What if your opponent had fewer good options every time their turn came around?

Moneyball is Gamelandia’s mono-black Premodern midrange loaner deck. It combines hand disruption, creature removal, and extra card draw to make your opponent work for every threat that sticks. This is a deck for players who enjoy learning what the other side is trying to do and interfering with it.

How Moneyball wins

Your discard spells help break up the opponent’s plan before it reaches the battlefield. [[Duress]] can take a noncreature, nonland card from their hand. [[Cabal Therapy]] rewards you for naming the right nonland card, potentially taking several copies at once. If you know the format or your opponent's deck, a well-timed Therapy can be devastating.

Creatures such as [[Ravenous Rats]] and [[Hypnotic Specter]] add pressure while continuing to attack the opponent’s hand. [[Dark Ritual]] can accelerate an early play, including the classic first turn Specter when you have the right opening hand.

Once the game settles down, [[Phyrexian Arena]] supplies an additional card each upkeep at a life cost. Removal spells help your creatures keep attacking, and [[Mishra's Factory]] gives you another threat without using a creature-spell slot.

Your key decisions

What should you take? An early Duress provides information as well as disruption. Remember what you saw. That knowledge can make a later Cabal Therapy much more effective.

Which creature needs an answer? You do not have unlimited removal. [[Smother]], [[Diabolic Edict]], and [[Snuff Out]] answer different situations. Check their restrictions rather than treating them as interchangeable and use them on creatures that mess with your gameplan.

How much life can you spend? Extra cards are powerful, but your life total still matters. [[Graveborn Muse]] draws cards and costs life according to the Zombies you control. [[Withered Wretch]] is a Zombie, so adding Wretches can increase that upkeep cost.

Your first game

Look for black mana, an early action, and a way to develop beyond it. A hand with several colorless lands and black spells may be awkward even though it contains enough lands overall.

Avoid firing Cabal Therapy at a completely unknown hand without considering the matchup. Sometimes it is worth taking a turn to gather information through Duress or the opponent’s plays.

If you resolve [[Masticore]], remember its upkeep discard requirement. It is a powerful threat, but you need to plan for keeping it around.

Finally, discard does not stop a useful card drawn later. Keep building your own battlefield so the opponent does not have unlimited time to find a way back.

Sideboard options

[[Engineered Plague]] can punish creature types that appear repeatedly across an opposing deck and make Elves players very unhappy. [[Dystopia]] provides pressure against green and white permanents, while [[Phyrexian Furnace]] interacts with graveyards. [[Powder Keg]] offers another way to answer groups of troublesome permanents.

Gamelandia’s Moneyball loaner decklist

[deck title="Moneyball | Gamelandia Premodern Loaner"]

Main deck
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Contagion
4 Dark Ritual
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress
1 Graveborn Muse
4 Hypnotic Specter
2 Masticore
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Phyrexian Arena
4 Ravenous Rats
3 Smother
2 Snuff Out
16 Swamp
4 Wasteland
4 Withered Wretch

Sideboard
1 Diabolic Edict
3 Dystopia
4 Engineered Plague
3 Gloom
2 Phyrexian Furnace
2 Powder Keg

[/deck]

Put the plan into practice

Borrow Moneyball for Wednesday Premodern at Gamelandia in Palo Alto and see how much a well-timed discard spell can change a game. Contact us about loaner availability before attending.

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