Swallow Whole

Sorcery

As an additional cost to cast this spell, tap an untapped creature you control.

Exile target tapped creature. Put a +1/+1 counter on the creature tapped to pay this spell's additional cost.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (15)

lhetrick13 on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

1 year ago

Drestlin - I do like how Baffling End comes from one of my favorite sets! Otherwise, I feel like it is similar to a lot of the other low cost removal from {B} out there in terms of having a condition to meet to be effective, having a negative side effect, or losing those at the expense of cost such as Fatal Push, Infernal Grasp, Bloodchief's Thirst, Assassin's Trophy, Maelstrom Pulse, Vindicate...

The cheaper removal stuff from {W} also has limiting conditions conditions or negative side effects like Smite, Swallow Whole, Reciprocate, Condemn, etc...which was one of my problems to begin with, not being able to always removal the creatures I needed consistently with Swallow Whole. Not saying that my idea to use Retribution of the Ancients for removal is not without its faults as you have to have +1/+1 counters to lose but at least it does not give the opponent a boost in land or creatures or take a 10th of my health (which the high number or fetch, shock, or pain lands already do that and more!).

Playtesting Retribution of the Ancients so far has had mixed reviews. I have either lost playing against decks like Living End where creatures are not really a thing until they are a thing and its to late or I have gotten it out and it does work effectively to help clear the board of essential pieces or just enough so I can get unblocked creatures for the win.

lhetrick13 on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

1 year ago

NoopyNolife - I will let you know, I try to stick to a strict monthly budget and bent that a bit by actually putting in my monthly order today rather than waiting for May. So I just picked up 4 copies of Retribution of the Ancients to add into my deck top test drive it so pretty excited to try it out over the next few weeks!

Your fear of giving up the added bulk of our creatures to remove the opponents creatures is warranted for sure. The thought is, if I can remove his creatures by lessening the bulk of mine but still have my creatures out due to his being removed, I came out on top right? Like I mentioned, Swallow Whole had its moments but lacked the ability to removal creatures that would not tap. The deck does have ways to get to those types of creatures but the primary removal could not making them difficult to deal with. The introduction of {B} into the deck does give me access to a lot of nice removal cards but many of them have conditions that must be met or are just more expensive that tapping a single swamp and removing some +1/+1 counters.

At the moment, this is all theoretical but check back in a week or two and I will likely have some notes under the playtesting section or will have already adjusted the deck based on how it felt. You will either see it still there or some {B} removal spells added...

Drestlin on G/W +1/+1 counters exile

2 years ago

Chasmolinker the Panglacial Wurm seems great, since you don't even have to draw it, you'd need one or two at the most. i'll probably keep it in mind if i ever try to build this weird ramp counter deck we are discussing about now ahah

lhetrick13 what you found is what i suspected - unfortunately, cards should come next week so i won't be trying much apart from maybe very small changes - i don't want to print more proxies :D

i'll let you know as soon as i try out the new version.

or maybe i'll get around to print the few cards and will be able to try it tomorrow.

FYI, this is what i put together for next try:

Creatures - 4 Conclave Mentor - 3 Duskshell Crawler - 2 Hopeful Initiate - 2 Iron Apprentice - 2 Lion Sash - 2 Oran-Rief Ooze - 2 Savior of Ollenbock - 2 Scavenging Ooze - 4 Servant of the Scale - 3 Willow Geist

Lands - 4 Forest - 1 Karn's Bastion - 2 Llanowar Reborn - 3 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood - 3 Plains - 4 Razorverge Thicket - 2 Sunpetal Grove

//Enchants/Sorc/Instants - 2 Dromoka's Command - 3 Enter the Unknown - 4 Hardened Scales - 3 Swallow Whole - 3 Tezzeret's Gambit

//Sideboard - 2 Gaea's Blessing - 2 Gleeful Sabotage - 3 Mistcutter Hydra - 2 Predator Ooze - 4 Savage Summoning - 2 Wildwood Scourge

lmk if you have any comment on this one

lhetrick13 on G/W +1/+1 counters exile

2 years ago

Drestlin - see comments below...

1. In terms of removal cards...I agree with you that Inscription of Abundance should go. I looked at it as well and although it does provide options, it is expensive to use it multiple abilities. Swallow Whole is not perfect but it does fit in a +1/+1 deck nicely with the caveat that you need a creature out and you need your opponent's creature to be tapped. You should play around with it and see what you think. I would avoid Gleeful Sabotage personally. I would not want to dedicate 2-4 slots for a card that can only kill artifacts/enchantments and be useless otherwise. Hopeful Initiate I feel like kinda fills this need for me. He is not perfect, but he does give some flexibility.

2. In terms of the draw potential...I just play MTGO and complain about the prices of some of those cards so I feel you if you are buying some of these in paper. I run two copies of Horizon Canopy and find I almost always end up using its draw ability so it is really nice for that. I am working on getting all four copies of Esper Sentinel still and he is only around 9$ per card in MTGO! Hmmm...so Inspiring Call has been sub-optimal in your experience huh? That is good to know. I will still experiment with it but good feedback still. I could definitely see how Hunter's Insight might provide a more consistent draw potential. Both of those two are situational but I will play with that too. Thanks for the suggestion!

3. ya...Savior of Ollenbock is a bit of a double-edged sword for offensive creature removal, especially if you are using him to exile cards from the opponent's graveyard! Extremely effective though if you can get him to train once or twice and exiling your own graveyard :) And I feel you with Basri's Lieutenant being slow. I originally ran four copies of him and recently dropped it to three but am considering dropping him down to only two copies. Useful card but not as useful as others...

4. If it were my deck and I was trying to find some room to fit in some of the stuff we talked about...I would drop 2xBow of Nylea. Your creatures should be bigger than most anything out there so you do not really need the deathtouch. It's activated ability is nice but I feel like for 3 CMC and an additional 2 CMC to activate an ability is pretty steep although the abilities are nice. Like you mentioned, you should most likely just run Gaea's Blessing or Elixir of Immortality for the mill deck. I would also drop Avatar of the Resolute as his ability is only mediocre I feel like even in this deck. You are only running 4 cards that allow you to remove cards from graveyard so I feel like Willow Geist could drop a copy. You could also likely drop a copy or two of Duskshell Crawler. Trample is nice but it is critical to the deck. Those are just some potential ideas for freeing up some space.

5. In regards to tokens...I am currently running Torens, Fist of the Angels and although he has won me games, I am actually thinking of dropping him. Perhaps he will be better once I am running 4xEsper Sentinel with the Horizon Canopy but right now, I only get one of two tokens out of him and that is it usually. If I could keep more cards in my hand, then he might be better to get out 3-4 tokens typically in a game and he would be worth the slots

Drestlin on G/W +1/+1 counters exile

2 years ago

lhetrick13 thanks a very bunch.

Basically, not caring about competitive at all, tournaments and whatnot, i only play with a group of friends which always use the same decks around.

• One is an elf tribal deck that closes faster than me with their free mana tap untap shenanigans. I have had limited success if i manage to remove key creatures.
• One is basically an 8rack deck, with discards, creature removals, which sometimes i manage to beat if something manages to stick to the ground
• One is a fairies control deck, counterspells, bouncers - hard to get around especially if he manages to counter most of my stuff and then takes control of the one creature i managed to sneak in...
• One is a mill deck...probably should just put in that Gaea's Blessing since he doesn't run single card deck removals like Surgical Extraction and this would be the easiest way to simply render his deck useless
• One is a zombie deck with board resets that he can recover better than i do - found that with this, the easiest solution would be to fit a couple of ozolith so whatever gets destroyed simply comes back the same or close to.
• Last but not least it's an equipment deck with Puresteel Paladin shenanigans. Very quick.

Now, to your answers which ring very true.

1. You are right. I think i need more flexible removals - the Inscription of Abundance probably need to go. Most likely need to go. Swallow Whole and Hopeful Initiate sound like great ideas. What do you think of Gleeful Sabotage? This is a whole lot of chunk of the deck to dedicate to "counters" tho. I feel this could dilute the win-con and screw me once i'm very quickly topdecked.
2. This is a big issue that i can't seem to solve: green or white card draws come at a disgusting premium - i can't really afford to either Horizon Canopy or Esper Sentinel (i think especially the second would be a pretty disgusting draw engine ahah. If i can give you a suggestion if you are considering Inspiring Call (which i find could probably net me at most like 3-4 cards at best most games...tho it does provide that invulnerability that our creatures kind of need..) there's also Hunter's Insight which i have run in another deck to a moderate success, which i think as a card draw could probably work better. Again tho, in my specific case, i find that these are somewhat slow and prevent me to cast something else more useful (creatures, usually) which means i'm another turn behind on having another viable creature to attack with. I will try and see if Inspiring Call does solve some of my issues with draw and creature destruction (tho, sacrificing is always an issue...but eh).
3. Savior of Ollenbock sounds like a pretty good idea, both as a (somewhat dangerous ahah) creature removal and an insurance against explosions. I don't end up with a lot of creatures on the board, usually, so Basri's Lieutenant is a fairly slow (...for my standards at least) card that probably won't do too much.

And we come to the end...what would you cut to put in 8(12?) cards? I can only clearly see 2 cards to cut (the 2 Inscription of Abundance).

3x Inspiring Call (maybe 2?) 1 extra Dromoka's Command (i really like this, since it's so flexible...) 3x Swallow Whole (maybe only 2 again?) 2x Hopeful Initiate or maybe Gleeful Sabotage since training, unless i've got a bunch of Conclave Mentor and/or Hardened Scales down is fairly slow 3x Savior of Ollenbock 3 i feel is the bare minimum to have a chance of having at least one of them down, training and etcetera at the right time.

this would make for 10 or 12 cards - maybe 8 dropping swallow whole and the extra dromoka's. Nothing that would really make this deck any faster tho.

Thanks a bunch...please let me know your thoughts!

p.s. should i just restructure the deck to go wide with tokens with stuff like Torens, Fist of the Angels and other stuff that drops tokens/boosts all creatures? That would probably break my heart ahahahah

lhetrick13 on G/W +1/+1 counters exile

2 years ago

Drestlin - I think any deck is going to struggle to be effective against all the types of meta decks you mentioned. To a degree, every deck is specialized and will match up better against certain decks than others so rather than trying to make yours effective against every deck, you would likely focus on making it do what it does better with the hope that its strengths can overcome its weaknesses. Then again, I am not exactly a competitive players so that statement may be complete garbage.

With that said, I am also working on a +1/+1 deck at the moment (I'll Raise you +1/+1...) so many of the questions you posed are exactly the same I have been asking myself. Looking at your deck, it reminds me a lot of mine despite the many different cards and I have a feeling you fair well against creature based decks that rely upon strength. Here are a few things I noticed and some suggestions:

1. You have a pretty low mana curve with a lot of ways to throw some +1/+1 counters around. The big thing that jumps out to me is in terms of creature removal you are running 2xDromoka's Command and 2xInscription of Abundance will allow you to "fight" target creature. Otherwise, you can not remove any creatures. Have you found this to be a challenge? In terms of dealing with artifacts and enchantments, Dromoka's Command would allow you to deal with enchantments but that is it. To me, this seems like a potential issue. I run Hopeful Initiate, Swallow Whole, Collective Effort, and Dromoka's Command to help with removal while still give me options.

2. I found that with the low mana curve, under ideal scenarios, I could play most my hand by turn 3 or so and really hit the wall as I would not have anything left to play. At that point I the next couple draws would determine my success. I would guess you run into the same thing looking at your deck. To fight this I added in Horizon Canopy and Esper Sentinel to try to generate some additional draws. I want to do some testing with Inspiring Call as that would kill two birds with one stone by generating some extra draws and possible saving the bacon of my creatures against those devistating board wipes than I can not recover from due to lacking drawing mechanics.

3. Complete personal preference here but I really like Savior of Ollenbock and Basri's Lieutenant in terms of helping a "destroy all creatures" from ending my game. I usually have Savior of Ollenbock exile my own creatures from my graveyard as a insurance policy so if he does leave the board, other creatures of mine return to play. Basri's Lieutenant is similar that even if you clear the board, at least a 2/2 knight will still be around for each creature with a +1/+1 counter on it that was killed. Both of those make people think twice about playing those cards and I have experienced far less of them playing this deck, than my usual creature focus decks.

Not sure if anything I mentioned was actually helpful but hopefully something was. Happy brewing!

Chasmolinker on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

2 years ago

First off, Thanks for the recognition lhetrick13. I don't know about infamous, but I'll take it. And thanks for reminding me to update that list ASAP. lol

As for the rest:
- Retribution of the Ancients, I never tried it. I don't know if you want to rely on it to heavily. If you go into {B} there is SOOO much removal that becomes available. Fatal Push, Infernal Grasp, Thoughtseize, Bloodchief's Thirst, Assassin's Trophy, Maelstrom Pulse, Vindicate...

- Swallow Whole can definitely go for something more reliable. At sorcery speed, you probably already took damage by the time you're casting this. The additional +1/+1 counters seems like an uneven tradeoff.

- Hopeful Initiate seems fine. Scavenging Ooze could replace one of the 3 copies currently in the list.

Daghatar the Adamant works really well if you need a mana sink. I would probably go up to 4 copies of Luminarch Aspirant though TBH.

lhetrick13 on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

2 years ago

Chasmolinker - I saw you were the mastermind behind the infamous So, You Wanna Buy Junk Yea? (Budget) deck. I noticed that Winding Constrictor was your main workhorse as you are messing with energy counters and +1/+1 counters in that deck so he really pulled his weight there.

I am playing with the idea of pulling in {B} as I kinda liked the idea of Retribution of the Ancients as my main removal. I would still keep Hopeful Initiate around to deal with other threats but pretty much just drop Swallow Whole in exchange for it. What are your thoughts on that?