MTG Salvation

Is anybody else having difficulty in finding a purpose or strategy around Aminatou’s -6?

I’m finding difficulty in seeing the benefit of any type of board state you’ve built being passed away...???

One thing to note is that her minus ability can get your stuff back (it blinks cards you own and returns them under your control). So while you generally want to create a state where you don't have much in play before using her -6, giving away one or two high value permanents isn't a disaster - replaying Aminatou on the same turn you ulted her gets you one back immediately (along with retriggering its etb), and she can repeat that the next turn, hopefully being protected by whatever you took with her ult.

Thanks for your input guys, I was just making sure I wasn’t the only person feeling a bit of disconnect between the listed abilities

The other thought that had occured to me was to choose a pool of chaotic cards like Teferi’s Puzzle box and brew from there...

Other usage is basically thievery.

Example 1: A Rhys the Redeemed player on your Left has a massive token army. Using your ultimate and declaring Right will give you that token army.

Example 2: An Atraxa, Praetors' Voice player has many planeswalkers on the board including Atraxa. You want it but they are effectively two seats away in either direction (4-player game), so you use Rings of Brighthearth to copy your ultimate so the effect happens twice. You are now in control of a bunch of planeswalkers and you can use each of their abilities, maybe even ultimates, immediately after.

Another usage requires some political trickery as if you been making at least one ally in the match, you can push the more favorable board controlled by one player onto them. As Aminatou can also function as a kingmaker Commander.

Thinking with Aminatou requires some thinking outside of the box.

I agree 100%.

I wasn’t totally certain, but it seemed to me like to fully realize this commander’s potential you can’t really use a “strategy”, I think the best play here is to attack strategy itself. The more chaotic you can make the game te better.

Classic stuff like tombstone stairwell and previously mentioned Teferi’s Puzzle Box

My first thought was to a)just not have any non-land permanents in play when you activate her ultimate, or b) make sure that whatever non-land permanents you have in play are the kinds of things that you want your opponent to have like a Demonic Pact that has been used three times, a Lich's Mastery while holding Cyclonic Rift in hand, a Forbidden Crypt after nuking their graveyard, or an Illusions of Grandeur with a hefty cumulative upkeep. Anything that you would happily Donate to a player would be the kinds of things I think would work best.

When I built Aminatou, I only foresaw myself using her -6 in the case where I had infinite Chain Veil activations (at which point I could surely win some other way so why do it...?)

Then I had a game where the Lord Windgrace player had amassed a huge boardstate, had eliminated most of my board and all of the third player's board, and yet I had Aminatou at 5 when I started my turn. I cast Oath of Teferi, +1'd Aminatou and then used Aminatou's ultimate to steal Windgrace's board (including Windgrace himself, who was a turn from ulting!), give Windgrade literally nothing, and I think I gave the third player a couple mana rocks or something (plus the Oath, but he had no walkers in his deck and I stole it back with Aminatou when I recast her).

I find that you’re not alone in finding difficulty in using the ult. A lot of the Aminatou players I’ve gone against have said the same thing – “don’t worry about the ult, because it sucks for me”. I will say though that I consider it a highly underrated ult.

First of all, it’s very easy to achieve. Her coming down on Turn 3 and she can ult on Turn 7 when the coast is all clear. It always seems very early in the game I’m eyeing her for the ult.

Second, it’s great as a deterrent effect. If somebody is holding a bomb like Rite of Replication, then it is tempting fate to use it as long as she is sitting at high loyalty.

And even when deliberately set up, it is not hard to play a permanent-light strategy in these colors, and then having a good chunk of spot removal instead of wipes to sculpt around the player whose stuff you want to steal. Theoretically, it could be a strong backup win-condition if somewhat reliant on an opponent not playing too much of a spell-based deck.


I will say, I have seen once or twice that I played in apprehension of a 6-loyalty Aminatou going ultimate next turn, and then for some inexplicable reason the pilot chose not to pull the trigger. A couple may have been to avoid causing an unpleasant experience, but others I suspect the pilot may have just missed it. I know one player in particular whose deck seems to have Approach of the Second Sun as the main win condition, they often pass up on the ult.

Usually what I hear is the reason they don't pull the trigger is out of just pure greed for loyalty. As the logic is if you have more loyalty than your ultimate you get to keep that planeswalker around.

Also yes her ultimate is highly underrated and not very understood. Then again Aminatou is one of the most oddball planeswalkers they have printed.

I can give you a few sequencing tricks that can help, but Aminatou’s ultimate is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

If you've got open mana and you're looking to ultimate, then playing Oath of Teferi can be really nice. You can target your best card and that will be exiled until end of turn.

If you have more than 6 loyalty then you Aminatou [-1] the Oath of Teferi and exile another card, so that you're covered for that as well.
Really that can be enough that you've stolen somebodies board and then made sure your best cards come back to you.

That's why I really like Kaya, Ghost Assassin as you can look to exile one of your creatures AND Kaya herself with Oath of Teferi in play.

Parallax Wave is the best way to make sure you leave opponents without your creatures. This is one of the more efficient ways to have a one sided creature exchange with an opponent. You can even make sure it has no counters remaining, so that when it gets passed to an opponent, it will go to graveyard on upkeep, returning all your creatures to you, making sure you have blockers for days that round.

I don't know what your deck configuration is like, but if it has enough creatures then you could look at Ghostway and Eerie Interlude.

Cyclonic Rift and Teferi's Protection can be use to protect your stuff.

Teferi's Protection would render your permanents nonexistent, you just have to cast it in response to her ultimate.

What makes this even harder is that she is Esper. White and Black are both known for getting the absolute most value out of permanents. Recursion, Reanimate, Regenerate, etc... It’s quite counter-intuitive.

A buddy of mine back in our high school days brewed up a “chaos” deck. I do believe a well thought and well chosen pool of chaos cards might be the way to play this walker.



Another direction I thought of ... teedering on insanity perhaps, is “Wall” tribal, and accompanied by a plethora of cards that accelerate everyone’s game, ... good ole Howling Mine ... for example.

... hide behind walls, keep +1-ing, then profit of someone else’s board...

???

Another poster definitely has it right. This one really requires out of the box forward thinking.

Quote from thenickelphoenix »

Another direction I thought of ... teedering on insanity perhaps, is “Wall” tribal, and accompanied by a plethora of cards that accelerate everyone’s game, ... good ole Howling Mine ... for example.

... hide behind walls, keep +1-ing, then profit of someone else’s board...

You could try and make a "Hug" deck. The trick is to somehow making sure you get 6 loyalty on Aminatou, while feeding your opponents potentially draw and mana. You want them to commit creatures to the board, but yeah at the same time not being able to just remove Aminatou whenever they want.

There are a few pillow forts cards specifically for planeswalkers in Mystic Barrier and Sphere of Safety, Baird, Steward of Argive.
Silent Arbiter, Meekstone, Crawlspace.

If you did have static draw effects, then you could look at fogging opponents attacks with; Angelsong, Darkness, Frontline Strategist, Harmless Assault, Holy Day, Kami of False Hope, Knight-Captain of Eos, Pollen Lullaby.

You can also look at "return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step" cards to mitigate handing over that permanent to an opponents;
Aetherling, Astral Slide, Argent Sphinx, Cauldron Haze, Cauldron of Souls, Eerie Interlude, Flickerform, Flickerwisp, Galepowder Mage, Ghost Council of Orzhova, Ghostway, Glimmerpoint Stag, Liberate, Long Road Home, Mistmeadow Witch, Nezahal, Primal Tide, Oath of Teferi, Otherworldly Journey, Saltskitter, Skybind, Sudden Disappearance, Venser, the Sojourner.

Some of the cards that really stand out to me to build around there are; Astral Slide, Eerie Interlude, Ghostway, Mistmeadow Witch, Skybind, Sudden Disappearance.

This actually looks like it would be a really fun "let's brew".

Thanks for the reply. I did not even realize “group hug” existed let alone that it was a used strategy. This certainly seems viable imo. Thanks for the tip.

I haven't had a chance to think this idea all the way through, but one other thing that just occurred to me would be to use something like Rings of Brighthearth to copy the ultimate ability. When the copy resolves, you can do a bunch of stuff at instant speed while the original effect is still on the stack. You could then choose the opposite direction when the original ability resolves and get all your stuff back. It's like a mini-Mindslaver that would allow you to use another player's board for a brief window of time to wreak some havoc.

I actually used her ultimate against a Markov vampire tribal and a Mimeoplasm, I prevently keep all my bombs in ny Hand and took Mimeoplasm mana ramp artifacts and some utility dudes, the Markov player give the mimeplasm player is general and some vampires, I give some ramp and nothing more, The markov player is usually very aggressive but was unable to recuperate from that blow, I finish off the Mimeoplasm player with raw card advantage, so yeah for all instances and purposes animatou's ultimate win me the game, is specially powerfull if you can deprive someone of a general which is important for his strategy.

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Teferi's Protection would render your permanents nonexistent, you just have to cast it in response to her ultimate.

And that's how you do it. Mini-Brainstorms (especially when we have two card draw doublers now) and blinking can win the game for you, but the Captain Ginyu -6 really does it if you have a convenient frog ready. Homeward Path is also fairly batrachian in appearance.

Just remember, that final ability should always be assumed to be just gravy. You're not in green, you can't Doubling Season into the ultimate. You are, however, in colors that can protect a planeswalker fairly well, between blue's counterspells, black's removal, and all three colors' ability to restrict your opponents. And like every ability, you shouldn't just use it for no reason. (One of my personal bugaboos is what I call "mindless play": "Oh, I drew a land, I'll play it." "Oh, I can fire off an ultimate? Make it so." Seriously, do not do this.)

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Teferi's Protection would render your permanents nonexistent, you just have to cast it in response to her ultimate.

You're not in green, you can't Doubling Season into the ultimate. You are, however, in colors that can protect a planeswalker fairly well, between blue's counterspells, black's removal, and all three colors' ability to restrict your opponents. And like every ability, you shouldn't just use it for no reason. (One of my personal bugaboos is what I call "mindless play": "Oh, I drew a land, I'll play it." "Oh, I can fire off an ultimate? Make it so." Seriously, do not do this.)

You have blue and black. Animate Dead your Deepglow Skate then blink with -1

Thanks for all the input and participation guys, there is a lot of useful knowledge in this thread