Legacy's most feared deck. Dredge is the "Boogeyman" in the room regardless of what the meta looks like. With a game strategy that does not resemble traditional Magic in the slightest, Dredge is widely regarded as unbeatable unless properly answered by sideboard hate. Eliciting fear and loathing, Dredge is for many the only reason graveyard hate cards persist in sideboards.
The Dredge mechanic is perhaps the most effective form of card advantage ever designed. In a nutshell, your graveyard is your hand with this deck. With rapid means of filling your graveyard, playing Dredge in many ways feels like playing with a 30 card hand. The deck wants to dump its hand into the graveyard as quickly as possible, which is why a decent portion of the deck is devoted to discarding cards.
The main engine in the deck is Bridge from Below, which generates huge armies of zombies very quickly. With Dread Return, you can reanimate Flayer of the Hatebound and then reanimate Golgari Grave Troll for lethal. What makes this deck scary to play against is its schizophrenic nature. It can be explosive and kill rapidly, or long term and attrition oriented. Because of its proficiency at early or late game strategy, Dredge is generally a heavy favorite pre-sideboard.
As stated earlier, Dredge game 1 is nearly unbeatable save for a few rare circumstances. This strategy has an obvious glaring weakness, which is its only balancing factor within the meta. This weakness is graveyard hate. The most popular choices are Leyline of the Void, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Rest in Peace, Faerie Macabre and Ravenous Trap. Knowing what your opponent's sideboard hate consists of is crucial for success. In general, game 1 is almost an automatic win; however, game 2 and 3 are generally more difficult and require a desperate, grueling game plan. Playing around sideboard hate with your own answers to their answers is the basis on which game 2 and 3 stand on. If you don't mind playing around lots and lots of sideboard hate, Dredge is an extraordinarily powerful strategy.
