The Worst Magic: the Gathering Sets of All Time

While there's some debate about what exactly counts as a Magic set most people seem to agree that Outlaws of Thunder Junction will be Magic's 100th expansion set which makes now the perfect time to talk about some of the best and worst sets in Magic's 30-year history. I expect if you were to plot out every single magic set you'd end up with something that looks a lot like a bell curve with most sets falling somewhere between a bit below to a bit above average but today we're not interested in all those sets that were "meh" or "okay" or even "pretty good" because we're going to be looking at the literal worst sets of all time! As far as I'm concerned there's seven Magic sets in the game's 30-year history this standout is being the worst ever made and those sets are going to be our focus today #7: Unfinity When it comes to ranking sets I normally give silver border sets a pass because they're not tournament legal and essentially you're just made as a joke no matter how bad a silver border set might be it's hard for it to really negatively impact players because since the cards aren't legal to play anywhere it's really easy to just opt out of these sets all together if you don't really like them. If you love the silly designs and horrible puns you can go to a pre-release or try to get your play group to rule zero in your favorite silver border cards but if you don't like the set you can just skip it this is why you won't find Unhinged on the list even though the "gotcha" mechanic is one of the worst of all time to the point where even Mark Rosewater regrets making it and messing up one of his beloved silver border sets Unfinity however gets no pass because Wizards decided to make this unset tournament legal, well at least part of it was tournament legal, which is where the problems begin. The combination of making a set that's half tournament legal and dropping the iconic silver border which made it super clear which cards were illegal for tournament play and replacing it with a tiny holographic acorn because players were in WOTC's words biased against silver border cards because they thought they were illegal which they literally were illegal led to some big headaches for players to try to figure out which cards they could or couldn't legally put in their decks and this issue was made even worse by some printing errors where some cards were printed with the wrong holo so they looked legal even though they weren't but just being a partly tournament legal unset wouldn't be enough to make our list today but don't worry Unnfinity keeps getting worse two of the big mechanics in the set were attractions and stickers both of which had some big problems. Honestly the two mechanics attractions was the least offensive needing to carry around an extra side deck of attractions was an annoyance but actually playing with a bunch of attractions was even worse since once you got a bunch of them open you'd spend 10 minutes on your upkeep rolling dice and trying to resolve a bunch of less than impactful effects where the rest of the table checked their phones and yawns. I once build a Yarok Attraction commander deck only to tear it apart after a handful of games because if my deck actually popped off it bored me to play with it. Even worse though was stickers. The idea of stickers is you could use them to change the characteristics of your card which I guess is sort of a cool idea but the implementation of stickers was downright awful. Wizards billed the stickers is reusable but it quickly became clear that they're not actually reusable they constantly fall off cards get lost on the floor and were just generally a nightmare to to try to play with and one of these cards ended up being a legacy staple in ____ Goblin which along with ramping Goblin decks into Muxus unfortunately managed to revive the long dead Mind Goblin meme in the Magic Community like 10 years after it was sort of funny if it was ever even funny at all the set was so poorly received that Wizards had said it's doubtful they'll ever make another unset again and they recently dropped the hated acorn holo for the return of silver borders for not turning legal cards when you add this all together the lasting impact of Unnfinity is potentially killing UNsets in Magic and making Legacy players deal with this joke for the rest of time cuz some came in the mail today these nuts goty [Laughter] goty want to keep this joke going with your friends? well you can get names sticker Goblin and all the magic cards you need from sponsored Card Kingdom over at www.CardKingdom.com/mtggoldfish #6 Prophecy Back in 1999 Wizards would release Urza's block which would go down as one of the most busted blocks in Magic's entire history after having to ban a ton of cards across formats thanks to the degenerate turn one kills that Urza's block enabled Wizards decided that they needed to power things down a bit and they did so aggressively starting with the next block headlined by Mercadian Masques.While none of the sets in Masques blocks were great Prophecy the third set and the last set in the block was by far the worst like the rest of the block it was massively powered down compared to what players had come to expect but what made Prophecy an all time bad set was its design on his Drive to Work podcast Magic's head designer Mark Rosewater called Prophecy the second worst design set in Magic's history behind only Homelands uh June 5th prophecy comes out um so I've about before that I I've called homelands the worst design set in Magic history prophecy is number two as far as uh it was designed by um William Jockish who was a developer and William was a very good developer not the strongest of designers along with being intentionally powered down the set was lacking cohesion in thematically and mechanically different than the rest of Masques blocks and even worse the set just wasn't fun to play with the most iconic card from Prophecy and honestly the only card from prophecy that stood the test of time exemplifies this problem in Rhystic Study you probably know Rhystic Study is that annoying Commander card that constantly ask players to pay the one but what you might not know because Prophecy sucks so much that no one plays with Prophecy cards is that do you pay the one is actually the primary theme of the entire set which is overloaded with Rhystic cards that essentially allow your opponent to counter your effects by paying a mana as Mark Rosewater put it on his blog when asked why Prophecy was so bad most of the designs might have been interesting as a thought experiment but it just wasn't fun to play with for example the main mechanic ristic was basically your opponent gets a built-in counter spell there's nothing Magic players hate more than getting their spells countered in prophecy's entire gimmick is that your opponent wouldn't even need to play counter spells to counter your spells your cards would give them the option to do that often for just a single mana even discounting the counter spell issue the set was just bad while the Avatar cycle was iconic for its era none of those cards really see play anymore and outside of Rhystic Study and plague wind almost zero Prophecy cards show up in decks today because many of them were overcosted and underpowered like the hilariously bad blessed winds all around prophecy was just an underpowered unfun mess of a set which brings it in at number six on our list #5: Battle for Zendikar Zendikar which released in October 2009 was a loved magic plane sure the Limited Format might have been a little bit fast but the flavor of the adventure world was on point Allies were loved as a sort of modern reimagining of Slivers and the set finally finished the iconic fetchland cycle so when Wizards announced we'd be returning to the plane for Battle of Zendikar in 2015 players were pretty hyped but battle for Zendikar failed to meet players expectations for a Zendikar set in a bunch of ways rather than feeling like this cool adventure world the set was mostly about Eldrazi but rather than being about the cool epic Eldrazi Titans these new Eldrazi were mostly tiny often colored creatures rather than massive colorless bombs to fix the colored creature issue Wizards created one of the worst mechanics ever in devoid all devoid did was make it sew a card with colored Mana symbols was technically colorless despite how it looks well there are some fringe implications of mechanic in super narrow circumstances like your Kozilek's Return can kill a protection from Red creature cuz technically it's colorless 99% of the time the mechanic is nothing but flavor Texts and not even good or funny flavor texts but like super cringy unnecessary flavor text. Battle for Zendikar also ruined allies one of the most beloved parts of original Zendikar in OG Zendikar allies all cared about each other sort of like slivers but in Battle for Zendikar allies had no mechanical cohesion they were just just mostly random creatures with the Ally subtype stuck on for no apparent reason to the point where one of my play group's favorite games back when battle for zendikar released was is it an ally? where someone would name a random battle for zendikar creature and everyone else would have to guess whether it was randomly an ally for some reason if you look towards gameplay rather than design battle for zendikar gets even worse the set was Notorious for its lack of impact on standard back when it released and even with nearly a decade of hindsight it doesn't really look much better today Gideon Ally of Zendikar was the standard staple of the set and ulamog, the ceaseless hunger is a commander staple but beyond these two cards the next best options in battle for zendikar are cards like Zulaport Cutthroat which did you realize is an ally for some reason in void winnoer which cost 30 bucks even though no one really plays it speaking of price even though Battle of Zendikar was a horrible standard set is still managed to make for one of the most expensive standard formats of all time when Battle for Zendikar dropped fetch lands were in standard because of Khans of Tarkir which released the year before the fetchable dual lands that battle for zendikar offered led to a format where most decks were four or five colors and many were playing between 12 and 14 fetch lands to have nearly perfect Mana this led to the cost of a standard deck spiking to its highest point in the past decade and pushing some tier decks near the $1,000 price mark when you add this all together battle for zendikar was a set full of underpowered cards that also failed to meet players expectations flavor-wise turned allies from a casual favorite into a laughing stock featured one of the worst mechanics of all time ind devoidd and managed to make standard prohibitively expensive easily making it one of the worst magic sets ever made #4: Savoirs of Kamigawa the issues with Savoirs of Kamigawa are actually pretty similar to prophecy like prophecy Savoirs of Kamigawa was the third set of a bad at least underpowered block similar to how Wizards powered down Masques block because urza's block was so broken Wizards did the same thing to Kamigawa Mirrodin block which came out the year before was super overpowered leading to a bunch of Bannings in standard which caused Wizards to pull back on the power level of the next block while all of Kamigawa was underpowered Savoirs of Kamigawa was the worst of the block by far the set had four main mechanics sweep which makes you bounce your own land hands to try to get some value epic which keeps you from playing spells for the rest of the game and wisdom which cared about the number of cards in your hand for some reason all of which range from forgettable like wisdom to downright awful like sweep the only good mechanic in the set was channel which honestly was pretty underpowered itself until we returned to Kamigawa couple of years ago on the individual card level Savoirs of Kamigawa was even worse the most expensive and long lasting card from from the set is pithing needle which still does see Heavy sideboard play today and some of the legendary lands from the set like Oboro, or Miram or Miko-Kuro do see fringe playing specific decks but that's about it at least for me when I think of Savior of Kamigwawa rather than thinking of a good card or an iconic card I'm more likely to think of something like one with nothing one of the most iconically and hilariously bad cards ever made or maybe you think of the original magic crack gate Kami of the Crescent Moon the set's kind of more of a meme than anything while you might think that the popularity of Commander would give the set new life thanks to the legendary creature theme of Kamigawa in reality the legends from the set are so bad that even Commander can't really save it in Savoirs of Kamigawa's Defense I will say it did suffer from a bit of bad timing being the third set of an underpowered and unpopular block that came right after the broken Mirrodin block and right before one of Magic's most beloved planes in Ravnica which released the following year but it's not just a victim of circumstances it's a bad set full of bad mechanics and underpowered cards making it not just one of Magic's worst sets but also one of its most forgettable #3 March of the Machines Aftermath the most recent set on our list aftermath released less than a year ago but is quickly risen in the ranks of worst magic sets of all time due to its small size in the widely hated mini booster packs aftermath came at the end of a yearslong story arc of Phyrexia invading the Multiverse while the story officially came to an end with March of the machines where the heroes banded together to fight off The Phyrexian Invasion aftermath was supposed to be a coda to the story showing what happened to some key characters after the invasion was defeated but it failed in essentially every way possible from a lore and flavor perspective the set was railed on for not really having much lore or flavor at all after being buil as this flavor focused prologue set instead it had minimal story and a bunch of seemingly random characters doing mostly random things meanwhile gameplay-wise the set straight up flopped Nissa, Resurgent Animist is by far the chase card from the set showing up on the fringes of modern and more recently in some standard landfall combo decks but beyond Nissa only Calix, Guided by Fate really saw standard playing some enchantment decks maybe a tranquil frillback occasionally in a sideboard and open the way is a good Commander Ramp spell but that's really all the minis set had to offer really though it wasn't the lore or even the lack of play that brings aftermath in on our list today it was how the set was sold since the set was small Wizards decided to sell it in many six card booster packs unfortunately these packs were incredibly redundant and unfund to open because you'd open the same handful of cards over and over and over again sometimes opening multiples of the same card in the same six card card booster pack if the price of the packs had been lower to account for the smaller set size in the redundancy it probably would have been fine but Wizards attempted to sell the mini boosters for the same price as full 15 card boosters this mostly caused players to revolt and refuse to buy booster packs of the set allog together the aftermath of aftermath reinforces just how bad the set really was the price of a booster box dropped from over $100 to around $50 which clearly showed that the magic Community simply wasn't willing to pay full price for a six card booster pack the set was so hated and perform so poorly that while Wizards had initially planned an aftermath style set for Outlaws of Thunder Junction they pulled the plug on the release instead inserting the cards from The Big Score set into normal Outlaws of Thunder Junction boosters is a special sheet so now let's also talk about otj because there was an epilog style booster in production there as well there was yeah so uh this is also slightly tricky without spoiling too much um yeah so Thunder Junction was constructed as a set to have an epilog we were we were really bullish on the idea of epilogues are a good way to include more story content about magic in a format that doesn't necessarily have to be draftable uh we were just pushing putting the finishing touches on that when March of the machines and the aftermath released and we realized that we ought to not do epilog boosters in exactly the same way as we had done March of the machines which is what we had been planning to do so what we did was we rolled the content of what was going to be the Thunder Junction epilogue that content has been included into just regular Thunder Junction packs so we we took what would have been an epilog booster and just put all those cards in the in the main set basically aftermath was so bad it killed the entire concept of many epilog boosters even though Wizards had another whole set already designed and ready to go which is a pretty good sign that marks the machine aftermath this serves a spot on our list today #2: Dragon's Maze Back when dragon's maze released in May of 2013 magic had blocks three sets in a row featuring the same plane tied together mechanically thematically and in flavor traditionally the last set of each block was a smaller set with dragon's maze having just 11 mythics including Maze's End which was a bonus Mythic thanks to a land slot in the booster packs and just 34 rares third sets of blocks tended to have issues their small size made it difficult to flesh out mechanically they were unpopular with players and difficult for wizards to design although dragon's maze is in a league of its own as far as bad third sets are concerned flavor-wise it took a huge hit for a couple of reasons for one the set lacked cohesion it was essentially a bunch of cycles kind of randomly mashed together it also managed to contain zero dragons despite being called Dragon Maze and it didn't even have Niv-Mizit even though Niv- Mizit built the dragon maze or something plus according to head designer Mark Rosewater some cool things like a equipment cycle for the guild Focus Maze Runners were left out of the set simply because there wasn't enough room to fit them in is far as gameplay is concerned the set essentially had one good card in Voice of Resurgence and the rest of this was so bad that the Elemental token Voice of Resurgence makes was actually one of the most valuable cards in the entire set for a while while Maze's end has developed into a fairly iconic Rogue win condition more recently at the time there were only 10 gates in existence in Magic which made it really difficult to win with when it was first printed Beyond these two cards and maybe sideboard playable wear tear the set just really didn't offer much at all today dragon's maze is one of the least valuable sets in ex existence the most expensive card of the set is master of cruelties at $3.65 and there's only two other cards in the set that are worth more than two bucks in Voice of Resurgence and maze's end the set sold poorly and outside of Voice of Resurgence was incohesive thematically and had little impact on Magic gameplay it was so bad that Wizards essentially changed the entire way they design magic sets in part because of how hard dragon's Mage flopped the following year with Fe Magic's final small third set in journey into nyx which wasn't great but not nearly as bad as dragon's Mage before trying one large third set in dragons of tarkir and then Wizards just dropped the three set block structure all together starting with Battle for Zendikar 2016 when you consider that Wizards design sets about 2 years ahead of when they release there's a pretty good argument that dragon's maze was so bad it basically killed the threet block structure which is still controversial today with many players wishing blocks would return to add more cohesion to the game #1 Fallen Empires it's the fall of 1994 Magic's the hottest game around even discounting the alpha beta unlimited reprintings of Magic score set four expansion sets Arabian Nights Antiquities Legends and The Dark the first three are some of the most iconic and expensive sets in Magic's history while The Dark wasn't quite as strong but still offered some iconic cards like blood moon and ball lightning Maze of Ith and fellwar stone one of Magic's big problems at the time is that sets tended to be under printed making hard for players to find the cards they needed to play with or sealed products at a reasonable price the game was just way more popular than Wizards could have ever realized then came Fallen Empires Wizards decided they would fix the supply issue by massively increasing the print run of the set meanwhile retailers like local game stores burned by not getting enough to pass sets which sold out super quickly put in huge orders for Fallen Empires expecting that they'd only get a small percentage of what they actually requested because that's what had happened with past sets estimates suggest that there were 65 million cards from the dark printed but Fallen Empires jumped all the way up to 350 million a print run essentially six times as large as a result you could buy Fallen Empire's boosters at or even below cost many years after the set release because of this huge glut of unwanted product to the point where Fallen Empires players at one point sold for as little as $1 per booster pack this might sound like a good thing and maybe it would have been except the set was downright horrible it was full of super janky designs tribes like dwarves and thallids and thrulls that had little support from other sets and cards like Soul exchange which were essentially just strictly worse versions of existing cards like animate dead and a bunch of super overcosted creatures with little power in huge drawbacks like or deep spawn in Hand of Justice honestly Ebon Praetor should probably be included on this list as well but the absurd Donnie Darko is so good it gets a free pass the only cards from the set to seem meaningful play were the lower Rarity Hymn to Tourach which for a long time was the most expensive card in Fallen Empires at about $2 until recently some Reserved List buyouts increased the prices of things like Elvish farmer and Conch Horn even though they don't really see any play high tide which is a legacy Staple in monoblue storm decks which are often named after the uncommon and Goblin grenade which occasionally shows up in some Modern Goblin decks the following year Wizards made homelands which had many similar issues to Fallen Empires and in all honesty might be an even worse set overall although it's Fallen Empires that makes our list today mostly because of expectations before Fallen Empires every single magic set was great it seemed like anything that Wizards touch turned to Gold but Fallen Empires shattered this Illusion by the time homelands came out in 1995 players had already lived through Fallen Empires making homelands just another bad magic set rather than the first ever bad magic set something that didn't even really seem possible to a lot of players at the time hilariously players use so few cards from homelands and Fallen Empires that Wizards actually create a rule for tournament play that your deck must contain at least five cards from each standard legal set simply so cards from these sets would actually be showcased during pro events that's right these sets were so bad and so unplayable that Wizards literally had to forced people to use them by changing the rules of the game which makes Fallen Empires with a honorable mention to homelands more than worth the number one spot on our worst set list so those are the seven worst sets in the History of Magic the Gathering what's your pick for worst set? did I miss anything? make sure to let me know in the comments and if you want even more magic check out the video where I rank all the lose the game cards in magic or maybe the one where I explain the MTG iceberg

Channel: MTGGoldfish

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

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Length: 24min 15sec (1455 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024