The latest “Against the Odds” series explores a Premodern deck built around Distorting Lens and Dystopia, a combo that changes the color of your opponent’s permanents and forces them to sacrifice those permanents one by one. The deck, put together by the series’ author, turns a card that does almost nothing on its own into a machine that strips away mana and creatures.
The core idea is simple on paper. Distorting Lens taps to change the color of any permanent until end of turn. Dystopia, a card from the Alliances set, forces each player to sacrifice a white or green permanent during their upkeep. Put them together, and you can turn your opponent’s best permanent — including their lands — white or green, then watch it get sacrificed.
Distorting Lens and Dystopia
Distorting Lens is a two-drop artifact that taps to change the color of a permanent to any color until end of turn. On its own, that ability is useless. The article describes it as “just as useless as it sounds.”
Dystopia changes the math. The enchantment makes each player sacrifice a white or green permanent on their upkeep. Against a green or white deck, Dystopia is already strong. Against anything else, it needs help. Distorting Lens provides that help by turning the opponent’s permanents into the colors Dystopia targets.
The deck also runs Vodalian Mystic, a creature that does the same color-changing trick but for instants or sorceries on the stack rather than permanents on the battlefield. That makes it especially powerful with blast spells against control or combo decks.
The Early Lock
The deck’s strongest opening uses Dark Ritual to cast Dystopia on turn one, then Distorting Lens on turn two. From there, the player can change the color of an opponent’s land to green or white on their upkeep, forcing them to sacrifice it. The result is close to a hard lock on the opponent’s mana.
The lock is not permanent. Dystopia has cumulative upkeep, meaning the player must pay an increasing amount of life each turn to keep it on the battlefield. In practice, the deck can usually afford to keep Dystopia around for three turns, paying six total life, or maybe four turns at ten life, before letting it go.
So the disruption is temporary. But drawing multiple Dystopias can extend the lock, and the rest of the deck supports the plan.
Blasting Everything
Distorting Lens also supercharges a family of one-mana blast spells: Hydroblast, Pyroblast, Red Elemental Blast, and Blue Elemental Blast. Normally, these cards can only counter or destroy a permanent of a specific color. With Distorting Lens, they become universal removal.
For one mana, the blasts can counter or destroy any permanent, as long as the player first uses Distorting Lens to turn that permanent into the correct color. The article calls this “incredibly broken,” since the combo turns a conditional spell into a one-mana answer for anything.
Vodalian Mystic extends the trick to spells on the stack. By changing the color of a spell before it resolves, the player can counter it with a blast. This is especially helpful against spell-based combo decks that don’t care about creature removal.
Finding the Combo Pieces
The deck has limited card draw, so it relies on two unusual tutors to find its combo pieces. Ancestral Knowledge lets the player look at the top ten cards of their deck, exile any number of them, and stack the rest in any order on top. It has cumulative upkeep of one, but the player can pay once, grab what they need, and let the enchantment go.
The article describes it as a weird tutor that sometimes whiffs. In practice, the player plays it, chooses a card from the top ten, puts it on top of the deck, pays the upkeep once, and then sacrifices it.
Lim-Dul’s Vault works differently. For two mana, it lets the player look through their deck in chunks of five cards, choosing to stack those five on top or pay a life and try again. With enough life, it ensures the player draws whatever combo piece they are missing.
The Threats
Disruption alone doesn’t win games. The deck needs a way to close out the match before the opponent rebuilds. It runs two options.
Hypnotic Specter, nicknamed “Hippie,” is a 2/2 flier that forces the opponent to discard a card at random when it deals combat damage. It’s a slow clock, but the discard makes it hard for opponents to rebuild after a Dystopia clears their board. If an opponent tries to sandbag lands to play around Dystopia’s upkeep cost, the Specter might force them to discard the land they were holding.
Phyrexian Negator is the other threat. It’s a 5/5 trampler for three mana, the original inverted version of Phyrexian Obliterator. The article notes it was “incredibly far above the curve back in the late ’90s.” It’s one of the fastest clocks in Premodern.
What to Expect
The deck is fragile. It depends on assembling multiple pieces, and Dystopia’s cumulative upkeep limits how long the lock can last. But when it works, it turns the opponent’s own lands against them, one sacrifice at a time.
The full article, “Against the Odds: Turning Things the Wrong Color for Fun and Profit (Premodern),” sets out to test the deck in a league, with the author jumping in to find out the odds of winning by changing the colors of opponents’ permanents. The results are not yet described, but the setup alone shows how far a useless-looking card can go with the right support.
The deck is ridiculous, and that’s exactly the point.
KEY FACTS BOX
- Format: Premodern
- Core combo: Distorting Lens + Dystopia
- Dystopia set: Alliances
- Dystopia upkeep cost: Cumulative — 6 life for 3 turns, 10 life for 4 turns
- Blast spells used: Hydroblast, Pyroblast, Red Elemental Blast, Blue Elemental Blast
- Color-change backup: Vodalian Mystic (for spells on the stack)
- Tutors: Ancestral Knowledge (top 10 cards), Lim-Dul’s Vault (chunks of 5)
- Threats: Hypnotic Specter (2/2 flier, random discard), Phyrexian Negator (5/5 trampler for 3 mana)
Source: mtggoldfish.com