Tasha's Hideous Laughter
Sorcery
Each opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until that player has exiled cards with total mana value 20 or greater.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $3.84
- EDHREC rank
- #2950
Tasha's Hideous Laughter exiles cards from each opponent's library until you've hit a combined mana value of 20 — in a four-player pod, that routinely strips 10 to 20 cards per opponent before they can interact. At two mana, it's one of the most efficient mill spells ever printed, and Umbris, Fear Manifest turns every exiled card into a permanent power and toughness boost.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Umbris, Fear Manifest
Umbris, Fear Manifest gets +1/+1 for each card exiled from opponents' libraries or graveyards, so Tasha's Hideous Laughter can swing its stats by double digits off a single cast. At 78% inclusion, it's close to a mandatory inclusion in Umbris lists.
The Mindskinner
The Mindskinner triggers whenever a player mills cards, turning each exile event from Tasha's Hideous Laughter into incremental life loss and pressure. It converts a mass-exile spell into a damage source without any additional setup.
Bruvac the Grandiloquent
Bruvac the Grandiloquent doubles each instance of milling, so the 20-mana-value threshold from Tasha's Hideous Laughter effectively becomes 40 worth of cards stripped per opponent. That's often most or all of a player's library in one spell.
Phenax, God of Deception
Phenax, God of Deception builds toward the same attrition goal as Tasha's Hideous Laughter — empty every library — so the two pieces stack naturally in the same strategic lane. The spell provides a burst of mill that complements Phenax's steady tap-to-mill engine.
Hope Estheim
Hope Estheim cares about cards being put into exile, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter can trigger that condition at scale by exiling large swaths of opponents' libraries at once. It pulls triple duty as mill, exile trigger, and pressure on opponents' resources simultaneously.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Tasha's Hideous Laughter is a staple — two mana to strip a meaningful chunk of every opponent's library is an extraordinary rate, and its power scales directly with the number of low-CMC cards in those libraries. In Modern and Legacy, it sees play in dedicated mill strategies where the 20-mana-value threshold is easy to hit against efficient, low-cost decks; mill was a fringe archetype until this card arrived and gave it a genuinely fast engine. Pioneer is a legal but narrower home, where the presence of larger-CMC threats means the exile count per opponent drops and the spell becomes less consistent. Vintage has the raw card quality to make mill uncompetitive at the highest level, so Tasha's Hideous Laughter doesn't show up there in meaningful numbers.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$3.84 cheap tier
At $3.84, Tasha's Hideous Laughter sits in the cheap tier for a card with this kind of competitive reach across multiple formats. Its price is unlikely to drop further given its staple status in Commander mill strategies and its continued Modern relevance.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Umbris, Fear Manifest
- The Mindskinner
- Bruvac the Grandiloquent
- Phenax, God of Deception
- Hope Estheim
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.