Thanks to its slow nature, it’s not uncommon for Commander games to end up stalling on the board. Between setting up combo turns, the overabundance of creatures, and Commanders needing protection, games can quickly become a standstill. Thankfully, there are a few interesting ways to break through this lock, such as Season of the Witch, from 1994’s The Dark.
MTG Season of the Witch
For three mana, Season of the Witch destroys every untapped creature that could have attacked, but didn’t. While this is a hugely powerful ability, there are a couple of drawbacks. Having to pay two life during your upkeep isn’t ideal, but the bigger problem is that this effect is symmetrical. Thankfully, while this inherently puts your creatures at risk, getting around Season of the Witch is rather easy.
Tapping creatures with effects like Springleaf Drum, for example, lets you save your high-value creatures without putting them at risk. Alternatively, Commanders with powerful activated abilities that make them tap like Zaxara, the Exemplary, won’t be forced to attack, either.
Of course, if your Commander isn’t a creature, it won’t care much for Season of the Witch, either. Hearthhull, the Worldseed, for example, can just stay a noncreature Spacecraft until you’re ready to win the game. Similarly, Tasha, the Witch Queen is a great home for Season of the Witch this way, since she can create tokens to protect herself with
If you want to hold back creatures to block with Season of the Witch in play, taking advantage of Indestructible Commanders can work wonders. Magic’s various Gods can use this to great effect, but a few one-off Commanders, like Kefka, Dancing Mad, can also gain temporary Indestructible to avoid Season of the Witch.
This synergy makes Season of the Witch particularly interesting with The Last of Us’s Ellie, Vengeful Hunter. This Commander can both temporarily give itself Indestructible to hold itself back, and can repurpose redundant attackers into direct damage.
Pure Carnage
While it is possible to get around Season of the Witch’s downside, leaning into this card is also an effective strategy. Goad Commanders, like Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant are an excellent choice for this strategy, as it rewards opponents for attacking one another. Similarly, Bhaal, Lord of Murder is great at Goading your opponents’ creatures while also having Indestructible more often than not.
Since your opponents will be forced to go shields down due to their creatures attacking, Season of the Witch can similarly help decks that need to connect with otherwise underwhelming creatures. Magar of the Magic Strings, who turns your instants and sorceries into 3/3 creatures, is a fantastic example of this.
If you’re interested in having your opponents attack oneanother instead of yourself, pillowfort effects also work quite well with Season of the Witch. Ghostly Prison and Propaganda are usually enough to steer most of your opponent’s traffic elsewhere. If that’s not enough, Blazing Archon will make sure Season of the Witch forces your opponents to wage war with oneanother.
Forgotten, But Not Cheap
For a card with so many use cases, Season of the Witch sees almost no play in Commander. According to EDHREC, only about 1,500 decks use this card, which is a surprisingly low play rate. Considering this card can be quite powerful, there’s a good chance that most MTG players simply don’t know about it. Realistically, this wouldn’t be too surprising, as it is a Reserved List card from 31 years ago.
As usual for an old and somewhat weird Reserved List card, Season of the Witch is also rather expensive. Near-mint copies of this card tend to sell for around $20, and worse-condition copies are only $12. While this hardly makes it a budget choice, it’s not the most expensive MTG card, either, so it might be worth a try if you want to cause some chaos.
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