Combos Browse all Suggest
Legality
| Format | Legality |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
Contract from Below
Sorcery
Remove Contract from Below from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.
Discard your hand, add the top card of your library to the ante, then draw seven cards.
legendofa on
Turn 0 win vs Chancellor of dross (100%)
8 months ago
I'm pretty sure Contract from Below can't even be included in the deck unless you're playing for ante, as a separate rule from the banlist. Rule 407.3: "When not playing for ante, players can’t include these cards in their decks or sideboards, and these cards can’t be brought into the game from outside the game."
I guess since the exercise is about leaving aside the four-copy rule, you might be able to set the ante card rule as well, but I personally would put an asterisk next to this one.
legendofa on Cube idea, good or bad? …
11 months ago
Does ante have any place in the game at this point? Or should I just let it be quietly forgotten?
Caerwyn I was planning on excluding Amulet of Quoz and Contract from Below pretty much exactly for the reasons you outlined, and I agree with your analysis, but I'm curious about what empirical testing will come up with. I have to admit, you're confirming what I was concerned about.
Abaques I forgot about the Mystery Booster cards. I'm probably not going to add all 100+ of them, but a good handful could spice it up.
Caerwyn on Cube idea, good or bad? …
11 months ago
Only from analysis, but I feel fairly confident in that analysis. Consider:
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The average ante card is likely to hit a land 42.5% of the time (17/40 - a fairly standard land base in Limited). Of those, you’re very likely to hit a basic land - which you could have gotten out of the basic box anyway.
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Even in a colourless heavy meta, your odds of hitting a colourless are going to be pretty low. The odds you hit a colourless card which also improves your strategy or also debilitates your opponent’s deck are pretty low (and the odds of debilitating your opponents deck being worthwhile for you - meaning you hit the card in game one or two - are even lower).
The odds just are not on the side of Ante being fun, and that’s before we look at the cards themselves:
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Amulet of Quoz either turns the game into a literal coin flip or is just exiling a single card from the top of an opponent’s library. Either it is a troll card if it resolves which can cause issues with folks twiddling their thumbs waiting for rounds to end or it is a mediocre mill card someone spent 6 mana for.
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Bronze Tablet - maybe playable. Maybe. It is a ten mana theft piece that allows your opponents to take something back from you. That means for it to be playable, you must be in the position where you can play a 6-mana artifact, and activate it (either that turn or by surviving a turn), have something on your opponent’s side worth taking, have nothing on your side better than what you would take, and be in a position where your opponent won’t just take back what you stole. There’s a lot of things that must go right to make the card playable.
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Contract from Below - Arguably the most powerful card ever printed in the entire game, this has no place in your cube. It’s just too good, especially in 40 card decks. Every time it is played, it is likely to be the game decider all by itself.
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Darkpact - interacts badly with the math above. Odds are nothing will be worth claiming from ante, making this a three mana card just sitting about doing nothing in your hand.
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Demonic Attorney - Really bad card with the above math. You’re spending 3 mana to very likely get something completely useless to you into ante.
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Jeweled Bird - One mana for something that can only recover a card you likely can afford to lose. It would feel great if you got unlucky with what you ante, but otherwise it is almost always going to be a dead card.
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Rebirth - Awful, awful card for limited. This stretches out games and can interfere with the timing of rounds.
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Tempest Efreet - Again, the math is bad for this card, particularly since you’re going into an unknown zone and your opponent goes into the choice with perfect knowledge of their risk.
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Timmerian Fiends - In an artifacts matters cube where there is heavy artifact recursion, this might be playable. Still, it requires a very specific set of circumstances for someone to draft into and make it worthwhile.
I should probably add the caveat that some players might find it fun, even if the math makes it very, very clear that the Ante cards are all traps (excepting Contract, which, again, is just too darn good).
anubis1ra1 on
Lokotor's Cube
3 years ago
too strong:
Contract from Below (ummm... what?? this is too strong and the ante doesnt exist to balance it)
concerning:
Ichorclaw Myr (colorless infect)
Sun Titan (probably fine)
Porcelain Legionnaire (cheap first strike, hard to kill in reasonable time without using removal spell on a 2 drop)
Battle Screech (or Lingering Souls/Spectral Procession) too many of this effect (too many flying tokens I think)
Winds of Abandon game ending 1 sided wrath (probably just too strong)
Mana Tithe fine card, but not sure why white has counter spells
Peregrine Drake probably fine, but just worth watching for overly easy infinites
Etherium Sculptor potentially too many artifact synergy cards like this in the cube (artifacts might be one of the most well supported archetypes)
Brain Freeze (not really supported?)
Snap again potential infinite mana
Tainted Strike/Phyresis Infect is potentially too strong
Feldon of the Third Path potentially degenerate?
Flameshadow Conjuring (goes infinite with multiple creatures with an iron myr)
Golgari Grave-Troll maybe fine
Sprout Swarm (I've seen this card be silly, but its probably fine)
Groundswell/Scale Up (with infect)
Caerwyn on None
4 years ago
I am on my phone, and did not feel like formatting a card response via mobile, so I’ll respond to your question here.
The “remove if not playing for ante” cards fall into two categories. The first involves the ante zone, which is as you described - the winner keeps all the cards in that zone. The second is ownership changing effects - there are two cards, Tempest Efreet and Timmerian Fiends that allow you to become the owner of another’s card. Ante was removed from the game pretty quickly as it runs afoul of many gambling laws - we only ever had the Ante Nine printed.
Notably, the single most powerful card draw spell, by an order of magnitude, ever printed is an ante card - Contract from Below .
Caerwyn on What cards do MTG players …
5 years ago
I'm with SynergyBuild on this one. Demonic Attorney speaks to me on a personal level, and Contract from Below is the single best draw card ever printed (take that Ancestral Recall !). I completely understand why they were removed from the game--after all, there's lots of places where playing for ante would be illegal--but that does not mean they are not fun.
I've thought of putting together a cube with lots of Ante cards, so you're constantly getting new cards to add to your draft pool/loosing cards from your pool, requiring you to use the junk you picked up. I have not had time to give the project the attention it deserves though, so it's sitting on the back burner.
I've also said it before, and I'll say it again--any card with banding. It's a really neat ability, but just doesn't have the support necessary to make it shine. I'd love a banding-based Commander precon, but doubt that will ever happen.
SynergyBuild on What cards do MTG players …
5 years ago
God that Contract from Below power!!
I played a list that went infinite casts of Demonic Attorney and then passed to let the opponent draw a card and instantly took their entire deck. The deck ran other insane cards too, but I just love that I can take someone's deck. Forever. Legally.
Rabid_Wombat on With no ban-list, what is …
5 years ago
Here you go NotAsGood:
Mono Black Casual- 4x Dark Ritual , 2x Terror 4x Hymn to Tourach , 4x hypnotic spector, 4x Mind Twist 4x Drain Life , 4x Black Knight , 4x Order of the Ebon Hand , 2x Greed , 2x Diabolic Tutor , 2x Howl from Beyond 4x Contract from Below and 20x Swamp