Bitter Ordeal

Sorcery

Search target player's library for a card and exile it. Then that player shuffles their library.

Gravestorm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each permanent put into a graveyard this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)

Legality

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

Discussion (48)

Ogrecorps on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

3 days ago

UPDATE: VICTORY!!

Here's the deck I used (warning, it is not great and I'm open to suggestions to improve it as a more general-purpose meme deck that strips out important things and leaves someone else to actually kill people in free-for-all format.) https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/18-06-25-SkD-grrr/?cb=1750236034

The story: 3 players, me with the meme deck, work friend with the "you cannot lose the game" mystery deck, and a third with a deck specifically filled with legendaries of as many types as he can make work.

My starting hand had Leyline of the Void and I kicked off hostilities with Bitter Ordeal and got to peruse through the "cannot lose" deck to see how it works. Key cards found: Herald of Eternal Dawn, Negate, Three Steps Ahead, Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, Virtue of Persistence. I took out one of the 4 Heralds. The legendaries deck built up nicely with about 6 or 7 big creatures with deathtouch (All-Out Assault) and flying and vigilance and lifelink and other such nonsense. This player normally likes to be fair (i.e. spread the damage around, not pick on anyone) when he feels like he's winning so I had to warn him off with the strongest arguments I could that I was absolutely not a threat to him, that I had built the deck specifically to counter the other player. Cannot Lose had no creatures out so Legendaries swung at him fully with enough to put him to -9 life. Looked like it was over already and then pop! Cannot Lose flashed out Herald of Eternal Dawn before combat damage was dealt, keeping him alive despite negative life.

Cannot Lose then quickly got out two lecture halls from Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, giving the herald and both lecture halls hexproof. Around here I realized a major weakness in my deck: it largely has to target something in the opponent's graveyard, making Leyline of the Void super not helpful. Happily, Cannot Lose Get Lostd it. Because nothing much was going to graveyards that I wanted to strip out, I built up a little supply of Extirpate and Surgical Extraction - this will be important later... Legendaries took about 6 turns and smashed Cannot Lose to about -30 life while enjoying all the lifelink that gave him.

It was at this point that Cannot Lose messaged me privately to say that he'd won, it was just going to take an hour. The next turn, he used Loran's Escape on his Herald and then used one of his Restricted Offices for a boardwipe. My defenses being so pathetic, were fine. Legendaries, however, got cleaned out, 7 or 8 big beasts in the graveyard... This left Cannot Lose as the only one on the table with any attacking power and a pair of Fountainports to slowly grow an army of fish with.

Somewhere in the excitement I'd stripped out all of his Get Lost, and Stock Up. I knew from searching his hand that he had a Negate still ready for something that might kill his Herald, the only thing keeping him alive. Then came the exchange I'm going to be hearing about all day today at work from Cannot Lose, the part where he's kicking himself for doing what he did: Legendaries brought out a planeswalker; Cannot Lose used Three Steps Ahead to counter it, putting a copy of one of his 2 counter spells in his graveyard. I targeted it with Surgical Extraction. He Negated. I surgical extracted his Three Steps and then Extirpated his Negate, successfully exiling all of his counterspells! He has already told me that he shouldn't have countered the planeswalker, that he should have just used fish from Fountainport to neutralize it.

And then Legendaries Ruinous Ultimatumd. Herald, hexproofs, and my two Wall of Vines all gone! Cannot Lose was at -30 something life and evaporated in a long silence followed by a drawn out frustrated groan. He'd nearly fought his way back and if only he could have had another Herald in hand to flash out or I hadn't stripped out his counterspells... He was also intimately familiar with Legendaries' deck because the two of them worked on it closely together so knew exactly how little strength he had left after all of those creatures got wiped with no serious options for bringing any back. Either way though, I still had 3 Sudden Spoilings in my library somewhere so chances were decent I'd get him killed for being in negative life sooner or later.

Thus began the long, slow final phase of the battle wherein I had only defensive creatures, and Legendaries had 40-something life but only one or two offensive options left in his deck which was down to about 27 cards to my 35ish. I used Liquimetal Coating and Splinter on one of his Plains, a generally useless move and one I probably should have saved for an actual threat but I was just happy Cannot Lose had lose'd. The end came when I fired off a kicked Sadistic Sacrament, ensuring that there wasn't going to be anything left to hurt me. Before I searched his deck, however, Legendaries capitulated and we called it there, official cause of death: inevitable milling out.

legendofa on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

1 week ago

Somewhere in the depths of my profile, I have a theoretical combo that's something like 20 cards that I specifically made to be as "you can't lose the game" as possible, and people still poked holes in it.

Suggestions Show

If you want to beat the unbeatable, based on the description, I would go mainly {B}. There's not much that can survive a big -X/-X like Black Sun's Zenith or an unmorphing Bane of the Living. Leyline of the Void and Bojuka Bog are graveyard hate with different forms of uncounterability. Lier, Disciple of the Drowned shuts down counterspells, and stuff like Eyes of the Wisent punish blue spells (like most counterspells).

Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament also punish combos with low redundancy, on top of Bitter Ordeal.

I'm not quite sure what the second clue could be. Assuming your interpretation is correct, there aren't that many cards that grant abilities from the graveyard, and most of them are offensive, not defensive. Arcane Lighthouse strips shroud and hexproof without being countered, and Sudden Spoiling strips inherent hexproof and shroud, if that comes up. Yixlid Jailer shuts down all graveyard tricks, on top of the graveyard hate above.

If you plan on making it 3v1, have two people run hard control while the third goes for combo breaking. Metaphorically, get two people to hold him down while the third goes through his pockets. Or just go triple aggro and attack before he can get set up.

Ogrecorps on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

1 week ago

Hello All! A friend in my gaming group says he has a 2 card combo that makes him "unable to lose the game". He, monologuing like a super villain that he is (he wins nearly all 1v1 games and 70% of free-for-alls) gave a number of hints, perhaps on purpose, perhaps unwittingly. I would like to give him a surprise and: A) figure out what he's planning B) get my other friends on board and C) squash him! Really make him regret giving me information!

In all seriousness, he'll have a grand time being defeated, especially if it had to be done using outside help and collusion.

Here's the clues: 1. A creature on the field that makes him "unable to lose the game". 2. A card in his graveyard that somehow protects that creature, giving it shroud or hexproof or something. 3. He plans to defend himself with about a dozen counter spells to prevent non-specific targeting with boardwipes. He also said this will protect him from us forcing him to sacrifice his precious creature. 4. He also plans to somehow recycle his graveyard back into his deck so we can't mill him out.

I think the first one could easily be Platinum Angel or Herald of Eternal Dawn. If I can identify key cards likely to be in his deck, I'd like to load my buddies and I up with cards like Bitter Ordeal and a couple other I can't remember right now that strip every card of a given name out of his deck. The look on his face will be SPETACULAR.

BTW, we are playing online so there's no cost limit but he keeps his camera on.

Also, yes, I could just become a better player to win more but I like to think I help keep things lively by orchestrating shenannigans - like the time The Villain announced the nonsense name of the deck he was going to play in the following game and I went on his public profile, found it, and sent copies to everyone else so we were all playing his incomprehensible eldrazi mess in the following game. He got quite the kick out of seeing, one at a time, each of us putting out lands and whatnot from his deck and then finally realizing that somehow we were all playing his deck - that only he knew how to use properly.

Squee_Spirit_Guide on Clockwork Black

10 months ago

capwner Haha, oops, I forgot it would take out the blood artists too :) I suppose it still works here with Bastion of Remembrance, but it isn't great. Back in the day I used the combo to try and make gravestorm a thing and win with Bitter Ordeal. It kind of worked, but there are so many better things to do with the combo.

draftdump69 on Traxos Combo

1 year ago

rona, herald of invasion works with retraction helix + mox amber. more emries + rona might make playing more mox ambers make more sense. If you're playing 4 emries, having 4 Mishra's Bauble would be a no-brainer.

Urza, Lord High Artificer might also be a solid addition, allows you to generate infinite mana regardless of whether or not you have mox amber.

Generally, thassa's oracle is better than labman. other wincon considerations are Bitter Ordeal, Cut / Ribbons, Grinding Station or Grapeshot.

that being said, playing 1x emrakul is probably the best wincon. it would allow you to loot infinitely until you get an infinite mana enabler.

another direction to go is Sleep-Cursed Faerie. It might not go infinite but it can probably bounce your opponents board with retraction helix if you have an urza in play.

Basshunter on Slime Caves Minibiome from Starbound

1 year ago

Hey dude, i had the same idea - just didnt build it yet. Here's an idea i had about Slime Against Humanity: It counts towards cards in exile aswell, so there are plenty of cards to exile cards out of our library, what could be a nice interaction with slime...

i.e. Bitter Ordeal, Cranial Extraction, Lost Legacy, Memoricide could be used to make the slime-token lot stronger..

Its just an idea yet and i havnt tried any of those, but what you think about it?

BEDECK on Chattering Ordeal

2 years ago

Ah, Myr Retriever + Heartless Summoning + Bitter Ordeal. A person of culture, I see. Btw, The Meathook Massacre is tutorable with Shred Memory and can win the game through endless retrievering

Made_Compleat on Horrifying Nightmares

2 years ago

Hey! I love this deck. A few suggestions:

Runo Stromkirk  ^Flip is a bit of a nonbo with Umbris, Fear Manifest, as he isn't a horror when he ETBs and doesn't exile when he transforms. Thus, he's won't ETB as a horror to get that sweet sweet value. He also doesn't really synergize with the horror tribal theme. Likewise, the Shapeshifters in the deck like Evil Twin don't synergize, as they're not horrors and don't have changeling. Dauthi Voidwalker runs into the same issue, but it is pretty good so I wouldn't cut it.

A funny card in the deck would be Chainer, Dementia Master. He creates nightmares from your opponent's yard, which then exile more cards with your commander. However, he does come with the drawback of exiling all Nightmares when he dies. He's still totally worth it, though. Angel of Suffering do be silly. She might not be the best, but she's just kinda funny in the deck. The same goes for Bitter Ordeal, which, like all cards from Future Sight, is just kinda nifty. Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver ain't a bad card in this context, nor is Ashiok, Sculptor of Fears. Nightmare weaver is better, but both are pretty good in this context. Ashiok, Dream Render is pretty deece as both a Stranglehold and a exile-based mill engine, and she also completes AshiokTron (tm). To compleat the "Not good, just funny" cycle, Chainer's Torment. Is it an absolutely awful card? Yes. Is it hilarious? YES. Phyrexian Rager is pretty nice as well.

I hope that you find these suggestions helpful!