Cards that skip a turn and how it affects Commander Brackets

What "skip your next turn" means

Ever been confused about MTG terminology? We've all been there. Some cards end with the words "You skip your next turn." This one is pretty straightforward! It means exactly what it says. When your next turn would start, it just doesn't happen, and play moves straight on to the next player.

You end up miss everything your turn normally gives you. You don't Untap your cards, you don't draw, and you can't play a land. Anything you tapped stays tapped until the turn after that.

You're still in the game, though. On everyone else's turns you can still block, cast spells at Instant Speed and use abilities that don't need your own turn.

Why would anyone play these?

Because the payoff is huge for how little you pay. The skipped turn is the real price:

• Meditate costs three mana and draws you four cards.
• Chronatog can get +3/+3 for no mana at all. That's 3 more Power and 3 more Toughness until the end of the turn, and you can only do it once each turn.
• Eater of Days costs four mana for a huge creature: 9 Power, 8 Toughness, flying and Trample. The catch is that you skip your next two turns.

What it costs at a four-player table

In a two-player game, skipping a turn hands your opponent two turns in a row. At a four-player Commander table it's a lot worse. The other three players each take two turns before you get your next one. That's six turns where your cards stay tapped and you can't draw or play a land.

That's what makes these cards incredibly risky. Your blockers have to survive two full trips around the table, and any lands you tapped for mana that turn stay tapped the whole time. Not only that, but you're at risk of someone using a *target* *removal* card or exiling it before you can even use it. If possible it's a smart idea to try to have enough mana to protect yourself.

Getting the turn back

A few cards pay you back:

• Wormfang Manta makes you skip your next turn when it enters. When it leaves the battlefield, you take an extra turn.
• Magosi, the Waterveil lets you skip a turn now to put an eon Counter on it, which saves that turn for later. When you want it back, you remove the marker and return Magosi to your hand to take an extra turn.

Extra Turns come with their own table etiquette. For commander brackets 1 (aka EDH Brackets) they require there to be none at all, and for Brackets 2 and 3 ask you not to chain them, which means taking them one after another. They are allowed to be in your deck for brackets 2 and 3 though.

Stopping someone else's extra turn

Some cards turn somebody else's extra turn into a skipped one. Ugin's Nexus and Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant say that if a player would begin an extra turn, "that player skips that turn instead." Stranglehold does the same thing, but only to your opponents. They're a direct answer to decks built around cards like Time Warp.

Find more

We tag every card that skips part of a turn or a whole turn, so you can find them all in one place: Turn Skipping. To be frank, most of them skip your draw step, the part of your turn where you draw a card, not the whole turn. Always be sure to read the card before you add it.