Thanks to Commander’s massive resurgence over the last few years, many old MTG cards have been given a new lease of life. The format’s singleton nature pushes players to find some incredibly obscure cards, granting many forgotten gems and pet cards unexpected homes.
Even in this light, some MTG cards can be tough to use. The payoff for breaking these cards, however, can be truly immense. Cowardice certainly falls into this camp, offering massive rewards to the decks that can fully utilize it.
Cowardice MTG
Initially printed in Mercadian Masques, MTG Cowardice offers an enchantment that warps the game for five mana. Depending on your opponent’s strategy, Cowardice can outright make their deck unplayable. If your opponent is playing Voltron and trying to suit up their creatures with equipment, for example, Cowardice will just bounce their creature back to their hand instead. Since Cowardice doesn’t target, the effect can’t even be stopped by Hexproof or Shroud.
In addition to stopping any strategies that want to target their own creatures, Cowardice makes targeted removal really strange. Since nothing targeted will ever actually die, common cards like Deadly Rollick will instead be repurposed to bounce effects. This makes Cowardice really scary when played with Commanders that have cheap entry effects, like Aang, Swift Savior, essentially turning removal spells into additional value.
Notably, since Cowardice is a symmetrical effect, it can also make removing an opponent’s creatures rather troublesome. Your best bet are board wipes and sacrifice effects, since neither of these targets creatures. Sheoldred’s Edict, for example, will permanently get rid of a threat on all of your opponent’s battlefields.
If sacrificing isn’t an option, you can also get ahead with Cowardice by overloading your deck with targeted abilities. Ms. Bumbleflower, an already extremely terrifying Commander, becomes an outright nightmare with Cowardice in play. Suddenly, each spell you cast can now bounce an opponent’s creature back to their hand. Alternatively, if someone plays a board wipe, you can start bouncing all of your creatures to hand to protect them. Similarly, Cowardice can turn otherwise harmless spells like Sea Kings’ Blessing into massive one-sided board bounces.
Creating Infinite Bounces
For the same reasons that Cowardice messes up Voltron decks, it can also break some other strategies in half. Any low-cost targeting effect you have, like Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots, becomes a way to bounce your creatures back to your hand repetitively.
Some archetypes, like Panharmonicon ETB decks and Adventure-focused decks can take advantage of this synergy more than others. Combine some scary Adventure spells like Brazen Borrower with some copy effects like Lucky Clover and Lightning Greaves, and you can continually bounce permanents back to your opponents’ hands.
An underrated place to try Cowardice is in Ninja Typal strategies. Not only will this make bigger threats like Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow, near impossible to remove, but you can reset your creatures’ Ninjutsu potential. Alternatively, Cowardice is also powerful alongside the Evoke mechanic, saving your creatures from being sacrificed by targeting them with instant speed abilities. Considering that Ashling, the Limitless is a fantastic Evoke enabler, the new Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander could drive some interest for Cowardice.
As you may imagine, using cards like Lightning Greaves also leads to easy infinite combos with Cowardice. So long as you have six lands in play, Edge of Eternities’ Anticausal Vestige can draw your entire deck with Cowardice. Since Vestige keeps getting bounced back to hand, you’ll be able to replay it with the Eldrazi’s leaves the battlefield trigger, drawing your entire deck in the process. Once you have an empty library, Vestige can cheat Thassa’s Oracle into play to win the game in one fell swoop.
Lightning Greaves and Cowardice can also create infinite mana alongside any creature that goes mana-positive. Bouncing ____ Goblin over and over with this combo should net a ridiculous amount of mana. You can otherwise create infinite entry effects with cards like Priest of Gix and Priest of Urabrask. A mana reducer like Jet Medallion can make infinite mana, while Impact Tremors just wins outright. Similarly, using Krark-Clan Ironworks and Myr Battlesphere can also lead to infinite colorless mana and infinite creature tokens.
A Card With Infinite Potential
Between targeting opponents’ cards and bouncing your own, the number of decks that can include Cowardice is enormous. So long as you can get more value than your opponents from a card like this, there’s a decent chance that getting this enchantment in play will win the game for you in a landslide. Better yet, thanks to essentially being undiscovered, Cowardice is incredibly cheap. The Ninth Edition reprint of this card is only $0.50, making this accessible even for budget Commander decks.
So long as it synergizes with your strategy, the only real downside of Cowardice is its mana value. Five mana is extremely costly at higher bracket tables unless you can take advantage of Cowardice immediately. Notably, since this doesn’t come with any kind of in-built protection, Cowardice may end up removed rather quickly.
Not every deck can play Cowardice, since this card just outright hoses some strategies. That said, if you’ve got lots of targeted abilities or want to return your own creatures for additional value, consider giving this card a try.
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