Solitary Confinement MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 2 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost3
RarityRare
TypeEnchantment

Key Takeaways

  1. Provides unparalleled defense, shielding from damage and opponent targeting, crucial for certain MTG strategies.
  2. Enchantment requires careful hand management due to its upkeep discard cost, affecting long-term strategy.
  3. Infrequently matched, making it a distinctive and potentially game-changing card in the right deck build.

Text of card

At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Solitary Confinement unless you discard a card from your hand. Skip your draw step. You can't be the target of spells or abilities. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to you.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Solitary Confinement offers a unique edge, as it essentially prevents your opponents from forcing you to discard or taking damage, which means you retain more control over your hand and resources.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly impacting mana, this enchantment ensures the cards in your hand remain undisturbed. By maintaining a full grip, you’re free to deploy your strategies without interruption, indirectly speeding up your gameplay.

Instant Speed: Although Solitary Confinement itself doesn’t operate at instant speed, its ability to be enacted each upkeep can significantly alter the pace of the game. It allows you to bypass the need for other defenses during your turn, saving instant-speed responses for critical moments.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Solitary Confinement necessitates that you discard a card during your upkeep. This can quickly deplete your hand, especially in decks not designed to manage or benefit from constant discarding.

Specific Mana Cost: The card’s casting cost requires white mana, which might restrict its inclusion to white or multicolored decks, potentially excluding it from a variety of other strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a three-mana investment to get Solitary Confinement on the field, players might find the setup cost steep, particularly when planning around the ongoing discard condition. Other protective measures or card advantage engines might be more mana-efficient options.


Reasons to Include Solitary Confinement in Your Collection

Versatility: Solitary Confinement offers a unique protective mechanism that can be a game-changer in many deck builds. It shields you from all forms of damage and makes you untargetable by opponents’ spells and abilities, integrating well with strategies that capitalize on card draw or graveyard synergy.

Combo Potential: With the ability to create lock-down situations when combined with cards that replenish your hand, Solitary Confinement can be the cornerstone of powerful combos. It excels in decks that can easily discard cards as part of their game plan, elevating its combo potential significantly.

Meta-Relevance: In metas dominated by direct damage or control decks, Solitary Confinement can provide the resilience needed to outlast opponents. It’s a card that demands an answer, and in the absence of one, it can single-handedly shift the tide of a game in your favor.


How to beat

Solitary Confinement is a unique enchantment in MTG that offers players protection at a cost. To maintain its effect, a player must skip their draw step and discard a card each turn. Due to its ability to prevent damage and stop opponents from targeting you or permanents you control, overcoming this card can be challenging.

To disable Solitary Confinement, one strategy is to limit the controller’s card availability, which is crucial for its upkeep. Cards like Bottomless Pit or Necrogen Mists force the user to discard at a faster rate, potentially exhausting their hand and naturally breaking the confinement. Another angle is to use enchantment removal such as Disenchant or Naturalize to directly destroy Solitary Confinement. Last, leveraging cards that bypass Solitary Confinement’s effects by causing loss of life rather than damage, like Blood Artist or abilities that force sacrifice, such as Liliana of the Veil’s edict effect, can effectively circumvent its protective bubble.

Understanding the mechanics of how Solitary Confinement shields a player allows you to formulate a plan to dismantle this defense and resume your path to victory.


BurnMana Recommendations

Diving into the strategic depths of Solitary Confinement can significantly influence your MTG gameplay. The card’s blend of protective measures and disruptive capabilities can be the linchpin in many deck types. However, its effectiveness hinges on your ability to sustain its upkeep cost without depleting valuable resources. If you’re intrigued by the potential combos, the resilience it can grant against certain metas, and the unique defense mechanism it offers, mastering this enchantment could be your next big power play. Visit our in-depth exploration to better understand how to integrate Solitary Confinement into your deck and maintain its dominance on the battlefield.


Cards like Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement is a unique enchantment in Magic: The Gathering that offers players protection at a cost. When examining its counterparts, cards like Ghostly Prison and Propaganda come to mind. Both create a defensive barrier by taxing opponents for each attacking creature, yet they don’t provide the personal immunity that Solitary Confinement grants from damage and targeting. Another card of note is the Sphere of Safety, an enchantment that increases the cost per creature based on your enchantment count. However, it still lacks the shielding nature of Solitary Confinement.

Further in the spectrum, we have the formidable Ensnaring Bridge, which limits creature attacks based on hand size, a different approach to stalling the battlefield. Moreover, none of these alternatives safeguard against detrimental targeting the way Solitary Confinement does. Its self-preservation mechanism is distinctive but comes with its upkeep condition, which requires discarding cards, a price that may impact a player’s strategic reserves.

Ultimately, few cards can mimic the solitary confinement’s protection, sacrificing card advantage for tranquility on the battlefield. Its blend of defense and preservation positions it uniquely within the array of defensive MTG cards.

Ghostly Prison - MTG Card versions
Propaganda - MTG Card versions
Sphere of Safety - MTG Card versions
Ensnaring Bridge - MTG Card versions
Ghostly Prison - Champions of Kamigawa (CHK)
Propaganda - Tempest (TMP)
Sphere of Safety - Return to Ravnica (RTR)
Ensnaring Bridge - Stronghold (STH)

Cards similar to Solitary Confinement by color, type and mana cost

Damping Field - MTG Card versions
Farmstead - MTG Card versions
Cooperation - MTG Card versions
Noble Steeds - MTG Card versions
Aura of Silence - MTG Card versions
Empyrial Armor - MTG Card versions
Cessation - MTG Card versions
Arrest - MTG Card versions
Glorious Anthem - MTG Card versions
Samite Sanctuary - MTG Card versions
Pariah - MTG Card versions
Tattoo Ward - MTG Card versions
Sparring Regimen - MTG Card versions
Shielded by Faith - MTG Card versions
The Restoration of Eiganjo // Architect of Restoration - MTG Card versions
Oblivion Ring - MTG Card versions
Cage of Hands - MTG Card versions
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant // Rune-Tail's Essence - MTG Card versions
Guardian's Magemark - MTG Card versions
Celestial Dawn - MTG Card versions
Damping Field - Antiquities (ATQ)
Farmstead - Summer Magic / Edgar (SUM)
Cooperation - Ice Age (ICE)
Noble Steeds - Alliances (ALL)
Aura of Silence - Commander 2015 (C15)
Empyrial Armor - Weatherlight (WTH)
Cessation - Urza's Legacy (ULG)
Arrest - Mystery Booster (MB1)
Glorious Anthem - Junior Super Series (PSUS)
Samite Sanctuary - Prophecy (PCY)
Pariah - Seventh Edition (7ED)
Tattoo Ward - Odyssey (ODY)
Sparring Regimen - Strixhaven: School of Mages Promos (PSTX)
Shielded by Faith - Signature Spellbook: Gideon (SS2)
The Restoration of Eiganjo // Architect of Restoration - Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (NEO)
Oblivion Ring - Magic Online Theme Decks (TD0)
Cage of Hands - Commander Legends (CMR)
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant // Rune-Tail's Essence - The List (PLST)
Guardian's Magemark - Salvat 2005 (PSAL)
Celestial Dawn - Time Spiral Timeshifted (TSB)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Solitary Confinement MTG card by a specific set like Judgment and Modern Horizons 2, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Solitary Confinement and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Solitary Confinement Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2002-05-27 and 2021-06-18. Illustrated by Scott M. Fischer.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12002-05-27JudgmentJUD 241997normalblackScott M. Fischer
22021-06-18Modern Horizons 2MH2 2652015normalblackScott M. Fischer

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Solitary Confinement has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
PremodernLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal
PennyLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Solitary Confinement card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

DateText
2021-06-18 Solitary Confinement prevents all damage that would be dealt to you, not just combat damage.
2021-06-18 The draw step happens after the upkeep step. If you choose not to pay Solitary Confinement's upkeep cost, you'll sacrifice it. That turn's draw step will happen.

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