Mindslaver is a very iconic design thanks to its devastating effect. Getting to control your opponent during their turn can really let you mess with their plans. From using their removal spells on their own creatures to making poor attacks into your big blockers, there are plenty of ways to gain a significant advantage.
Over the years, this style of effect has appeared on a handful of other cards, such as Worst Fears and Emrakul, the Promised End. Now, Edge of Eternities is bringing another card that lets you control an opponent’s turn into the mix. This time, it’s an equipment with a costly activated ability.
The Dominion Bracelet
The Dominion Bracelet puts an interesting twist on the traditional Mindslaver design. This time, you need to jump through a few hoops to get your reward. You first need to have a creature in play to equip. Then, you need to pay upwards of 15 mana to exile The Dominion Bracelet at sorcery speed. This is a hassle, unless you’re playing a deck with consistent access to beefy creatures.
See, the 15-mana tax is reduced by equipped by the equipped creature’s power. So, if you can play a huge threat in a reasonable time frame, you may be able to play and equip The Dominion Bracelet on the cheap.
This is easier said than done in a Constructed setting, but in Commander, there are some decks that can utilize The Dominion Bracelet nicely. Yargle and Multani comes to mind immediately. The whole goal with this legend in the Command Zone is to play cards that take advantage of its incredible stat line, and this equipment does just that.
Otherwise, Ghalta, Primal Hunger decks seem like solid homes for The Dominion Bracelet. With this equipment attached, you’ll only need to pay two mana to take control of an opponent’s turn.
One other way to take advantage of The Dominion Bracelet is to play the card in a dedicated equipment deck. Even if you aren’t playing huge creatures, suiting them up with Blackblade Reforged and such will reduce the cost of The Dominion Bracelet’s activated ability just fine.
Equipment-themed Commander decks can naturally suffer in a multiplayer setting. Killing one person isn’t enough, and fighting through interaction from multiple players isn’t easy. The Dominion Bracelet helps with this problem, since you can attack one player for huge chunks of damage, then take control of another player’s turn and make it more likely you’ll untap with your board unhindered.
Doubling Up
One major difference between Mindslaver and The Dominion Bracelet is that The Dominion Bracelet gets exiled when you activate it. This means you can’t rebuy it with cards like Academy Ruins. However, there are still some ways to get an extra bonus out of this equipment.
The first is to pair The Dominion Bracelet with Karn, the Great Creator. Karn’s -2 ability allows you to put the equipment from exile back into your hand to use all over again. Gaining control of an opponent’s turn only makes it more likely you’ll keep Karn around and rebuy The Dominion Bracelet all over again.
In addition to Karn, any card that lets you copy activated abilities and choose new targets for the copy enables you to double up and control multiple of your opponents’ turns. Illusionist’s Bracers, for instance, pairs perfectly with The Dominion Bracelet.
For most decks, The Dominion Bracelet will be too slow and too mana hungry to maximize. However, if you put in the work in the right shell, you can get money’s worth no doubt.
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