The 24 Best Impact Tremors Effects in Magic Ranked

Impact Tremors | Illustration by Lake Hurwitz

Hi everyone! Today, we take a look at one of the best ways to deal damage in aggressive decks, and that’s cards that have an Impact Tremors effect, or simply impact cards. When each creature you play deals damage to your opponents when it enters, it’s like they’re pseudo-unblockable, hasted threats. That, of course, gets better in go-wide token strategies.

Looking to extend the reach of your creatures and burn Commander players out? These cards may be just what you’re looking for.

What Are Impact Tremors Effects in MTG?

Warleader's Call | Illustration by Aldo Dominguez

Impact Tremors effects, or simply impacts, mimic the original Impact Tremors, a simple 2-mana enchantment that damages one or more opponents each time a creature enters under your control.

For this list, I’m considering cards that deal consistent damage. Each time a certain card enters, your opponents lose some life. I won’t consider cards like Viashino Pyromancer, or spells-matter cards like Guttersnipe. Sometimes, it’ll count just a specific creature type, like dragons or nontoken creatures. I’m also considering both damage and life loss, and will use the language interchangeably. I’ll tend to rate cards better the more flexible they are at triggering, so a card that only triggers with dragons brings up the rear. Other cards rate better based on Constructed playability.

#24. Dragon Tempest

Dragon Tempest is a fine inclusion in dragon typal decks, and it even scales with the number of dragons you have. The thing is, many dragons cost 4+ mana, and this card will sometimes sit on the battlefield without doing anything for a couple of turns. The most important aspect of this card is that it’s a haste enabler, especially useful if you’re playing a big dragon commander that needs to attack. You’ll see this card in more focused dragon decks with commanders like Kaalia of the Vast or Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm.

#23. Flayer of the Hatebound

Flayer of the Hatebound is a specific type of impact card, since you’ll want to have cards that come back from the graveyard. Mechanics like undying or unearth are fine, and the Flayer itself returns from the dead with 5 power, dealing that amount of damage. With this card around, each infinite persist combo will be lethal, like you’re sacrificing Murderous Redcap again and again.

#22. Grim Guardian

Grim Guardian is an impact card for enchantment decks. Many enchantress decks in BG or WBG play a lot of enchantments in a single turn, even if it’s just some cantrips or auras, and the damage this card deals adds up. You can think of it as more direct damage in Voltron aura strategies, or a slow win condition for value decks that use Doomwake Giant or Anikthea, Hand of Erebos.

#21. Obyra, Dreaming Duelist

A faerie impact card, Obyra, Dreaming Duelist is a good reason to build a faerie typal deck. It’s a flash commander at 2 mana, so you can cast it, untap, and hold mana for your tricky faerie stuff. And if you have cards that make many faerie tokens like Alela, Cunning Conqueror, Bitterblossom, or Oona, Queen of the Fae, Obyra can do a lot of work.

#20. Wispdrinker Vampire

Wispdrinker Vampire is an impact card that works specifically for creatures with power 2 or less, which is basically most tokens. It was an interesting build-around for its set, and this card intersects with many WB themes, like low-power, vampires, lifegain, and more. It’s restrictive as an impact card, but it works in many infinite loops and you get some incidental lifegain.

#19. Tinybones Joins Up

Tinybones Joins Up is usually played in formats like Standard to make your opponents discard a card, and you can get it back with cards like Nurturing Pixie. But it’s also an impact card if you’re playing legendary creatures.

#18. Wayward Servant

Wayward Servant is a zombie impact card you’ll put in most black and white zombie decks. It’s excellent as a Limited signpost uncommon, and in Orzhov () Commander decks that constantly create zombie tokens like The Necrobloom, Ratadrabik of Urborg, or Zahur, Glory's Past.

#17. Suture Priest + Blood Seeker

I’ve put Suture Priest and Blood Seeker together as functionally identical reverse impact cards, because they only reduce life totals when opposing creatures enter the battlefield. In a way, this can fight infinite creature combos. Suture Priest gets a nod here since it’s better in more decks due to the lifegain.

#16. Vial Smasher, Gleeful Grenadier

Vial Smasher, Gleeful Grenadier is better than many of these cards, but as an impact card, it loses many points because it only works with outlaws. Cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction that create mercenary tokens are good with Vial Smasher, and you’ll play this mainly in outlaws-matter Commander decks.

#15. Glaring Fleshraker

Glaring Fleshraker is this far down the list simply because it only works for colorless creatures, but don’t get fooled by that restriction. This card is good enough as a mix of ramp and an interesting combo piece. Each time you cast a colorless spell, you’ll get a mana back in the form of an Eldrazi Spawn token and 1 damage to each opponent. If you’re going infinite in an artifact loop, that’s your win condition.

#14. Witty Roastmaster

Witty Roastmaster doesn’t have anything special besides the impact alliance effect, but at least it doesn’t have any creature restrictions. Considering the many other impact cards, you’ll play this for redundancy in Commander decks that ping or in rarity-restricted decks and Cubes.

#13. Raphael, Tough Turtle + Shocking Sharpshooter

I’ve put Raphael, Tough Turtle and Shocking Sharpshooter together because they’re almost the same card: a 1/3 for 1, with your basic, functional impact effect. A slight advantage goes to the Sharpshooter because it has reach. Decks that want impact effects will probably play both cards, considering that you want to start early and have a board presence as soon as possible.

#12. General Kreat, the Boltbringer

General Kreat, the Boltbringer is an excellent addition to the impact cards. It triggers off any creature type, and you can create Goblins just by attacking with other goblins. This is especially strong when you have cards like Goblin Rabblemaster that create an attacking goblin token with haste every turn for free.

#11. Molten Gatekeeper

Molten Gatekeeper is very similar to Weftstalker Ardent in the sense that you can put it in play for just 1 mana and combo. It’s also an artifact, which is an interesting advantage. The thing is, to be able to pay 1 mana and have this card in play, you need to discard it or have it trade off, so your classic discard and draw effects in red can help you here.

#10. Weftstalker Ardent

Weftstalker Ardent is interesting as a 3-mana card that impacts whenever creatures or artifacts enter, which expands the scenarios in which this card is playable. What sets this card apart is the warp cost considering that many times you’re just interested in the impact effect for one turn. When you’re about to go off, that difference in mana cost is huge.

#9. Slash, Reptile Rampager

Slash, Reptile Rampager is a big, pushed rare, as a 7/5 that deals 2 damage with its alliance ability. The only problem with this card is that MTG isn’t that keen on cards that cost 5 but don’t impact the battlefield immediately. If you get to untap with this mutant turtle, however, you can deliver a good chunk of damage to your opponents. Just attacking with Slash already deals 2 damage to everyone by making a 2/2 token.

#8. Corpse Knight

Since we’re considering life loss as an impact effect, Corpse Knight is one of the classics. Zombie and knight are good creature types, and it’s a serviceable, aggressive 2-drop card for these decks. White and black decks interested in creating many tokens and sacrificing them will usually play this card because they already get the damage upfront.

#7. Arbaaz Mir

Arbaaz Mir has the added benefit of lifegain, though with the restriction that it only works with historic permanents. With the effect being linked to artifacts and legends, you have many possibilities like playing an equipment-heavy deck, a slower deck around sagas, or using some impactful legendary creature cards. From there, a simple card like Mechanized Ninja Cavalry will do some work.

#6. Impact Tremors

There’s nothing wrong with the original Impact Tremors, a card from Dragons of Tarkir (I thought it was older). It’s cheap at 2 mana, it pings all opponents, and it works with all creatures, besides being slightly harder to interact with than creatures with the same ability.

#5. Ayara, First of Locthwain

Ayara, First of Locthwain only works for black creatures, but it does so many things that it ends up being very flexible. You can play Ayara in life drain/lifegain decks, or black devotion decks due to its mana cost. It’s also interesting in aristocrats deck as a sacrifice outlet.

#4. Agate Instigator

The best aspect of Agate Instigator is that it has offspring, so you get the trigger twice and you have a little redundancy to spot removal. It’s also a lizard, and lizard decks are built around the idea of damaging players every turn, as a sort of bloodthirst mechanic. This card is an auto-enabler for many of the Bloomburrow lizards.

#3. Warleader’s Call

Warleader's Call is an important card as a mix of a Glorious Anthem and a way to punish more defensive decks with the constant damage. Plus, if you have any form of recursion or a steady stream of creatures, it’ll be hard for your opponents to survive all the constant pinging.

#2. Terror of the Peaks

Terror of the Peaks is an already playable card as a 5/4 big dragon with protection. This card has a super impact effect, as it deals damage equal to another creature’s power to any target. It’s usually played in some sort of combo deck that can put a lot of big creatures on the battlefield at once, with cards like Hypergenesis or Bringer of the Last Gift. But it’s also cool as a source of constant damage.

#1. Purphoros, God of the Forge

It’s hard to top Purphoros, God of the Forge as the go-to impact card. First, it deals 2 damage when any creature enters the battlefield on your side, which is a great improvement. Purphoros is also an indestructible enchantment, and not that many players run exile-based enchantment removal, so the card tends to stay on the battlefield. You can build around Purphoros by having a lot of token producers, or just add it to a red token strategy, where it’ll also be very strong.

Best Impact Payoffs

When talking about the best impact payoffs, it’s hard not to think about effects that make a lot of tokens at once. MTG has plenty of that: Song of Totentanz, Tempt with Vengeance, and Devastating Onslaught are just a few examples.

Creatures that enter the battlefield and produce a lot of bodies are also valid. Examples would be Captain of the Watch, Siege-Gang Commander, Beetleback Chief, or just a planeswalker like Elspeth, Sun's Champion on the +1 ability. Krenko, Mob Boss can produce a lot of goblin tokens in a goblin typal deck.

Many blink combos win the game on the spot. Sometimes you have an infinite loop like two Myr Retriever and a card like Ashnod's Altar. Birgi, God of Storytelling and Grinning Ignus is also an infinite enter combo.

A card like Norin the Wary triggers impact cards naturally by exiling itself and returning to the battlefield multiple times per turn cycle.

Red cards that double all the noncombat damage dealt speed up your game plan. You can think of cards like Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Artist's Talent, or Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might. Panharmonicon will double all triggers from creatures entering.

Mass reanimation isn’t bad, either. Even Standard has combos that revolve around Raise the Past or Bringer of the Last Gift, and you can also play Living Death or Rally the Ancestors.

Wrap Up

Agate Instigator | Illustration by Quintin Gleim

And that’s about it for Impact Tremors effects, guys. With the popularity of battle royale Commander play, it’s hard to have an aggressive deck that doesn’t rely on one of these cards to help with sustained damage, especially when one of these can be your commander. It’s also interesting to note that many combos in EDH rely on casting and recurring creatures in an infinite loop, so one of these may very well be an important wincon for your deck.

Which impact cards do you like most? Have you ever built a Commander deck around this effect? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s discuss it over on the Draftsim Discord.

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