Bargain Bin Trolling

My cousins and I usually play Magic when they come over for our family lunch on Sunday. Last Sunday, my cousin brought his Lim-Dûl the Necromancer EDH deck, so we decided to give it a spin. I was using Thraximundar, while my other cousin was using Rafiq of the Many.

While at first glance the deck didn’t seem to hold a candle against Rafiq’s aggression and removal or Thrax’s across-the-board control, my cousin began to drop a some cards that are likely to be found in your FLGS’s “reject rare” bin. One of them was this:

Descent into Madness is often derided as one of those rares only Johnnies could love. It’s slow to act, and probably won’t impact the board significantly before it gets Naturalized or O-Ringed.  It would likely not be worth much in a 60-card deck, let alone in the highly aggressive standard meta.

EDH, however, is a different story. The format has the one thing this card needs to become devastating: Time. Due to EDH’s much slower pace, it is likely your Descent into Madness will rack up 4 or more counters (ours hit 5) before your opponents can do anything about it. That’s certainly what happened to us.

After a well-timed Wit’s End, my cousin played Descent into Madness and proceeded to obliterate our boards. Thankfully I had Thrax in play and enough lands to stall before Thrax himself was swallowed up by the black hole. So yes, my cousin made a combo off two much-loathed cards and almost killed me. It was only when the Descent exiled itself that I was able to declare what was pretty much a checkmate: Nobody else had a board, but I still had Thrax.

The second game was crazier, and won once more by bargain-bin rares.

What do Glacial Chasm, Gibbering Descent, Infernal Darkness, and Phyrexian Etchings have in common? On the surface, there’s two things: They’re all reject rares, and they all cost below $1.

There’s one other thing: They all work together.

My cousin started by playing Phyrexian Etchings, which is sort of like a postpaid Necropotence. Thanks to the card advantage, he was able to draw into  all the other cards. He then cast Infernal Darkness, locking out Rafiq’s mana and giving me a very hard time. Suddenly, all my dual lands were useless. Next, he cast Glacial Chasm, which would prevent any generals from killing him.

At this point I told him he needed an Eon Hub, because his Cumulative Upkeeps were going to kill him. He’d reduced himself to critical life just getting the combo going. He simply said

“I’ve got a solution.”

Then he played Gibbering Descent, which was the last card in his hand.

We stared at each other for a while. Rafiq was completely paralyzed, and I could only use black mana. Although I was able to break the lock thanks to a well-timed Wasteland on the Glacial Chasm,  it was frustrating while it lasted, and it was a four-card combo. The odds of that happening in EDH are astronomical, but man that is insane.