Surgical Extraction

Instant

({BP} can be paid with either {B} or 2 life.)

Choose target card in a graveyard other than a basic land card. Search its owner's graveyard, hand and library for all cards with the same name as that card and exile them. Then that player shuffles their library.

Combos

• Distress + Surgical Extraction
• Despise + Surgical Extraction

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
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
PreDH	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

zapyourtumor on Mono Blue Delver (Tempo)

1 month ago

Its nice to see old cards being played but sadly there is a lot of outdated tech here.

Consider is better than Opt with snaps

Not running at least 3 CS is probably trolling

Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student  ^Flip is an option, although it definitely slower than delver. So is murktide.

For a tempo deck, you want cheap and efficient interaction, which 3 cryptic notably is not. Probably need 1 mana counters like Spell Snare Spell Pierce Stern Scolding in some split between main and side. Scolding in particular is usually sideboard material however since monoblue has garbage removal its probably good to mainboard 1-2 copies.

Fading Hope is probably? better than snag although I have a soft spot for snag.

I recommend some Subtlety and more FoNs over shoal. And probably extra fons in the side too.

The only advantage of monoblue over izzet or dimir is that Harbinger of the Seas becomes better so I'd put at least 2 in the side. And running fetches for deck thinning is not worth the 1 life.

Probably want more utility lands like Sink into Stupor  ^Flip, Otawara, Soaring City, Castle Vantress. The mdfc lands also pitch to your pitch spells.

What exactly are you siding in Commandeer against? Same with redirect, clique and shackles. And you have zero grave hate in the sideboard. In monoblue you don't have many options, so something like Soul-Guide Lantern, Surgical Extraction, Grafdigger's Cage. the first two are probably better. Hurkyl's Recall is ok vs affinity. Dress Down is good against several decks right now. I have no idea what monoblue should run vs energy and similar decks, there may not be anything better than Engineered Explosives or Ratchet Bomb. Maybe titi is good enough if you can turbo flip it.

Overall a lot of suggestions but I think in general I'd go something like this for the maindeck:

-4 opt -3 cryptic -1 redirect -4 vapor snag -1 disrupting shoal -1 snapcaster mage

+4 consider +2 counterspell +2 fading hope +1 spell snare +2 stern scolding +1 spell pierce +1 force of negation +1 subtlety

-6 fetches

+1 otawara +2 sink into stupor +1 castle vantress +2 island

TheVectornaut on Monocolor hell

2 months ago

Cool to see this combo actually being tried out. Depending on the local modern meta, I could see this struggling with both speed and consistency. And if you're worried about wincons getting countered, I'd also be worried about the combo being disrupted. Something like Vexing Shusher could help get past countermagic, but it doesn't solve the more pressing issue of post-sideboard hate. Liquimetal Coating has some redundancy with Myr Landshaper but Splinter does not. A single Disruptor Flute, Ancient Vendetta, or more likely a Thoughtseize into Surgical Extraction could suddenly make things pretty tough. I think the deck is also likely to struggle against creature threats, especially when you haven't resolved a Liquimetal Coating. If you're willing to splash into black, I think Tear Asunder is better than Shattering Blow while having the option to kick and remove creatures and planeswalkers in a pinch. And while I know you'd prefer to exile over destroying, Assassin's Trophy is also very flexible without Coating. You might even be able to bait an opponent into searching for a basic to Splinter in cases where they don't already have one. Path to Exile is similar if you prefer white. Adding more colors would additionally justify running more shocks or other 2+ land type duals of different colors, something which would allow you to use fetches stolen by Oblivion Sower more reliably. Staying in red, there's still Abrade, Untimely Malfunction, Brotherhood's End, Explosive Derailment, and Overwhelming Surge as options. A final card that i think might fit here is Wrenn and Six. It's just such a nuisance in Gruul decks, keeps you on curve with a single fetchland, can get back Buried Ruin to keep your artifacts online, and the ultimate can even let you Splinter repeatedly if the game goes long. As for sideboard options, that will always depend on what you're actually facing. Still, I'd probably focus a little more than normal on matchups with decks that run few basics or few lands altogether. As an example, Leyline of the Void against manaless dredge or Blood Moon against amulet titan. If you're playing against refined versions of decks like that, I think it's still gonna be tough, but you gotta do what you gotta do for the sake of the janky combos!

legendofa on Grrr

4 months ago

What's the intent of Wall of Vines and Corpse Blockade? I know that having a direct win condition isn't the main priority of this deck, but I strongly recommend putting one in anyway. If you're trying to be the last one standing in free-for-all matches, you can't always rely on your opponents to 100% cooperate. The defenders are less proactive than other cards here.

Next thought is that the Liquimetal Coating + Splinter is cute, but the Coatings have nothing to do without the Splinters. This can be switched out for some other control options, or if you want to keep the style points, use Glissa Sunseeker. There's probably enough deck removal as-is.

I'm a big fan of discard, so I'm going to suggest the 1-mana options there. Anything from Duress to Inquisition of Kozilek to Thoughtseize will be a good turn 1 option. Right now, your 1-drops are all either reactive or passive, and this deck wants to start shredding fast, not wait for the opponent to build up resources.

Normally, I'd suggest Abrupt Decay here for general-use removal, but it sounds like your group leans toward the higher end of the mana curve. Assassin's Trophy is a similar option, if you can deal with helping your opponent ramp.

I'm a little more cautious about this next suggestion, since it's going to be very gimmicky, but a copy of Chancellor of the Spires can kickstart your Surgical Extractions and Extirpates.

Ogrecorps on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

4 months ago

UPDATE: VICTORY!!

Here's the deck I used (warning, it is not great and I'm open to suggestions to improve it as a more general-purpose meme deck that strips out important things and leaves someone else to actually kill people in free-for-all format.) https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/18-06-25-SkD-grrr/?cb=1750236034

The story: 3 players, me with the meme deck, work friend with the "you cannot lose the game" mystery deck, and a third with a deck specifically filled with legendaries of as many types as he can make work.

My starting hand had Leyline of the Void and I kicked off hostilities with Bitter Ordeal and got to peruse through the "cannot lose" deck to see how it works. Key cards found: Herald of Eternal Dawn, Negate, Three Steps Ahead, Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, Virtue of Persistence. I took out one of the 4 Heralds. The legendaries deck built up nicely with about 6 or 7 big creatures with deathtouch (All-Out Assault) and flying and vigilance and lifelink and other such nonsense. This player normally likes to be fair (i.e. spread the damage around, not pick on anyone) when he feels like he's winning so I had to warn him off with the strongest arguments I could that I was absolutely not a threat to him, that I had built the deck specifically to counter the other player. Cannot Lose had no creatures out so Legendaries swung at him fully with enough to put him to -9 life. Looked like it was over already and then pop! Cannot Lose flashed out Herald of Eternal Dawn before combat damage was dealt, keeping him alive despite negative life.

Cannot Lose then quickly got out two lecture halls from Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, giving the herald and both lecture halls hexproof. Around here I realized a major weakness in my deck: it largely has to target something in the opponent's graveyard, making Leyline of the Void super not helpful. Happily, Cannot Lose Get Lostd it. Because nothing much was going to graveyards that I wanted to strip out, I built up a little supply of Extirpate and Surgical Extraction - this will be important later... Legendaries took about 6 turns and smashed Cannot Lose to about -30 life while enjoying all the lifelink that gave him.

It was at this point that Cannot Lose messaged me privately to say that he'd won, it was just going to take an hour. The next turn, he used Loran's Escape on his Herald and then used one of his Restricted Offices for a boardwipe. My defenses being so pathetic, were fine. Legendaries, however, got cleaned out, 7 or 8 big beasts in the graveyard... This left Cannot Lose as the only one on the table with any attacking power and a pair of Fountainports to slowly grow an army of fish with.

Somewhere in the excitement I'd stripped out all of his Get Lost, and Stock Up. I knew from searching his hand that he had a Negate still ready for something that might kill his Herald, the only thing keeping him alive. Then came the exchange I'm going to be hearing about all day today at work from Cannot Lose, the part where he's kicking himself for doing what he did: Legendaries brought out a planeswalker; Cannot Lose used Three Steps Ahead to counter it, putting a copy of one of his 2 counter spells in his graveyard. I targeted it with Surgical Extraction. He Negated. I surgical extracted his Three Steps and then Extirpated his Negate, successfully exiling all of his counterspells! He has already told me that he shouldn't have countered the planeswalker, that he should have just used fish from Fountainport to neutralize it.

And then Legendaries Ruinous Ultimatumd. Herald, hexproofs, and my two Wall of Vines all gone! Cannot Lose was at -30 something life and evaporated in a long silence followed by a drawn out frustrated groan. He'd nearly fought his way back and if only he could have had another Herald in hand to flash out or I hadn't stripped out his counterspells... He was also intimately familiar with Legendaries' deck because the two of them worked on it closely together so knew exactly how little strength he had left after all of those creatures got wiped with no serious options for bringing any back. Either way though, I still had 3 Sudden Spoilings in my library somewhere so chances were decent I'd get him killed for being in negative life sooner or later.

Thus began the long, slow final phase of the battle wherein I had only defensive creatures, and Legendaries had 40-something life but only one or two offensive options left in his deck which was down to about 27 cards to my 35ish. I used Liquimetal Coating and Splinter on one of his Plains, a generally useless move and one I probably should have saved for an actual threat but I was just happy Cannot Lose had lose'd. The end came when I fired off a kicked Sadistic Sacrament, ensuring that there wasn't going to be anything left to hurt me. Before I searched his deck, however, Legendaries capitulated and we called it there, official cause of death: inevitable milling out.

wallisface on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

4 months ago

I mean, the guys deck can't be particularly good or it would have had some form of meta recognition by now - a 70% win rate would be absurdly high.

In any case, it should be trivial to beat whatever he's planning:

• Counterspells do nothing to stop board wipes like Supreme Verdict

• Graveyard hate in modern is super easy to come by and extremely trivial to include. Relic of Progenitus is perfectly main-boardable, and if you're especially worried about his graveyard shenanigans, there's Dauthi Voidwalker, Leyline of the Void, Surgical Extraction, etc. There's also Extirpate which he can neither counter nor respond to.

• I'm not buying the statement that his 2 card combo will prevent sacrifice, unless he's referring to targeted-sacrifice, and is planning on granting himself hexproof. In any case Sheoldred's Edict and Flare of Malice are incredibly hard to prevent happening.

• you could just ignore whatever nonsense he's doing entirely and perform a combo win that doesn't require interacting with him at all, aka something with Thassa's OracleGC

Overall though, this "combo" sounds a lot like a house-of-playing-cards... in that it's going to collapse at the smallest hurdle. I imagine it's not going to be particularly fast, so if you're playing any aggro or combo deck with even adequate speed you should out-race him. And with the amount of information he's given you, it should be trivial to disrupt the pieces he needs to do anything if you're playing control. If you're playing midrange there's a change he can get setup before you can do your thing, but if that's the case the above suggestions should stop him from doing anything.

If price is truly no limit and you're really wanting to crush his dreams then just pick any current modern-competitive deck at complete-random and I'm sure you'll come out on top

DreadKhan on Legacy Mono Black Reanimator 04-02-2025

5 months ago

I've always loved Reanimator in Legacy, it's crazy to see how much it's changed over the years! We've come a long way from Deep Spawn! It's cool that Animate Dead still makes the cut.

A lot of decks like this sneak in a Children of Korlis to recoop all life already paid to Griselbrand (thus letting you draw that much over again). FWIW I think Children would make Borborygmos Enraged a better card since Children can help you draw your entire deck, potentially letting you win on your first turn (if you're lucky enough).

I think there wouldn't be much opportunity cost to throwing in a single Scrubland (and some Fetches to find it), but that's a huge budget jump, but if you want to play at tournaments I think Children are a really high ceiling include potentially. That said I'd include Children even if you don't have any lands able to cast them, they're a great reanimation target in my experience.

I think this is an efficient and threatening deck; being able to switch to Discard vs opposing combo decks seems pretty sweet. I could see Surgical Extraction in your sideboard, not sure how many would make sense, maybe x2. I'm a lot less sure about this, but maybe you should add x1 Witherbloom Apprentice from your Maybeboard, even x1 with x4 Entomb should be enough to get by.

CommanderNeyo on Bob's Dadrock 8 Rack

6 months ago

I personally love Surgical Extraction in decks like this - if they have two of the same card in their hand, you can discard one through Thoughtseize effects and the grab the second for 2 life with Surgical - makes for a powerful turn 1.

It also works great if playing against combo decks like Goblin Charbelcher

Balaam__ on Uren8

7 months ago

Cursory thoughts

I like what you’re going for, and the twin Dragonstorm cards are really great choices with repeated value. Ramp looks alright too.

My main concern is the average cost of the truly useful spells is very high. If Breaching Dragonstorm, for instance, gets countered (or worse yet falls under surgeon’s knife,) that’s a major blow to the deck’s core functionality. It’ll be quite awhile before you amass enough mana to hardcast anything huge, and I don’t see anything in the way of removal to help you stay afloat. You’re going to be racing to ramp out and at that point it’s 50/50 if you’ll make it in time.

I think it might be worth considering reining in your draconian army in favor of some spot removal—just in case.