Super Secret Sunday #12

Welcome back to Super Secret Sunday, where we talk about under played cards, under the radar strategies, and under-thought thoughts! I have been playing a lot of limited recently, which has me thinking more about new cards. And do you know what THAT makes me think about? You guessed it; old cards.

I have seen some Standard decks. The metagame seems to be dominated by a awkwardly powerful life gain cards. Decks with a whole mess of colors and a buncha dual lands. You are probably familiar with the human sub-theme deck that utilizes the interaction between Izzet Staticaster and Nightshade Peddler. Which is super cute. Adorable. Only in lame formats like Standard would a Deathtouchy pinger shut down creature decks. Normally I am one of those 'answer' people who like to interact with the opponent in different ways and disrupt their game plan. If I get taken down by silly shenanigans like this I deserve it, but it got me thinking. What if I had a pinger theme deck in Commander? Would it be terrible? Duh. Would it be super sweet? Duh. Would I play crazy-fun cards like Neko-Te? Duh.


While we are on the topic of tapping things down and never letting go...Yea. It does says the 'next two untap steps." TWO untap steps. Their guy can't attack/block/do anything intelligent this turn, the next turn, or the turn after that. I love me some Ice. And this bad boy is one stone cold mamma-jamma.
On a side note, although this was originally printed as a Rare, it received an update in one of the Master's Editions on MTGO, so yes, I will be jamming it in my Pauper Cube/decks...in case you were wondering.


I was recently playing a game against a friend of mine and a member of my regular play group; in this game, my opponent was on mono White Kemba. I was on Mono Green Omnath. Because both of our deck were full of nonsense and light on removal the board became a gigantic mess, very quickly. Each of us had more than 30 creatures in play, well over 200 power on the table, no way to profitably attack each other, not one Wrath of God in sight. The thing that tipped the balance was that I had a consistent source of card advantage and a way to gain huge mana advantage by putting more threats into play quickly. We went back and forth for several turns, he was hoping to top deck some narrow outs and I was just looking for a steady stream of gas to try and go over the top of his army.

This card doesn't buy you a whole lot if you can't consistently hit...and hit pretty big. Flipping a Llanowar Elves is fine, but you want to be slamming the beef into play. I just wish I had something like Top or Mirri's Guile in play during that game...


Back on topic, I don't like what has happened to counterspells in the modern iteration of constructed Magic. Not Modern, since counter magic is still very dominant there, but more like...the limited environment of the last few sets. They are making things uncounterable, pushing the power levels of permanent cards, and moving already weakened counterspells to higher rarities.

This is what I think an uncommon counterspell should look like. It is expensive enough to be balanced; you don't usually get a huge mana advantage, it can't hose early plays, and you can rarely counter and also play something else on the same turn. What do you get in exchange for all this extra cost? Well, the value of possibly being able to counter a second spell late in the game. Power Sink is a reasonable common. Cancel is still unplayable in every constructed format. Syncopate is a fine card, exiling is relevant these days, but it just isn't uncommonly powerful.

Enough soap box talk. In a big mana format like EDH it is easier to gain a tempo advantage of a 5cmc counter. It is also more realistic to Flashback at 7 mana, since many games reach that stage naturally anyway. This is a great way to get extra mileage out of 1 card slot. Not too flashy, but a solid role player.

That's all for today folks! Thanks fer listenin' to ol' Grandpa. I hope you guys have been liking the Ill-Gotten Games segments. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any suggestions for future videos or future-future tech. Till next time zoners....
Old El Pass-o