In Commander, there’s a wide array of different strategies that players can build around to great success. Typically, while counterplay and interaction are always important, the vast majority of strategies are rather self-centered. Whether you’re building around a typal strategy like Dragons, or a theme like Counters, your own game plan is usually the focus.
As fun as these strategies can be, there’s also joy to be found in messing with your opponents’ strategies instead. Control and Stax-focused decks are great at this, of course, but few things feel quite as punishing as discard decks. If this is the route you want to go down, then Winter, Misanthropic Guide is one of the most entertaining and oppressive options.
MTG Winter, Misanthropic Guide
In a vacuum, Winter, Misanthropic Guide can easily work against you, since it gives away six cards during your turn. Thankfully, you do get two cards yourself, but even then, you’re giving opponents fuel to potentially answer your threats. While this is hardly the best trade deal in MTG, Winter’s final ability changes the game entirely.
Once you clear the Delirium card type threshold, let alone push it further, you’ll want opponents to be drawing more cards. After all, the more cards your opponents have in hand, the more they’ll need to discard at the end of turn. This is where Winter shines, as there are plenty of cards like Waste Not and Liliana’s Caress to make discarding that much more punishing.
Beyond these staple enchantments, creatures like Tinybones, Bauble Burglar and Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal can do tons of work. To make the most of these, though, you’ll want to give opponents as many cards as possible. Thankfully, between Scrawling Crawler, Seizan, Perverter of Truth, and Spiteful Visions, this is pretty easy to do.
With all this card draw going around, you can also lean into ways to punish this, like Razorkin Needlehead and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. If that isn’t enough to keep your opponents on the back foot, you can also run graveyard-matters cards like Barrowgoyf, Necrogoyf, and Polygoyf. Hell, you can even run [tooltips]Reanimate and Valgavoth, Terror Eater to pull cards out of the grave.
No Cards for You
While Winter’s core game plan revolves around forcing additional draw and discard, that’s not the star of the show. Instead, Winter, Misanthropic Guide’s party trick is to push Delirium further, reducing your opponent’s hand size to zero. To get this online as fast as possible, there are self-Mill engines like Stitcher’s Supplier
Stitcher’s SupplierWhen this creature enters or dies, mill three cards. (Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.), not to mention every supertype possible.
Thankfully, you don’t have to force in every supertype, as there are plenty of powerful discard-focused Planeswalkers. Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted, for instance, can be a real menace, while Grist, the Hunter Tide’s ultimate packs a mean punch. Even Battles aren’t forced additions, as Invasion of Zendikar provides strong ramp while Invasion of Eldraine forces discarding.
Alongside these, you can also run Tarmogoyf Nest, Lignify, and Formless Genesis to hit Kindred. Naturally, cards with multiple supertypes, like Haywire Mite and Osseous Sticktwister, are also solid inclusions. Even artifact lands like Drossforge Bridge and Slagwoods Bridge aren’t bad inclusions, either, honestly.
Since all of these cards are just good in a discard-focused strategy, getting at least seven supertypes in the graveyard is surprisingly doable without forcing it. If you do want to push things even further, however, then you can also run Gnat Miser and Locust Miser. While these cards can work wonders, notably, you do have to work around timestamp order.
Since effects like Reliquary Tower are popular in Commander, it’s entirely possible for Winter’s big flashy effect to be nullified. To get around this, you can use cards like Conjurer’s Closet to ensure Winter is the most recent hand-affecting effect that entered.
Strong Yet Surprisingly Cheap
All in all, since Winter, Misanthropic Guide gets consistently stronger throughout the game; he makes for a stellar Commander. This power doesn’t come at a great cost, either, as you can pick up a near-mint copy of Winter for just $0.13 on TCGplayer. Even the showcase variant will only cost $0.25 if you’re a fan of that art treatment. With this in mind, Winter, Misanthropic Guide is a great pick for a discard-focused Commander.
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