Balancing Act

[ISBPathfinder]

Ok, so I was looking at a very low permanents in play style of deck and I was curious as to what level of inappropriate something like Balancing Act might feel. This deck would generally probably be somewhere of an 8+ power scale deck having a lot of interaction for opponents but its also going to win via commander damage rather than a combo or alt wincon. The goal for this type of deck would be mostly to play against some rather cutthroat decks rather than it being my casual deck but I guess the real question is how many would consider it to just be MLD even though I don't think it will ever accomplish that it will trim some lands off the top as well as make it hard to keep things other than lands if it resolves.

I was planning on going deep on some of the Lotus Vale lands and being ultimately permeant light as my boardstate might be my commander and lands within reason. If it matters I was looking at this with a Chromium, the Mutable idea.

[BlackbirdPlaysMTG]

If you play this card in relatively high power level pods, I think it won't raise many eyebrows, especially if your opponents are also playing cutthroat decks and cards, and able to respond to shenanigans like this. I ran a somewhat similar card (Natural Balance) in a decently strong Titania, Protector of Argoth list and that was never a problem.

[pokken]

I think most casual people would flip the hell out if you got 2 lands and nothing else and cast Balancing Act :D

If it's against more aggressive cutthroat players I doubt they give a crap since they should be expecting to defend against counterspell-only questions.

basically for me, this is a deck for pods playing Thassa's Oracle

[yeti1069]

I think it just becomes unplayable if you are intending to come out ahead on anything. I can see wanting to have your commander out, then use this to cut the legs out from everyone else, but at a higher power table, opponents may be running fewer creatures anyway, or may have sac outlets--if they clear their board in response, you lose whatever you wanted to keep. Are you going 0 on nonland permanents across the board? Is there a reason to run this over Cataclysm? If you're running the Lotus lands, you are still likely 3 vs 1 on mana, and it achieves almost the same goal for other permanents--it won't get rid of the lone enchantment or planeswalker (or battle?) a player has, but Balancing Act often won't hit those either, unless you're always at 0 for those.

[Ruiner]

This brings back memories of the old extended deck that would run a bunch of lands that sacrifice for mana to play out Balancing Act + Terravore. I've thought about porting that concept over to commander before.

I think Balancing Act, if you can leverage it well, is a great game closing spell. Cripple everyone else and then you are the only one with a board state. Combos nicely with Teferi's Protection as well.

[illakunsaa]

Ordered myself a copy. I run several turbo fog builds and I mostly have only lands so Balancing Act seems like a good card to play.

[3drinks]

Man, back in the MTGSally days I had this in Kaalia while I wished for the OG Balance to be unbanned (even bought a 4ED copy to hope) and this card...well, it does what it says on the tin but it really................doesn't actually do what we need it to do. The main issue is it doesn't ever hit what you need it to hit and that is disastrous for a wipe because when you need to wipe, you need to hit the offending problem card(s). And much as I wanted to believe in Balancing Act, it just fails at that job.

Best of luck to you, but I suspect this is not going to be the card you imagine this card to be.

[Serenade]

I want to use it in Carmen Cruel Skymarcher so bad.

[pokken]

I want to use it in Carmen Cruel Skymarcher so bad.

man, what a neat card. I just...want to play fetchlands. :D