Top 10 Worst Rares in MTG 

On Vizzerdrix: The reason it is a rare is because it was a color pie break. Blue did not get big creatures without downsides at the time. Still a bad card, but it exists to show one of blue's weaknesses.

I had a friend who actually found a use for One With Nothing in his Damia commander deck. Since Damia draws you up to seven if you have less than that on your upkeep, he used one with nothing as a one mana wheel. He'd use it right before the start of his turn, discard a bunch of junk cards, and get a fresh hand

I think the point of banding was somewhat misrepresented here. Banding is MUCH better on defense than on offense, and many old-school players will tell you that banding is extremely good in limited formats. It effectively prevents your opponent from ever attacking favorably if you have banding creatures on board. For example, if your opponent attacks with a 4/4, you can block it with your 4/4 and a 1/1 and send all the damage to the 1/1. Or if they attack with a 2/2, you can block with two 2/2s and assign 1 damage to each. Just an absolute nightmare. Helm is still not a good card, but it’s actually kind of a limited bomb which can’t be said about the rest of the cards on this list.

Kind of disagreeing with Wormfang Manta being so high on the list. The extra turn doesn't require it to die, just to leave the battlefield. If you have a card like Hushbringer to stop the turn skip when it enters, as well as a repeatable blink source, you can take infinite turns. You can also use alternatives like turning into a copy of it, or manifesting it, so it can leave play without technically entering. Not something you'd see in any 60-card constructed format, but still waaaaay better than Wood Elemental.

I managed to win a game thanks to Blessed Wind once. When I was starting to play, there was a guy with an Elf deck who could gain hundreds of life points per turn. He had above one thousand life when I managed to tap all his creatures, then I used Blessed Wind on him and attacked with everything, witch was just a little bit above 20 damage.

You could’ve told me Battlewagon had indestructible instead of killing itself after attacking, and I would’ve believed you. And it would still be bad. Edit: Well, it looks like I’ve been proven wrong. Honestly, I think it would be fun to see a commander group where each person picks a bad card and makes a slight errata to base their deck around it.

Vizzerdrix was created to show new players that you don’t get efficient big creatures. The flavor text even indicates this. It’s a cool card for different reasons than stats.

One With Nothing was a niche sideboard card that helped you survive against a certain combo deck that wanted you to have lots of cards in your hand. This makes it better than an unplayable draft rare, because unlike all of those, at actually saw play.

A lot of these cards are situationally still decent, that's one of the best things about magic. If you want to build around a specific card you think is cool, you can totally do it

After winning a game with One With Nothing, I will defend that card to my dying breath. Also, Wormfang Manta was part of a pretty brutal infinite turn combo back in its day.

Fun fact about the Magister Sphinx: it's set a player's life to 10 is not a may. In a draft the other day, I faced a situation where they bounced my Sphinx, and I had to make them gain life or set myself to 10. Didn't actually end up mattering because I was pretty handily winning, but it did buy the opponent another turn to draw out of the situation. The leech is a pretty clear example of some of the lessons MtG had to learn about the power level of one mana creatures. For a long time there was an established rate, that creatures typically have power at least equal to their mana value, or else significant upsides to make up for it. The problem is that while a 1 mana 1/1 fits this rate, it's also just too low impact to be worth a card. Even in limited formats, some of the lowest power level where commons and uncommons see play, 1 mana creatures were just a trap that would make your deck worse by including them. So cards like the leech looked good on paper at the time for being an above rate card with a downside, but that rate was just never worth it to begin with at that mana cost. Recently, they've started to rework that thought process for one drops. While they don't push one drops above rate too often, they have learned to just load them up with utility. Abilities to cash in the creature late in the game with some expensive draw effect, repeatable utility, and similar effects mean that it's not a complete disaster to draw the card after the first two turns of the game, where the creature becomes outclassed in combat.

One With Nothing + Hivemind + Ertai, Wizard Adept or some other non-spell counter ability to counter your original One With Nothing. One With Nothing might also be playable with Ensnaring Bridge.

I had an EDH deck once which incorporated One with Nothing into my favorite wincon for the deck. With an Academy Rector on the field, I could Renounce everything, then One with Nothing to drop an active Barren Glory at the end of the previous player's turn, and go straight into upkeep, win the game trigger. So many vulnerabilities, but so much fun when it actually pulled it off.

If I'm correct, Vizzerdrix saw competitive success as a sideboard option as well, although not because the card was actually used but because some players liked its plain weirdness enough to put it in the sideboard of competitive decks. Which doesn't make the card good, but I think it's interesting and I also like the fact that it shows that even at competitive levels some players found ways to sneak in pet cards or bad cards just out of passion or to have fun.

Wormfang Manta used to be a legit combo piece back when phasing triggered leaves play abilities but not comes into play abilities. We could use Vanishing or Vodalian Illusionist to jut keep phasing it out and getting extra turns. Manta became pretty useless when they changed the rules for phasing

Helm of Chatzuk is no joke.. the defensive plays are amazing

Hey, Wormfang Manta can be used for infinite extra turns if you set something to cancel ETBs and manage to blink it at least once each turn, like Conjurer's Closet or Brago.

On One With Nothing - there was once a release with Hellbent mechanic, that gave creatures extra abilities, usually extra stats if you had no cards in hand. So technically you could make a deck with an 'attack gamble' where you lineup your hellbent creatures, discard entire hand and attack all at once, for 'all or nothing'.

I remember one of the people at my multiplayer table playing a 5 color deck with all of the leeches in it, but every other card in the entire deck was either a colorless artifact or a land, so unless he had 2 or more of the same leech, there were no downsides. Back in 2004, this wasn't actually *that* bad as the leeches were mostly ahead of curve at the time, and the Sunburst mechanic was now a part of the game.

This list misses what I personally feel is the actual worst rare in all of Magic - "Pale Moon" One With Nothing is very very bad, certainly - but it actually does the thing it says on the card when you play it, and that thing *can* impact the state of the game in a meaningful way. Pale Moon is a 2 mana Instant in blue that makes nonbasic lands (for both players) make colorless mana instead of their usual type, until end of turn. That's it. Some obvious issues: 1) There is no way to actively gain benefit from Pale Moon. There is nothing that happens as a result of Pale Moon that makes it easier for you to play your own cards, to attack your opponent, or to build your board state. You gain no benefit from playing this card; the only possible positive effect is that it might be used to hinders you opponent at a critical moment 2) The effect does not actually hinder your opponent in the vast majority of cases. Many nonbasic lands already produce colorless, making the effect irrelevant. Nonbasic lands used for color fixing are clearly the target of this effect, however if it is late enough in the game, your opponent probably has enough lands out to not be worried about losing a little color from their nonbasics. If it is early enough in the game that your opponent's mana base is small enough that this effect might matter, then it *still* only matters if they happen to be wanting to play a card that requires that color fixing on that specific turn when you play the Pale Moon 3) Even if your opponent is in the narrow situation where the effect *might* hinder them, you have almost no way of knowing whether that is the case before they actually try and play a spell - by which point it is too late. The only way to make this card work is to cast it during their upkeep, before they have the opportunity to tap their lands for mana in a way that can be used to cast things on their main phase; if they actually have something to cast, they can simply respond to the Pale Moon by tapping their mana to float it, then casting that spell after Pale Moon is resolved (if during main phase), or even just casting some Instant or activating some ability in response during the upkeep. If you happen to burn your Pale Moon on a turn when they weren't going to do anything anyway, you've wasted a card, and two mana in the early game, which could have been used advancing your own position. 4) If you use it and it actually manages to stop your opponent from playing anything on a turn when they would have done something, then congratulations - you've managed an effect that was *almost* as good as a Counterspell; except the Counterspell would have gotten rid of the card they tried to play, but since you used Pale Moon, they still have it in hand to try and play later.

In defense of Banding: It's fairly terrible when used offensively. But it's actually really solid when used defensively. One of the best uses for Banding (in modern rulesets - this didn't apply in the old era) is that it makes it so you can easily chump-block a creature with Trample. Because a Trampling creature has to kill ALL of the enemies blocking it, Banding makes it so that you can simply apply all of the damage to the weakest creature so that doesn't happen. Banding is still a bit niche, but it definitely has its moments when played for blocking rather than attacking.

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

Omg i've been watching your duel logs channel even though i only play mtg. Thank you for great content!

You'll notice that pretty much all of these cards are very old, from back when they were still learning how to really make the game. I think the newest one is One With Nothing and it's clearly there as a skill testing card. Nowadays you're more likely to see really weird, experimental cards at Mythic Rare since they show up less frequently and can screw up draft environments less than a regular rare.

This list shows just how much the creature power curve has accelerated over time. Shivan Dragon and Mahamati Djinns were top of the pyramid as on-cost P/T with evasion. Then the Terror hit. The feels-bad was strong.

I remember having vizzerdrix when I played magic back in elementary school. Even back then I realized it was bad because it was too expensive.

I'd love to see card prices added to the videos - just as a small number below the presented cards. I feel like it adds some context regarding supply and demand. It also saves a google search if you're considering adding the card to your deck, such as in your utility land video :)

I personally think that any card that saw play at the highest levels of competitive should automatically be DQ'ed from a list like this...least of all take the top spot.

A lot of people point out that certain notoriously bad cards have some niche uses in commander. But that's really a moot point because just about any card in existence can find some niche use in commander due to the nature of the format.

The best part of this video is that you easily explained what Banding is and how it works so simply. Good job.

The downside of Wormfang manta can be dealt with kinda easily with cards that prevent ETB effects from triggering. Keep bouncing it at the end of your turn and you can more or less just lock your opponent(s) out of the game if they dont have anyything to interrupt the combo with.

There was a period of time where Wormfang Manta had combo potential with phasing. Currently, phasing in/out doesn't count as entering/leaving the battlefield, but for a time the rules said phasing out *did* cause triggers, while phasing in did not. So if you could find a way to phase the manta out, you would get an extra turn but not have to skip one. I don't think this was ever competitively viable due to the manta's mana cost, but i had fun with it around the kitchen table.

"Use Helm of Chatzuk to give my (Cho-Mano/Mogg Maniac/Brash Taunter) banding, band it with this big trample-y thing with a really low toughness and swing. How much damage do YOU want to take?"

Excellent work. I love your explanations and especially the fact that you don't spend 20% of the video talking about your sponsors or beg for subs. For that alone, I subscribed. Looking forward to more vids from you!

tbf, comparing vizzerdrix to 1. One of the most whacky creatures in the game 2. a 7 drop that got printed DECADES after vizzerdrix 3. a planeswalker so broken its to this day the sign-post threat of the tron archetype is not at all a good point.

One with nothing can actually be a good card if you play it in the right deck, and I think that the top 2 should be Sorrow's Path and Teferi's Isle which somehow didnt make the list.

I wish I had a One With Nothing card, these types of cards are always memorable and fun to collect.

Usually these cards are terrible for their cost. Sometimes its a fun thought experiment to debate what cost would make one of these bad cards worth it.

As for the Leeches, the Red, Blue and White ones have a home in Zedruu the Greathearted decks in commander. As giving them to your opponent benefits you because you draw cards when you do.

For Wood Elemental: Dauntless Dourbark is a later card that’s just strictly better. Cost: 3G. P/T equal to the number of Forests you control, and has two tribe synergies. No land sacrifice needed.

Didn't i see One with Nothing in another video of yours? Was it the video about alternate win conditions or something? Pretty sure you mentioned it in another video.

in the defense of one with nothing: 1. owling mine: this was a competitive deck for the standard and was really good due to the low mana cost and simple control route, it stocked your opponent's hand with cards and dealt damage with ebony owl netsuke and sudden impact. one cast of one with nothing was worth it because it would crumble the combo 2. madness and other graveyard Strats: if you are playing a graveyard deck or a madness deck or a hazoret deck it was a cheap way of stocking your graveyard and discarding. 3. its the best at what it does, what it does may be bad, but it is still the best at it. this means if any discard synergies come out like the aforementioned madness mechanic, flame blade adept's ability, glint horn buccaneer, or rielle the everwise, this card is a must include

Thought i recognized your voice from your yugioh channel. Just started playing magic, looking forward to more videos.

The madlad is actually covering magic, who would've thought we'd see the day?

I actually ran Eater of Days back in the day in my blue white deck, I played it together with that blue counter spell that countered triggered abilities so it basically was a 5 drop 9/8 flying trample that made you discard a card. Pretty good but definitely not quite as good as the other stuff around at that time.

I have an EDH/Commander deck featuring Damia, Sage of Stone as its commander, and One With Nothing has synergized with her alternate drawing mechanic quite well. Being able to spend 1 mana to redraw a fresh hand of seven in a pinch is pretty potent.

I had a mungha wurm deck back in the day. It relied on an elf ramp core and I had a couple winter orbs to mitigate the weakness. It was fun

You only looked at the Helm of Chatzuk from the offensive side instead of the defensive side, where it is much more useful. Here, if at least one creature that is blocking an attacker has banding, the defender gets to choose how to assign damage. This means that if you block a 5/4 trampling creature with 4 - 1/1 creatures and give one of them banding, you can choose how to assign the damage, assigning all of it to one creature. You can even choose not to assign any trample damage to yourself.

I remember one time long ago when someone summoned Eater of Days against me, and I think I either used Naturalize or Shatter on it or something similar, and then proceeded to use my following three consecutive turns to beat down the opponent's life points before they could get another turn.

I actually have a pretty efficient deck using one with nothing as a combo piece for a win condition. Having hive mind and megrim on the field you can make your opponents draw a bunch of cards and then have them discard all they're hand to kill them.

awesome work here ^^ i assume "Worst Mythics" will be a separate video.

One with Nothing is a strange card in that it always show up during the theory crafting phase of certain cards. Like early Hogaak cards slot in 1 or 2 one with nothing in order to dump cards to Hogaak since it is such an efficient discards spell.

For a future video Can you explain the meta in Magik? The best decks and strategies?

I feel *One With Nothing* could be considered with Self-mill in Commander if you focus more on your graveyard as your main "hand" than the actual hand. But that is still very risky and difficult to do.

honestly the buff to Battlewagon should be that it also has 'it cant be blocked', making it a huge threat as you just tap a bunch of creachers, pump it with a LOT of power, and then go forward with it.

I've won games off the back of One with Nothing in a set roulette challenge once. Legal sets were urzas block, kamigawa block, and bfz block. Turn one on the play, swamp, dark ritual, exhume, hold priority, one with nothing, discarding the void winnower in my hand

I understand that One with Nothing is famously a bad rare, but it was a key piece of my Rakdos deck back when Ravnica first came out, I'd blitz mana ramp and get a Pit Dragon on the field with Taste for Mayhem(s) on it, then swing for lethal on turn four/five by using fatal Frenzy then One with Nothing in response. It was surprisingly effective.

The helm is not bad, banding on blockers doesn't just let the blocker assign the damage order, it lets them assign the damage. For example if you attack with a 10/10 I can block with 2 4/4s and a 2/2 with banding, then I can kill your 10/10 and assign all the damage to the 2/2.

There used to be a games and collectibles shop at a mall i often go to , and they had a few Saviors of Kamigawa boosters. I bought 3 or 4 over the years (they didn't have much supply at all), 1 of those had a foil Oboro, Palace in the clouds, another one had Mikokoro, Center of the seas, one i don't remember and then the infamous One with nothing. Even with cards with madness, dredge and over graveyard effects going around i still can't think of a single use for that card

Keldon Battlewagon is really good when pair with a lot of untap effects like Copperhorn Scout, Moblize, and Vitalize. With enough effects you could pump Keldon Battlewagon, tap to pump itself, untap it, and swing for huge. There is Burning Anger which gives the enchanted creature 'tap to deal damage equal to its power to any target' so you could pump it smack someone and still be on the defensive. Fling is also an option. There are a lot of different ways to use Keldon Battlewagon outside of Vigilance.

I hope you do a top 10 best / worst zombies. That would be fun.

I would like to know what is your methodology for doing your TOP10 listis?

I've made some research for this (I was really bored), and Helm of Chatzuk is actually pretty good in a dedicated Commander banding deck. It's a very niche commander deck, but at least it's not as useless as North Star or the Battlewagon.

About Wormfang Manta: There are cards like Stifle who can counter it's triggered ability. If you manage to do this, you can get the extra turn effect without having to skip any of your turns.

did you know: If you give Helm of Chatzuk to an Indestructible, any creature Banded together with it also becomes Indestructible. *Banding = a way to make multiple creatures indestructible, basically.*

Dude… One with nothing is awesome! I play it with Bone Miser when I don’t have Zombie Infestation available to me. I gives me mana, zombies, and draw. You just make sure you play Shadow Of The Grave on the stack holding priority and play One with nothing so that it goes off first and you get your cards back to use the mana. Best used with a big hand from Peer Into the Abyss. Then you‘ll possible get to discard down again for cleanup and get more triggers and if you play it nicely you can have multiple cleanups and instant plays like a Gitrog or Hapatra deck! Having flash or an Emergence zone to sack and give flash works awesomely here.

I turned it off right when you said Vizzerdrix!!!! The disrespect! Just kidding, great video!! Keep it up

Isochron Scepter + One with Nothing + Hive Mind + Disruptive Student or another way to repeatably counter your own spells. You counter your own One with Nothing while your opponents all have to cast it. The ultra Jank lock ;).

The Vizzerdrix entry reminds me of another mtg video with the worst removals having Vengeance among them. Vizzerdrix is the best colored beater blue would have for years since it's release, similar to how vengeance dates back to when white didn't have as many cheap removals. Both are much worse by today's standards and were never GOOD, but they didn't start off as THE WORST.

One with nothing is a piece in my multiplayer underworlds dreams deck. Allows you to dump your hand to make use of an ensnaring bridge.

I started playing in Urza's block and one of the first rare cards I packed was Vizzerdrix. I kept him for so long as a bulk rare but I think at some point I set it on fire.

Manalogs: this card bad. The entire MTG community: imma start this card's whole career.

Im currently at the hospital and this video helped a lot to lift up my spirits, lol I love trash mtg cards

What about the lace cycle from a/b/u?

I'm surprised you didn't include the Lace cards!

I have a collection of Vizzerdrix, including an artist signed one, because I love the art

So, most of the cards you're mentioning are pre 8th edition, and you're comparing them to post 8th edition cards. Early magic cards were a much wider gambit on power level. Rares are supposed to be either more powerful, cost less mana, be more complex, or break the color wheel. Since 8th edition the average power level of cards has gone up, and they break color wheel restrictions more often, as well as bend the wheel a bit. there are many bad rares in magic that saw some level of play simply because at the time the cards around them were also for the most part fairly mediocre especially if you're comparing them to cards made much more recently, even at the common level. I think some of the point of your argument gets lost when you're comparing cards printed more than two years apart from each other. Not that it makes those cards seem better in that sense, but in standard a lot of cards get used, and in modern, legacy, and vintage, only the best cards get used. and it's not particularly fair to compare cards like Splendid Reclamation to Black Lotus as an example. They're just from very different times.

Banding is much better when blocking than when attacking. It's actually a pretty strong defensive ability in lower-power formats where blocking is relevant.

Was hoping to see Aladdin's Ring on here. It was printed at rare for dozens sets before finally being downshifted. That card is literal toilet jewelry.

The Kamigawa block garbage was a big reason my local game store closed back in the day. I got crushed with so many One With Nothing boosters that I quit the game for 5 years

i have a random (fun) idea... a video about Devotion cards... not necessarily only the best/broken cards. but maybe interesting ones. and im not talking about the gods, that just need it to be a creature, but cards that do x amount stuff. (like gary) to add to it, you could talk about cards, that "support" devotion due to their mana costs... (i simply need any reason to talk about the Phyrexian Obliterator :)

If I'm gonna discard my entire hand, then I better pay 0 and get 3 mana out of it (Lion's Eye Diamond).

On Blessed Wind... I made a "wind" deck back in the day and used Blessed Wind to set crazy life gain decks back to 20 and then kill them... it was quite comical even if that rarely happened

I had a friend play wormfang manta against me in a casual deck. that card is almost his win condition. you play it, skip your next turn and the turn after that you blinked it and copy the triggered effect a shit ton of times generally giving him an extra 3-5 turns. This is what we call a legacyish deck, where we just try to build them for fun and find fun interactions with cards. But in this non-format format, the manta deck was actually pretty neat. btw, I play a deck with a ton of cards like eater of days, leveler (before it was worth money) etc. with really, really big creatures with no downside that i play for super cheap by cancelling their etb effect

I used to play keldon battlewagon in my traxos deck. Tap traxos, untap him with a historic spell, keep going until keldon is massive Now he's in my vish kal deck and I tap a creature to the wagon before saccing the creature to vish kal, and then reanimate that same creature, tap him again, eventually sac the wagon to vish kal too 😎

Re:wormfang manta It fits as a top end in Torpor Orb Jank, on account of Torpor Orb turning off *all* enter the battlefield triggers on creatures passively. You effectively turn it into a 5 mana time walk with a 2 mana 6/1 flyer attached. Granted, that's obviously not meta, and as stated, Eater of Days is *way* better (as is Phyrexian Dreadnaught) in that deck, but there *are* conditions you can find where it is so much better than Vizerdrix

Keldon battle wagon is a flavor win due to its proper representation of using a battering ram and it can protect your creature if you want trample damage but don’t want to kill your creature you can get death triggers too

With Beamtown Bullies, Wormfang wouldn’t “die” since it’s exiled, so it would work nicely

One with Nothing can win games, if played very strategically.

One with Nothing + Brink of Madness seems to be pretty cool

There were two starter decks where one player has 6/6 Trained Orgg as a win condition, and the other player has 6/6 Vizzerdrix. The player who got their 6/6 first, or protected it better, would win the game. It would only make sense for that bomb to be rare.

I would say 10 is better than almost half the list. Just deserves to be common now.

I think you misstated banding a bit there. If creatures are blocking in a band only ONE creature has to have banding. Not "all but one" like when creatures attack in a band. This actually makes Helm of Chatzuk pretty decent in Limited. There are many situations in which it just straight-up stops your opponent from attacking since just one single bander will radically change what happens. Most banding cards were very good in Limited. Even offensive banding could be useful in lots of situations. Great video though overall.

Vizzerdrix is the only white bordered card to never have a black bordered first print. Usually only released in starter packs. Kezzerdrix exists, but Kezzerdrix is actually playable.

oketra's last mercy is also theoretically a better blessed winds too, esp in commander. in theory you could use wood elemental in a 'copy' deck that uses the cards that can make tokens of any permenant alongside a lot of copies of doubling season or anointed procession to make tonnes of token forests (or copy tokens with dryad arbor so which is easier and you can use populate effects with them. add some 'cares about creatures dying' cards and wood elemental wierdly becomes kind of good. its just a 'build around' kinda card) alabaster leech and the others, while terrible, are 'fine' as they're some of the only leeches in mtg. so if you for some reason wanted to make leech tribal, you might have to run them. I was about to make a similar point about wormfang, but as it turns out, turn/phase skip effects do accumulate, so copying it would make you skip multiple turns on the ETB, rather than them cancelling out on a 2+. sad. and i do have to say with certain versions of madness, one with nothing is kinda good. you just have to think like a dark world player. there *are* a couple of madness cards that have a madness cost of 0 , and in both instances they're kind of good. one is free hand return for a black creature and one is a green 1/1 with pump (which in madness becomes a strictly better memnite). if madness does return with more like these 2, there could be an utterly broken deck given that OWN costs just 1 black mana.

Banding is actually incredibly powerful. Offensive Banding is horribly designed but Defensive Banding changes the combat damage assignment and doing so for 1 is great.

Vizzerdrix is a very early control finisher, it's no longer good at it but at one time cards like it and Mahamoti Djinn were good late game drops when your opponent was out of resources and could establish anything.

The battle wagon. I believe you should be able to attack with all of your creatures that have vigilance and the wagon. Then tap them after attacks are declared. This will up the damage of your wagon, and should double your total damage for the attack, as the creatures retain their power. Just become tapped. That's actually pretty useful in that one specific scenario. Attack for 10 damage and they don't block, then just tap them all and get an extra 10 damage out of it and get a sneaky win. Still a horrible creature.

Thanks!

One With Nothing use - Have hand of mostly creatures, Tutor a Rise of the Dark Realms to top of library (I think all of these are sorcery speed in monoblack but you can mystical tutor for instant speed), at the begging of endstep of the prior players turn, one with nothing to throw your creatures into the bin. Your turn draw step, draw Dark Realms, Cast Dark Realms, Profit. It's a very Niche use for Commander, but it's not too terrible.