The Dirty Dozen — 12 of My Favorite Stax and Hate Pieces for Commander
There's no doubt that stax is contentious among Commander players. When you sit down to play a social game of Magic, it can feel really bad when someone is playing cards that proactively keep you from being able to do your thing. That said, there are also situations where stax and hate pieces become an appropriate and reasonable method of protection against combos and other high power strategies.
In this article, I'd like to provide an introduction to playing these types of cards and go over some of my favorite stax and hate cards for Commander. I'll also include a few tips for aspiring stax players with each card on the list. After all, I wouldn't want you to go in unprepared if you've never used cards like this before.
On Stax and Hate Cards in Commander
Commander is a social format. It's important to remember that stax and hate cards aren't appropriate for all tables and that not all forms of proactive prevention are created equal. You should always strive to make sure that the power level of the table is appropriate for the type of stax and hate pieces that you're playing. A big part of why stax has such a bad reputation in Commander is because of non-games created by power level imbalances and a lack of good pre-game discussion.
In the PlayEDH power level system, the strength and acceptable density of these types of cards scales with power levels. You can expect to see cards such as Ghostly Prison and Blind Obedience in the Battlecruiser power level because these types of cards have been printed in Commander precon decks on occasion, but wouldn't expect to run into a deck that aims to turbo out a full-on Stasis lock while playing around the level of unmodified Commander precons. That would be a more appropriate threat to expect in a (much) higher power level.
Dedicated lists with a high density of these cards won't fit into the Battlecruiser and Low Power experiences. You might start to see lists with more of these cards in Mid Power, but the most aggressive stax lists will be relegated to High Power and Maximum Power. One of the primary goals of our curated power level system is to offer people the ability to choose the power level that best suits their play style and the level of threats that they wish to play against.
Now that we've done our due diligence by having the ‘stax talk’, let's move on to the list! As per usual with me, cards appear in chronological order. It's just ever so hard to actually rank the things that you love.
Stasis (Limited Edition Alpha, 1993)
Appearing all the way back in the very first Magic set, Stasis has earned quite a reputation for grinding games to a halt. This card offers an interesting puzzle to the person playing it — how can one make sure that they always have a blue mana available at the beginning of their upkeep while everyone is skipping the untap step?
We need to find a way to break parity. As there are no untap steps to speak of while Stasis is in play, we can't rely on a card like Seedborn Muse to do the dirty work. One proven method is relying on an untapper in the command zone.
Commanders such as Jorn, God of Winter and Estrid, the Masked can easily keep Stasis going by untapping permanents that allow you to pay the upkeep cost and continue to break parity on Stasis. After all, expecting your opponent to concede while you also can't do anything is not a win condition and not the optimal way to play stax pieces.
Blood Moon (The Dark, 1994)
This card has a quite simple function. It punishes your opponents for playing greedy mana bases. Decks with fewer colors will easily be able to play through Blood Moon because they'll have more basic lands. There aren't many downsides to playing as many colors as possible, so this card can go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
Decks that can run Blood Moon effectively will probably be one or two colors at most. You also want to make sure that your gameplan can still operate while it's in play. For example, cards such as Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild have undesirable interactions with Blood Moon. You'll probably want to avoid relying on most land-based strategies and stick to punishing opponents with cards such as Ruination while you operate mostly unscathed.
If you like Blood Moon, you can play a second copy of Blood Moon on a body with Magus of the Moon. This card was originally printed in Future Sight, but it has seen a few reprints over the years.
Cursed Totem (Mirage, 1996)
Activated abilities on creatures can be very powerful. Cursed Totem blanks all of them for just two mana, which is a ridiculously good rate for such a strong effect. Cursed Totem can wreak havoc on decks that rely on mana dorks or creature-based combos. With the prevalence of powerful activated abilities in Commander, Sheldon Menery himself called it a necessary card for Commander and ranked it as one of the top 20 cards for Commander in Modern Horizons 2 when it received a much-needed reprint there.
Since this card provides a symmetrical effect, you'll want to avoid putting it in decks that rely heavily on creatures with activated abilities. After all, you wouldn't want to turn off your Walking Ballista if that was your primary win condition.
This makes it a perfect fit for decks like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow ninjutsu or "fair" combat Sram, Senior Edificer voltron because these decks don't rely on activated abilities to win games. It’s worth noting that Cursed Totem only stops activated abilities of creatures on the battlefield, so ninjutsu abilities will still work.
Humility (Tempest, 1997)
Aside from having some of THE BEST art in all of Magic, Humility is one of the most effective ways to make creatures with big stats and powerful abilities more manageable. It turns out that making all creatures into vanilla 1/1s is quite strong. There's never a moment when creatures will have their abilities on the battlefield, so it even beats creatures with powerful enters-the-battlefield abilities.
Creatures are stronger than ever, with cards such as Dockside Extortionist and Thassa's Oracle being some of the most powerful cards in the format. Humility readily slots into decks helmed by commanders like Shorikai, Genesis Engine that can make extremely good use of its powerful effect as a way to deal with problematic enemy creatures while still having access to a functional commander and viable win conditions. After all, vehicles are only creatures if they've been crewed!
Back to Basics (Urza’s Saga, 1998)
This is a card that shuts down nonbasic lands by preventing them from untapping and the first of two land hate cards from Urza's Saga that made this list. This is incredibly powerful, but the symmetrical effect makes it a real build-around card. You can't just throw this into any deck with blue and expect it to put up results. You could easily wind up with a bunch of your own lands stuck tapped if you're not careful.
Despite having a similar theme that screams synergy at first glance, a deck helmed by Archelos, Lagoon Mystic probably isn't the best home for Back to Basics because of the demanding color identity that will likely see you running a high number of nonbasic lands. This card is probably most at home with commanders such as Urza, High Lord Artificer and Teferi, Temporal Archmage that can run a good number of basic lands and have built-in ways to break parity on the effect through untapping and mana production.
Contamination (Urza’s Saga, 1998)
Much like a few other cards that we've seen on this list, Contamination seeks to deprive opponents of resources by hindering their mana production. This card only allows lands to produce black mana and also prevents powerful lands from producing more than one mana at a time. This effect even hits basic lands, so it can be quite strong when it comes to slowing down opponents, especially if they're not already playing black. The only real cost is that you need to feed Contamination by sacrificing a creature during your upkeep to keep the effect going.
While it's likely a bad fit for your K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth storm deck and other black decks that aren't running many creatures, Contamination is perfect for commanders like Nath of the Gilt-Leaf that can play green mana dorks and reliably produce creatures to sacrifice to keep it around. If that's not in your wheelhouse, you can also use cards like the classic Bitterblossom to pump out disposable creatures and keep your opponents off their game.
Crackdown (Mercadian Masques, 1999)
We've all heard about how white is the ‘worst color’ in Commander - I absolutely do not agree, and Crackdown gives you a chance to get your revenge on naysayers by punishing them for playing creatures that aren't white. This card will shut down most combat strategies that don't rely on many white creatures while rewarding you for playing the ultimate go-wide color.
Crackdown lets you stop powerful beat sticks with upside such as Pako, Arcane Retriever before they get out of control. You can even get some bonus synergy from cards like Blind Obedience and Court Street Denizen by tapping down enemy creatures before they ever have a chance to attack you at all. Unless your opponents have removal, you can practically soft-lock their combat strategies out of the game and teach them to respect the power of mono-white.
Trinisphere (Darksteel, 2004)
Higher power Commander games are usually dominated by efficient spells with low mana costs - many powerful staples can even be cast without paying any mana at all! Trinisphere represents the nuclear option when it comes to taxing cheap spells. This card simply does not care about your opponents and their cheap mana rocks, free counterspells, or efficient manual storm lines. Everything is surprisingly equal when it all costs at least three mana.
The effect is extremely strong, but it definitely doesn't fit into just any decklist. You'd only want to run this card in a very specialized type of deck. While Trinisphere is one of the strongest artifacts out there, you surely wouldn't run it in a Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain artifact storm deck because it would grind your deck to a halt.
A better fit for this card would be artifact-heavy stax lists such as Heliod, Sun-Crowned, especially if they run cards such as Mishra's Workshop that can help get Trinisphere out early to start putting pressure on the faster decks at the table.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence (Rise of the Eldrazi, 2010)
You might notice that this card is reminiscent of an earlier card on this list in that it disables activated abilities on creatures. The key difference is that Linvala, Keeper of Silence is asymmetrical! That means that you can still run all of your favorite creatures with activated abilities while punishing your opponents for doing the same. It almost doesn't seem fair … almost ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).
Commanders such as Kenrith, the Returned King and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy can quickly spiral out of control, so having an answer for them that doesn't stop your own activated abilities is fantastic. As far as asymmetrical hatebears go, this is one of the strongest in the Commander format.
(Author's note: It was just a funny coincidence that all of the commanders that I mentioned in this section have 'K' names. I suppose that I could have also mentioned Katilda, Dawnhart Prime; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; Krenko, Mob Boss and Kykar, Wind's Fury and continued the theme! Who knew that there were so many strong 'K' name commanders with activated abilities?)
Collector Ouphe (Modern Horizons, 2019)
Artifacts are among the strongest cards in the entire Commander format. You can do almost anything with the right artifacts, and most of them have activated abilities. Collector Ouphe is a card that shuts down all of that nonsense, turning mana rocks and other powerful artifacts into paperweights. This can be absolutely back-breaking for certain decks.
While Collector Ouphe isn't the only card that does this, it does have the distinct upside of working with other green cards such as Chord of Calling, allowing you to grab it at just the right time to shut down whatever your opponents are trying to do with their artifacts.
It's also a fantastic fit for green in general because of green's ability to produce mana without artifacts using cards such as Llanowar Elves and other mana dorks. As far as Collector Ouphe is concerned, your opponent's Mana Crypt is nothing more than a piece of useless scrap that has a 50-50 chance to deal 3 damage to them during their upkeep.
Archon of Emeria (Zendikar Rising, 2020)
Are you tired of your opponents casting two or three spells a turn and always having perfect untapped mana at all times? Archon of Emeria is the card for you. This creature is like a hatebear and a half, offering a powerful spell-casting restriction and punishing greedy land bases at the same time. All of this on a decent flying body for just three mana is a steal.
Archon of Emeria bolsters the already strong stable of Rule of Law variants while offering upsides. You don’t need to worry about the majority of combos or even the creeping value of commanders like Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder and Rashmi, Eternities Crafter while this creature is around. This card makes a strong case for being the absolute strongest hatebear in the Commander format and it scales well to even the highest power levels.
Dauthi Voidwalker (Modern Horizons 2, 2021)
Graveyard strategies are extremely strong in Commander and it can almost feel mandatory to pack some answers for them. Dauthi Voidwalker is among the strongest answers around. For just two mana, you get an unblockable body with an asymmetrical graveyard hate ability that also allows you to cast one of the cards that you exile without paying its mana cost - that's a lot one one card!
The only real downside that this card has is that your opponents are able to cast their own Dauthi Voidwalkers and gain access to the cards that you've exiled from other players. This isn’t the end of the world when you can proactively shut down powerful cards such as Underworld Breach, The Gitrog Monster or Reanimate for such a minimal cost. Having access to exiled counterspells and removal can also be handy in a pinch.
I hope that this list was informative for you! There are many other powerful cards out there like these ones, but I definitely don't have time to cover them all in one article. I'm a firm believer in stax and hate cards as a means of proactive protection and prevention in the Commander format, as long as you keep them within appropriate power levels. Don't be afraid to lean on cards like these from time to time.
I'd like to take this opportunity to plug my strongest stax deck, which is led by Heliod, Sun-Crowned. You can view it here. It’s an example of an aggressive stax deck that is designed to compete with the strongest decks in the format. Your mileage with stax and hate cards may vary depending on your preferred strategy, the decks that you play against, and the intended power level of your games.
Regardless of whether or not you choose to play these types of cards in your own decks, I hope that you continue to enjoy the Commander format. As always, I'll see you out there!
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
