Magic: The Gathering - How To Use Expropriate

Expropriate is one of the scariest cards ever printed for Magic: The Gathering. Played in the right decks, it can give you an infinite number of extra turns, steal everything your opponents control, and lock them out for the rest of the game, but there is one caveat: your opponents decide how well it goes.

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Making the most of Expropriate might catch the ire of your Commander table, but if you're going to win anyway, you might as well do it in style with a few extra turns. Make sure you're making the most of Expropriate, because time is money.

How To Use Expropriate

Expropriate is a sorcery that costs seven generic mana and two blue, meaning you can only cast it during one of your main phases when nothing else is currently on the stack.

Once it’s resolved, you and your opponents all have a decision to make. Each player makes their decision in turn order, and shares it with the rest of the table:

• For each player, including you, who choses time, you take an extra turn.
• For each player, including you, who choses money, you’re allowed to choose and gain control of a permanent an opponent controls.

This means, in a game of Commander with four players and no other effects in play, you could gain up to four extra turns, or gain control of four permanents. This is why Expropriate is a powerful card and costs so much to cast.

A quirk of this card is that it doesn’t target any of the permanents you gain control of. As it says “choose” and not “target”, it can circumvent hexproof, shroud, and ward.

Once you’ve finished voting and either adding your extra turns or taken control of permanents, Expropriate goes to your exile instead of your graveyard. If you receive any extra turns, they will happen after your current turn has ended.

If you’ve gained control of any permanents, they do not leave the battlefield. They simply move over to your control. It will regain summoning sickness, and don’t be able to tap or attack until the beginning of your next turn.

The Best Cards To Use With Expropriate

On its own, Expropriate can be a ridiculously powerful card that can swing the game in your favour. However, if you want to take it further, there are other cards that synergise well with it.

Illusion Of Choice

For just one blue mana, Illusion of Choice allows you to make every other player’s voting decisions for them. This way, you can choose exactly how many permanents and how many extra turns you have, and there can be no colluding between your opponents to give you the worst deal.

As an added bonus, this effect lasts for every vote spell that turn, so casting any other cards that require votes, like Council’s Judgment or Magister of Worth, while you have the chance is recommended.

Brago’s Representative And Ballot Broker

These cards both cost the same amount, have the same type line, and do the same thing: give you an extra vote. This means you’ll be buffing the number of results you get from an Expropriate from four to five or even six, if you have both out.

Note: Ballot Broker is a ‘may’ ability. You can choose not to vote the additional times, but Expropriate will require you to vote at least the first time. If you have Brago’s Representative out, you must also vote with that.

If you gain additional votes, you do all of your voting at the same time. You’ll be making three choices in a row before your opponents cast theirs, but they don’t have to all be for the same thing. In Expropriate’s case, you could choose to vote for both time and money.

Model Of Unity

There are cards that punish your opponent for not voting the same way as you, such as Grudge Keeper. Model of Unity goes the alternate route, and rewards players who vote in line with you by allowing them to scry 2.

Letting people dig for the cards they need could be enough to net you an extra turn or two with Expropriate. On top of that, it’s a mana rock that can be useful even when you aren’t voting.

Pull From Eternity

For one white mana, Pull From Eternity allows you to put an exiled card you own back into your graveyard. One of the biggest downsides of Expropriate is that is exiles after it resolves, leaving you without ways to recur it.

Once it’s in your graveyard, there are tons of ways to recur Expropriate from your graveyard. Mystic Sanctuary can put it back on top of your library, or something like Repository Skaab or Ardent Elementalist can put it into your hand. You could even Spelltwine it, to cast it and another spell straight from graveyards for a much lower cost than normal.

The Best Commanders For Expropriate

If you’re planning on building any of these commanders, Expropriate is definitely a card you should consider running in it,

Tivit, Seller Of Secrets

Tivit is by far the best voting-matters commander in the game. Not only can he trigger a vote that makes Treasures to help you cast Expropriate even quicker, he lets you vote an additional time when the time comes to cast it.

With flying and ward on top, Tivit is a tricky commander to block, so you could be taking people out of the game through combat damage in all those extra turns you stack up.

The Valeyard

Like Tivit, The Valeyard gives you an extra vote. Stacking up as many of these effects as possible before casting Expropriate is an excellent way to win the game, but there are a few reasons you’d probably consider Tivit over him.

Because he’s in blue, black, and red, you don’t have access to cards like Brago’s Representative or Ballot Broker, limiting how many extra votes you can accumulate. He’s also more niche than Tivit, with his first ability caring about villainous choices – a type of vote introduced in the Doctor Who Commander decks.

Erestor Of The Council

The blue/green Elf Commander deck from Lord of the Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth had an interesting diplomacy subtheme, and Erestor of the Council tries to persuade your opponents to side with you for some benefits of their own.

A single Treasure token might not sound much, but having some mana available when you go into your extra turns might just be enough to sway them to vote alongside you. Alternatively, they could use it as a political chip of their own, offering to vote money, as long as you take the Treasure Erestor gives them.

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