Card Spotlight
Winter Orb
A two-mana artifact from 1993: while it's untapped, players can't untap more than one land during their untap steps. For its cost, it is one of the most efficient stax pieces ever printed.
Commander Spotlight
Winter Orb ↗
A two-mana artifact from 1993: while it's untapped, players can't untap more than one land during their untap steps. For its cost, it is one of the most efficient stax pieces ever printed.
See Winter Orb's full stats and printings →
Strategies it goes well with
- Stax and prison decks. It's one of the most efficient land-denial effects ever printed for the mana cost, and the backbone of many dedicated lock decks.
- Low-curve, mana-rock-heavy decks. Winter Orb only holds back lands, so a deck with a low curve and several mana rocks suffers far less from its own Winter Orb than the rest of the table does.
- Decks with untap effects. Anything that untaps lands outside your own untap step, such as Seedborn Muse, lets its controller sidestep much of the lock.
How it does in Commander
As the commander
It's an artifact, never a commander. Winter Orb lives in the 99 of a deck designed to function under its own lock.
In the 99
It is the signature card of stax decks built to operate on almost no mana while everyone else's plans stall out. It is a poor fit for anything else.
Formats it's strong in
- Dedicated stax decks. The deck is built to need very little mana, so the lock costs its own pilot little while shutting down everyone else's plans.
- cEDH pods running prison strategies. At the highest power level, a well-timed lock piece can be the difference between winning and losing outright.
Formats it's weak in
- Almost every other deck. A card that slows down every player equally, including its own controller, is a poor fit for a deck that isn't specifically built to need less mana than the table.
- Casual and social pods. Locking a whole table's mana down is one of the fastest ways to make a Commander night stop being fun for everyone else. Talk about it in your Rule 0 conversation before you play it.
Synergistic cards
Static Orb ↗
A companion lock: while it's untapped, players can't untap more than two permanents of any type during their untap steps, so it also holds back the rocks and creatures Winter Orb lets untap.
Seedborn Muse ↗
Untaps your permanents during every player's untap step, which sidesteps Winter Orb's restriction for its controller almost entirely.
Smokestack ↗
Another classic stax piece from the same design era, sacrificing permanents each turn to further starve the table.
Any cheap, mana-efficient finisher ↗
A stax shell built around Winter Orb needs a plan that closes the game without much mana of its own, because the lock buys time and does not win by itself.
Is it worth the price?
Winter Orb's age has kept its price on the higher side for a two-mana artifact, without ever becoming a true chase card. Worth owning specifically for a dedicated stax build; a bad purchase for almost any other deck, and one worth a conversation with your playgroup before it hits the table.
Frequently asked questions
How does Winter Orb lock the board down?
While Winter Orb is untapped, each player untaps at most one land during their untap step. Artifacts, creatures and other permanents untap normally. The table's land mana drops to almost nothing, while a Winter Orb deck, built to function on very little mana itself, keeps operating.
Is Winter Orb banned in Commander?
No, though it's one of the format's clearest examples of a symmetrical effect that is lopsided in practice. The deck running it is built to need less mana than everyone else, so the "everyone suffers equally" framing rarely plays out that way at the table.
What kind of deck wants Winter Orb?
A stax deck built around cheap spells, mana rocks (which Winter Orb doesn't stop from untapping), and a plan that doesn't need much mana to close the game. A deck that wants to cast expensive spells every turn is the opposite of what it needs.