World Enchantments are a card type that Wizards of the Coast no longer creates new cards for or has any support for. World Enchantments - or Enchant World cards as they formerly were - are a bit like a very early and very janky form of Legendary Enchantment - and yet it's even sillier than that in a lot of ways due to how it's handled now. Only one World permanent may exist on the battlefield at a time. If anyone plays another one, the previous one is sacrificed. If, say, two enter at the same time, all World permanents are dumped - and yes, I did say "World permanents" - theoretically, other permanents could gain the supertype, as the Comprehensive Rules notes that the World supertype is "normally relevant on ennchantnments" and explicitly says "permanent" everywhere else. It also has some hanndling that suggests that in theory a permanent could gain or lose the World type for other reasons. Somehow I don't think you have to worry about those effects or World non-enchantments ever coming to pass, but maybe R&D will lose their marbles someday.
World Enchantments debuted in Legends, where they were intended to be the enchantment analogue for other Legendary card types (more or less), such as creatures ("Summon Legend" back then) and Legendary Lands. They were called "Enchant World" at the time. Because of the move away from the use of "Enchant X" card types in Ninth Edition, they needed a solution. Enchant World cards, despite the type line, were not local enchantments (i.e. what we now call "auras"). The results of this change are, for these cards, ultimately a bit weird, but they were weird cards anyway. To date, the "World" supertype has been printed on only two paper-game cards that aren't a part of things like the Mystery Booster test-card sets. Due to the type being retired in non-reprint sets after Visions, it's not likely we will see many more instances of this, as 21 out of the mere 26 of these cards are on the Reserved List. Of the remaining 4, Arboria and Concordant Crossroads have seen recent reprints, while Revelation and Land's Edge were only reprinted in Chronicles.
By and large they are symmetrical in their effect - which typically requires some manipulation to take full advantage of. Seeing as how they existed from Legends to the Mirage block, you can imagine that the power level of these cards is… all over the place. In this article, I will rank them according to how good or not I think they are. There are a mere 26, which is… fine, to be honest; World Enchantments are a rather silly mechanic, all considered.
(Also this is purely about how playable the cards are despite three of them having art by infamously terrible people.)
This is mostly here because it is very pointedly a very weak card. That’s Homelands for you, huh?
So, let me explain really quickly that this symmetrical buff feels much worse than, say, that of Bad Moon or other cards. For a start, you can, in theory, expect players to not be playing the same color as you, while flying creatures are much more widespread across colors and generally are quite nice in any deck. It is much worse because, if both players have flying creatures, this doesn’t really move the needle much in combat. Buffing your 2/2 and your opponent’s 1/3 by +1/+1 each doesn’t let you beat over your opponent’s creature nor the other way around. So unless you are playing a huge amount of small flying creatures, this is not a good choice. Even then, you can find cheaper versions of this effect, which are less likely to backfire in your face.
That’s Homelands for you, huh?
This is a worse version of Telepathy but off-color. This is useful information to have, but one doesn’t usually even play Telepathy, so it ends up not looking that good as a result, especially with the cost you have to pay of making everyone else see your hand, too. Not necessarily a bad card to play, but not amazing.
Much like Revelation, this is useful information to get, but it’s probably not worth making everyone else see your own top card. At least in blue, you probably have some way of disrupting other players’ decks, forcing them to mill their top card if you really don’t want them to have it.
Symmetrical control effects can be played against others if you are careful, but you’d like for them to be something that at least you have control over. Teferi’s Realm is very hard to manipulate, and if you want to at least gain the edge with it, you really want to get it out at the end of the turn of the player who goes right before you - certainly doable, but even then, it’s a bit awkward. I guess you could just keep calling enchantments and keep your opponent from ever using it, but you get to remove your opponents’ non-aura enchantments during your turn…? This one probably has more potential than all this, but it feels a little crap.
A big problem with many World Enchantments is that they feel like worse versions of existing enchantments. This, in a lot of ways, can feel like a worse red version of Bottomless Pit. It offers the discard victim a little bit of leeway to play the now-revealed card before discarding it, and it avoids literal “on discard” triggers (and prevents the card being discarded, meaning it slightly nerfs Madness strategies, I guess).
It has a very thin application in the form of making niche combos with cards that check for spells not cast from the hand or even specifically from exile. There are better ways to do this in the greater scheme, even if you need it to happen over many turns.
Hey! Do you like The Rack? Excellent. This is basically The Rack, but symmetrical and slightly stronger. Unfortunately, red does like emptying its hand (or ends up there easily), and probably does not need more things to gamble with their lives. Seems like a nice card for Rakdos. But also, it’s boring.
Okay, this one is odd. Outside of Ice Age block constructed, this is typically not a symmetrical effect; you would build a deck around it. This would be a great card to juice up some massive spell/s to finish off a player in one fell swoop, but at 3 mana (in three colors) to activate, it takes a while for this to break even, so it’s not your best choice unless you already have other things like Doubling Cube on the board. Definitely a major “Potential Card”, because the other idea, of making this something you use for more than one turn, is quite silly - who wants to lock down their lands for a turn like this? I guess you could pull it in with a wish against a snow land player if you wanted to try something high-risk, but that also sounds like a bad idea.
This card has one niche combo, with Island Sanctuary. Defending this is a bit rough, but it’s potent. However, setting this aside, Mystic Decree hinders some of blue’s strongest evasion abilities. Islandwalk is fine to dump - you very well might not need it very much yourself, and removing it from your opponents’ creatures is very helpful. Flying, however? Blue is the king of flying! This means this is more likely to hurt you than not. You really have to build around this, but it can be pretty good situationally.
Speaking of how boring some of these effects are, here’s two Meddling Mages for basically the same price, except your opponent chooses the card for one of them.
See, strictly speaking, this is a very good card in theory. But it’s also symmetrical in the strictest sense; your opponent isn’t going to go out of their way to prevent themself from playing their good cards. Things get maybe a little more complicated in Commander or other multiplayer formats, but not by so much that I think most players would be champing at the bit to use this, but perhaps it is situationally decent. It ends up feeling a bit overcosted for what it is, basically, but in its time, this was probably a strong sideboard piece.
In today’s world of EDH-heavy kitchen tables, this one probably doesn’t make anyone terribly impressed; it’s 3UU to exile all graveyards, and probably counter one staple at most, because we’re not talking about an area where cards of the same name crop up so much. However, in block constructed and limited, this has a lot more potential, especially if it comes down early; in those environments, you’re more likely to see multiple cards with the same name - especially, for the second one, at the common position. Which is still important, that’s where a lot of your creatures are going to end up, or certain spells certain deck types would like to repeat! Situationally very potent.
Once more, we have a card that suffers for the massive shift to Commander as the most popular casual format. Outside Commander, weighing between a creature and a quarter of your starting life is seriously tough. Maybe this comes down a little late to make that big nowadays, but it’s still nasty. In Commander, though, players will willingly take massive amounts of damage and play to the “only one life point matters” philosophy even harder when they have more life available to them. If you play this, odds are that the next player will just eat the 5 life under the fair assumption that they should prevent you sacrificing your own creature for some benefit (you are playing black), unless they can use it to their benefit. This seems like it’s a house in block constructed, though.
Second Third verse, same as the first. However, in Commander, this has a very good use: strangling token decks. Since tokens without name have the same name as their creature types, and most of these types of decks will usually produce large amounts of at least one token type, this will seriously interfere with their ability to build a big board. Additionally, it tends to hurt mana rocks pretty badly, since quite a few, like Sol Ring, are staples of the format to such a point that almost every deck plays them. It is, however, a significantly more potent card in 60-card or other non-singleton formats; too slow to play in eternal, probably, but likely to be monstrous in block constructed.
Perhaps the most average, straightforward World Enchantment of them all, except maybe Concordant Crossroads. By comparison, this one slows the game down a bit, but not necessarily a huge amount. Gravity Sphere feels like a weak solution to the problem it fixes, much more cleanly handled by other cards. I just can’t think of what they are offhand, though, which is why this isn’t way lower.
I was waiting to get to this one! This might be the strongest card in Homelands, period. A few others have been more usable, but this one is incredibly potent.
While this card is mostly just a weaker Propaganda/Ghostly Prison, that’s not a bad thing, and it’s a rare effect in black. I wouldn’t really want this effect printed in black more often, but it’s one of the most fundamental philosophies of early black card design: old black could do damn near anything if it overpaid for it, particularly with life points. Having more access to this ability is always good.
Rather boring due to mostly being a weaker and more symmetrical Crawlspace, but that effect on combat momentum is still quite potent. This is a great card if your deck likes to go tall, especially since it can keep your large creature safe if your opponent would otherwise think of dumping a bunch of weenies to block it - even though they’re probably usually just going to chump-block it forever until they find a solution unless it has trample or something. However, I really don’t have much more to say on the matter.
Despite its very good card name, In the Eye of Chaos is only decent. What it works on, it works very well on. But the odds are, if you’re playing blue in any capacity, you are using at least some countermagic, and making that more expensive is a monstrously bad idea. As much as this can stop your opponents from playing certain spells, if the push through anyway, you would want a harder counter at the ready, and this will stop you from being able to use them so easily. So you have to play very carefully around this, but as with many of these, in the right circumstances, this card is incredibly powerful.
I’m sorry, I don’t like this one very much.
Over time, artifact creatures have gotten better, and since this card’s printing in particular, we’ve seen the widespread proliferation of indestructible creatures. The effect also targets, which means it’s baffled by shroud, hexproof, and protection/hexproof from black. Your opponent can simply do too much to make this not pull its weight. I mean, I guess you can do the same yourself, but you can also manipulate other sources of forcing players to sacrifice creatures during their upkeeps, too. There’s nothing special about this card, it just has a powerful effect.
Forsaken Wastes gets a lot of its power from the fact that getting rid of it is painful. For your opponents, I mean. If you want to get rid of it, well, there are a lot more ways to sac enchantments than there were when this was printed. Even the humble Claws of Gix will get the job done. But when an opponent starts feeling the heat, or needs their life-gain to start making their combo work, they’d best get ready for a big punch in the face. Sure, I just said earlier that this is no big deal in Commander, and it’s not, really. But that spell can be countered, or you can return the Wastes to your hand, or many other things. As much as I love this card, the other eight enchantments here are all at least a little better, in my opinion.
Exciting! This one’s less weird than it looks!
Think of it this way: Chaosphere switches flying and nonflying. Creatures on the ground can’t be blocked by fliers, while grounded creatures can block them even if they didn’t have reach before (fun that the new text explicitly gives reach - it feels like it shouldn’t, but I think that’d make people madder). Handing out the rarely-seen Dust Corona evasion to your entire ground force is pretty fun, and has more than its fair share of uses. Chaosphere feels like it’s much more effective than Gravity Sphere at dealing with flying creatures because it doesn’t take away your evasive options, even going so far as to turn them on their head; it shakes up the dynamics of the board much more without committing new bodies to the board, and it can win you a game in a way Gravity Sphere won’t.
This is probably my big sicko pick for the high numbers. Land’s Edge just looks like a symmetrical (and therefore bad) Seismic Assault, right? Sure! Seismic Assault has seen a few variants over the years because it’s a fun effect to build around. But this one is just kind of undercooked, right?
Land’s Edge ends up all the way up here because it has very high combo potential. Land’s Edge doesn’t just let you discard land cards to deal damage; you can discard anything for no effect (targeting planeswalkers not seeming to be useful at this point unless you’re actually doing something). Except having discarded the card, proccing its madness/mayhem ability if it has those, and also just having it in the graveyard. Certain strategies, such as reanimator decks, will find that very useful. Land’s Edge has the ability to be a one-size-fits-all solution to a lot of combo needs, with its main downside meaning your opponent can do it too. Don’t be surprised if it ends up being your undoing.
It’s a good thing mono-green is pretty powerful, because you really want to be in monocolor to run this. Multicolor decks will just have a bad time, being forced to rely on (mostly) mana rocks and creatures if they want to use multiple colors of mana in one turn. This becomes much more brutal in 60-card formats due to the fact that rocks are more prevalent in Commander, but even then it can hamstring a lot of decks that rely heavily on multicolor cards, especially if they’re playing a lot of 3+-color cards. Incredibly powerful, considering.
A much more powerful control card than most of the other World Enchantments. This can be used to make the whole game grind to a halt… except for things cast at instant speed. Arboria has basically only gotten better for green players, thanks to an increasing amount of flash creatures and other instants. However, blue - and remember that this is a throwback to fairly hard-and-fast “enemy colors” era - has always been reactionary. Black would probably have a worse time with it. That era of Magic design was weird.
Arboria is a pretty solid control card, and while you don’t have full control over the effect, with the right build, you can set up and keep yourself safe from combat, and maybe break it when you no longer need it. Alternatively, you can build a deck which doesn’t attack anyway. Unfortunately, you are vulnerable until your next turn unless you play it. To get around this, you’ll have to get it out outside your turn. Arboria is a serious build-around card, but very good.
Is Living Lands not good enough for you? Well, here you go. It’s easier to combo with this.
Now here’s a card that launches a thousand combos. There are plenty of effects to animate lands, but Living Plane is an excellent one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. It has no stipulations and requires no other support to do its main effect. And the sheer amount of combo potential created by turning every land into a 1/1 creature is very high. It’s quite possible to, for example, destroy all of your opponents’ lands by using something that deals 1 damage to each creature you don’t control. Or even just ping them slowly. And of course, having a nice wide board lends itself to the obvious solution of just overrunning your opponents (spell of the appropriate name optional but quite handy). However, you have to be careful with this; you’re very vulnerable to damaging effects that hit many creatures; one Pyroclasm will end you.
Simple but oh so effective, this card’s sheer power is ridiculous considering when it can come down. A 3-mana tax on any spell is back-breaking in most cases; any deck that needs to resolve multiple spells in a turn is basically completely wrecked by this one. It can also help protect your own interests by making countermagic much more expensive; jacking up the price on those by three mana each hurts, especially if your opponent was hoping to use Force of Will; going from 0 to 3 is rough. However, it is symmetrical, so it’s another card that you must play around – and that can be very, very hard. But if you have the right build, this card is an absolute monster.
Easily the simplest card on here save maybe Gravity Sphere. This is “just” Mass Hysteria in green - a color that has a few instances of haste to its name, but isn’t really the expert in that field without support from red. But Mass Hysteria is a great card. This helps to offset its big, expensive creatures not being likely to not get anything done when they come down, or just in general enables you to use creatures sooner - including mana creatures, letting you build up more board fairly quickly.
Basically, I don’t have a lot more to say about this card because its uses are all extremely obvious, but that’s perfectly fine. Calling this card a “combo piece” feels… wrong. It’s just a utility, but a very, very good one. The effect is symmetrical, which is usually going to be okay; it’s an acceptable payment for a good aggro deck, and in a multiplayer game it can just be good to get everyone doing things a little faster and usually not upset anyone immediately, so it’s just a good card to have any time you play green. In fact, I’d say this effect better suits green than red outside of a fairly few specific cards that really want it, so this is probably better than Mass Hysteria even outside of anything about color power levels in formats like Commander. Look, I don’t have a lot to say about a card that’s this plain in its effects, except that its use cases are “always” - in surprising contrast to my #1 pick.
Okay, this might be a weird choice, but in this case, it’s mostly because Tombstone Stairwell is a very effective win condition basically itself. In terms of pure raw power, you can’t beat Tombstone Stairwell.
You want to play this card as close to when you can go for a win as possible, because it’s costly to keep up. However, once you dump enough creatures into your graveyard, you simply pay the cost, then create a massive army of zombies and run over your opponent. Being that Tombspawns are zombies, they can benefit from the amazing zombie support that exists and you can make your crew super buff to bring it home if you don’t have enough power already. At practically all levels, Tombstone Stairwell can prove potent.
Making things better, Tombstone Stairwell does one very specific (and very odd) thing that makes it have more incredible combo potential: its tokens are explicitly destroyed by its effect, not exiled or anything else silly like that. As a result, they trigger on-death abilities like that of Blood Artist or The Meathook Massacre. They are also destroyed, not sacrificed, so if you can make them indestructible, you may be able to keep them around for a bit. Sadly, no card yet makes all your creature tokens indestructible.
Still, you can see how this card has a lot of potential and is significantly more exciting than even some of the other very handy World Enchantments, and is probably the best of this very narrow category. Tombstone Stairwell is incredible and requires no qualifiers in that sentiment.