Drawing cards is crucial to MTG, especially in slower formats like Commander. Not only does singleton make finding particular cards difficult, but constant board wipes force players to rebuild multiple times throughout a game.
For that reason, shutting down card draw is one of the scariest things a player can do in Commander. Some of these effects currently exist as Game Changers, but even those cards allow one draw per turn. Curiously, there is one weird card from Magic’s history that can shut down card draws completely.
MTG Zur’s Weirding
Zur’s Weirding is an extremely potent enchantment, affecting many aspects at the core of Magic. Revealing everyone’s hands might not seem like a big deal, but it changes the Commander landscape significantly. Everyone knows who the real threat is, and can play around every piece of interaction that any player has.
This aspect of Zur’s Weirding, alone, is enough for some Commanders to want the card. Nebuchadnezzar, can strip key cards out of your opponent’s hands without any guesswork. Similarly, Sen Triplets will always steal the most powerful cards at the table.
That said, revealing players’ hands is just a side-effect of Zur’s Weirding’s key ability. Allowing any player to deny key draws in exchange for life, Zur’s Weirding can bring the game to a standstill. Of course, this also affects your draws, so you’ll need to have a way to tip the scales in your favor.
Draw-based Grouphug Commanders, like Nekusar, the Mindrazer can take advantage of this, amplifying the cost of denying cards for your opponents. You can also play Zur’s Weirding with lifegain Commanders, like Hope Estheim and Oloro, Ageless Aesthetic, to give yourself more life for denying critical cards. This idea makes Bloodchief Ascension particularly nasty with Zur’s Weirding. If Bloochief Ascension is turned on, it creates a lock, allowing you to deny every single card your opponents draw due to Ascension’s drain trigger.
In some rare cases, you can even use Zur’s Weirding to fix downsides on some specific Commanders. Ms. Bumbleflower can use Zur’s Weirding to turn off the card draw she gives to other players, while Isperia, the Inscrutible can see your opponent’s hand to get consistent tutors.
Getting Around Drawing Cards
While getting ahead of Zur’s Weirding’s penalties is one way to use the card, some Commanders create card advantage without drawing cards at all, getting around the enchantment more directly. Taigam, Sidisi’s Hand, Eruth, Tormented Prophet, and Tomorrow, Azami’s Familiar, for example, turn your normal draws into Anticipate or Impulse Draw effects. Similarly, Stock Up, Underrealm Lich, and Enduring Renewal can do the same from the 99.
Since denied card draw gets put into your graveyard instead, you can also play around Zur’s Weirding by using Commanders with powerful graveyard recursion effects. Muldrotha, the Gravetide is the poster child of this strategy, allowing you to recur all kinds of permanents from your graveyard. Lier, Disciple of the Drowned, Katilda, and Lier, and Iroh, Grand Lotus can also take advantage of this thanks to their heavy Flashback themes. Otherwise, if you have a graveyard-centric deck, like a Dredge strategy, you don’t even really need specific Commanders to use this card. Cards like Bloodghast and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath are just as good in the graveyard as they are in your hand.
Inciting Chaos
While Zur’s Weirding can be extremely powerful when used well, it’s not the card that every Commander playgroup will be happy to see. All of the effects that Zur’s Weirding enforces are not only rather unfun to play against, but they make Commander games extremely long. Every draw will turn into a debate, and having all hands revealed slows down the rate of play significantly.
That said, when taken advantage of, Zur’s Weirding is very powerful for its price point. The cheapest copy of this card, a reprint from Fifth Edition, only costs $0.69 on average, unlocking this as a potential option for budget decks.