CompulsionHow it works & interactions with other cards

What It Does

Compulsion offers two distinct activated abilities that focus on card selection. The first ability allows you to discard a card from your hand to draw a new one for two mana, known as 'looting.' The second ability lets you sacrifice the enchantment itself to draw a card, ensuring it provides value even if you no longer need the repeatable effect or are short on cards in hand.

How It Resolves Step by Step

To use the first ability, you must pay one blue and one generic mana and discard a card as a cost; the draw happens only when the ability resolves. Because discarding is part of the cost, your opponents cannot respond to the discard itself, only to the ability on the stack. The second ability works similarly: you pay the mana and sacrifice Compulsion as the cost. Once the sacrifice is paid, the enchantment is in the graveyard and the draw effect waits to resolve.

Common Mistakes

A common error is forgetting that Compulsion's abilities are activated at instant speed. You do not need to wait for your turn to cycle through your deck. Additionally, players often forget they can sacrifice the enchantment in response to removal. If an opponent tries to destroy Compulsion, you can respond by activating its second ability to draw a card before it leaves the battlefield anyway.

When to Play It

Compulsion is best utilized in control or combo decks that need to filter through dead draws, such as excess lands or situational reactive spells. It is particularly potent when you have cards that benefit from being in the graveyard or when you are searching for a specific win condition late in the game.

Interaction examples

Filtering for Answers

Rhystic Study

If you have Rhystic Study on the battlefield and an opponent casts a spell they can afford to pay for, you might not get your draw. You can use Compulsion to discard a duplicate Rhystic Study or an unneeded land to search for a counterspell instead.

Digging Under Pressure

Mystic Remora

When the Cumulative upkeep on Mystic Remora becomes too expensive to pay, you can let it go to the graveyard. Before or after that, you can use Compulsion to discard the high-cost noncreature spells you might have drawn from the Remora's triggers to find immediate defensive plays.

The Final Cycle

If you have no cards in hand, the first ability of Compulsion cannot be activated because you cannot pay the 'discard a card' cost. In this scenario, you can activate the second ability, paying two mana and sacrificing Compulsion to draw one final card.