Ill-Gotten Gains MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Ill-Gotten Gains provides a unique form of card advantage by allowing players to recover key cards from their graveyard. This enables a player to strategically reclaim spells that will help regain or further fortify their position in the match.

Resource Acceleration: While Ill-Gotten Gains itself does not directly generate resources, it indirectly leads to resource acceleration by allowing the recasting of cards that may accelerate mana or provide other valuable assets critical for outpacing opponents.

Instant Speed: Ill-Gotten Gains operates at sorcery speed, yet its effect can set the stage for instant speed interactions on future turns. By recouping instant speed spells from the graveyard, it strategically prepares a player for responsive play and potential game-winning interruptions.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One of Ill-Gotten Gains’ drawbacks lies in its symmetrical effect that forces each player to discard their hand. This condition can backfire, especially if your opponent can benefit from a graveyard strategy or if you’re inadvertently providing them with a fresh set of cards.

Specific Mana Cost: The casting cost requires three black mana, making it less flexible. It locks you into a heavily black-influenced mana base, which can restrict deck-building options, especially in multicolor scenarios.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a cost set at four mana, Ill-Gotten Gains asks for a significant investment for an effect that might not always be favorable, considering the current pool of cards in play. This makes it less appealing in environments where tempo and resource efficiency are crucial.

Reasons to Include Ill-Gotten Gains in Your Collection

Versatility: This powerful spell offers strategic flexibility across a variety of decks that capitalize on recursion and hand disruption. Ill-Gotten Gains can refill your hand while disrupting opponents’ carefully curated hands, working well in environments where timing and resource management are key.

Combo Potential: The card is notorious for its ability to enable combo finishes. Used alongside effects that negate the downside for you or amplify the pain for your opponents, it can create game-winning scenarios, especially in the right context of graveyard-based strategies or when paired with a well-timed discard effect.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta filled with graveyard synergy or where players often find themselves with depleted hands, Ill-Gotten Gains can turn the tide of the game. Its ability to disrupt and provide card advantage can be particularly potent against control decks that rely on maintaining specific answers to your threats.

How to beat

Confronting Ill-Gotten Gains on the battlefield is a unique challenge in Magic: The Gathering. This card requires careful strategy to counteract its ability to disrupt the state of play by forcing both players to discard their hands and reclaim only up to three cards from their graveyard. A key strategy to overcoming Ill-Gotten Gains is to minimize the value it can provide to your opponent. As it exiles itself upon resolution, graveyard interaction becomes limited, pushing players to maximize the utility of the cards they choose to retrieve.

To effectively counter Ill-Gotten Gains, consider employing graveyard hate cards to remove key pieces before your opponent has the chance to recover them. Leyline of the Void, for instance, can be a debilitating foil to your opponent’s plans, as it ensures that any card sent to the graveyard is exiled instead. Similarly, playing cards with flashback or other alternative casting methods from the graveyard can ensure that you maintain momentum no matter which cards you’re forced to discard. By limiting your opponent’s choices and maintaining a flexible game plan, you can turn the tide against Ill-Gotten Gains, making it more of a nuisance than a decisive advantage for your opponent.