Deck & Commander Strategies
Old Stickfingers
The deck aims to reanimate Tresin, a legendary creature that copies all activated abilities of artifacts in the graveyard, and combine it with artifact creatures like Walking Ballista and Devora to generate infinite damage through counters and targeted removal. It relies on discard spells to protect its combo and graveyard interaction to set up the win.
Dihada, Binder of Wills
This deck mills legendary creatures into the graveyard using Dihada's activated abilities, then reanimates them quickly to apply pressure. It generates treasure tokens for ramp and uses discard and interaction spells to disrupt the opponent's game plan while leveraging flicker effects to maximize value from reanimated creatures.
Gameplay Insights
- 1
Stickfingers' player prioritized accelerating mana with cards like Dark Ritual and lands such as Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and City of Traitors to enable a quick Tresin reanimation and combo activation.
- 2
Dihada's use of the commander’s minus ability to mill and selectively recover legendary creatures while generating treasures provided ramp and card advantage essential for maintaining pressure and interaction.
- 3
The inclusion of discard spells and flicker effects allowed Dihada to disrupt the opponent’s hand and board state, while also reusing valuable enters-the-battlefield triggers.
- 4
Crop Rotation combined with Shallow Grave created a potential instant-win setup for Stickfingers, but the threat was mitigated by Dihada’s hand disruption and graveyard interaction, highlighting the importance of timing and protection in combo decks.
- 5
The game underscored the delicate balance between assembling a fragile combo and protecting the graveyard against exile effects and counters, which ultimately dictated the tempo and outcome of the match.
Notable Cards
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Walking Ballista
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Dihada, Binder of Wills
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Shallow Grave
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Crop Rotation
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Collective Brutality
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Dark Ritual
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Flicker
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Inquisition of Kozilek
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Arid Mesa
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Bone Shards
Gameplay Summary
The Duel Commander match between Old Stickfingers and Dihada, Binder of Wills was a tense showdown of graveyard-centric strategies, each leveraging reanimation and disruption to gain an advantage.
Stickfingers' player aimed to assemble a combo involving their commander Tresin, which copies all activated abilities of artifacts in the graveyard, combined with Walking Ballista and Devora, enabling infinite damage via counters and removal.
However, this deck operated on a high-risk, high-reward axis, as it required careful mana acceleration and protection from graveyard disruption to successfully execute its win condition. On the other side, Dihada's deck focused heavily on milling legendary creatures into the graveyard to reanimate them efficiently, using Dihada's minus ability to exile cards from the top of the library and selectively recover legendaries while generating treasure tokens for ramp.
This deck also featured discard and interaction spells to disrupt Stickfingers' combo setup.
Throughout the game, the Dihada player utilized flicker effects and reanimation spells to establish a board presence and pressure the opponent.
A pivotal moment was the use of Shallow Grave and Crop Rotation to enable a near-instant combo attempt by Stickfingers, though the Dihada player’s hand disruption and graveyard interference prevented a clean execution.
The match revolved around protecting the graveyard from exile effects and counterspells while racing to assemble and resolve critical combo pieces.
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