Stranglehold

Enchantment

Your opponents can't search libraries.

If an opponent would begin an extra turn, that player skips that turn instead.

Discussion (51)

Spirits on Kaalia, Mirror Breaker cEDH

1 month ago

Some Commander Legends updates:

weezel, Maralen of the Mornsong going back in supported by Opposition Agent, still not going as far as Stranglehold but Aven Mindcensor also not bad with it.

uninvited, Spire of Industry finally in, added the Vault of Whispers and Ancient Den as well as the Mox Opal to support. Thrill of Possibility has been good too at getting Worldgorger Dragon or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker out of hand.

LordKunai, Leyline Tyrant just runs too slow, not going to commit him to the deck. Lion's Eye Diamond / Lurrus of the Dream-Den lines would be nice if you have a LED. Imperial Recruiter let's you really go for the Leonin Relic-Warder combo piece. If you want to go that route, I would remove the Worldgorger Dragon combo completely, and also include Recruiter of the Guard. I replaced Steelshaper's Gift with Open the Armory, wasn't a significant change. With it in though, I was thinking take Corpse Dance out since I have the extra Animate Dead tutor, which abandons the Dockside Extortionist / Corpse Dance line, which never happens anyway. WGD has T1 potentials (like my Buried Alive/Reanimate Line) but Bogardan Hellkite is SOOO bad, I was even thinking to try Omen of the Forge instead.

Need this card: Bogardan Drake, BR, Dragon, Flash, Flying, Haste 1/1. When Bogardan Drake enters the battlefield deal 1 damage to any target. Dash R or something lol to replace Bogardan Hellkite, there just isn't anything Flash/Instant in the game of magic.

I keep waffling on Plunge into Darkness, I think it helps more than hurts. I'm about 90% sure i'm going to take Angel of Despair or Corpse Dance to permanently add the tutor in.

plakjekaas on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

2 months ago

Yeah, no. I'm not buying it. I think a lot more players than you assume, play the game to play the game, and just don't like to lock up tables in the magnitude you're suggesting. Because the way you picture it, there will be no decks left not playing blue or black in the world.

I will not be jamming Hullbreacher in my temur landfall deck, Opposition Agent will not make the cut for Rankle, Master of Pranks, nor for Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire (excellent answer right there in the command zone btw). Commander players all over the world like to play suboptimal decks with janky combos, tokens, big creatures, tribes, any way to personalize the experience and make it fun to play. The problems you are projecting are only for tables that rely on their tutors to do anything they want to, with only interaction, tutors, and instant, hard-to-interact-with win-the-game combo pieces in their deck.

Which is currently the most powerful way to play magic in EDH, because you're playing singleton. But not really, because every tutor counts as every other card in your deck that it can find. OP agent, like Aven Mindcensor, Stranglehold,Mindlock Orb and Leonin Arbiter, will absolutely WRECK cEDH tables, nobody will disagree with that. If you can't answer a 3/2 with your hand and/or boardstate, without searching your library, or if your deck can't win without its Thassa's Oracle, yes, then this card is a major problem for you.

But in the top 100 cards on EDHrec, there's 16 that get hosed by OP agent. 9 of them only search your library for land(s). If that was enough to be banned from a format, Null Rod and Collector Ouphe would have been banned ages ago, because almost every deck plays mana rocks (23 out of 100 are hosed by those). Getting your stuff stolen feels bad, however, so this will immediately make the top Salt Cards list on EDHrec.

It sounds like only the most powerful decks and tables are not ready for the impact of this card, the paradigm shift that searching your library to find exactly what you need at any time, can be answered now, and might no longer be the best thing to do in any situation, it might even lose you the game now. The rest of the world, who can just cast a 6-power creature from their hand, or the command zone, and start beating the player who forbids them to play their deck until he is no more, along with the other 2 players who don't have an OP agent in play and like to see it gone, will shrug and consider this the next unfun stax piece, like Stasis, Winter Orb, Armageddon, Cursed Totem, Drannith Magistrate, Notion Thief, Narset, Parter of Veils, Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top, Glacial Chasm and others that have mostly been self-restricted at 90% of all EDH playgroups in the world, but not banned.

So to preemptively ban this card because a small subset of commander metas around the world will have a hard time dealing with it, is hard for me to get behind, especially if that's the same subset that will have a Force of Will, an Assassin's Trophy, a Cyclonic Rift and/or a Mystical Tutor to find those or a different answer with OP agent on the stack.

TotesMcGoats on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

2 months ago

Yea, you are absolutely overreacting. Is it kinda dumb that it steals your opponent's tutors? Yea. But you'll probably only get 1 off of it when you flash it in. And it could literally get killed in response. Its not as bas as it looks. Opposition Agent is fine. Dumb, but fine. Play counterspells, play removal, pay attention to your opponent's having open mana, or just Rule 0 it with your playgroup if you all hate it.

The ONLY thing I'm ACTUALLY a bit worried about is Maralen of the Mornsong. Maralen I could see getting a ban just so that we can avoid another Leovold situation. Opposition Agent alone isn't "the most disgusting card ever printed", but when you can't draw, can't tutor, you're slowly killing yourself, and your opponent gets to play everyone else's cards, NO ONE is going to want to play against that. Its like if they made a Commander that's intentionally designed to Mindslaver Lock you.

Maralen has never really seen a lot of play in the past because she's basically self-defeating since your opponent gets to tutor first and can simply find whatever piece of removal they want to kill Maralen. Cards like Shadow of Doubt, Leonin Arbiter, Aven Mindcensor, Stranglehold, and Ashiok, Dream Render ALREADY exist, but the difference is that none of them have been playable in a mono black deck with Maralen before.

So the real problem is that Opposition Agent should have been Blue/Black like Notion Thief, or IMO, ABSOLUTELY should have been a WHITE card. One of the few unique parts of White's color pie is hatebears. And Opposition Agent would have been a great piece of card advantage for white, similar to Alms Collector, which isn't nearly as good as it sounds since it doesn't trigger from multiple singular draws, but only if 2 or more are drawn at once from the same effect.

Opposition Agent otherwise has the same problem as Hullbreacher does. Its just going to die to removal immediately. You might get a bit of value from it, but once its out, no one is going to choose to tutor or draw extra cards until its gone. So you get some immediate value from it, and then its basically just another hatebear.

Hullbreacher is NOT Smothering Tithe. Smothering Tithe triggers on EVERY draw and it tricks you with the option of paying for it, even though few people ever want to, much like Rhystic Study. You still get to draw all the cards you want, someone else just gets a little extra benefit for it. It doesn't actually harm you unless you choose to pay for it. That's why its so good, it flies under the radar. Its why people will kill a Platinum Angel or Blazing Archon on sight, but don't really care about that Ghostly Prison even though they're both keeping you from getting attacked. One has an optional work-around, its just inconvenient enough to disuade people from doing it.

IMO, Opposition Agent should have been white, and it should have fit along the same lines as Smothering Tithe. Something like, "Flash, Whenever an opponent searches their library, you may also search your library for a card, unless that opponent pays 2. If you do, put it into your hand and shuffle." This way you're just taxing your opponents' tutors, or profiting off of them yourself.

People have said it before, but Rhystic Study should ABSOLUTELY have been a white card, and this would have been a cool way to do it, much like how Beast Within breaks green's color pie, so it was colorshifted to white in Modern Horizons as Generous Gift.

hejtmane on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

2 months ago

Technically Maralen of the Mornsong been able to do a lockout in rakdos for ever with Stranglehold but this just makes it easier in mono black

firrlo on Emry, Lurker of the Loch cEDH

2 months ago

jackiscool231

They synergize with Brainstorm and Hedron Crab. If your meta has a lot of Blood Moon or Stranglehold, then I would cut the fetches + the crab and replace them with basics :)

Peoni on Lord Windgrace CEDH Land Hate

4 months ago

I recommend running more stax/hate pieces in this deck. Cards like Null Rod, Sire Of Insanity, Stranglehold, and Trinisphere would do a lot to slow down any proactive combo players at the table and give you time to get your MLD value engine running. This deck isn't fast enough to win a race with them, so you'll need to stifle their speed significantly in order to compete with the faster decks at the table that aim to win in the first few turns.

Chrome Mox would be a nice addition. Could probably serve to replace Arcane Signet since you need your mana to be as fast as possible if you have any hope of hating out your speedier opponents before they go off. I don't know if you need an Eternal Witness in this deck, and I think you could also benefit from running some more cheap mana dorks along with a Priest of Titania rather than ramp spells like Kodama's Reach to speed up your ramp and hit your end game faster. Speaking of Titania, Titania, Protector of Argoth would be pretty strong in this deck.

Like your deck! Hope this helps. :^)

Peoni on Rampage!!!!!

4 months ago

Got it. I'm also assuming from what you're saying you want your opponents to have options in dealing with the rough board states you develop rather than just completely shutting them out of the game with stax and land destruction. I was going to recommend Boil over Choke as an upgrade, but maybe you like the more forgiving but still punishing style of your pick. I'll think some about more fair and puzzle-like picks you could put in and get back to you for sure. One card I would definitely recommend now is Stranglehold. Very good card all around, especially in red stax.

SynergyBuild on TnT Eternal Winter

5 months ago

No/very few Strangleholds in my metagame, but I'm currently running both tutors for consistency purposes, and built a better pile for Neoform.

Notion Thief and Linvala, Keeper of Silence act as strong options to sac Tymna for, or to sac for Muse. Collector Ouphe as beats the Monolith/Scepter piles many other TnT decks go for.

As is I made the deck better for these tutors, I do want to fit 2 more one-stop forks in, but don't want to cut interaction for them. Gtg test more, I'm 3-5 cards over and cutting down actually changes a lot given the density of tutors and cantrips etc.