Friday, July 12, 2013

Busting Dark Depths

Dark Depths.

Dark DepthsToken - Coldsnap - Marit Lage 20/20

I've been cramming this card into my Commander decks for a while, longing to swing for lethal damage with a sweet, sweet 20/20 flying, indestructible, spaghetti monster.

There is a combo with Vampire Hexmage to remove all of the counters at once. Which is great if you are running black. Of course, I'm playing up a demons theme in black, so vampire creatures are out. I moved Dark Depths over to my blue deck (no Hexmage there). In that deck, I was trying to power out the token the hard way: one quarter at a time. No, wait, that's something else. I was stacking cards like Caged Sun to pump mana into the Depths. It's still 30 mana to unleash the beast, but for those games where things stall out it does act a bit like a pressure cooker as I remove the counters one... by... one.

Vampire HexmageCaged Sun

If you haven't read it yet, there are some "big" rule changes coming with M14. One of the implications of these changes is that there is a new combo to bust Dark Depths without paying all that pesky mana. The combo is with Thespian's Stage. You can read more about this combo at MTGSalvation, but the way it works is that you use your Thespian's Stage to copy the Dark Depths that is already in play. When you do this, under the new rules, you can choose which copy of the legendary land to keep and which to sacrifice. Keep the Stage as a copy, which conveniently has no counters on it. The counters are placed on the Dark Depths when it "enters the battlefield." The copy never does, so it gets no counters. Bingo-bango. Spaghetti monster.

Thespian's StageExpedition Map

Several cool things are happening here. Both lands are colorless, so you can cram this combo into your Commander deck no matter who is sitting in the Command Zone. The Thespian's Stage is a good land in many cases anyway, so the Dark Depths is the only dead card in the combo. Oh, and lands can't be countered. Throw in Expedition Map to help you get one of the pieces and you are off to the filthy, filthy races.

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