Gitrog County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisal
Commander / EDH*
SCORE: 18 | 19 COMMENTS | 3771 VIEWS | IN 4 FOLDERS
Version 4.0: Shadows Over Innistrad Overhaul —June 14, 2016
I've been neglecting this deck. Time for a major overhaul. With the latest expansion, we now have The Gitrog Monster. Arguably, this could be the best commander for a dredge-based deck. For now, I'm already in white and rely on Karador, but there's still room for a cute frog horror and all the shenanigans it brings. As of this update, I haven't tested my new list, but I'm excited enough about what The Gitrog Monster brings to the table that I'm renaming this deck in its honor. So, starting with Version 4.0, this deck is now "Gitrog County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisal Starring Karador, Ghost Chieftain.
Changelog...
+Emeria Shepherd: This isn't a landfall deck and it doesn't have a ton of plains cards, but Emeria Shepherd has a lot of potential anyway.
+False Prophet: I'm including more sacrifice outlets, which makes this look like a tempting board clear.
+Graveblade Marauder: Nothing too special, but as the game goes on, opponents are compelled to block this or lose massive life.
+Nissa, Vastwood Seer: The five Origins planeswalkers give me a chance to play planeswalkers in this deck that I can actually get out of my graveyard pretty easily. Trying out Nissa for now, since she has such nice utility. But I've got my eye on Liliana as well.
+Phyrexian Ghoul: A classic sacrifice outlet that I should have thrown in long ago.
+Putrid Imp: Trying to employ more discard outlets.
+Riftsweeper: In conjunction with Peel from Eternity, this can recur all of my exiled stuff as the game goes on. This weakly counteracts graveyard hate by opponents, but the real boon is grabbing my used flashback spells.
+Sidisi, Undead Vizier: Demonic Tutor on a creature that doubles as a sacrifice outlet? Yes, please.
+The Gitrog Monster: So much synergy in one package. Even if this wasn't a 6/6 deathtouch body, even if it didn't function as an Exploration, the card-drawing ability would be good enough to include the card in this deck. This turns dredging into an explosive loop and give the deck easier access to combos. Because of that, I'm reworking the whole deck to make better use of this card.
+Wild Mongrel: Discard outlet, and a very good one.
-Apprentice Necromancer: It worked well enough and might go back in, but it was a backup and I'm hoping not to need it.
-Dark Confidant: Powerful, to be sure, but I don't think that this is the deck for it.
-Siege Rhino: I'm trying to combo out, and this doesn't do much. I might be making a mistake by trimming too much defense from this deck. We'll see.
-Spirit of the Hearth: In the right environment, this might be valuable. I didn't get much use out of it.
-Sylvan Library: This was a borderline case in the old deck, since it synergized with dredgers and helped the deck be more explosive. Easily surpassed by The Gitrog Monster.
-Crucible of Worlds: I reluctantly cut some cards that were dead weight in the graveyard. Still not sure this is the right move.
-Worm Harvest: Too slow for this deck. In a Loam-based deck that didn't focus on other dredging and played more of a control game, this would make sense.
-Boneyard Wurm: I had too many blockers that didn't do anything. It was this or Ghoultree. I'm tentatively cutting this because by the time it became big enough to matter, I didn't need a vanilla blocker.
-Kessig Cagebreakers: The coolest token-generator in the deck and I'm hesitant to cut it, but my deck just doesn't have a good way to take advantage of it.
Ob Nixilis clan may give you nice win conditions....Ob Nixilis, Unshackled and Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and then the commander version Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath....I especially like for your deck Ob Nixilis, Unshackled because it has the opponent theme you have going in some of your higher cost spells.
December 30, 2014 2 a.m.
TheStephenation says... #3
Hm, I'm not seeing much synergy with the Ob Nixilis cards. My deck isn't well-positioned to abuse the Landfall mechanic, so the original Ob Nixilis, while good, wouldn't be particularly amazing in my deck. I'm also not using board-sweeping or Maralen shenanigans, so the M15 version wouldn't be as good here as it could be in other decks. There are engines with Reveillark and such, so I could make Ob Nixilis into a huge, flying trampler, which is nice. As for the planeswalker version, I'm not seeing any potential for it in my deck that would make it any better than Liliana of the Veil was, and I cut her because planeswalkers don't do well in this deck.
January 2, 2015 6:51 p.m.
Ever thought about using the Angel of Glory's Rise + Ashes of the Fallen combo? Rise of the Dark Realms might also be nice in here.
December 2, 2015 3:56 p.m.
phyrexetherium says... #5
Emeria Shepherd is great for getting back noncreatures that get dredged. I also run Deadbridge Chant.
December 27, 2015 4:21 p.m.
TheStephenation says... #6
Emeria Shepherd is going into this deck once I've decided on an updated list. The card has amazing potential here.
I'm against Deadbridge Chant in principle, but it's also just not practical without using a computer-based RNG or something. I'm not going to write down the graveyard order of my 50-card graveyard, then shuffle it up to get a random card, only to reset it back to the right order. Worst mechanic ever. Fortunately, there are plenty of better recursion engines for this deck, as a six-mana enchantment is a bit of a stretch if I'm potentially pitching the contents of my hand to fuel dredging. It's still a powerful card and could be viable in a deck that takes a little longer to start dredging, but damn, it would be annoying.
TheStephenation says... #1
Whip of Erebos would be quite good in some other, pretty similar decks. I'm not using it here for three reasons, which may not be obvious on seeing the deck...
I start dredging instead of drawing within the first few turns, so an artifact/enchantment is likely to get milled away and sit in my graveyard for the rest of the game. I've cut the number of noncreature artifacts and enchantments down for that reason. There are still a few in the deck, but they are cards that can be played very early on for a huge advantage.
It's a mana-intensive card. My deck can eventually build up mana, but it is mostly focused on cheap recursion of big creatures, and eight mana is a bit much. If I were drawing more cards and playing ramp spells, it would work nicely.
This deck is built to keep its creatures either on the battlefield or in the graveyard, and the more in both, the better. Exiling them, even for a considerable benefit, is something that I'd do in a different deck. That's why I've added more stuff like Jarad and Splinterfright. I don't want my graveyard to be depleted.
December 7, 2014 2:36 p.m.