Ichorid Through the Ages

Before I get into this, just let me say that this article did not come about through me being bitter about losing to Ichorid at Star City. I lost to Ichorid fair and square. I didn’t plan on the eventuality of meeting the deck, didn’t sideboard for it, and knowingly shot myself in the foot before both matches.

Oops.

The fact that I beat my first opponent playing Ichorid and lost to the second is a tale in itself. In the first half, my opponent mulled into oblivion and couldn’t get his dredge engine started; in the second half my opponent didn’t even play Cabal Therapy, a card most would consider integral to the Ichorid strategy.

I should also say that I do harbor a few prejudices against Ichorid, most of which stem from the fact that a deck that doesn’t have to play spells to win isn’t playing Magic anymore.

Anyway…

I’ve actually been meaning to write an article on this topic for about a month. The last time I was in Sandusky on a Friday night, I played in a free Standard tournament using a borrowed Kavu Justice deck. In the last round of the tournament I faced off against the Standard build of Dredge and got my Mudhole stomped in even though I’m pretty sure I should have the advantage in the match.

I don’t know what specific list my opponent was playing, but it probably looked something like this:

2x Horizon Canopy
3x Gemstone Caverns
1x Svosgoth
4x Breeding Pool
4x Watery Grave
2x Underground River
6x Island

4x Drowned Rusalka
4x Magus of the Bazaar
4x Merfolk Looter
2x Bonded Fetch

1x Darkblast
1x Life from the Loam
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Golgari Grave Troll

4x Narcomoeba
4x Bridge from Below
4x Dread Return
2x Flame-Kin Zealot

Dredge can afford to run fewer dredgers than Ichorid because it has more copies of “Bazaar” as Drowned Rusalka, Magus of the Bazaar, Merfolk Looter, and Bonded Fetch all perform a similar function. Otherwise the goal is essentially the same, get your dredgers in the yard and dredge a whole bunch, then play Dread Return and win. If you can’t play dread return, make a bunch of zombies and win.

What I didn’t know then but can see now is that I played against Dredge wrong. I was playing against Ichorid, thinking I needed to stop the dredging engine and killing all his Looter guys. Really, you need to stop the combo by stopping Flame-Kin Zealots and Bridges, more importantly the Bridges.

I hear the Extended versions of the Dredge strategy are also pretty dangerous. One uses the Flame-Kin combo with zombie tokens while the other just makes a gigantic Sutured Ghoul with Dragons Breath for the win. I have no experience with either one specifically, though, so I’ll just put up a sample list of the Ghoul combo:

4x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Polluted Delta
4x Watery Grave
2x Breeding Pool
1x Blinkmoth Nexus
4x Flooded Strand

4x Golgari Grave-Troll
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Ichorid
4x Narcomoeba
3x Golgari Thug
3x Phantasmagorian
1x Sutured Ghoul
2x Cephalid Sage

4x Tolarian Winds
4x Careful Study
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Dread Return
1x Dragon Breath
1x Bridge from Below

The distinction between the two lists is the environments they play in. The Bridge combo collapses in an area where there are a lot of creatures to die and remove Bridges. The Ghoul combo suffers a bit more in metagames with lots of control where they might have trouble punching Dread Return through counters and bounce.

There’s a Legacy build of Dredge now too. Legacy is the smallest format that allows the use of Lion’s Eye Diamond, and, lucky Legacy players, they get to use four of them. With such a powerful graveyard enabler, I would have expected them to use Serum Powder like the Vintage decks, but I was wrong. They continue using Breakthrough and Careful Study like the Extended versions:

4x Lion's Eye Diamond
3x Lotus Petal

2x Cephalid Sage
1x Flame-kin Zealot
4x Golgari Grave-troll
3x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
4x Narcomoeba
3x Putrid Imp
4x Stinkweed Imp

4x Bridge From Below
4x Breakthrough
4x Cabal Therapy
2x Careful Study
4x Deep Analysis
3x Dread Return

4x Cephalid Coliseum
1x Dakmor Salvage
2x Underground Sea

Oddly enough, this is also the last format in which attacking the middle part of the gameplan—the Bridges from Below—is probably more correct than attacking the beginning of the gameplan—the dredging. Still, you can see how this would go: first turn LED or Breakthrough, second turn dredge a bunch and make some dudes, third turn flashback and win.

In Vintage, the score changes a bit as the whole Ichorid strategy hangs on the best dredging tool available—Bazaar of Baghdad. A while ago, Albert “meadbert” Kyle realized the huge connection between starting a game with Bazaar in hand and winning, so he built his deck with that in mind. Most notably, he included Serum Powder to help in mulliganing to the all-important Bazaar. This gives (according to his calculations) a 96% chance of mulling to Bazaar and a better than average chance of having more than five cards in hand.

Here’s the maindeck for the Ichorid list that finished in the top eight at SCG Indy:

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Serum Powder

2x Cephalid Sage
2x Flame-kin Zealot
4x Golgari Grave-troll
4x Golgari Thug
4x Ichorid
4x Narcomoeba
4x Stinkweed Imp

4x Bridge from Below
4x Leyline of the Void

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Dread Return
4x Unmask

4x Bazaar of Baghdad
4x Dryad Arbor

This deck has no way to draw cards outside the draw step if Bazaar is neutralized, and the whole gameplan can be thrown into disarray by having to mulligan into oblivion, a first turn Leyline of the Void or Pithing Needle on Bazaar, Wasteland with no good dredgers in the yard, or an early Yixlid Jailer. Clearly between the maindeck and sideboard the answers are there for these problems, but they’re often in topdeck mode either looking for those answers or the mana to play them.

When things go right, though, look out. First-turn Unmask then dredging into a first turn Cabal Therapy off of Narcomoeba can be brutal. First-turn Leyline protects the Bridges, and Chalice of the Void makes the powered decks fair and turns off Tormod’s Crypt. Dredging into Narcomoeba, Therapy, and Bridge is disgusting and leads to easy second turn wins. Plus, there’s always the backup plan of smashing face with Ichorid and never having to cast a spell, ever.

Lists like these have been putting up surprisingly solid results lately. It seems as though, once a threshold number or proportion of Ichorid decks is played at a tournament, one of them will almost certainly make top eight

This is my suspicion of what happened at SCG Indy.

The finals in Indianapolis were seven Gush decks and Ichorid. Despite Ichorid being relatively easy to hate out, one Ichorid deck battled through eight rounds to make the finals. I’m certain that at least one of his opponents must have been packing Leylines or Jailers or Crypts or something, so the performance is a testament to both the deck and its pilot, Jim Erlinger.

I have a feeling there was a relatively large amount of Ichorid in Indy. It’s such a cheap proxy deck to put together and so similar across formats that just about anyone could put it together and bring it in. Plus, it’s a good enough deck to make that plan worthwhile. In the future I’ll know that large tournaments, ones with Internet advertising outside local boards and the Mana Drain, will probably have a higher than normal population of Ichorid just because the deck is so accessible.

My issue with Ichorid has always been that, despite its speed and unconventional wins that make normal strategies ineffective, it’s still really easy to crush. Its reliance on finding and using Bazaar makes it weak, and it can easily lose to itself multiple times in a tournament by mulliganing too far.

With that in mind, here’s the newest list Geoff Moes would put together:

4x Bazaar of Baghdad
4x Bayou
1x Swamp
3x Bloodstained Mire
2x Polluted Delta
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Mox Jet
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal

4x Ichorid
3x Ashen Ghoul
4x Nether Shadow
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Putrid Imp
4x Golgari Grave-Troll

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Leyline of the Void
4x Contagion
3x Bridge from Below
1x Darkblast
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Demonic Tutor

Geoff had multiple top eight and top four appearances with non-Powder Ichorid before Future Sight came out and turned the deck on its ears with Bridge from Below and Narcomoeba. (Not to mention that an impending wedding turned Geoff’s life on its ears for a few months. Congratulations to Geoff and his lovely bride, by the way.) The conclusion he continually came to when playing the deck was that it never really got much faster than a third-turn kill, and if you tried to pack too much speed into the deck, it suddenly could be disrupted too easily.

The addition of mana, then, doesn’t really slow the deck down, but it does make the deck more reliable and consistent. First, the deck doesn’t rely just on Bazaar anymore; now the deck can discard and dredge (albeit a little more slowly) with Putrid Imp. Second, the deck doesn’t need to mulligan to just a Bazaar since there are now tutors to help find one, or to find any of the helpful spells that are in the maindeck. Third, and possibly most importantly, this Ichorid deck actually has more than four Cabal Therapies, since it can hardcast them.

Bridge from Below becomes a secondary plan. It’s still good as a win condition, to be sure, but it’s almost better as a red herring. Opponents will recognize Bridge as one of Ichorid’s key cards to victory and will expend resources to remove it, while this deck beats down with Ichorid and Ashen Ghoul.

In contrast, then, Contagion becomes even better. It can keep the ground mostly clear against Fish and Goblins and is a free source of -4/-2 to any opposing Quirion Dryads or Psychatogs. Post board, it kills Yixlid Jailers remorselessly. In such a creature-oriented format, Contagion deserves a spot in the maindeck.

It’s an interesting exercise.

You may decide on different maindeck choices. The notable missing card right now is likely Unmask, but Geoff decided against it saying he didn’t want seven or eight pitch spells in the maindeck. The other choice that could possibly make it is Chalice of the Void, which has lost some power right now since GAT doesn’t use a full complement of moxes.

Ichorid is a powerful, tournament-viable deck that shares around 16 cards across all formats currently. Playing one version proficiently doesn’t necessarily translate exactly, but the strategies are similar enough that you should be able to pick up the rest without too much trouble.

For those of you playing against Ichorid, well, I guess play some Leylines. It’ll be there, and you’d better be prepared.