I don’t think so – let me explain: If we take a look at the most successful decks in Modern right now we have a lot of decks that rely on the graveyard – different “Flavors” of Dredge in Hollow One, Phoenix, BridgeVine, the real Dredge that differ in how disruptive, explosive and consistent they are, but also Combo like Storm, KCI and Scales Affinity (relies on “dies trigger”), but also a lot of the fairer decks rely on the graveyard for parts of their strategy – Mardu Pyromancer rather heavily, to smaller extends Grixis Shadow (Delve-Threats, Snapcaster) and BGx (Tarmogoyf, Kolaghan’s Command, Lingering Souls). There’s some with less reliance like UW control and a lot of decks outside the tiered ones (Grishoalbrand or Living End) which also rely on the resource Graveyard.

My theory is, while dredge is the deck that got people to gear up on Leylines, Rest in Peace and Surgicals, i wouldn’t hold dredge alone accountable for the current trend of maindecking those cards – its just that people started to notice that they actually hit a lot of decks really hard.

A few years ago – back under twins reign – the maindeck 1-of relic of progenitus to hold Tarmogoyfs, Living End and Grixis Control down was – if my mind doesn’t play tricks on me – a common thing for a lots of decks to have in the maindeck and vanished since then. I still know that Grixis Control was considered the worse Jund at the time (although it was good at out-junding Jund) because of the heavy reliance on the graveyard which was often addressed in the maindeck by other decks. Imagine my surprise when Mardu Pyromancer took off – that was only possible due to graveyard hate nearly completely vanishing from the format.

I suppose that at the moment we just are at a tipping point were the things the resource graveyard offers through differenct cards (value, resilience, inevitability, explosiveness) have come to a critical mass where many decks can lean on different things the graveyard provides and for the first time in modern history half of the tiered decks actually use it. And this is a point every non-rotating format will reach through time.

Take a look at legacy – it’s not uncommon for Merfolk to play Leyline of the Void or for Elves to have Surgicals in their sideboard – basically every deck has some amount of them – the blue based decks with cantrips usually 3, 2 if they feel they can rely on herd immunity – and the non-blue somewhere between 3-4 and Grafdigger’s Cage in addition to be able to reliably interact in the first few turns. And still in this format there are different flavors of heavily graveyard reliant decks – Comboesque Reanimator, Dredge, Aggro Loam and some that utilize it for other means like Storm.

Since cards enter the format at a rather slow pace, it has needed some time to come true for modern – but in my opinion being able to meaningful interact with the graveyard early will always be the necessity for a format that grows old.

Dredge was certainly the reason people started loading up on graveyard hate, but i don’t think that dredge is so oppressive (especially in a world of Settle the Wreckage, Anger of the Gods and Terminus where catching up is quite possible and dredge itself is so bad at interacting with other decks that it is easily raceable by the likes of Storm or Infect) that it necessitates Maindeck hate – it’s just that people started noticing how often those cards are really good and you would bring them in a lot of the time to the point that they are worth maindecking.

I think when people refer to Surgical being overboarded, they’re usually talking about how people always seem to bring it in vs. grindy matchups where the card disadvantage hurts quite a bit, and where the impact is not actually all that high (e.g. bringing it in against Snapcaster Mage decks.) I also often see people make the mistake of thinking Surgical will when the game when it actually doesn’t, and then durdling around and ending up dying. There aren’t many decks, even combo decks, that are so fragile that a single Surgical will actually win the game, so I think that’s important to keep in mind.

That said, it’s a fantastic sideboard card. Just know its limitations and avoid these common pitfalls!

Nice insights. I actually agree with you that Surgical is under-appreciated/under-boarded in Modern, and side it in almost every deck I play (they all happen to be relatively fair creature decks). But I think we’re in the minority there! Good luck on Grixis, I’d like to see that deck perform in this metagame.

i’m on Grixis Control, and Extraction has to be used differently in slow decks like this. i want to make 2 points:

1) if you run Surgical Extraction vs. Dredge in slow decks like mine, its better to go after the payoff cards. dredge has no problem getting multiple dredgers in the yard (there are of course exceptions). Going after Narcomoeba/Bloodghast has proven best for me, because there is a significant chance of permanently shutting off Amalgam, especially with Snap-Surgical. if you get the board under control (for me with Anger of the Gods, Izzet Staticaster or Young Pyromancer), it still has proven better for me to go after Conflagrate and even Creeping Chill before the dredgers. going after them is only viable if we have a fast clock to take away their time to rebuild. the overarching idea is that dredge is actually somewhat threat-light and just runs out, no matter how many cards it sees.

2) i actually think Surgical is UNDERboarded. Surgical Extraction gets exponentially better the more you have. 1 copy can give you a chance to establish your own clock vs dredge, but having 2 (or surgical-snap) is just game-winning. 2 surgicals are much more than 2x as good as one. which is why i’ve been up to 3 copies in the board since creeping chill. this incidentally significantly improves KCI, makes storm almost easy, and in tango with Fulminator Mage/Field of Ruin is great against Tron and Valakut.

i will say that Surgical Extraction is probably the best it can possibly be in Grixis control. the applications are endless.

For most Modern decks that are struggling with the Dredge matchup, I agree that Trap is probably the best option out there!