Breaking Obzedat's Aid
Deck Help forum
Posted on May 10, 2013, 12:35 a.m. by EvenDryke
Let's find fun ways to break Obzedat's Aid , shall we?
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker , Karn Liberated , Omniscience , etc.
What are some fun targets for this guy?
I usually just use it to recur planeswalkers in my Esper Recycling Service deck.
Since it costs so much, it's pretty hard to break reanimating artifacts, creatures, and lands, so ideally planeswalkers and enchantments are going to break it. I'd say that popping it on a Panoptic Mirror and saccing/re-animating Contamination every turn is a pretty good lock. But then again, Bitterblossom does the job easier. Maybe using it to get Defense of the Heart back every turn would be a lot better.
May 10, 2013 12:54 a.m.
"Breaking something" typically means you have a way to make it part of an infinite-looping combo or just win because of it and one other card.
May 10, 2013 1:40 a.m.
RegisteredDecksOffender says... #5
I disagree. I say breaking a card means making anything outlandish happen. I think nitpicking someone's definition of "breaking" is fairly pointless, especially when that person is asking a specific question.
May 10, 2013 2:38 a.m.
Ohthenoises says... #9
Esper/Junk superfriends would be my way of doing it. Esper gives you U for counter magic and Junk gives you G for ramp.
May 10, 2013 7:45 a.m.
Playing Chavest gives you easy access to cycling such as Faithless Looting that can give your graveyard the fuel you need.
May 10, 2013 7:55 a.m.
Ohthenoises says... #11
Personally I'd never run Faithless Looting over Forbidden Alchemy .
May 10, 2013 8:16 a.m.
I like it better for it's lower mana cost, and the fact that it doesn't require a different color for the flashback.
May 10, 2013 8:19 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #15
I have to say in passing that I agree with zandl. There's a marked difference between using a card in the way for which it was designed and using a card in a way for which it was not designed. Only when you do the latter are you "breaking" anything.
The design of Obzedat's Aid is such that it doesn't lend itself to being "broken." It doesn't combo with anything or do anything outlandish. It does what it's supposed to do. I'm not saying it's not powerful; rather, I'm saying it's not breakable.
You should instead ask what the best way to use Obzedat's Aid is. To that end, I'm not sure.
May 10, 2013 10:25 a.m.
Although I agree with Epochalyptik and zandl in that the common term for "breaking", means to make a card have a greater use than it's intended design; I also believe that a card that is horrible being made useful is in fact "breaking" the fact that it was designed to be horrible.
Trait Doctoring
is an example of this. It's an absolutely useless card... but I recently managed to make a deck that actually finds uses for this piece of junk.
Traits of the Dryad - I "broke" the card... though the deck is not "broken".
As far as Obzedat's Aid is concerned, there's just no "Breaking" it... not in the typical sense, nor (I believe) in the "making it useful" sense. At least not while Unburial Rites is still in Standard. It is simply better in EVERY way. can be used more than once, can be used from the grave, can be used for less CMC, and, while it's within the same Colors, it can be splashed into a non Back/White decks because it only requires one color mana at a time. - The only thing this works better with are Enchantments/Artifacts... leaving 1 possible worthy target. Omniscience ... that's a lot of hoops for one target.
In general, 'reanimating' a single target needs to be cost effective. So for any creature, you have to compare to casting something with Heartless Summoning , and or Crypt Ghast in play... There's easy ways to get a T4 Griselbrand without having to use ways to get it into the graveyard. Plus with the other options, you can reuse those effects on additional creatures (note that's one of the benefits of Unburial Rites ... used more than once).
In general, I think that my Trait Doctoring deck shows that it currently has more hope than this card... though Obzedat's Aid has a place in limited and EDH, where as Trait Doctoring does not.
May 10, 2013 11:10 a.m.
Ohthenoises says... #17
@Rayenous It also recurs planeswalkers. In esper/junk superfriends the recursion of a walker is pretty awesome.
May 10, 2013 11:19 a.m.
I suppose... though it's still not cost effective. I'd usually rather just have the Planeswalker in my hand. (Though this gives options when you have more than one in the grave)
Epochalyptik says... #2
I don't really think you're going to break it. The cards you listed happen to be nice targets for it, but they don't break it.
May 10, 2013 12:52 a.m.