MTG Fear Explained: Fear vs Intimidate vs Menace, Who Can Block It, Every Fear and Intimidate Card, and a Budget Vela Deck (2026)

Fear is one of Magic’s oldest evasion abilities, and one of the few abilities Wizards of the Coast has replaced twice. It was replaced by intimidate in 2009, and intimidate was replaced by menace in 2015. Both are still in the Comprehensive Rules, though, and every card that has them is legal in Commander, Legacy and Vintage. That means the question “who can block a creature with fear?” still comes up at real tables every week.

The short answer: only black creatures and artifact creatures can block a creature with fear. Of the 18,361 different creatures ever printed for paper Magic, that is 5,373, or 29.3%. The other 70.7% cannot block it at all. Intimidate works out almost the same, between 27.8% and 31.0% depending on the attacker’s colour, except in one case: a colourless creature with intimidate can only be blocked by artifact creatures, which is 7.2% of every creature ever printed.

This guide quotes both rules, explains every interaction that comes up in play, and compares fear, intimidate and menace side by side. It lists all 40 creatures printed with fear, all 23 cards with intimidate and the 52 cards that hand either ability out, with Scryfall prices and EDHREC deck counts. It ends with a $51.03 Vela the Night-Clad Commander deck that uses that 7.2% number: 34 of its creatures are colourless, so under Vela almost nothing your opponents play can block them.

What is fear in MTG?

Fear is an evasion keyword: a creature with fear can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures. It only matters when the creature attacks. It does nothing when the creature blocks, and it doesn’t stop the creature being targeted, dealt damage or destroyed.

Here is the whole rule, from the Comprehensive Rules (7 August 2026 text):

702.36a Fear is an evasion ability.

702.36b A creature with fear can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures. (See rule 509, “Declare Blockers Step.”)

702.36c Multiple instances of fear on the same creature are redundant.

Three things follow from that wording, and each one settles a common argument:

• The attacker’s colour doesn’t matter. Fear always says “black”. A red creature with fear (Squealing Devil) or a white one (Dust Elemental) still can only be blocked by black or artifact creatures, not by red or white ones.
• “And/or” means either is enough. A blocker only needs to be black or an artifact creature. A black artifact creature qualifies twice over, which changes nothing.
• Two instances of fear do nothing extra. If a creature with fear gets fear again from an Aura, nothing changes.

The ability is older than the word. The Alpha card Fear (1993) is an Aura whose rules text described the effect in full. The first creature with the ability was Suq’Ata Assassin in Visions (1997). Wizards turned it into a one-word keyword in Onslaught (2002) and changed the Oracle text of every older card to say “Fear”.

What is intimidate in MTG?

Intimidate is fear’s replacement: a creature with intimidate can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a colour with it. A red creature with intimidate can be blocked by red creatures and artifact creatures. A black one works exactly like fear.

702.13a Intimidate is an evasion ability.

702.13b A creature with intimidate can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it. (See rule 509, “Declare Blockers Step.”)

702.13c Multiple instances of intimidate on the same creature are redundant.

Intimidate was added to the rules with Magic 2010, but no card in that set had it. The first intimidate cards were in Zendikar (October 2009): Bladetusk Boar and Halo Hunter. The official Zendikar rulings add the details that the rule text leaves open:

• Intimidate looks at the creature’s current colours. If Bladetusk Boar is turned blue, blue creatures can block it and red ones can’t.
• Colour only matters when blockers are declared. Once the creature is blocked, changing its colour (or the blocker’s) doesn’t undo the block.
• A multicoloured creature with intimidate can be blocked by a creature that shares any one of its colours. Vela the Night-Clad is blue and black, so any blue creature or any black creature can block her.
• A colourless creature with intimidate can only be blocked by artifact creatures. Colourless isn’t a colour, so no creature “shares a colour” with it. A colourless creature that isn’t an artifact (an Eldrazi, for example) can’t block a creature with intimidate at all.

Fear vs intimidate vs menace

All three are evasion abilities that restrict who can block. Fear and intimidate restrict which creatures can block. Menace restricts how many. That difference is why menace is the one Wizards still prints.

A creature can have more than one of these at once. When it does, a legal block has to satisfy all of them (rule 509.1b: if any blocking restriction is disobeyed, the whole block declaration is illegal). A creature with fear and menace needs two or more blockers, and every one of them must be black or an artifact. A red creature with both fear and intimidate can only be blocked by artifact creatures or by creatures that are both black and red.

For a full breakdown of menace, including how it interacts with first strike, trample and “can’t block” effects, see our menace guide.

How many creatures can block a creature with fear?

This is the number that makes fear and intimidate different from every other evasion ability, so we counted it. Scryfall lists 18,361 different creatures legal for paper play. Here is how many of them can block each version of the ability:

Three things stand out.

Fear and intimidate are almost exactly as strong as each other on average. Every colour has roughly the same number of creatures, so “black or artifact” and “shares my colour or artifact” both come out near 30%. The difference is not in the average but in the spread: fear is the same against every deck, while intimidate on a red creature is useless against a red deck and very strong against a deck with no red creatures.

The artifact exception is small. Only 1,314 of the 18,361 are artifact creatures (7.2%). That is why a colourless creature with intimidate, which only artifacts can block, is so much better than a coloured one.

In Commander the numbers barely move. Of the 17,920 creatures legal in Commander, 5,217 are black or artifact (29.1%), and only 1,245 are artifact creatures (6.9%). Commander decks aren’t random samples of creatures, and a black deck at the table blocks fear creatures all day. But in a four-player game, a creature with fear usually has at least one opponent it can attack freely.

Why Wizards retired fear, then intimidate

Mark Rosewater explained both changes in his Making Magic column “Evergreen Eggs & Ham” (8 June 2015). The short version:

• Fear had two problems. The name was backwards, because the creature makes others afraid rather than being afraid itself. And because it always said “black”, it only made sense on black creatures, so it was a mechanic for one colour. During the design of Magic 2010, lead designer Aaron Forsythe took fear out of the set. Rosewater proposed a colour-matching replacement, and that became intimidate.
• Intimidate turned out to be too swingy. In Rosewater’s words, “against other decks the ability is useless.” Its strength was decided the moment two decks were paired: the same creature could be nearly unblockable against one opponent and a vanilla creature against the next. It was also more confusing than expected.
• Menace fixed both. It asks how many creatures block, not what they look like, so it works about the same in every matchup and in every colour. It became evergreen in Magic Origins (July 2015). The last new creature with intimidate, Flesh Carver, had been printed the previous November.

Rosewater has since rated intimidate a 10 on his Storm Scale, meaning Wizards doesn’t expect to bring it back. Fear came back exactly once, on Wire Surgeons, a new card in The Brothers’ War Commander (2022) that also gives artifact creatures in your graveyard encore.

Fear and intimidate rules: the interactions that come up

Can a black creature block a creature with fear?

Yes. Any black creature can block it, whatever its other colours. A black-green creature can block a creature with fear, and so can a black creature with defender.

Can an artifact creature block fear and intimidate?

Yes, always, whatever the colours involved. Both rules say “artifact creatures and/or”, so an artifact creature can block any creature with fear or intimidate. That includes artifact creature tokens such as Thopters, Servos and Constructs.

Does fear care what colour the attacker is?

No. Only intimidate looks at the attacker’s colour. Of the 40 creatures printed with fear, 36 are black. The four exceptions are Squealing Devil (red), Dust Elemental (white), and two colourless artifact creatures from Darksteel, Arcbound Fiend and Dross Golem. All four are still only blockable by black or artifact creatures.

Can you change what fear says?

Not with a text-changing effect. The old General Rulings Summary (January 2003) addressed this: cards like Magical Hack, which change colour words, can’t change fear. The reminder text on the card isn’t the ability. The ability is defined by rule 702.36b, and there is no colour word on the card for the Hack to change.

Does a flying creature with fear need a black flier to block it?

Yes. Dust Elemental and Phobian Phantasm have both flying and fear, so a blocker must satisfy both restrictions: it needs flying or reach, and it must be black or an artifact creature. A black creature with reach works. A black creature without flying or reach doesn’t.

What happens if fear or a colour is removed after blockers are declared?

Nothing. The block restriction is only checked as blockers are declared. The Nuka-Nuke Launcher rulings state this for intimidate: once the equipped creature is blocked, changing its colour, the blocker’s colour, or whether the blocker is an artifact won’t make it unblocked. The same goes for losing fear or gaining it after the block.

Nim Deathmantle turns intimidate into fear

Nim Deathmantle gives the equipped creature +2/+2, intimidate, and makes it “a black Zombie”, replacing its old colours. A black creature with intimidate can only be blocked by black and artifact creatures, which is exactly fear. It is the sixth most-played card in the whole family on EDHREC (46,636 decks), though most decks play it as a recursion engine rather than for the evasion.

Shriekmaw kills exactly the creatures that can’t block it

Shriekmaw is the most-played creature with fear (101,469 decks on EDHREC). Its enter trigger destroys “target nonartifact, nonblack creature”, which is the precise complement of fear: it can only kill creatures that could never have blocked it, and the creatures that can block it are exactly the ones it can’t kill. The evasion and the removal were designed as a pair. Many players cast it for its evoke cost ({1}{B}) as a two-mana removal spell, in which case it never attacks at all. Our evoke guide covers how that works.

Is fear the same as “can’t be blocked”?

No. “Can’t be blocked” (as on Benthic Infiltrator or Rogue’s Passage) stops every creature. Fear stops about 70% of them. Watch out for newer cards that use the word in an ability name without using the keyword: Wraith, Vicious Vigilante’s “Fear Gas” ability says it can’t be blocked at all, and Baleful Beholder’s “Fear Ray” mode gives your creatures menace, not fear.

Every MTG card with fear

Scryfall lists 40 creatures printed with fear. We checked the list two ways: every card Scryfall tags with the fear keyword, and every card whose Oracle text contains the word. The keyword search returns exactly these 40 creatures. The text search also finds the cards that grant fear (listed further down), plus six we left out: five that only use the words in a name (Baleful Beholder’s Fear Ray mode, Wraith’s Fear Gas, the Tomb of Annihilation dungeon’s Veils of Fear room, the card Fear, Fire, Foes! and You Come to the Gnoll Camp’s Intimidate Them mode) and the Unhinged joke card Greater Morphling.

Here they are, sorted by how many Commander decks on EDHREC play them. “Everything else on the card” is the rest of the Oracle text, so you can see what each creature does besides evade:

Most of these are cheap: 33 of the 40 cost under $1. The priciest are Wort, Boggart Auntie ($29.37), Ratcatcher ($9.28) and Dread ($8.45).

The ones worth knowing about:

• Shriekmaw — removal first, evasion second (see above).
• Shadowmage Infiltrator — a 1/3 for three that can draw a card each time it deals combat damage to a player. It is one of the best-known Odyssey cards and is still in 27,792 decks on EDHREC.
• Avatar of Woe — costs {B}{B} once there are ten creature cards in all graveyards, and its tap ability destroys a creature. The fear is a bonus.
• Guiltfeeder — a 0/4 that makes the defending player lose 1 life for each card in their graveyard whenever it attacks and isn’t blocked. Fear makes “isn’t blocked” much more likely.
• Wire Surgeons — the only new creature with fear printed since 2009.

Every MTG card with intimidate

There are 23 cards with intimidate, all first printed between October 2009 and November 2014. Two of them have it only on the back face: Gatstaf Shepherd (a werewolf that transforms into Gatstaf Howler) and Elbrus, the Binding Blade (an Equipment that transforms into Withengar Unbound, a black 13/13). Because intimidate depends on colour, the colour column tells you who can block each one:

Thirteen of the 23 are black, five are red, two are green, and one each is white, red-green and blue-black. The black ones behave exactly like fear. The most interesting ones are the lords that hand it out. Bellowing Tanglewurm gives all your other green creatures intimidate, and Vela the Night-Clad gives it to every other creature you control. That matters because each creature checks its own colours. A green creature under Bellowing Tanglewurm can only be blocked by green and artifact creatures. A colourless creature under Vela can only be blocked by artifacts.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (117,467 decks) and Sepulchral Primordial (74,137) are by far the most-played. As with Shriekmaw, neither is played for intimidate. Mikaeus gives your other non-Human creatures undying, and Sepulchral Primordial steals a creature from each opponent’s graveyard.

Cards that give fear or intimidate

These are the 52 other cards that grant one of the two abilities: 36 give fear and 16 give intimidate. They include Auras, Equipment, lords, one-shot spells, and one land.

The most-played card in the whole family is a land. Shizo, Death’s Storehouse is in 216,008 Commander decks on EDHREC, more than any fear or intimidate creature. It taps for {B} and has no drawback, so most decks run it as a Swamp that happens to be legendary. Its second ability, which gives a legendary creature fear, is useful when your commander needs to connect.

Cover of Darkness (108,738 decks) is the real tribal card. It gives fear to every creature of the type you name, including your opponents’ creatures of that type. Marrow-Gnawer does the same for every Rat on the battlefield, and it is the most popular fear commander by far. Our Rat deck guide covers that build.

When fear and intimidate were printed

This table counts when each card in the family first appeared. It shows the handover clearly. The last new fear creatures before the switch arrived in Alara Reborn in April 2009, and intimidate took over five months later:

After 2014, the family went almost completely quiet: one new fear creature (Wire Surgeons, 2022) and one new card that grants intimidate (Nuka-Nuke Launcher, 2024). Both appeared in Commander products, where old keywords are allowed to return for one card.

Are fear and intimidate legal? Format by format

• Standard: none. No card in the family is legal in Standard today.
• Pioneer: no creature with fear, but nine intimidate creatures from Gatecrash, Magic 2014, the Theros block and Magic 2015, plus seven cards that grant fear or intimidate.
• Modern: 31 of the 40 fear creatures and 21 of the 23 intimidate cards. The ones missing were never printed in a Modern-legal set.
• Legacy, Vintage and Commander: every card in the family. None of the 115 has ever been banned or restricted anywhere.
• Pauper: 13 fear creatures and 10 intimidate cards have been printed at common.
• MTG Arena: only six cards in the whole family are on Arena. Nezumi Cutthroat is the only creature with fear, and Cavern Lampad, Immerwolf and Lifebane Zombie are the only ones with intimidate.

If you want to check a specific card’s legality or price, the KrakenTheMeta card finder shows every format and printing.

Best fear and intimidate commanders

Six legendary creatures have fear or intimidate, or give it out. Here they are, ranked by how many decks on EDHREC use them as the commander:

Marrow-Gnawer is the clear leader, because Rat decks were already a popular tribe and it gives the whole tribe fear. Wort gets played as a Goblin commander. Mikaeus leads undying combo decks. Vela the Night-Clad is the only one that gives intimidate to your whole team, and she’s also the cheapest of the six. That is the deck below.

Budget Vela the Night-Clad deck: colourless creatures only artifacts can block

Vela the Night-Clad costs {4}{U}{B} and has three lines: intimidate, “Other creatures you control have intimidate”, and “Whenever Vela or another creature you control leaves the battlefield, each opponent loses 1 life.” She is one of the cheapest commanders in the game at $0.32. She was first printed in Planechase 2012 and was reprinted in two Commander precons, Arcane Wizardry (2017) and Grave Danger (2022).

Most Vela decks fill up on blue and black creatures. That works, but a blue-black creature with intimidate can be blocked by any blue creature, any black creature and any artifact creature: 8,492 of the 17,920 creatures legal in Commander, or 47.4%. Two of the five colours can block you.

This deck plays colourless creatures instead. Devoid Eldrazi, the big colourless Eldrazi titans and a few colourless utility creatures. Under Vela, each of them has intimidate and no colour, so only artifact creatures can block them: 1,245 of 17,920, or 6.9%. Against most Commander decks, that makes the whole team close to unblockable. And the Eldrazi Scion and Spawn tokens that many of them make are colourless too, so the tokens also get past everything except artifact creatures.

The deck has 34 colourless creatures that aren’t artifacts, out of 40 creatures in total. The coloured exceptions are Vela herself, plus Carrier Thrall, Zulaport Cutthroat, Blood Artist, Ravenous Chupacabra and Mulldrifter, which are there for what they do, not for attacking.

How the deck plays

• Turns 1 to 4: ramp and cheap devoid threats. Salvage Drone, Dimensional Infiltrator, Eldrazi Skyspawner, Emrakul’s Messenger, Dominator Drone and Silent Skimmer come down early and start chipping in, plus nine mana rocks, starting with Sol Ring. Several of the early creatures make Eldrazi Scions or Spawn, which are free mana later.
• Turn 5 or 6: Vela. Everything you already have now has intimidate. The colourless creatures can only be blocked by artifacts. Deepfathom Skulker draws a card each time one of your creatures connects, and Ruination Guide gives the colourless ones +1/+0.
• The drain engine. Every creature you control leaving the battlefield makes each opponent lose 1 life with Vela out, and that includes tokens. Sacrifice a Scion for mana: 1 life from each opponent. Put Skullclamp on a 1/1 Scion: it dies, you draw two cards, and each opponent loses 1. With Zulaport Cutthroat out as well, every creature or token that dies costs each opponent 2 life, and Blood Artist adds 1 more to a player of your choice. Smothering Abomination turns its own upkeep sacrifice into a card and a drain every turn.
• Top end. Ulamog’s Crusher, Artisan of Kozilek, Desolation Twin, Oblivion Sower and Benthic Anomaly are all colourless, so they get intimidate too. An 8/8 with annihilator that only artifacts can block ends games fast.
• Interaction. Infernal Grasp, Go for the Throat, Feed the Swarm, three devoid removal spells (Grip of Desolation, Complete Disregard, Oblivion Strike), Ravenous Chupacabra, and three counterspells.

The deck’s real enemy is an artifact deck. If an opponent has lots of artifact creatures (Thopters, Servos, Constructs), your team is back to being blockable, and your best plan is to race them or remove their blockers one at a time. That’s also the case for Nim Deathmantle: don’t put it in this deck, because it makes the equipped creature black and gives up the colourless advantage.

The decklist ($51.03)

100 cards, all Commander-legal, all within Vela’s blue-black colour identity, checked against Scryfall on 26 September 2026. The price is the total of each card’s cheapest ordinary (non-promo) printing on that day.

The ten most expensive cards:

Nothing costs more than $5. The obvious upgrades, if you want to spend more: Grave Pact or Ashnod’s Altar for the sacrifice engine, a few fast colourless lands (Eldrazi Temple, Ancient Tomb), and bigger Eldrazi titans such as Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. For cheaper swaps, run the list through our budget swap tool, and check the mana curve with the deck analyzer. Our aristocrats guide covers the sacrifice side of the deck in more depth.

Are fear and intimidate good?

In Limited, they were very good. In a draft, where most decks play two colours, most of an opponent’s creatures usually couldn’t block them. That made cheap commons like Severed Legion, Accursed Spirit and Krenko’s Enforcer reliable sources of damage. It is also why intimidate was retired: in Magic 2014 or Theros draft, a black intimidate creature was nearly unblockable against a white-green deck and a vanilla creature against a black deck.

In Constructed, they were rarely the reason a card was played. The fear and intimidate cards that saw real play (Shriekmaw, Shadowmage Infiltrator, Mikaeus, Geth) are there for their other abilities. Evasion that depends on the opponent’s colours is too unreliable for a tournament deck that has to beat the whole field.

In Commander, they are better than they look. With three opponents, there’s usually one with few black or artifact creatures, and you can choose to attack that player. Lords that give the ability to your whole team (Vela, Marrow-Gnawer, Cover of Darkness) are where it’s strongest. If you want an AI-built starting point for any of these commanders, the community deck gallery has public lists you can copy and edit.

Fear and intimidate FAQ

What does fear do in MTG?

A creature with fear can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures (rule 702.36b). It only affects blocking, and only when the creature with fear is attacking.

What is the difference between fear and intimidate?

Fear always lets black creatures block. Intimidate lets creatures that share a colour with the attacker block. For a black creature they’re identical. For a red creature, fear lets black creatures block and intimidate lets red creatures block. Both always let artifact creatures block.

Is fear still in Magic?

Yes, in the rules and on older cards, but it’s retired. It was replaced by intimidate in 2009, and Wizards has printed only one new card with fear since then (Wire Surgeons, 2022). Every card with fear is still legal in Commander, Legacy and Vintage.

What replaced intimidate?

Menace, starting with Magic Origins in July 2015. A creature with menace can’t be blocked except by two or more creatures.

Can a creature with fear block?

Yes. Fear only restricts which creatures can block it. It has no effect when the creature with fear is blocking.

Can a colourless creature block a creature with fear?

Only if it’s an artifact creature. A colourless creature that isn’t an artifact, such as most Eldrazi, can’t block a creature with fear, and it can’t block a creature with intimidate either.

Can an artifact creature block a creature with intimidate?

Yes, always. Artifact creatures can block any creature with fear or intimidate, whatever colour either of them is.

Who can block a colourless creature with intimidate?

Only artifact creatures. No creature can share a colour with a colourless creature, so the only exception left in the rule is “artifact creatures”. That is 7.2% of all creatures ever printed.

Does fear stop a creature from being blocked by a black creature with a different colour too?

No. A black-green or black-white creature is black, so it can block a creature with fear.

Does intimidate check the colour of the card or the current colour?

The current colour, as blockers are declared. If an effect changes the attacker’s colour before blocks, the blockers that can block it change with it. After it’s blocked, colour changes don’t matter.

How many cards have fear in MTG?

40 creatures were printed with fear, and another 36 cards grant it. Intimidate is on 23 cards, and another 16 grant it.

Is fear or menace better?

It depends on the opponent. Against a deck with few black and artifact creatures, fear is much better, because about 70% of creatures can’t block at all. Against a black deck, fear does nothing, while menace always forces at least two blockers. That consistency is why menace replaced both.

Is fear on MTG Arena?

Barely. Nezumi Cutthroat is the only creature with fear on Arena (in Historic, Timeless and Brawl), and only three cards with intimidate are there: Cavern Lampad, Immerwolf and Lifebane Zombie.

Fear and intimidate are finished as new mechanics, but they’re far from dead. The cards are cheap, legal almost everywhere that isn’t Standard, and in Commander a well-chosen attack still gets past most of the table. For more combat keywords explained with every card counted, read our guides to banding, protection and the combat damage keywords.