{SCD} Equipoise

[Hermes_]

So on my pintrest feed MTG cards come up and this one made me wonder if it's worth including in any deck or it's not worth it.

[MeowZeDung]

Could be interesting if you're a creature light deck since you could phase everyone's creatures out, but the next player after you would get theirs back on their turn and could attack anyone else without dealing with blockers. That's pretty risky and political though, and entirely too narrow. Really it would just force everyone to tap out for their instant speed stuff on your upkeep, assuming you had fewer lands/artifacts than them and moved to phase out their untapped lands/rocks. I could see it in something weird like Pramikon, Sky Rampart where you essentially dictate who everyone attacks and remove blockers to clear the way for them.

[folding_music]

I've used it really recently in an Obzedat, Ghost Council control deck, only running creatures that can sacrifice themselves, especially for control purposes eg. Crypt Rats, Restoration Specialist; you can attack with Obzedat, have it "phase itself out" at the end of your turn, Equipoise clears away any possible blockers that came down last turn and gives Obzedat another unopposed attack. it was a fairly casual deck so I was also running Deadly Wanderings which makes Obzedat a way bigger life swing too.

Equipoise actually looks really customizable and complicated but I don't have four thousand IQ to work out the best way to use it :3

[Sinis]

I think it could be worth it in the same decks that like to play Ward of Bones and similar. But, Ward of Bones isn't exactly commonly played.

[pokken]

Pretty savage with dismiss into dream

[DirkGently]

Could be interesting if you're a creature light deck since you could phase everyone's creatures out,

It only phases one player's stuff out. Although it should still work pretty well for the situation you describe, except that it's more of a dog pile on one player after you open them up.

Pretty savage with dismiss into dream

Nawp, doesn't target creatures just the player (check the oracle text).

On the plus side, it does get around hexproof.

This only affecting one opponent and only phasing them out...seems hard to abuse. I guess if you have no lands for some reason, you can make it hard for the counterspell deck to do anything? If you don't have any creatures, you can blink out someone's blockers and the players to your left can pound them? I can imagine scenarios where this is good, but I can't imagine decks where I want to play this.

[pokken]

Ah, it says target land. Kinda weird. Probably good to post the oracle with this kinda card.

[Wallycaine]

You're all missing the real all star combo with this card: Sands of Time!

I think that actually was a combo back in the day, since as long as your sands sticks, nobody's permanents phase back in. But even if you get the perfect board state of no lands, no creatures, phase out your whole board permanently... you can only do it to one player at a time. And the rest are (rightly) going to view that as a threat. Maybe you could get away with it if you play your combo "fair", and only exile most creatures and excess lands, while holding your own as blockers? Still seems bad politically.

[Mookie]

In a vacuum, this looks sort of underwhelming to me. Best-case scenario (assuming you have no creatures, no artifacts, and a low enough number of lands), you can phase out all of one opponent's artifacts, creatures, and untapped lands. However, as soon as it gets to their turn, all those things will phase back in. Could be good if you're concerned about a blue player countering your stuff and want to make sure they have no mana available... but Grand Abolisher (or even just Silence) does that much more consistently. In general, I would be a bit hesitant about shutting down interaction from an opponent entirely - it lets you resolve stuff without fear... but so can everyone else at the table.

I'm also not entirely sold on the value of phasing out your opponent's creatures. It's not terrible, since you can clear out blockers... but that doesn't really matter if you don't have any creatures to attack with in the first place. Can be useful if you're just trying to get in with a flyer, I guess - if your opponent only has one or two flying blockers, it isn't hard to phase out all of them.

Still, I suspect the best use for this would be to use it diplomatically. Assuming you go immediately after the scariest player, you can phase out all their stuff and open them up to interaction from both yourself and the other players. I'm not sure I would justify running the card just on that basis, but could be interesting to test out.