Magic: The Gathering may be designed for battling other players, but that doesn't mean you always need someone sitting across the table if you want to shuffle up and play.

Whether you're testing a new deck, practicing combo lines, or just looking to get a few games in when everyone else is busy, there are plenty of ways to enjoy Solo Magic: The Gathering.

So, let's cover all the ways to play MTG by yourself, the different solo modes you can try, and which might be the best fit for you.

Can you play Magic: The Gathering solo?

There are quite a few ways to play MTG alone.

At its simplest, solo play can mean goldfishing your deck to test opening hands, mana curves, and combo lines.

But if you want something a little more involved, you can also play against yourself, try Solitaire-style variants, solve puzzles, or even just load up a digital version of Magic and compete with a computer.

Most of these solo play modes aren't official competitive formats, but that's honestly part of the appeal. You can tweak the rules, adjust the difficulty, and find whatever kind of solo experience works best for you.

So, with that in mind, here are some great ways to play MTG solo:

1. Goldfishing
2. Adding Disruption
3. Playing Against Yourself
4. Challenge Decks
5. Garruk the Slayer
6. Horde Magic
7. Mana Maze & Magic Solitaire
8. MTG Puzzles
9. Solo Digital Play

1. Goldfishing

The easiest way to play MTG solo is goldfishing, which basically means playing your deck against an imaginary opponent who does absolutely nothing.

Shuffle up, draw seven, take mulligans normally, and start playing through your turns. From there, you'll play Lands, cast Creatures, assemble combos, and see how quickly your deck can get moving.

None of this may sound particularly exciting, but goldfishing is a great way to test your deck's consistency.

You can quickly get a feel for things like:

• Land Drops: How often are you hitting Lands on curve?
• Mana Curve: Are too many mana-intensive cards clogging up your hand?
• Combo Speed: How quickly and consistently can you assemble your main combo?
• Card Performance: Is Doctor Doom actually as amazing as you thought, or does he just spend every game stuck in your hand?

Goldfishing works especially well for proactive decks like Aggro, Ramp, and Combo, where it's easy to see how quickly your game plan comes online.

Control decks are a little harder to judge without anything to react to, but you can still test mana development and card selection.

Regardless of what kind of deck you're testing, goldfishing makes it easy to repeat the process. You can play through ten opening hands, track how many you'd keep, and see how consistently your deck does what you built it to do.

2. Adding Disruption

The biggest problem with goldfishing is pretty obvious: real opponents generally don't sit around quietly while you assemble your perfect board.

So, if you want a more realistic test, start sprinkling in some disruption.

You can script certain things to happen on specific turns, such as:

3. Turn Three: Your best Creature is destroyed.
4. Turn Four: Your next important spell is countered.
5. Turn Five: A board wipe is cast.
6. Turn Six: Your graveyard is exiled.
7. Turn Seven: Your best Creature is destroyed again.

Better yet, tailor the disruption to whatever your deck struggles against the most.

Testing a Graveyard deck? Suddenly, there's a Grafdigger's Cage on the field stonewalling you from your graveyard.

Playing Control? How well can your deck really fare against an uncounterable and practically Hexproof Thrun, Breaker of Silence?

Running a Creature-heavy deck? Pretend your opponent casts an on-curve Wrath of God and see how well you can recover.

None of this perfectly recreates a human opponent, but it does force you to test something far more useful than your deck's best-case scenario: what happens when someone actually tries to interact with you.

3. Playing Against Yourself

Now, if you want MTG solo play to feel even more like an actual game, one of the easiest options is simply playing both sides.

Grab two decks, shuffle them up, draw seven cards for each, and play a normal game of Magic while controlling both players. Of course, there's one fairly obvious problem with this: you have perfect information.

Both hands are visible, every interaction spell has already been spoiled, and even Counterspell isn't exactly surprising when you're the one who drew it. Still, playing against yourself gives you something goldfishing can't: bona fide interaction points.

The trick is to play each deck as honestly as possible.

When you're controlling Deck A, make the best decision Deck A could reasonably make. Then switch sides and do the same for Deck B. And perhaps most importantly, be careful not to let one deck magically know what's in the other deck's hand.

If Deck A is holding Smaug the Magnificent and plans to cast it next turn, Deck B shouldn't suddenly hold up all its mana to counter it just because you know what's coming. Hidden information will always be a little awkward, and bluffing basically goes out the window.

However, this mode is still great for testing matchups, removal, board wipes, combat, and how your deck performs when things start actively fighting back.

4. Challenge Decks

If playing both sides still feels a little too predictable, Wizards has created something much closer to an automated opponent. During the original Theros (THS) block, Wizards released three special Challenge Decks as part of the Hero's Path:

• Face the Hydra
• Battle the Horde
• Defeat a God

Each Challenge Deck runs a little differently, though, so let's break down what you're actually up against.

Face the Hydra

Face the Hydra pits you against exactly what the name suggests: one increasingly irritating Hydra.

You choose how many Hydra Heads begin on the battlefield, then take your turns normally while the Hydra runs through a predetermined sequence. On its turn, it reveals and casts the top card of its library before dealing damage based on how many Heads it controls.

Your goal is simple: destroy every Hydra Head. Naturally, killing one can cause more to grow back, because it is a hydra, after all. But, between the random draws and constantly regrowing Heads, Face the Hydra creates a simple but unpredictable boss fight that's surprisingly well suited for solo play.

Battle the Horde

Battle the Horde trades the Hydra for an army of rampaging Minotaurs and changes up the rules quite a bit. The Horde doesn't have a life total. Instead, every point of damage you deal mills one card from its library.

To win, you simply need to empty the Horde's library and clear every remaining Creature from the battlefield before the Horde overwhelms you.

Like Face the Hydra, this challenge largely runs itself, making it another natural fit for solo play, but with a much more army-focused approach rather than fighting a single oversized boss.

Defeat a God

Finally, Defeat a God has you take on Xenagos Ascended and his army of revelers. Xenagos begins on the battlefield alongside two Rollicking Throngs, then reveals and casts two cards from his library during each of his turns.

You can attack Xenagos and his Creatures directly, and your goal is to defeat the newly ascended God before his growing board overwhelms you.

You can also begin with up to three Hero cards if you want a little extra help on your quest.

Together, these three Challenge Decks come surprisingly close to an official tabletop Magic: The Gathering solo mode. The enemy largely runs itself, you still get to play with your own deck, and each encounter creates a different kind of boss fight.

The only real downside is availability, since these products came out in 2013 and 2014 and may take a little more effort to find today than the latest Commander precon.

5. Garruk the Slayer

Challenge Decks weren't Wizards' only experiment with boss battles.

Magic 2015 (M15) introduced Garruk the Slayer, an oversized Planeswalker created for the set's Prerelease experience.

Garruk starts at 20 loyalty and can use one of his loyalty abilities each turn, letting him create Wolves, power them up, destroy Creatures, or even wipe your entire board. Your job is simple: attack Garruk like any other Planeswalker and reduce his loyalty to zero before he overwhelms you.

The original challenge technically allowed for two players, with one controlling Garruk and the other playing their normal deck, but it's incredibly easy to adapt for solo play: Just play your deck normally and control Garruk yourself.

Unlike piloting an entire second deck, there's no extra hand, mana base, or complicated board state to manage. Instead, you only need to choose which of Garruk's abilities he uses each turn.

For a little more unpredictability, you can even assign his available abilities to numbers on a die and let the roll decide what he does. And sure, Garruk may occasionally use a questionable ability this way, but actual Magic players do that all the time anyway, so it's probably fine.

6. Horde Magic

Horde Magic takes the idea of an automated opponent and turns it into something much more customizable.

Created by Peter Knudson in 2011, the Horde format pits players against a self-running Horde deck, traditionally made up of Zombie tokens and straightforward spells.

On the Horde's turn, reveal cards from the top of its library until a nontoken card appears. Every token revealed enters the battlefield, the nontoken card gets cast, and then the Horde comes charging in.

Its Creatures effectively have Haste and attack whenever possible, while the Horde itself has unlimited mana. In other words, there are no Lands to manage and very few decisions to make.

Sometimes it reveals two Zombie tokens and a manageable Extremely Slow Zombie. Other times it reveals eight Zombie tokens and an Army of the Damned, and that's game.

The Horde also doesn't have a traditional life total. Instead, every point of damage dealt to it mills one card from its library.

And much like the later-released Battle the Horde Challenge Deck, you win by emptying the Horde's library and clearing away every remaining Creature before it does the same to your life total.

Put it all together, and Horde Magic gives you something most solo modes can't: an opponent that largely runs itself while constantly keeping you guessing from one turn to the next.

7. Mana Maze & Magic Solitaire

Maybe you'd rather skip the imaginary opponent altogether and turn Solo MTG into an actual Solitaire game. Well, Mana Maze and Magic Solitaire both do exactly that, albeit with very different rules.

Mana Maze

Mana Maze is an early Solitaire variant created by Mark Rosewater with help from Gene Rosewater.

Rather than playing against an opponent, you arrange a 60-card deck into one of several layouts and work through the cards toward a chosen objective. That objective can vary quite a bit. You might need to:

• Destroy a specific card
• Clear every card from the layout
• Reach a certain life total
• Create your own objective entirely

You can also play open, with every card face up, or closed, where only the top card of each pile is visible. Either way, any uncovered card is considered in play, with Mana Maze dividing them into two basic groups.

• Active Cards: Creatures, Artifacts, Lands, and non-Aura Enchantments become active immediately without needing to be cast.
• Passive Cards: Instants, Sorceries, Auras, and similar cards still need to be cast with the appropriate mana and legal targets.

This means every card you uncover can either become a useful tool or another obstacle you'll need to remove. Mana Maze also changes several familiar Magic rules:

• You Start with One Life: A single damaging effect can end the game unless you've gained life first.
• Mana Burn Is Back: When your mana pool is cleared, you lose one life for each unspent mana remaining.
• Tapping Consumes Cards: Whenever an active card becomes tapped, any effect from tapping it happens first, then the card goes to the Graveyard. (i.e., tapping a Mountain gets you that , but there goes your Mountain.)

All this to say, deckbuilding plays a critical role in Mana Maze. You need enough removal, useful abilities, and other effects to work through the permanents in your layout without accidentally creating a puzzle that's impossible to solve.

In that sense, Mana Maze is almost like playing two games at once: first you build the puzzle, then you try to beat it.

Magic Solitaire

Magic Solitaire, meanwhile, draws much more directly from traditional Solitaire.

Originally published in Duelist #34, Magic Solitaire begins with seven piles.

The first contains one card, the second two, and so on until the seventh contains seven, with only the top card of each pile face up. Everything left over becomes your library. Your goal is to clear all seven piles before cycling through that library three times.

From there, familiar Magic mechanics get repurposed to help remove cards:

• Creatures can attack piles, with any face-up Creatures there acting as blockers.
• Spells can destroy, counter, discard, or bounce face-up cards when applicable.
• Lands move into separate piles and are sacrificed to cast spells or activate abilities, with most normal mana costs ignored.
• Permanents can be played, but you can generally control only one at a time, and using its ability or attacking with it causes you to sacrifice it afterward.
• New cards become available as you clear away whatever was covering them.

There's also no opponent or traditional life total. Instead, the challenge comes from figuring out the right sequence of plays to clear every pile before you run out of chances.

In short, Mana Maze gives you plenty of freedom to choose your layout and objective, while Magic Solitaire offers a much more defined setup and win condition.

So, if you're looking for a true Magic: The Gathering solo play experience rather than simply testing a normal deck, both offer genuinely different ways to turn your collection into a one-player game.

8. MTG Puzzles

Not every Solo Magic experience needs to involve playing an entire game.

Sometimes, one complicated turn is enough.

MTG puzzles give you a prebuilt board state and a specific objective, such as:

• Win this turn
• Survive the next attack
• Deal an exact amount of damage
• Find the only sequence that breaks through an otherwise unbeatable board
• Somehow make a convoluted seven-card combo actually work out

Unlike goldfishing, these puzzles aren't testing your deck's consistency so much as your ability to spot interactions and sequence your plays correctly.

As such, solving them means paying close attention to things like mana efficiency, combat math, the Stack, triggered abilities, activated abilities, Graveyards, and whatever tiny line of rules text inevitably turns out to matter.

These puzzles are also easy to turn into your own solo practice.

If an interesting board state comes up during a real game, take a picture or make a Mental Note and revisit it later to consider ways you could have protected your board more effectively, or if there was a different play sequence that could've had a desirable outcome.

And the more you practice, the easier it becomes to spot an optimal line in your next game before the opportunity passes you by.

Playing MTG Solo Digitally

If physical cards aren't a requirement, playing Magic: The Gathering solo becomes considerably easier.

After all, computers are notoriously good at always being available for a quick game.

MTG Arena & Sparky

MTG Arena is Magic's official digital client, available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS. Specifically for solo play, Arena lets you battle Sparky, its computer-controlled opponent.

Sparky is designed to help newer players learn the game, making Bot Matches a convenient place to familiarize yourself with Arena and practice before jumping into games against other players.

Just choose a compatible deck, load into a Bot Match, and start playing.

The Benefits of Solo Arena

The biggest advantage is that Arena handles most of the bookkeeping for you. It automatically tracks life totals, handles triggers, highlights legal actions, creates tokens, and enforces the rules, making it especially helpful for beginners learning the basics.

Experienced players, meanwhile, can use Bot Matches to run a deck through a few games without needing another person around. Sparky isn't going to perfectly reproduce the decisions of an experienced opponent, but at least something on the other side of the battlefield is actively trying to ruin your plans.

Arena's Limitations

Arena still isn't a perfect substitute for playing your paper decks.

Its available cards and formats are limited to its own card pool, so you can't assume every physical deck in your collection can be recreated card-for-card.

Commander players will notice this limitation especially. Arena currently offers Brawl as its Commander-style format, with a Legendary Creature or Planeswalker leading a deck in one-on-one games, rather than traditional multiplayer Commander.

And while Sparky does provide some interaction, a computer opponent still can't fully recreate everything that makes playing against another person interesting. There's no bluffing, table politics, threat assessment between multiple opponents, or lingering resentment because somebody remembers what you did to them six turns ago.

Still, if you simply want to play an actual game of Magic without another person sitting across from you, MTG Arena is easily one of the most convenient ways to do it.

Solo Magic on Forge

Arena is one of the most popular options, but open source rules engines like Forge have also started to grow in popularity. Forge is completely free to use and does have a host of useful features, but it's important to remember that it's a completely unofficial platform.

Forge was created in 2008 with the purpose of letting you play MTG against a computer agent. It has support for a few formats:

• Commander
• Draft
• Modern
• Sealed
• Standard

The good thing about Forge is that you have access to any card that was ever printed, rather than being limited to your own collection. You can even create and draft a custom cube, or upload decks to play against specific ones.

It takes a little bit of computer know-how but can be a useful tool.

Play Against an AI Bot on XMage

XMage is another free, open-source software that you can use to test your decks by playing against a computer opponent. The only issue is that there can be a little bit of a learning curve depending on how comfortable you are with tech.

It requires you to set up a local server and connect to it, all within the Xmage interface. From there, you can add a computer opponent to the server for you to play against. Players do say there are some errors, but that it's overall easy once you're set up.

You can choose from a variety of skill levels and even select the exact deck that your AI opponent will use. There are advanced settings in the app that allow you to test out limited play or even make all your mulligans free while no one's looking.

Creating a Solo Mode

Magic already gives you the game pieces, so all you really need is a simple set of rules telling your automated opponent what to do.

For example, you could build an enemy deck with Creatures and straightforward spells, then have it follow rules such as:

• Reveal one card at the start of its turn
• Put Creatures directly onto the battlefield
• Cast Instants and Sorceries automatically
• Give its Creatures Haste and attack every turn if able
• If a spell needs a target, choose the legal permanent with the highest mana value
• Make any other required choices randomly

That alone is enough to create a functional opponent.

From there, you can start getting really creative:

• Every fifth turn unleashes a predetermined boss Creature
• The enemy reveals two cards per turn once its library drops to 20 or fewer cards
• Defeating certain Creatures earns you a Treasure
• Survive ten turns to win the game
• Collect 20 Clues to uncover a mystery and earn various bonuses

As long as the rules stay consistent and require as little decision-making as possible, you've basically created your own MTG solo format.

What makes a good automated MTG opponent?

The key word here is automated.

Keep in mind that the more decisions an opposing deck forces you to make, the less it feels like you're actually playing against something.

Murder's "Destroy target Creature" is easy enough to incorporate if you establish that it always targets your Creature with the highest power.

Sublime Epiphany, on the other hand? Now, you're spending five minutes deciding which modes your imaginary opponent should choose, what everything should target, and how it can optimally ruin your game plan.

Good cards for automated decks generally have:

1. Simple or mandatory effects
2. Few or obvious targets
3. Global effects
4. Straightforward combat abilities
5. Effects that naturally get stronger over time

Board wipes, anthems, token generators, and simple life-loss effects all work well. Cards like Damnation, Coat of Arms, Raise the Alarm, and Blood Artist require relatively little interpretation.

In contrast, cards involving voting, negotiation, complicated modes, or tutoring usually don't. Council's Judgment, Fact or Fiction, Cryptic Command, and Wishclaw Talisman all ask the automated opponent to make decisions that are a little too strategic for a truly self-running deck.

The overall goal isn't to create the smartest Magic opponent imaginable, but rather to create one that can keep throwing interesting problems at you without needing another person to run it.

The Best Way to Play Magic Alone

The best approach to Magic: The Gathering solo play really depends on what you want out of it.

• Testing consistency? Goldfish your deck.
• Testing interaction or matchups? Play two decks against yourself.
• Want a self-running boss fight? Try a Challenge Deck.
• Want a more straightforward boss fight? Take on Garruk the Slayer.
• Want a replayable automated opponent? Build a Horde.
• Want a true one-player card game? Try Mana Maze or Magic Solitaire.
• Want to sharpen sequencing and rules knowledge? Solve MTG puzzles.
• Just want to play a game? Load up Arena and battle Sparky.

Chances are, no single mode will do everything you need, so you'll probably get the most out of mixing and matching a few. And at the end of the day, if your deck still falls apart the moment another human touches it, well, at least now you know what to work on.

Conclusion

Playing Magic: The Gathering solo may look a little different from sitting across from another player, but that doesn't make it any less useful or entertaining.

Whether you're goldfishing a new brew, battling a Horde, solving puzzles, or loading up Arena against Sparky for the 50th game, there's a solo mode for just about anything you're trying to get out of the game.

Some are better for testing. Others are better for actually playing. And if none of them fit what you want, Magic gives you more than enough tools to invent a solo format of your own.

So, the next time game night falls through or you just feel like shuffling up on your own, don't let the empty seat across the table stop you. After all, finding an opponent is optional. Playing Magic isn't.

FAQs: Playing Magic by Yourself

Is playing MTG solo actually fun?

Playing Magic alone can be a lot of fun if you enjoy deckbuilding, puzzles, sequencing, or simply watching a new brew come together. Some forms of solo play are more about testing than entertainment, while others can feel much closer to a dedicated one-player game with actual goals, pressure, and replayability.

Plus, since many solo modes are highly customizable, you can always adjust the rules, difficulty, or win conditions if things start to feel too easy or repetitive.

Can you play MTG Commander solo?

Yes, Solo Commander in MTG works surprisingly well, especially for deck testing.

The easiest option is to goldfish your Commander deck and see how consistently you hit Land drops, ramp, cast your Commander, and establish your main engine. You can also add scripted interaction, play against another Commander deck yourself, or battle an automated Horde if you want something that fights back.

Solo play won't recreate the politics of a four-player pod, but it's still a great way to learn a new deck before bringing it to the table.

Is there a way to play Commander against bots?

The only way to play Commander against a bot is by using a client like XMage or Forge. Both of these applications are completely free and offer a great way to play solo as long as you know your way around a PC.

Is playing MTG good for your brain?

Magic puts a variety of mental muscles to work, including memory, strategic planning, probability, mental math, sequencing, and problem-solving. Even something as simple as planning combat can require you to track several Creatures, potential responses, available mana, and multiple possible outcomes at once.

Solo play and puzzles can put even more emphasis on those skills by giving you time to carefully work through complicated situations. None of this necessarily means playing Magic will suddenly make you smarter, but it certainly gives your brain plenty to do.