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Moxonomy

Strategic Betrayal

Sorcery1 generic manaBlack mana

Graveyard hate usually arrives as an incidental clause bolted onto a creature or a cantrip, priced so cheaply that it barely registers as a card slot. This one inverts the arrangement: the entire card is committed to the erasure, and the bonus is that you also pull a creature off the board. That coupling gives it a different job than the standard hate piece. Against decks whose graveyard is the engine (reanimator, delirium, escape, anything looping a threat back), you answer the recursion outlet and the fuel source in one sorcery, denying the rebuy before it materializes rather than trading blows with each returned body. Because the opponent chooses which creature to exile, it is a poor removal spell against a wide board; the payoff lives in the games where the yard is the deck, and blanking it while subtracting a permanent bleeds tempo from strategies that budget around cheap, repeatable interaction. The sorcery timing sets the terms of the exchange: you cannot hold it up to respond to a reanimation spell mid-cast, so it works as pre-emption, cast on your own turn to clear the graveyard before it does its work rather than as a reactive counter once the loop is already running.

Strategic Betrayal (tdm)
TDM · #422uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.51
Foil: $1.00
Oracle Text

Rules text

Target opponent exiles a creature they control and their graveyard.
Legalities

Format Status

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

Other printings

1 set
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