by Mishra Planeswalker

Created on: October 19, 2010

Puppet’s Verdict is a rare Magic: The Gathering card from the Mercadian Masques expansion, released in 1999.  For 3 mana (2 of which must be red), this sorcery allows you to flip a coin.  If you win the flip, all creatures with power 2 or less are destroyed, and if you win, all creatures with power 3 or greater are destroyed.  

Red is the one colour that consistently gets cards which have very random effects such as this (Also see cards like Grip of Chaos and Thieves Auction).  Thus you must construct a deck which plays Puppet’s Verdict to be able to have a good use for either of the results most of the time.   

The most obvious way to make a card such as Puppet’s Verdict more consistent is through the use of a card like Krark’s Thumb, which allows a player to re-flip a coin whose result is deemed unfavourable.  Of course, the major downside to playing with a card like Krark’s Thumb is that you have to play a card that does nothing by itself, and still might do nothing when you cast another specific subset of cards.  

before we delve deeper into how one might go about profitably using Puppet’s Verdict, let’s examine the effect we are getting for our mana and coin flips.  One thing that should be noted is that this is one of the few ways red has to deal with large amounts of flying creatures.  Comparable red cards like Earthquake and Swirling Sandstorm do not deal any damage to creatures in the air, and thus this is a rare effect for the colour.  The next interesting point is precisely how Puppet’s Verdict destroys the creatures.  It actually destroys them, rather than dealing damage.  Why is this relevant?  Simply because damage-based removal doesn’t kill some of the most annoying creatures in Magic.  Cards with protection from red (which many opponents will sideboard in) such as Kor Firewalker will prevent any damage dealt to them by red sources.  However, a global destruction spell like Puppet’s Verdict will dispatch the troublesome creatures that can be the bane of mono red decks.   

Returning to how we can best use Puppet’s Verdict, we would like to ideally play it in a deck which plays very few creatures, so that we don’t end up accidentally blowing up our entire army.  Either that, or play creatures with temporary lifespans (such as Ball Lightning) or that can be recurred from the graveyard (such as Magma Phoenix).  

Puppet’s Verdict is a random card that can have random effects on the game state.  However, with an understanding of how it works and how to correctly build your deck, you can tilt the randomness in your favour.  

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