that, the opportunity cost of boarding it is lower than usual, but still should be approached with caution. It usually forces the activation of hate cards like Relic or Tormod’s Crypt, which makes them easier to play around. In some matchups, it can be used more proactively to attack key pieces on the other side of the table rather than hate cards, for example Blade of the Bloodchief against Broodscale, Scion of Draco in Zoo, or to attack Lotus Bloom in upkeep or Belcher when they don’t have access to seven mana. It’s also a solid answer to Damping Sphere. 

Ray of Revelation

Ancient Grudge for enchantments. In theory, it should be about as effective as Grudge, but in practice, there are only a few good targets for it – Urza’s Saga and Leylines in Zoo. If your local metagame has a ton of Saga decks, you can safely add the first Ray to the mix. Add a second one if you expect Leyline of the Guildpact and Leyline Binding, so a turn two Scion of Draco that’s all colours won’t run away with the game. Notably, Ray of Revelation won’t do much against Leyline of the Void because we don’t have access to white. It’s also quite hard to catch Rest in Peace with it – this would require having Ray in the graveyard and keeping green mana up, so you could answer RIP with its ETB trigger on the stack. Luckily for us, neither of them are widely played anymore.

Graveyard hate

Sometimes, there’s a need to add a few graveyard hate cards to our sideboard. In my opinion, there are three playable options:

• Leyline of the Void. Extremely impactful, but has to be in the opening hand to work. Because of its raw power, it can be brought in against more decks compared to the alternatives.
• Faerie Macabre. An elegant solution to the rise of Goryo’s Vengeance and to a lesser extent Grixis Reanimator. Uncounterable, free, and can’t be stopped by Teferi – it’s just a good hate card. It also has a hidden mode of protecting at least some of our payoffs from Surgical Extraction – just exile the copy that was targeted and the spell will fizzle. 
• Surgical Extraction. Very similar to Faerie Macabre. It can be countered, costs life, and Teferi stops it, but it also covers a slightly wider range of matchups, which makes the choice less obvious. For example, Surgical is better against Storm, although still not great. Its biggest upside is in its type – being an instant in the Phoenix + Artist’s Talent deck is extremely useful. It can also be played for zero mana ‘proactively’ just to return our chickens to pressure the opponent. For me, it’s the best solution available, at least for now. 

Collector Ouphe

Seeing that Affinity has been reasonably popular ever since the printing of Pinnacle Emissary, and our match up against the deck with multiple maindeck Tormod Crypts isn’t the best, it’s good to have two or three heavy hitters like Ouphe in the board to drastically improve our chances of winning the match. It’s also fine against Belcher and Broodscale, but it’s not as effective, and both said decks have answers to it. If your local meta has a lot of affinity, feel free to play two or three copies.

Leyline of Sanctity

In my opinion, it’s the best solution to the metagame infested with Endurances. Otherwise, I wouldn’t touch it and rely on discard instead. The card has a few upsides:

• It doesn’t cost any mana, which means that our development isn’t affected by it.
• It requires the opponent to not only have graveyard hate, but also a way to interact with enchantments, or approach the matchup from a different angle altogether. This means that the mere possibility of Leyline in our opening hand might force the opponent to make suboptimal decisions.
• It works for any copies of Endurance opponents can possibly have.

The card has weaknesses too, a lot of them to be honest with you. I listed them below:

• You must have it in the opening hand to make it work. Luckily for us, Dredge doesn’t draw many cards anyway, so the chances of drawing it later on are smaller compared to other decks. Even if it happens, Dredge doesn’t care that much about card quantity – all that matters is whether the engine is online.
• If it gets answered, any Endurances your opponent might have will be unlocked, so the punishment might be quite high.
• Wizards printed a lot of cards that instead of targeting an opponent has the dreaded ‘each opponent’ clause instead, making Leyline useless against them.

Minor sideboard cards

Gemstone Caverns

This card isn’t widely played because it has a lot of restrictions attached to it. You can’t focus on card advantage and need a good way to use your extra mana early in the game, so the opponent won’t be able to keep up. Luckily for us, Dredge can make it work:

• Dredge is one of the few decks in current Modern that doesn’t care how many cards are in your opening hand. As long as you have two lands and any way to start the engine, you should be fine. Starting with five or four cards is a common occurrence. That’s why it’s usually beneficial for us to exile one card from our hand to get the tempo advantage when we are on the draw.
• Since Gemstone Caverns enters the battlefield before the game starts only when we’re on the draw, it’s important to have enablers that will fully benefit from the fact we have this one extra mana source before our first turn, so for example Gaze becomes a bit better.
• Artist’s Talent is extremely powerful and playing it a turn earlier should increase our winrate drastically. 

While there are some upsides to it, it’s easy to find a few downsides as well. When drawn later in the game, it’s a colourless land which clashes with Conflagrate. It’s not a Mountain for Lava Dart, and it takes valuable sideboard slots, so it’s not free to run it. But if you struggle finding relevant cards to your sideboard, you can always add one or two copies of Gemstone Caverns and it should be fine.

Pithing Needle

The card is both good at stopping some graveyard hate cards and problematic combo pieces or planeswalkers. While you can name Relic of Progenitus or Tormod’s Crypt, I don’t recommend bringing in Needle in the dark versus decks that don’t have other relevant cards to name. It’s a viable addition against strategies that both have graveyard hate with activated abilities and rely on planeswalkers or other nonland permanents that need to be activated. Tron with Relics and Karn, the Great Creator would be a good example. It’s also good at stopping random combo decks, especially when they don’t expect it.

Void Mirror

If you expect to play against a ton of Eldrazi Tron, you can try playing a few Void Mirrors in the sideboard. It can also be decent against Living End. Against other decks it’s quite bad and too situational, so I would keep it on the bench.

Vexing Bauble 

It’s just a great Magic card and I can see playing a few copies in the sideboard just as a solid answer to Solitude, Affinity (but only when you are on the play) and a bunch of other decks that use a significant number of free spells. 

Slaughter Pact

It’s my answer to Harbinger of the Seas. The card is both quite popular because of UG Ritual and so annoying for me that I like playing one or two copies, just to have outs to the lock. Being a zero mana spell in the combo turn is also nice.

Magus of the Moon 

Play it if you expect a lot of Amulet (but at this point you probably shouldn’t play Dredge, so I don’t know…)

Gameplay tips

Goldfish before playing any events!

You should be able to find the most efficient way to victory against an opponent that puts up no resistance in your sleep. I strongly recommend spending a few hours goldfishing before you even play your first match with the deck. It’s the best thing you can do to become a good Dredge player. Learn how you can optimise your gameplan and what type of hands have the biggest chances of setting up an early board or milling the whole deck on turn three. If you are playing in paper, it’s also a nice way for you to figure out your own way to execute game actions with physical cards and announce triggers. Later on, you’ll be surprised how often your games will look like one of the goldfish scenarios you were working on for so long. Once you learn the basics, you’ll be ready to play against other players.

Mulligan a lot

Dredge is one of the best decks in Magic’s history in terms of how well they mulligan. Take advantage of that and don’t keep medium sevens just because going down a card seems scary. In Dredge, it’s sometimes actively better to mulligan to six because you can put back Creeping Chill on the bottom, effectively getting an otherwise dead card back to the deck. Similarly, putting back Phoenix doesn’t seem terrible. Bottoming dredgers is also good because after you fetch, you’ll have a deck with a greater number of dredgers, so the odds of keeping the dredge chain going while going off will be higher. Going down to five is often close to free,and some mulligans to four will still be very functional. As you can see, you shouldn’t be afraid of sending back medium hands. Prioritise having two or more enablers, two lands, and at least one dredger. Artist’s Talent and a bunch of medium spells like Loam or Lava Dart will also do the job. On the other hand, a seven card hand of two lands, Looting, two Imps, Chill and Phoenix is likely a mulligan, because it doesn’t have two enablers. On top of that, it has a Creeping Chill, which decreases our total damage from twenty six to twenty three, making it even more unappealing.

Always count how much damage you can deal while going off

In previous versions of Dredge, it was quite easy to generate a ton of damage over the course of the game – the deck was designed to constantly get back creatures from the graveyard, so it was safe to say that they could deal a lot of damage. The Phoenix + Lava Dart build sacrificed the long-term resiliency for explosiveness. This results in a very limited amount of damage you can generate if you are trying to go all-in. It’s twelve from Chills, at most twelve from Phoenixes if they all end up alive and unblocked by the end of combat, and up to four damage from Lava Darts, but in most cases it’s either two or three. So when you decide whether you should go all-in or play a longer game, you should always count if it will be possible for you to actually kill the opponent. Of course, it’s possible to attack with pigeons more than once, but it requires keeping a few cards in the library to not lose to decking. And when you’re trying to not go all the way, it’s possible some of your payoffs remain in the deck, which will further limit your damage output.

Learn when you can go all-in and when you should take things slowly

There are two ways of playing Phoenix Dredge:

• Combo approach: mill your whole deck in one turn, trigger all Chills, sacrifice as many Mountains to Lava Darts as possible to summon Arclight Phoenixes and win in one turn. Do it if you are sure you’ll win after dealing twenty something damage.
• Old school: mill some cards and try to cobble something together. Start with an enabler or two, cast Loams and set up for a big Conflagrate, play a few removal spells, return a few Phoenixes you happened to find early and play a more regular game of Magic over multiple turns. Do it if you have to play around hate, can’t mill the whole deck, or need more damage to win the game.

There are also some scenarios in between these two extremes. For example, you had a strong start of Looting into Inquiry. You got lucky and flipped something like two Chills, three Phoenixes, and two Lava Darts. It’s technically possible to sacrifice both of your lands and attack for nine, dealing seventeen damage total. However, once you go for it, you most likely won’t cast any spells for the rest of the game because you’ve just sacrificed all of your lands. And while technically it should be enough to finish the game later on because you’ll have another combat and eventually mill more Creeping Chills, there’s a possibility for a random Solitude + Ephemerate to ruin this gameplan. It might be better to wait a turn to cast Life from the Loam + two Lava Darts, so you still get back Phoenixes while being able to keep playing the game after your opponent interacts with you. Analyse and learn when you can go all-in and when you should play a longer game.

How to combat graveyard hate?

In the past, there were two ways to combat soft graveyard hate – destroy it and force the activation, or mill a few cards and present some value to force the opponent to act. Since we don’t have twelve threats in the deck now, but only four, and they require more resources to trigger, it’s much harder to take the latter route. That’s why in my opinion, nowadays you are more inclined to answer the hate cards or simply not play Dredge if graveyard hate is on the upswing. It’s still possible to overpower some forms of hate. For example, Faerie Macabre won’t usually have a significant impact, and Surgical Extraction on Phoenixes still gives you the option to finish the game with Chills + Conflagrate, it’s just much harder to do so than previously. Small Kozilek’s Command doesn’t do much, but the one with X=4+ will most likely exile all of our Phoenixes. Learn how each archetype approaches graveyard decks and sideboard accordingly. Thanks to the power of Artist’s Talent, it’s not as costly to oversideboard as it used to be.