Last week I said I was going to share the results of my Fate Reforged box peeling, but something else happened that changed my priorities: B&R list changes were announced and they sparked quite the wave of enthusiasm with the unbanning of Golgari Grave-Troll.

The unbanning of Grave-Troll has revitalized interest in Modern dredge decks, an area I consider to be my expertise.

It all began with the printing of Vengevine, a card that's already riding the same wave of enthusiasm as Grave-Troll. I'm a junkie, there's a lot of ways to build Dredgevine...

Over the years, I've brewed up more iterations of Vengevine decks than I care to admit to, so I've had a hard time listening to the uninformed chatter regarding speculation to coincide with Grave-Troll's unbanning.

First off, you have to understand how Grave-Troll is different than the current dredge enablers, namely Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug.

Most of the time, the difference between the Troll and the Imp seems negligible, but it's technically 20% more dredge than Imp and 50% more than Thug, which is very relevant. Depending on what your underlying strategy consists of, the simple fact that you're able to forgo black mana by running Grave-Troll is enough to open the strategy up to different iterations and explore uncharted waters.

Before, Bant was less than ideal because it had no real way of doing anything with the dredge enablers that got stranded in your hand, but now Bant Dredgevinve can be a reality with Grave Troll and Life from the Loam doing the heavy lifting. A "dredgebase" consisting solely of Life from the Loam and Grave-Troll is now entirely possible.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Grave-Troll is not the same player in Modern as it is in Legacy due to the absence of Cabal Therapy and Dread Return. In Legacy, Grave-Troll usually just says "dredge six" with the remainder of it's text box remaining irrelevant for 95% of the games played. That's not the case in Modern, where casting Grave-Troll is likely to become a realistic road to victory.

Partners in Crime

The obvious places to start speculating are the dredge enablers and the usual suspects:

Vengevine is probably one of the main reasons you're even considering playing Grave-Troll in the first place. Lightning fast starts, with multiple copies of this hasty beast hitting the battlefield, are the stuff dreams are made of for Modern dredge players. There's a reason it's referred to as "Dredgevine."

Casting two creatures in the same turn is the sole way to make this engine run, so filling out the deck will require creatures that are both cheap and useful to the deck. These creatures are going to consist almost exclusively at one or two converted mana.

Which bring us to this little guy:

Hedron Crab is going to be the first creature that comes to most people's mind when filling out these roles. This card is already starting to climb in price, but there is still room to make some money. Hedron Crab is an uncommon from a set that's now five years gone and has enjoyed a substantial casual demand for those coveted mill decks, which means there's not an overabundance in circulation.

Narcomoeba essentially does nothing in Modern. Without Cabal Therapy and Dread Return to capitalize on the free body, a 1/1 flyer just doesn't do much. Narcomoeba isn't even a part of the equation in Modern. I would avoid this as a speculation target unless we see a "sacrifice a creature" flashback cost printed (don't hold your breath).

Bridge from Below is a card that's somewhat hard to evaluate in these decks. I've tried it out in a few of the brews I've come up with, but the lack of a useful sacrifice outlet to send your creatures to the graveyard makes bridge significantly less powerful in Modern than in Legacy.

That said, it is possible to stack the triggers so that you end up with a pile of zombie tokens when trading your creatures in combat. Again, this is not a card I would put much stock in.

Bloodghast is probably the second best dredge creature in Modern, after Vengevine. Reanimating by a simple landfall trigger allows for Bloodghast to return to the battlefield easily and often.

Bloodghast also has the same gift of casual appeal that we saw with Hedron Crab--kids just love their vampires, especially when they come back from the dead. Bloodghast seems like a pretty safe card to place your bets on because its current price is based heavily on casual appeal, so you're not likely to just lose out if this whole Dredgevine wave folds.

Then there's Glimpse the Unthinkable, a card that's climbed the price ladder pennies at a time continuously since being printed. If you haven't realized it yet, casual kids love mill decks, and Glimpse is the penultimate mill card...

"TEN CARDS FOR TWO MANA?!? OMG!!"

Glimpse may seem like a trap, but, for only two mana, you get roughly 20% of your deck in the graveyard, and that number will grow every turn, as you're almost guaranteed to hit dredge cards flipping that many cards into the graveyard.

While I am skeptical that Dredgevine is going to be "the next big thing" in Modern, the dream is real. And that dream often includes this gem.

Glimpse has a couple things going for it: it's from a print run that's a fraction of what we see now, and it has huge casual appeal. Combine that with the reality that we're only a couple cards away from mill decks reaching "critical mass" in Modern and you have the potential for huge gains.

Glimpse is not a card for the faint of heart. At $23 a pop, they are not a cheap card to pick up. But if Glimpse were to become a real thing, $4o is not out of the question.

Those are the "usual suspects" for Dregevine decks, but what about the diamonds in the rough?

You Don't Even Know

While Vengevine was in Standard, there was a deck that made a few ripples featuring Fauna Shaman, Vengevine, Hedron Crab, Bloodbraid Elf and one other card that really tied the whole deck together:

Knight of the Reliquary allowed the deck to benefit from the self-milling in a different way than just hoping for Vengevines to show up. All those lands were suddenly pure gold, boosting those Knights to ridiculous proportions.

With Grave-Troll hitting the Modern scene, the need for the black dredgers is alleviated and Bant Dredgevine is suddenly a viable strategy. I'm a believer in Knight of the Reliquary finding success in Modern one way or another. The card is simply too good to keep hovering around $5.

Magus of the Bazaar is a card that's been overlooked in Vengevine decks for a long time. enabling massive dredging and the reanimation of Vengevine when cast alongside another inexpensive creature. The fact that this card is not even $1 baffles me greatly.

Haakon, Stromgald Scourge showed up in a pretty sweet Modern deck alongside Burning Vengeance and Nameless Inversion, but it does some impressive work when it comes to enabling Vengevine. Haakon is (only) castable from your graveyard and carries a surprisingly relevant creature type: zombie.

Why does it matter that Haakon's a zombie? Because Gravecrawler exists and these two creatures in the graveyard is enough to rebuy those Vengevines.

Did you see it? Did you make the other connection with Haakon?

While in play, he allows you to cast Knight of the Reliquary out of your graveyard again and again.

With Coldsnap being such a dismal set to open, there just aren't many of these in circulation. So, if does catch on, the price will shoot up pretty quickly from the $3 we see today.

The other aspect of this card that makes it a good long term pick is the reality that it's only a matter of time before something is printed that makes Haakon a real role player.

Gravecrawler has long been my go-to enabler for reanimating Vengevine. Whether combined with Haakon or unearth friends like Dregscape Zombie or Viscera Dragger, casting a couple of these is a great way to rebuy your angry elementals.

Gravecrawler has already recovered from its post-rotation slump and is likely to maintain long term appeal among zombie aficionados. At $5, this is seems like a reasonably safe pickup, but I have a hard time seeing Gravecrawler ever going over $10.

Don't Chase

Golgari Grave-Troll's unbanning is going to prove to be an interesting case study in Magic finance going forward because it's really not that powerful of a card.

Much of Grave-Troll's price growth has been driven purely by player enthusiasm for this style of deck, despite it traditionally being a weak way to attack the format.

Grave-Troll and Vengevine have already seen movement, so it will be interesting to see what cards come along for the ride.