Oh no you don't...

If there's one type of card that gets Commander players collective backs' up it's cards that stop them playing spells or make them pay for doing so.  For the purposes of this article let's call them...

Punisher cards*

The poster child for these cards has to be Kaerverk the Merciless.

I'm sure it's quite easy to see how having Kaervek on the table might anger your opponents. One thing to note is that the CMC of a spell with X in the casting cost is just whatever mana symbols are printed on the card.

Of course playing such cards presents a Painful Quandary to the player considering it. (Pun intended)

If your opponent doesn't have a card in hand they have no choice if they want to cast a spell they have to pay 5 life to do so!

Of course if you have a Liliana's Caress or Megrim in play then your opponents' choices become even less palatable.

Searching the library; everyone's at it in commander. Whether it's for a creature, planeswalker, land or any other card in your library most decks will contain some kind of search ability.

Not if you've got Ob Nixilis, Unshackled on the board they don't. Okay he doesn't stop searching dead in it's tracks but it's going to cost your opponents 10 life, yep 25% of their starting life total, just to search their library....Ouch.

Of course you should know by now that I personally favour a strong suit of spells in my deck that let me draw extra cards each round. But what if my opponents have one or more of these in play?

Along with Nekusar, the Mindraser it just goes to prove that you aren't even safe when drawing cards.

More black cards to punish your opponent. This time if they attack, play a land or try to cast a spell of a particular colour.

One of the cool things about Blood Seeker is his ability to switch off token deck, especially those looking to go infinite.

But Black isn't the only colour that specialises in cards that punish your opponenets. White is pretty good at it too, but it does it in a different way.

So rather than outright attacking your life total, White slows your opponents down by making everything they want to do that bit harder to accomplish.

You might think that Thalia should be included in this group, however, she targets you as well as your opponents and the last thing you want to do is hinder yourself.

White does have one card that acts a little like the black cards above;

Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker - you have to let them damage you but if they do so they are going to have to sacrifice a permanent.  This isn't so great against token decks but otherwise it's a great form of defence.

White is also good at stopping your opponents from doing certain things.

White also have another trick up its proverbial sleeve; making things come into play tapped.

While this doesn't 'hurt' you opponents it does slow them down. A token deck looking to run an infinite loop and attack you with thousands of hasty tokens isn't going to be able to if any of these three cards are on the board.

White isn't the only colour that can do this. Red can do it and so can Blue.

Speaking of Red cards they also have access to Æther Sting.

While not the strongest card in this group, Red  has the advantage that it can play enchantments that double damage.

One card that I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog is Rhystic Study.

Your opponents either have to let you have a card or pay 1 extra per spell they cast. So you're either slowing them down or speeding yourself up.

Memory Erosion is possibly a double edged sword. If you come up against a reanimation type deck then you could end up fueling their deck for them. It's also not that punishing so I'd probably give it a miss. I included it as it's a commander specific card.

For the first time in this blog I get to show one of the old style flip cards (non-double sided). Erayo, Soratami Ascendant.  If you can get Erayo to flip then countering the first spell played by each opponent is particularly nasty.

To finish off this post I have Isolation Cell. The only artifact that punishes your opponents for playing spells.

Just remember play too many of theses and your games will quickly become you versus the rest of your opponents.

Phil



*I know punisher cards actually have a type in Magic where you have to pay life to stop a socery/instant from happening but I couldn't find a better name for this group of cards.