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Is there anything that can be done against a Stigma Lasher if you have a life gain deck?

This card seems quite broken. 2 mana for a 2/2 wither is a good card. But to have it ruin any hope of lifegain for the rest of the game seems unfair. (The rulings say that you still cannot gain life even if you kill Stigma Lasher.)

I was planning to build a life gain deck to counter my friends burn deck. But that seems pointless now.

He can add a few of these and some cards like Soul's Fire or Power of Fire (letting a creature damage a player without a chance to block) and I will be done for the rest of the game.

Is there any way to remove the effect of Stigma Lasher once it has done combat damage?

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  • 8
    "Do I have any hope?" Of course you do. It's a 2/2 2-drop without haste. Just kill it before it can do its thing.
    – Alex P
    Commented Jan 11, 2014 at 23:22
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    Circle of protection: red could be usefull against burn and stigma lasher
    – Ivo
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 0:44
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    In general, for any particular strategy, there's probably a card out there somewhere that totally hoses it. If your opponent is trying to beat just your deck, this kind of thing will happen.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 20:05
  • How about instead of building a lifegain deck, you build a regular creature deck that can gain some life with things like thragtusk(now only $2) and kitchen finks. That way, playing stigma lasher will be underwhelming
    – Sam I am says Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 17:20

5 Answers 5

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Stigma Lasher's effect cannot be removed while the game is still going on — so, obviously, the only way around it is to abandon the current game and replace it with a new one by using Karn Liberated's third ability, which gets rid of the effect and also everything you've accomplished so far.

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  • Very clever....
    – Malco
    Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 15:20
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There is no way to remove the effect, but you could play around it.

Transcendence prevents you from losing for having negative life, but instead you lose for having 20+ life (which you no longer have to worry about).

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  • You can do some interesting things with Lich effects too, but that requires a B/W deck.
    – user1873
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 1:28
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    Transcendence doesn't seem like a very good card in a life gain deck except as a hard counter to a Stigma Lasher based burn deck. Actually, there's never a point when having life gain will help you while transcendence is on the field.
    – murgatroid99 ♦
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 2:35
  • @murgatroid99, Sideboard, since it is only useful versus Stigma Lasher
    – user1873
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 4:53
  • The problem I see is that sideboarding it in would devalue the life-gain cards in your deck.
    – murgatroid99 ♦
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 4:56
  • If the deck was a life gain Lich deck, it would be unaffected by Stigma lasher. Transcendence would be key to the deck as well. The OP hasn't said what kind of life gain deck they are making.
    – user1873
    Commented Jan 12, 2014 at 5:10
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No. Effects that say "until the end of the game" are never removed or negated by any other effect.

More specifically, when Stigma Lasher deals damage to a player, the triggered ability creates a continuous effect. This effect is not attached to any permanent or targetable game object, so there are no Magic cards that will enable you to gain life after that effect resolves.

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While you can't stop the ability once it's happened, there are a few things that can be done to work around Stigma Lasher's effect.

  1. Start a new game - Karn Liberated lets you end the current game and start a new one with some special changes. This new game won't still have Stigma Lasher's effect in place.
  2. Change your loss conditions - Transcendence will actually make Stigma Lasher's effect work for you, not against you, if you can't gain life but lose when you have a high life total instead of life less than or equal to 0, you can't lose due to life totals. Just don't play it unless you're already below 20 or you lose instantly.
  3. Prevent life loss also - Worship and Platinum Emperion will prevent you from losing due to life loss, Worship stops you from losing that last point of life if you have a creature, Emperion stops your life total from changing, up or down, for any reason.
  4. Don't let the lasher hit you - Combat damage you can block, damage due to effects like Power of Fire or Soul's Fire you can't stop that way, but you can prevent that from hitting you. Leyline of Sanctity is one of the common ways to give a player hexproof, if they can't target you with the non combat damage, then power of fire on the Lasher just doesn't work.
  5. Prevent yourself from losing - Platinum Angel Stops a player from losing the game, if you can't lose you still have a chance there.

Since your opponent is playing burn, likely mono red, they can't deal with enchantments. Leyline of Sanctity, Transcendence and Worship will both also be permanent effects once you get them out there. These cards will turn a game you can't win into a game your opponent can't win with a mono red burn deck.

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There is no way of removing Stigma Lasher's effect unless you use Karn Liberated's last planeswalker ability (restarts the game).

I'd suggest just eliminating the Lasher once its out. I'd suggest cards like Oblivion Ring or Detention Sphere to deny him the Lasher.

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