Am I The Bolas? - Tricky Treat

October 29, 2025

Nefarious LichNefarious Lich | Art by Jerry Tiritilli

Hello, and welcome to Am I the Bolas? This week: Keep the receipt on that gift!

This column is for all of you out there who have ever played some Magic and wondered if you were the bad guy. I'm here to take in your story with all of its nuances so I can bring some clarity to all those asking, "Am I the Bolas?"

I'm ready to hear you out and offer advice. All you have to do is email [email protected] with your story, a pseudonym you want to use, and of course, only include details you don't mind in the column! You might see your story below one day. You might even hear it on the podcast. Which podcast?

THIS PODCAST!

I'm Mike Carrozza, and I finally watched the The Lord of the Rings movies. I have some thoughts.

Treebeard, Gracious Host

This guy made me have to get up and pace, I was so annoyed.

This week, a fumble hurts two.

(Post edited for brevity, clarity, and then some.)

SUBMISSION

Hello Mike!

I am a relatively recent listener and reader, but I really love your content and have taken away a lot of insight from your responses to other folks who have written in!

I am a relatively new regular player (time and money now allow for hobbies - mostly Commander), but I have kept up with lore and general gameplay understanding of Magic as a whole since New Phyrexia. For years I have been interested in making a Blim, Comedic GeniusBlim, Comedic Genius Commander deck and I have finally had the chance to make it happen.

I am really fond of Blim, since it opens the doors to cards whose risk/benefit analyses are often too costly to run in most Commander play. That being said, a recent game with Blim has me wondering if I have made it an unfun deck to play against or if I made the right/wrong decision in the moment, and how I might navigate that in the future, since I really do love Blim as a whole.

For the purposes of explaining this scenario, I am playing against Players A, B, and C at a card shop, at which I am relatively new. Our game was progressing at a fairly casual level, but power escalation over the course of the game was really taking off, with most players having/threatening major swings imminently.

Player A was very clearly the primary threat, having amassed a huge board and several clocks to win if combat didn't do so outright. Between Players B, C, and myself, we managed to remove Player A, so they were no longer a problem.

The resulting board dynamic was Player B and I being on-par for threat level, but with vastly different playstyles, and Player C who had very effectively pillow-forted themselves with stax and flying chump-blockers but had minimal game-ending threats showing yet. Player C was objectively a non-option for me to attack and deploy Blim's signature "bad gifts" effect. Player B was pretty obviously my next threat, since they were approaching critical mass with a Merfolk-typal strategy but no flyers yet.

My next move (and its resulting gameplay pattern) are what I have questions about. I had no impactful solutions in hand, but did have something which would protect me in the short term since I was now worried that with Player C being difficult to attack, I would be next for Player B's wrath and with minimal ability to block.

I played Nefarious LichNefarious Lich (the only bad gift I had in hand or on the board at the time) and swung unblocked at Player B, giving them Nefarious LichNefarious Lich. With only a couple cards in their graveyard, Player B was now too afraid to pick a fight with Player C (if they could even get through), and could not attack me since Nefarious Lich states that once it leaves the board, its controller loses the game. It is also for this reason they could not destroy/exile it, despite having the ability to do so on the board. They proceeded to just draw and make tokens for the next three turns until I was eliminated by Player C, causing Player B to also lose.

Am I the Bolas in this scenario for playing a "If I can't have it, neither can you" contingency piece like this as a form of protection? It was my only option at that time (luck of the draw), but I do feel conflicted about the resulting gameplay dynamic, since a player kind of had to draw for options before finally just losing. I recognize and accept that Blim can inherently make me a target of the table once I hand out a dangerous "gift" or two, but I don't want to become a real world villain because Blim's strategy requires some serious firepower to be given away to be viable in Commander. No one articulated any overt disdain for the move, but Player B did say in passing "I can't really do anything this turn, so I guess I'll just pass, then."

With regards,

Mm'menon, Uthros ExileMm'menon, Uthros Exile

Blim, Comedic Genius

VERDICT

Thank you for writing and asking me to weigh in on your story. As I mention every week, if folks don't write to me, there's no column, so if you, the reader, want to send me a story, whether it's your own or one from Reddit or a friend's, please send it to [email protected] and I'll get to it here.

I'll begin by saying that LichLich effects are some of my favorite cards in Magic. I don't really play them, but I collect them. I think they're absolutely fascinating, and designed in a way that flips the game on its head. I'm happy to have the first Lich effect I ever opened make an appearance in my column. Nefarious LichNefarious Lich is a card I didn't understand when I opened it, but I wanted to make it work so badly. I was ten, though, and my friends and I didn't really know the rules well. C'est la vie.

This is such an interesting play. It's definitely a bummer to be Player B in this scenario. If he takes you out, then he loses (great tech - so good). He didn't have enough to properly go after Player C. You didn't have a way to give C any gifts and now, after this move, you basically gave Player C the ability to focus on you for the win.

I guess the question I have is whether there was a plan besides stalling. You've just put yourself in a bit of a lose-lose scenario, too. If B had the firepower to get through C and then take you out, he'd win thanks to state-based checks, so it wasn't impossible to get there. However, it narrows the window considerably while C is seemingly untouched and that pillow fort has done its job.

I think that the group's reaction to this seems pretty fine. Nobody seems to have been particularly butt hurt about the whole deal. B assessing the situation and recognizing his hands are tied - I get how that can feel bad, but sometimes that's the game! Especially when you play a card like Blim, Comedic GeniusBlim, Comedic Genius.

Given that things don't seem to have gone off the handle, I'm happy to award you a Not the Bolas. This was a bit of a Hail Mary in the sense that you're trying to buy yourself some more time and all was not lost for B, but without a plan it can feel a little drawn out, which is a bummer. It feels like more of a tricky situation and closer to an honest mistake than a calculated targeting of an opponent.

I believe that it's no harm no foul, but if you play Nefarious LichNefarious Lich this way again, you'll deadlock yourself with an opponent and you should have follow-ups to ensure that the plan is on rails.

This also brings up something that's come up for me recently. I have a friend who's played his Kefka, Court MageKefka, Court Mage against us a couple of times. It's an absolutely brutal affair; his hand is always overstuffed and ours are stripped with no real way to come back from it. He apologizes a ton, but with a deck like this, he's locked into the play pattern.

He made this deck to embrace being the villain, and while being the villain is working, he's not embracing it so much.

I believe it's time to own your decisions in game and in deckbuilding. It's one thing to pop things into your deck to see how they'll work, but if you've spent a month on Archidekt tooling over a list every other night, goldfishing it until all of your cuts are perfect, you have to stand tall and accept that these are play patterns you've built into the deck.

Chat with the pod first, make sure everybody is up for this kind of game, and once everybody accepts, stick to your guns. You put this Lich effect to give away to somebody because it might cause them to lose the game and at the very least cause some confusion. It's there to destabilize your opponent, just like many removal cards.

Apologize if people aren't having fun and put the deck away for the next game. But if it seems like it's all good until they lose, it is what it is - that seems like pretty dynamic gameplay.

Thanks again for writing in!

Nefarious Lich

Mike Carrozza

Mike Carrozza is a stand-up comedian from Montreal who’s done a lot of cool things like put out an album called Cherubic and worked with Tig Notaro, Kyle Kinane, and more people to brag about. He’s also been an avid EDH player who loves making silly stuff happen. @mikecarrozza on platforms.

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