Bitter Ordeal

Sorcery

Search target player's library for a card and remove that card from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.

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

Discussion (50)

Mcat1999 on X Gon Give It To Ya (Xiahou-Dun Stax Primer)

5 days ago

In addition to Sadistic Sacrament , there is Bitter Ordeal . Assuming you can combo off and cast your commander an infinite number of times with your infinite mana production, you can Gravestorm for 300+, or effectively each opponent's entire library.

The first time you may only land 1 single card. However you'll then land 2 cards on the second casting, then 3, then 4. So on and so forth.

If you cast it 24 times, that will land you 300 cards you exile. More than enough by the time you go off, as each opponent (ideally) opened the game with a 7 card hand, each library started with 99 cards (-1 for Commander) and several turns have passed, meaning several draws. So in reality it may only need to be cast 20 or so times but 24 would be the "safer" bet.

This is because "1+2+3+4 (...) +24" = 300.

So essentially it gives you a second Sadistic Sacrament , in the event the first one fails to land properly, is exiled, or you draw into Bitter Ordeal first.

What this allows is a secondary Sadistic Sacrament , should the first be exiled, such as by a Tormod's Crypt .

FenIsABasicSwamp on Rainbow in the Dark: Haakon Reanimator Combo

1 month ago

Hey Pheardemons yeah of course I remember you. I've been wondering how your deck ended up being for you. This is by far one of my favorite decks and the deck I've invested the most time into in the last 3 years. I'm glad you came back to the game.

1) Why Wasteland? You may have noticed that all of the cards in this are German foil for the most part. I has been nearly impossible to get either Wasteland or Strip Mine in German, or foil for that matter. I like the art on EMA Wasteland more than any of the stripmines and it felt appropriately thematic for a character like Haakon, who's epithet being "Stromgald Scourge" suggests he would leave a Wasteland behind his army. Also, rarely does an occasion arise in EDH where I want to destroy a basic over a non-basic anyways, and I recently found an opportunity to get a foil borderless German Wasteland from the new Zendikar set.

2) Emergence Zone is amazing and should be played in all monocolor decks that can sustain one more colorless nonbasic. Also, there's a minor subtheme of lands being playable from the graveyard with Crucible of Worlds in this deck to support the overall discard theme. So the Zone is not necessarily a one-off use.

3) Fetches for the same reason as emergence zone: playing lands from the graveyard and if I get it going with Crucible and Ghirapur Orrery, I can really get some deck thinning going on by pulling lots of swamps out of the library. Why the two that I have and not the others? I don't have German foils of Prismatic Vista, Bloodstained Mire, and Marsh Flats is the easy answer; also theres a point where I worry about reducing the number of overall Swamps in the deck, but maybe that's erroneous since each fetch doubles as a swamp. The other real reason is that I have all the German foil snow-covered swamps and wouldn't have any other use for them if I took them out of this deck for the other fetches.

4) I haven't really gotten to use K'rrik since I put him in the deck. Took a while to source a German one and then get it altered and Corona has severely impacted how much I actually play EDH nowadays. We'll see how impactful the life loss is, but as with all such things you have to strike a balance between your greed to play stuff out with him and putting yourself in a dangerous situation. Lifelink is generally not the way I plan to recover from things like K'rrik, rather cards like Disciple of Bolas and Disciple of Griselbrand are usually more useful for gaining relevant amounts of life back. I rarely find myself attacking unless it's to get a sword trigger.

5)Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder has been in earlier iterations of this deck but his sac trigger from making too many thrulls makes him less attractive unless you can play something like Conspiracy so that he doesn't make thrulls anymore. Abhorrent Overlord is a key piece to generating a massive number of dudes to be sac fodder to an altar to make infinite mana. Since the point is to get to a play where I can just keep sacing and replaying cards from my graveyard with Haakon and Ashes of the Fallen, Overlord does that better than any other card in monoblack.

6)Bitterblossom would serve no valuable purpose other than the Contamination lock and I prefer not to play really "mean" magic like that. Contamination is not usually in the deck but I wanted to try it out because its art seems really fitting for Haakon once again as the Scource of a place. Also, it's a good card for helping a black deck catch up that is playing from way behind "better" decks.

7) Being that this deck hovers between $2-3k, I think it's safe to say that money is not a factor. I generally don't like playing tutors and already play way more in this deck than in a normal one of my decks because it's inherently so handicapped. Razaketh has been in it before and I may put him back in, it's just very easy to win outright with him on the battlefield.

8) Ghirapur Orrery has maybe backfired once on me, it's a careful balancing act. It backfired spectacularly on Justin Parnell in SCG's CMDRVS show. His opponent got a Bojuka Bog on the extra land drop and nuked his graveyard. I never play Lifeline until I'm ready to take advantage of it, and preferably when I have Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet out so that it doesn't work for opponents. Haven't really gotten to use Tombstone Stairwell because of the pandemic.

9) Null Profusion is amazing and underplayed. Play Reliquary Tower or Anvil of Bogardan afterwards and the time stamp of the last card replaces the reduced hand size with infinite hand size and now you just draw cards for every card you play. Works great with Haakon playing cards from your graveyard and Crucible of Worlds doing the same.

10) Yawgmoth is a great extra free sac outlets. Sac outlets are always the most important thing to have in a monoblack deck, especially one's that draw you a card and can potentially be removal too. His proliferate ability lets me immediately ultimate Liliana, Defiant Necromancer often too. He's generally my favorite black creature of all time.

11) Always always dredge Stinkweed Imp. More cards in your graveyard is always the goal for Haakon. The best is dredging him, discarding him to Skirge Familiar, and then drawing again from something else to dredge him again.

12) Creature tutors like Fleshwrither are always more appealing to me in Haakon because I can replay them from the graveyard. Fleshwrither isn't a good card per se, but it is a pet card and also just fantastic and frequently reusable. I can get graveyard hate (Kalitas), ramp (Crypt Ghast), or card draw (Disciple of Bolas) with him so he's very flexible depending on what point in the game I'm at.

13) Conspiracy isn't actually in this deck and Cryptbreaker is here as a discard outlet to help me get Haakon in the graveyard as well as be a infinitely castable creature from the graveyard with Haakon/Ashes out and Phyrexian Altar. That gives me all the draws I could need or infinite Gravestorm for Bitter Ordeal when it's in the deck.

14) I have recast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger probably 5 times in a turn from the graveyard with this deck before. He's amazing and all I've needed. I prefer not to use stuff like Oblivion Stone or All is Dust that a lot of my deck wouldn't dodge as well, and since my wincon is a black enchantment Decaying Soil, I would have few options to recover from it if I was forced to use those. Scour from Existence isn't here because I don't like using over-costed one-off spells. I can tutor for Ulamog and use him repeatedly.

These were good questions and I appreciate you reading my bio and asking questions respectfully. Your manner of asking demonstrates thoughtful consideration of the deck instead of pushy insistence of a different viewpoint. Ultimately there's no "right" way to build an EDH deck, although there are objectively more optimal ways to design them. I have a passing interest in optimization, but am mostly making choices to balance synergy with flavor and a fun play experience.

KibaAlpha on Life For Me, None For Thee

2 months ago

Since you are going the token route have you considered Bitter Ordeal?

Also Jet Medallion and Pearl Medallion are excellent ramp cards.

Reznorboy on Why Does Mono-Black Have So …

2 months ago

Black does have some cards that exile specific cards from the opponent's library though, which is theoretically better.

Bitter Ordeal

Sadistic Sacrament

Surgical Extraction

Extirpate

ConsumingKiribo on DiMill

2 months ago

Bitter Ordeal doesn't trigger because permanents don't count as permanents unless they're on the battlefield. Maybe something like Surgical Extraction is useful.

You don't need Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth as most of your cards mostly require blue mana. You're only using black as removal, so it isn't the best. Something better to put in the slot could be a bounce land, kind of like why you put in Oboro, Palace in the Clouds. Maybe something like Dimir Aqueduct or just another copy of Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.

Take my advice with a grain of salt though, as I am no expert on milling.

SomeDipshit on K'rrik TurboStone - Shadowborn Apostle(Primer)

3 months ago

Of course, Bitter Ordeal

MrKillStar on We're all mad here

3 months ago

Rainbowjuice77 - the only one of them that can search multiply libraries (including yours) is Bitter Ordeal, since you can change target for every copy of Bitter Ordeal, but you need to trigger it somehow (I use it in my Syr Konrad, the Grim's For the Void deck with Desecrated Tomb + Phyrexian Altar + Tortured Existence as a main engine for different stuff).
There is a lot of cards that can be really sweet with Opposition Agent, the most casual use would be to use Op.Agent just on its own, without anything else like Maralen of the Mornsong, etc..
And with Wishclaw Talisman I would definitely run Homeward Path :D

MrKillStar on Grab your shovel and dig

3 months ago

Sanglier: I somehow got Thornbite Staff from someone's entire collection before it jumped to like 6-7 dollars :D
To mess with my others, I like Life's Finale; Sadistic Sacrament and Bitter Ordeal to cripple their cards or entire libraries with some infinite die triggers for Bitter Ordeal (I use Desecrated Tomb + Phyrexian Altar + Tortured Existence for that), but thats a bit more evil than just a discard spell... :D More cards I know about like that are Nightmare Incursion and Praetor's Grasp, all those cards could work really well together in some library-hate themed deck I guess.

Anyway, Thornbite Staff could be really sweet here with Gisa, even with only a 2/2 zombie token on board, which would basically be: ": sacrifice a 2/2 token to make two 2/2 tokens." whiiiiiiich, just looking at my collection again, could go infinite with Carnival of Souls and something that gives you 1 or more life upon a creature etb, like Ayara, First of Locthwain. Just not every playgroup is OK with infinite combos.. just some ideas here :D