The 36 Best Color Hosers and Hate Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 28, 2024

Pentarch Paladin (Time Spiral) | Illustration by Jim Murray

Magic’s first rulebook gives us a window into the world of ‘90s MTG that’s fascinating to those newer to the game. And it’s also a nostalgia trip for those of us who were there. In the Q&A section in the back, you can find the following:

Q: My opponent keeps using her Circles of Protection. How can I get around those?

A: A Circle of Protection against a color you rely on can be crippling.

Author and Magic creator Richard Garfield goes on to explain, in effect, how this means you should strategically choose multicolor decks.

The contrast to today’s Magic is illuminating. As a casual player back then, I remember our local LGS couldn’t fill the demand for Circle of Protection: Red as our answer to the variations of Red Deck Wins played in our town. We’re playing a really different game today, so this all seems quaint.

That said, if CoP: Red were Standard legal on Arena, don’t you think people would be packing it to climb the ladder?

Let’s look at the best color hosers and hate cards in MTG and see which, if any, are playable in the everyday format where most of them are legal, contemporary Commander.

What Are Color Hosers and Hate Cards in MTG?

Insight | Illustation by Ron Chironna

Color hosers and hate cards are cards that target spells or permanents of a specific color in MTG or particular land types. They can run the range from mass destruction or bounce, taxing or life drain effects, boons for your stuff, and repeatable abilities on permanents all the way to individual instants and sorceries. Early hosers were often negatively balanced, but more recent color hosers have often given buffs or cost reductions to your creatures if an opponent casts a spell of a certain color or has certain colors of permanents or type of basic lands.

History of Color Hosers and Hate Cards in MTG

Color hosers have been a part of the game since Alpha. Mark Rosewater has explained that they exist to balance the metagame and to encourage players to play multicolor decks. In Magic’s first ten years, that philosophy seemed operational enough to make a decent number of them.

In more recent years, color hosers are fewer, weaker, and more situational, and part of that is that some of these older cards simply make it so that one person can’t play Magic at all, which isn’t exactly fun, as pointed out by Patrick Sullivan.

What About Hosers and Hate and Rule 0?

What does this all mean for Commander, the format where you’re most likely to see these cards, if you ever do? As fixing gets better and players sleeve up for 3-, 4-, and even 5-color decks, these cards have less of a chance of just being dead cards in your hand. In a world where most tables don’t want to see cards like Stasis or Armageddon, which make the game unplayable for lots of decks, what happens when you roll up with a card that makes one person’s deck, in particular, unplayable? Short answer: it depends.

#36. Devout Lightcaster

Hard to cast and only hits black creatures, but aren’t you tempted to try Devout Lightcaster in a blink deck? There’s like 400 better ETBs, but this seems hilarious to me.

#35. Dream Tides

Does a bad Stasis fit the needs of your stax deck? If so, maybe Dream Tides is right for you.

#34. Insight

Insight plus Shifting Sky draws a lot of cards. That doesn’t quite seem worth the difficulty of pulling it off, but in the right local meta I’d sleeve up Insight and go to town against the elf and Simic menaces.

#33. Acid Rain + Boil + Boiling Seas + Choke + Flashfires + Tsunami

The hard land destruction spells meant your opponent couldn’t play the game anymore in 1994. Today they could still do that against a mono-color deck with lots of basics, and you can adjust the color with lots of Sleight of Mind effects. But then you spent two cards on that to target one player?

Against a field of early-game triomes and shock lands, this just works to destroy everyone’s early mana bases. That’s good for making everyone hate you, and that’s about it. I’d maybe try that in an Izzet shell where you like the spell in the graveyard, but that cuts the list to Acid Rain and Flashfires so that you don’t mess with your own lands.

#32. Deathgrip + Lifeforce

Unexpected counter resources that break the color pie and scream Magic boomer to the table. Lifeforce synergizes with enchantress decks, which makes it better than Deathgrip. Not necessarily good cards, but great if you like people asking to see your cards and getting Cheeto dust on them as they read your ancient cardboard relics.

#31. Volcanic Eruption

If you’re running a deck with Mind Bend shenanigans where you can change the land type, Volcanic Eruption seems fun if not precisely good. But there aren’t that many cards that change lands to Mountains outside of the Blood Moon space. This card is brutal with Blood Moon, sure. But that’s a lot of work for an unclear outcome.

#30. Anarchy

Anarchy is a brutal inclusion in a deck with Glamerdye sorts of effects. Still not sure those effects are worth it. I say that as a person with all these cards in my storage boxes who has long dreamed such a Boomer’s Revenge Deck would work.

#29. Searing Rays

This is a mild hot take, but at this point in the list none of these cards are all that great, so hear me out! Searing Rays just munches face against a tokens deck. In an Izzet deck where you can run effects like Najal, the Storm Runner to pop this off at instant speed, this could win on the spot in certain instances. I have done this against soldiers. Once. Usually, I wish I had almost any other card.

#28. Eastern Paladin + Exorcist + Northern Paladin + Southern Paladin + Western Paladin

This set of black and white paladins from Weatherlight and Urza’s Saga plus their forebearers have never been very good. But as multicolor decks increase, these might be worth a look for knights decks in Orzhov colors. They find targets at most tables, especially Northern Paladin, Exorcist, and Eastern Paladin. Southern Paladin and Western Paladin probably need a raft of color changers like Scuttlemutt to be worth it. Repeatable creature destruction isn’t terrible, otherwise, no one but nostalgic boomers would run Royal Assassin. These cards are a lot worse than that, but I might run a set of paladins in a knights deck instead of my lowest-tier spot removal spells.

#27. Pentarch Paladin

For a little more cost the hard way, Pentarch Paladin is a more flexible option for that knights deck.

#26. Kormus Bell + Life and Limb + Living Lands + Nightcreep

Kormus Bell, Life and Limb, Living Lands, and Nightcreep can punish green and black decks by making their lands killable. And they can also be used by those decks for a go-wide alpha strike. Either function seems underwhelming.

#25. Mind Harness

Nonsense as a permanent, but Mind Harness is an awesome but limited temporary steal effect if you need that in blue.

#24. Order of the Sacred Torch + Stromgald Cabal

These seem like decent risks for a knights deck, which often use one or both of these colors as the downside isn’t too bad. And Order of the Sacred Torch can be a real annoyance, especially because the decks that care about it can have their removal countered by it! Kind of the same, to a lesser degree, for Stromgald Cabal.

#23. Prismatic Boon

A wincon in Hinata, Dawn-Crowned where it’s really efficient, Prismatic Boon is flexible for aggression or defense.

#22. Hunter’s Ambush

If you’re running a Fog suite, Hunter's Ambush is a typical cost for most fog effects, but it has a nice gotcha clause.

#21. Floodgate

This requires you to run basics, but if you’re running a Thassa, Deep-Dwelling blink deck, Floodgate is a pretty nice repeating wrath.

#20. Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

Fine in a madness deck, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage can destroy a surprising number of commanders.

#19. Inundate

Inundate is a lot of mana, but tell me you wouldn’t enjoy this in Ovika, Enigma Goliath.

#18. Sudden Demise

Obviously Sudden Demise is absurd against tokens and go-wide decks. There are loads of better sweepers overall, but a one-sided board wipe isn’t to be underestimated.

#17. Llawan, Cephalid Empress

A janky bounce spell for a blink deck, Llawan, Cephalid Empress looks and probably is terrible. But it often bounces one or two commanders and their allies when it comes down and then forces enemies to deal with it. And it leaves your blue creatures alone. This ruins someone’s day in your blink deck. But it’s often a sad nothingburger. Pitch to Force of Will?

#16. Elephant Grass

Elephant Grass is likely unplayable without the clause that affects all creatures regardless of color.

#15. Reap

This card can be a big nothing. But Reap is an auto-include if you’re playing Daryl, Hunter of Walkers, though.

#14. Compost

Note that Compost triggers off mill, making this a reasonable card to spec on in decks that like enchantments or based on your local meta. And speaking of Daryl, Hunter of Walkers, here’s another boomer card for that deck.

#13. Seedtime

I’ll always run Seedtime in my green stompy decks. I can’t remember the last time I sat down at a table where someone wasn’t playing a deck that used blue instants. Sure, that means they can counter this, but usually this gets dropped when they tap out on your end step for something like a Memory Deluge. Easily dead cardboard, but the upside is worth it, especially because this is the only extra turns spell that people might actually enjoy seeing come off.

#12. Snake Pit

Only about four of the top thirty commanders run color combinations that won’t trigger Snake Pit. That gives you good odds of making lots of snakes. How good is that on a 4-drop? You’ll make a lot of snakes against an old school Talrand, Sky Summoner deck, but it won’t quite keep up head-to-head. I’d add this underplayed card to an enchantress deck, though. Just to see.

#11. Wash Out

Not one of the better bounce spells in Magic, Wash Out can be sneaky good under many circumstances and just fine under most. Let’s say you sit down at a table with a Simic ramp player, a Selesnya tokens player, and someone else. Just naming green feels like Cyclonic Rift at sorcery speed for half the price in your Ovika, Enigma Goliath deck.

#10. Wake of Destruction

Mass land destruction that avoids your stuff is a pretty salty play. For 6 hard-to-cast mana in a world where people are running too many fancy lands and not enough basics, the upside of Wake of Destruction keeps shrinking.

#9. Spreading Plague

If you’re looking for a creatureless board for your combo or control deck, there are few spells as effective at accomplishing that than the salt-inducing Spreading Plague. Or you can just pop this into your Sliver Hivelord deck.

#8. Mana Maze

This is my hottest take. Mana Maze is super useful if you’re laboring to pull off the Blind Seer deck, but I think people are sleeping on this because they haven’t read the oracle text. Players can’t cast spells of a color of a spell that was cast on a turn. That stops cascade decks cold and puts an upper limit on storm count. It means you can only play one spell a turn as mono blue (aside from your raft of colorless artifacts!), but it means that your one blue spell a turn is uncounterable except for like a Tibalt's Trickery or something in non-blue. Then, when it’s not your turn, how do enchantress and zombies and tokens decks, etc. go off with this on your side?

#7. Shelter

It draws you a card, which makes this protection spell playable. In a blue deck I never have room for Keep Safe, which is really close to Shelter, but in a white deck this acts like a counterspell with a cantrip. So that’s cool.

#6. Magus of the Moon

When you need an extra Blood Moon effect on a fragile creature, Magus of the Moon is there for you.

#5. Sejiri Shelter // Sejiri Glacier

Being an MDFC is key here, as you can run Sejiri Shelter without it becoming dead in hand if no one is running targeted removal. Just drop Sejiri Glacier and move along.

#4. Pyroblast + Red Elemental Blast

Although there’s a Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast, being able to interact with blue from red is awesome.

#3. Carpet of Flowers

This costs one and draws a card in an enchantress shell, for the risk of running Carpet of Flowers is small enough. Even in a world of fancy lands, you can count on a few Islands out there, in fetched triomes and shock lands, etc. The floor is that this usually gives you an extra mana a turn. Note that’s any color you want, btw. But the ceiling is pretty good on this.

#2. Blood Moon

If it’s good enough for Modern, right? Blood Moon is obnoxious and horrible, but it gets everyone. We’re just pretty used to it by now.

#1. Veil of Summer

Banned in its Standard, this card is just broken. Veil of Summer is worth it alone to drop on the stack of a counterspell!

Best Color Hosers and Hate Cards Payoffs

Aside from the handful of good cards noted above, there are only two real payoffs for these in EDH.

Light of Day could mean the zombie player at the table just can no longer win if they didn’t pack their Feed the Swarm. That’s not cool, and it’s against the spirit of Commander, which is why Iona, Shield of Emeria is banned.

But.

There’s that person at your LGS who not only overtunes their decks for your local meta while pubstomping noobs or throwing in infinite combos despite the typical rule 0 talk (or maybe “in spite of” is actually correct for once). If adult interaction doesn’t sway them, perhaps a few ‘90s blasts of color hosing could be just the thing to “sideboard” in while adjusting your decks at home.

I kind of hate this, as it meets a toxic player with more toxicity, but this seems to have been a part of Richard Garfield’s original plan for the game, so maybe this is worth an occasional consideration?

If you wanted to actually use these cards in a fair deck, you would need to pack a lot of color and land changers. There are a few dozen of these cards, and most are just as below rate as the color hosers, but it feels like this is a hill for a Magic boomer to die on at least once. Think about cards like Blind Seer, Scuttlemutt, Trait Doctoring, and Mind Bend for color, and Mystic Compass, Tideshaper Mystic, and Vision Charm for lands.

I have never actually built this deck, so I can’t vouch for it. But it seems terrible. And salty.

Wrap Up

Shelter | Illustration by Christopher Moeller

The future of color hosers and color hate cards is unclear. Cycles of these have been in recent sets like Streets of New Capenna and have a long history in summer core sets. These cards, like Whack, feel like Limited tools.

But one potential design space in a world of power creep is this one. If there were decent anti-black color hosers in the game, would The Meathook Massacre and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse have been so dominant?

Stay tuned. This list might be really different in a few years!

What do you think? Is this a part of Magic’s history we should return to, or is it, like Hootie and the Blowfish, better left in the ‘90s? Let me know in the comments or over on Discord!

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!