"Illusory Gains:Infusing a little Chaos"

"Illusory Gains:Infusing a little Chaos"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

Illusory gains is one of those cards that makes you scratch your head. Is this good? Or is this not good? Today we explore some of its possibilities.With a little control we will try to bypass Illusory Gains weakness and maybe, just maybe come out on top.

So first off why is this rare card good? For 5 mana you can enchant any creature(except for the Hexproof and Shroud Ones) and you are now able to control it. Stealing a big creature away from an opponent and possibly smashing him or her on the face with it. Wow right? You would be pretty happy with this result am I correct?

Normally anyone would by Illusory Gains is a "Sick" Card. I say that because if you decide to take their biggest creature and they decide to play let us say , Raise the Alarm , the weakness of Illusory Gains will be exposed. When a creature comes into play under an opponents control you need to attach Illusory Gains to that creature or in this case you need to choose between that 2 1/1 Soldier tokens that just arrived on the battlefield. In effect you are letter go of the big creature you just captured and replacing it with something that could easily die while not giving you much of anything. Could be worse , it could have been a 0/1 Kobold. Which reminds me. Never play this card against Prossh decks or anything with Avenger of Zendikar or Tokenators. The amount of creatures your opponents are able to spew on the battlefield render it absolutely worthless.

So why should I play it if it is such a horrible card? Well. Like Joker once said ,"Introduce a little Anarchy , upset the established order and everything becomes chaos". This card will matter because it will make opponents hesitate while casting key cards. While there is a probability that you would get a sucky , weak creature there is also a possibility that this card will stop opponents from casting their Commanders in EDH. Imagine taking Hold of Kaalia of the Vast when it comes into play? Or Any Angel , Dragon or Demon that she would drop if you are not able to control her and she attacks. Chaos.

Always remember that you have at least 3 opponents in your EDH games and the chaos that Illusory gains creates will surely confuse at least one of them.And hopefully you are in the middle of that confusion ready to take advantage of it all.

Illusory Gains for as long as it is in play will surely check your opponents. They would hesitate casting Commanders , they would hesitate Reanimating that big creature or even using that card that summons a Craterhoof Behemoth since you could control that creature.

Take note that its apparent weakness attaches this card and does not target so it bypasses Shroud or Hexproof. Imagine being able to control a Narset!

Illusory Gains is certainly an evil card in the right situations. I am looking forward to adding this to one of my EDH decks. So how do you plan to infuse chaos in your EDH playgroup? So you Illusory gains in your immediate future? Leave me a comment below and thanks for reading.