We Draft the Best “Gotcha" Spells in Commander | The Command Zone 619 | MTG EDH Magic Gathering
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Show Notes:
The fantasy draft format is back and, this time, you should expect the unexpected! JLK, Jimmy, and Rachel are drafting the best “Gotcha!” spells in Commander. We’re talking about the tricks that catch your opponents totally off guard and turn the game on its head. But which of the format’s obscure surprise spells will take the top spot? And who will emerge victorious once the dust finally settles? Come find out, and you might even pick up some new tech along the way!
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:03:43 - Game Knights Live At Gen Con
00:04:39 - We Draft The Best “Gotcha” Spells
00:05:04 - What is a “Gotcha” Spell?
00:14:05 - Round 1
00:24:45 - Round 2
00:39:39 - Round 3
00:50:30 - Round 4
01:01:19 - Round 5
01:11:48 - Final Drafts
01:13:27 - No Green Cards?
01:16:00 - Honorable Mentions
01:26:15 - To The Listeners
#magicthegathering #mtg #commander #mtgcommander #edh #podcast #commandzone - เกม
When you were talking about Fury Storm, Josh talked about how you can't get salty when someone makes a copy of something you brought to the table. I had a game recently where I played my Essix, Fractal Bloom deck. One of my opponents had a non-legendary Eldrazi with annihilator-2. I made 3 copies of that creature. Oh the salt that was at the table. My reply was exactly what Josh said. "You brought this to the table... not me"
I became the archenemy in a game for stealing someone's Gray Merchant of Asphodel off the top of their deck and casting it. Somehow the other players decided that my casting such a powerful effect meant I was the biggest threat at the table, even though it didn't come from my deck. I wasn't even playing Black...
Only three copies? That player was very lucky XD
Josh: "That blue spell isn't a gotcha, it's another day at the office."
Classic JLK 😜
My favourite “gotcha” moment I had a large board state with my Ovika enigma Goliath deck, the person before me in the turn order also had a large board state and played rivers rebuke targeting me… I played bolt bend for 1 red mana and switched the target to him. Ended up casting a finisher next turn and killed the last two players 😃
Love it!
My best Gotcha moment was playing Rakdos Charm when an opponent made a wide token board and tried to kill me with Triumph of the Hordes. “How about all your infect creatures kill you instead?”
Rakdos Charm is called the „Anti-Combo-Charm“ in our Playgroup for these exact moments.
My best was rakdos charm against a Ghyrson Stark. Pinging him for +2 for each creature
I hit 124 Scute Swarms with a Rakdos Charm one time. It was glorious lol
My favorite loss was against my Kasla deck where I had all of every token and I was about to win the game and someone Rakdos Charmed me for a CRAZY amount. It was great.
I'm still waiting for rakdos charm to be the gotcha! for me when someone goes wide like that! It's the one thing that really drew me to it.
Jeskai is the ultimate Gotcha color pie. Deflecting Palm, Domineering Will, Reins of Power, Gideon’s Sacrifice, Comeuppence, Take the Bait, Illusionist’s Gambit.
commandeer, will bender, deflecting swat
Fury storm, narsets Reversal
Magnetic Theft, Mandate of Peace, Arcbond
omg the wholesome nerdery in this thread is everything. 💕
Tell me about it. We have a guy in our group that has a Jeskai deck and I swear EVERY FRICKIN' time he has some sort of combat trick or response to everything.
My favorite gotcha card is in fact a counterspell. It's called Withering Boon, and it's amazing to see people react to it, because LITERALLY NO ONE ever expects the counterspell from the mono-black deck.
I would say seedtime. It feels so good when someone opts on your turn or casts a measly blue spell and you gain a whole extra turn.
I absolutely love seedtime. It’s so narrow, but so much fun. I play it in my naya stompy deck. So when the blue player counters my haymaker, I come out of left field with 2 open mana and an extra turn spell. And then I drop another haymaker and swing out
When I first started EDH in 2013 the two meme cards in our group were seedtime and withering boon(a bad black counterspell). Good times!
I feel like the ultimate goal with these videos is to make the most JANKY commander decks using all the cards drafted. Would be a pretty interesting concept
My greatest gotcha! moment came shortly after Dr. Who released. I was the only one really in my playgroup that bought into Dr. Who (Timey Wimey). My friend was playing his Gishath deck and had an absurb number of dinos on board. I was wide open and he swung out. I got to shout, Everybody Lives! as his attack did nothing. He remembers it to this day. That game also took place on his birthday haha!
i hit my friend with that card on monday haha.. i still lost but it bought me a turn to beg and pray a little longer. bro swung at me for like over 40 damage (i had no blockers) and i was like ...i could do the funniest thing rn
My friends and I are checking legit every day to see if tickets pop up for the live show. Still hoping to get in but if not we're all doing some drafts of bloomburrow over the weekend and enjoying the food trucks!
I literally just made a video on the most interesting gotcha cards released in a long time. Return the Favor is a unique card that does things no other Magic card can do.
Saw that episode yesterday, it's my favorite trick you've covered so far. I bought 5 copies of Return the Favor for my red decks today.
It’s really just a fork/deflecting swat with a bigger cost including spree
@@gabecastillo1634Maybe there is more to it. The video he mentioned does talk about how it is the only card in all of Magic that lets you make a copy of an activated ability or triggered ability that an opponent controls. You can copy someone's card with storm, you copy the storm trigger to make a bunch of copies of that spell. You can also use it to copy a Planeswalker's ult, which is crazy.
No @@gabecastillo1634
@@digitalworldsvr7881 Thanks, I know I've seen your comments on videos for a while, on some of my earlier episodes. So for someone that's been watching them for so long, that's great to know. I really liked the episode as well. One of my favorites.
44:16 Pretty sure Aven Mindcensor is the card my play group has most gotten hosed by - myself included. 😂
That said, I was the person who introduced the card to our group.
Turning a Demonic Tutor into an Impulse is kinda hilarious tbh
Something special feeling about nabbing someones planeswalker with Word of Seizing and stealing the ult from it. "Oh you've worked so hard getting all that loyalty on it.... Mine now."
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve interrupted someone’s infinite combo with Word of Seizing.
My most recent gotcha was casting Entrapment Maneuver with a Cathars' Crusade out in response to a lethal swing. Notably they had a transformed Hollowhenge Huntmaster so no one could interact with their board to remove anything to prevent lethal.
Just last night while I had no cards in hand but open mana, I used a fetch land into Mystic Sanctuary to pull a Render Silent out of my grave to stop a Torment of Hailfire blowout. I as a player always like to build in weird defensive tech. My personal favourite is using Tower of The Magistrate to protect my Luxior, Giada's Gift voltrons from creature removal and boardwipes.
I've just built a deck with 20+ gotcha spells in it, it runs surprisingly well and makes for a super interactive game where everyone still gets to do their stuff....it just backfires sometimes.
Would love to see the list if you are willing to share!
You should make an extra turns where you can only build with your draft picks! I don’t know exactly how it would work, but it would be cool
I love Deflecting Palm so much. Deflecting Palm along with the original Narset were the cards that actually got me into Magic to begin with when my Uncle taught me how to play and handed me his old Jeskai Monk deck. Now I have my own Narset Commander deck that emulates my favorite parts of how my Uncle’s old deck played, and has my own unique inclusions to truly make it my own. The whole deck is one big Combat Trick with a ton of flexible pieces of interaction that can be used for offense and defense.
I would love to see this list sometime! Do you have a link?
@@thebrystradamus8541 This is the list for my Narset, Enlightened Exile deck:
1 Akroma's Will
1 Arcane Denial
1 Arcane Signet
1 Archmage Emeritus
1 Arena of Glory
1 Austere Command
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Azorius Signet
1 Boros Charm
1 Boros Signet
1 Brainstorm
1 Brainsurge
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Command Beacon
1 Command Tower
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Deflecting Palm
1 Demonic Ruckus
1 Detective's Phoenix
1 Elsha of the Infinite
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Fists of Flame
1 Flooded Strand
1 Frantic Search
1 Great Train Heist
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Hinata, Dawn-Crowned
3 Island
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Izzet Signet
1 Jeskai Ascendancy
1 Kykar, Wind's Fury
1 Legion Leadership // Legion Stronghold
1 Leonin Lightscribe
1 Mana Drain
1 Maze of Ith
1 Meticulous Archive
1 Monastery Mentor
3 Mountain
1 Mystic Gate
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Narset of the Ancient Way
1 Narset Transcendent
1 Narset's Reversal
1 Narset, Enlightened Exile
1 Narset, Enlightened Master
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Perilous Landscape
1 Pinnacle Monk // Mystic Peak
3 Plains
1 Pyretic Charge
1 Raugrin Triome
1 Reconnaissance
1 Reconstruct History
1 Requisition Raid
1 Return the Favor
1 Rising of the Day
1 Rugged Prairie
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Sea of Clouds
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Shorikai, Genesis Engine
1 Siege Smash
1 Sink into Stupor // Soporific Springs
1 Slickshot Show-Off
1 Smothering Tithe
1 Snap
1 Sol Ring
1 Steam Vents
1 Stella Lee, Wild Card
1 Storm-Kiln Artist
1 Stroke of Midnight
1 Sundering Eruption // Volcanic Fissure
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Take Up the Shield
1 Talisman of Conviction
1 Talisman of Creativity
1 Talisman of Progress
1 Three Steps Ahead
1 Thundering Falls
1 To Arms!
1 Trickbind
1 Triton Wavebreaker
1 Twinferno
1 Twisted Fealty
1 Unauthorized Exit
1 Vandalblast
1 Veyran, Voice of Duality
1 Whirlwind of Thought
1 Windfall
I'm a big fan of Bolt Bend as a budget/unexpected Deflecting Swat. I'm always surprised by how many decks I can reliably use it in.
Would love to see a 4th person on these so we get to dig a little deeper on the cards!!
Mercadia's Downfall is absolutely going in my Otharri deck and my Balmor deck. I can always count on Rachel to show me a card I haven't seen before and fall in love with it immediately.
I'm surprised Rachel was able to kill Jimmy with Mercadia's Downfall. Wouldn't that required him to have drawn enough lands for it to matter?
Also, shoutout to the Queen Marchesa mention at the end. Building her taught me how many effects similar to Deflecting Palm exist in Rakdos, and it gets so much better when I spend the whole game playing Group Hug to build up my opposing armies and then turn them against their owners. Not only do I have so many gotcha cards, but I work to make them even better than normal.
I am going to GenCon again this year (only missed one in the last 16-ish years) and would love to meet you guys.
Reflect Damage has always been a favorite for me. Blasphemous Act? No no, you take 200 damage
Portal Manipulator is a great new card from Clue Edition, its a callback on Portal mage but way better, it lets you redirect all attackers.
My favorite gotcha moment occurred a long time ago with one of my old play groups.
Back then everyone had at least one Voltron deck, with some people having multiple. I liked the strategy so I enjoyed it, but I noticed something concerning. Everyone was running Lightning Greaves and almost no one was running Swiftfoot Boots. It concerned me that everyone would risk their commander being killed by instant speed removal for a one mana reduction in cost. The de facto leader of that group said that it wasn't too much to worry.
Later that day we were playing a game and a situation came up where a fully equipped Voltron commander the leader was playing was about to be equipped with Lightning Greaves. He looked to me and asked me if I had the removal and I said I did. He said I'll show you how easy it is to recover and went to put the commander in the command zone when I stopped him. "Put it into your hand" I said and then revealed that my removal spell was Fumble. His face turned white and everyone laughed because it was the perfect gotcha to everything he had been lecturing me about all day.
Fumble has remained one of my favorite spells to just trip people up with to this day.
Echoing truth is my pet gacha spell
1 and a Blue
Return target nonland permanent and all permanents of the same name to their owners hand.
It's so good against token decks or just as a single target bounce. Awesome both defensively and offensively.
#1 is Mystic Reflection for me. I sac'd my 27 power Chasm Skulker to Greater Good, drew 27 cards, cast Mystic Reflection, created 26 copies of an opponent's Archon of Cruelty. All for 1 mana at instant speed with the right board state.
Mid-clip comment!
My favorite "Gotcha!" was from a few months ago.
The Beamtown Bullies, my Haakon Dimir, and two others.
He had Leveler and Eater of Days in Graveyard, obviously.
I had Chapter 2 on Founding the Third Path, with a Patriarch's Bidding in my Graveyard, I warned the table in advance of my intentions.
Chapter 3 hit, Bully player gave me Leveler in response, I exiled my Library, resolve Bidding, I choose Leviathan. He gets his own Eater of Days back and skips his next two turns.
Goblin player got Goblins and wiped out the fourth player, not worried abiut me at all because I die at Draw step.
Skip Bullies turn.
On my Upkeep, I cast Gravepurge and refill my library with the 13 creatures in my Graveyard, Draw, attack Bullies and drain out Goblin player.
Skip Bullies, I attack and win.
Two huge Gotchas from me that were so clutch in that game.
Rakdos Charm!
In another game, I exiled someone else's Graveyard, we each took 10 damage from his Syr Konrad, killing the 3rd and 4th players, then I Simic and Boros Charm my Niv-Mizzet Guildpact for +3/+3 and Double Strike and kill the Konrad player.
Both were glorious wins out of nowhere, except for the dirty feeling I felt for killing two players with Black's Autopilot Commander.
I love Force of Despair - not only having the benefit of being cast while you are tapped out but creating a tempo change for others who now need to reassess how they use their board wipes can be brilliant!
My favourite is Domineering Will, so versatile, acts as removal/protection. It can be used outside of combat if you have haste or if the creatures don't have summoning sickness. Activated abilities etc. I always find a use for it
havent see the video full but for what ive seen. Rakdos charm is amazing, exiling someone GY when they gonna make their win move with a mass revival or whatever is priceless. reflecting palm is amazing also, i got one player with it once and next day he wrote in our friends group chat "oooo no you didnt won that game, the creature was hexproof!" i knew this was coming lol, i said reflectic palm doesnt target, so doesnt matter. boom, good card. i use many of them in my queen marchesa aikido kinda deck.
I like “Slip out the back” often it is used as a protect my thing but it can also be used to phase out an important Combo creature or fog a single creature. Which is super cool for a 2 mana blue spell
I can't believe this is your first time at Gen Con! Rachel it's like 3 hours from Chicago! Anyway, I mainly sign up for Commander Pods. They're open events where they pair up pods of 4, and cost like $10 to play, but you're guaranteed to get in some games and you can win tickets to turn in for prizes. Varies in power levels so have a range of decks. Or you can just try to recruit people to create a pod and have some casual encounters. Which for you guys should be no problem.
Hope to see you there! Only way it could be better is if you can drag The Professor along ;)
A favorite gotacha of mine is Ertai's Meddling, a "counterspell" that is more disruption than anything else. Love the look on opponents when I use it against their Teferi's Protection (x = 1 or course)
I'm thrilled to see time stop here. The upside to just skip somebody's turn is great, but ill never forget casting it in response to the cosmic imposter tibalt ult threatening to recast jeskas will. Guy was so certain he completely forgot to play a land that turn!
I was playing orvar against my friend's krenko. It was late in the game (turn 5) and I knew I was almost certainly going to lose on my opponent's next turn.
I had one tiny sliver of a chance, he had enough damage on board to kill me, but only just barely and I had two mana up.
But he got sloppy, he tapped krenko to create 40 goblins. I tapped my last two mana and played mystic reflections, causing his goblins to come in as copies of my mulldrifter.
He decked himself out and mystic reflection became one of my favorite cards of all time.
Big fan of a lot of these in sunforger decks. Special inclusions there: wild ricochet and debt of loyalty.
That being said, I think narsets reversal has to be my #1 pick. It hits the sweet spot of versatility by being 2 mana and yoinking an early ramp or draw spell, but retains the insane blowout potential against big spells like rift or torment. And it has one of my favorite interactions of all time with any effect that automatically forks your spells
It's pretty niche but basically whenever anyone casts something narsets can target while you have an auto fork out you can: cast narsets, copy it, redirect the copy to the narsets card, returning it to your hand and getting another copy to point at the original spell you wanted to narsets, retaining the card in your hand.
My favorite "gotcha"-spell is also my favorite Magic card of all time (and totally symmetrical you guys, I mean: C'mon it even says: "Players") is Shadow of Doubt. I love everything about this card, how its name and function align, how very, very Dimir the name, flavor text, artwork and even mana cost are etc.
My favourite is tainted strike. It gives target creature +1/+0 and infect at instant speed until end of turn. Doesnt have to be a creature you control. So if anyone does not block a big flyer or eldrazi you sneak it in there and boom one opponent less at the table.
In this Gotcha category my favorite Op Agent moment is when my friend and I used it not to screw each other over to use a mystical tutor with Op Agent to find a removal spell and keep a 3rd player from winning
My favourite would be Ezuri’s predation.
5GGG: for every creature your opponents control, you get a 4/4 beast. Each beast then fights a different one of those creatures.
I cast it on a board full of scute swarms, friend scooped. Then a second later I realized I had Elemental Bond out... Decked myself hahahaha
My best to Gotcha moments were when I won the game with 1 single mana.
First one was a guy who played a Etherium Sculptor/Divining Top combo and then attacked with an infinitely strong Glassdust Hulk. I had Sanguine Bond in play and payed 1 white for an Awe Strike. It was glorious.
Second one was when an opponent played Consecrated Sphinx into Timetwister and drew 49 cards. I happened to draw Runeflare Trap with exactly 1 red mana open. Also glorious :)
Rachel Weeks, I am such a massive fan and If I see you at Gen Con; I will cry. You are my mtg hero and my motivation to keep playing and deckbuilding, I will be frequenting the area near bloomburrow drafting.
As i tell my friends all the time, "dont mess with the gruul player!" I love gruul and despite what youd expect, i play fun gotcha spells. My pet card is Green Slime for a reason😅.
I love running Avoid Fate. Nobody expects a green counterspell, even if it’s a narrow one
Arcbond. My favorite card in magic. The floor can be low, but that ceiling is just 🤌
My dream moments with it:
-Casting it with an Ink-Treader Nephalim in play and doing 38 damage, living and winning with 1 life.
-Casting it with Fiery Emancipation in play and stopping a Gishanth deck from killing us all
-Casting it on my friend's chump-blocking Plague Stinger and killing two people with infect when I wasn't playing infect
-Casting it on a Zurgo Helmsmasher with indestructible and lifelink (from my Dihada commander) after my opponent chump blocked
A couple of the big hits I've made recently are with force of despair, ashiok's erasure against a persistent petitioner deck, and seedtime. I also like mystic reflection, sudden substitution, and commandeer
Two of my favorites are Reiterate - most of what was said with Fury Storm applies here, but you can copy different spells. And you can also cast it, then leave it in your hand for a few turns so your opponents forget about it, then cast it later on. I have a MTGO screenshot from years ago where I Reiterated someone's Villainous Wealth with X=20, and managed to put all of my opponent's libraries onto the battlefield under my control.
My second is Prismatic Strands. It prevents all damage of one color, not just combat damage, and has flashback, so you can also cast it early, then flash it back turns later when your opponents have forgotten about it.
I have mirror weave in my shorikai vehicles deck and turned all my opponents creatures into uncrewed vehicles, swung out and win that turn. Was the best magic moment I’ve ever had
My personal favorite gacha moment while playing was something akin to Inkshield, but something I prefer. My friend was hitting us with an infinite mana combo that ends with a fireball for way too much, I dropped Selfless Squire. The joy I felt when I asked him to give me exact numbers and then had a giant creature instead of him killing us and everything.
Time Stop is really good when someone whipes the board because they though you were the problem. Now they don't recover next and your going to recovery from their whipe and they wont.
I had a great gotcha moment when someone was playing sovereign and was expecting me to fog, but was okay with it because they would still get their attack triggers, but then I played Mandate of Peace
Lads you got the only ads i dont skip, great work
My Number 1 Gacha card is actually green, it's called Constant Mist.
Landfall is my favorite archetype and there was 1 time I said I would fog if any of the creatures attacked me and they forced the issue. I fogged, bought it back, and said the same thing. I was not attacked for the rest of the game and won that way.
I have a Queen Marchesa deck that plays Backlash. It’s packed full of “gotcha” cards like Delirium and Mirror Strike. Instead of goad and prevention, I go with redirect effects like Gideon’s Sacrifice and Captain’s Maneuvers.
My Extus deck has nearly every “Fork” spell in the game, ironically not including Fork. It has Twinning Staff so I can basically copy your stuff basically infinitely.
Kelsien, Licia, and Edgar Markov don’t have many of these types of spells, they just have a more unorthodox play style that people aren’t expecting.
I don't know about number one pick (or if it'd ever make it onto a list even) but a card I always regard fondly is Sublime Epiphany. Obviously it costs a lot to cast and there are plenty of situations where it's a really bad card to have in your hand but the times where I got the most out of it make it have a special place in my heart.
I'm so glad Backlash came up. I also run a Queen Marchesa deck with a handful of "Gotcha" spells in a Sunforger package and it is *SO* incredibly satisfying to grab Rakdos Charm, Deflecting Palm, Backlash or Fury Storm in the perfect moment. I find that my line in that deck is often to try to disincentivize folks from attacking me (Goad, Rattlesnakes, Ghostly Prison, etc) for most of the game and position myself as one of the final two and then judo throw my final opponent into the bin.
Personally, my best Gotcha moment is that when I played Blame Game, one opponent was out, I drew Take The Bait and my opponents teamed up against me. Then one full swinged at me and I played the card. Then I swinged in with a 25 power 25 toughness selfless squire against one (with rogues passage, fiendish duo or gisela blade of goldnight and duelist heritage) to deal 100 damage against one opponent and the rest at the other (I think it was like 30 damage). I WON!
My favorite Gotcha card is "Mana Short", cast it during combat and there goes any plans for that 2nd main. Has won me several games.
Rains of Power is the card that holds most wins by itself from my collection, followed close by Vorpal Sword.
Reins is just so versatile spell, never played a game where I had it in my hand and did not find a use for it.
My fav reason for running Narset's Reversal is for when your pod is running some cards that say "This card can't be countered", there always seems to be a fight over it which is always fun to win and the copy effect is just the cherry on top lol.
Missed my top gotcha of all time: skull crack. It makes an opponent die from commander damage even through a teferi’s protection. It un-fogs the fog. It cancels half exsanguinate. It deals the last three damage to an opponent who thought they could save their combo piece creatures and win on their turn. And it stops plansewalkers from dropping an emblem. Can’t always beats can.
I can't wait for the game knights where they have to build a deck out of there draft picks
Reins of Power has to be one of my favorite responses to a cyclonic rift.
A good green gotcha spell is weathering the storm. Sometimes gaining just that little bit of health is enough to steal a win from an agro player when playing green.
My favorite gotcha moment was playing a tainted strike in my lord of the nazgul deck when attacking with my commander against someone with flying blockers and they chose not to block and taking them out with infect due to the extra buff. I even asked “how mean should I be this combat?” And the player I attacked was like “as mean as you can”. Not knowing what was coming. 😂
I still play reverse damage in most monowhite decks (which is a powered down ink shield), ut my favorite gotcha moment was playing a mana tithe after an opponent tapped out for an overloaded cyclonic rift.
One of the funniest one: playing mono-white, there was only 3 of us left, I was archenemy at that moment and one of my opponents sent his entire board at me. Windshaper Planetar to the rescue, redirected everything at the other opponent and killed him and the proceeded to attack him, with all his creatures tapped. Glorious!
One card you didn't bring up that I've found surprisingly strong is Theoretical Duplication, of course I did have it once against a flicker deck.
I'm so happy you're doing this video.
I've just been getting into gotcha cards.
Super niche, but I'm a fan of playing Whiteout as a gotcha in Titania, Nature's Force. It often gets milled incidentally, and springs like a trap card from my graveyard to ground an army of flyers straight into the hungry arms of my elementals.
My Favourite "gotcha" card is Green Slime(3 mana 2/2 with flash and Foretel 1G, ETB: counter target activated or triggered ability of an artifact or enchantment and destroy that artifact or enchantment). "do you pay the 1 for Rhystic Study?" "no, but don't draw the card yet, i have something special". Your Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study? gone! I also saved myself a few times from my own Descent into Avernus
Oh man one of my favorites has got to be Theoretical Duplication. Was absurdly behind in a game & cast it in response to a massive Living Death, it was beautiful :,)
Until end of turn happens during the Cleanup step where no one has priority. It's different from "At the beginning of the end step" effects which have a window to be put on the stack after the end step has begun.
My favorite gotcha spell is Seedtime! Not the most consistent, and certainly depends on the power of your play group, but oh man when it works
My favourite cEDH gotcha spell is Endurance for when my opponent casts Thoracle and exiles their library.
My Jon Irenicus deck limited at Urza's block era usually wins through gotcha spells. Hatred, Reins of power, ray of command,... I love it ! I had an awesome gotcha moment with reins of power against a token deck in Amsterdam. "Wait this card does whaaat? 😮"
It’s the usual blue bs, but why does it also grant haste?
@@Marie_U_Ahner I know, right; but the point of my whole deck is giving old cards from the history of MTG to my opponents. What's more fun than grab them all back and turn it into a huge killing swing ?
PLEASE CONSIDER…. Samut, Voice of Dissent thanks to both Flash and Untap ability. People always forget the flash so I can bait out attacks, and if I’ve got 6 mana available I can bring them in to actually untap another creature on board to give an opponent a blocker. So I either earn some favor there or organize a trade between my enemies.
I’m biased though as this is my pet commander 😂
backlash is an all time favorite of mine. it's in just about every rakdos color deck i make, and it really shines in my Kelsien sunforger deck
I think it would be awesome to either draft precon decks or groups of precon decks. Personal preference would obviously be a huge factor, but so would general power level.
Delirium from mirage is my favorite gotcha card, I've played it so many times after watching someone stack counters on a big creature
Crop rotation tutpring out glacial chasm or obscuring haze are best gotcha
My favorite Gotcha is in my Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist deck. He gives me protection from salamanders, then distributes them throughout the game. Standardize makes all creatures the creature type of your choice, you swing out at me? Salamanders. You have a ton of blockers? Salamanders.
Tainted Strike and Ram Through.
My favorite gotcha cards are clone effects, especially now that we're getting more of them with interesting takes on the ability.
Other than those, I'd say Return the Favor is probably the best.
Blood of the Martyr while playing Darien, King turned my buddy's fleet of thopters into about 300 points of life and and an equal number of soldiers suddenly showed up for duty on my battlefield...there was a lot more going on but the Dark was my first set so it felt pretty good
Reins of power is one of my favorite "gotcha" cards, one use that wasn't really talked about in multiplayer is to take Player "A"s board when player "B" is attacking you to use as blockers to reduce both their board states by killing both players creatures and hopefully not taking as much damage yourself
I never thought about using something like Fury Storm to counter a counterspell by copying an opponent's counterspell when they are countering something important. That's pretty cool
Game knights with a draft stipulation beforehand sounds amazing
Welcome to Gen Con! It's a spectacle. Hope you enjoy it.
I'm so glad the first card that came to mind was the first card talked about. Say what you want about Inkshield but it can swing games back into your favor and maybe even win you the game.
I have won a few games with inkshield. It's so fun
I like Berserk and Tainted Strike a lot, Berserk can be used as removal for a problem creature, problem player and can be used on your own stuff if you just want the buff yourself, Tainted Strike is less versatile but is fairly good at outright ending a player out of nowhere. Narset's Reversal is another old favorite, it's one of the better aggressive forks, if not the best, though I have used it defensively to copy my Aetherize (it was a weird game). I'm not sure if it's quite a 'gotcha' card on it's own, but if you can use something like Emergence Zone with Thieves' Auction you will get a free swing with whatever you steal, and can flub an attack fwiw. One of the weirder cards I'd argue qualifies is Spurnmage Advocate, a card that doesn't see too much play but probably should, the real beauty of the card shows up in multiplayer, where you can give cards back to a player who has cards you either don't care about, or who'll use them in a way that's convenient for you, and you also get to blow up an attacker, all for W, and you can do it repeatedly. The Advocates are jank, but there are a few that are worth using, Sprungmage is one with a high ceiling and playable floor. If we're talking about random Red buff spells, don't forget Rites of Initiation, that's only R and can make your army huge if you've got lots of cards, I used to win with it all the time in 1v1 in high school, people would be so confident because they were about to win that they'd not even bother blocking, they just full send with their bigger board and count on the better clock, only for me to kill them by throwing away a mitt of bad cards. I'm not sure if the Mercadia one is better or not, both have their upsides.
There is no end to the irony that WotC is intimately familiar with the fact that unconditional counters shouldn't cost UU, let alone U or 1U, yet they keep printing free counters. They won't print another better Counterspell any time soon, but Narset's Reversal is totally fine, even if in many situations Reversal is a much better card. Psychology of capitalists is wack, yo.
There is a HUGE drop between Hatred and Embercleave, yet Embercleave is also a good effect, that's how good Hatred is, even at 5 honking mana.
I like Sudden Spoiling, but after trying out Mass Diminish it's hard to be as into Spoiling... it's not a true 'Gotcha' since it's not instant, but you're free to say 'Gotcha!' when you cast it targeting the guy with a bunch of big Eldrazi, now he's got 1/1s, and until YOUR next turn. Oh, and if he's not dead you can do it again (or more likely you can remove another player).
Smirking Spelljacker is sweet, 5 mana is a honk-full, but some of my favorite decks lean VERY hard into 5 drops. I also like that you could technically Proteus Staff it out in possibly the weirdest deck imaginable... the trick is giving your opponent an extra turn spell on your turn, AND giving Haste to the Spelljacker, so you end up getting infinite extra turns. I think if you pulled that off any pod would be tolerant of the fact that you're on extra turns combo with a 3/3 clock in the air.
Move to refer to 'threaten' effects as 'borrow'? The flavor is better, I'd also settle for insanity effects (that's what some of the older versions were built around). I feel like this is going to be Menace all over again, they want that type of evasion on some creatures, but they have to use Menace even when the term doesn't make sense (the creature requires help to corner, but isn't 'menacing' at all). Split Second salvages Word of Seizing, the effect is too expensive, but it's potentially pretty strong, depending on your meta, but it can easily be a terrible card if nobody leans into permanents.
I like Moment's Peace over Tangle, but both are very good.
Rite of Replication is a neat 'Gotcha' effect I think you neglected, mostly if you use it to copy an opponent's non-Legendary creature to make 5 (!) of it and take over the game. It's very 'you did this to yourself' when you make 5 copies of the opponent's best thing.
One of the more brutal gotcha's I've done was using Containment Priest to shut down a big Atla Palani turn.
Playing my kadena, Slinking Sorcerer (morph) deck, and someone cast the card that destroys everything with power 2 or greater. I had almost every morph creature out (in a 9-human pod) and cast Biomass Mutation with X=1. That was 5 years ago, and it's still talked about. And yes, I won. More than half the players conceded, leaving me with a couple to take out on my turn.
my funniest moment: Radiate targeting a Beast Within. Talk about going back to nature. No lands, nothing. Just 3/3 beasts.
Also had a game of CLB draft commander where I assassinated someone with Eldritch Pact - target player draws X and loses X life, where X is the number of cards in their graveyard. Delved too greedily and too deep… 😂
I have enjoyed playing arachnogenesis in Esix, making the tokens ulamogs (with mirror box out), avengers of zendikar, orhan frostfangs… lotta good times 😂
Shoutout to to imps mischief and seedtime, and the people that have already mentioned them. But I think “wrong turn” is so funny, especially because it’s in blue, which is a bit of an odd effect. It comes out of absolutely nowhere, completely wrecks someone’s potentially game winning attack, could give an unexpected blocker, and then can have so many different effects on the game. Like giving it to the player in last. It’s just so funny
My fav gotcha spell is Sudden Spoiling. 1 and 2 black. Target players creatures lose all abilities and now are 0/2. And this card has split second. So it ends the stack.
This is one i was looking for here. When someone's alpha strike turns into a one sided board wipe....
@@ninjafished i play in a pod with all of make everything indestructible...ie Avacyn. so it funny when a Wrath sticks.
It doesn't end the stack. More like pause it.
I love Green Slime as a gotcha card, rarely expected in my area. Nimble Obstructionist is a wonderful cycling gotcha card, no counterspelling it either