There is an ocean of words in the English language, and they can be paired to form a myriad of phrases. But only a select few can make you cringe each and every single time you hear them. For instance:

• I'm afraid we're going to have to amputate.
• Your flight's been delayed another hour.
• Let's just be friends.
• You're paired with Mike Long.

What makes these phrases so cringe-worthy is that the moment they are spoken, you no longer have control (not that you ever did, but most people like to think they do). You are being chucked into a void where very bad things are about to happen to you, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. In short, these phrases are indicative of situations that make you feel impotent in every sense of the word.

Magic has cards that say the same thing.

After all, cards - like words - can be put together to form a sum greater than its parts. In this way, building a deck is much like putting together words to speak. And, just as the words you speak and how you use them reflect on you as a person, so too can your decks and cards you put into them reveal things about yourself. For instance, a well-tuned and metagamed deck with four copies each of two chase rares can say either, "I am very serious about winning" or "I am a huge jerk with no imagination."

By the same token, replacing Jackal Pups with Goblin Balloon Brigades in a Sligh deck either means "I value fun over quality" or "I am a complete moron." The way the deck is played usually reveals which is which.

However, there are cards that, when played in multiplayer, reflect badly upon you no matter how they are played. They are cards that elicit sighs of frustration - or flat-out concessions when they resolve. They are cards that mean that the only one having fun in this game is the person who casts them. Cards whose casters flat-out miss the point of multiplayer.

Cards that lose you friends.

Without further buildup, here is a small list of these cards that should never see the light of a multiplayer table. We'll start with the least offensive and work our way down from there.

Megrim
If you want to be first out of a multiplayer game, Dark Ritual + Megrim is almost as good as conceding first turn. What's worse is that Megrim isn't that great a card, as it does absolutely nothing by itself - but multiplayer aficionados hate losing to it. Be it the Blue/Black combo versions (Windfall + Wheel and Deal or Sunder + Warped Devotion), the Mono Black Control versions (Anvil of Bogardan, Ensnaring Bridge, Pox), or the crazy off-the-wall stuff (Prosbloom-like decks that wins by playing lots of Prosperities, removing their hand from the game, then casting Megrim + Balance), it is an almost universal truth that the Megrim player dies first.

Even if you hide the deck's purpose long enough to win, the next time you play Swamps, chances are you'll be out first.

The reason for this hatred is that fact that when Megrim is played, what you are in essence saying to everyone at the table is, "I'm going to kill you in a turn or two, and there isn't anything you can do about it." It's not so much the fact you suddenly have something that represents inevitability that gets on peoples' nerves; it's more the fact that you are telling everyone at the table that you alone are going to end the game, and you're telling them exactly how you're going to do it.

Grip of Chaos
Does making large groups of people draw dead cards arbitrarily sound fun to you? How about slowing the game to a crawl? Well, congratulations! You're a bastard!

You're probably also playing Grip of Chaos in a multiplayer game.

It looks harmless enough on its own, but all hell breaks loose when it hits play. Sure, multiplayer is filled with all sots of board sweepers and non-targeting effects - but even then the typical multiplayer deck is supplemented with more targeted spells or effects than even the deck's creator sometimes realizes. What this actually makes Grip of Chaos is an ultra-Meddling Mage for cards with the word "target" in them.

Grip effectively kills both strategy and politics. Can you use Disenchant, Boomerang, or Vindicate to get rid of it? Not without risking your own stuff or someone else's. Can you Congregate someone out of a tight spot in return for a favor later on the game? No, you can't. I've seen people forced to use a Nevinyrral's Disk or an Akroma's Vengeance just to get rid of this one enchantment.

One. Enchantment.

In theory, this looks like a fun card and sounds like a fun card, but in practice it is anything but.

Shared Fate
When I saw this in the Mirrodin spoiler, I thought it would be one of the most enjoyable cards that multiplayer had ever seen. After all, who hasn't wanted to play with your friend's Verdant Force in mono-blue or cast your cousin's foil Time Stop in a green deck? Surely this would be great multiplayer fun for all.

Boy. Was. I. Sooo. Wrong.

I built a G/U deck that could accelerate into a third- or fourth-turn Fate. I got it to curve out perfectly, and put Shared Fate out on the third turn. This was followed a period of questions about the enchantment and quizzical looks.

This was, in turn, followed by thirty points of damage to my dome.

Remember that thing about people's cards and decks representing their personality? Everyone else certainly did. People like to play with their own cards. They're funny like that.

Of course, the real reason why you should never play Shared Fate in a multiplayer game is the tendency for people to forget who owns what. Nothing can kill a playgroup faster than a suddenly missing Mox.

Limited Resources
This card has errata. It now reads: W, Sorcery: As an additional cost to play this, sacrifice your playgroup. All other players concede from the game.

I've seen Tradewind Resources, B/W land destruction with artifact mana, cheap artifact creatures, and The Abyss, and of course the G/W turbo-lock varieties. If you are playing to win and care about nothing else, go ahead and build a deck around this card. If you consider anyone in your playgroup as a friend or a decent human being, stay the hell away from Limited Resources. Forcing five other human beings to watch you torture them is not tech; it's trash.

Speaking of which...

Stasis
Peter Jahn wrote about this in his excellent series on the most hated archetypes in Magic, so I won't say anymore about this one.

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Oh, who the hell am I kidding? This is Stasis we're talking about here. I believe that if you take Stasis and multiply it by the number of other people playing, the result would be an exact mathematical depiction of Hell.

Basically, Stasis is a card for players who can only climax while looking at themselves in a mirror. And you can quote me on that.

Now, I have ragged on these cards pretty hard - but as the writer of a previous article pointed out, these are good cards to pull out against bragging bastards who don't care about the rest of the table. Frankly, if they care that little about everyone else, then they deserve what they get. That said, the insinuation that these cards are good to use every once in a while is plain silly. If you like your friends, you don't play these against them. As I've said before, wrong is wrong. You wouldn't try to justify screwing your best friend's girlfriend by saying, "It was only once."

Well, not if you're a decent human being.

In any event, keep your mind sharp and stay the hell away from Stasis.