As a decades long MTG fan, one of the most useful bits of knowledge every player needs to have is a general awareness of when your opponent is most likely to ruin your carefully laid plans.
What is their preferred method of removing your creatures off the board?
How soon will it start happening?!
IS THERE EVEN ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT!?
I present to you ALL Deception Counter cards along with where along the mana curve you can expect to start experiencing their nasty effects!
NOTE: Some cards appear identical in effect but with different mana costs due to omitting additional effects unrelated to these lists. Please look up each card to see what other "surprises" they might have.
| Creature Abbreviations | Keyword Abbreviations | |
|---|---|---|
| [c]reature | (Ab)ility | (R)oar |
| [r]elic | (E)nd (o)f (T)urn | (S)tart (o)f (T)urn |
First on the docket is vanilla card removal. Deception has plenty of it but in a wide variety of forms. Whether they burn it, steal it, kill it, bury it, bounce it, turn it inside out, steal its lunch money, or send it to market to pickup groceries, Deception has an abundance of options for removing obstacles. Seriously, ~90% of all Deception cards have some kind of counter built into them while the other 10%. . . also have counters built into them. . . I'm only half joking.
The important thing to note, however, is nearly every Deception card comes with a lengthy instruction manual in its card text. I've had to omit a lot of card text from these descriptions, but common themes are increasing/decreasing card costs after pulling them somewhere and card duplication after some other effect.
For example, Orfeo's Guile and Charm are both included in the Card Advantage list, below, because Deception loves to "kick down the door" before it proceeds to "loot the room". Munchkins love Deception decks ;P
Oh, and be mindful of stat swapping! Twisting Talisman, Dionysian Drunk, and Master of Surprises feature strength/health swapping which easily demolishes 0-strength walls.
Board presence is another strong suit for Deception, as Sleep can be the entire strategy for some decks. If you noticed the removal cards (Demolitions Expert, Darkdream Hex, Dream Stalker), I try to limit the Removal lists to cards that have (near) immediate effects. These forms of removal on require one other step (Sleep/Order) before the card play becomes lethal.
There are a few instances of Burn and Deadly, but the main mechanics to watch for are Sleep, Order and Hidden. I don't include Hidden on this list, but think of Order and Hidden as Deception's version of Protect and Ward. They achieve roughly the same effect—damage/targeting immunity—but with interactions unique to their domain.
Before moving on, take a moment to compare the cost distribution of Card Removal and Board Control. Removal sees a major uptick at 6 mana when multiple forms of board clearing become available while Board Control drops off after 3 mana if Sleep isn't a primary focus of the deck.
Perhaps the biggest ball of yarn to untangle for Deception is the myriad ways it likes to steal answers during a test. Unless you've built your deck specifically for obtaining (and maintaining) card advantage, Deception will usually have more cards to work with at all times. The Thievery power can provide an endless supply of 1-cost cards from your domain while their actual cards bury, front-run, or outright steal your cards.
Here are the most common mechanics you'll run into:
- Shuffling cards back into your deck.
- Copying the top card of your deck (and possibly topdecking it against you!)
- Copying cards from your deck.
- Copying cards from your domain.
- Filling your hand/deck with "junk" (if they know what they're doing).
- Stealing cards from the board/your hand.
These shenanigans are consistently available at every mana cost, but you won't see multi-card duplication until 4 mana with Pickpocket. This might seem incredibly imbalanced, but there are a few mechanics that prevent this from becoming impossible to counteract:
First, if they fill their hand with too many cards, they'll mill their deck each turn until there's room for more cards in their hand. This can become a major setback if their continuous pillaging turns up duds they can't or don't want to use. For example: Lost In The Depths is a 1-cost Magic Spell that requires targeting a creature in order to obliterate all cards in your deck with the same cost before drawing one card. That could easily backfire if the Deception player doesn't have cost gaps like a Magic player might have in order to run this card in their deck.
Second, the randomness of copying cards isn't always efficient. Using mana casting a card just to play the copied card is wasteful if it was a card you could have simply included in your deck to begin with. There's a careful balance required, and Deception players are giving up efficiency for mass chaos when they introduce multiple forms of card duplication.
That's all for now, but do share in the comments below if you've discovered other strong combos or plays worth learning or being prepared for!
~ Ent
Counter Lists for Each God:
DEATH — Card Removal, Board Control
LIGHT —Card Removal, Board Control
MAGIC — Card Removal, Board Control, Mana Ramp
NATURE — Card Removal, Board Control, Card Advantage
WAR — Card Removal, Blitz, Creature Ramp