Just my thoughts on what I believe are the ten best hate cards in the commander format. If you enjoyed this video, please like and share it. Support me on Patreon: / voidmagegamer Follow me on Twitter: / voidmage_gamer
I never pay for the study and cast a lot of spells, then traumatize the player, pop tormud's crypt. When you lose half your deck drawing more cards is unfortunate.
If you mention Kismet you also have to name Frozen Æther, as it is Kismets blue, timeshifted version. Loxodon Gatekeeper is Kismet on a stick so It should not go unmentioned, too!
Surprised Choke wasn't in here. Threw it in my Karametra deck the other day, the merfolk player played Scoop on the stack in response, and it was one of the best feelings I've had playing commander.
With stasis if you keep 6 mana two blue 4 colorless you can capsize with buyback at the end of your opponent turn and you can play magic while everyone else doesn’t lol
The way i learned Magic was by playing against an old deck full of plague rats, will o wisps, nightmares, fireballs, winter orb, rack AND vice, royal assasins and extermates. I didn't win a single game for about my first 20-25 games. "Hate cards" ceased to phase me long ago
Sometimes... After a looong day... I play with Iona as my General in my Angel Tribal Commander Deck .... Against my friends monocolored deck... He always tries to... But never succeed...
I was playing Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign. Mono blue. My opponent managed to get Iona, Shield of Emeria to stick. Of course they named blue. My turn rolls back around and I managed to top deck a Mycosynth Lattice. The look on his face was priceless.
Humility is a pretty rough card, but I like the added flavor of Overwhelming Splendor which targets a particular player for a very similar effect. Great way to get your friend with a huge board to hate your guts
This is more of a top Stax cards list than a top hate cards list. Hate cards are things like Rest in Peace, Containment Priest and Stranglehold. You have a few of them, but I wouldn't say things like Winter Orb are hate, they're Stax.
Saying these cards "aren't hate, they're stax" is like sticking your hand in a fire and saying "it doesn't hurt, it burns". If it's hateful, it's hate.
It seems odd to see Humility receive an honorable mention immediately followed by Kismet which has negligible impact in my opinion. Many decks cannot win through a Humility whereas there are nearly no decks that I know of that are bricked by Kismet. Kismet is a pest to most, causing delay, often nothing more. Humility is absolutely backbreaking to any creature-based themes as well as wincons (such as Lab Man). I have yet to see a Gaddock Teeg meaningfully impact a game. Most decks that favor noncreature spells sport ample spot removal and the decks that favor creature-based strategies remain virtually unaffected. I imagine him being difficult for some mono-blue or Simic builds I suppose, but I personally have yet to see his effect hold any relevance in a game. Rhystic study is a powerful card, but I wouldn't consider it a hate card as it only presents an avenue for a player to be enabled. It isn't a preventative card on its own.
Not sure I agree with what your concept of "hate" card. Most of these are grief cards that don't single out a single color or strategy to "hate". What I've always heard called "hate" cards are fairly narrow. Things like Boil, Perish, Blood Moon, etc. that punish a specific color or a specific strategy (non-basic land use). Your list are cards that attack pretty much everything and aren't narrow in the slightest.
Nice list! Stax is not called after Smokestack though. It's actually called after a deck called $T4KS, Which stood for The 4k Solution. A deck made to counter the Gro-A-Tog deck in the Vintage format.
Could you please do a deck tech for sen triplets, pillowfort, no stax ideally, emphasize political gameplay perhaps? Although I think some hatebears are probably warranted some slots in the deck. At the moment my current list has no wincon outside of azors elocutors and my opponents decks, but I built it with the idea that they can't call my deck boring or unfun because I'd be playing theirs. Please help as I'm not sure if I'm doing it right
I don't think you can out-politic people hating you for playing with their stuff and shutting them out of your turn. I have played a deck like that, that mostly focused on stealing other people stuff and I invariably became the target after a few turns of trying to ramp up some mana.
Nice list, but I wish you listed Void Winnower at least as a honorable mention. Since it is colorless it can go in any deck and there are lots of good cards it hoses that are even cmc. All the 2 mana counterspells, 4 and 6 mana wraths, Cyclonic Rift, many good commanders, all the 6 mana powerful creatures, etc.. If you can protect it from odd cmc mostly single target removals, it will win you the game probably.
In my play group we used to have a person that would play Stasis, Winter Orb, and Static Orb. Needless to say we banned his deck into oblivion(the person had other problematic cards, and the deck was just to powerful for our playgroup)
I recently threw together a zur deck with various cards i had in my collection...the two games we played were games of arch enemy. Won them too. Might upgrade it lol
as a person who only has rainbow commander decks (it wasn't intentional the five color commanders just call to me) i laugh at iona as she removes one color but i got 4 more.
No, there's a subtle difference between 'when X enters the battlefield' and 'as X enters the battlefield'. So in her case, the order of events goes Cast-Resolves-Trigger-Enters, compared to ETBs which go Cast-Resolves-Enters-Trigger.
Ive actually only played one game where my Static Orb actually had a significant effect on the board. I felt bad about it...but not bad enough to where I wont do it again. Lol
Number 6 should be humility, is does the exact same thing but also makes them 1/1s. That behemoth become a 1/1 with no triggers. With the orb it’s still a 5/5 haste. And void winnower instead of Teeg for number 4 as it turns off all even spells, makes creatures unblockable and it can’t be shocked and killed.
I'm surprised no one is mentioning Overwhelming Splendor. It's 8 mana but completely disables all their creatures, any artifacts/enchantments with annoying activated abilities, enter battlefield triggers on creatures don't work and they can't even use abilities on spells like cycling or kicker. I guess traditionally commander is a 3+ player format but in 1v1 it's basically a game winner as soon as you play it. Another one I love to use is Sphere of Safety. 5 mana makes it a bit costly for a normal game but in commander that's less of an issue and you only need a couple more enchantments before you start slowing down your opponent lots. Add another enchantment or two and to attack they can't play any spells and can only attack with one creature. It may seem like there's less pay-off for all the work to have enchantments compared to these other hate cards but from my experience playing with it I've found it's incredibly effective at defending you and its ability to go beyond (2) cost makes it far better than ghostly prism for commander.
I was going to say it but I see someone already mentioned it - how on Earth is Contamination not on this list? If you are ot playing black and cannot respond immediately, you are in big trouble
One of my friends used to run Meren of Clan Nel Toth, but he moved away from her when the rest of us started running ALOT of grave hate. And then he made Xenagos infect.....
Meren is a lot of fun but she can be dealt with. She's one of my favourite decks, but mine has some silly things in it like Deranged Hermit. :D Last game I got to play Gray Merchant of Asphodel 3 times in a single turn, killing 2 players and taking the last to 6 life. (Who then died my next turn.)
I don't think Hall of Gemstones should be lower than Thalia or Kismet. It literally says players who play multiple colors cannot cast more than one color of cards on their turns. Kismet is merely annoying and Thalia is only a tax. That's it.
I think older sets are the best sources for hate cards, design have thankfully moved away from it recently, my favourite old school haters are, Eye of Singularity is fun, ruins token decks, usually nukes a handful of mana rocks, Primal Order, stings those fancy $$$ manabases and even nibbling 3-4 a turn adds up, Mana Breach is a fun alternative to Stasis, Contamination is more or less the Iona effect, kind of liked Power Surge till the manaburn change, now Stranglehold is the red hate of choice, honorable mentions for Mana Web and Sands of Time, not particularly potent but like Rhystic will cause the hate to flow
Ensnaring bridge, sanguine blood, all of dmg per draw or 8 rack cards like the rack, ghostly prison, properganda, mind over matter, the lists goes on...
I personally hate Insurrection. I have a good board state with lots of creatures, maybe my opponent does too, and with one card he/she steals it all away and I have nothing to block with.
For as long as she is on the battlefield, yes. She enters, you pick the color, that color can't get cast until she leaves the battlefield. Last time I saw her it was a 1v1 and I was playing mono-green elves.. yea that's a scoop.
If I sit down and my opponent puts Gaddock teag on the table I'll scoop right then on principle. I and everyone else wants to play commander, not not play. The kind of people who play these kind of decks usually only play once at my LGS, and I never see them again thankfully
ok you just can't win against a graveyard strategy if you don't run graveyard hate. unless you go super fast and reliable combos or whatever. as soon as the game goes into turn 5, 6 without you being within winning range then you just can't do anything against all the value commanders like sidisi and meren accumulate.
Stasis +Wilderness Reclamation is absolutely degenerate. It essentially locks down the opponent completely while simply moving your untap step for lands to after your end step.
i think you forgot one. there is a creature that is worse then Iona, and that creature is Void Winnower gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=void%20winnower it does so much more hate then people realize. just call it a Honorable mention I suppose.
should have add vorinclex voice of hunger, jin gitaxias core augur, and void winnower. look up that lock out combo. lol. no one can do shit but sit there and watch u win with ease.
I've always found it interesting that winter orb shuts off lands being able to be untapped, but snow lands exist, and can be untapped each turn as a normal land would.
I have a monocolor deck for each color, and each one is well equipped to deal with Iona, even if they give her hexproof, indestructible, etc. I make it very clear that people shouldn't play that card, because when they do, they don't win
