Equipment are one of the worst card types in Magic: The Gathering as it does not generate value on its own. You need a creature to use them, and you need to pay additional costs past that point to even turn them on. Despite this, some equipment are so powerful that they see play anyway.
Sometimes, Equipment bypass the type’s intrinsic downsides, or can be lifted up by support cards. Other times, Equipment are simply strong enough to be playable on their own. The new Final Fantasy Holiday Bundle Equipment Fishing Gear definitely falls into this latter category.
Fishing Gear MTG
In a dedicated equipment deck, you don’t really need any tricks to make Fishing Gear good. More often than not, connecting with an opponent’s face and getting a free permanent out of it is worth the trouble of using Fishing Gear. Getting a massive creature for free is the obvious dream with Fishing Gear, and considering that you have three different opponents to choose from, your chances might be a bit better than you think. At worst, getting an extra land for five mana is a steep cost, but this card’s floor is more than worth the occasional ceiling. Even if you get a Fish, that’s an extra creature you can stack all of your equipment onto.
All of that said, you can make Fishing Gear an absolute monster if you’re willing to put in some work. Giving your equipped creature Double-Strike can let Fishing Gear steal multiple cards from your opponent’s deck. This is rather easy to achieve in a focused Equipment strategy with cards like Fireshrieker.
You can also take advantage of First Strike with Fishing Gear thanks to effects that can move equipment around at instant speed. Cards like Forge Anew and Inventory Management are often found in equip decks anyway. With Fishing Gear, provided that the first card using the equipment has First Strike, these cards can let you connect with the equipment multiple times in combat. You can also move the equipment around if your initial Fishing Gear card gets blocked.
While this helps the equipment out, these basic tactics aren’t too exciting. There are a few ways to truly unlock the power of Fishing Gear. We saved the best for last.
Manipulating Your Opponent’s Deck
If you want to make sure your Fishing Gear hits it big, there are a few different tricks you can employ. Scheming Symmetry may be the most popular individual card that does this, and it fits like a glove in Noctis, Heir Apparent decks. Just let your opponent tutor something to the top of their deck, and steal it with Fishing Gear on the same turn! The only downside to this is that you’ll usually have to play Fishing Gear after the tutor if you’re trying to catch your opponent by surprise.
A lot of cards you could use with Fishing Gear will have the same issue as Scheming Symmetry, but there are a few standout options that will force cards to the top of your opponent’s library. Memory Lapse, Submerge and Unexpectedly Absent are all interactive pieces that can remove oppoising threats, save your own cards, and have synergy with Fishing Gear. All of these cards show up in colors that are commonly associated with equipment Commanders, but could also allow Fishing Gear to see play in a more offbeat control deck.
Fishing for Cards Every Combat
If you aren’t playing cards like Slicer, Hired Muscle and Alexios, Deimos of Cosmos in your Equipment Commander decks, you’re seriously missing out. These cards make your equipment work overtime, forcing your opponents to take massive swings at one another on each of their turns.
This is also true when using Fishing Gear. Thanks to Slicer having Double-Strike, he can trigger Fishing Gear eight times per turn rotation. The lack of Trample sometimes means that Slicer will simply be chump-blocked, but this is usually resolved by another piece of protection-based Equipment that can be stacked onto Slicer.
While Alexios won’t trigger Fishing Gear as many times without a piece of Double Striking or extra combat equipment, the creature has Trample, and grows each time it moves to another player’s control. This creature essentially ensures that you’ll get some extra Fishing Gear triggers before someone deals with it.
While these are the best ways to use Fishing Gear, you can also just equip it to your opponent’s threats. You cannot do this naturally, but common equipment Commander cards like Ardenn, Intrepid Archeologist can attach Fishing Gear to your opponent’s biggest threat. Then, when they swing in, you can get Fishing Gear triggers from their creature. If you’re public enemy number one, you might even be able to get a Fishing Gear trigger off your own deck. You can use cards like Vampiric Tutor to find the nastiest threat in your deck to cheat in.
There are some instant speed ways to do this that can catch your opponent off guard. Magnetic Theft, for example, can move Fishing Gear to an opponent’s attacking creature after they’ve declared combat. Battlefield Improvisation and a few other equipment-based combat tricks can accomplish the same thing. These are, once again, already good in an equipment-based deck.
The True Power of Fishing Gear
While using Fishing Gear to its fullest potential requires some unorthodox thinking, the card will generally provide enough value to make it worth playing in your Equipment deck. As long as you have some synergy with it, Fishing Gear can easily snag some powerful permanents and run away with the game. Forcing opponents to remove cards acquired by Fishing Gear is pure card advantage, snowballing your board position quickly.
Add on that Fishing Gear really doesn’t look that threatening at first glance, and there’s a good chance this card gets ignored by the table until it’s too late. You won’t be able to play it everywhere, but I am very high on what this card can accomplish in the right deck.
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