The Worst Creatures in the History of Magic: the Gathering

in Magic the good cards get all the glory but there's tens of thousands of cards in Magic and a lot of them aren't that good and some of them are hilariously bad and those are going to be our Focus for today as we look at the worst creatures in the history of Magic the Gathering number 10 easling leprechaun a one Mana one1 is about as weak as a creature can be although as creatures like esper Sentinel it's not necessarily a deal breaker assuming the creature has a strong ability so what Mighty ability does aeling leprechaun offer when it blocks or becomes blocked by a creature that creature becomes green as the rest of the card makes abundantly clear that's it it's just green it doesn't do anything else why it's theoretically possible to make this ability do something for example you could turn a creature green so it can't block your surge mare so you can kill it with a death Mark these synergies are so rare in underpower that in reality the ability kind of does nothing making matters worse it's a one one Asing leprechaun is very likely to die the first time it blocks or becomes blocked by anything which means even if the ability did do something meaningful it wouldn't really be possible to build a deck around the effect because it's a one shot not that you'd want to build around it anyway oh yeah and as a green one drop hling leprechaun is competing with some legitimately useful creatures including manad dorks like glan War elves delighted hling and birds of paradise or if you want to go beatdowns cards like hex Drinker experiment one and Allosaurus Shepherd outside of the meme value in some sort of Lucky Charms deck there's really no reason to ever put aing leprechaun in your deck number nine POG hul Lums in Magic six Mana can buy you a lot it can get you legitimate bombs like grave Titan Massacre wormer vein Ripper or it could buy you the ninth worth creature of all time B hoodlums for six you'll get a 41 that can't even block but wait it has a clash ability when it enters the battlefield if the top card of your deck has a higher Mana value than your opponent's deck you'll trigger this powerful ability and put a single plus one plus one counter on bog huls the funniest part is even if you high roll and win The Clash the end result is a 52 that still can't block a card that would probably still be on our list today and that only happened about one one third of the time number eight Goblin Firebug through the lenss of 2024 magic Goblin Firebug is an almost unthinkably bad card it's a grizzly bear a two Mana 2u but with a hilariously huge drawback when it leaves the battlefield you have to sacrifice a land if Goblin Firebug was super far above the curve then maybe the land sacking downside would be worth the risk but all you're getting is a two two for two the thing is for most of Magic's life Wizards use grizzly bears as a sort of Baseline creature green was supposed to be the color of the strongest creature so they refused to give other creatures cards of grizzly bears power level in fact it wasn't until 2016's eldrid Moon that red got an actual grizzly bears in Falcon WTH Reaver in this historical context Goblin Firebug almost makes sense you get this above the curve I guess for your color creature but you have to deal with a drawback which is simply too harsh for it to be worth it today thanks to power creep red gets cards like robber of the rich a grizzly bear with reach and haste and one that steals cards from your opponent's deck or even ogre head Hound which doesn't even see play but it's a grizzly bear that's also an equipment that can draw a bunch of cards so there's no reason to ever play Goblin Firebug well unless you somehow manage to build a deck where destroying your own Mana bases in upside then there might be a reason to run Goblin Firebug although I'm not sure a deck like that actually exists need a goblin Firebug of your own while you can snag one from our sponsor Card Kingdom over at cardkingdom.com MTG goldfish number seven teino Calvary original Kagawa block is known for having some of the worst creatures in the modern era of magic thanks to mechanics like bito and soul shift which along with Wizards trying to power down the game after breaking it a little bit with mirin the year before for led to wizards powering down the base stats on most creatures but even in this powered down plane teo's Calvary sticks out for its pitiful stats for four Mana you get a one one which is literally as bad as a creature can be stats-wise but don't worry it has bashid one so if it blocks or becomes blocked it'll grow into a 2 two until endit turd but a for Mana 22 is still pretty horrible thankfully though it has an activated ability which tap to deal one damage to an attacking or blocking Spirit if this ability could hit any creature teino Calvary would still be a pretty bad card but probably not among the worst creatures of all time but most of the time this ability is going to do literally nothing cuz your opponent isn't going to have spirits in their deck considering that white gets four Mana four fors with upsides like flying or doubling your tokens and even these cards mostly don't see competitive play you could literally multiply the stats on teo's Calvary by four and it would still be unplayable that's how bad the samurai really is number six warping worm when you see a reservist guard from 1996 that costs less than a dollar you know it's got to be a pretty bad card in warping worm is hilariously bad like teo's Calvary warping worm is a four Mana 1 one which we've already determined is a pretty bad start starting point and in some ways warping worm is even worse than the samurai because it's a simit card and green is supposed to get the biggest creatures in the game the ability on warping worm makes it even less useful during your upkeep it phases out unless you pay its Mana cost again which means if you want to keep your four Mana one1 around the following turn it's actually kind of an eight Mana 1 One the good news is when warping worm does phase out it gets a plus one plus one counter how you are supposed to play the card is sticking warping worm letting it phase out a few times to slowly grow into a meaningful threat but if you actually think through how this works in practice it actually just doesn't really work at all let's say you play a warping worm on turn four on turn five it phases out and you have nothing at all not even a warping worm to block with or attack with on turn six it'll phase back in and get a counter and become a two2 so now it's a turn six four Mana grizzly bears and then on turn seven it phases out again so you hand attacker block with it turn eight it comes back in gets a counter and now it's a 33 essentially making it a eight turn four mana centure corser and then turn nine phases out no creature turn 10 it phases back in and becomes a 4 four making it a rumbling baof that's right it takes six turns half of them without even having warping we on the battlefield to build a random forgettable common when you could you know just spend four mana on rumbling Bao and cut out all the extra steps well there are a lot of plus one plus1 counter synergies in magic cards like Harden scales or doubling season even if you're doubling up the counters on warping worm it's still not even close to being worth it number five Zer Spirit a six Mana 06 is already a horrible creature although six tough just means that it's at least a good if incredibly overcosted blocker right well not exactly since zeph spirit's ability happens to be that if you block with it you have to return it to your hand which means you might be tempted to spend six more Mana to get it back on the battlefield rapidly decreasing your odds of winning the game every single time you cast it when asked about Zephyr Spirit Magic's head designer Mark rosewater said that it was made to be bad on purpose actually it was made to be so bad that even beginners understand that it's bad so well done Wizards I guess number four primordial ooze the idea of primordial ooze is sort of cool it starts off small as a one one but every turn it sticks on the battlefield it slowly grows the problem is it has a truly absurd number of drawbacks first it has to attack each turn which means if your opponent has a blocker it's likely to chump attack itself to death the turn after it comes into play even worse on your upkeep you have to pay a Mana for each plus one plus one counter on it or you tap it and take damage equal to the number of counters on it which means primordial Los is the rare one drop that is just as likely to kill you as it is to kill your opponent let's say you play it on turn one on turn two you get a counter and you have to pay a Mana making it a two Mana 2 two but it gets progressively worse from there on turn three you'll have to pay two more Mana it'll get a counter and become a four Mana 3 three and then on turn four you got to pay three Mana and make it a seven Mana 44 and so on and so forth I probably shouldn't say have to pay because technically it's a choice but if you choose not to pay you'll take an increasingly large amount of damage each turn and because primordial Lo Taps itself you won't even be able to attack or block with it if you want a similar card look for something like blood hallu or scoot mob which working a similar way but you know won't accidentally just kill you number three Merchant ship back in the earliest days of magic flavor was often way more important than power gameplay when it came to designing cards and merchant ship is the perfect example it's a one Mana 02 which if you manage to attack with without it getting blocked gains you two life which is supposed to represent the merchant ship successfully delivering its Wares of course if your opponent doesn't have an island then it can't attack because du it's a ship and ship go on water how would you even sail to your opponent if they weren't on an island and then if you don't have an island you have to sync the ship because you'd have nothing to sail it on if the goal was to design a magic card that exactly represents how a merchant ship works in the real world the merchant ship is pretty great if you want to make a magic card that people want to put in their decks though not so much well un evening an island isn't a big deal since Merchant ship's a blue card so you should pretty much have one by default your opponent needing an island means in some relatively big percentage of games merchant ship won't be able to attack at all and even if your opponent does have an island and you manage to get an attack with the ground bound or I guess seab bound 02 you don't even get to deal any damage you just gain two life which means even when everything falls just right it's literally impossible for merchant ship to actually kill your opponent and win you the game but hey at least it's a merchant ship number two Alabaster leech while the entire cycle of leeches are horrible Alabaster leech is by far the worst of the bunch for a very counterintuitive reason it's the cheapest of the cycle in general being cheaper and more efficient is good in Magic but not when it comes to leeches Alabaster leech is a one Mana 13 which by isn't especially exciting even though it's technically above the curve especially for its era the problem with Alabaster leech is that it makes every one of your white spells cost one more white Mana to cast for as long as it sits on the battlefield the idea of leeches is you get an overpowered creature but you have to deal with the downside of slowing down the rest of your game plan the problem is that Alabaster leech isn't actually overpowered if it was a 1 Mana 33 or something it could actually be a kind of interesting card but as a one Mana 13 it's mostly a slightly above average blocker compared to other white one drops of its era which simply isn't enough to make it worth stacking yourself out of the game starting on turn one number one wood Elemental wood Elemental is basically Magic's original end the forest come to life but sadly it's also the worst creature that Wizards has ever made for four man get a creature with power and toughness equal to the number of untapped Forest you sacrifice when it enters the Battlefield if golin Firebug was bad because it was a self stone rign that made you lose one land then wood Elemental is essentially a self Armageddon if he casted it on turn four think about how this card works if you have four mana and you cast it you won't have any untapped Force to sacrifice so it'll just die let's say you want to build a rumbling bof the classic unplayable common four Mana 4 four you need to get up to eight Mana play wood elves and then sack half of your Mana base all to just get a rumbling boss you might be thinking well what if I want to sacrifice my lands well then you have scape shift or Hugh the Atwood or reprocess or pineus Carnage or even shimatsu the blood cloaked which is also horrible but at least to let you sack your TAP lands outside of the funny old art there's literally no redeeming qualities to Wood Elemental none at all you should never put it in your deck and if you do accidentally put it in your deck you should pray to the magic god so you don't draw it and if you do draw it for the love of God please don't cast it and there you have it wood Elemental is the single worst creature in the history of Magic the Gathering looking for even more magic well check out the video where I ranked all the Losa game cards in magic or maybe the one about the worst sets ever made

Channel: MTGGoldfish

Views: 60,163

Keywords: Magic: the Gathering, MTG, MTG Arena, MTGGoldfish

Id: 2hQlDKYYyzU

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024