While the MTG Reserved List hosts some of the most well-known and powerful cards that Magic has to offer, there are also a lot of cards that many players have never heard of on it. Considering that the Reserved List has 572 cards on it, all printed before 2002, the List contains plenty of cards that were printed before many MTG players were even born.
In addition to the age of these cards and the inability to reprint them, some of them are just real stinkers, like Marjhan. Others, however, have effects so powerful that many wouldn’t even be able to imagine printing them in a modern set. One of those cards recently appeared on MTG personality Ben Bateman’s Pack it Up Chaos Draft YouTube series, piquing players’ curiosity towards In the Eye of Chaos to the moon.
In the Eye of Chaos MTG
First printed in Legends, for three mana, In the Eye of Chaos is an Enchant World effect that has a massive warping effect on any game of MTG. Enchant World cards have largely been phased out of the game, but these refer to enchantments that have extreme symmetrical effects that impact the entire table, including the caster. In this case, In the Eye of Chaos essentially doubles the cost of any instants or sorceries that players try to cast. If they fail to pay the tax, the spell in question is countered. In a way, this makes In the Eye of Chaos much harder to remove than the average hate piece, thanks to doubling the cost of many removal attempts targeting it.
In the Eye of Chaos is particularly nasty against instants and sorceries with free alternate casting costs. For Game Changers like Force of Will and Fierce Guardianship, In the Eye of Chaos will force their casters to pay their mana values regardless of the card being cast for its alternate cost. This can seriously hamper the effect that these cards have at a Commander table, making it extremely favorable for you if you can deal with the cost yourself.
Another extremely noteworthy point to make with In the Eye of Chaos is that it’ll make board wipes significantly more expensive. This makes it a great tool to protect go-wide Commander game plans. Blasphemous Act, a very popular Commander board wipe, will become particularly difficult to cast since In the Eye of Chaos will require the caster to pay a tax equal to the card’s full mana value.
Despite all these upsides, In the Eye of Chaos sees shockingly low levels of play everywhere. The symmetrical effect that the card offers does make it difficult to include in normal MTG decks, but In the Eye of Chaos is also both an extremely expensive card and one that’s not known all that well by a majority of players. That said, in the right decks, the enchantment can make board states extremely lopsided. If your goal is to take advantage of the powerful restriction that this Legend card enforces, there are a few ways you can do it.
Breaking the Parity
The most obvious way to use In the Eye of Chaos in your favor is simply to play it in a deck that has very few, if any, instants or sorceries. If you’re building a deck with a particular Commander or focus in mind, like an Enchantress deck piloted by Zur, the Enchanter, you can focus on removal in your theme that skirts around In the Eye of Chaos. Zur can even tutor out In the Eye of Chaos with its triggered ability, and hugely benefits from it. Since you get to sneak spells into play without casting them, your incremental value gets amplified by slowing your opponents down.
That said, there are also ways to use In the Eye of Chaos in an instant and sorcery deck. If your deck heavily focuses on copying spells instead of casting them, In the Eye of Chaos will have a much smaller effect on you compared to the rest of the table, since only the first instant or sorcery spell will be taxed. This could be an option in archetypes that heavily focus on copying spells, like Adventure decks.
Alternatively, you can play In the Eye of Chaos alongside a Commander that prevents your spells from being countered. Playing In the Eye of Chaos in a Taigam, Ojutai Master Commander deck, for example, will prevent your spells from being countered if you don’t pay the Eye tax. There’s, alternatively, some powerful cards you can play in the 99, like Chimil of the Inner Sun, that will similarly break the parity that In the Eye of Chaos enforces.
An Extremely Powerful, but Controversial Reward
There are many different decks that can use In the Eye of Chaos to powerful effect, so long as you’re willing to pay the financial price tag attached. If you do decide to use In the Eye of Chaos to impact games at your Commander table, just be sure you’re playing at an appropriate bracket level for such an effect. Preventing an opponent from playing a deck isn’t really in the spirit of lower brackets, and is the sole cause for some cards appearing on the Game Changers list, like Drannith Magistrate. That said, there is certainly a place for this card to shine, and when it does, your opponents will remember it.
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