Thanks to decades’ worth of cards available, there are some really bizarre ways to win the game in MTG. Whether you amass 100 counters on a card or gift your opponent infinite Hippos, there are plenty of wild and wacky combos available that your opponents won’t see coming. The best combos, however, come from cards that seem to benefit your opponents, like Hive Mind. Given the potential upside they offer, your opponents can often end up ignoring this card until it’s too late.
MTG Hive Mind
Hive Mind quite literally links the instants and sorceries of each player at the table, allowing everyone to get in on the action. This can turn quite simple removal spells, like Swords to Plowshares, into a spell that removes the four biggest threats on the table. Counterspells are an even bigger nightmare, turning into a priority-led stack war.
Thanks to this, in a deck that runs little to no instants and sorceries, Hive Mind generates a ton of value. While you won’t be offering any copies to your opponents, Hive Mind will turn all of their instants and sorceries into your gain. This will also help keep any players ahead in check, since multiple players can combine their Hive Mind copies against them.
Outside of that, however, there are a lot of ways to get more value out of Hive Mind. Running mass-Hexproof effects like Asceticism, for example, forces all of the extra removal spells opponents make onto other creatures. Otherwise, effects that end the turn, like Sundial of the Infinite, can cut some players off from casting their Hive Mind copies.
Should you want to run instants and sorceries with Hive Mind, there are also a fair few spells that the card can, essentially, amplify. Cards like Vision Skeins just become more effective, making everyone draw eight cards instead of two. Alternatively, Hive Mind can turn wheel effects like Windfall into mass-mill tools. Throw Pure Intentions into the mix, and a wheel effect risks milling the table.
If you want to create a unique experience with Hive Mind, copying Epic spells with it completely changes a game of Commander into a weird minigame. Whether you cast Endless Swarm or Undying Flames, no one, including yourself, will be able to cast any other cards. Enduring Ideal is probably the best card to copy this way, but it’s a lot less fun.
The Gift of Game Loss
The silliest way to use Hive Mind is to, essentially, gift your opponents cards that cause them to lose the game. The zero-mana Pact cycle, like Pact of Slaughter and Pact of the Titan, are the easiest cards to do this with, causing any opponent who cannot pay the Pact to lose. Since all of the Pact cards require colored mana, you’ll often knock some players out who are in the wrong colors. Glorius End can do something similar, but only the opponent to your right will die.
If you want a more definite way to close the game, Hive Mind can accomplish that with Doomsday and a wide variety of cards. Whether you use Opposition Agent or Ashiok, Dream Render, any card that prevents opponents from searching their library will make Doomsday empty their deck. You can pull off a similar combo with Opposition Agent and Selective Memory, exiling all nonland cards in each opponent’s deck.
Frankly, the combo applications for Hive Mind are near-endless. Copying Enter the Infinite with a draw punisher like Scrawling Crawler, for example, will burn your opponents for lethal damage. If you want to be particularly mean, Teferi’s Protection and Disciple of Caelus Nin forces all your opponent’s permanents to Phase Out permanently. Sure, it doesn’t win the game on the spot, but forcing them to start over is even worse, in some ways.
Silly, but Deadly
Giving your opponents your instants and sorceries may seem like a downside, but Hive Mind quickly demonstrates why shared knowledge can be dangerous. Considering this, it’s no wonder that the card already sees play in over 15,600 decks according to EDHREC. Hive Mind is likely still underplayed at this rate, especially in decks that don’t run a lot of instants and sorceries themselves.
Unfortunately, thanks to being a relatively well-known chaos card, Hive Mind isn’t a budget card. The cheapest variant of this card is its Magic 2010 printing, currently $8.45 at the absolute cheapest. That said, in the right decks, Hive Mind is easily worth the addition, creating tons of value and memorable moments for your Commander pod.
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