Hirohay@aol.com

Subject: THE LIMITED HELL - Kenny Hayashi

Don't you hate when you see a rare where you say "wow, this would be awesome if it just didn't effect me, but because it does, it sucks." ?
Thats exactly what i said when I saw this:

Limited Resources W
Enchantment
Exodus
When limited resources comes into play, each player chooses 5 lands they control and sacrifices the rest. If there are 10 or more lands in play, lands may not be played.

At first this sucks, because it limits the land. Face it, everyone likes mana. Big decks need it for big stuff, little decks need it for multiples of stuff. Granted, weenie decks will survive, although slightly slowed, but it wipes out big decks. But it still leaves you in the same fix. There are lots of cards that let you get around this and use it to your advantage.

Propaganda or Windborn muse.

Propoganda is a stronghold enchantment and the muse is an onslaught creature, 2U and 3W respectivly. Both have the same effect: if some one wants to attack you, they have to pay 2 for each attacker. You're free to attack away though.
With limited resources, it stops creatures dead. 1 of them is a hastle. 2 is harsh. 3 means no attacking you.

Land destroyers:
Notice that limited's effects die if there are less than ten lands. In a 2 player game, simply kill one of there lands, bringing the count down to 9, and play your own land. It puts them one step back, and you one step forwards.

Rhystic magic:
with prophecy's rhystics, they have great effects for cheap mana, but become somewhat useless if the opponent can pay mana. With limited, they wont have mana to spare.

Freebies:
Using the Urza Block, drag out any of the blue spells that say when it is played, untap that many lands. Cloud of Faeries, a 1U 1/1 blue flyer from Urzas Legacy is great being free, flying, and has cycling.

Dealing with your limit on land:
Easy. Grab anything else that produces mana. The downside is that limited doesnt horribly affect decks that do this, such as the birds of paridise, or elves. Or moxes and lotuses. Also, fill the deck with nonbasic land that makes more mana, like coral atol.

Land Mobility:
You'll end up drawing lands later when they're useless. Deal with this in 3
ways:
Have cycling lands
Have cards that feed on discard
Have cards that let you sac lands.
About the last one: Example: trenching steed or Overgrown estate. Say you have out five basic lands, and you just drew Fountain of Cho, or some other great mana maker. Sacrifice one land thats out, lowering to count to 9, and thus letting lands be played, then play your land.

Reconnaissance and Revielle Squad:
What if your still afraid of their blockers?
Reconnaissance lets you attack all out, then pretend like your creatures that were blocked never attacked, while the others go through.
Or dont have propaganda or windborn for defense?
As long as Revielle Squad is untapped when they attack, all your creatures can block.

The Drawbacks:
The main thing that gets straight past, even when you have the limited/propaganda lockdown, is cheap burns, or things that sacrifice to do damage. I had stalled out once with a friend. Both of us had too many blockers to attack. He had cabal archons, which i had forgotten about. It went on long enough, that he just sacrificed ten clerics with the cabal archons, i lost 20 life and he gained 20.
The other thing that gets past are alternate mana sources. I thought i had screwed this other guy over, but he whips out a gilded lotus, which gives 3 mana, then sculpinting steel to copy it. I didn't draw any disenchants, and he just stomped me like i didn't even have limited out.
Disenchant. Anything that kills enchantments screws the deck. Fountain watch may save you, but if they pull a tranquility...

Playing it:
Try and set up the pieces before hand, like propaganda. Your opponent will just see a nuisance. A soon as you have five lands out, play the limited if you can. After that, you can just watch them squirm at all the stuff they cant do.