Fast mana is undeniably one of the most powerful resources in all of Magic. Thanks to this, mana rocks are a staple of the Commander format, being an auto-include within almost every deck. As if this didn’t accelerate games enough, Treasure Tokens are absolutely everywhere nowadays, making fast mana even faster. This can easily allow players to run away with games, leaving little time for everyone else to react.
Thankfully, there are a few ways to deal with this growing problem. Artifact removal has become the obvious go-to, but there are a few more unfamiliar options. An old enchantment from all the way back from Antiquities, for instance, can put some serious restrictions on their lines of play.
Haunting Wind MTG
Because the card’s only printing appeared in Antiquities, Haunting Wind reads very strangely. Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast has solved this problem by updating the card’s oracle text.
“Whenever an artifact becomes tapped or a player activates an artifact’s ability without {T} in its activation cost, this enchantment deals 1 damage to that artifact’s controller.”
Wizards of the Coast | Via: Gatherer
On the surface, Haunting Wind’s ability is very simple, but there are a ton of ways that you can punish an opponent for using artifacts. Tapping artifacts for mana is undoubtedly the most straightforward of those, but any activated ability gets taxed by Haunting Wind. This can be particularly important when playing against newer strategies like Convoke and Waterbending that can both tap and activate the abilities of artifacts like Clue tokens in the same turn.
This also means, however, that your opponents don’t need to activate artifacts at all for Haunting Wind to damage them. You can tap all the artifacts that they control with a card like Kill Switch, sending massive waves of damage if they’re creating tokens. As an added bonus, most of Commander’s powerful artifacts, from Sol Ring to Treasure Tokens, become more difficult to use. These can create a lethal combo in Vazi, Keen Negotiator decks, which can force your opponents to create Treasure Tokens only to turn them into damage.
Thanks to punishing any artifact that enters tapped, Haunting Wind also punishes opponents who focus their strategy on artifact creatures. Attacking means tapping, which will begin to restrict just how aggressive Construct Token players can be in the later turns. Even if your opponents aren’t playing artifact creatures themselves, you can use Ygra, Eater of All to force them into this situation.
As a small side effect, Haunting Wind shuts down a ton of traditional infinite combos in Commander.Any combo deck using Phyrexian Altar, for instance, would have each sacrifice effect taxed by Haunting Wind. This can effectively shut down these combo decks, and that’s hardly the only artifact it works with. Any combo that relies on an artifact with a broken activated ability gets hosed by this humble card.
Excelling in Pinger Strategies
Haunting Wind’s lethality as a hate piece can be multiplied when running it alongside a synergistic Commander. Thankfully, there are plenty of options in this regard, so getting additional value out of Haunting Wind in MTG is a breeze.
Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin serves as the best example of this, being the single best place to include Haunting Wind. Since Haunting Wind effortlessly deals one damage, Ob Nixilis provides tons of Impulse Draw while being a surprisingly scary threat. The only downside of this synergy is that it’s so strong you could end up decking yourself if you’re not careful.
Haunting Wind is also quite powerful in decks that care a bit more loosely about making opponents lose life. Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls is a great example of this, turning each first instance of life loss your opponent loses into card draw and a +1/+1 counter. While your opponents can technically play around this, it’d be difficult not to get good value from Valgavoth.
A Bit Pricy
Even if you don’t synergize with Haunting Winds, the card can be an effective way to slow down opponents using a lot of artifacts. Considering that, and all the Commanders that Haunting Wind is a slam dunk in, it’s extremely surprising that this card is incredibly underplayed, even in the Commanders it synergizes with.
Part of the reason for this might be its price point. While Reserved List cards from Antiquities can be a lot more expensive than Haunting Wind, it still demands a $13 price tag for its near-mint variants. There are multiple Damaged copies available for around the $5 mark, but it remains that Haunting Wind is not a budget card.
All of that said, especially for decks like Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin, Haunting Wind is easily worth the $5 price tag. If you’re having trouble dealing with a friend’s artifact-based strategy or need an enabler for your papercut deck, it’s hard to find a better card than this.