Today we're looking at the most hated
card from every single year of Magic: the Gathering
1993 Winter Orb from Alpha While it's tempting to go with Stasis in part
because it essentially locks the entire table out of playing Magic by making
players skip their untapped step and in part because of its divisive art that
some players really hate and was apparently made by Magic creator Richard
Garfield's aunt for free Stasis has one big problem: you don't actually see it
very often because it's difficult to build around since you need a way to
keep making blue mana every turn while skipping your untapped step. As a result
Winter Orb, which isn't quite as brutal as Stasis on the battlefield but is much
easier to play, takes the trophy for 1993. Traditionally used by low curve
aggro decks as a way to punish mana hungry control decks the artifact makes
it so each player can only untap a single land each turn which slows the
game down to a crawl. The other reason Winter Orb beats out Stasis is that the
artifact was recently given new life thanks to the printing of Urza, Lord High
Artificer. Since Winter Orb only works if it's untapped it quickly developed
into a staple in Urza Commander decks where you can keep your opponents locked
under Winter Orb and on the last end step before your turn use Urza to tap Winter
Orb to free your mana from the lock turning the artifact from a symmetrical
lock piece into one that only hurts your opponents which makes it especially
hated 1994 Divine Intervention from Legends
Many Magic players play the game with the goal of winning and Divine Intervention
essentially spits their faces by forcing the game to end in a draw which means
after playing a game of Magic - potentially for hours - no one actually
wins which some player is find to make the entire experience pointless. The card
was so hated when it was first printed back in 1994 that it was banned from
competitive play less than two months after it was printed which at the time
set the record for the fastest banning ever. While this is enough to put Divine
Intervention atop our 1994 list two other cards deserve honorable mentions. First The Tabernacle at Pendral Vale, the bane of creature decks everywhere as a
land that makes players pay a mana on their upkeep for each of their creatures
or else sacrifice them. At its worse it's super annoying to have to spend a
big chunk of your mana each turn to keep your creatures alive at its best it's a free
repeatable wrath that only costs a land drop. The second card is Nether Void
which makes everyone pay three more mana for each of their spells or else they
get countered. You know how people hate playing against Thalia, Guardian of Thraben? Nether void is essentially three Thalias stapled together except it
doesn't die to creature removal and it works for any spell not just none
creature spells. It really says something about 1994 that this was also the year
that Blood Moon was first printed and blood moon doesn't even make our
honorable mentions! 1995
Jokulhaups from Ice Age. While in recent years Demonic Consultation has become a pretty
hated card thanks to its ability to combo with Thassa's Oracle I'd argue that
this rage is misguided; people actually hate Thassa's Oracle and just kind of
take it out on Demonic Consultation which just happens to be the easiest way
to combo with the alt-win condition but nothing from 1995 tops Jokulhaups. There's nothing Magic players hate more than having all of their lands blowen up
which makes sense because without lands can't really play Magic and in some ways
Jokulhaups is the worst kind of mass land destruction because it also
blows up creatures and artifacts which leads to some players playing it as a
wrath not really realizing or caring about the Armageddon mode. Basically
people play Magic because they want to, you know, play Magic and for just six
mana Jokulhaups keeps this from happening. Want to lose some friends? Well you
can snag all the most hated cards in Magic from our sponsored Card Kingdom
over at www.cardkingdom.com/mtggoldfish 1996 Flash from Mirage 1996 was actually
a pretty tame year in terms of card design there are only two sets released
during the year so there's not really a ton of cards to choose from. Cursed Totem
is annoying if you're playing a deck full of Mana dorks or other creatures
with activated abilities but beyond Cursed Totem there's just not that many
hated cards from the year which makes the infamous combo piece Flash the
winner for most hated card almost by default. For the first decade of Flash's
existence it wasn't really played at all but this change when Protean Hulk was
printed in Dissention. The idea was to use Flash to cheat Protean Hulk into
play maybe as early as turn one with fast mana and then you'd sack it which
would let you tutor up a game-ending combo of creatures with Protean Hulk's
death trigger. This synergy led to Flash being banned in Legacy like the weekend
after the interaction came out as well as Flash being banned in Commander and
restricted in Vintage 1997 Humility from Tempest It's almost
like Wizards realize that 1996 was a bit light on hateable cards and decided to
fix that in 1997 because there's a ton of options from the year: Apocalypse is
the ultimate troll card destroying literally everything on the battlefield
by also making you discard your hand so you essentially take yourself fully out
of the game and get to make everyone else at the table hate you, but hey at
least in combos with Barren Glory. Pendril Mist is 1994 honorable mention
The Tabernacle at Pender Vale on an enchantment, meanwhile Static Orb is
almost 1993 winner Winter Orb but for all permanents rather than just lands
making another brutal combo piece with Urza, Lord High Artificer but nothing
can compare to the pure brutality of Humility. For just four mana the
enchantment turns all creatures into 1/1's with no abilities. While this might
sound like a weird twist on a wrath it's actually far, far worse because it
applies not just to all the creatures on the battlefield but all future creatures
as well for as long as Humility sticks around. This also makes it super difficult
to kill Humility since creatures like Reclamation Sage or Loran of the Third Path
which are normally good answers for enchantments won't have their abilities
so they can't blow it up. The end result is once Humility hits the battlefield
the game devolves into this weird slap fight where everyone tries to kill each
other with mostly harmless 1/1's as they question their friendship with a
Humility player. 1998 Sunder from Urza's Saga while Urza
Saga and really Urza's block has a reputation of being one of the most
broken blocks in Magic, harkening combo winner in the competitive formats and
leading the endless bannings, it also deserves to be known as one of the most
hated blocks in Magic. Just look at Urza Saga - the first set in the block. That one
set offered three mass land destruction spells in Catastrophy, Wildfire and
Sunder, two upgraded Blood Moons one that ruins basic lands by turning them
into swamps in Contamination and the Blue version of Blood Moon in the aptly
named Back to Basics, constructed playable lock pieces in Energy Field and
Worship and the OG stax piece of Smokestack and that doesn't even
consider all the broken combo pieces! I honestly have no idea how to pick just
one single most hated card from 1998 but let's go with Sunder because there's
something uniquely painful about having all your lands bounce back to your hand. If your opponent destroys all your lands with an Armageddon effect they're just
gone and you can get over it but if you get Sundered there's an extra layer of
psychological damage is you have to look through your handful of beautiful mana
sources and then discard them all the hand size at the end of your turn
watching all your hopes and dreams of the game slowly slipping away is your
resources hit the graveyard one by one. It is a brutal experience. 1999 Thieves' Auction from Mercadian Masaques while 1999 gave us a bunch more massland
destruction spells - Impending Disaster, Wake of Destruction and Tectonic Break -
this isn't really that unusual for the era. Back in the 90s land destruction was
common and while some players hate it today it's was mostly accepted as a part
of the game at the time. On the other hand Mercadian Masques brought with it a
uniquely annoying card in Thieves' Auction. The idea of the card is that for
the little low price of seven mana yet exile all permanents and then you
essentially do a fantasy football style draft to see where those permanents end
up on the battlefield. While the card never really saw a competitive play with
the development and popularity of the multiplayer Commander format Thieves'
Auction has become infamous and hated. It doesn't really progress the game in any
meaningful way, instead it just shuffles around all the permanents on the
battlefield and in a four-player game the battlefield can have a lot of
permanence which means the card takes forever to actually resolve. God forbid
multiple players are using the same sleeves for their cards because and who
knows if you'll actually get all your cards back at the end of the game. Basically Thieves' Auction is hated because it really doesn't do much other
than siphon away everyone's time which puts it atop our list for 19.99. 2000
Rhystic Study from Prophecy. While Lin-Sivvi Defiant Hero deserves an honorable
mention for dominating 60 card formats thanks to the awkward legend rule at the
time that made us only a single copy of a legend could exist on the battlefield
at once which made Standard and Block into a race to see you could play the
first Lin-Sivvi to lock their opponent out of playing their copies of Lin-Sivvi
the Rebel simply can't match the hatred and notoriety of a lowly Prophecy
common Rhystic Study. Rhystic Study was a afterthought when it was printed but the
enchantment later developed into a staple in the Commander format where its
iconic question "do you pay the one?" not only drives players in insane because
it's asked every time they play a spell but the enchantment also leads to endless
arguments at the table about who will be the "responsible player" and deny their
opponent to card advantage at the cost of a mana and who will just ignore the
enchantment and reward its controller with an endless steam of card draw. Basically Rhystic Study is hated not just because it's super good and super
obnoxious to play against, but it's also the card most likely to lead to a
literal fist fight during a game of Magic
2001 Time Stretch from Odyssey One archetype of hated card that we haven't
talked about yet is extra turns spells. The game of Magic is built an idea that
you take a turn and then your opponent takes a turn, extra turn spells break
this rule allowing one player to take multiple turns in a row which just feels
unfair. Time Stretch is especially hated because it doesn't just give its caster
one extra turn it gives them two which means if you're playing against a Time
Stretch player you'll likely be sitting there for 20 minutes as your opponent
gleefully dumps their hand, draws endless cards, and pulls super far ahead. That
experience - just sitting there doing nothing while your opponent has all the
fun and does all the things - is one of the most deflating the game of Magic can
offer which is why Time Stretch is the most hated card of 2001. 2002
Insurrection from Onslaught 2002 is a pretty weak year for hated cards. By this
point wizard should mostly stop printing mass land destruction spells - some of the
most hated cards in the 90s - removing a lot of the low hanging fruit. There might
be an argument for Solitary Confinement which basically makes it so you can
never die as long as you keep it on the battlefield making it a staple in
enchantress decks across formats but let's go with Insurrection. While losing a game
of Magic is one thing losing to your own creatures is especially painful and
Insurrection tends to invalidate everything else it went on during the
game before it was cast winning out to the blue even if its controller has the
weakest battlefield. It's pretty easy to see why it's such a hated card. 2003 Mindslaver from Mirrodin 2003 is an interesting year for heated cards
Scourge brought with it the storm mechanic which is hated simply because
it's one of the most overpowered mechanics Wizards ever made. Hilariously
a card printed to hate on storm - stifle which can counter the storm trigger and
keep all the copies from happening - is a hated card in its own right mostly
because it can be used to counter a fetchland activation turning into one
mana land destruction, but none of these cards can match the hatred for some of
the artifacts from Miorrodin. Chalice of the Void's ability to lock cards of a
specific mana value out of the game is reviled and that doesn't even consider
the rules lawyering it offers with infamous "Chalice check" where players
intentionally cast spells into Chalice hoping that their opponent forgets the
trigger and lets the spell resolve, but even Chalice of the Void can't match the
hatred for 2003's winning card Mindslaver. Mindslaver combines together
two of the things that Magic players hate the most: extra turn spells and
losing to their own cards. When you activate a Mindslaver you get to control
your opponent during their next turn. At worst this means it's a extra turn spell -
you can steal your opponent's turn and just pass and go back to your turn
essentially giving you two turns in a row - but in a reality Mindslaver is much
much worse than this because normally you're not going to choose to just pass
the turn for your opponent, that'd be way too nice. When you play your opponent's
turn you want to play the turn in the worst way possible doing things like
casting their removal spells on their own creatures, cracking their fetchlands
and casting their ramp spells but feeling to find any lands to put on the
battlefield, chump attacking with their best creatures into blocks. While getting
mine slavered once is brutal many Mindslaver decks look to loop the artifact
from their graveyard with cards like a Academy Ruins which, with enough mana,
lets you control your opponent for the rest of the game making Mindslaver a
super easy choice for most hated card of 2003. 2004 Possessed Portal from 5th Dawn There aren't many cards in all of Magic that
can match the raw brutality of the 5th Dawn rare Possessed Portal. While costing
eight mana means you don't see Possessed Portal very often, that's a good thing
because when it does show up it is miserable. While it's on the battlefield
no one can draw cards and Portal slowly eats away all the permanents on the
battlefield and all the cards in players hands by making everyone's sacrifice or
discard on each end step. Basically Possessed Portal is Obliterate but in
super slow motion which makes it even more painful. When played fairly many,
many turns later its controller will eventually have to sacrifice Possessed
Portal to its own ability once they run out of other permanents to sacrifice and
the game will essentially start over except it'll be on turn 20 and no one
will have any cards in hand or any permanents on the battlefield. It is
absolutely miserable. 2005 Golgari-Grave Troll from Ravnica If
you're an artifact player you're probably not the biggest fan of Kataki
War's Wage and Thoughts of Ruin deserves an honorable mention for being one of
the only mass land destruction spells legal in the Modern format but nothing
from 2005 can match the hatred for the dredge mechanic is highlighted by the
best dredger Golgari-Grave Troll. The problem with dredges it's not really
playing Magic. All the dredge deck needs to do to win the game is get a single
dredge card in the graveyard and then start using the mechanic every time they
draw a card and their board will quickly be full of free creatures coming back
from the graveyard like Prized Amalgam, Ichorid, Narcomeobia and more. In Legacy
there's even an infamous version of the deck that doesn't play any lands at all
because it doesn't need to cast any spells to win the game, and this is what
makes the mechanic so hated: you're trying to do normal Magic stuff casting
spells, playing creatures, tapping lands where opponents doing none of these
normal Magic things and they're probably crushing you anyway which isn't exactly
most players definition of fun. 2006 Grand Arbiter Augustine IV from
Dissention There's really two cards from 2006 competing for the title of most
hated both of which happen to be Azorius cards from Dissention which I
guess makes sense considering pretty much everyone hates playing against
UW Control. The first card is Grand Arbiter Augustine IV which has been an
annoying card forever, ramping its controller while so slowing down
opponents by making them ping an extra mana for their spells but the hatred for
Grand Arbiter really took off once Commander became a format since you can
play the legend as your commander making sure you have access to its annoying
taxing effect every single game on turn four arguably making it one of the most
hated commanders in the entire format. Second we have Worldpurge which is
basically Wizard's attempt to fix Upheaval by making it impossible to
break this symmtery of the spell. The easiest way to break up evil is just
make a ton of mana, float it all, bounce all the permanents and then redeploy
your hand with your floating mana which your opponents won't get the opportunity
to do. Since Worlpurge empties everyone's mana pools this trick is
impossible with the Dissention rare which means it's basically just seven
mana restart the game with your opponent getting to be on the play which is a
pretty annoying effect. There isn't really a way to use it to your benefit
it just sort of slows the game down as players are forced to spend time
replaying their lands and replaying their creatures. Either would be a fine choice
for most hated card of the year but we'll go with Grand Arbiter Augustine
IV simply because it can be played as your commander which means it shows up
way more often in actual games of Magic than Worldpurge which just super
annoying but mostly unplayed. 2007 Thoughtseize from Lorwyn Honestly this
one caught me by surprise because I consider Thoughtseize to be a pretty
healthy card for competitive play .Sure it might be a bit overtuned but there's
many situations where Thoughtseize's ability to take a card from your
opponent's hand allows fair decks - think of modern Jund trying to beat down with
Tarmnogoyf - to compete with unfair combo decks and control decks. However
when I was working on this video I asked Twitter for their most hated cards in
Thougthseize was actually one of the most common answers, which I guess does
make some sense. Magic players often keep hands that are looking to execute a
specific game plan and for just one mana Thoughtseize can ruin the entire plan
by making you discard your most important piece. All of this to say even
though I don't personally hate Thoughtseize and I actually sort of like
it I'm also trying to make the list as a objective is possible and the community
has spoken making Thoughtseize the most hated card of 2007. 2008 a Ajani Vengent from Shards of Alara So far we've mostly talked about
cards that people hate for gameplay reasons, cards that combo or destroy
resources or keep you from playing the game, but her most hated card from 2008 -
Ajani Vengeant is a little bit different. As a standalone Magic card I
think most Magic players actually like it Ajani, so why is it our most hated
card of the year? Well Ajani Vengeant combines together two massive changes to
the game of Magic they happened 15 years ago and many players hated at the time
and actually still complain about to this day. First Ajani Vengeant a
planeswalker and Planeswalkers were introduced to the game the year before
Lowryn and a lot of long time Magic players hate the Planeswalker card type
thanks to its raw power and ability to dominate the game. Second Ajani is
also a Mythic Rare. Shards of Alara was the first set to include cards of the
Mythic Rarity and a big chunk of Magic players hate mythics either because
they think they lead to more overpowered cards being printed or they blame the
rarity for the ever-increasing cost of playing the game by making some of the
most hype cards from a set even harder to find. Add these two things together -
players hatred for mythics and hatred for planeswalkers - and the stage I set
for a card that many players actually like to somehow be the most hated card
of a year simply because of the changes to the game that it represents. 2009 Iona, Shield of Emeria from Zendikar The easiest way to design a hated Magic
card is to give it an ability that stops players from playing the game which has
been a recurring theme throughout our list and in 2009 Zendikar Wizards took
this concept to the next level with Iona, Shield of Emeria which lets you
choose a color and then keeps your opponents from casting spells of that
color. Kust how much you hate Iona mostly depends on the deck you're playing. If
you're a five-color deck then Iona is more of an annoyance than a real problem
but if you're playing a mono colored deck Iona keeps you from doing anything
at all which is absolutely brutal. This power led to Iona being a staple
reanimation target across formats almost as soon as it was printed and eventually
led to a somewhat constroversal banning in the Commander format. Speaking of
Commander Sen Triplites deserves an honorable mention as being one of the
most salt-inducing legends in the Commander format thanks to its ability
to steal spells and lands from opponents hands each turn cycle, as does Progenitus
whose iconic "protection from everything" text makes it almost impossible to kill,
assuming you can find a way to get it on the battlefield 2010
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre from Rise of the Eldrazi 2010 is an interesting year. There are several overpowered cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor which broke
Standard and Primeval Titan which is banned and Commander and dominates
Modern which deserve to be mentioned simply because of their negative impact
on competitive play. Scars of Mirrodin also brought with it the infect mechanic
which a lot of players really hate headline by Skitherix, the Blight Dragon
although the most impactful poison cards would be random cheap commons like
Glistener Elf and Blighted Agent which wouldn't show up until 2011's New
Pheraxia set, but perhaps the most hated cards of the year were the annihilating
Eldrazi Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Kozilek,
Butcher of Truth. The annihilator mechanic is brutal making you sacrifice
a bunch of permanents when you get attacked by a creature with annihilator
which combined with a massive size of the Eldrazi and their powerful cast
triggers make them incredibly hard to beat. Technically Emrakul's the best of
the bunch but it's also banned in Commander which means you're actually
more likely to play against Ulamag or Kozelek these days and even though these
Eldrazi aren't quite as powerful they're still super annoying to play against
Which Eldrazi deserves to be a top spot on our list is up for debate. I can see
arguments for all three but let's go with Ulamog, the Infintie Gyre since
it's legal in Commander and its cast trigger also blows up a permanent making
it one of the most destructive finishers ever printed 2011
Mental Misstep from New Phyrexia There's really two very different kinds of cards
competing for the title of most hated card in 2011 and which one you hate the
most will largely depend on what format you play. The first group is headlined by
two of the New Phyrexian Praetors Jin-Gitaxias Core Augur and Vorinclex Voice of Hunger
both of which have incredibly hateable static abilities with
Jin-Gitaxian making you discard your entire hand every end step while so drawing its
controller tons of cards and Vorinclex doubling its controllers mana
while also letting the opponents only until kept their lands every other turn. If you're a commander player these are likely some of the cards you hate the
most. On the other hand 2011 also brought with it one of the all-time most hated
mechanics for 60 card formats in Phyrexian mana highlighted by the color
pie breaking Mental Misstep. While these cards might not look that impressive at
first glance the fact that you can cast them for two life rather than for mana
makes them incredibly broken since any deck can play it. The end result is that
the best Phyrexian mana cards like Mental Misstep just straight up broke the game
and are banned in essentially every format and even the ones that are legal
like tDismember are often disliked because they break the fundamental rules
of the game. While I can see arguments for both sides the devastating
impact of Mental Misstep on Legacy - one of Magic's most powerful formats - where
every deck had to play the counter spells so they could try to stop their
opponent's copies of the counter spell an absolutely horrific play pattern, puts
it atop the list for the year although if you want to go with Jin-Gitaxian or
Vorinclex I'm not gonna argue with you 2012 Cyclonic Rift from Return
to Ravnica 2012 is one of the easiest years to pick a most hated card it's
return to Ravnica's Cyclonic Rift and it isn't especially close. While the
instant is fine in 60 card formats in Commander its ability to make everyone
accept its caster pick up all their non-land permanents at instant speed
makes it one of the most feared and reviled cards in the format. The best
case scenario when someone overloads a Cyclonic Rift is that they bounce all
their opponent's things, untap and proceed to win the game. When that
happens Cyclonic Rift is super powerful and maybe a bit annoying but mostly fine. The worst case scenario though is that someone casts a Cyclonic Rift and
doesn't really have a board state that lets them win the game. In these
situations what usually happens is everyone spends a few turns rebuilding
and then the Cyclonic Rift player will recur the instant from their graveyard and
make everyone pick up all their non-land permanents again and then a few turns
later they'll do it again. These games - the games of non-lethal Cyclonic Rift
loops - are some of the most miserable that the Commander format has to offer. They take forever to finish and you spend most of your time playing the same
cards over and over and over again which is why everyone hates on Cyclonic Rift.
2013 Notion Thief from Dragon's Maze In the earliest years of Magic some of
the most hated cards were mass land destruction spells which would leave you with a ton
of cards in hand but no way to actually play them because you wouldn't have any
mana. After Wizards decided to mostly remove mass land destruction from the game
the equation changed. Since you would always have the mana to cast your spells the
bigger concern was having cards in hand so you should have something to spend
your mana on. Enter: Notion Thief, the first major member of one of the most
hated archetypes of cards in the last decade of Magic, card draw hate. Once
Notion Thief hits the battlefield it keeps opponents from drawing extra
cards. Actually, it's way better than that - if your opponent would draw an
extra card you draw those cards instead! It's original intention was to hate on
Sphinx's Revelation - a mass card draw spell that was dominating Standard at
the time, and when played this was - in response to your opponent casting
some huge card draw spell - you can argue that Notion Thief is actually a positive
for the game since it keeps control decks from running away with the game
with card advantage, but players quickly realized that the true power of Notion
Thief wasn't to wait for your opponent to cast a card draw spell, it wast to
combo with it in conjuntion with Wheel effects - cards that force all players
to discard their hands and draw 7 cards. With a Whell Notion Thief turns into an
incredibly frustering combo piece that least your opponents empty-handed while
its controller has a million cards in hand In many way the hand destruction problem is
and inversation of the land destruction problem from the 90's. To play a game of
Magic you need two things: mana to cast your spells and spells to cast with your
mana. Mass land destruction took away the mana making it impossible to play the game. While mass hand destruction like Notion Thief takes away the cards which also
makes it impossible to play the game, making Notion Thief and easy choice
for most hated card of 2013. 2014 Treasure Cruise from Khans of Tarkir 2014 might be the least hateable year of
Magic ever. Commander's growing but Wizards hasn't yet started to design
every single set for the format which means that Standard and Modern are both
thriving as well. The closest thing we have to a hatable card from the year is
probably Treasure Cruise and even that's a stretch because the issue with Treasure
Cruise isn't that it's miserable or keeps you from playing the game it just
ended up being super overpowered. It turns out that delve is a busted
mechanic in format like Modern and Legacy where fetchlands let players
quickly and easily fill their graveyard which led to Treasure Cruise-based
Delver of Secrets decks dominating competitive formats for a few months
until Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were banned in Legacy and in Modern. While I'm not sure this is really enough to qualify a card as hated, like I said,
2014 was a uniquely good year for Magic design which means there just aren't a
lot of hateable cards to choose from. 2015 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy from Magic origins
2015 is a tricky year for hated cards with two very different cards
competing for the title. First we have Void Winnoer. The Eldrazi's ability to
keep opponents from using or even casting even mana value cards is super
annoying. As we've learned there's nothing Magic players hate more than
not being able to use their cards and Void Winnoer basically says half your
deck is useless now. On the other hand we have Jace, Vryn's Prodigy which was
hated for a very different reason. The Magic Origins flip walker ended up
costing almost $100 a copy during its peak thanks to its power
and playability in Standard combined with this super expensive mana bases
driven by fetchland's reprinted in Khans of Tarkir and fetchable dual lands from
Battle for Zendikar. Jace led to the most expensive Standard format of all
time with tier decks costing nearly a thousand dollars. While void winner is
certainly annoying, Jace's price tag and the overall cost of standard during 2015
was so hated by players that some just stopped playing the game altogether
which makes Jace the most hated card of the year, not so much because of how it
played on the battlefield but because of what it did to the game as a whole. 2016
Expropriate from Conspiracy: Take the Crown 2016 was a fairly hateable year in
Magic. In Modern Eldrazi like Thought-Knot Seer dominated the format during the
infamous Eldrazi Winter before they were eventually banned. In Standard
Emrakul, the Promised End brought with it many of the worst aspects of 2003's
winner Mindslaver except it also came along with a 13/13 flying, trampling body
for some reason and it was also banned. Speaking of bannings Leovald, Emissary of
Trest was the strongest version of a Notion Thief style card draw hate effect
yet leading to its banning in Commander but in this sea of hated cards a certain
blue sorcery floats to the top: Expropriate. Ass we discussed before two
things Magic players hate is extra turn spells and losing to their own cards and
Expropriate combines those two things together in a especially miserable
package that actually requires players to vote for which horrible option they
want to experience. Since you also get to vote for Expropriate you're guaranteed
to get at least one extra turn if you want it and then each opponent has to
choose whether to give you their best permanent (which you get to choose) or
even more extra turns. This is the closest thing we have to a Saw-style
horror movie playing out in a Magic card. Yeah, technically you get a choice but
both choices are so brutal and so painful that you'll lose either way
which is why it's Expropriate is so hated. 2017 Paradox Engine from Aether Revolt
While there might be an argument for Carnage Tyrant which many Standard
players hated thanks to its combination of a big trampling body along with hexproof
and uncounterability making it especially hard to interact with or
maybe Overwhelming Splendor an updated but expensive take on 1998's winner
Humility that only hurts a single player or maybe even the busted eminence
commanders like The Ur-Dragon which have annoyingly powerful effects that you
can't interact with while they're sitting in the command zone but all
these cards fade away compared to the hatred for Paradox Engine. So why is
Paradox Engine so hated? It's not because it wins the game. It's actually because
it doesn't necessarily win the game. The most common way to play Paradox Engine
is with a bunch of mana rocks so you can tap all your artifacts to float a bunch
of mana and then you cast a spell to untap all your mana rocks and then you
can tap them again to make even more mana. If you back this up with a bunch of card
draw you can generate a ton of mana and play through a huge chunk of your deck
in one turn when this happens the Paradox Engine player is super likely to
win the game eventually they'll drawn into some sort of finisher but they aren't
guaranteed to win the game which means all their opponents have to sit there
for a half hour watching the Paradox Engine player have all the fun, draw
through their deck and make a huge pile of mana just because there's a
0.0001 chance that there's like 20 lands in a row on top of their deck and the
plan fizzles and you get another turn. The non-deterministic nature of Paradox
Engine combos which essentially holds opponents hostage for a huge amount of
time is what makes the card so hated and eventually led to its banning in
Commander 2018 Nexus of Fate from Core Set 2019. On one
hand it's probably not a surprise to see Nexus of Fate is the most hated card of
the year. It is an extra turn spell after all and we've already discussed how players
tend to hate extra turns because it lets the extra turn player hoard all
the gameplay and all the fun but the reasons that Nexus of fate in specific
is so so hated goes far beyond just being an extra turn spell. For one thing
it's an extra turn spell that for some reason shuffles itself back into your
deck once it resolves which led to a tier Standard deck built around looping
Nexus of Fate to take infinite turns. Some of those decks played only a single
Callous Dismissal as a win condition which meant that the Nexus of Fate
player would try to close out the game by attacking with a 1/1 amass Zombie
which is a incredibly miserable experience to sit through for the
opponent. The looping of Nexus fate also led to some other issues. There's an
infamous game caught on stream where a player had zero ways to win the game but
proceeded to Loop Nexus of Fate for over an hour as thousands of people watch the
stream which eventually led to Nexus of Fate being banned in best of one
standard on Magic Arena. But it gets even worse Nexus of Fate was a buy a box
promo which means players couldn't even find copies in booster packs. Wizards had
said that these unique buy a box promos were supposed to be casual cards rather
than constructed staples but they clearly missed super high on Nexus of Fape
this led to some pricing issues especially on Magic Online where a
single copy of Nexus of Fate costs nearly $200 at one point, if you could
even find one to buy at all. Buy-a-box promos are also foils which led to
another issue for competitive play. Magic foils are infamous for curling and playing
curling foils in a tournament that can be considered cheating because you might
be able to see where the card is in your deck. As such there were Pro Tour level
tournaments where players were allowed to play proxies for Nexus of Fate
because the real version was considered to be playing marked cards and cheating. Basically Nexus of Fate was hated by pretty much everyone. Casual players
hated it because it was an extra turn spell and a loopable one at that. Competitive players hated it because it was hard to find and only came in foil
making Nexus of Faith the perfect storm of Magic card hate ability 2019
Teferi, Time Raveler from War of the Spark 2019 might be the hardest year ever for
picking a most hated card mostly because the year was stuff full of cards that
players hated. Oko, Thief of Crowns was hated because it broke the game. Agent of
Treachery was hated for being the most competitive "steal your stuff card" of all
time. Questing Beast was hated for its memeably large amount of text. The
brawl deck legends Korvald and Chulane were hated for being overpowered. Field
of the Dead was hated for offering too much value on a land. Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
was hated for being too strong in Commander and Brawl. Karn, the Great
Creator was hated for locking Modern players out of the game with
Mycosynth Lattice and that's just a short list of cards players hated from 2019. Honestly we could probably do a whole video just talking about hatable cards
from that year alone but in this sea of overpowered miserable hated cards two
cards stand out above the rest. The first is the war of the spark planeswalker
Teferi, Time Raveler. While many of the first run of planeswalkers with static
abilities from War of the Spark like Karn, the Great Creator and Narset, Parter
of the Veil Teferi, Time Raveler stand out above the pack for being a three mana
planeswalk which kept you from casting things at instant speed by also allowing
your opponent to play during your turn while also bouncing your best permanent. While Teferi was grown-inducing everywhere the fact that it often showed up in
UW Control decks loaded up with counterspells and sweepers and Teferi, Hero
of Dominaria made it especially hated by Standard players. Eventually it
ended up being banned in Standard and in Pioneer in rebalanced on Magic Arena. The
second card comes from Commander 2019 Dockside Extortionist. The two-drop
Goblin simply makes too much mana and is too easy to combo with making it one of
the most hated cards in the Commander format even today four years later
there's an ever-present conversation about whether Dockside should be banned
in Commander. Why either of these cards would be a fine choice for most hated
card of the year personally I lean towards Teferi, Time Raveler simply
because it shows up in a bunch of formats while Dockside really only shows
up in Commander. While Commander players really hate Dockside Teferi is hated by
Commander players, Modern players, Standard players, Arena players, paper
players basically everyone hates Teferi. 2020 Thassa's Oracle from Theros: Beyond Death
2020 is more or less a continuation of 2019 with one of the
most broken areas of power creep in Magic's history which led to a lot of
hated cards. The free spell cycle from Commander 2020 headlined by Fierce
guardianship is especially hated in Commander in part because it's
overpowered and in part because it feels like the cards were designed to be
Commander staples which feels worse than when a card is designed for other
reasons and organically develops into a commander all star. The same is also true
of some other cards released in 2020 especially in November's Commander
Legend set which included gems like Jeweled Lotus, Hullbreacher and
Opposition Agent. Meanwhile in 60 card formats 2020 brought with it Winota, Uro,
Goldpsan Dragon, Emergent Ultimatum and Alrund's Epiphany, all of which were at the
very least disliked. More importantly 2020 was the year that Wizards unleashed
the companion mechanic on the multiverse which broke the game by giving players
an extra free card in their starting hand and it led to endless erratas and
Bannings putting companion alongside storm and dredge on the short list of
most hated mechanics in the game's history. Oh yeah 2020 was also the first
time Wizards printed Universes Beyond cards releasing The Walking Dead Secret
Lair drop which enraged vorthos players to the point where some players
swore that if a player sat down at a table with a Rick, Steadfast Leader deck they
would simply refuse to play with them. While views on universes Beyond have
softened over the last couple years there's no doubt that The Walking Dead
cards at least deserve an honorable mention in 2020. But one card from 2020
manages to breach the divide between casual Commander players and competitive
60 card players: Thassa's Oracle. The two drops win the game if your library is
empty enters the battlefield trigger led to a broken combo deck in Pioneer with
the Inverter of Truth which almost killed the fledgling format while in
Commander the combo of Demonic Consultation in Thassa's Oracle dominated
the most powerful version of the format cEDH. Unlike previous payoffs for
having an empty library like Laboratory Maniac which require you to draw a card
with an empty library to actually win the game the fact that Thassa's Oracle
just immediately wins the game when it hits the battlefield makes it incredibly
hard to interact with unless you're a blue deck playing some counterspells. Basically it turns out that thus's Oracle is just a bit or I guess maybe a
lot too easy to win with. While there's a bunch of 2020 cards that Commander
players say in a bunch more than 60 card constructed players hate Thassa's Oracle
is unique because everyone hates it making it an easy choice for most hated
card of the Year 2021 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer from Modern Horizons 2. It's
pretty obvious that the most hated card from 2021 comes from Modern Horizons 2
which means the real question here is which card from the set is most hated
Ragavan, Nimble pilfer is the most obvious choice as a one drop that can
snowball into a win all by itself if unchecked which makes many Modern
players hate it. More recently the card's been added to Magic Arena which has
opened up a whole new level of hate from Historic Brawl players who often just
scoop on turn one once they see the stupid monkey. I can also see a pretty
strong argument for the free evoke elemental cycle for Modern Horizons 2
most specifically Fury which has pushed a lot of decks built around small
creatures out of the modern format. If you're a fan of Merfolk or Elves or
similar tribal decks with a bunch of small creatures you probably hate Fury
far more than you hate Ragavan. Part of me wants to do the hipster thing and go
with Fury since it's less obvious but the fact that Ragavan is hated by
Historic Brawl players along with Modern players makes it the correct choice for
2021 like it or not. Oh yeah, a quick honorable mention to Key to the Archive. While I don't think the card technically qualifies for our list since it's a
digital only card that doesn't exist in paper we can't talk about the most hated
cards in the game of Magic and not mention Alchemy, likely the most hated
format in Magic. While some players hate all Alchemy cards just because they
don't exist in paper Key to the Archive is even more hated than most since its
spellbook offers players an extra turn spell in Time Warp and as a colorless
card it can show up in any deck. Players hate extra turn spells in general but
seeing your opponent's mono white deck start taking extra turns with Time Warp
is especially infuriating for Historic Brawl players on Magic Arena. 2022
_____ Goblin from Unfinity. The recent standard batting offer a shortlist to the most
hated Standard cards of the past year: Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is hated for
being too good why Invoke Despair is hated for being super strong and also
super annoying, but broken cards are more or less normal in the current power
creeping era of Magic design which means that just being overpowered isn't enough
for a card to be the most hated card of a year anymore. The winner of the year is
a card that only sees fringe competitive play _____ Goblin. 2022 brought with it
Magic's fourth unset Unfinity. Traditionally Unsets are fairly well
received. They aren't tournament legal so they're easy to ignore if you don't
enjoy their wacky themes and designs and some of the cards are actually pretty
fun and at least funny but what made Unfinity unique is that Wizards decided
to make some of the cards from the set tournament legal including the super
goofy sticker mechanic. On paper the idea of putting stickers on your
expensive Magic cards looked weird and in practice it was even worse because
the stickers which were supposed to be reusable ended up being pretty low
quality and hard to use more than once and arguably hard to use even once. They
ended up falling off cards, ending up on the floor stuck on random things and
were quickly destroyed. While any tournament legal sticker card would be a
worthy choice for most hated card of the Year _____ Goblin Takes the cake in part
because it actually shows up in some Legacy Goblin decks and in part because
the endless Mind Goblin jokes it brings to Magic tables. 2023 Orcish Bowmasters
from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth. We're only halfway through 2023 so
it's a bit silly to pick a most hated card for the year. Who knows what
miserable, reviled card will show up over the next six months? This said for the
sake of completion we have to pick something so let's go with the current
boogeyman Orcish Bowmasters. The card is somewhat reminiscent of some super
hated cards from the recent past like Hullbreacher and Hotion Thief which hate on
card draw. While Bowmasters isn't quite as brutal because it still lets players
draw cards - it just deals a bunch of damage and makes a huge mass token. While
the card is still brand new it's already caused concern with players predicting
that it'll break Legacy and calling for it to be pre-banding Commander. Will the
card be as good as people expect or will the hate start to fade as players learn
to play wither against the two-drop? Only time will tell, but for now Orcish
Bowmasters is as good a choices as any for most hated of the tear. What's your
most hated Magic card? Make sure to let me know in the comments and then if you
want even more magic make sure to check out the video about the worst cards to
have ever been banned or maybe the one where we discussed the best creature
during every year of Magic the Gathering.
