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Thrilling Encore: Creative Plays in MTG
In the grand theater of Magic: The Gathering, some moments feel like a well-timed ovation—where a single instant changes the entire board state and the table’s mood shifts from danger to déjà vu turned victory. Thrilling Encore is one of those moments. This black, rare instant from Battlebond arrives with a heavy-hitting clause that invites you to choreograph a turn where the graveyard becomes your stage and the battlefield, your final act 🧙🔥. Its mana cost of {4}{B} asks for a patient hand, but the payoff can be explosive, especially in multiplayer or commander formats where war stories are born from dramatic reversals ⚔️.
The card’s oracle text is a clean but cunning invitation: “Put onto the battlefield under your control all creature cards in all graveyards that were put there from the battlefield this turn.” It’s more than a mass reanimation; it’s a precise ledger of what died and when. The power lies not only in summoning those creatures back, but in owning them for a moment of strategic misdirection—opponents think they’ve cleared threats, and suddenly you reintroduce a chorus of creatures that you control and that their defenses didn’t anticipate. The flavor line—“Welcome to the winning team.”—feels like Battlebond’s two-headed giant energy condensed into a single, sly wink from Alex Konstad’s illustration 🧙🔥💎.
Creature-combat turns can feel like chess matches suspended in blood and steel, and Thrilling Encore gives you a peculiarly elegant way to reset the board on your terms. It thrives on timing and on layering interactions that only become obvious after the turn has already unfolded. If your creatures were killed or sent to the graveyard by a board wipe, a spell you cast, or a sacrifice effect earlier that same turn, Encore can pull them back en masse, all at once, under your control. That means players who love “graveyard shenanigans” or "reanimation" archetypes have a powerful tool to extend value beyond a single swing, trading a fragile board for a dramatic late-game resurgence 🎲🎨.
“Welcome to the winning team.”
From a design perspective, Thrilling Encore embodies the elegance of black’s reclamation toolkit while embracing Battlebond’s theme of teamwork and dramatic late-game comebacks. The set’s live-wire energy is reflected in Encore’s ability to redraw an entire cast of creatures that slipped away into shadows, turning graveyards into sudden reservoirs of power. The card rewards players who plan several moves ahead—and it does so with a clean, approachable line of text that invites creative sequencing rather than brute-force dominance 🧙🔥.
Creative strategies to maximize Thrilling Encore
- Plan your graveyards, not just your battlefield: Build a deck that can populate graveyards with specific creature cards that you want back this turn. Self-mill, discard outlets, and token generation that dies en masse can all seed your graveyard with prime candidates for Encore’s return trip. When the turn arrives, you reanimate a small army that your opponents thought they’d neutralized, flipping the tempo in a single stroke 💎.
- Embrace the “all graveyards” clause: Because Encore pulls from every graveyard, your gambits aren’t limited to your own resources. If an opponent has a valuable creature in their graveyard that died this turn, you can claim it for your strategy. This adds a political edge to multiplayer games and creates memorable, table-shaking moments ⚔️.
- Combo-and-swing timing: Trigger a sequence where a mass destruction event occurs earlier in the turn, wipes the board, and then Encore reanimates the creature ensemble that had already paid the price this turn. The result is a dramatic comeback with multiple bodies attacking and blocking anew, potentially altering mulligans and remaining life totals in a single instant 🧙🔥.
- Synergy with ETB and death triggers: Reanimated creatures that enter the battlefield will immediately re-trigger ETBs if they have any, amplifying value. This makes Encore a natural fit in decks that lean into “enter-the-battlefield” effects from the reanimated crew, creating cascading value that keeps pressure on the table 🎲.
- Decks with bold reanimation ecosystems: While Thrilling Encore is color- and mana-efficient for a five-mana spell, it shines brightest with a broader black-centered reanimator shell. Cards that help you assemble a late-game graveyard board or that give you redundancy in reanimation can turn Encore into a marquee finisher rather than a one-shot surprise 👀.
In terms of rarity and accessibility, Encore sits as a strategic pick from Battlebond, a set built around bold plays and imperfect information in a team-based environment. Its cross-format relevance—legacy, vintage, and commander-friendly—means you can design a playful, memory-rich deck around a card that intentionally invites risk and reward. The art, the flavor, and the sheer impact of its turn-one-to-endgame potential all combine to make Thrilling Encore a memorable reference point for creative play in MTG’s modern era 🧙🔥💎.
Practical deck-building notes
- Target formats: Commander and Legacy players will find Thrilling Encore especially satisfying due to the prevalence of graveyard interactions and the opportunity to influence multiple opponents’ boards.
- Protection and access: Include ways to protect Encore in games with counterspells or graveyard hate. Since you’re leaning into a grand plan, you’ll want to ensure you can cast Encore when you want it most.
- Mana curve and pacing: With a mana cost of {4}{B}, Encore is a mid-to-late-turn play. Plan your turns so that you’re not simply “casting a spell” but executing a sequence that ends with a dramatic, table-wide reanimation.
As you prepare for your next session, consider Thrilling Encore not just as a card, but as a philosophy: sometimes the most creative strategy is the one that invites the table to reevaluate who owns the board and why. When you pull the pieces together—graveyard setup, precise timing, and a dash of battlefield chaos—the Encore moment becomes less of a gamble and more of an art form 🧙🎲.
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