TheSwarmer

[[Plow Under]]?

[[Stroke of Midnight]] does not exile and cannot be cast for 1 or 2 mana, getting rid of a [[Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar]] or an [[Animate Dead]] for 1 or 2 mana respectively is often what games will be won or lost by.

[[Amulet of Vigor]] is interesting, maybe worth it in a [[Tangle Wire]] balls to the wall Root Maze deck

It's really hard to say without giving it a whirl whether that could work. Though my experience with pox makes me lean towards a No. The way you lose most of your games with decks like Pox, assuming your deck doesn't just outright fail to function to begin with ofc, is that you hit just the right pressure points, you disrupt them and before you can turn the corner and get them to zero permanents or life points they storm off, or topdeck a [[The One Ring]] or [[Show and Tell]] in an [[Omniscience]], etc.

Now it could be that [[Root Maze]] can really only be good in critical mass disruption decks, like bordering on Stax, or that it needs the sort of home that I described in my first comment, where free spells and extremely heavy hitting threats are used to capitalize on an opponent who is really stumbling with their fetch lands.

Some things that come to mind for the more staxy pathway are:
[[Spreading Algae]] + [[Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth]]
[[Tangle wire]]??
[[patchwork automaton]], [[sphere of resistance]] type builds

For what it's worth, if the card is playable at all, it's probably so in legacy with how prevalent fetch lands and soul lands are in the format. Looking forward to what sort of nonsense you brew with the card next!

I think free spells and haymakers might be the way. In legacy, an [[Up the Beanstalk]] Simic deck with [[Murktide Regent]] and at least 6 forces, cantrips, Tamiyos, and all that shite, could maybe work? I am not sure, but I really like the card (not as much as you tho xD).

Ah yes, the casual 4x Strip Mine xD Big fan of this tho, takes me back.

Running only 4x [[Swords to Plowshares]] seems dubious at best. Also maybe [[Terminus]]? Given how [[Root Maze]] *probably* plays out.

Now, my favorite card is [[Smallpox]], so [[Root Maze]] as a card is right up my alley, but I think it has seen so little play because, in practice, the sort of decks that can spare slots to play it are also the kinds of decks that cannot really capitalize on making the opponent stumble. And ofc the card slows you down just as much. Unlike [[Smallpox]], it is much much harder to build a deck that breaks the symmetry, and much like [[Smallpox]], the main issue you will run into is that yes, your opponent is doing fuck all on low resources, but so are you. And this is not really a problem you need to solve per se, but you do need to minimize it. Pox does this with [[Liliana of the Veil]] and Urza's Saga for example.

Can't help but feel like [[Unearth]] would work really well here.

Also protein bars tend to have a decent amount of fat, it's where some of the flavor and a lot of the nutrients come from. See the Truth!

Okay, what? xD
[[Putrid Imp]] is shit nowadays; too slow, too unimpactful, don't run it except for religious reaons.
4 [[Breakthrough]] is extremely excessive. [[Ox Of Agonas]] should be played instead as at least 1 of.
4x [[Cabal Therapy]] is a necessity while [[Wreck and Rebuild]] is just bad in a shell like this and [[Life From the Loam]] serves little to no purpose as the game should be over before the lands matter and dredge super low compared to the other options.
[[Poxwalkers]] and [[Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis]] should be included.
lion's eye diamond for speed and optimal build viability in the metagame.
[[Prized Amalgam]] is too slow for legacy and not worth running
4 [[Ichorid]] is too much in a deck with so few black creatures, many of which are dredgers or other Ichorids.

Lastly, the sideboard of a dredge deck should consist of nothing but answers to opposing graveyard hate (e.g., [[into the flood maw]], [[portable hole]], etc.) and hate against combo decks that are even faster (e.g., [[leyline of the void]]).

Also, you'll want some very high impact shit for [[Dread Return]] to make sense, I'm talking [[Duskana, the Rage Mother]] or [[Satoru, the Infiltrator]] or at least a manabase of fetches and duals with mountain types and [[Anger]] to make [[Dread Return]] on a [[Golgari Grave-Troll]] lethal (a play that is made much weaker with every [[Ichorid]] included in the deck).

Seems much much better. Focused and aggressive. [[Siege-Gang Commander]] may be hard to cast, but I am very partial towards the card, too many memories of playing with it when I was 9 years old or something. I love it. And I suppose there is some tension between [[Lava Spike]] and the fact that the rest of the deck is an aggressive tribal creature deck. Like a turn 1 lava spike is much much worse than a turn 1 goblin as that 1 goblin will attack multiple times, or eat a removal spell after doing some damage, or stress the opponent's blockers 3 turns down the line, or enable [[Goblin Grenade]]. BUT [[Lava Spike]] is better against board clears so it is not objectively wrong to run it. Nevertheless, cards like [[Legion Loyalist]], [[Foundry Street Denizen]], or [[goblin rabblemaster]] *may* be better.

Oh also, for aggressive creature-based red decks, [[Sundering Eruption // Volcanic Fissure]] can be really really good in cases where taking 3 damage is irrelevant.

Damn, this shit is cool as fuck! Only thing is that 4 [[Force of Negation]] just seems excessive, especially with so many non-blue cards. Also, do you think you can fit a Triome land in there to cast Fire? Like, surely you don't need 3 surveil lands,

Generally, cards like [[Raging Goblin]] indicate you want the game to be over asap, certainly before cards like [[Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet]] and [[Butcher of Malakir]] come into play. Furthermore, the odds of being able to cast these cards on curve are below 20% in a deck with 22 lands. Lastly, [[Goblin Chieftain]] and [[Goblin Grenade]] in a deck with so few goblins is kind of sketchy.

It just seems like the deck is trying to go into too many directions. Reminds me of a lot of the decks I built around the time I started playing, but the concept is more solid than me using [[Flame Slash]] to make [[Phytohydra]] not shit xD.

Also, casting [[Gatekeeper of Malakir]] for BBB in a deck where only half the mana sources provide black is very, very, very sketchy. Why not make 2 decks, a midrange vampire one, with high quality threats and removal such as [[Vampire Nighthawk]] and another goblin deck, a mostly red one with a slight black splash for [[Slavering Nulls]] and mayble lords like [[Mad Auntie]].

I mean, I also don't have the money for Legacy, but that doesn't meant I am into self-harm.
I am mostly saying all this in jest, but it genuinely pains me to look at the state of modern. I genuinely think the game would be better off if everyone stopped playing it.

Oldschool [[Elvish Ranger]] >>> [[Dryad Sophisticate]].
[[Basandra, Battle Seraph]] for bdsm enjoyers.
[[Guul Draz Vampire]] A.S.S.
[[Jaya Ballard, Task Mage]] for latex fans.
[[Razia, Boros Archangel]] for men who like calling girls mommy.
[[Soul Collector]] for goth girl fans.
[[Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts]] for Basic Instinct enjoyers.
And who could forget [[Quirion Dryad]]
And personally, I am a fan of [[Disciple of the Old Ways]] and [[Vampire Hexmage]].

I now realize I have been playing this game for too fucking long xD

Man, just switch to legacy, please xD It's like every interesting idea you come up with for modern is this herculean effort to make a suboptimal strategy work in this misbegotten format while legacy has that same strategy posting 5-0 league results online at least 3 times a month.

All that said, I hate the spell pierce art you chose, and 4 [[Force of Negation]] seems too heavy.

In a more black-centric build, yeah. But since we only have 2 swamps, not really. All you really need to win is Mystic anyway, the card takes over the game so rapidly it's kind of insane.

Generally, if you are playing flash creatures, your deck is gonna run at least 12 faeries, hence the relevance of the human subtype on the otherwise extremely shitty 1/2.

The problem with decks like this is that they are 2017 decks; they have been power-crept out of the format completely : (

Almost every card in the deck is severely, extremely underpowered. The only even vaguely playable flash creature in the format, besides [[Spellstutter Sprite]] of course, is [[Brinebarrow Intruder]] because of how badly it fucks up Mono Red and how elegantly it enables [[Of One Mind]].

IDK man, this simultaneously feels like a worse Murktide and a worse Goryo's Vengence deck. I do really enjoy the Tamiyo angle though, it gives the deck much more range, a whole new angle of attack.

Power creep has kind of fucked pauper, though not as much as it has every other format. Though the format is relatively healthy all things considered. There's always a boogeyman to beat, what can you do.

As of today, it is the most popular deck in the metagame at ~20% representation in MTGO leagues, with madness burn at ~3%.

Campfire, though a lovely card and my preferred "win condition" for decks like this, is simply too slow. And sometimes a liability too as some burn opponents will sideboard in [[smash to smithereens]].