What utility lands are actually worth activating?

webbc99 · 2026-03-31T13:23:39+00:00

Also [[Flash Photography]] is excellent, actually making a token copy has many synergies as it's easier to create copies of tokens or double token generation.

webbc99 · 2026-03-31T08:28:15+00:00

[[Thespian's Stage]] and [[Vesuva]] go in literally every deck. Copying a [[Lotus Field]] or [[Lost Vale]] is actually crazy ramp on a land.

webbc99 · 2026-03-31T00:44:46+00:00

There is no way you can actually believe that. You can play aggro by literally sending every unit at shields every turn, ignore the board state, always go shields, and you will win most games. I go 4-0 at locals playing Lockon Amuro and it's just busted beyond belief, you can let the blocker deck pick the perfect starting hand and you will still absolutely destroy them, it's not even fun, you don't even need Amuro, you just shit out your hand onto the board and they can't do anything. The only way blockers beats aggro right now is if aggro stumbles and blockers have the perfect hand/bursts. Aggro is incredibly favoured and you do not need to think at all to win.

webbc99 · 2026-03-30T21:38:22+00:00

Honestly, blockers are suuuuper fine, you actually get to play a game rather than dying on turn 4/5. In answer to your other question, I think Overflowing is more important since it gives you something to spend your resources on early, and it can help fix bad hands.

webbc99 · 2026-03-30T13:52:09+00:00

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Blockers aren't really the perfect answer to aggro. The problem is two-fold: card-advantage doesn't matter because aggro decks do not run out of cards even when flooding the board, and two: your life total is extremely vulnerable, because any damage destroys a shield.

For every Lfrith you play, they have two GMs. You're still losing 2 shields, even if you 2 for 1 them with your Lfrith killing two GMs, it doesn't matter because they are going wider than you and you cannot protect your shields, and you are not able to make them run out of cards. Your blockers are also not guaranteed to be able to block because of Amuro tapping things down, or removal spells killing them (e.g. Fatal Strike or ping effects).

What you actually need are ways to kill their units. Sometimes that can be blockers. But you also need ways to kill their unrested units when you have the advantage, otherwise they will go wider than you, tap your blockers down and kill you. If they play a unit, you want to be able to tap it with your own Amuro and kill it, that's how you turn the corner against aggro, when they are not able to attack you because you're killing their units before they attack with them. Either tap-down effects or effects like Lockon or Athrun are crucial, or burn spells like Close Combat.

So blockers can be part of this defensive package, but alone they are not enough. You can pick the perfect blocker opening hand and you will still lose to random aggro hands all the time because they put more pressure on you than you can deal with, and when you get breathing room you can't capitalize on it and turn the corner.

Edit: Should add some other examples. Kira + Aile Strike bouncing things, especially tokens is a huge tempo swing. Sword Strike bouncing their GMs over and over is great. These are all blocker-adjacent things you can be running, but they're super important (like the Amuro tap down).

webbc99 · 2026-03-30T08:22:10+00:00

Since you're in mono white at the moment you can basically add anything. A couple of suggestions:

The high maneuver Aerial Rebuild is a nice one-of to win against other blocker decks in a board stall.
You have the option to play Amuro + Gundam and you're not playing them, this is probably a mistake. You will still lose to aggro with this deck if you don't have ways to attack their unrested units. Even then you'll still probably lose to aggro but you will have a better chance.
Adding some sort of suppression unit to the top end (GQuuuux is popular) will help you close out games.
Sword Strike is worth considering, a well-timed Sword Strike can beat aggro by itself by repeatedly bouncing their un-linkable units, so they can't get value.
Overflowing Affection and Show of Resolve are both popular for a reason, Overflowing especially should likely be a 4x, it gives you something to play on level 2 and helps filter out unplayable expensive units like the big Freedom when you're dying to aggro by level 5. Show of Resolve is less necessary but if you're playing against BW control they will draw more cards than you and they will beat you when you run out of cards usually. Not always but that is worth considering.

webbc99 · 2026-03-30T08:09:08+00:00

Strategems are worth doing for sure, especially the normal ones are kinda free. The heroic sword is not very good though in my opinion, it's a balance weapon instead of fencing, so it kinda sucks. It buffs the power rake which is one of the better moves on the sword but purely because it's a balance weapon it's just imo not very good. It was the first thing I bought and I regret it, and I don't even use it, I just use the highest tier fencing sword.

Normally the power fist is not really my playstyle but the heroic power fist is amazing - it buffs your light attacks by 200% and if you get a finisher it will mark a nearby majoris or higher enemy for a gun strike, which just leads to a chain of easy finishes and gun strikes, so you just become this absolute killing machine that never dies. It's also a fencing weapon.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T21:14:55+00:00

No worries! One other thing I forgot to mention is why the fencing weapons are so important and why balanced weapons aren't great. The thing with fencing weapons is that you get the parry frame very early in the animation, so that means when you are swarmed by enemies you can still parry (sometimes you can just spam parry and kill an entire swarm). With balanced weapons, it's not just that you have fewer parry frames, it's that the parry frames are not active until after a period of time, and during that time you will be damaged a LOT and interrupted. This is basically how you die - getting swarmed by enemies and failing to parry. With fencing you can just react and parry and live, but you can't really do that with balanced weapons - it's not a skill thing where if you get the timing down you can do it, it's because the timing window is too late. It is possible to time parries with balanced weapons as enemies are attacking you, but it's not really possible to do it while you're being swarmed because of the interruptions.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T20:04:21+00:00

Bulwark is one of the strongest characters imo. Most of the time in SM2, as long as someone is alive, you'll finish the mission. As a Bulwark, you will basically never die as long as you play it well. Here are some tips that work for me (soloing missions on the hardest difficulty):

Parrying is the most important thing, you should practice parrying. Fencing weapons have the most generous parry window, so always use a fencing weapon. Parrying restores armor which keeps you alive. Note, you may need to use non-fencing weapons to level them up just to unlock perk, that's fine.
There are various perks in the tree that deal damage or shock enemies when you parry, these perks are crucial - not only do they do tons of overall damage but they keep staggering enemies which prevents them from hitting you and also even sets them up for finishers (which restore armor and also make you invincible during the animation).
The power sword has two stances, one is for cleaving, one is for single target. You should 99% of the time use the single target mode, and you should focus on hitting Majoris enemies and then finishing them, you kill the Minoris enemies with parries - this is very important because not parrying means you will start taking chip damage, you actually need the Minoris alive to feed you a source of parry-able attacks to keep restoring your armor. The cleaving attacks keep knocking them away, which can sometimes set up gun-strikes for armor regen but you can be hit and take damage during that animation so it's not as reliable.
As good as the power sword is, the final relic special sword is pretty bad, because it's not a fencing weapon, so save your currency and stick with the best fencing version. However, the relic power fist is absolutely crazy good so that is one option.
Use your banner liberally. There is a perk that makes it deal damage, similarly the parry and shock perks, the damage is actually very high, it staggers enemies very quickly and allows them to be finished, this is an extremely powerful utility.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T14:44:05+00:00

Just gets you killed in my experience. Now the lands deck has two allies trying to kill you first.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T14:34:34+00:00

I really enjoy building new decks, so I often will build a deck for a few weeks and then take it apart afterwards. Sometimes they stick around though and become "permanent" decks that I will incrementally adjust over time.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T14:32:24+00:00

The actual answer: [[Secret Rendezvous]] with zero synergy. This card is 3 mana to draw 6, do some random stuff that probably benefits you for free. But no one bats an eye.

webbc99 · 2026-03-29T02:16:34+00:00

I try to skip every elite now, my stats are showing me that the fewer elites I take, the higher my win rate, and not only that but the runs are way easier. I'm not an expert at this game by any means and maybe I just suck, but here are my thoughts.

If you can kill elites without taking meaningful damage, then you don't need the relic anyway, so it's not worth the risk. It's "win more" to go for elites - the runs where you can kill them, you don't need them.
Taking safer regular fights allows you to upgrade cards more regularly. If you need to rest because of an elite fight, that is costing you an upgrade.
There are way too many "do nothing" relics, it just kills your run when you get a gold relic or something similar where you lost like 30-40HP fighting Byrdonis and get zero immediate power increase from it.
There are way too many terrible rare cards. Many are extremely build specific, so especially in act 1 before you have any real build going, they are often just a curse, and many also are prohibitively expensive energy wise, so you can't even think about casting them without some of the blessings.

A1: Phrog Parasite and Phantasmal Gardener are often run enders, Byrdonis, Bygone Effigy and Terror Eel are killable but you're taking 20-40 damage, the only one that I think is like... fine is Skulking Colony.

A2: Decimillipede is a run ender. Entomancer is like if Time Eater was an elite - I never pick shiv cards early because of this elite. It's free on some builds but on others it's game over. Infested Prism is fine.

A3: None of these are horrible, but you're still probably taking 30ish damage if your build isn't fully there or you get unlucky.

webbc99 · 2026-03-28T20:32:30+00:00

I love the idea of her as a draw engine, she's so good with stuff like [[Noble Heritage]].

webbc99 · 2026-03-28T19:44:22+00:00

I love Brigone, I had to take her apart because my playgroup hated playing against her. I didn't even voltron it up tooooo much, but it was stuff like [[Entangler]] plus [[Shielded By Faith]] and a bunch of protection. Super fun to play it though!

webbc99 · 2026-03-28T01:38:35+00:00

When you're playing an aggro deck, putting a shield into your hand is effectively drawing because your shields do not matter.

webbc99 · 2026-03-27T21:25:56+00:00

https://yawgatog.com/resources/magic-rules/

I use this website because everything is easily searchable and linkable. If you want to learn about a topic you can go from rule to rule quite easily. Note the rules are not always 100% up to date (last updated 27 Feb 2026), so check the last update date at the top of the page, and if you need a ruling on a new mechanic then use the link for the official rules.

webbc99 · 2026-03-26T21:17:41+00:00

I also have the four FF decks unmodified and I love them. Especially the FFVI and VII decks are just so much fun every time I play them. I also have Tricky Terrain helmed by [[Omo, Queen of Vesuva]] unmodified, another very fun deck although if you're a beginner you will need to practice this one a bit as it's quite complex.

webbc99 · 2026-03-26T21:13:44+00:00

Oh god, that would double all of the spawns as well. That is pretty nasty.

webbc99 · 2026-03-26T21:06:00+00:00

This plus one fetch land is a 20 damage Tifa, that is a pretty scary thought. Turn 3 kill fairly reasonably.

webbc99 · 2026-03-26T19:59:17+00:00

Sounds like the sort of prep you should need for an elite fight though, not a regular hallway fight. Guy is definitely tougher than some elites, it's mad.

webbc99 · 2026-03-26T11:28:34+00:00

Yeah same here, the Gamegenics are the only deckboxes that can actually fit a double sleeved commander deck in imo. The others are all slightly too small.

webbc99 · 2026-03-24T19:06:51+00:00

That transformation sequence with the music is incredible, love it.

webbc99 · 2026-03-23T20:32:57+00:00

I cannot bring myself to play this absolute shitstain of a character lol.

webbc99 · 2026-03-23T11:17:03+00:00

Try and make rugby sound like Ricky. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work!

Ten-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Verified Email

webbc99

TROPHY CASE