Cabal Therapist

Creature — Horror Mercenary

Menace

At the beginning of your precombat main phase, you may sacrifice a creature. When you do, choose a nonland card name, then target player reveals their hand and discards all cards with that name.

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
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

legendofa on Skeleton Control

1 year ago

Welcome to the club, Hundrumleek!

Bubbling Cauldron doesn't feel like it offers that much here. How many games has the life gain made a difference for you, where it actually bought you the time to win? Unless the life gain from Bubbling Cauldron regularly and reliably helps you win matches, I think that adding another source of pressure would work better.

Sticking with the "cheap sacrifice outlet" idea, life loss from Lampad of Death's Vigil or Vermin Gorger would offer another chance for Gutterbones to recur. Cabal Therapist or Nezumi Bone-Reader can force discards. While not Skeletons, these are "safe" and affordable options, if budget is a concern.

I also think you can safely cut one of the Skeletal Swarmings and add some more draw cards. Village Rites is another Corrupted Conviction, for example. This will help lower your mana curve and reduce early game dead draws. Since this deck is more control-y than ramp-y, getting SkeleSwarm before you can use it is just a dead draw.

Skeleton is my favorite creature type, and {B}{G} is my favorite color combination, so this sort of deck always gets my attention. Above all, have fun!

legendofa on infinite rats

1 year ago

Pulling from my own Rat tribal deck (Modern-ish casual, not EDH):

Karumonix, the Rat King gives you an out against lifegain-heavy decks. I don't recommend going deeper than that with poison (i.e. don't add Ichor Rats or Septic Rats), but Karumonix adds a layer to your attacks and keeps rats coming.

I haven't gotten Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm yet, but I want to. It looks amazing. If your budget can handle it, I'm recommending it just in theoretical grounds.

I personally am not impressed with Swarm of Rats (Rat Colony is pretty much all-around better) and Pestilence Rats, but they might work better in EDH, where you always have access to a fear-granting effect. How have they worked for you?

Ratcatcher is a free tutor for a rat every turn. Highly recommended.

Memoricide is a little odd, since it can only hit one card that isn't in play. Is this a meta choice? Do you have a specific target for it that you know you'll see?

Unless you see a bunch of Voltron, Battlecruiser, or other decks with one big creature, I would diversify the removal a little bit. You have a lot of single-target creature removal. I'm a big fan of discard, so I'm recommending based on what I like at this point. Cabal Therapist, Mind Slash, and Sadistic Hypnotist turn your rats into hand removal. Feed the Swarm offers enchantment removal with a very evocative name for this deck. Try some of these in place of Cast Down or Ultimate Price or something. Also, Despise isn't great if you're just fishing. If you want a T1 discard effect, Thoughtseize is best, Inquisition of Kozilek and Blackmail are solid, and Dread Fugue is pretty good.

Following up on that, I see a good set of mass removal and graveyard recursion, and Marrow-Gnawer lets you rebuild quickly. This part looks solid.

Balaam__ on Balaam__

1 year ago

@Daikodubs Alright, so here’s what I cobbled together. It isn’t quite Sultai, and I’d actually very much recommend abandoning a tri color mana base in favor of {B}{U} instead, but if you’re dead set on Sultai it’s easily adaptable.

4 Vapor Snag 10 Swamp 4 Spell Pierce 4 Mana Leak 6 Island 4 Hedron Alignment 4 Gurmag Angler 4 Counterspell 4 Cling to Dust 4 Choked Estuary 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Cabal Therapist 4 Bojuka Bog

You’ve got enough mana to reliably cast Hedron Alignment from your hand.

You’ve got 8 cards that will get a copy from your hand into your graveyard, namely Cabal Therapy and Cabal Therapist. Just name yourself as the target player and dump from your own hand.

You’ve got 8 cards that let you exile a copy from your graveyard, playsets of Bojuka Bog and Cling to Dust. That last one will let you recover lost life too in case you’re dangerously close to death.

You’ve got a boatload of countermagic to fizzle a lot of what your opponent may try, either to stop you or else to bolster their own strategy.

Lastly, I threw in Gurmag Angler because you mentioned you like Delve and it’s also a fine card to block with if necessary or even to win with should Hedron Alignment somehow not be a viable wincon for whatever reason.

Prices fluctuate depending on where and how you buy, but this rings it at around $20 or less depending on the set of card you’re looking at. Like I said, this is but one way to try building around Hedron Alignment and there are many others. But the idea is to fully commit to it while ignoring anything that’ll only distract from it. Take it, adjust it as you see fit, make changes etc.

Hope this helps.

dnthymamai on Discard Raven

1 year ago

Nice discard deck! May I also suggest some ideas for the sideboard:

Quest for the Nihil Stone if you find that your opponent's hand empties fast (e.g. they are aggro).

Cabal Therapist for game 2, when you already have information on your opponent's deck.

Unearth for some recursion for your key creature!

lagotripha on Cult of the Forgotten Gods

2 years ago

Biggest question - how competitive do you want to be? Cause there are great sacrifice cards and effects for competitive play that just shouldn't mix with things on a more fun casual level.

On the competitive end, I'd look at CMC 1 and two, with a focus on card advantage and disruption; Bomat Courier for refilling the hand, Cabal Therapist as ersatz thoughtsieze, Carrion Feeder and Ravenous Squirrel as a chunky creature and repeatable sac outlet, cards like Dockside Chef as extra squirrel copies, there are a lot of really good options.

The hard part is what you are trying to sacrifice - cards that like being in the graveyard and come back tend to get pricy, meaning that you'll probably get more from token value - Mogg War Marshal is about the best budget option, but even there its only 3 triggers for two mana. An artifacts matter list is an option - bomat courier, Glaze Fiend, the dog from the new set and so on would let you run Oni-Cult Anvil or Pia's Revolution for a lot of value, while also taking advantage of treasure, blood food and other 'artifact tokens' as they are printed.

Young Pyromancer is a classic for a reason, but it does need instants and sorceries - more value from Dragon Fodder, but less from return from graveyard effects.

All told, a lot of it is about the kind of deck you want to build. All in elemental awakener is great, trying to loop changelings with awakener and stuff like Prowess of the Fair is hilarious if you want to go that route too.

Kazierts on Oops, All 1 Drop Zombies

3 years ago

Sorry for not realizing the entire deck was meant to be CMC 1, not just the creatures. With this in mind, I got a few other suggestions.

• Cabal Therapy is a great discard spell that sees a lot of play in Legacy already. Alternatively, you could use Cabal Therapist for repeatable discard, though it's not on tribe.

• Ghoulcaller's Chant could be an option in case you see the life loss from Phyrexian Reclamation being too much of a problem. Sure, it isn't repeatable but in some cases getting two zombies at once without losing life could be very useful.

• One creature that's on tribe is Stitcher's Supplier. Since you have quite a few zombies that want to be in the graveyard in order to reanimate themselves, the Supplier can help you get them there.

HobbyMan5000 on Manaless Dredge

3 years ago

Epic, Cabal Therapist might be good.

Daveslab2022 on Will WotC Eventually Print an …

3 years ago

WOTC has been printing old effect onto creatures. Cabal Therapist is the only one I can think of rn, but I believe that they are doing this to give some more counter play to these kinds of effects. I do think that they may print a creature with that effect, but I think Urza, Lord High Artificer is the closest we’re going to get anytime soon.