Gauntlet Dredge

I assume that much of Eternal’s player base probably has at least a passing familiarity with Magic: The Gathering, but for those who do not, “Dredge” is an archetype designation which originally stems from a Magic mechanic which focused on discarding cards from your own deck. I have since seen this name carried across to other games with similar self-discard strategies, and while Shoaldredger exists, it is not where the name originates from. I feel like “Dredge” has a nicer sound to it than, “self-discard void shenanigan midrange combo” though, so I personally don't mind.

Self-discard cards have been in the game for a while, but it took a critical mass of both self-discard, as well as payoff cards, before there was a possibility of a coherent deck. I have fiddled with this strategy quite a bit over the years, and there have been periods of time where it was both very consistent and very successful. At its pinnacle, I wasn’t really in the habit of posting my decks here, and by the time I finally started, several nerfs had really hamstrung the deck’s performance. Cards like Elding of the Final Hour, Grenahen, and Krull, Xumuc Occultist shone a bit too bright for their own good, and their subsequent nerfs really hurt the power and consistency of the deck. While the heart of the deck was still largely functional, the drop in sheer power made it much more difficult to steamroll ground-based resistance. As a result, I found myself more frequently stalling in a way that made me no longer consider the strategy reliable for gauntlet.

While my expectations had been lowered by the bevy of nerfs, I have always made a point of revisiting my older decks with every new release. Bone Music gave the deck even more burst potential, but didn’t do much to overcome the deck’s issue with stalling. For a while I focused more heavily on Xenan Dredge variants, as they seemed to have fewer issues with stalling, something that I think can be attributed to their large overwhelm threats.

However, Xenan variants have a multitude of their own issues. For some reason that I really do not understand, there still exists multiple incomplete power cycles, and Xenan is one of the unfortunate faction pairings that loses out. The lack of Vows, Paintings, and Marks can restrict its power and cripple its tempo during critical turns in the early game. Xenan Dredge not only has both higher influence requirements than the Feln version, but also has even less support to meet them.

Xenan Dredge can have problems playing defensively as well, especially against flyers. The nature of Dredge decks is such that they tend to be very unit-heavy to take better advantage of cards like Shoaldredger, Valles Rex, and Dark Purveyor. This limits the amount of space left over for non-unit cards, like removal, and in turn makes it more likely to lose to a large flyer. Endless Nightmare can’t block, and is basically blank if you need to play defensively. I have lost multiple games where I simply drew multiple dead copies of Endless Nightmare that did nothing to stop me from getting run over.

My last main issue with Xenan Dredge is that it is much more reliant on its void, which makes it proportionally more susceptible to getting absolutely bodied by void hate like Steward of the Past and Reality Warden. While these cards are not incredibly common, you should expect them to show up pretty frequently across a large sample size. Playing a deck that can effectively fold to a single card that sees play in multiple opposing decks makes winning consistently difficult for obvious reasons.

Previously, the choice between Feln and Xenan was something of a trade off, and ultimately I felt that both fell a bit short. However, with the release of Battle Lines, I feel that the balance has been wildly upended in Feln’s favor. Preyscouter performs very well in this deck. The symmetrical discard effects like Fear and Darkwater Vines are excellent enablers for Preyscouter and require no additional deckbuilding concessions. It’s not always flashy but, Preyscouter has a lot of synergy with this strategy, and can have some silly interactions with Moldermuck when the copies it plays start growing bigger instead of smaller. However, Preyscouter’s biggest impact probably comes from granting overwhelm. Overwhelm makes it much easier to push through large amounts of damage with cards like Dark Purveyor, Shoaldredger, and Bone Music. So much easier in fact that, when combined with Pteriax Mount, I found that I wasn’t experiencing nearly as many losses to board stalls as I had been previously.

Pteriax Mount is a card that was always on my radar, and had even been included in previous Dredge builds, but it hadn’t really impressed me. The more that I play with it in my latest build though, the more it feels like the glue that holds the deck together. My previous versions of Dredge never lacked the ability to generate high-attack threats, but having threats was one thing, and being able to end games with them was another. Granting flying to a Maggot Swarm or a unit buffed by Dark Purveyor can often end the game in a single swing. Giving Plunk Wumpkin or Moldermuck +1/+1 and flying is also incredibly effective for fighting a war of attrition. Lastly, Pteriax Mount also gives the deck a much greater ability to play defensively in the air. Overall, it has really felt like Pteriax Mount has helped to address many of the previous issues I had with the archetype.

Now that I feel as though Dredge is back in a spot where it both feels good and performs well again, I just figured that I would take the opportunity to share my list as well as some of my thoughts on the archetype.