You just need to kill it before that happens. Dredge cannot afford to sleeve many anti hate cards without reducing its consistency. And cage DOES goes against him building his grave. If he draw cards then he does not build the grave, if he build the grave he does not draw the anti artifact hate.

I have never won a game where the cage was cast in turn 1 or 2 while i was playing with dredge.

But indeed ravenous trap also works wonders and it also hits on some coco decks since the finks can be hit after it goes to the grave for the third time.

People just stubbornly refuse to sleeve 4 cages against dredge. When people learn to have 4 grave hate cards on their side dredge will not feel that impressive. Grave hate also hits Jund, hits any finks reliant deck, hurts snapcaster decks.. in fact hits most non linear decks.

I played dredge for a while. It falls in pieces whenever people field grave hate. Nothign is more frustrating than the other player starting with a cage turn 1.

It’s better than what you’re giving it credit for, as a resolved Cage stops Ancient Grudge from being flashed back. That means a Dredge player looking to remove the Cage has to either have the hate in hand or draw it naturally. It’s not perfect, as the best solution is to continuously wipe the ‘yard with Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, but it’s cheap and anyone can play it, which combines with the fact that it has applicability against the likes of Jeskai Nahiri, Abzan Company, Kiki Chord, and Elves has made it ubiquitous.

Either way, this doesn’t invalidate the fact that a lot of players are using Grafdigger’s Cage and that CoCo and Chord decks are suffering as a result. So I’m not sure what the point of your comment was.

The WMCQs are taken into account. Some fell in August, but some were in the September data.

I believe your results are right and on spot, of course, but as you mentioned and well, it’s dangerous no tot take WMCQ’s into account for the future.

I’m also currently seeing a lot of RG Valakut decks in MTGO, and they all use the Scapeshift plan and not the Trough the Breach one (but then again, those are for this month so far, not September, so we might still notice the switch next month).

Jeskai’s fall to tier 2 was expected, at least for me. We will still see one Blue control deck coming to Tier 1 status, i believe, but probably not Jeskai.

I’m curious about the next moth, if we’ll see the shift in Valakut and if we see the comeback (very unlikely) of certain decks back to tier 1 status.

Oh, and am kind of hoping to see UW Tron getting a comeback since it top 8’d a WMCQ, and winning trough a lot of tier 1 decks (Burn, Jund , Grixis and Suicide Zoo)

This has been my experience too. But that doesn’t stop Cage from hitting CoCo decks with splash damage. Even if people aren’t supposed to run it, they are.

Grafdigger’s cage isn’t really that good against dredge, it only masks the yard until they can blow up cage, doesn’t dissuade them from dredging/ developing the yard, and they run 3-4 ancient grudge alongside nature’s claim or abrupt decay making an artifact that once removed has generated little value compared to other hate bad. If your in the colors for rest in peace it’s hands down the best, they have half as many chances to get rid of it (3-4 nature’s or abrupt decay vs those and ancient grudge) and it stops all development from the deck, no dredge, no drawing, nothing but do you have the answer to rest, and even if they do it still exiles the yard. Outside white ravenous trap is an option a lot of people including dredge players forget about, it’s like a tormod’s crypt but has a surprise factor instead of them knowing and playing around it. My main point is a lot of people use cage, as few other cards hate the grave and cards being cheated into play, but against dredge it’s a poor option, and I want my grave hate to hit dredge harder than I’d like cages flexibility, it’s just too poor against them because of there massive removal suite for it despite being good against other decks as well.

Right. My comment didn’t make this clear, but the other anti-Dredge hate (Leyline, RiP) would be what’s pushing out Living End.

Grafdigger’s cage doesn’t actually prevent Living End from working thanks to a quirk in its wording, even though it intuitively seems like it should.

Interesting observation on Cage vs. Company. That actually makes a lot of sense. Same thing with Living End from last month (although it is back in Tier 3).

Agreed on Dredge. Lest anyone misinterpret my claims on the deck, no, I don’t think it’s broken—just obnoxious.

Changes that are somewhat surprising, on the other hand, are the revival of Bushwhacker Zoo (welcome back!), and Death’s Shadow Zoo’s precipitous drop (perhaps a bit too risky). I’m also somewhat impressed with Company decks hanging on as long as they have – Dredge’s rise has spoiled the metagame for those decks, because Grafdigger’s Cage (most people’s Dredge hate of choice) stops them pretty cold too.

On the subject of Dredge… I don’t really feel like it’s busted, but it does have a pretty broad range of tools. It has the explosive starts to race with Burn, punishes decks with X/1s thanks to Conflagrate, and preys on any fair deck that doesn’t interact with it early. That said, I’ve had lots of success against it, because as it turns out early countermagic and graveyard hate keeps it from ever getting off the ground. I expect to be a Tier 1 deck going forward (and they really should cool it on printing enablers like Cathartic Reunion and Haunted Dead), but as long as nothing crazy comes out in the ensuing sets, it’s just a good linear deck like others before it, and really combo’s lone top-tier representative.