Sadly, nearly every other answer is for more than zero mana, so you can expect to be slowed down thanks to them. The ideal example is Leyline of Sanctity – it’s for zero mana, so if we have it, we won’t lose a tempo at all and will be able to deploy our threats while being protected from various graveyard hate options. Playing something that stays on the battlefield or has an impact immediately is a better approach. They also work terribly with Ox of Agonas. Cards like Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm may look ok in theory, but in practice, you’ll always want to develop your gameplan and tapout for an enabler instead. They also shouldn’t require you to keep the mana open all the time. In a long run, you’ll lose more games to not doing your thing when the engine is going than to random hate you didn’t expect to face.īecause Dredge is so focused on its own gameplan and its curve is filled with plays (for those who haven’t read the first part of the primer: turn two Reunion, turn three Ox is the goal) answers have to be as cheap as possible so they won’t slow down our goldfish time too much. But the fear of it shouldn’t force you to always side in three Wear//Tears. Sure, sometimes you’ll lose to a random Leyline of the Void that somehow got into the sideboard of the deck that usually doesn’t play it. In my opinion, in Dredge it’s better to not side in something that’s maybe good, but you are not 100% sure than to add something that’s not absolutely necessary. There’s also a huge threat of oversideboarding. 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 hating the opponent’s strategy. That’s why our sideboard should always prioritize answering to the opponent’s hate first. We are simply forced to do our thing over and over again. It’s also so dedicated to its main gameplan that we can’t pivot into something different after game one. Dredge is an aggro-combo deck that’s designed to get a critical mass of threats early in the game. When building and using a sideboard in Dredge, it’s also important to understand how sideboarding affects the deck’s main gameplan.

The secondary purpose is to do what regular sideboard cards should do – answer opponents’ key cards or strategies, but it’s more of collateral damage than the main reason why the card is here. Its main use is to neutralize opponents’ hate cards. Introductionĭredge’s sideboard is nothing spectacular in the combo world. If you want to check out more of my Dredge content, check this link. If you are new here, don’t forget to check our Discord Channel.

Mtg modern dredge primer