Wanna try something fun?

How about Mana Maze Solitaire with a legacy Dredge deck.

I just heard about this game from Mark Rosewater's podcast. I looked up the rules, and thought "I bet it'd be easy to destroy all cards in a dredge deck." And I happened to have one proxied up.

It quickly became apparent that dredge was not made for mana maze solitaire, and mana maze solitaire was not made for dredge.

I decided to try the first suggested setup, 6 piles of 10 cards each. As I was shuffling, I realized 8 of the lands in my deck deal 1 damage to me, and in mana maze solitaire you start with 1 life. So instead of 12 viable lands - Gemstone Cavern, Mana Confluence, and Cephalid Coliseum - I had 4. I hoped to get lucky. When I layed the piles out and flipped the top card of each, I found I did have a Gemstone Cavern, plus a Breakthrough, Putrid Imp, Golgari Grave-Troll, Faithless Looting, and Lion's Eye Diamond. A solid dredge hand.

When I saw Putrid Imp, I immediately wondered if just casting it would let me destroy every card from every pile. Then I realized I didn't have to cast it, and couldn't move it off the pile if I did.

I re-read the rules. My hand was definitely separate from the piles, so no insta-win there. But Putrid Imp would still be useful if I got extra cards in my hand.

Then I realized I had no idea how card draw was supposed to work. I re-read the rules again. There was no mention of card draw spells, probably because they weren't supposed to be in the deck. And then I realized there was no draw step, so dredge could only trigger off card draw spells. And my only way to destroy cards was with dredge.

And the only way to get extra cards in hand was with Breakthrough, so Putrid Imp wasn't as necessary as I first thought.

So. I decided I would draw from a pile into the separate area for my hand, and I would choose what pile to draw from. And I would flip the top card face up before deciding which pile to draw from. And I would dredge from the piles too, using the same rules.

Then I saw Lion's Eye Diamond, and realized that without a hand, it was a straight Black Lotus. So I had more mana than I first thought. I sacced it for red and cast Faithless Looting to put the grave-troll in my graveyard. Then I went to work.

My board in the middle of resolving a Breakthrough. The shiny Narcomoeba in the middle sits on top of my graveyard.

And while playing I realized a few things:
1. I didn't have to put Narcomoeba into play, so I didn't.
2a. I did have to put Bridge from Below tokens into play. So I needed to either reveal bridges close to last, because my only creature destruction was Cabal Therapy and Dread Return. And Dread Return would put a creature back into play. That meant I could put a maximum of 4 creatures on the battlefield - though at the time I thought I could go up to 10 because I forgot Dread Return requires you to return the target to the battlefield.
2b. I didn't know what was considered "in play" for Bridge. I checked the rules again, and learned that every revealed card was in play - even though they were also in my hand/on top of my library (libraries?). Yet another aether vortex.
2c. So if I put Bridge into my graveyard, then every creature I dredged or discarded would create zombie tokens.
2d. Unlike regular solitaire, this game didn't have a rule allowing you to move cards on top of a pile to an empty space.
2e. Therefore, I had to dredge Bridge to get at the cards beneath it.
3. Bridge was going to kill me.

As luck would have it, I revealed a Bridge on top of 7 other cards. I raced to figure out a way to play around it, but couldn't think of anything besides "put it in my graveyard and hope all the cards below it are non-creature cards."

I put it in my graveyard, and then almost immediately put 5 zombie tokens on the field while dredging. I had lost, though I didn't realize it at the time, and kept going.

Then I found another Bridge on top of 5 other cards. That was when my stomach started getting in knots.

When I revealed the third Bridge, I realized that there was a way around it I hadn't realized: I could use Breakthrough to put it in my hand. Then I could destroy the cards beneath it on the pile. Then I could use Putrid Imp - or better yet Cabal Therapy - to discard it after getting rid of all my creatures.

But it was too late. I ended the game with all my paper cards destroyed, but about 10 zombie tokens on the battlefield.

So. It is possible to win with dredge. You just have to:
-Draw non-damaging mana sources.
-Use Breakthrough to put Bridges in your hand.
-Then dredge your deck.

If you want to play it, I recommend sideboarding in some pain-lands for Lotus Petals, and some Firestorms or Darkblasts for the zombies.

Vintage is Great!

If you've never seen vintage play, you're missing out on some of the hypest games in magic.

I've been going through the backlog of the Vintage Super League for just that reason. In one of my favorite games thus far, Randy Buehler won a match over Kai Budde with Dredge. Up to this point, Dredge (which I'm still getting accustomed to writing instead of Ichorid, the name I was introduced to) had something like an 0-14 record in the VSL. It won games, but not matches, and even in the video description they call it the "Dredge curse".

Now I love Dredge, because it ignores the fundamental rules of magic: you don't need mana, you don't really need lands - save one - and you don't need to cast spells. And I love seeing it do well, and thinking of it as a top-tier deck. But losing that many matches in the VSL makes me think it's just not.

They say Dredge's win rate is directly proportional to how much people prepare for it. When people sideboard against Dredge, they're favored to win - especially now that Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace exist. But Dredge did win a big tournament - whose name I can't remember right now - watch the VSL to get it. But maybe the competition in the VSL is just that much higher that Dredge can't do well.

Or maybe the pervasiveness of Shops decks with T1 Wasteland/Grafdigger's Cage was keeping Dredge back. Less of a problem now that Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem have been restricted.

Either way, Randy chose to pilot Dredge against Kai Budde's UGw control deck with maindeck Rest in Peace. And he won in the most ridiculous way possible.