The Worst Creatures in the History of Magic: the Gathering 

I'd probably add Leviathan, it's a 10/10 for 5UUUU ... that doesn't untap or attack unless you sac 2 islands and comes into play tapped, Sky swallower might be in the discussion but at least you can torpor orb it, one can find "Icatian Moneychanger" pretty bad, at least worse than a 1/1 for 1, Flailing Soldier comes with the ability to let your opponent remove it without using a card but he is at least above curve so I don't know, Gate Hound is a really funny 1/1 for 3 (sure it has a weird upside but.. come on... seriously?) Infectious Host suffers from the same issue but technically if you jump through some basic hoops it's like you almost got 2 mana worth for your 3 mana creature? Hawkeater Moth is a flier! and it has shroud! And... it's a 1/2 for 4 mana, did I mention it has shroud? Deathcurse Ogre is like.. I am sorry, why am I also losing 3 life? Who is this card for?

I was honestly surprised scornful egotist wasn’t on the list at all. To me that’s the quintessential bad creature.

EXILED BOGGART

Aven Trooper

Shelkin Brownie.

The burden of information management

Yeah, it's a dumb pick for sure, there are much worse creatures than a 1 mana 1/1 without drawbacks.

yeah it's genuinely insane to put a 1/1 for 1 in a list of bad creatures. like if we're talking about really shitty old creatures there are tons of 1/1s for 2 or 3 with useless abilities in Alpha alone, or like any 0 power wall being basically entirely useless.

Seth just dunkin on an actual little guy.

Yeah I was gonna say I think he just wanted to talk about the leprechaun. “1/1 for 1 is about as bad as a creature can be” is so so wrong lol

True. Also I am first reply yay!

Lol, so true. Sparky staple.

I'm not familiar with the rule that puts the +1/+1 counter during upkeep. You are correct with the every turn buildup, but I'm pretty sure you don't order the triggers. It gets the counter before the phasing cost trigger goes on the stack.

@@xaldath4265 No player gains priority during the Untap Step, which is when Phasing permanent changed phasing states (Phased In/Out). As such, nothing can actually go on the stack during this time. The earliest part of a turn any player gains priority is the beginning of the upkeep. Both the "When Warping Wurm phases in, put a +1/+1 counter on it" and the "At the beginning of your upkeep, pay 2GU or Warping Wurm phases out" triggers will both try to be placed on the stack at the same time. Because you control both triggers, you choose the order they are placed on the stack/will resolve. Even though the condition for the "...phases in" did happen first, during the Untap Step, the trigger itself doesn't go on the stack at that time.

I came to say this. I think Seth forgot that it would phase back in on its controller's untap step anytime its phased out, and sincenit phases itself out on your upkeep, it's not every other turn like other phasing cards. It really goes turn 4: 1/1 Turn 5:phases out Turn 6:becomes grizzly bear Turn 7:becomes centaur Turn 8:becomes rumbling baloth You only skip the next counter if you pay to keep it for the turn

You sound like a friend of mine who would take cards people would complain about being terrible and build winning decks around them just to break opponents. I salute you and players like you for making the game interesting.

You didn't even spell his name right, so yes.

Singing Tree in shambles

Beamtown Bullies stonks

lol, oops

@@MTGGoldfish And you oop. f

Ayy now it does lol

I enjoy magic still so I don't want to come off as "it ain't what it used to be!" But man, nothing beats those memories from 1994 of opening packs and just getting lost in all of the art, throwing some cards into a deck, taking that deck with a rubber band slapped around it outside at recess and playing unsleeved on the ground. Magic was legit magical then. Cards were weird. The art was weird. Magic design today is burdened by the weight of 30 years of precedent.

That’s how I believe that works nowadays. Back before Teferi’s Protection (iirc, that card had been coupled with a rules change on phasing), objects would phase in at the same point that they phased out initially (so if they phased out in combat on your turn, they phase in during combat on your next turn). So the wurm wouldn’t be around for the beginning of the upkeep since that’s when it phases back in due to its own effect. But I could be mistaken, I didn’t deal with phasing when I first started up

To my knowledge, you are correct. Still a bad card but not as bad.

@@xenosai371 Unsure if it was always the case but phasing back in (and presumably out, if you have Phasing) happen before Untap.

@@mikeheath4916 ugh the effort of actually doing research. No clue what the basis on my thoughts of old phasing was, but cards like Rainbow Efreet and Vanishing come to mind. You are correct, the only rules change I could find was that in 2017 for Teferi’s protection, cards are not changing zones which meant that tokens no longer die when phasing out. Indirect phasing of auras, equipment and fortifications is still wack though

@@xenosai371 Phasing-in (or out if due to the static phasing ability) was a part of the untap step since at least 6th edition. That's not too long after mirage, but they did tweak a lot of things at that point so maybe that was the case? but I am skeptical,

I wish it was in Modern. Doing in in Legacy seems super hard.

Seriously though, I'd love to see some against the odds decks try to make some of these cards actually work. It'd be fun for the memes if nothing else.

That might be on the best creature list I'm working on. Legit bomb.

You can at least play that one face down as a 2/2 for 3 mana

Very nearly played that in a tournament because I didn't have 4 Exalted Angels and Morph creatures were kill on sight in the meta. The psychological damage was almost worth it but I went with a different swerve in the end.

Scornful egotist eas in a set with a bunch of cards that care about the highest mana value among permanents you control. It was meant for Limited, and actually served a purpose in it. Morph Egotist into Torrent of Fire or Rush of Knowledge is real.

@@MTGGoldfish Breaking mh3 Emerge cards with Egotist?

Kamigawa was not all bad. The power level was just all over the place. Devoted Retainer and Ronin Houndmaster would have been amazing cards if not competing with affinity. Even in Mirrodin itself there were some really good non artifacts like raise the alarm and Auriok Gleivemaster. Many of the one mana white arcane spells from kamigawa were fine, too. It is just cards like Kitsune Healer another 4 mana 2/2 from kamigawa that make you think none of the commons were playable in that era.

stuff for zedruu player but in blue they are already true abominations to give already

@@munsterotaku3058 yeah this seems absolutely fine in zedruu

@@munsterotaku3058 Ah, so maybe use it in a mono-red "donate" deck featuring Harmless Offering!

Yep . Reminds me a bit of when your opponent casts Walk the Plank on your giant octopus or whale or whatever, and kills it by … putting it in the water 😂

Lol, good choices. Gnomes is hilariously bad.

Ersatz Gnomes can be used with Dromar, the Banisher to prevent him from bouncing himself so it has its uses.

Shelkin Brownie is hilariously bad since even if "bands with other" ended up being a strong mechanic, of the 6 black border cards that use the mechanic, it didn't actually stop any of them. The "bands with others" works when you have at least one creature with the ability and any number with the correct quality. None of the 6 cards that use it actually have it themselves, but they instead give it to other creatures. There is a cycle of lands (Cathedral of Serra is one of them) that give bands with other legendary creatures to your legends of a specific color. If you had Cathedral of Serra to give all your white legends "bands with other legends" then it would only be relevant if you had multiple legends and at that point removing the "bands with others" ability from one wouldn't be relevant (except for the specific case where you had multiple legends, only one of which is white) since you only needed one of them to have it. The 6th card is Master of the Hunt which creates Wolves of the Hunt tokens which "band with other creatures named Wolves of the Hunt". Shelkin Brownie doesn't work here for the same issue since "bands with other" is only relevant with multiple wolves, but each of the wolves has it so removing it from a single one is useless. It would take a decade until Old Fogey was printed in Unhinged with "Bands with other dinosaurs" for there to actually be a card with "bands with others" which Shelkin Brownie could stop. Of course there weren't officially any dinosaurs for it to band with until some point around Ixilan which was more than another decade after that.

Nah, Scornful Egotist is worst-case scenario a 3-mana 2/2 when you play it morph, which is behind the curve but not actively terrible (it's marginally better than a regular 3-mana 2/2 because your opponent at least doesn't know what it is). And its front side did have a point: Scourge had a lot of cards that were stronger if you had permanents with high mana costs in play so the idea was you'd play it for 3 mana, turn it up for 1, then use its high mana cost to get big power off of something like Rush of Knowledge). It at least had a use, especially in Limited.

@@lseths I don't think anyone familiar with the ancient meme from Gatherer is going to mistake it for being a genuinely usel-ALL HAIL THE GREAT LORD EGOTIST!

The Goatman that has a built in donate and there is an artifact that bounces a card you own back to your hand

Confirmed, yup I'm taking the basic land over this.

I played quite a bit of Kamigawa block Limited, and... not really. Something weird is up if you're siding the Cavalry in, even in a spirit-heavy environment.

Thanks for pointing it out already, the way he pronounces it in the video was so painful (no offense Seth :)). I personally wouldn't pronounce the end as "ling"; more like "lin".

@@PM-ut6sy I've know two Aislings and one of them people called Ashlin and the other people called Ashling. I just went with the crowd.

I love it too! I've basically made a career off of playing bad cards :)

​@@MTGGoldfish I just love that it specifies where the stars are located, Plague Rats is another fun one (and also extremely bad)

Phantasmal sphere is by quite a margin better then Wood Elemental. Within the context of sealed its got a decent chance of winning the game for you. But mono green sealed (already a ludicrous notion) somehow getting a 16/16 for 20 is still not likely to break a stalemate.

@@totalvoid6234 in sealed players often have a much higher concentration of removal including bounce, got forbid they have multiple Bounce spells and you spend turns getting it to three power being forced to tap out and they bounce it, this could happen multiple times. That is actively hurting you. Or just wait for the 4th pay and get a 4/4 flyer with removal. I would rather have a dead card, that might do something super late game when I am otherwise out of resources than card that cuts me off of resources early game and gives my OP resources later. But we can both agree they are both awful And I do agree if your opponent has 0 interaction sphere does kill in 6 turns if you hit your land drops. So that might happen more than I think. Partially if we are playing alliances sealed specifically.

Yes.

I remember it being a 4/4, if you paid every color.

@@funkydiscogod yeah paying wubrg for a 4/4 with a niche ability that shrinks it to a 2/2 or a 0/0 is still pretty aggressively terrible but at least it can sometimes be like a 5 mana do nothing 2/2. Just in particular the statline of -1/-1 is funny as shit. Maelstrom elemental was a 7/7 vanilla and it was godawful unplayable but spinal parasite is at least just a card that can win a game in theory, and there are a lot of creatures that can't

I mean, you could still tap stuff down before blocks though it's not the most efficient rate. Master of Arms gets super confusing if you aren't aware of that rules change (though first strike makes it probably still playable in limited).

Sadly, phasing doesn't cause creatures to enter or leave the battlefield. It is simply "treated as though it doesn't exist" while phased out.

Spinal Parasite has entered the chat

Also equipped with sword of harth and home.

Of course, nowadays you can get a 3/2 with upside for 2 mana fairly easily, so all the 2/2s with downsides are basically now consigned to the annals of magic history

Yes, though since it still dealt damage to you your net change of life total would be 0. Of course if you gave it both then you would life every turn, but at that point there's better things you could be doing.

@@seandun7083 thanks for the explanation