My friends and I have a few inside jokes relating to Magic that date back to our childhood. One joke relates to what we felt was the worst Magic card of all time--back in the late 1990s, we granted this honorific to the Song of Blood, the Red sorcery from Visions that minimally improved your combat stats. A few years later, a rare from Saviors of Kamigawa rivaled Song of Blood and it became unclear which spell was worse.

That's right. If you've never seen this 20-year-old card before, you're welcome. Now, for just one Black mana and at instant speed, you can leverage this powerful spell to discard your hand!

I still can't imagine what it felt like when players opened this rare in their booster packs. Talk about a major letdown.

Enter Hellbent

The following year, Wizards of the Coast gave players a reason to consider casting One with Nothing. They did this by introducing a new mechanic in Dissension, Hellbent, which improved a card's power when its controller/caster had no cards in hand. Suddenly, One with Nothing could actually do something outside of strange corner cases!

What does it mean to improve a card's power when its controller has no cards in hand? Let's take a look at an example to dive further into the rules.

Here's your textbook Red common removal spell. For four mana, you can deal three damage to a creature or player. This card is underwhelming to say the least, though in a Limited match you may be desperate for removal spells. The one saving grace is, if you have no cards, then Cackling Flames instead deals five damage instead. Thus, if you have no cards in hand (i.e., you are "hellbent"), then Cackling Flames deals two additional damage.

Hellbent was introduced in Dissension and only appeared on cards associated with the Rakdos (Black/Red) guild. The mechanic was created by Aaron Forsythe, and was reintroduced in Future Sight and Modern Horizons. According to the MTG Wiki, the Hellbent name gained popularity amongst players to the point where the slang term for having no cards in hand is "hellbent," even if you're not playing with any cards with the mechanic. It's a useful shortcut to describe a characteristic of a game state; for example, it's useful in a game of Limited to indicate a player has nothing in their hand with which to interact with what their opponent is trying to accomplish.

Granted, players typically don't want to be hellbent, as it means their hand is empty of cards. This leads to an interesting tension between wanting more resources and wanting to empty your hand to increase the power level of your spells.

Additional Hellbent Rules

Hellbent is a fairly straightforward mechanic to understand. The MTG Fandom Wiki lists a few subtle points relating to Hellbent rules.

• If a hellbent ability of a spell or permanent is a static ability, the number of cards in its controller's hand is continually checked.
• If a hellbent ability of a spell is a self-replacement that changes the effect of the spell, the number of cards in its controller's hand is checked as the spell resolves. It's not checked when the spell is cast. (This is an important rule to understand).
• If a hellbent ability of a permanent is an activated ability, the number of cards in the permanent's controller's hand is checked when that player tries to activate the ability. It is NOT checked when the ability resolves (also important).
• If a hellbent ability of a permanent is a triggered ability, the number of cards in the permanent's controller's hand is checked both when that ability would trigger and when that ability would resolve.

These nuances may seem obvious, but they carry significant weight when it comes to how Hellbent functions. Specifically, forcing an opponent to draw a card at instant speed has potential to disrupt a Hellbent effect, depending on where the card draw effect is placed on the stack.

For example, consider Twinstrike from Dissension.

If you cast Twinstrike and have no other cards in hand, and target two 3/3 creatures controlled by your opponent, you're hoping to destroy those two creatures. However, if with Twinstrike on the stack, your opponent activates their Loran of the Third Path forcing you to draw a card, your Twinstrike will only deal two damage to those 3/3 creatures unless you can get that new card out of your hand while Twinstrike is still on the stack.

Iconic Hellbent Cards

There have only been 22 cards printed with Hellbent in the history of Magic, with the majority showing up in either Dissension or Future Sight. Despite the limited library of Hellbent spells, there are a couple noteworthy ones that have had their impact on the game.

The most iconic of all Hellbent cards--and the reason I wanted to write an article on this topic--is Infernal Tutor, the Black sorcery from Dissension.

At first glance, this spell may seem weak--a spell that only lets you tutor for something you already have in your hand is hardly exciting. It's that Hellbent ability, which turns Infernal Tutor into a Demonic Tutor, that makes this spell so powerful. In Legacy, players have combined Infernal Tutor with Lion's Eye Diamond to maximum effect.

For example, I used to run this combo in my Ad Nauseam Tendrils (ANT) Legacy deck. The play pattern was as follows: cast a ritual or two, drop a Lion's Eye Diamond, cast Infernal Tutor and while holding priority sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond for three mana. You discard your hand and can therefore search up any card you'd like from your deck. My most frequent targets were either Ad Nauseam (to draw a bunch more cards) or Tendrils of Agony (to kill my opponent). Many Legacy tournaments were won by players utilizing this Hellbent combo.

While Infernal Tutor is likely the most powerful Hellbent card of all time, it's not the most valuable. This is because the sorcery has since been reprinted in Ravnica Remastered.

Instead, technically the most valuable Hellbent card is Gibbering Descent from Future Sight.

I don't think this card is particularly that exciting. I guess the way it's supposed to work is you and your opponents end up dumping their hand and losing one life per turn, but once your hand is empty you don't have to lose that life. Six mana is a lot for an effect like this, especially when you have much enchantments like Bottomless Pit and Necrogen Mists that empty hands for half the mana. I guess it's the fact that this is a Future Sight rare that's never seen a reprint that adds to this card's value.

Many Hellbent cards don't do enough to be noteworthy nowadays. Here's an example of an unexciting Hellbent card printed more recently, in Modern Horizons 2: Necromancer's Familiar.

See what I mean when I say unexciting? A four mana 3/1 flying creature that only gets lifelink if you're hellbent isn't that strong. Would this creature be overpowered if it always had lifelink? I wouldn't think so. I guess the idea is that you can discard cards to protect Necromancer's Familiar and keep it around longer, and then it eventually gains lifelink after you've discarded enough cards from your hand? Hellbent can be extremely powerful, but Wizards of the Coast really scaled back the power level with its reintroduction in Modern Horizons 2.

Wrapping It Up

Despite the handy shortcut Hellbent gives us for when a player has no cards in hand, the mechanic largely fell flat. Outside of Infernal Tutor, not many Hellbent cards saw much play. Much to my chagrin, One With Nothing never saw its day in the sun to enable Hellbent--the cards just aren't strong enough on the whole.

That being said, back in 2016 Mark Rosewater gave Hellbent a 5 on the Storm Scale, meaning in the right environment we are likely to see this mechanic return. It'll have to combine with something powerful in the set, however, or else players will again shy away from emptying their hand. This isn't a popular goal in Magic. The mechanic itself is versatile enough and there are no problematic rules associated with Hellbent, making the mechanic straightforward to understand. Rosewater concluded, "The kind of environments that hellbent wants come along often enough. I don't think we're going to go out of our way to use hellbent, but I believe one day it will be a good fit for a design we're doing."

Rakdos fans will have to be patient. I'm not sure what the set will need to look like for hellbent to be a logical inclusion. Until then, Rakdos players will have to find their hellbent anthem in older sets, and One With Nothing will remain one of the most pointless spells of all time...at least among my friends.