Top 10 Best 1 Mana Creatures in MTG 

Yeah fetchlands are the best manafixing and utility lands simultaneously. Brainstorm in legacy, deathrite, delve, and all sorts of uses it's just insane. Like if fetchlands didn't exist, deathrite shaman is never banned anywhere.

Don't forget the double landfall

Maybe they could print fixed fetch lands someday? Perhaps ones that make you lose 1 life for each copy in your graveyard as part of the ability instead of the cost, so you can't just throw 16 in a deck with two mountains and call it burn (oversimplification for a deck I love, sorry burn!)

J8

​@@dstreetz91 jkj

i think a big part of the way noble hierarch worked at the time was heavily thematic. not viewed as a downside but as an underline of the theme aspects of each shard

He's bad at MTG though.

@@a_fuckin_spacemarine7514 Oh that’s why his MTG content is all broken, he’s a Yu Gi Oh guy.

Definately a huge upside to the card. Caverns already helped out a lot, though mostly to power out a progenitus or something or slow roll 1 elf per turn. Shepherd let you actually attempt to play your deck as intended.

Elves in legacy can get ruined by EE

@@badvoodoo2097 A lot of times, Elves can kill you before you can blow it. At least recover the cards back

Laughs in Proliferate

My personal picks for what could be the top 3. Ghalta, rampaging ferrocidon, polyraptor/marauding raptor.

@@asta5907 Friend, you are clearly misspelling Colossal Dreadmaw

I'm getting Deathmist Raptor flashbacks here.

@@Folfire You mean Gruul Dreadmaw. Or possibly Oko, Crowned Dreadmaw. Perhaps Colossal Dreadmaw Hammer if we're talking equip spells. But we all know the best one is Colossal, Lord High Dreadmaw.

@@Folfire i run him as a finisher in my pauper bant control deck

it would have been great fun to see

As a kind of joke he could make it "Top 10 Guilds of Ravnica Guilds"

@@Folfire sorting out 2-9 would be tricky. Golgari won in Ravnica, and Dimir lost in Gatecrash. Transmute has slightly more potential, but you're not really going to use it unless you build a deck around it. Although, Tolaria West could be useful in other decks...

What esper does ? Esper players love control decks ..especially the kind of decks and pilots that forget to put WinCons in the deck...so they just win by destroying and countering everything you do for 60+ turns untill you deck yourself..... So, at one time. Elixer of immortality , no joke ... Was the WinCon for the deck... Ran one or two in case one got exiled....

And if you decrease it to 0, he does nothing

I was partial to phasing out Phyrexian Dreadnought myself using Vision Charm. Yeah, I went -1, but a lot of people couldn't deal with it easily.

@@vxicepickxv I mean, tempoing yourself into oblivion doesn't matter if you win.

Or play it when you control two Eldrazi Mimics and attack with two 12/12s

Yeah when welder was released it was the undisputed best 1 drop in vintage IIRC. Has so many combo's with it. Mother of runes is amazing in matchups where you need to protect your stuff. Dreadnought is so nostalgic, but I love it. Pretty easy to kill sadly now.

@@dstreetz91 Yeah, Welder was good in Vintage back in the day and then Mirrodin block was released it was totally nuts. Mom is great and DN is sweet but pretty vulnerable these days too but a solid combo card.

That may be true, however this list seems to be geared more towards 60 card constructed formats in general and not specific decks.

?

@@CodeVenomSnakes Mother of Runes, for some reason not in this vid

​@@CodeVenomSnakes it's a nickname for a white magic card called mother of runes

Ahh... Mirrodin block

While Ascendant gets turned on immediately in EDH, it's still less of a threat than in 1v1 formats. Your opponents have more life, making a t1 6/6 less threatening, especially in a multiplayer format. Still a great card either way.

@@komradekontroll Yeah def agree. It's not "ban-worthy" like some others may suggest. It's still just a big beater at the end of the day, vulnerable to all kinds of removal.

@@mentaloasis It's definitely a threat, and in a competitive 1v1 edh setting I think it's probably one of the best, but those multiplayer games, you just get a target put on you if it's out before like t3.

Commander is a singleton format, so it's very inconsistent if you get it early enough to make a big difference.

Mindslaver 👻

@@badvoodoo2097 I was thinking of that card when i posted but couldnt remember the name! Yes i agree

Me too. I was thinking of Kird Ape, Rogue Elephant, and Ghazban Ogre too.

@@GMontag Gotta love a first turn Kird Ape played with a Taiga.

Downside is you instantly become the archenemy. So, better come prepared

@@todddalton4579 true true, BUT if u can get out Felidar u win b4 anyone gets a chance! if its a legal card???

@@carter3329 Felidar perfectly legal in EDH and the strategy you describe isn't that easy to pull off. You need to get the Felidar out AND it needs to survive until YOUR next upkeep AND you need to still be above the 40 life at that moment. So that's a lot of ways to disrupt its game winning effect: counter it, remove it at instant speed, remove it at sorcery speed, damage you ... I'm not saying it can't be cheated in early and protected for a turn, but to get that consistenly in commander is a tough ask

@@tomcads1604 Yea it's def a hard way to win & a very un-fun way too!

Probably just because of how creature centric the game is that a 1 mana 1/1 doesn't cut it anymore when it needs to connect. If it was something like whenever it attacked or beginning of your upkeep, put a goblin into play it would still be the best probably, but connecting is so difficult.

If you play an instant on someone else's turn it does indeed count as a cast.

INS-RTR-THS standard is considered the GOAT standard format for many people. So many different viable decks, lots of interaction and fun cards

I started in Rise or M10, can't remember. I got to experience the most oppressive standard format with jace and stoneforge, only for it to be followed up with one of the best formats in standard. No standard format since has really been as enjoyable.

@@komradekontroll yup i know how you feel. I wasn't playing during the Jace & Stoneforge take over. But i remember one of the decks was called something crow?

@@carter3329 Caw blade

Aaah, Thoughtseize for round 4, or Gut Strike's and Shock lands to get a round 1 Death's shadow out, then Patriar's turns it from a 1/1 into a 13/13

I think he has done it this way because the original description of Flying is that the creature can't be block except by creatures with flying. Reach was introduced later as "This creature can block as it it had Flying" so it was more of "an exception to the rule". I think only /recently/ has the reminder text of Flying got to include that it can be blocked by Reach. I think that's what has happened.

There are actually non mana costs, they're just not very common. Force of will Needs you to discard for a cost for example, and there's no way to respond to this with another counterspell or something. Similarly you can't use deflecting swat on ashnod's alter, because the sacrifice is a cost.

@@josephwodarczyk977 oh yes! About this. Some cards include "as an additional cost" or something along those lines. In that case, if the spell is countered, then yes, you do lose that. But otherwise, you only lose mana.

The entire point about that bit is that Natural Order does in fact have that additional cost, so it does happen even if countered.

Dark depths enters with counters and when you copy it it technically never entered the battlefield so it never gets those counters

Thespian Stage doesn't remove counters from the original Dark Depths. It just becomes a copy, and it never gains those counters for itself because it's not entering the battlefield. If a permanent becomes a clone while it's already on the field, it doesn't get etb stuff.

nvm lol

Yes Edit: Sorry. Turns out I was wrong. It can't go above 13/13 naturally.

True, Reinforced Ronin is a good way to get lots of damage in early. It’s very versatile.

It’s still a historically insane card - and those are very very recent additions to magic

Not so much dominating. I believe a big part of what made it dominate was that there were a lot of decks at the time reliant on the graveyard for various strategies, and Deathrite did double duty both generating value for the controller while also eating resources from the opponent. Much more present and efficient graveyard interaction combined with the rise of less graveyard reliant strategies has moved decks away from that somewhat. I mean, it'd still make it pretty tough for a Murktide deck to deploy Murktide if you can just consistently start eating spells out of their deck by turn 1, but that's a niche case against a fairly removal heavy deck. Still, Deathrite is quite the value engine that's easy to cast, has more targets to hit than ever, and a pretty solid stat line to boot. I think it could easily hold its own as still a must kill creature even among Ragavan and Saga running rampant. Ragavan itself is a bit overrated. Swinging out early with Ragavan generates some insane value and dash makes it pretty hard to hit with removal, but there's a lot of games where the board just stabilizes and Ragavan sits there doing nothing or quickly gets traded off for something. While Deathrite isn't nearly as good early as Ragavan is, one of Deathrite's strengths is that its still just as good once the board stabilizes, if not better. Especially with the current meta propagated by the fetching into triomes, Deathrite would be right at home in 4 color piles, looking to just outvalue alternatives. Honestly, if it was unbanned in modern, it could serve as a pillar to support 4c decks other than WURG Omnath piles.

One of the main things that made Deathrite a busted card is that there's very little downside to playing it. Ragavan is an example of a card whose power level is dependent on its context, as we can see from the fact that it's banned in legacy, while it remains legal in modern despite modern supposedly being a lower power format: Ragavan is one of the best cards on turn 1, and great on an empty board, but it becomes a dead card when your opponent has a bunch of creatures to gum up the ground, which is often the case in modern where games can go longer and creature combat is more relevant. Compare that to Deathrite Shaman: Deathrite is, like Ragavan, an amazing turn 1 play, as it's a 1-mana spell that ramps your mana. However, unlike Ragavan, Deathrite is basically never a dead draw. Even if you play it late in the game onto a full board, the fact that it can ignore blockers and nug you for 2 points of damage every turn makes it a lethal wincon that you *have* to spend a card to deal with. There's also the fact that gaining 2 life per turn is huge against aggro decks, *and* it also can also deprive the opponent of the ability to use their graveyard as a resource: even if you're not playing against a reanimator deck, you're still taking away fuel that they could have used for delve spells, and you get to "stifle" effects like Snapcaster Mage. On the subject of what it means for a card to "dominate," there are lots of "powerful" cards like Dark Ritual that allow you to do more busted things than play a turn 1 mana dork that is also a slow wincon, and these are allowed to exist in Legacy because they have relevant downside -- Deathrite is good not because it's the best at doing any particular thing, but because it's good at doing *so many* different things and lacks any real downside because it's almost always a relevant card.

@@kuiperkineticliterature7586 Couldn't agree more. To add to it, it's casting cost shouldn't be overlooked. Every deck besides maybe RDW and white weenie would splash green or black just for a chance of playing DRS, and it would do so with ease, because a single B/G hybrid might as well be 1 colorless in decks that run it.