We talked about the best group hug cards earlier this week because sometimes it’s nice to just be nice.
That’s hardly the norm in Commander though, and sometimes you just want to watch the world burn.
If you’re here more to cause problems than anything else, then you should check out the ten most annoying Commander cards.
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The 10 most annoying Commander cards
Now, we could have easily just made this a list of Stax cards and have been done with it, but we’re not talking about the ones that make the game harder to play; we’re focussing on the cards that are infuriating in a more visceral way.
These cards cause everything from minor annoyances to full table flips, sometimes even when you’re the one playing them. So, if what you’re after is a bit of ire, then make sure you fit the most annoying Commander cards into your deck.
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10 – Rhystic Study
Rhystic Study is an excellent card, and it’s probably the one on this list that you should include in decks even when you aren’t trying to annoy people. For three mana, you get a Blue Enchantment that makes it so that whenever an opponent casts a spell, you get to draw a card unless that person pays one mana.
This isn’t game-ending, and it barely impacts anything at all. It becomes annoying because whoever has it in play gets to ask, “are you going to pay 1?” every time anyone casts a spell. It’s the kind of annoyance that builds up into something horrible. Smothering Tithe also hits this particular brand of aggravating.
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9 – Sen Triplets
Having your hand being your hand and then getting to cast your spells is something you take for granted. That’s not going to be the case when Sen Triplets is in play though. “At the beginning of your upkeep, choose target opponent. This turn, that player can’t cast spells or activate abilities and plays with their hand revealed. You may play lands, and cast spells from that player’s hand this turn.”
This is on a five mana Esper 3/3, so the cost and body aren’t great, but if you want to make sure you lose a game of Commander before you even get to do anything, have this as your main card. Nothing is more annoying than having your best spells used against you.
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8 – Confusion in the Ranks
For five mana, you can have yourself a genuine Red Enchantment that reads, “Whenever an artifact, creature, or enchantment enters the battlefield, its controller chooses target permanent another player controls that shares a card type with it. Exchange control of those permanents.”
Basically, nothing you play is what you’re going to get, and everyone’s best stuff is going to be constantly moving across the board. If you had high hopes for the permanents in your deck, then you were wrong. But hey, at least it doesn’t impact your nonpermanents…
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7 – Possibility Storm
Imagine if whenever you cast a spell, you had to reveal cards from the top of your library until you hit a card that shared a type with it, and then you got to cast that instead. Well, that’s exactly what Possibility Storm does for the low price of five mana.
This Red Enchantment has way too much text on it, and while reading it is part of the annoyance, the real problems come in when you have the answer to something in your hand, and you know you probably won’t get the job done with whatever you deck spits out.
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6 – War’s Toll
There are a lot of Red Enchantments on this list; Red just does annoying better than the other colors. So, War’s Toll is a four mana Enchantment that basically says no to all kinds of subtlety and strategy.
It makes it so that if an opponent taps a land for mana, then all of their lands get tapped. They can respond to this by tapping all of their lands, but it means that they only get one phase to cast things in. Likewise, whenever a Creature of their’s attacks, they have to attack with all of their Creatures. It’s an incredibly irritating card.
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5 – Blood Moon
This is the last Red Enchantment on the list, we promise. Blood Moon is a three mana Red Enchantment that turns every nonbasic Land into a Mountain.
It’s such a simple ability, but it absolutely ruins every day around. Even mono-colored decks tend to have a wealth of cool Lands around to keep things interesting, and now they’re all Mountains. You’re a monster.
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4 – Scrambleverse
Blood Moon was the last Red Enchantment, but this is the last Red card, and it’s a doozy. Scrambleverse is an eight mana Sorcery spell that untaps all permanents.
Before that, though, each permanent in play is given to a random player. How you decide to figure that out is only part of the annoyance. This spell can go in so many ways, and there is a small chance that one player will simply end up with all of the permanents. It’s more likely though, that nobody will be happy with how things turn out except the person laughing manically as they cast it.
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3 – Dovescape
Noncreature spells are quite common in Commander, and in MTG in general. Just look at how many you’ve seen on this list. Well, what if whenever you played a noncreature spell, it got countered, but you get a number of 1/1 White and Blue bird tokens equal to the mana cost instead?
That sounds pretty terrible, but that’s exactly what this White Blue six mana Enchantment does. It’s annoying at it’s worst, but if someone is playing a deck that isn’t all about Creatures, it’s so much worse.
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2 – Armageddon
We’re not spending a lot of time on this one. Armageddon is a four mana White sorcery that destroys all lands. It sucks; we hate it, and so should you.
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1 – Mindslaver
Finally, have you ever had the perfect turn planned out, you just need one more Land, and you know you’re getting it next turn, and then you can unleash hell upon all who have wronged you. You’ve got enough cards in hand to protect you from most threats; you just need to avoid dying. Then, your opponent taps six of there ten mana and plays Mindslaver. Oh no. It gets worse though, you look through your hand, but you don’t have a counterspell, oh no. They pay their remaining mana and choose a player to gain control of during their next turn. There are two other people they could choose, but they know you’re planning something, so they choose you.
Suddenly, your entire turn isn’t your turn. They play your turn, draw your land, do nothing with it, cast your best spells at the worst possible targets, and then swing in with your Creatures against the player playing deathtouch tribal. Your best turn was cataclysmic, but only for you, and that’s Mindslaver, baby. Not having control of your own turns sucks, and Mindslaver isn’t even that hard to get back from the graveyard. With enough mana, a player can just control the rest of the game, and there’s no worse way to lose than to yourself.
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