Expropriate

Sorcery

Council's dilemma — Starting with you, each player votes for time or money. For each time vote, take an extra turn after this one. For each money vote, choose a permanent owned by the voter and gain control of it. Exile Expropriate.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

kpres on Commander Deckbuilding Advice - A …

1 week ago

I have some deckbuilding advice. I'll make it concise:

The Three Problems

Your goal is to play a winning combination of cards before your opponent can do the same. To do this, you need to draw the right cards, be able to cast them, and do this faster than your opponent despite their efforts to stop you. These are the Three Problems your deck is trying to solve. It is tempting to fill your deck with only cards that work towards a build-around commander, but if you do, you'll have 4 or 5 mana available on turn 6, you won't be able to stop your opponent's threats, and you won't be drawing the cards you need. Follow the quantity recommendations below to deal with the Three Problems and still get to play your strategy.

Include 28 lands, plus 2 for each color, plus the average mana cost of your deck. So for a typical 3 color deck, you're looking at 39-ish lands.

Include 10 cards that let you deal with threats at instant speed. Every opponent uses artifacts, enchantments, and creatures, and you often need to disrupt a combo that's about to go off when it's not your turn.

Include 10 cards that net you more cards. With a high density of card draw spells, you are more likely to draw into your next draw spell and never run out of things to do.

Include 10 cards with low mana cost (3 or less) that give you more mana. Generally for every 2 mana rocks above this number that cost 0 to 2, you can cut one land.

Include up to 5 "win-more" cards, not more. These are cards like Doubling Season that are only good when your deck is already doing what it's supposed to do.

Include 1-2 spells that serve as a big finisher that works even when you're losing. Examples: Rise of the Dark Realms, Insurrection, Expropriate, Primal Surge, or Overwhelming Splendor.

Include 1 card that hurts decks that use the graveyard, such as Tormod's Crypt.

Include 1 card that recycles your graveyard, especially if it can be played from the graveyard or activates when milled. Gaea's Blessing is a good one. Feldon's Cane is especially good if you are using your graveyard and you would rather have your graveyard be in your library than exiled by someone's Bojuka Bog.

Include 1 board wipe, but it must fit the theme of your deck and break parity. For example, All is Dust when you're playing colorless, Living Death when you're playing reanimator, Hour of Reckoning when you're playing tokens, Cyclonic Rift in blue, etc. The more one-sided, the better.

Include 20 creatures, at least 10 of which can be played by turn 3. Some of these cards can double as your removal, ramp, or draw, or strategy cards. Having creatures prevents you from taking opportunistic early combat damage, and helps you recover quickly after a board wipe. Creatures with ETB effects are more valuable when you can blink or reanimate them.

Include 20-30 cards that work with your deck's strategy. It seems like not enough, but when you include more than this, you're cutting removal, draw, or ramp, which are all necessary for dealing with the Three Problems. Also don't forget that when you have enough card draw, you'll have access to most of these strategy cards.

griffstick on top cards of each color

3 months ago

{W} Esper Sentinel

{W} Swords to Plowshares

{U} Rhystic Study

{U} Expropriate

{B} Bolas's Citadel

{B} Vampiric Tutor

{R} Dockside Extortionist

{R} Jeska's Will

{G} The Great Henge

{G} Return of the Wildspeaker

iRidetheTvan on Thassa Blink

4 months ago

Show and Tell or Flood of Tears serve as extra ways to cheat big things in. I also run Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant because two copies of Expropriate or extra turns is better than one.

Mortlocke on The Queen's Egg

5 months ago

Profet93, you're absolutely right about Expropriate. Funny thing - I made that play in error and everyone still scooped, but about a week or so later my friend pointed out to me that we all made a mistake, and that it wasn't a legal target for Deflecting Swat. Expropriate doesn't target anything, meaning creatures with hexproof, or players with protection from blue are still affected. I blame mental fatigue, as that game was an intense one from what I remember. To be fair, it's been about 3 years since that game took place. Thanks for keeping me honest lol.

Mortlocke on The Queen's Egg

5 months ago

Profet93,

Thank you for the nice words, this is my signature deck of signature decks and have put the most most time (and money...so much money) into building it into what it is today. This deck is forever a work in progress, for as tuned as it is there is always room for improvement - so I always appreciate any and all criticism and suggestions. Speaking of which - Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are indeed powerful lands - but only within context. The pros don't outweigh the cons with those suggestions in my opinion - I don't run any Beacon of Creation or Cabal Coffers effects so I don't have any way to really "cash in" on these lands past having them fix my manabase. But like you said fixing the manabase of my opponents is the last thing I'd ever want to do, so i'll have to take a pass on those suggestions.

Delay is absolutely wonderful counter magic. Most often i'd end up delaying a turn 2 or 3 Najeela, the Blade-Blossom - which would then be dealt with when it hits the battlefield. Another great play I managed to pull off with Delay was "countering" a Swords to Plowshares that was aimed at my Commander. On my next turn I simply tutored for and cast a Crystalline Sliver. No one managed to cast a board wipe so when the time counters were all removed the Swords to Plowshares simply failed to find. Honestly, I've never been disappointed by Delay and is definitely one of my all time favorites - it always gives me just enough time to dig for an answer.

Toxic Deluge is just an old hold over from my previous meta. Alot of creatures were lower to the ground as most of my friends played combo decks that relied on some key creatures or played with creatures that had reliable methods of gaining protection or indestructible. I used to run Damnation, but I also have a full art foil Damn that i'm considering trying out as well. The verdict is still out on what I should run in that card slot to be honest, but i'm more than interested in your thoughts on what would be the most efficient option available for mass removal.

Once I managed to use Deflecting Swat to target a Expropriate. Obviously this was a late game play, but I knew that the Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign player had something up their sleeve and properly baited out the big spell by tapping out. It also helped that I had a Fierce Guardianship in hand as well in case someone wanted to thwart my plans. Everyone scooped after the swat resolved.

Thanks for commenting on the deck, i'll think more on your suggestions. Happy New Year to you, by the way. Do you have any acquisitions or decks your want to build in 2023?

ILuvMtg on

9 months ago

Enter the Infinite. I can't imagine my Woah, where did THAT come from??? Jodah deck without it. Other suggestions are Worst Fears, Expropriate, Chromatic Orrery, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Bringer of the Black Dawn, and Rhystic Study, to name a few.

You can check out my deck for more ideas, although I'm working on a budget so you have more freedom than I do in terms of cards you can add.

Good luck =)

itachi5464 on Izzn't it neat?

1 year ago

also Expropriate Mystical Tutor Fierce Guardianship Time Warp Jeska's Will

golgarigirl on So...Gates

1 year ago

Well, if you're getting lands onto the battlefield as a main strategy anyways, packing a few large spells that are known closers (Torment of Hailfire and Expropriate come to mind, but you definitely don't have to use those exact cards, since they're expensive, but you get the idea) are a solid backup. Landfall-type strategies is another natural fit, with Scute Swarm, Avenger of Zendikar and Field of the Dead as example closers.

The biggest trick with gates is that they're nonbasic, so a lot of the traditional ramp and landfall-enabling, like fetchlands, doesn't work on them. So I feel the deck would be leaning heavily into drawing a lot of cards (something all three of your colors are really good at), and then getting extra land drops per turn with Azusa, Lost but Seeking- effects. You could even lean into self-mill (which black and blue excell at), and then recur lands with World Shaper, Ramunap Excavator, and Splendid Reclamation. That, however, is risky again from the graveyard-removal angle.

Some of the other posters mentioned a voltron angle for the commander, and I definitely see that as a possibility too! I just wanted to lay out some other options.