Magic: The Gathering has quite a few compelling villains, and the Eldrazi are arguably some of the best. Their debut in Rise of the Eldrazi needed to feel climactic and powerful, so they had to make a mechanic that felt appropriate for world-eating, unknowable, and unstoppable eldritch horrors. That's right, I'm Luka Sharaska, and today we're going to be discussing the Annihilator mechanic.

How Does Annihilator Work?

In the case of Ulamog's Crusher, attacking with it makes the defending player sacrifice two permanents. All Annihilator abilities are templated as Annihilator X, where X is the number of permanents that need to be sacrificed. If you have some additional questions, don't worry! Here's a few tips to help you understand the rules.

• Annihilator is a triggered ability that triggers whenever a creature with it attacks.
• Lands are not spared when Annihilator triggers resolve. If all the defending player only controls lands, they must sacrifice the requisite number of lands. Ouch.
• Annihilator triggers will resolve before blockers can be declared, and as a result, creatures that are sacrificed will not be able to block.
• If a creature has multiple instances of Annihilator somehow, they will trigger separately. For instance, if a creature has both Annihilator 1 and Annihilator 3, the defending player will sacrifice a total of 4 permanents.
• Annihilator still triggers if you attack a planeswalker, as its controller is still the defending player. If the planeswalker is sacrificed to the Annihilator ability, creatures attacking it will still be attacking, blockers can still be declared, and if the defending player declines to block in a situation like this, no damage will be dealt to anything.

Now that we've covered the basics of the rules, let's get into how these cards will function during a normal game of Magic.

How Good Is Annihilator?

This is a pretty easy question. Annihilator is so good that they mostly put it on creatures that cost like eight or more mana. If you don't have a bunch of expendable tokens in play, sacrificing permanents is a really huge deal. If a mechanic is so powerful that you can only really put it on huge overcosted creatures for fear of it just destroying games, it's clearly powerful.

If you aren't developing your board enough, a paltry Annihilator 2 can feel like you don't get to play the game anymore, and some cards have numbers much less forgiving than 2. There's a reason people have been clamoring for ways to jam an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn onto the battlefield at a steep discount since the day it was released.

The Eldrazi creature type has had a pretty interesting history, and although Annihilator has not always been at the forefront of their collective tournament viability, there will always be players that like casting huge spells with powerful effects. Funnily enough, Wizards of the Coast didn't put Annihilator in the next two sets featuring Eldrazi, and those sets would go on to create an era now known as Eldrazi Winter.

Which Cards Have Annihilator?

It turns out there are only 19 cards with Annihilator across Magic history. Most were printed in Rise of the Eldrazi, but not all of them. Among those 19, there's even a couple of noncreature spells. So, let's take a look at all of them!

• Artisan of Kozilek
• Azlask, the Swelling Scourge
• Breaker of Creation
• Eldrazi Conscription
• Eldrazi Ravager
• Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
• Flayer of Loyalties
• Hand of Emrakul
• Hideous Taskmaster
• Idol of False Gods
• It That Betrays
• Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• Nazgul Battle-Mace
• Nulldrifter
• Pathrazer of Ulamog
• Spawnsire of Ulamog
• Ulamog's Crusher
• Ulamog, the Defiler
• Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Which Annihilator Cards Are The Most Iconic?

The three original Eldrazi titans are almost certainly the most iconic if you ask me. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre are all still expensive despite two of those only really seeing play in Commander. If you were a Limited player in those days, you probably have fond memories (or perhaps nightmares) of Ulamog's Crusher.

Personally, however, I'm a huge fan of Hideous Taskmaster, Flayer of Loyalties, and Eldrazi Conscription. Attacking with huge Annihilator creatures out of nowhere is a real blast. That said, I also have to shout out It That Betrays and Nulldrifter for being great value plays in a few of my favorite decks.

That's All, Folks

From the flying spaghetti monster that is Emrakul to a battle-mace from The Lord of the Rings, you've officially been briefed on every single Annihilator card and how they work. While Annihilator is pretty high on the Storm Scale, I'm confident we'll see it again someday. I've been Luka Sharaska, and I hope you've enjoyed this explanation of the Annihilator mechanic.

Let me know if I need to add a bit of extra content to this one. It's just over the edge of 800 words, but I'd struggle to call Annihilator a very complicated mechanic.