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At Grand Prix Lincoln in 2012 I sleeved up a deck that would forever stain my reputation among my friends. Despite being the only person at our hotel to cash the event, I was still "the guy who played Sedraxis Specter in Modern".
This wasn't only peculiar in that I placed better than the lot of them, but also that the idea to play Specter was something that I plucked from an Ari Lax article. Of course, I stopped trying to combat their teasing with logic and just embraced the joke long ago.
The real truth is that Sedraxis Specter isn't remotely close to the worst card that I ever played in constructed. Last year while I was tooling and retooling Red Devotion it became clear that Chained to the Rocks was the most important card in the deck by a wide margin. It killed the entire range of problematic cards for the deck, including format pillars Desecration Demon and Master of Waves.
One evening while jamming 8-mans and lamenting the fact that I could only play four Chained to the Rocks, I decided to investigate whether there was any serviceable way play more catch-all removal. This was before Banishing Light was printed, so if there was a card that I wanted it definitely wasn't obvious. After some trouble-shooting on gatherer I came across... something. Something that technically fit the bill, but was nothing short of embarrassing.
Being the degenerate that I am, I immediately threw a copy in my sideboard. The really funny part of this story is that the card was actually totally fine. I even had several opponents Thoughtseize my Angelic Edict because it was my only way to beat their Desecration Demon! That is, they forced me to discard it after reading the card and chuckling for a minute.
Sometimes you just have to go deep. If Tom Ross let the fear of embarrassment hold him back then we wouldn't have seem him win back-to-back Invitationals with Boss Sligh. What's your best story of the worst card you ever played in constructed?
I played Sligh during the days of GrimJar…with main deck Mana Leaks. Also played the 4th ed islands that looked liked mountains. GrimJar was mana tight, and every time they tried to Tinker out a Memory Jar, I’d counter it and they never saw it coming.
Basilisk collar in standard Jund.
I loved it when I could equip it to the goblin and throw smaller goblins to big threats like the lifelink angel.
I played a Boulderfall in R/G devotion at an FNM last year b/c I made a bet with a friend that I could play it in the maindeck and x-0. I won the bet and he was wicked pissed.
It’s a tossup between Manipulate Fate and Misthollow Griffin.
But I also really adore Worm Harvest.
https://www.quietspeculation.com/2012/07/legacy-griffins-food-chain-manipulate-fate-and-fun/
Dragonshift. The first iteration of the deck was a defender decklist where the main enabler of overload was axebane guardian. It did okay, but made me hate magic. I tried again with a straight izzet token list, which was much more fun
Hornet Sting. Elves deck back in CawBlade Standard actually trounced CawBlade, but needed removal to kill Lotus Cobras out of RUG.
Last season i had a standard deck that included 4 each dark favor and deviant glee. Won grinds against removal decks and had multiple turn 3 kills without my opponents taking any damage from their lands.