Single card Strategies - Portcullis

In my recent Secret Tech II, I looked at Portcullis as a sleeper rare for EDH. I also presented it very briefly on the Commander Cast Podcast Episode that came out this week. This information was pretty much the same in both places, in brief:


1.) It sticks the number of creatures in play at 2 if there aren't already more than 2 in play.
2.) Creatures enter the battlefield, trigger their CotB effects and disappear under the Portcullis.
3.) When Portcullis leaves play, those creatures will once again CotB and their triggers will fire all over again.
           3.a.) It's a "leaves play" trigger on Portcullis, so bouncing, blinking, exiling or destroying it will work.
4.) It works for your opponent's creatures too.
5.) It hoses Tokens


There are a couple of good things and a couple of bad things in there that I'd like to look at in a little more detail to see how we can work around them.

First of all, you have to look at finding some way to control the entry and exit of Portcullis other than the turn it comes into play. One of the suggestions on the podcast was Master Transmuter and it bears looking at in some detail. What will happen if you return a "loaded" Portcullis to your hand with Master Transmuter and return it to play again?


First, returning the Portcullis will be part of the cost of the ability, so this is a realistic defensive measure if you are planning on running the two cards together. The Transmuter ability goes on the stack. The Portcullis "leaves play" ability goes on the stack after the Transmuter ability and will be resolved first.


All of the hidden creatures come into play and their abilities trigger and resolve. You may then put an artifact into play upon resolution of the Transmuter's ability. For the purposes of this excercise, we're going to return the Portcullis. The creatures that recently came into play will remain there but any further creatures will go the usual route and be hidden by the Portcullis.


That's the very basic up-and-down with Master Transmuter. What happens if you start playing with the trigger orders on creatures coming into play normally rather than creatures hidden by the Portcullis?


A.) A creature comes into play where there are already 2 more creatures in play.
B.) It triggers the Portcullis.
C.) The exile trigger from the Portcullis goes on the stack
D.) Activate the Transmuter, returning the Portcullis: the Transmuter ability goes on the stack.
E.) The Portcullis "leaves play" ability goes on the stack.
F.) Resolve the the Portcullis "leaves play" ability though there's nothing to return.
G.) Resolve the Transmuter ability and return the Portcullis to play.
H.) Resolve the exile trigger on the initial copy of the Portcullis. Exile creature. Cheer.

Now that we have this, we can play with variations on the theme. If we wanted to have creatures under a Portcullis come back into play and leave again right away, how would we do that? We're going to use a Voltaic Key to untap our Master Transmuter and then re-activate her ability, returning a second (unrelated) artifact to hand and the original Portcullis to play. It would look something like this (taken from the top):

1.) Pay U, tap Master Transmuter, Return Portcullis to your hand: Transmuter ability #1 goes on the stack.
2.) Portcullis "leaves play" trigger goes on the stack.
3.) Pay 1, tap Voltaic Key: Untap Master Transmuter.
4.) Pay U, Tap Master Transmuter, Return another artifact to your hand: Transmuter ability #2 goes on the stack.
5.) Transmuter ability #2 resolves, you put Portcullis into play.
6.) Original Portcullis "leaves play" trigger resolves, all creatures hidden under initial Portcullis come into play. The new Portcullis sees these creatures coming into play and, as the active player, you place the exile ability onto the stack. The controllers of these creature's CotB triggers put them onto the stack in clockwise play order.
7.) Resolve the creature's CotB triggers in counter clockwise order.
8.) Exile all newly returned creatures under Portcullis #2 if, including them, there are 2 or more creatures in play.
9.) Resolve the Transmuter ability #1 and put an artifact from your hand into play.

Wow! That's a lot going on right there! You can now "flash" in and out a whole host of creatures that you have hidden under a Portcullis as many times as your opponents will allow you to. Despite all that, there's a small hole in your plan in that you don't always control what the other players are going to do with their CotB abilities if they have any. What if there was something annoying that you just didn't want to see back in the game? You could Stifle the "return to play" trigger of that creature but you can also permanently remove all the creatures coming back in if you're willing to lose any of your own too. This will essentially involve adding the steps A.)-G.) into steps 1.)-8.). (Steps G.) and 8.) are essentially the same.)


Between Steps 6.)  and  8.), after the point where the copy #2 of Portcullis, introduced in Step 5.), triggers upon "seeing" all the creatures coming into play but before you resolve its exile trigger, you need to use a bounce spell or effect (more Master Transmuter activations if you can untap her again) to cause the Portcullis #2 to leave play. The "leaves play" trigger will go on the stack, then resolve, returning all creatures under the Portcullis  #2 to return to play except that there are no creatures under Portcullis #2: they are all still waiting for Portcullis #2 to exile them in Step 8.). What you've done here is slipped A.)-G.) in before you resolve Step 8.). Once you've done that you resolve Step 8.) and exile those creatures. Unfortunatly for them, their lifeline has now been cut and they will stay exiled. How sad. Cheering is not obligatory. Again, there is some price to pay in that any unfriendly CotB effects will fire once, but after that they are gone.


Not every creature will have a relevant CotB effect, some will just be annoying creatures. Either way, if you haven't set up to exile those creatures, when they come back under an opponent's control, unless you have a way to deal with them, it's probably not going to be good news for you. Let's face it, you're not going to be able to remove every creature every time with the method described in A.)-H.). What if I told you that, when these scary creatures came back into play, they'd all be working for you, irregardless of who owned them? Well, it's possible:

If you can find a way (and the hefty mana requirement) to do it, it's entirely possible that, once you have cast a Gather Specimens, you can give the Portcullis a quick spin, get some nifty CotB effects once or twice and end up with the whole army ready to do your bidding.

The other aspect to all this is having only two creatures in play at all times. You're playing blue at least so you have access to some decent control cards as well as man-lands. Having Vedalken Shackles and other Control Magic spells is a good start. Master Transmuter is obviously extremely preferable if you want to do shennanigans. Simply neutering an opponent's creature with Maze of Ith can be an effective route too as players don't really like killing one of their own creatures just to be able to play another one. Other creature-count options are March of the Machines (though this will preclude anyone, including you, from allowing artifacts to come into play) or Karn, Silver Golem and any of the artifacts that become creatures or man-lands like Mutavault and Mishra's Factory.


Just one last point: in the suggestions here, we haven't gone outside Blue. It's entirely possible to stay mono-coloured here as well as branching out into other colours. Go have fun, you crazy kids!