Against the Odds: I Stole All My Opponent's Lands! (Foundations Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Foundations Standard for the return of one of my all-time favorite archetypes: Eminent Domain! If you don't know Eminent Domain, it was one of the earliest-ever Budget Magic decks way back in 2015. The idea is to steal all of your opponent's lands with cards like Annex and Confiscate, just like eminent domain allows the government to take a person's land. Well now, thanks to Foundations, we have Confiscate in Standard and some absurd support cards, which makes it possible to steal not just all of the opponent's lands but also all of their permanents for one of the funniest flawless victories possible! How can you steal all of your opponent's permanents in Foundations Standard? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Against the Odds!
Against the Odds: Eminent Domain
The Deck
The first step to stealing all of your opponent's permanents in Standard is also the most boring: ramp as much as possible. Our plan is incredibly expensive, which means we need a lot of mana to make it work. For this, we have cards like Overlord of the Hauntwoods, Heaped Harvest, and Spelunking, all of which add extra lands to the battlefield. Spelunking comes with the upside of making our lands enter untapped, which is incredibly powerful with our other ramp spells.
We've also got Map the Frontier, backed by a couple of Deserts to supercharge its power in Arid Archway and Conduit Pylons. Along with potentially ramping a ton of mana to the battlefield by grabbing multiple Arid Archways with a Spelunking on the battlefield so they enter untapped, this package also allows us to surveil consistently, which is super helpful in finding us our key combo pieces when we need them.
Now for the fun part: stealing everything! We actually have two plans for stealing all of our opponent's permanents, both revolving around Confiscate, which, for six mana, simply lets us control the permanent that it enchants. Ideally, we'll use Confiscate to steal one of our opponent's lands, which sort of makes it a weird ramp spell, although part of the aura's power is that it can steal anything, which makes it a great way to deal with whatever bomby permanent our opponent has on the battlefield.
But for our purposes, one Confiscate simply isn't enough. We need a whole bunch of Confiscates to steal all of our opponent's permanents. The first way we can do this is slowly with Extravagant Replication, which copies one of our nonland permanents on our upkeep. If we have it on the battlefield alongside Confiscate, we can copy the Confiscate each turn, slowly eating away our opponent's mana base. If we ever get two Extravagant Replications on the battlefield, we can use them to copy each other and then use our multiple copies of Extravagant Replication to copy Confiscate to steal multiple permanents each turn!
While the Extravagant Replication combo can be effective, it's also slow. Once we start stealing our opponent's stuff each turn, there's a good chance our opponent will simply scoop before we can steal everything they have. Doppelgang speeds up the process greatly. If we can ramp enough to cast a Doppelgang with X = 3 or 4, we can copy Confiscate multiple times (if we already have multiple Confiscates, a single Doppelgang might be enough to steal all of our opponent's permanents) and also Extravagant Replication. So, if we can't steal everything right away, we'll be able to copy Confiscate a bunch more times the next turn. Once the first Doppelgang resolves, we'll have a bunch of Confiscates on the battlefield. This means the second copy of Doppelgang can target just Confiscate, which should almost always be enough to steal every permanent our opponent owns!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 4-4 with the deck, giving us a 50% win rate, which is fine for an Against the Odds deck. More importantly, our plan worked! Out of our eight matches, we managed to get ourselves in a position to steal all of our opponent's permanents four times, although in a couple of those games, our opponent scooped before we could literally get all of their permanents on our side of the battlefield. Thankfully, our last opponent was a glutton for punishment and sat through us stealing literally all of their permanents two games in a row!
I have to say, I love having Confiscate in Standard. While it probably isn't all that good because the Standard meta is very prepared for enchantments at the moment, it was incredibly powerful in our deck. Even outside of using it to steal all of our opponent's permanents, we also had a game where we used it to steal a Liliana of the Veil after our opponent got it up to six counters to immediately ultimate it against our opponent. It was glorious! While it might not end up a top-tier competitive card, the enchantment does things that no other card in Standard can do, and I love it!
So, should you play Eminent Domain in Standard? Honestly, I expected our record to be worse than it was. I figured we'd lose a bunch but eventually steal all the permanents, making the losses worth it. But we actually won at a reasonable rate and did the cool thing, which is a good place for an Against the Odds deck to be. While the deck certainly isn't tier or anything like that, it is hilarious and will pick up some wins. If you like the idea of stealing everything your opponent controls, give it a shot! It's incredibly satisfying when it works!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
