{"id":1902,"date":"2026-10-06T06:56:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krakenthemeta.com\/blog\/mtg-intimidate\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T07:01:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T07:01:13","slug":"mtg-intimidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krakenthemeta.com\/blog\/mtg-intimidate\/","title":{"rendered":"MTG Intimidate Explained: How Intimidate Works, Who Can Block It, Every Intimidate Card Ranked and a $61 Vela Deck (2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intimidate<\/strong> is a Magic: The Gathering evasion ability: a creature with intimidate can’t be blocked except by artifact creatures and\/or creatures that share a colour with it<\/strong>. A red creature with intimidate can only be blocked by red creatures and artifact creatures. A blue-black one can be blocked by anything blue, anything black, and any artifact creature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

We pulled every intimidate card from Scryfall, every deck count from EDHREC, and the colour and card type of every creature legal in Commander to measure how much intimidate dodges. There are 39 cards with intimidate<\/strong>: 23 with the keyword and 16 that give it to other creatures. A one-colour intimidate creature can be blocked by 27.5% to 30.6% of Commander-legal creatures<\/strong>, a bit more than the 19.7% that can block a flier. A two-colour one can be blocked by about half of them. A colourless creature with intimidate can be blocked by only 6.8%<\/strong>: artifact creatures and nothing else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

That last number is the reason to care about a keyword Wizards retired in 2015. This guide covers the rules and timing, how intimidate compares with fear, menace, flying and skulk, every intimidate card ranked by Commander play, the commanders, what intimidate cost on a creature’s stats, why it was replaced, how to beat it, legality in every format, and a $61.06 budget Commander deck<\/strong> that gives intimidate to colourless Eldrazi with Vela the Night-Clad.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What is intimidate in MTG?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n

Intimidate first appeared on cards in Zendikar in October 2009. It replaced fear<\/a>, the old black-only version of the same idea, and was itself replaced by menace<\/a> in Magic Origins in 2015. The Comprehensive Rules still define it:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

702.13a<\/strong> Intimidate is an evasion ability.<\/p>\r\n

702.13b<\/strong> 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.”)<\/p>\r\n

702.13c<\/strong> Multiple instances of intimidate on the same creature are redundant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

In plain terms: when your intimidate creature attacks, the defending player looks at their creatures. Any artifact creature can block it. Any creature that shares at least one colour with it can block it. Everything else can’t.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The keyword is symmetrical in a way fear never was. Fear always asked “is the blocker black?”, which was great on black creatures and odd on anything else. Intimidate asks “does the blocker share a colour with the attacker?”, so the same keyword works the same way on a red Boar, a green Wurm or a white Spirit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\"A
Bladetusk Boar, a 3\/2 for four from Zendikar (2009) and one of the first creatures printed with intimidate. Art by Sam Burley. Image via Scryfall; \u00a9 Wizards of the Coast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n

How intimidate works: colours, timing and stacking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n

Colours are checked when blockers are declared<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

Intimidate looks at the attacker’s current colours and the blockers’ current colours at the moment the defending player declares blockers. Scryfall’s rulings on Bladetusk Boar spell it out: if the Boar has been turned blue, it can be blocked by artifact creatures and\/or blue creatures, not red ones. And once it’s blocked, changing its colours doesn’t undo the block. The same goes for the blocker: making a blocking creature stop being an artifact after blocks won’t make your attacker unblocked (Nuka-Nuke Launcher ruling, 2024).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

So colour-changing tricks only work before blocks. Cast them in your beginning of combat step or main phase, not after the defender has picked blockers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Multicoloured creatures are easier to block<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

A multicoloured creature with intimidate can be blocked by any creature that shares any<\/em> of its colours. The Hideous Visage ruling gives the example: a white-blue creature with intimidate can be blocked by white creatures and\/or blue creatures, no matter what other colours they are. Every extra colour widens the set of possible blockers. That’s why two-colour intimidate creatures are blockable by roughly half of all creatures (see the table below).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Colourless creatures with intimidate<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

A colourless creature shares a colour with nothing. Give it intimidate and only artifact creatures can block it. This is the one place intimidate is clearly better than flying, and it only happens when another card grants the keyword: no colourless creature was ever printed with intimidate. The three ways to get there are Vela the Night-Clad (gives your whole team intimidate), Executioner’s Hood and Nuka-Nuke Launcher (Equipment). Nim Deathmantle doesn’t work for this: it also turns the creature black.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Intimidate with fear, menace and other evasion<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

Evasion abilities stack: a creature has to satisfy every blocking restriction at once. A creature with fear and intimidate can only be blocked by an artifact creature or by a creature that is black and<\/em> shares a colour with it. A creature with intimidate and menace needs two or more blockers, each of which is an artifact creature or shares a colour. Flying plus intimidate needs a blocker with flying or reach that also shares a colour or is an artifact. Two instances of intimidate on one creature do nothing extra.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What intimidate does not do<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

Intimidate doesn’t stop your creature from blocking, doesn’t protect it from removal and doesn’t care about power or toughness. It only limits who can block it. A 0\/8 artifact wall can block any intimidate creature; a black 1\/1 can block a black intimidate creature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

How hard is an intimidate creature to block? We counted<\/h2>\r\n\r\n

We took every creature card legal in Commander (17,852 cards, excluding Un-sets and tokens), recorded its colours and whether it’s an artifact, and counted how many could block an intimidate creature of each colour. Flying is the reference: 3,516 of 17,852 creatures have flying or reach, so 19.7% of creatures can block a flier.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\n\n
Intimidate creature’s colour<\/th>Commander-legal creatures that can block it<\/th>Share of all 17,852<\/th>Compared with a flier (19.7%)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Colourless<\/td>1,216<\/td>6.8%<\/td>About 2.9\u00d7 harder to block than a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Blue<\/td>4,906<\/td>27.5%<\/td>1.4\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Black<\/td>5,160<\/td>28.9%<\/td>1.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Red<\/td>5,222<\/td>29.3%<\/td>1.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
White<\/td>5,350<\/td>30.0%<\/td>1.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Green<\/td>5,463<\/td>30.6%<\/td>1.6\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Blue-black<\/td>8,417<\/td>47.1%<\/td>2.4\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Blue-red<\/td>8,501<\/td>47.6%<\/td>2.4\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
White-blue<\/td>8,591<\/td>48.1%<\/td>2.4\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Black-red<\/td>8,707<\/td>48.8%<\/td>2.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Blue-green<\/td>8,720<\/td>48.8%<\/td>2.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
White-black<\/td>8,915<\/td>49.9%<\/td>2.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
White-red<\/td>8,904<\/td>49.9%<\/td>2.5\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Black-green<\/td>9,018<\/td>50.5%<\/td>2.6\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
Red-green<\/td>9,010<\/td>50.5%<\/td>2.6\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n
White-green<\/td>9,121<\/td>51.1%<\/td>2.6\u00d7 as many blockers as a flier<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/tbody><\/table>\r\n\r\n

Three things stand out:<\/p>\r\n\r\n