This weekend, over 100 players from across the world began battling for glory, cash prizes, and seats on the Pro Tour at MTG Arena Championship 11. Showcasing a rather diverse Standard environment and highly competitive games, this event has been a fantastic one to watch.
During day one of the Arena Championship, one unique play garnered a ton of attention from viewers. A Dimir Excruciator pilot was able to harness the power of Deadly Cover-Up, to exile an opponents basic lands in spectacular fashion.
MTG Deadly Cover-Up Meets Earthbending
Since its printing, Deadly Cover-Up has mostly appeared in small numbers in control decks here and there. At five mana, this spell is a bit clunky, and it’s upside hardly makes it an auto include. While having a board wipe double up as a Surgical Extraction effect is nice, this additional value isn’t typically at its best against go-wide creature decks where you’d want a board wipe.
Over time, however, Standard has evolved in a way where Deadly Cover-Up is an important piece of the puzzle. Within Dimir Excruciator shells, having access to a board wipe versus green creature decks like Four-Color Rhythm and Simic Ouroboroid is essential. Where the Collect Evidence ability really starts to become an important factor; however, is in the Mono-Green Landfall matchup.
Mono-Green Landfall, which has risen in popularity considerably, relies on repeatedly hitting land drops to get value from Landfall triggers. Utilizing cards like Sapling Nursery, this deck can easily overwhelm Dimir Excruciator’s removal suite. While this has always been a sore spot of the matchup, now a new solution to the problem has been discovered.
As showcased in the feature match of round 4 at the Arena Championship, Deadly Cover-Up is actually capable of exiling all basic Forests from the Landfall player’s library! Notably, there does need to be a Forest in the graveyard to exile with Deadly Cover-Up to start the chain, but this isn’t as difficult to accomplish as you might think.
This is because of the presence of Earthbending in Landfall shells. Once Badgermole Cub animates a Forest, that Forest is now a creature and is fair game to wipe away with Deadly Cover-Up. Notably, the Forest that gets exiled won’t even come back to play via the Earthbend return trigger, since it also gets exiled.
Extra Utility
This powerful line of play that completely messes with the Landfall deck’s plans has become a massive talking point in the community after being displayed on such a big stage. While the play has been met with some negative reactions due to the “unfun” play patterns of land denial, for the most part, players seemed excited that this powerful interaction came up in a huge high stakes event.
It’s also nice to see such a cool design get more recognition. After all, Deadly Cover-Up hardly sees much play in other Constructed formats. As for Commander, while the sorcery can completely hose Relentless Rats decks, there are stronger board wipe options in general to choose from. For Standard enjoyers, though, make sure to keep Deadly Cover-Up on your radar, and don’t be shocked if the card continues to see an uptick in usage.
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