But no inspiration hit. Ah well. Time to get my fillings, and I am numbed on both sides of my mouth as I have a filling needed on the left and right side of my teeth. One is on the palatal side of a molar, and the other the distal side of a bicuspid. The numbing of my mouth takes longer than I expect, and the work on my molar begins first.

As I sit there, with a dentist drilling down on one of my teeth with the large vibrating drill, that’s the one they usually use first, one of my tricks is to mentally pull away and head elsewhere. For me at least, an occupied mind is a distracted mind. So I try to come up with my idea for the Top Ten article. And then it hits me.

I am here, under the Dentist’s drill, in serious physical unease (not fully what I would describe as pain, but a severe discomfort). That is what I should be writing about! What cards feel like you are being drilled on by a Dentist when you encounter them? What are the Top Ten Most Painful Cards of All Time for casual and multiplayer play?

Struck at both the irony and the lining up of these two elements, I laughed. Folks, it’s one thing to pull away a bit from the dentist’s drill, or to flinch, but it’s another thing entirely to laugh. That is one of the worst things I could have done that moment. Which, of course, led to more laughter. I almost pity my Dentist. Here he is, focused on his job, when all of the sudden his patient laughs at him, and ruins his work.

Ah well. That’s my lesson for you all. Don’t laugh during dental work. Of course, by telling you that, I’ve led to the inevitable Giggle Loop result. (I wanted to link to the Giggle Loop video, but it’s blocked on YouTube by the BBC. Ah well, it’s a classic scene from the sitcom Coupling, where one character tells his friends about the Giggle Loop, and that, once you are aware, the effects are stronger. But the basic idea is that you want to laugh at an inappropriate time, like a moment of silence or a dentist chair, and then you hold it in. But then you think how funny it would have been to laugh then, and you almost laugh a much bigger laugh, and then you hold it in, and this repeats until you have this giant laugh you can’t hold in that’s significantly worse than the first one, thereby completing the Giggle Loop.)

So, having just essentially Giggle Looped on my Dentist’s chair in the middle of dental work was, to say the least, something I still find funny. And with a lingering memory of pain as well.

So let’s get to it! What are the most painful cards and effects in Magic-dom?

10.Underworld Dreams

This and #4 below were the first cards I considered when I came up with this idea in my Dentist’s chair as the drill was driving down on my right molar. It’s a simple card that has always been something that is very hard to deal with, hits players life totals from awkward angles, plays nicely into the “Group Hug” decks that wind up with a bit of a kick, and has killed tons of people through the years. It’s enchantment status makes it incredibly hard to handle if you are Black or Red. And if you’re Blue, your options are basically countering or bouncing, both of which can be planned against. Only White and Green have permanent answers to an enchantment like this. Meanwhile, it’s hard to fight against the life loss by drawing. Often, one of the ways to get an answer is to draw raw cards, but here, that hurts. A Looter effect like Merfolk Looter is rough. Card draw like Black’s life-for-cards swap is doubly onerous. It’s hard to fight it and to find a way to solve it. And frankly, the only reason this hits back at #10 these days instead of a lot higher, is that the most commonly played multiplayer format, Commander, starts with 40 life instead of 20, so it’s not as painful there. But it is still a dominant experience.

9. Manabarbs

Why do you play Magic? Sometimes, I like tapping lands, playing big creatures, and swinging. And then other times, I like tapping lands, finding awesome synergies and combos and using them. Know what both involve? That’s right, tapping lands. We need to tap lands for mana, and for playing the game. Making people take damage for every land they tap for mana is a bad feel. It works against what you want to do. I don’t like it when I have to decide between casting a fun card or not taking three damage from the lands I’d use to do it. It’s annoying. And in a similar way, cards like Ankh of Mishra that punish you for dropping lands is also pretty inconvenient.

8. Winter Orb and Rising Waters

There was a time when powerful tempo cards were all the rage. And there were so many, that weaker tempo cards didn’t get as much play, even if they would dominate in a modern context. Take Smoke as a good example of a card that didn’t get a lot of notice back there in the era of Winter Orb, Static Orb, and two cards higher on my list. But if you reprinted Smoke today in Amonkhet? As a 2 mana enchantment? I think it’d potentially have a major impact. Smoke is no joke. And cards like Winter Orb dominated their era. Often, they’d be used as a useful adjunct for aggro decks, like Frozen Fish that would run a Merfolk deck backed by Lord of Atlantis and Winter Orb, or Stompy, an early Green deck with Mtenda Lion, Ghazban Ogre and Winter Orb. But due to the “it only worked when untapped” rule of artifacts at the time, a lot of decks would run this with Relic Barrier or Icy Manipulator, and tap it so that only their foe suffered the Orb. It was always, a strong and powerful card for ruining people’s day. And Rising Waters got a lot of play when it arrived as well, in similar reasons. Mercadian Masques is the last true tempo-ish block, and you don’t have many true tempo night mares that keep people from untapping their stuff and forcing people to pay mana for a lot of taxing effects like Rhystic Study, along with Rishadan Port and such. Sporting a number of free spells that had just been printed, like Gush and counters, Waters was all over and won a lot of high-level tournaments, including at the Pro Tour. These cards were impactful out of the gate, and prevented you from playing all of the spells in your grip, but none were truly as painful as . . . 

7. Stasis

 . . . this thing. Of this sort of “You won’t untap something” section of tempo cards, from Meekstone to Stasis Orb to Mist of Stagnation, I would argue that Stasis was the worst by far. Stasis decks were just painful to a different level. Nasty. And deck-builders had so many tools to break Stasis. I ran Stasis myself a few times in tournaments, so I know. Man, there is no worse beat than playing against this card. I still remember the first time I was shut down in a tournament with no answer. Turbo Stasis would run Howling Mine to force folks to draw out quickly, and ensure you got enough cards to play a land each time to upkeep it. You tossed in Kismet or Root Maze to force your foe’s stuff to drop down tapped, so they had no options at all. They ran creatures with vigilance like Zephyr Falcon to swing for a damage here and there to win with untapped creatures. They ran Instill Energy with Birds of Paradise to tap down the Stasis. They ran bounce, like Time Elemental or Boomerang to reset as they got close to tapping out. Just 6 mana was a Time Elemental lock (play it on your turn, bounce at the end of your foes). And Stasis is not just a card from ancient history. People are running it as a lock down in EDH decks like Teferi, Temporal Archmage; Derevi, Empyreal Tactician, and more. It’s just as painful in 2017 as you’d imagine.

6. Karma, Flashfires, Anarchy, Acid Rain, et all

I’m not apologizing for it, but I won my first tournament on the back of Flashfires. Well, that and first turn Goblin Balloon Brigades in virtually every game as well. It was a Mono-Red deck that ran a lot of the concepts of Sligh and using mana each turn and the mana curve before that was a thing. But four GBBs and two Granite Gargoyles and a Shivan Dragon were powerful reasons to tap those Mountains every turn for various effects. Ironically, the tournament was for an Alpha Gauntlet of Might, a card worth, at the time, around $120. Which I sold immediately because I was a kid in high school who needed the cash.

Anyways, Wizards never really understood how to make hosers in the early days of the game. Most of their early hosers just won the game immediately against the color you were playing against. You had land hosers like Tsunami and Acid Rain destroying everyone’s basic lands. Sweeping removal like Perish or Anarchy is just unfair against one color. And I’ll also toss in Karma as one of the true unfair painful cards to run up against. They all left you with a bad feeling in your mouth after. You built a fun deck, came to play and have fun, and then a 4th turn Karma arrives and you have no enchantment removal to deal with it. So long and thanks for playing! Bad beats indeed.

That was actually one of the reasons I liked Mono-Red better than the other colors during that era. I could sideboard in Flashfires and Red Elemental Blast with great results. I even had a Magnetic Mountain. Boom! But what were my foes going to do to me? White would often choose the pure shut-down of Conversion over Circle of Protection: Red, but I had two Disenchants in my side board I’d send in to take out Conversions. And I had a way around COP: Red, make them tap their mana with my many creatures and then burn them down. And trust me, Flashfires is always going to win vs. COP:Red. Meanwhile, Blue’s only good tool was Blue Elemental Blast (and maybe Volcanic Eruption, but no one ran it). It was even to my REBs. So no one won that match. Red was safer vs hosers than any other colors out there. So I ran Mono-Red instead of the others, and won. A lot. Trust me, be glad the era of hosers moved to things like Execute instead of Virtue's Ruin.

5. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, and to a Lesser Degree, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

The Praetor cycle includes a few cards that are fine. I don’t have an issue with Urabrask the Hidden. It’s a 5 mana investment for a 4/4 that gives your team haste and forces your foes to have their creatures arrive tapped. That’s fine. But Jin is horrible. I know some defenders are going to talk about how it’s a comfortable 10 mana, and if you have 10 mana, then you should win the game anyway. Sure thing. But two responses. Firstly, it doesn’t win the game on the spot, but it does slow the freakin’ game down and put you in a dominant position from which to win, so I’d rather a simpler take on, “You win the game” language. Secondly, and this is pretty important, many players aren’t playing this for 10 mana. Surprise surprise! Nope! It’s getting dropped by deck-tutors like Tooth and Nail. It’s the target of choice in Oath of Druids or put-it-into-play effects like Show and Tell. In multiplayer, I see it more off a Show and Tell or other early game cheating than Eldrazi Titans or nastier stuff. And you get it out with cheap reanimation spells all the time as it lacks the “shuffle back?” clauses of Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. They could have given it no casting cost at all, and it would be almost as prolific and still just as painful.

4. Armageddon

This was the other card I thought about, in addition to Underworld Dreams. Why? Well, if someone plays Armageddon, they are doing so looking to break it. Consider Wrath of God or Oblivion Stone. The decks that use those usually include decks that are just looking for a reset button. But Armageddon is strictly relegated to decks that are looking to abuse it. From Erhna-Geddon decks that played Erhnam Djinn on the 3rd turn via Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise followed by Armageddon shortly after. To decks with high degrees of mana rocks and friends like Sol Ring, Voltaic Key, and Grim Monolith to stuff like aggressive decks that don’t care about the mana, just the smashing, and use Armageddon to prevent you from answering their quick threats. Honorable mention to Oblivion, which has a similar, “You aren’t playing it unless you are abusing it” feel, but due to twice the casting cost doesn’t have the same “bad beats” feel.

3. Kokusho, the Evening Star

Kokusho, the Evening Star has won a lot of games with its death trigger. So many that it was banned in Commander for years. And I can recall it being one of the essential cards at any multiplayer game. People would rely on the legendary rule to kill multiple Kokushos, so if I had one out, then I would play a Clone, copy it, “Boom!” and then a death trigger hits. And it was easy in reanimation shells to get multiple Kokusho triggers. And many cards, in combination with Kokusho, would win the game right there, like a Rite of Replication kicked. And then, after the era of Kokusho’s dwindled as it was banned in Commander, Exsanguinate and Grey Merchant of Asphodel and similar effects were printed, and no, they wasn’t as abuse-able, but they gave Black some more tools in the mass-life drain category well beyond stuff it previously had like Subversion or a one-time effect like Syphon Soul.

2. Sundering Titan

Friends don’t let friends play Sundering Titan. It’s wrong. It hoses mana bases, like dual lands, considerably. It tears out a ton of land on arrival, even nice basic lands that aren’t hurting anybody. It’s painful, both on arrival, and then when it leaves too, giving you a lovely, “Doubly Damned” moment. (Plus it’s a leaves play trigger, not a death trigger, so I can’t even stop it with an exiling answer) And then it invariably gets fetched out with Tinker or something similarly broken. Just don’t. Sundering Titan ends friendships.

1. Shahrazad

I thought about putting Mind Twist here in my Top 10, and even here at the top, as it was once one of the most reviled cards out there. But you know what? It’s not painful enough. We have Mind Shatter, just one more mana, and no one really pays attention. Mind Twist has its heritage built on its reputation, and today, we have many more foils like faster creatures, better card drawing, and frankly, better things to be doing than dropping sixor 7 mana to force someone to discard their hand. Life has improved for the Mind Twist. But Shahrazad? No way.

Now, I used to run Shahrazad as a fun card in a few of my decks. Hey, if you like playing Magic, then you should like Shahrazad, right? But as I played it, I realized a few issues with Shahrazad that made it suck:

1. Shahrazad requires you to keep playing with the same deck, even though a lot of folks like to change up their decks in-between games.
2. Shahrazad punishes a play-group where some people have to leave soon. Imagine a 5 player chaos multiplayer game where I drop Shahrazad. Now this game could legitimately wind up taking 90 minutes to 2 hours to play through on average, with 45-60 minutes per multiplayer game on average. Having some people concede because they have to go makes the rest of the card rough.
3. The more people are playing, the worst Shahrazad gets. A three player game that gets Shahrazad’d is one thing. A seven player game is a whole other story entirely.
4. It’s abusable. Invariably someone plays Fork on it, and then a bunch of extra games commence. It’s worse that Time Warp recursion or Time Vault with Voltaic Key junk because those actually win the game with something resembling real game speed.
5. All Shahrazad promises is another subgame that just hurts the losers afterwards. Given the life loss is just half of their current total, I’ve often seen people with 4 or 5 life starting it, and it’s a lot of hoops to jump through to save yourself from taking a few life.

It’s banned in tournaments. It had to be. And I wouldn’t even play it in the most casual Magic circles anymore either.

Shahrazad is just too painful to play against. It’s too rough. For those who think, “Eh, it doesn’t look that bad”, trust me, it plays worse that you think. And it’s my clear choice for the most painful card of all time.

What did you think of my list? What are your most painful cards? Moments? What punches you in the stomach when you play it? I’d love to hear it!

P.S. — Heya! Thanks for reading my stuff! Check out my new website, at my name — abesargent.com . It’s a website where I am creating and walking you through a large pan-gaming sci-fi adventure that should prove epic in scope and which you can play along with, if you want. So swing on by and check it out!

P.P.S. — I don’t usually give you stories of how I found the idea for an article, or let you look behind at the process I’m doing, but I do think there is value when there’s a fun or unusual story, rather than, “I was reading a few articles on the mothership that I wanted to process or build around.”