MANALESS DREDGE FULL
MANALESS DREDGE FREE

Opening-hand Chancellor of the Annex is often worth a turn and sometimes worth a game against opposing hands that rely too strongly on Tolarian Academy, Mishra’s Workshop, or Black Lotus. It can do monstrously broken things, while presenting significant disruption along the way.

MANALESS DREDGE FREE

This deck picks up perhaps the greatest number of free wins of any deck in the current environment. As a result, these matches are often favorable for the Manaless Dredge player. These decks frequently lack graveyard hate, land disruption, or other key interactive elements. With arguably 16 free counterspells, a fast clock, and Dread Return bringing back a flying Lodestone Golem (in the form of Chancellor of the Annex), this is perhaps the worst possible matchup for fast combo decks. If there is minimal graveyard hate, post-board games will instead play out like Game 1 with very good chances for the Dredge player despite Wasteland. Post-sideboard, it stops the Marit Lage combo but can often be played around or through. Only when backed with high amounts of pressure is Wasteland reliable against the Manaless version of this deck.

With maximum numbers of Petrified Field and Library of Alexandria, this build has very high resilience to land-denial tactics. Wasteland is a powerful threat against Dredge-based decks in Vintage, which rely heavily on specialty lands.

Both decks will frequently contain a plethora of dead cards post-sideboard, but the Dredge player can come prepared with Bazaar of Baghdad and Library of Alexandria to power through the chaff and reliably present the Marit Lage combo. However, the fact that these cards come in during sideboarding creates a tactical weakness – a transformative sideboard can be played to attack the near-helpless opponent. Hate cards like Leyline of the Void and Grafdigger’s Cage are the bane of most Dredge decks. Shy of adding significant spell-based discard like Careful Study, this is the maximum level of consistency possible. Against the vast majority of the field Library is fast enough to win most games, especially with free counterspell support.

MANALESS DREDGE FULL

The deck features the full set of Bazaar of Baghdad and Serum Powder, but also runs Library of Alexandria to provide even more hands worth keeping. This deck is tuned to trump each of the different ways that Dredge can lose matches, and to fully exploit the current environment to harvest free wins. With Narcomoeba, I have 16 total blue cards, which is a reasonable minimum to support Force. Force of Will provides a very powerful effect, one long sought in Dredge but rarely utilized. I have chosen to run free counterspells such as Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap, and Mental Misstep. (9) 1 Library of Alexandria 4 Bazaar of Baghdad 4 Petrified Field (0) (15) 4 Dark Depths 4 Thespian’s Stage 3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 2 Vampire Hexmage 1 Mana Crypt 1 Riftstone Portal Manaless (24) 4 Chancellor of the Annex 4 Narcomoeba 4 Ichorid 4 Golgari Thug 4 Stinkweed Imp 4 Golgari Grave-Troll (0) (27) 4 Force of Will 4 Mental Misstep 4 Mindbreak Trap 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Bridge from Below 4 Serum Powder 3 Dread Return (0) Of course, the graveyard portion of the deck is highly modular and virtually anything can be run in the remaining space, provided the mana costs and mana-production align. In the current environment, it most often consists of anti-hate cards like Nature’s Claim, Ingot Chewer, and Chain of Vapor.

In others acceleration like Breakthrough and Brainstorm is the norm. In some cases this has consisted of free disruption like Chalice of the Void and Unmask. There have been many iterations of the deck, with the non-Dredge maindeck components being the key marker that set one apart from another. The deck has fought Mishra’s Workshop decks for the title of ‘Premiere Colorless Deck’ and occasionally won – including a Vintage Championship. Graveyard mages fueled by the unholy alliance of Ichorid, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Golgari Grave-Troll have consistently put up results. Dredge is a historical powerhouse in Vintage.

Manaless dredge