So I have a friend who is very fond of Grave Pact. So much so that nearly every deck he builds is just a variation of the same Gravepact.deck. While I don't mind playing against it every now and then the decks are so tuned that no multiplayer game ever gets anywhere if he plays this because no one is able to keep any creatures on the board. It gets to the point where people are just not enjoying the game any more because they don't get to play their game. We tried talking to him about it but this is difficult for him due to reasons (Him not caring explicitly not being one of them, it's not that negative).
Now I could just build my next commander deck with Sigarda, Host of Herons as the commander and include Tajuru Preserver, Angel of Jubilation and Linvala, Keeper of Silence. I actually have those cards just sitting in my binder but I generally don't like hategaming like that. Do you guys ahve any tips on how to take any deck and account for the presence of Grave Pact effects without going overboard on the Grave Pact hate? I don't want to ruin all his fun either.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The secret to enjoyable Commander games is not winning first, but losing last.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
Outside of green and white, blue can run counters and bounce spells to deal with it - both of which are again stuff you should be running anyway.
Red and black have it harder, though the latter can run cards like Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament as well as various discard spells and abilities to proactively deal with it.
Don't hate on specific cards, just run more general answers.
You can also play a deck that doesn't rely on creatures. This can be a combo deck, it can be a control deck... I play Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath for monoblack control. Grave Pact doesn't bother me.
Well, I am a green mage, so my first answer is biorhythm. Unfortunately, for some reason it's banned.... I guess I'd have to say run Yeva, Nature's herald and flash in shaman of forgotten ways at the end step? Proceed to punish him (and everyone else) for having precious few to no creatures.
Lots of people skimp on answers for anything that isn't a creature - that's why I like enchantments so much. They're probably the least planned for permanent in Magic. It's like when people are deckbuilding, they're assuming their opponents are the sort of players the RC targets - Timmies who start their mana curve at 5cmc and don't want to use or face answers. Personally, creatures are the permanents I stock removal for the least - they're the easiest things to nullify by doing business as usual in a game of Magic. That's actually what steered me from mono black or mono red over time - it was the enchantments that were the most infuriating. I remember a few games where I had to bend over and take it turn after turn because neither tutor nor Spine of Ish Sah was to be drawn.
Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace can be other options as well...Grave Pact requires creatures hitting the graveyard, so if they never do, GP is a dead card. But that goes against your desire to avoid excessive hate.
While the aforementioned cards are great, I would look more to exile effects for enchantments, like Return to Dust, Deicide or Erase. If you can load up on exile effects for creatures too(not overload...as BaronCappucino says, creatures are the easiest to deal with), you can also prevent GP from going off.
Alternatively, if you do want a creature-heavy build, mass token swarms do tend to be a problem for Pact decks to keep up with as they have to dedicate resources to the pact, the sac outlet and whatever creatures they're throwing into the pact, while you could just play an Army-In-A-Can and weather out a few of the pact triggers just off the back of that one.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras. Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power. Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza. Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall. Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana. Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die. Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet will create a token when he sacs one of his guys before the gravepact trigger giving you a guy to feed to it. So long as hes not saccing tokens himself that is.
Edit: Actually thats wrong, I'm sorry. But that makes it even better. It completely shuts his engine off.
Yeah I don't like hateplay so props to you for being the bigger guy
That said as others have said, enchantment removal should become more of a focus if this guy is folding you in half with Pact this often. Consider the amount of impact. Consider how much impact typical creatures have in EDH (Baleful Strix, Sun Titan) and similarly costed enchantments/artifacts (Skullclamp, Doubling Season) and you'll notice that typically noncreature permanents have waaaaay more impact on the game than creatures do, so if you're losing the arm wrestle of board control then it's probably because you're not handling those noncreatures. I typically run just as much Naturalize type stuff as I do creature kill spells.
Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace can be other options as well...Grave Pact requires creatures hitting the graveyard, so if they never do, GP is a dead card. But that goes against your desire to avoid excessive hate.
Note that Leyline (and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet) won't exile tokens, while Grave Pact will trigger off tokens dying. Rest in Peace will shut down Grave Pact completely, though.
Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace can be other options as well...Grave Pact requires creatures hitting the graveyard, so if they never do, GP is a dead card. But that goes against your desire to avoid excessive hate.
Note that Leyline (and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet) won't exile tokens, while Grave Pact will trigger off tokens dying. Rest in Peace will shut down Grave Pact completely, though.
Hhhhmmm...interesting distinction there that I missed on Leyline. Thanks for the highlight.
Sigarda, Host of Herons is my original commander deck. She comes out for all the Meren of Clan Nel Toth decks that pop up at my local shops. (They've died down, but for awhile I played against atleast one of them.) Nothing like watching the rest of the table loss creatures and go...naah I am exempt from this! She stonecold shuts their nonsense down. Most of them have little to no means to counter her given she's hexproof. They're just so effective at the sac outlet game they haven't bothered including any other means of stopping stuff. They tend to be light on flyers too, so Sigarda would often commander damage them to death to get rid of them.
The worst is games where I had a gravepact deck of my own.(I had a black white deck for a bit, then a Azban deck before I broke it up into two different decks.) People with creature heavy decks had no way of keeping their stuff alive as it would just chain death between us.
Playing a less creature focused deck is definitely a good way get around it. In my group hug/pillowfort deck, I generally have few creatures and am just trying prevent people from attacking me till I can win the game.If they are all dying just means I have less I need to stop from killing me.
Playing a bunch of tokens or cards like Reassembling Skeleton (and persist/undying) is also an option. Just sac the tokens whenever Pact is triggered.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Having played a reasonably nasty Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck for a while, I can tell you that those decks really struggle against tokens, primarily. Even at it's most heavily tuned, my Savra struggled to keep up with swarms, and I ran a lot of sacrifice, destroy effects, sweepers, reanimation. It is the strategy to go for, there's really just not a lot attrition decks can do to keep a swarm down. Unless it's Ghave attrition, because that guy goes ifinite stupid quick.
Otherwise, enchantment destruction is a good option - mono green has a whole lot of option there - and once they're gone, outside of white there are very few options to retrieve enchantments from the graveyard.
Yep. The really nasty Grave Pact decks use tokens. It's a staple in my black token/aggro decks where it ensures at least parity, barring the two cards that completely blank it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Now I could just build my next commander deck with Sigarda, Host of Herons as the commander and include Tajuru Preserver, Angel of Jubilation and Linvala, Keeper of Silence. I actually have those cards just sitting in my binder but I generally don't like hategaming like that. Do you guys ahve any tips on how to take any deck and account for the presence of Grave Pact effects without going overboard on the Grave Pact hate? I don't want to ruin all his fun either.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
Outside of green and white, blue can run counters and bounce spells to deal with it - both of which are again stuff you should be running anyway.
Red and black have it harder, though the latter can run cards like Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament as well as various discard spells and abilities to proactively deal with it.
Don't hate on specific cards, just run more general answers.
You can also play a deck that doesn't rely on creatures. This can be a combo deck, it can be a control deck... I play Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath for monoblack control. Grave Pact doesn't bother me.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
While the aforementioned cards are great, I would look more to exile effects for enchantments, like Return to Dust, Deicide or Erase. If you can load up on exile effects for creatures too(not overload...as BaronCappucino says, creatures are the easiest to deal with), you can also prevent GP from going off.
EDH decks: 1. RGWMayael's Big BeatsRETIRED!
2. BUWMerieke Ri Berit and the 40 Thieves
3. URNiv's Wheeling and Dealing!
4. BURThe Walking Dead
5. GWSisay's Legends of Tomorrow
6. RWBRise of Markov
7. GElvez and stuffz(W)
8. RCrush your enemies(W)
9. BSign right here...(W)
Edit: Actually thats wrong, I'm sorry. But that makes it even better. It completely shuts his engine off.
That said as others have said, enchantment removal should become more of a focus if this guy is folding you in half with Pact this often. Consider the amount of impact. Consider how much impact typical creatures have in EDH (Baleful Strix, Sun Titan) and similarly costed enchantments/artifacts (Skullclamp, Doubling Season) and you'll notice that typically noncreature permanents have waaaaay more impact on the game than creatures do, so if you're losing the arm wrestle of board control then it's probably because you're not handling those noncreatures. I typically run just as much Naturalize type stuff as I do creature kill spells.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Hhhhmmm...interesting distinction there that I missed on Leyline. Thanks for the highlight.
EDH decks: 1. RGWMayael's Big BeatsRETIRED!
2. BUWMerieke Ri Berit and the 40 Thieves
3. URNiv's Wheeling and Dealing!
4. BURThe Walking Dead
5. GWSisay's Legends of Tomorrow
6. RWBRise of Markov
7. GElvez and stuffz(W)
8. RCrush your enemies(W)
9. BSign right here...(W)
The worst is games where I had a gravepact deck of my own.(I had a black white deck for a bit, then a Azban deck before I broke it up into two different decks.) People with creature heavy decks had no way of keeping their stuff alive as it would just chain death between us.
Playing a less creature focused deck is definitely a good way get around it. In my group hug/pillowfort deck, I generally have few creatures and am just trying prevent people from attacking me till I can win the game.If they are all dying just means I have less I need to stop from killing me.
On phasing:
Otherwise, enchantment destruction is a good option - mono green has a whole lot of option there - and once they're gone, outside of white there are very few options to retrieve enchantments from the graveyard.
On phasing: