What if you could just take the best possible card from an opponent’s deck every turn instead of having to cast your own spells?
It’s a fun way to play a game, for sure, but it seems completely unrealistic. Well, it comes at quite a cost, but the almighty Eternal Dominion does make it possible.
What is Eternal Dominion?
Eternal Dominion is one of the five cards from Saviors of Kamigawa, and MTG overall, that has the epic mechanic. The mechanic reads, “For the rest of the game, you can’t cast spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy this spell except for its epic ability. You may choose a new target for the copy.”
Naturally, with such a hefty drawback, the spells all do something pretty impressive, and while we may end up talking about those at some point too, we’re just going to discuss this one for now.
For ten mana, Eternal Dominion is a blue sorcery spell that allows you to “Search target opponent’s library for an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land card. Put that card onto the battlefield under your control. Then that player shuffles.” So, we’re going to be stealing permanents, so that’s fun. Let’s get into our two choices for Commanders this week.
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Eternal Braids
First up is Braids, Conjurer Adept. Braids is a four-mana blue 2/2 that reads, “At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player may put an artifact, creature, or land card from their hand onto the battlefield.” That means our play here is getting around the downside of epic by never actually casting things.
We can further support this with Quicksilver Amulet and Thran Temporal Gateway, which both allow you to put cards into play without casting them, and thus get around the issues with epic. Other than that, you can just pump your deck full of obnoxiously large creatures and artifacts to make sure you’ve always got the biggest threat out at any given time.
If you’re feeling particularly mean, you can also put Eon Hub in your deck, which makes players skip their upkeep steps and therefore Braid’s ability. Then, just make sure you have a few different ways to put it back in your hand before your turn, like using bounce spells like Chain of Vapor, or combining a card like Stern Proctor with Deadeye Navigator.
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Sisay’s Dominion
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain is a three-mana white creature with a WUBRG ability, so you can use them at the head of a five-color deck. While they don’t allow you to put things in for free, you can pay one mana of each color to find a legendary permanent in your deck and put it directly into play as long as it costs less than Sisay’s current power level.
In addition to Quicksilver Amulet and Thran Temporal Gateway as above, we’ve also got the likes of Elvish Piper and Dragon Arch to use in this deck to avoid casting stuff. It may seem odd to make this an integral part of the game plan, but it’s always good to be able to use your own great cards alongside the one’s you’re stealing.
From there, just put in legendary creatures and creature buffs or equipment cards and you’ll never have to cast a card again. Both of these decks are a lot of fun to play, so get creative. Plus, with Sisay, you can even use the other epic cards if you want to.
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