Ordeal of Erebos MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Ordeal of Erebos encourages attrition-based strategies, enabling you to deplete your opponent’s resources while you maintain your own. When the Ordeal’s conditions are met, your opponent is forced to discard, gradually tipping the scale of card advantage in your favor throughout the match.

Resource Acceleration: While Ordeal of Erebos itself doesn’t provide direct resource acceleration, it synergizes with creatures that grow stronger with each attack. This allows you to enhance your board presence rapidly and make the most of your resources by pressuring your opponent and controlling their hand.

Instant Speed: Although Ordeal of Erebos is an enchantment that doesn’t operate at instant speed, it still plays into instant-speed dynamics. By making the opponent discard at a crucial moment, right after the enchanted creature swings, it can disrupt their planned plays, effectively serving as a preemptive strike against potential instant-speed threats.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Ordeal of Erebos necessitates an opponent to discard two cards once the enchantment is fully powered up with three or more quest counters. This can be less impactful if your adversary has no cards in hand or utilizes a strategy that benefits from discarding.

Specific Mana Cost: The card asks for one black mana and one general mana, making it a better fit for mono-black or black-heavy decks and potentially awkward in multicolored decks not focused on black mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: For two mana, Ordeal of Erebos may seem affordable at first glance, but given its incremental nature requiring a creature to attack multiple times to trigger, faster paced decks may find it too slow, and thus not the most mana-efficient way to force card discard.

Reasons to Include Ordeal of Erebos in Your Collection

Versatility: Ordeal of Erebos is a flexible enchantment that can be a key piece in multiple deck styles. It’s especially potent in decks focusing on +1/+1 counters and those that engage in creature combat frequently.

Combo Potential: This enchantment harbors synergy with strategies that revolve around boosting creatures quickly. Once the ordeal is fulfilled, it forces an opponent to discard two cards, paving the way for potential hand disruption combos.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where players are reliant on holding specific cards to execute their game plan, Ordeal of Erebos can be disruptive. Its ability to deplete an opponent’s resources makes it a strategic addition against control and combo decks.

How to beat Ordeal of Erebos

The Ordeal of Erebos card presents a unique challenge in the realm of MTG, effectively pairing enchantment benefits with a strategic sacrifice for your opponent. As a card that builds in power proportionally to the number of times the enchanted creature attacks, it can seem daunting. Fortunately, there are strategies to mitigate its impact on the game.

One effective tactic is to focus on removing the enchanted creature from play. Utilizing spot removal spells can ensure that the creature never gets the chance to attack the necessary amount of times to activate Ordeal of Erebos’s potent ability. Creature control spells like Doom Blade or Path to Exile fit this strategy perfectly.

Another angle of approach is countering the enchantment itself or using enchantment removal. Since Ordeal of Erebos must remain on the battlefield to be effective, cards like Disenchant or Naturalize can be critical in preempting its effect. Dealing with the card directly before its conditions are met can turn a potentially problematic situation around.

Overall, understanding both the mechanics and timing of when to disrupt the Ordeal of Erebos or its enchanted creature can turn the tide of a match in your favor.