Dredgersīeing that this is a Dredge deck, we will first investigate the namesake mechanic that fuels our engine. We play fourteen creatures with dredge, and while they all have stats, the only number we care about is the dredge number itself. In every opening hand, we need to have a card with dredge, and if we do not, hope to find one fast because we can never mulligan. This brings me to one of the many quirks about this deck. Because we have no mana, we cannot cast any of the usual suspects for putting cards in the graveyard like Faithless Looting or Careful Study. Instead, we take advantage of the maximum hand size rule. This means that we want to be on the draw no matter what deck we find ourselves up against. If we go first, we essentially give our opponent a free Time Walk. In a similar vein, mulliganing means we cannot pitch a card on our first turn, creating the same effect. We have enough graveyard effects that even if we do not have a dredger in hand, it is better to keep the hand anyway and start putting other cards into the bin. This card is about as gross to play against as it looks.

Obviously, cards with a higher dredge count are better, which makes Golgari Grave-Troll far better than Shambling Shell. The best card to pitch on turn one, however, is Phantasmagorian. Being able to discard three cards on turn one is incredibly powerful in a deck that uses the graveyard as a resource. As if this was not powerful enough, we can activate Phantasmagorian's graveyard-based ability twice by activating once, holding priority, and activating again. While we can only return it to our hand once, making the second trigger fizzle, discarding three cards is the cost of the ability, which makes it impossible to respond to. Stifle and other cards that counter activated abilities do not prevent us from discarding almost our entire hand.

Manaless dredge deck