Moonbar's Modern Matchup

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Moonbar

27 September 2016

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Hello, and welcome to Moonbar’s Modern Meta Matchup. This is an article series focused on taking two modern decks, breaking them down, and seeing what happens when they face off on paper. Every matchupafter this will be down to you, the community, but this week is Bant Eldrazi versus Dredge.

Bant Eldrazi: Do any of you remember Eldrazi Winter? I should hope so, as it was only a few months ago. Either way, any and all forms of the Eldrazi decks were dominant to the point of ludicrosity. After Wizards banned Eye of Ugin, the entire meta crumbled. Out of the rubble came Bant Eldrazi. Bant Eldrazi is technically an aggro deck, but it can play the role of midrange well. It uses mana dorks and Eldrazi Temple to ramp into turn three bombs such as Thought-Knot Seer, and then continue to curve into Reality Smasher and Drowner of Hope. If no bombs are forthcoming, the deck can filter through lots of cards with Ancient Stirrings to find the value. All of this is supported by removal like Path to Exile and Dismember as well as utility cards like Cavern of Souls and Spellskite. On the whole, the deck hits hard early and maintains the assault into the late game. Its main weakness is being fairly non-interactive on the whole, so it has a very difficult time dealing with planeswalkers and overwhelming card advantage in specific, but “unfair” decks in general, i.e. Nahiri lists, Kiki-Chord/Evolution, or Dredge. This bant Eldrazi list is by Andre Metzger that top-eighted at GP Lille this August.

1x Breeding Pool 3x Brushland 4x Cavern of Souls 4x Eldrazi Temple 1x Forest 1x Hallowed Fountain 1x Plains 1x Temple Garden 4x Windswept Heath 4x Yavimaya Coast 1x Birds of Paradise 4x Drowner of Hope 4x Eldrazi Displacer 2x Eldrazi Skyspawner 3x Matter Reshaper 4x Noble Hierarch 4x Reality Smasher 1x Spellskite 4x Thought-Knot Seer 4x Ancient Stirrings 1x Dismember 4x Path to Exile SIDEBOARD 2x Blessed Alliance 3x Engineered Explosives 2x Grafdigger's Cage 1x Rest in Peace 3x Stony Silence 3x Stubborn Denial 1x Worship

Dredge: Dredge is a deck that has been building up for a long time. At one point, several of its pieces were banned from Modern, making it useless. Then with the advent of even more unfair decks, the pieces became unbanned but unplayed. When Shadows Over Innistrad released, cards like Prized Amalgam and Insolent Neonate gave Dredge the support it needed to work well. And work it certainly does, being considered to be one of the best decks in modern right now. It uses the obscenely good mechanic of Dredge to start up an engine of powerful creatures coming out from the graveyard. It all begins with Insolent Neonate putting cards with Dredge into the graveyard. Once the Dredging begins, a chain reaction of Narcomoeba, Prized Amalgam, and Bloodghast begins. What makes the deck so good is the fact that the threats can’t really die and are too numerous and easily accessible to be exiled. The game one matchup for most decks is quite bad against Dredge, but the issue for Dredge is the post-board game. There are just so many good hate cards that can be brought in that effect the game immediately. This Dredge list is a somewhat standard one by Kaziyuki Takimura from the 2016 Modern World Championship.

2x Blood Crypt 4x Bloodstained Mire 3x Copperline Gorge 2x Dakmor Salvage 2x Mountain 4x Scalding Tarn 1x Steam Vents 2x Stomping Ground 4x Bloodghast 4x Golgari Grave-Troll 1x Haunted Dead 4x Insolent Neonate 4x Narcomoeba 4x Prized Amalgam 4x Stinkweed Imp 1x Collective Brutality 3x Conflagrate 4x Faithless Looting 3x Life from the Loam 2x Tormenting Voice 2x Shriekhorn SIDEBOARD 1x Abrupt Decay 2x Ancient Grudge 1x Collective Brutality 3x Engineered Explosives 1x Gnaw to the Bone 4x Leyline of the Void 2x Nature's Claim 1x Vengeful Pharaoh

The Matchup: Game 1: Dredge wins this one easily. The combination of blockers and resilience means that the Eldrazi swarm can never quite break through the defenses, and the Dredge engine is just too strong. The few pieces of spot removal in Bant cannot hope to make enough of a dent to force creatures through. If both players keep decent hands, the pre-board matchup is Dredge by a landslide. Game 2/3: This one is more interesting. The Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage easily get boarded in for Bant as well as potentially a Worship, and takes out Dismember and any of the high-cost Eldrazi like Drowner of Hope and Reality Smasher. Dredge boards in cards such as Gnaw to the Bone and Engineered Explosives to both soften the early beats and blow them up later, and Abrupt Decay to take out Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage. Dredge boards out Collective Brutality and one or two Conflagrates. The matchup hinges entirely on which deck rips their boarded-in cards. A turn one or two Rest in Peace or Grafdigger’s Cage will swing the matchup severely in Bant’s favor, but if Dredge pulls Engineered Explosives, it can blow up the problem cards. Overall, I still think that Dredge wins the match for one simple reason: there is not a guarantee, nor even a high likelihood, that either deck will find their sideboarded cards. This being the case, Dredge wipes the floor with Bant in a vanilla matchup.

What do you think would happen in such a matchup -- or, what experiences do you have with these decks? Keep in mind I haven’t played either deck and this is pure speculation and reasoning.