Combos Browse all Suggest
Legality
| Format | Legality |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
Rules Q&A
Bronze Tablet
Artifact
Remove Bronze Tablet from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.
Bronze Tablet enters the battlefield tapped.
(4), Tap: Remove Bronze Tablet and target nontoken permanent an opponent owns from the game. That player may pay 10 life. If he or she does, put Bronze Tablet into its owner's graveyard. Otherwise, that player owns Bronze Tablet and you own the other removed card.
Caerwyn on Cube idea, good or bad? …
1 year 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).
Caerwyn on How does this Act of …
6 years ago
Dimir-Acolyte - As this has been open for a couple days, I've marked Boza's post as the accepted answer to this thread. In the future, if you could please hit the "Mark as Answer" button that shows up on responses once you're question has been resolved, that would be appreciated. It helps keep the Rules Q&A section organised and serves as allows future users who stumble across the same question to easily locate the answer.
"Ownership refers to who's card that deck came from."
This is a good general way to understand ownership, but is not 100% accurate--there exist two exceptions:
Ownership also includes cards that are brought in from outside of the game--such as with Glittering Wish. This seems pretty obvious, but, technically, these cards do not have a "deck they came from" so do not neatly fit in your definition.
There also exist four cards that allow ownership to change, regardless of whose deck the card started in--Bronze Tablet, Darkpact. Tempest Efreet, and Timmerian Fiends. Granted, all of these cards are banned in every format, not welcome at kitchen table, and possibly in violation of local gambling laws, but they're still worth mentioning as a historical curiosity.
eatmygender on
6 years ago
The Silver-Bordered cards and Bronze Tablet are largely cards I'm including for the fun factor. I like having Un-set cards sideboarded in case the game isn't necessarily too serious, and a bit of spice would make it more interesting. Bronze Tablet is not something I would use with anyone who isn't fine with the whole ante shenanigan. It was in my collection, and fit okay enough, so why not? As you might have noticed, I reworked the deck because I found that the prices were getting out of hand. Mnemonic Betrayal looks amazing, but considering it's a mythic in the most recent set in Standard, I'd like to wait for the mass box openings 'till I pick one up for a better price, or I'll trade my Deathrite for it and Praetor's Grasp. Bloodchief Ascension looks fun, might trade my Mission Briefing for it. I hold Magistrate's Scepter close to my heart because I have the promo version (one of the only two promos I own), and the threatening nature of it means I can divert attention away from my hand and towards the artifact. If I can find justification I'll cut it though. Spellbook is also a cut. Mastermind's Acquisition as well. Glasses of Urza (which I legit thought was an un-set card at first lmao) is useful utility early on but loses purpose after. I'll cut it. I appreciate the help lots!! Do you have any help for creatures? I'm only at 16 and it's kinda growing on me.
Daedalus19876 on
6 years ago
Okay, so I finally had some time to come by and take a closer look! First, I suspect you know this, but Crow Storm, Five-Finger Discount, and are silver-bordered and thus not legal in commander. Many playgroups will allow them, though, which is fine if yours lets you. With that being said, Bronze Tablet is beyond banned: it permanently exchanges ownership of a card, an effect that is never ever allowed under any circumstances in modern Magic. I know it's in the sideboard, but it's not even worth having there.
Second, this deck looks a lot better than the first time I stopped by here! It has a tighter focus and more focus on a specific goal: steal if you can, mill if you can't. You're still on a budget, so I'll do my best to keep that in mind. I don't know if you're opposed to infinite combos, but Bloodchief Ascension is great here: just a great card anyway with mill, but doubly awesome when it goes infinite to kill opponents with Mindcrank. Mnemonic Betrayal might be exactly up your alley, as might Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and/or Lazav, the Multifarious. You also could use some more decent draw effects, like Rain of Notions, Read the Bones, etc.
Beyond that, Mastermind's Acquisition doesn't function in EDH unless your playgroup is playing with unusual rules (the second mode just doesn't do anything). My first cuts would be Energy Chamber, Feroz's Ban, Glasses of Urza, Magistrate's Scepter, Spellbook, Mastermind's Acquisition, and Peek. I hope that helps!
Caerwyn on Arena Forums
6 years ago
You are missing nothing--you're a person who totally understands why others find the Ravager story amusing.
But, for the sake of those who don't know:
Owner and Controller are two different words in MTG. The owner of a card is the one who actually owns the card. Ownership of a card pretty much never changes--there are some old cards, like Bronze Tablet, which change the ownership of a card, but these are not permissible in any format (and many of them run afoul of local gambling laws, so might just be illegal depending on your jurisdiction).
A controller of a spell or permanent is the person who has possession of it in-game.
So, for example, if I use Animate Dead on your Nicol Bolas, the Ravenger (I'm too lazy to look at what the reanimation spells in Standard are right now, so I'm using an older card with similar effect).
Animate Dead causes Nicol Bolas, the Ravenger to enter the battlefield under my control. I do not own Nicol Bolas, the Ravenger--the person who physically owns the card does; however, I still control it.
Nicol Bolas, the Ravenger's ability reads "Exile Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, then return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner's control." Emphasis added.
So, while I might control Nicol Bolas, the Ravenger and thus am the one who can activate his ability, his exile effect clearly states it returns under his owner's control, not his controller's control.
Panzerforge on Unhinged Booster Tutor
7 years ago
Only if you're playing for ante.
The oracle text for Bronze Tablet includes "Remove Bronze Tablet from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante."
"407.1. Earlier versions of the Magic rules included an ante rule as a way of playing for keeps. Playing Magic games for ante is now considered an optional variation on the game, and it's allowed only where it's not forbidden by law or by other rules. Playing for ante is strictly forbidden under the Magic: The Gathering Tournament Rules."
chosenone124 on Unhinged Booster Tutor
7 years ago
If I were to cast Booster Tutor and crack a pack of Antiquities, could I retrieve and use Bronze Tablet, to take my opponent's cards?
Fleetwood-Mat on Wall of Text Commander
8 years ago
oh you want like Cyclopean Tomb, Bronze Tablet and Chains of Mephistopheles and old cards like that.