Duress

Sorcery

Target opponent reveals their hand. You choose a noncreature, nonland card from it. That player discards that card.

Combos

• Bloodchief Ascension + Duress

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	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
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

K4nkato on Tomb of Annihilation (Venture into the Dungeon)

2 weeks ago

I have a few observations:

1) Your curve is too high. Too many hands have nothing to do on turn 1 & turn 2. Against midrange decks like Rakdos Midrange they’ll likely have Bloodtithe Harvester in play with Fatal Push ready to kill your three drop (they sack a blood token to trigger Revolt). Unless you open an Intrepid Outlander you’ll be defenseless until turn 4 or 5. You should diversify your curve with more 1 and 2 drops to smooth out your plays. While it’s not directly dungeon related I think Mosswood Dreadknight would be a great 2-drop.

2) You don’t have enough interaction. A combo deck like Greasefang, Okiba Boss can combo on turn 3 before you have a chance to remove her with Murderous Rider. If you remove her vehicle with You Find a Cursed Idol but don’t kill her she’ll just combo again the next turn. There’s a lot of great removal options in G/B like Abrupt Decay or Assassin's Trophy that handle tons of different matchups.

3) You don’t have a good plan for over-the-too value decks. The dungeon plan takes time to grind (not a bad thing), but your need to give yourself the time to grind. If you play against a deck with something like Bring to Light or Enigmatic Incarnation you might get completely ran over by Omnath, Locus of Creation or The Scarab God. You can fight back against these decks with unconditional removal like Go for the Throat and discard spells like Duress and Liliana of the Veil.

4) You need some more card draw. If you’re lowering your curve you should expect to play longer games & can pull ahead of opponents with card draw engines. Castle Locthwain pulls you ahead of your opponents in long games. Hive of the Eye Tyrant gives you an option to win the Dungeon back from an opponent when you’re out of creatures & closes long games against control decks. Field of Ruin is great for midrange mirror matches bc it blows up your opponent’s castles.

Dungeons can be a hard mechanic to work with but it rewards you for playing long games & slowing your opponent down. If you run a solid midrange deck with Dungeon cards to break parity and pull you ahead you’ll have a solid game plan.

jdogz32 on Obliterate

1 month ago

Your decks extremely heavy for only having 21 lands. I'd recommend going up to 24. I'd take out Cabal Stronghold in order for you to even break even on it you'd have to have 4 swamps in play and your deck only has 6. I'd also take out any land that enters the battlefield tapped. As heavy as your deck is with no form of ramp you can't afford to be waiting for lands to untap just to make your opponent lose a life. So I'd take out Piranha Marsh I'd also take out Mortuary Mire.

As slow as your deck is I'd add cards like Thoughtseize Inquisition of Kozilek or Duress taking your opponents best cards early game will really help give you the time you need to set up. I'd also replace Victim of the night for either Fatal Push or Heartless Act hope this helps

DreadKhan on Power Word Death

1 month ago

Phyrexian Totem isn't the easiest card to use, but most deck don't use a lot of instant speed burn spells or Flash creatures so as long as you've killed off their blockers it's a solid attacker. It can also force the opponent to keep blockers home. In practice, since it swings for 5 it can be fine to lose a few things to it in my experience (provided you're already ahead that game), and in situations where you can't use it to attack it's still a mana source that helps you cast your Obliterators.

Haha, yeah, I don't know if there is anywhere local I can buy cards, it's such a niche interest here, but online stores can make it easy to find cheaper versions of cards, though you have to do online shopping (which I wasn't eager to do). I know of a few European and North American companies who sell tons of stuff, and I think TCGPlayer.com has sellers from all over, and you can set the site to restrict sellers to ones that will ship to your area (it used to be pretty buggy, I have less trouble with it now).

The nice thing about 1 drops is that they allow you to start pressuring the board early, and some of them have useful abilities like Deathtouch, which let them trade with your opponent's better creatures. If you're not sure that Deathtouch creatures are good enough (or evasive lifelink creatures, like Cutthroat and Vault Skirge), you can also try out cards like Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, or Ostracize, since you get to pick what they discard these can be incredibly useful for only B mana. The best of these is probably Thoughtseize, followed by Grief and Unmask, but Inquisition usually works well in a format where people hate using cards with MV higher than 3. Some more 1 drops you can consider are Cryptbreaker, which is a zombie tribal card that can make tokens and draw cards eventually, and Foulmire Knight, this has Adventure and can draw a card if you draw it later in the game, and a 1/1 Deathtouch can block fairly well.

Dark Ritual isn't quite an auto-include in every deck, but it's one of the best cards that's legal in Legacy, it's especially useful if you can use all 3 mana and can play it turn 1. In your deck as is, if you have Ritual you can play a Gatekeeper or Messenger turn 1, either of those is a fair bit of value that early, and Vampire Nighthawk is really good with Dark Ritual since you can start gaining life turn 2. It turns a Grave Titan in a turn 4 play, at which point it's a very strong creature when you're sneaking it out so early, and while it's unlikely, you can end up with 2 Rituals in your opening hand and play Titan turn 2. If you use 1 mana discard spells as well as Hymn to Tourach, you can cast both (for the record you should cast the Duress type effect before Hymn) turn 1 which should decide most games on turn 1. Dark Ritual is a key card in decks that are trying to be fairly competitive, so if you want to make your deck stronger it's a great card to consider.

With all your removal (and the discard you've got), have you thought about x1 or x2 Sangromancer? It's a 3/3 flyer for 4, which isn't terrible, but it can gain quite a bit of life while still threatening your opponent. I guess it'd be a creature version of your Incursion, it won't gain as much life but it'll deal more damage.

If you want something to accelerate your games there is Phyrexian Arena, which was printed into Standard again, so it's extremely cheap compared to a few years back. It's not the best draw effect out there, but drawing a card each upkeep is pretty good value if you're not playing the fastest games, this card is also good with Dark Ritual, but it will cost a bit of life over time.

jdogz32 on

1 month ago

As your deck is based around Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker I'd recommend adding 4 of him.

Secondly I'd take out Ludevic's Test Subject  ^Flip he's just to slow. I tried to make him work and even with training grounds he's a large Mana dump and your opponent will just wait until he's either flipped or close to just remove him.

Thirdly, you need more draw spells. Control decks have some form of draw capabilities and your deck has 0. I'd recommend Opt Serum Visions or Expressive Iteration for starters.

Fourth The Scarab God is a good card but I'd either find a way to break his abilities or take him out. As of right now he's a large Mana dump and I'm not seeing any game enders.

Lastly I'd take out Slavering Nulls the odds that a 2/1 creature survives and makes a hit without any help is almost 0. I'd go with something more guaranteed liked Thoughtseize Duress or Inquisition of Kozilek. Hope this helps.

legendofa on Does roiling vortex trigger whenever …

2 months ago

Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver's token creation isn't a spell, it's an ability, and isn't affected by Roiling Vortex. Broadly speaking, a spell is anything represented by a card you play from your hand, that isn't a land. (There are exceptions, but this will cover most of the interactions you're likely to see.)

So, lands are never spells.

If it's coming from something already in play, it's an ability, not a spell.

A Duress you cast from your hand is a spell.

When you cast Corrupt Court Official, it's a spell until it resolves, then it becomes a permanent. This is important for cards like Essence Scatter; a creature spell is not the same thing as a creature.

The simplified sequence of events is

• Declare that you're casting Corrupt Court Official.

• Pay {1}{B}.

• Play CCO. (This is where it's a spell.)

• Nobody does anything, CCO resolves and enters the battlefield. (It's no longer a spell.)

• CCO's ability triggers, and you choose who will discard. (This is not a spell, it's an ability.)

• Nobody does anything, CCO's ability resolves, and someone discards a card.

Yeah, that's the simple version.

Roiling Vortex will affect cards like Memnite, which has a casting cost of {0} mana; Fireblast if Mountains were sacrificed, since no mana was paid; or Walking Skyscraper if you control eight modified creatures, since its cost is reduced to {0}.

The most technical definition is covered in 112.1 of the Comprehensive Rules:

• A spell is a card on the stack. As the first step of being cast (see rule 601, “Casting Spells”), the card becomes a spell and is moved to the top of the stack from the zone it was in, which is usually its owner’s hand. (See rule 405, “Stack.”) A spell remains on the stack as a spell until it resolves (see rule 608, “Resolving Spells and Abilities”), is countered (see rule 701.5), or otherwise leaves the stack. For more information, see section 6, “Spells, Abilities, and Effects.”

By the way, welcome to the club, Coldless! Are you confused yet?

wallisface on Bow Down to Sheoldred

2 months ago

idfkgabe yeah i already said Mind Rot was a terrible card in my original post. Duress is a lot better in that it is at least playable.

idfkgabe on Bow Down to Sheoldred

2 months ago

I do have one extra thing I want to take out. That would be Mind Rot for Duress. Any objections?

Darth_Savage on Whimsical tricksters

4 months ago

My first thought was add maybe 1 or 2 Nighthawk Scavenger to give a couple more rogues that can close out the game. Something else to consider is utility lands Castle Locthwain and Hive of the Eye Tyrant being the most obvious, though I could see a case for Blast Zone too. Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire could have a place as a tutor.

To really work you need a sideboard, so here are some suggestions;

2x Lithoform Blight (land strategies)

2x Cunning Nightbonder (control)

2x Bloodchief's Thirst (more removal, can hit planeswalkers)

2x Fatal Push (more removal)

4x Duress (for combo or to remve sweepers)

3x Faerie Macabre (grave hate or a rogue at worst)