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Moxonomy

Dubious Challenge

Sorcery3 generic manaGreen mana

The whole card hangs on a single negotiation, and the negotiation is rigged in a way most green ramp payoffs are not: you dig ten deep, exile up to two creatures, and then hand your opponent the right to keep one of them. The trick is the asymmetry hidden in that choice. If you exile only one creature, the opponent's "choice" is binary: let you have it or take it themselves, and they will simply take the better outcome for them. If you exile two, the giveaway becomes the floor rather than the ceiling, because whichever one they steal, you keep the other for free. That turns the spell from a coin flip into a deckbuilding constraint: it only reads as a deal when both creatures you can cheat out are individually game-warping, so that the one you keep still wins the exchange. Build it as straight ramp and you are gifting your opponent your best body; build it as a two-card combo enabler and the "dubious" part of the bargain becomes a formality. This is one of the green effects that put a reanimator-style payoff onto the battlefield without paying mana for it, but unlike most of them it asks you to make peace with handing real value across the table. The design is a study in voluntary downside: the card is only as fair as the worst pair of creatures you are willing to put on offer.

Dubious Challenge (pkld)
PKLD · #152srare
Pricing
Normal:
Foil: $0.43
Oracle Text

Rules text

Look at the top ten cards of your library, exile up to two creature cards from among them, then shuffle. Target opponent may choose one of the exiled cards and put it onto the battlefield under their control. Put the rest onto the battlefield under your control.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
N/A
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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