Bottled Cloister MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Bottled Cloister provides a unique card draw mechanic, giving you access to additional cards every turn while protecting your hand during your opponent’s turns. This leads to a significant advantage in resources that can turn the tide of the game.

Resource Acceleration: While Bottled Cloister doesn’t directly accelerate resources in traditional manners such as ramping or producing mana, it accelerates your resource availability by effectively increasing your hand size on your turn. This lets you have more options and the ability to play more spells.

Instant Speed: Though Bottled Cloister itself isn’t an instant, it synergizes well with instant speed spells by leaving your hand empty on opponents’ turns. This reduces the vulnerability to discard strategies and spot removal that often target a player’s hand, ensuring your key spells are safely drawn on your turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One downside of Bottled Cloister is its end-of-turn requirement, which compels you to exile all cards in your hand. This can be particularly detrimental if the artifact is removed during your opponent’s turn because it leads to a significant temporary card loss and can handicap your strategic options.

Specific Mana Cost: Bottled Cloister demands a commitment of four mana including generic and one from a specific category. The specific mana cost can be restrictive if your deck isn’t geared towards generating the right type of mana fluidly or if your mana base is stretched by other cards’ demands.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a cost of four mana, Bottled Cloister’s investment can be substantial compared to other cards in your deck. Although it offers a unique handing off of your cards during your turns, the initial mana cost might not align with the tempo of the game, often seeing players opting for lower-costing cards that allow for more versatile plays or immediate impact on the game state.

Reasons to Include Bottled Cloister in Your Collection

Versatility: Bottled Cloister offers a unique effect that can improve a variety of decks. Its ability to exile your hand during your opponents’ turns protects valuable cards from being discarded or plucked by Thoughtseize-like strategies. Upon your turn, you get the added bonus of extra card draw, which is always useful.

Combo Potential: This card synergizes well with effects that punish opponents when they have more cards in hand, or with strategies that require a large hand size only during your turn. It can also be used in conjunction with cards like Ensnaring Bridge, helping you to maintain a minimal hand size on opponents’ turns and then draw into options when it’s your time to act.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta full of hand disruption or where maintaining card advantage is crucial, Bottled Cloister could prove to be a valuable asset. It grants resilience against targeted discard, and ensures you have a fresh set of options every round, aligning well with slower, control-oriented playstyles.

How to beat

Bottled Cloister is a unique artifact card in MTG that removes your hand from the game during your opponent’s turns, then returns it to you and draws you an additional card at the beginning of your next turn. Beat this card by targeting the underlying vulnerability during your opponent’s turn. Ensuring you have instant-speed removal or discard effects allows you to deal with the artifact when the player’s hand is inaccessible, therefore disrupting their game plan. Abrupt Decay or Krosan Grip are excellent examples to consider, as they can’t be countered and can catch your opponent off-guard.

Another strategy involves attacking the player’s strategy during their upkeep before they retrieve their hand with Cloister. Cards like Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek played just before the upkeep can disrupt their next turn plans. Keep in mind that Bottled Cloister protects the hand only during the opposing turn, so timing your disruptive plays is crucial. With precise plays and an understanding of your opponent’s vulnerabilities, you can turn the tide against the constraints of Bottled Cloister.