What does Intimidate do in Magic: The Gathering?

A creature with intimidate can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it. So if you attack with a black creature that has intimidate, your opponent can only block it with artifact creatures or black creatures.

Is Intimidate still legal in Magic?

Yes — intimidate is still a functional, legal keyword ability. It's labeled deprecated, meaning Wizards of the Coast no longer prints new cards with it, but existing cards that have intimidate are legal in whatever format those cards are normally legal in (Modern, Legacy, Commander, etc.).

What is the difference between Intimidate and Fear in MTG?

Fear is the older, narrower version: a creature with fear can't be blocked except by artifact creatures or black creatures, regardless of what color the fear creature itself is. Intimidate generalized this by replacing the fixed 'black' with 'shares a color with it,' making the ability usable across all five colors.

What is the difference between Intimidate and Menace?

Menace requires the attacking creature to be blocked by two or more creatures — it doesn't care about color or type at all. Intimidate restricts which creatures can block based on color and the artifact subtype. Menace is simpler, more consistent, and is the ability that officially replaced intimidate on new card printings.

Can colorless creatures block a creature with Intimidate?

Only if they're artifact creatures. The intimidate rules specifically grant an exception to artifact creatures — not colorless creatures in general. A colorless, non-artifact creature cannot block a creature with intimidate.

Does stacking multiple instances of Intimidate do anything?

No. CR 702.13c explicitly states that multiple instances of intimidate on the same creature are redundant. Whether a creature has intimidate once or five times, the blocking restriction is identical.

Intimidate in MTG: Rules, Strategy & Cards

There's a particular kind of pressure that evasion puts on your opponent - not "you can't block this" outright, but "good luck finding something that can." Intimidate is built on exactly that idea. It doesn't make a creature unblockable, but in the right matchup, it might as well.

What is Intimidate?

Intimidate is a deprecated keyword evasion ability in Magic: The Gathering. A creature with intimidate can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it. If your opponent is running creatures that are neither artifacts nor the same color as your intimidating creature, those creatures simply can't step in front of it.

Think of it like a bouncer at a very exclusive club: most creatures don't get on the list. Artifact creatures always get in (they're colorless, so they have no color conflict), and creatures that share the attacker's color get in. Everyone else is turned away at the door.

The reason intimidate is labeled deprecated is important: Wizards of the Coast officially moved away from it and replaced it with menace - a simpler, more consistent evasion ability - starting around Magic Origins (2015). Intimidate still appears on older cards and in older formats, but it won't appear on new printings.

Format check: Intimidate cards are legal in whatever format the individual card is legal in - the ability itself isn't banned. But since it's no longer printed on new cards, you'll mainly encounter it in older formats like Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Pauper.

Rules

Here's the official rules text from the Comprehensive Rules (November 14, 2025 - Edge of Eternities):

CR 702.13a Intimidate is an evasion ability. CR 702.13b A creature with intimidate can't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or creatures that share a color with it. (See rule 509, "Declare Blockers Step.") CR 702.13c Multiple instances of intimidate on the same creature are redundant.

Breaking down the rules

A few things worth unpacking here:

Color sharing is the key variable. If your creature is red, any red creature your opponent controls can block it - even if that creature is also another color. A red-green creature can block your red intimidator just fine.

Artifact creatures are always eligible blockers. Because artifact creatures have no color, the "shares a color" clause can never apply to them. They're the universal exception. This means a deck built around colorless artifact creatures - think a Constructs-heavy artifact deck - barely cares about intimidate at all.

Multiple instances of intimidate do nothing extra. If somehow a creature picks up intimidate twice (say, from an Equipment and an Aura at the same time), the second instance is completely irrelevant. You can't stack the restriction.

Intimidate only restricts blocking, not attacking. A creature with intimidate still attacks normally. It's purely an evasion ability that activates during the Declare Blockers step.

Common misunderstandings

One thing that trips players up: intimidate is about the blocker's colors, not the controller's colors. It doesn't matter what colors your opponent is playing - it matters what colors their individual creatures are. An opponent in a Grixis (blue-black-red) Commander deck could still block your black intimidator with any of their black or red creatures.

Also worth noting: colorless non-artifact creatures (a rarity, but they exist) can not block a creature with intimidate. Being colorless doesn't grant the artifact exception - only the artifact subtype does.

Strategy

Playing with intimidate

Intimidate works best when your opponent is committed to a single color or runs few artifacts. A mono-white control deck, for example, will struggle badly against a black creature with intimidate - white creatures share no color with black, and if the deck runs few artifact creatures, that attacker becomes nearly unblockable.

In practice, this makes black the strongest color for intimidate. Black creatures with intimidate threaten most creature-based defense, since many popular aggressive and midrange decks run creatures that are green, white, or red - none of which share a color with black.

In Commander, the multi-player format, intimidate's value shifts. Each opponent might run different colors, so a black intimidating creature could be freely blocked by one opponent but slip past another entirely. You're essentially reading the table every time you attack.

Playing against intimidate

If you're on the receiving end, artifact creatures are your best friends. Even a humble Ornithopter or any artifact creature your deck includes can step in as a blocker without restriction.

If you're in a matchup where intimidate is hurting you, consider:

Removal spells that deal with the creature before it attacks
Tapping effects that keep it from attacking in the first place
Trading with it via a creature that shares its color, if you happen to have one

Deck-building considerations

Because intimidate cares about color, it rewards attacking into color-mismatched opponents. If you know your local meta skews toward mono-colored decks (a common pattern in aggressive Standard metas of the past), intimidate can be genuinely brutal. In a diverse, multi-color environment, its effectiveness drops off.

In Commander, pairing intimidate with mono-black strategies - where most of your creatures are black - means your opponents need black or artifact creatures to block. That's a real constraint in the format.

Intimidate vs. menace: Menace requires two blockers instead of one, which is always a meaningful constraint regardless of colors or types. In most contexts, menace is the more reliable ability, which is exactly why it replaced intimidate. That said, against opponents with very few blockers available at all, intimidate can be outright unblockable in effect - which is technically stronger than menace in those specific matchups.

Notable cards

Hideous Visage

A {2}{B} Sorcery that grants intimidate to all your creatures until end of turn. This is a one-shot alpha strike enabler: swing with your whole board, make everything effectively unblockable against the right opponent, and force through as much damage as possible.

Predator's Gambit

A {B} Aura that gives enchanted creature +2/+1 and intimidate - but only as long as its controller has no other creatures. It's a tight condition, but for a single black mana on a solo threat, the combination of a stat boost and evasion is genuinely efficient.

Gruesome Deformity and Grisly Transformation

Both are Auras that grant intimidate. Grisly Transformation adds card draw on entry, which goes a long way toward justifying the inclusion of an Aura in a creature-based deck.

Nim Deathmantle

An Equipment with a famous recursion ability - whenever a non-token creature you control dies, you may pay {4} to return it and reattach the Deathmantle. The granted intimidate is almost secondary to that engine, but it's a nice bonus on whatever creature it equips.

Executioner's Hood

A simple Equipment ({2} to cast, {2} to equip) that grants intimidate. It's a budget option for equipment-based intimidate decks, particularly in Pauper.

Boldwyr Intimidator

Not technically a card with intimidate, but worth a mention here for flavor and mechanical adjacency. Boldwyr Intimidator turns creatures into "Cowards" - and Cowards can't block Warriors. It's doing thematically similar work (creating blocking restrictions through creature types) without using the intimidate keyword at all.

History

Intimidate was introduced in Magic 2011 (M11, 2010) as a formalization and color-generalization of an older ability called fear. Fear - which appears on the card Intimidation in the source cards above - worked similarly but was exclusively for black creatures: a creature with fear couldn't be blocked except by artifact creatures and/or black creatures.

The design team wanted to bring that same "hard to block" feeling to other colors, and intimidate was the solution. By replacing the fixed "black" in fear's text with "shares a color with it," the ability became applicable to any color in the game.

For about five years, intimidate appeared across several sets, primarily on black and red creatures. It was never the flashiest keyword, but it did meaningful work in limited environments where color-matching your blockers was genuinely difficult.

Then came Magic Origins (2015), and with it, menace. Menace - requiring two blockers - was easier to parse, didn't require knowing the colors of every creature on the battlefield, and created more interesting combat decisions (do you block with two small creatures and trade, or let it through?). Intimidate was quietly retired, and as of the most recent rules update, it carries the "deprecated" label: still functional, no longer being printed on new cards.

Fear itself was deprecated even earlier, and neither fear nor intimidate appear on cards printed in recent years. If you're building a new deck and want that evasive, hard-to-block feeling, menace is what Wizards points you toward today.