MTG Top 10: BAD Cards That Used to be Good | Magic: the Gathering | Episode 402 

Remember, Dark Ritual was staple in black decks back in the day, hence Ishan's Shade going down earlier than usual.

I love the flavor of Orgg. "It's bigger than it thinks." It's too scared to attack big things, despite being one.

3:12 I'm not sure about the pronunciation either, but fun fact during playtesting it's name was "toy soldier" and when it came to finalizing the names for the printrun the devs weren't sure that to name it, so they just wrote 'toy' backward and added the 'ian'.

Anyone who's interested in experiencing what he's talking about, I recommend playing Shandalar, the Microprose late 90's MTG game.

I liked the quick slide by comparisons to cards from the more recent time.

Some cards that used to be good but are terrible or at the very least inefficient now are probably the following: 1) Balduvian Horde: RR2 , 5/5, Barbarian When this card comes in to play, discard 1 random card from your hand. If you don't, sacrifice this card Used to be a good aggro choice as a 5/5 for 4 is a fast creature then. Nowadays, while people can still take advantage of that discard due to a plethora of graveyard and discard payoffs (disturb and flashback come in to mind), its much harder because its random. Plus, a vanilla 5/5 probably isnt going to impact the board as much now as it did back then 2) Ivory Gargoyle W4, 2/2, Gargoyle Flying When this creature is sent from play to the graveyard, return this card to play at end of turn (im not sure when it comes back), then, skip your next draw phase W4: Remove Ivory Gargoyle from the game Back then, this was a win condition from some Blue White stall decks that use Moat or Island Sanctuary + Howling Mine combo,as a 2/2 that just wont die will eventually whittle people down. Nowdays, I think that "skip draw phase" upon ressurection is something many opponents can exploit 3) Blinking Spirit W3, 2/2 0: Return this card to your hand While a 2/2 that can dodge removal is good, recasting what is essentially a 2/2 vanilla over and over again might not be useful any more. Then, because the "stack" concept is no longer being used, you can't even get +1 with this any more. Back then, you could block with it, put the damage on stack, and then bounce it to your hand, which CAN lead to a +1 bec you may have killed a creature and keep yours 4) Necrosavant BBB3 5/5 BB3: Sacrifice a creature: Return NEcrosavant from your graveyard in to the battlefield Ok, this one, you can argue wasn't that good to begin with. I have, however, seen some black decks actually use this since it IS pretty hard to kill. 5/5 back then could take down some monsters, and its ability to come back for more is too much for some players... especially some control decks who rely heavily on countermagic to control the game. 5) Lhyurgoyff GG2, */* This creature's power is the number of creatures in all players graveyard, and toughness is the number of creatures in all player's graveyards +1 This used to be a way to recover from a board sweeper for Green after going wide... the highest I've seen this drop in a 1v1 game was a 10 / 11 ... still, nowdays, with cards like Voice of Resurgence, Caller of the Claw and a plethora of other "recovery" creatures that does things much more efficiently, this is bad. It doesnt even have ANY form of protection, so if your opponent kept a spot removal card, this thing is going down. It doesnt even have the decency to have trample, so your opponent can chump block it for days! It IS funny to play this in multiplayer, tho, I've seen this go up to a whopping 25 / 26 before 6) Derelor B3, 4/4 Black spells you play costs an additional B to play Same argument as said with Jade Leech: but worse due to lower stats. Back then, a mono-black aggro deck running Hymn to Tourach, Order of Ebon Hand / Knights of Stromgald, Black Knight, Bad Moon etc can use this as their top curve. 7) Dwarven Soldier R1, 2/1 When this creature blocks or becomes blocked by Orcs, this creature gets +0/+2 until end of turn Red aggro decks use to run this a LOT as well. It was among the few early creatures that were aggro enough for red decks to keep the pressure on the opponent while burning their best creatures. Nowadays, same argument as Goblin Elite Infantry: laughably bad since newer R1 2/1s or 2/2s come with upsides. Those are some creatures I could think of that were used back then that looks downright pathetic by now... Ill add others as soon as I remember more haha

I'm likely the only person who still uses Ihsan's Shade. It's a staple of every black deck I build on MTG: Forge. I can't say it's the greatest thing ever, but I still like it nonetheless. And the art alone is quite epic IMO. One of my favorites by Christopher Rush.

LOL at Goblin Elite Infantry's flavor text.

You forgot Morphling. In Type 1 and 1.5 Morphling was King. Then the rules of how stacking damage changed.

"because you wanna make a cube of intentionally bad cards" Now I unironically wanna make a commander cube for intentionally bad cards and intentionally bad commanders. It sounds like a lot of fun to try and make commander decks without using format staples of today like sol ring or rhystic study or etc etc and force everyone to come up with a bit more creativity in deck building. Perhaps it would give people creative ideas for future commander decks.

I'm kinda shocked at how many decks on edhrec use Mogg Fanatic, because I feel like THAT card is a wonderful example of a card that used to be crazy good but has the interesting story of a rules change making it toilet more than power creep.

ah, the memories. I remember just wreaking havoc with a first turn Ishan's Shade back in the day. They really need to make a "Return to Homelands" set.

How about "Top 10 Standard All-star" (Cards that have (almost) all of it's points from Standard format)

Haven't even watched the video yet, but I stubbornly played Ishans Shade long after it was in any way viable. Homelands man, woof, but that art, my gawd, this thumbnail had me immediately Edit: I also pronounced it Yoshan soldier, and played it in a kobold artifact deck when I was young and exceptionally stupid

Honestly, while any landwalk was generally a very mediocre skill (as it was highly dependent on what the opponent was playing to be effective or not), the use of it as a penalty such as with Ernham Djinn intrigues me. It’s a way to always make it live...unless you can somehow get out the creature without resorting to the proper basic land of its color (or certain nonbasic lands but whatevs). That’s some interesting card design there.

Ooh there could probably be a top 100 for this one!!!

Yo, it's Orgg! I love that card. Odd it's not a legendary creature. I guess there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of those creatures living their best orgg lives somewhere. XD

How about Underworld Dreams? A card that was at one point restricted in Vintage (when it was called Type 1), got reprinted at uncommon in THB and never saw competitive play there. You could probably make a list of cards that were once restricted, particularly from the early years, that now are hardly worth playing (Ali from Cairo, for instance).

My personal honorable mentions would be hypnotic spector, and serra angel

You should have mentioned Phyrexian Negator. Other than that solid list. Top-Notch work as ususal Nizzahon. Years of watching you and you have only ever improved as a content Creator. I'm glad you still make so much Content.

I called Yotian Soldier "Yo-shin soldier" as a kid as well

And here I am, playin Old-school 93/94 with my friends even today, cherishing my cheap Chronicles Ernham Djinn

I remember playing Ishan Shade. It was so cool looking and a 5/5 for six. And now that you point it out, yeah, it was immune to ALL of the spot removal of that era. You had to use red, and either more than 1 card or fireball it for 5

Lot of nostalgia in this video. I always played with 4 Erhnam Djinns if my deck was even half green. I never felt like giving your opponent's creatures forestwalk was much of a drawback. You could frequently deal with those creatures if they became a problem. Quite often, your opponents would be forced to use their smaller creatures which were assigned forestwalk by the Djinn to block the Djinn. Erhnam Djinn's "downside" was almost always irrelevant.

Dude I didn’t see the 3 at first on Erhnam Djinn and thought it was a 1 mana 4/5 and I was like “WHAT THE HELL”

Thank you for this video, Niz! Brought me some needed nostalgia. The other thing to remember about Ihsan's Shade was that not only did it dodge StP, but the other cheap removal cards out there couldn't target Black creatures (I'm talking about Terror and Dark Banishing). That meant that Ihsan's Shade was very difficult to kill. And as for the mana cost, it was actually balanced for the time. Remember that back then WotC used a general formula to determine a generic creature's casting cost: (Power+Touhgness)/2 + 1 = CC So, to be "balanced" a 5/5 creature should cost 6. Added abilities meant the CC would go up; a lower CC would mean a drawback would be added, etc. That is all out the window now.

The two earliest magic items I was gifted were the Garfield v. Finkel and Beatdown duel decks. It makes me smile that cards from both are on this list.

I think the funniest one was when Patrick Chapin was talking about seige rhino and said "this thing is absurd to anyone who ever cast erhnam djinn and was happy about it."

RIP Ihsans Shade, i'll never forget your glory on the high school lunch table.

Man Aggro Decks playing 5 Mana creatures without haste. What a strange and wonderful era early magic must have been

I would be interested to see a list about creatures with large mana cost to power/toughness disparities but are actually competitive during their time.

Invasion was also a really big multi-color block, so the idea is that you can minimize its downside by simply not ever caring about green beyond this one creature. Honestly Juzam Djinn should have been above this. That was the epitome of god hand when it came to creatures in those days, which is why it was so expensive for so long. $160-$200 is what it sold for from basically the beginning until card prices exploded. There's no reason for it to be worth so much today except because it was once worth so much.

"Even if there was a meta-game in standard these days where literally every deck played white..." Uh...(mono)white-something life-gain on arena would like a word...

Damn, sorry I'm late, as it turns out I'm on this list at #5 and needed to escape the mass amount of people looking to purchase me. But hey, on the plus side, I've managed to build myself an army made out of these cards that is going to stage a march outside of Nizzahon's house with the aim of getting "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)", although I'm a bit worried they're all too old for the job.

I've always loved Yotian Soldier. I've tried to use him effectively in Modern, but he's simply outclassed.

Ihsan's Shade is funny because it's one of the few cards to be good in its standard but bad in its block. It dodged the best 3 standard removal spells (StP, Terror, Bolt) but was vulnerable to the most common block removal (Roots).

What about Jackal Pup? I remember when that card absolutely dominated

Remember that Icatian Town was a ridiculous top end card for White Weenie decks. Usually a Serra Angel or two was your finisher, but in the mirror match casting the town with two or three Crusades on the board was just too much to handle.

Not so inefficient creatures if you black lotus mox sol ring basalt monolith into them. If I came into a modern tournament and could stick a 5/5 pro white t3 consistently I would in a good spot even today. No bolt no push no solitude no prismatic no path xD Creatures were so overcostly back than because ramp was way out of healthiness standards. Perspective plays a huge roll in mtg.

8 year old me is building a red deck back in the day with all of these

Old School format will keep Erhnan Djinn a very playable card as it is one of the best creatures in that format. Even Uthdin Troll will see play in Disco Troll decks.

not on the list but I can think of a few cards that became shitty because of better versions. Aspect of wolf -> blanchwood armor web -> spiderclimb I remember er back in the day they were cards everyone loved if you were green heh

Ah! I see Wingspan back there. The first time I played Wingspan, I actually thought of you because I remember how much of a bird fan you are. :-) Excellent game!

First game of Magic I played, I got wrecked by a Meekstone Vigilance deck that ran Yotian Soldier, Tempest Drake, and Serra Angel with Winter Orb, Icy Manipulator, and Kismet. My creatures got tapped down by the manipulators and never untapped, while my opponent beat me down with creatures that didn't tap. Yotian Soldier was solid, and it dodged popular removal too, like Terror and Lightning Bolt. You could Disenchant it, but you probably wanted that Disenchant for the Winter Orb or one of the Icy Manipulators or the Meekstone or anything else.

love the wingspan in the background :)

I kind of want to make, like, a cube of stuff from this era. Just to see how it would play. Proxies would probably be a must, or doing it digital, but it seems like it could be a neat little time capsule.

The only series that keeps me up on Monday

I think I played all these. The "upside" to the Goblin Elite was its type and 2-slot. Turn 1, Mon's Raiders, Turn 2, Elite, Turn 3 the Warrens, or the Goblin King... it wasn't ideal, but you were probably popping it for the Warrens any ways to go wide. I think Tempest, with Moggs was the first like "maybe I should update this".

A lot of younger players don't understand the older cards because they are unable to filter out those newer more efficient cards. At the time they were dominant because they were the best available cards. Yes, they've been outpaced, but at the time they were game breakers. Case in point: Craw Wurm. 4GG for a 6/4 vanilla. My nephew asked why anyone would ever play it. His eyes goggled when I explained an optimum green aggro opening hand. 3 Forests, 2 Llanowar Elves, 1 Wild Growth, 1 Craw Wurm (very doable in a 40 card deck with 4 of each card). This resulted in dropping a 6/4 on turn 3. And with more Craw Wurms and Giant Growths guaranteed in short order, the game was pretty well over.

Ah, brings back the memories of filling my decks with Erhnam Djinns, Juggernauts, Serra Angels, Sengir Vampires, Mahamoti Djinns and Shivan Dragons. Also, I remember being surprised after getting back into the game well after my teenage years and finding out all of these cards downgraded to being unplayable and worth pennies 😅

Ihsan had an amazing art enough for me to do a tabletop RPG character based on him

Nizzahon, your uploads every day are amazing! keep up the good work!

Great vid!

Not gonna lie, Yotian Soldier has pretty badass artwork.

what card is framed on the shelf in the back

At the time a big consideration was the lightning bolt test. 4 toughness went a long way there.

I feel like Morphling got forgotten here

Also the Ernham-Bun 'em decks which was a great foil to Necro.

I used to play with a guy who thought Jade Leech's text increased the devotion for his Xenagos deck.

Uthden Troll: Red was a REALLY bad color for a very long time in early magic (and this video certainly demonstrates that). Until Mirage brought out Wildfire Emissaries, you know what some of the best red creatures were? Uthden Troll. Ironclaw orcs. Goblin Balloon Brigade. If you expanded to 1.5 / extended formats, you could add Sedge Troll and Kird ape to the mix, though they were only good if you had badlands or Taiga on the table, respectively. Uthden wasn't bad, considering the options available. Ihsan's Shade: was honestly never good. It made the 1996 pro tour simply because the rules required the use of 5 homelands cards per deck, and if you're running monoblack, those cards were going to be Serrated Arrows and the Shade. Buddy's clearly designed for a time when Dark Ritual was an expected part of the game, and even then he's underwhelming. Black didn't really have a "beefy creature" game at any point where Ihsan was legal for tournament play, it was mostly weenie and suicide black decks. he falls in with Baron Sengir, Aku Djinn, and Lord of the Pit as impressive-looking creatures that never found a good home. Also, while Swords to Plowshares was very prevalent, no one really used Serra Angel that much; much as with the big black creatures, big white creatures were kind of homeless for a long time too. Orgg: Pretty much the same story as Uthden Troll. only showed up because you needed 5 Fallen Empires cards in the 1996 pro tour. he ended up being 1-of in a few Sligh decks until Fallen Empires rotated out. Much like the Shade, Orgg was never regarded as "good," and like Uthden its role was created more by a lack of options in Red. As you note the metagame was also important; White weenie, necro / suicide black, and sligh decks were the main "creature" decks, and all of them relied on 2-power creatures for their engines. Only Ernham/Willowgeddon really had the beef needed. The problem was, the decks running Orgg should have already been winning by the time you could cast the doofus anyway. Talruum Minotaur: Again we bump into the terribleness of old Red, and the needs of the Sligh deck. What do you run in your 4-mana slots? At the time you either went with Talruum for hyper-aggro, or Wildfire Emissary if you wanted to play more defense and be safe from Swords to Plowshares. It's bland, but I wouldn't call it a "bad card," even today - it's a boring little common that served a function. Storm Shaman: I'm not gonna lie, until this video I had no idea this card had ever featured in pro play. I cannot fathom why. it would have had no role in a sligh deck, and it's too mana-intnesive for the numerous splash decks that M-V-W created in the latter portion of the period. Who ran this thing? Why? Goblin Elite Infantry: Once again, we're confronted with "red was terrible" and "sligh decks were a thing." Know what creatures you had on the table for a 2-drop? Ironclaw orcs, Varchild's War-Riders, Goblin Tinkerer, and this. You already had four Orcs, the War Riders' upkeep was anathema to sligh's objective, and the tinkerer was extremely niche. So you ran the Elite infantry and you liked it. Icatian Town: Here we are, back at the 1996 pro tour and its mandate of "five cards from each active set." As you say, there weren't any massive token-generators at the time so Icatian Town was fairly okay card advantage. It mostly got run in Winter orb-based decks, which had a lot of ramp, so its cost wasn't that prohibitive. Even so, it was never particularly popular and only became a 'thing" becuase of that PT's rules, sort of like Ihsan's Shade did. Ernham Djinn: ...Does not hold a candle to modern green beef, that's absolutely true. And sadly he actually got supplanted by Maro when Mirage came out, so his reign as "top green beatface" was actually kind of short. Still, a 4/5 for four mana with a disadvantage that absolutely did not matter ("I give your manabirds forestwalk") was absolutely top-tier for the time and even the Chronicles reprint retained a $8 value for a long time. Jadwe Leech: ...Is after my time by quite a bit. So I got nothin'.

Man...I played from 94 to 01...and then dabbled with Arena here the last 6 months. I felt this list...especially Ernham D. When you talked about the troll, I had to laugh. My buddy back in the day used to like making weird decks to just be funny and he made a 3 mana 2/2 with NO special abilities deck...5 color with nothings but the creatures in it.. We put duals and pain lands in it as a final tribute to lunacy. :D

It's worth noting that almost all of the card comparisons are against a modern day mythic or rare, which has been where power creep has been the most extreme. They can't think of exciting cards to make rares now a days, so now, they just give them better stats than everything else. Mythics are even worse about it.

Were there any mana filtering artifacts back in the day like Chromatic Sphere? If so, you could easily run a deck with that Green Djinn creature without any forests so long as you were using the filterer.

I'd go with pronunciation 2 for Yotian Soldier.

Creatures in general are not as desirable as they used to be. While maybe the game was a bit slow back in the day, it is definitely too fast today. I think somewhere around the original Ravnica set they had the speed about right.

I started playing MtG around Ice Age/Mirage and I remember not understanding how Phasing worked so I traded Sandbar Crocodile for land - only to be hosed by it repeatedly. I also remember my "friends" trying to convince me that Goblin Elite Infantry was a good card.

I feel like this is more a super nostalgia than anything else. Psychatog is my pick to be the king of no longer relevant creature cards.

I've seen multiple people in comments talk about various other bad creatures as being good back when combat damage used the stack, and in every occurrence, the card was printed originally *before* 6th edition, and thus before the many years of "damage on the stack" shenanigans. Mogg Fanatic was heavily played before 6th edition, which came out a little over a year later - it became absolutely amazing with the new rules. 6th edition came out right before Urza's Destiny (spring 1999), and the rules went into effect the Monday after the Destiny Prerelease. That was a very confusing tournament with respect to rules. Everything through Tempest block, and the first two sets of Urza's block, were all pre-6th edition.

On Ihsan's Shade - if I'm not mistaken, the early ruling on protection prevented any kind of destruction, including from sweepers like Wrath of God. Even if that was the case today, it'd still be a tough sell, but back then it could be a black control deck's end-game battering ram.

Always a good day when nizza uploads a top 10 video

With so many ways to produce green mana not coming from forests, I feel like Erhnam Djinn isn't as bad as it seems in a deck made for it. You could have a deck with no forests capable of casting him, so the downside essentially does nothing. Obviously, there are better creatures out there than even a vanilla 4 mana 4/5 that you don't have to limit your manabase for, but it's worth noting that, in the right deck, Erhnam Djinn _could_ be a vanilla 4 mana 4/5. Without having to cast Armageddon.

Man I wish magic would go back to the old school ways. Call it barebones or something. Everything is just op and over the top

Talruum Minotaur and Goblin Elite Infantry were my jam since I started with Portal/Mirage. Getting good, low CMC creatures in red was rare. Raging Goblin -> Elite Infantry -> Goblin King was the nuts lol

Actually Yotian Soldier used to be a sideboard card against Turbo Stasis prison decks. Because necro decks did not have ways to destroy enchantments except for Nevinyrral’s Disk which was useless against Stasis.

When I got my box of Fallen Empires I loved Icatian Town. damn that card was awesome back in the day. And when I first started playing Uthden Troll was gamebreaking I can testify.

I almost always play a 3/3 haste for 4 in limited aggro decks And storm shaman was a BEAST in its heyday even in the deckmasters special product it got put in at max by both Garfield and Finkel

Great content. Thanks

It’s so interesting that early Magic creatures were so bad while early Magic non-creatures tended to be amazing. That’s has definitely switched in today’s Magic.

You also forget the deck. Ernham Burn 'em. Which used orcish lumberjack to sack forests.

Bad card cube sounds pretty fun

Got to love the difference between the Djin’s original and reprint prices! I

This is a really cool concept for a vid! Keep it up!!

I could see jade leech being reprinted as a common in some set where green is in a "big costed spels matter" like, not the mana cost of the spell but what you pay to cast em (so X spells only trigger stuff past a certain point, cheating spells doesnt work, and so on) it could be pretty cool!

Love the old school art

Am I seeing Ishan's Shade correctly as an uncommon? You straight up compared it to a mythic rare. A 5/5 uncommon should cost more to cast or have fewer abilities. I would also say this speaks volumes to the style of deck construction in the modern game. When routinely see competitive decks costing multiple thousands of dollars that can include all the mythic rares you desire. Back in the 90s when these cards were run, what was the cost of the average top 8 deck? Also what was the strongest creature in the the game at that time? 7/7? 5/5 is pretty beefy regardless of the era.

The key to Yotian Soldier and Storm Shaman wasn’t that they could block well, it’s that they were unboltable.

Just waiting for you to do enough of these lists to make a "Nizzahon bad card tribal" commander deck

I would have put the fall of Mogg Fanatic on this list.

Not too long until we get spooky themed videos with an awesome intro.

How about a Top 10 video on just Tokens. Both creature and non-creature.

Ihsan's Shade has very very very cool art

Does anyone remember a 12/12 Forest monster? I think it was a wurm or something similar, would be a very old card at least 15 years old.

Back then we basically had only two efficient removal spells: Terror and StP, so destroying the Shade was an headache

Congratulations! I had actually never heard of Storm Shaman in my life!

Mahamoti Djinn: I thought I could have a place in top 10

Erhnam Djinn is still a staple in Old School Magic, Erhnamggedon is a very popular deck for a reason.

I still run a copy of ihsan's shade in a mono black devotion deck. Only through pure stubborness and nostalgia

Illusions of Grandeur is worth a mention. It was the linchpin of the Trix deck.

I miss my white / blue deck with circles of protections for every colour.

I misread the mana cost of Ernham Djinn (boy, those old frames...) and was going crazy at the idea of a 1 mana 4/5