MTG Salvation

Half asking for advice, half just venting frustration.

It's only been a few days since the launch of the new set in Magic Arena, and it seems like every deck I go up against has at least one of these new god cards in it. The ones that can come out as early as turn 4, have ridiculous stats and abilities, and can't even be exiled. At least when I was playing Magic Online I could ask in the notes "no God cards, please" when Theros was in Standard, and didn't lose anything when people ignored the request and I forfeited the match. I'd barely crept halfway through Silver rank in Arena, and now I'm stuck in Bronze again because I can't figure out how to get around these stupid cards.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Just from WAR, Crush Dissent, No Escape, & Kasmina's Transmutation should all work pretty well.
Killing the god then milling it works too.

Any sort of countermagic that can hits creatures, really, works against gods. Everything else depends on the god.

Pacifism Effects

Or take them for yourself with control changing effects.

the question for me is, which tips will be practical in standard so that it doesnt end in a race of gods

so every color or color combination should at least have something in the sideboad (does every color need something ? can a white aggro just out race a kefnet for example, where it is enough to answer it just once?)

Ashiok, Dream Render, Bond of Insight, or Enter the God-Eternals after using any normal removal on the god is another option.

You can deal with an opponent's WAR God in the following ways (with examples given as card tags):

- Steal it
- Counter it then exile it from the graveyard
- Bounce it then make the opponent discard it
- Put it into its owner's library then mill it (or mill it into exile)
- Make it lose its last ability then use a normal removal spell on it

Quote from SyntheticDreamer »

- Copy it

Copying it doesn't stop them from abusing it, and your Spark Double example doesn't work, because it can only copy your own creatures/walkers.

Quote from Lithl »

Quote from SyntheticDreamer »

- Copy it

Copying it doesn't stop them from abusing it, and your Spark Double example doesn't work, because it can only copy your own creatures/walkers.

I can't read. Fixed it.

Quote from SyntheticDreamer »

You can deal with an opponent's WAR God in the following ways (with examples given as card tags):

- Steal it
- Counter it then exile it from the graveyard
- Bounce it then make the opponent discard it
- Put it into its owner's library then mill it (or mill it into exile)
- Make it lose its last ability then use a normal removal spell on it

Am I the only one noticing that all of these involve blue?

Just saying.

If a new meta bubbles up to the surface that makes intense use of these Gods, were're going to see Gods decks and.... blue.

I actually managed to eliminate Oketra several times at the prerelease by No Escape and Toll of Invasion (discard works too).

If you're aggro, go faster than them before they drop them. Get their life down low enough where it doesn't even matter. Three of them don't even do anything the turn they come down anyways. Not to mention Rhonas needs a board state for it to be impactful (you're already losing if it is), and Bontu is basically clearing the board for you to attack.

I did find them quite troublesome in limited.

My solution at the time against a three colour deck was to kill it then Demolish one of his only two sources of that colour..thankfully he didn't draw another red source hehe.

One way to deal with those gods was mentioned in the release notes even. Kill it the normal way and then exile it from the graveyard while the trigger to put it into the library is on the stack. This way, the card will stay in exile, because the trigger is looking for it only in the graveyard, where it is no longer to be found. Orzhov gets playable tools for this with Consecrate // Consume and Ethereal Absolution.

This works for the exile part of the trigger, too, but cards to interact with exile with instant timing are much more scarce and niche. Pull from Eternity comes to mind.

Quote from joeyb11223 »

I did find them quite troublesome in limited.

My solution at the time against a three colour deck was to kill it then Demolish one of his only two sources of that colour..thankfully he didn't draw another red source hehe.

Props for making Demolish work. lol