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Hesitation

Enchantment

When a player casts a spell, sacrifice this enchantment and counter that spell.

CMC
2
Mana cost
{1}{U}
Color identity
U
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Stronghold
Price
$0.30
EDHREC rank
#22193
Buy on TCGplayer
Hesitation card art
Hesitation locks the table out of casting spells until someone sacrifices it or pays around it — one card doing real stax work for one blue mana. The catch is that it destroys itself the first time any opponent does cast a spell, so without an Opalescence-style loop to reset it, the effect is a single-use tax rather than a persistent lock.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern not legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Commander is where Hesitation earns its slot, specifically in stax and enchantress shells that can either loop it or leverage the brief window it buys. Legacy sees niche play in prison lists that chain together taxing permanents, but the one-trigger self-destruction makes it fragile in a format where opponents have cheap answers. Vintage is legal but rarely worth the slot when more permanent disruption exists. Hesitation is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper, so its competitive life is narrow by default.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.30 bulk tier

At $0.30, Hesitation sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a throw-in or from a commons box. The price is unlikely to move meaningfully given its narrow application and lack of crossover appeal outside dedicated stax builds.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.