Top 10 Worst Vanilla Creatures in Magic 

Obviosly n one is Grizzly Bear

Gigantosaurus?

Yargle and Multani. 18/6 for 3BBG

@@jjjj8644Not vanilla.

@@jjjj8644 thats not a Vanilla, they have trample

Often abridged to "Ancient Carp"‚ for short

Love a channel that only does one take.

Hmm, yes, the floor here is made of carp!

@@josephinelilith3224 most of the spelling or naming errors are done intentionally to get more engagement :P And it works everytime hehe

Well, only on the times when people don’t unsubscribe or block the channel for what they take as demonstrable incompetence at the basic task of reading, in a video about a game predicated on interpreting text.

I was just thinking the same. I remember that card to this day from the first time I saw it as a child, just because of that flavor text.

Agreed. Big miss on this list

I used to run a Vizzerdrix deck about 10 years ago. Whenever I would beat people with it I would have them sign a copy of the card (if they wanted to).

Bro we hated it backin 7th and 8th. Freaking awful

​@@kaluszwig5854big miss on not forcing them to sign shame

It's so bizarre. I don't know what wizards was thinking

It's almost like they were printing cards for the commander format without knowing what the commander format was.

It's been 9 months

@@CircusQueen8so like 45 sets

Some vanilla is good in standard. Like dino 10/10 fore ggggg

The better statement would be to say Yargle and Multani is the only vanilla in Standard. It's been only a year since that one card, but more than three years since the last one before that.

Also, not printing vanillas has absolutely nothing to do with power creep.

Why should that be a part of the game

​@@lolbajsetit makes card evaluation one of the skills required for success in draft. It's already a requirement for constructed, but it's crucial in draft. Not every card can be obviously great, and it's a game skill to recognize contextually good and bad cards

Yeah, the literal 15 year gap between Wandering Ones and Rustwing Falcon from the video is not a fair comparison. Not that Wandering Ones was ever good even in its time, but still...

It's also a soldier which is a relatively easy creature type to power up

This is so backwards. You don't want a 2/2 for 3 because it's inefficient, but a 0/3 that needs MULTIPLE exalted triggers to maybe swing for some damage is fine? A 2/2 for 3 will win like 100x more games than a 0/3.

Goblin hero at rare was a misprint IIRC, like I know red creatures were really bad in the 90's and stuff like jackal pup was an allstar in red but they wouldn't give a 2/2 for 2R rare status.

@@fernandobanda5734 then take a look at the standard of the time, valiant guard could be a 3/3 for one thanks to doran the siege tower, I'd say that was a point more in it's favour

Goblin Hero was misprinted as a rare in a later set, but it has always been a common.

i find it strange that having generic mana be most of it's cost someone was like "this can totally be cast for just the one green" meanwhile the dinosaur, having three green pips on it, was enough to warrant being a higher number at same total mana. Meanwhile black is just reanimating stuff...

Yeah it doesn't make sense either like how is it worse than raging poltergeist, something you wouldn't play even in limited because it trades with any creature assuming all your creatures have at least 1 power.

@@dstreetz91 there are so many bad creatures from back during alpha/beta etc.. the list is kind of a joke ^^ still fun to watch .. I just had to give my 2 cents because Scaled Wurm was one of the first cards I bought .. I don't know why, but the Ice Age artwork just spoke to me ^^

Something else about Scaled Wurm. It was part of Wizards' promotional push for Ice Age. It was included in many hobby magazines to generate hype for Magic's first Stand-Alone expansion. In other words, it was so bad Wizards was giving it away for free. :P

Having Hexproof makes it not vanilla... A good vanilla would be that 5 mana 10-10 card

@@user-jd5zt4of8q I know. Isamaru is a bogles is a sense that you use its above rate stats as the advantage. And yeah. That is a legend.

Do you mean a "Sliver" bullet?

@@benikujaku4567 nice pun there.

Venser's sliver was probably just them doing a callback to metallic sliver, which was at least a 1 mana 1/1 sliver and is now functionally vanilla because at the time of it's printing in tempest you just had artifact creature with no subtype like gnome or what have you.

Older sets (and I say this since I left the game years ago and have not kept up in touch with it) really had a way to get you into the lore of the setting with just a few lines of flavor text printed in cards that would never see any play, those sort of details were magical, one of my favorite ones was from a Coldsnap card called Krovikan Scoundrel, a few lines of text and the image of the card and can feel the vibe of the set.

"Scaled wurm was originally printed in ice age too so it did pretty well back then since almost nothing was that big in terms of stats." You and I remember a very different 1996. Mono-Black aggro decks were so popular and effective then that most tournament players referred to that era as Magic's "Black Summer". Good luck casting an eight-drop when your opponent has destroyed your hand, refilled theirs, and played multiple first striking bears all by turn five.

Hound is dog but wolf isn’t

@@isambo400 Weird.

They've printed a few cards that are intended to buff vanilla creatures, but they usually run into the awkward situation of being creatures with abilities, meaning that they are unfortunately nonbos with each other

There is some support, but they are almost always overshadowed by things with actual abilities

Vanillas are not meant to be good cards in Magic (except for just a couple). They're meant to be teaching tools, simple cards that set the bar for what you can expect. They purposefully make very few vanillas that are even bigger than normal creatures with abilities, because playing with vanillas is inherently more boring.

Yes and no. Unlike yugioh magic has multiple formats, so vanillas arent meant for competitive play but rather drafting. And in that format they are perfectly acceptable too even good dependin on the era. For example 5 mana 4 3 cards suck, but say your drafting and are only goin for cheap red cards but in pack 2 ya open a bomb black card that ya wanna slot in and change your deck from an aggressive to a more controlly one. Your red cteatues are small and maybe another player scooped up the better black cards so your left with a bad creature but its bigger than what ya got. It might be better than another creature with more power and the same cost but more mana pips cus its castable earlier. Ancient carp is certainly bad even in limited, but the vanilla rule doesnt exactly work how people interpret it. Blue for example rarely gets creatures with power matching their cost and if it does maych theres gonna be a downside. Red regularly gets dudes with big power but little buts, they also have more direct dmg spells than any color so clearing they way for a 6 1 is feasible for them, still bad but a play line that could win a limited game. Vanillas are hard to design around and even harder for players to get attatched too. For example ya cant really make a vanilla dragon cus its gotta have flying. Simply put they dont have interesting design space for card creators and dont get the creative buildcrafting juices flowin of the players so they dont try to push em. There are some gems when it comes to vanillas though. There is a card the buffs creatures with no abilities by +2+2 printed in a set meant to show what magic cards could look like in the future. Theres a commander that does the same and there was a 5 mana 10 10 that was big enough to be a decent card nothing too strong but a big dumb dinosaur. Vanillas also have plenty of card space for flavor text which adds geat worldbuilding. Great ox has a funny quote from bruce tarl borish herder, when it gets reprinted we get a new quote from him insulting the ox and eventually we get a commander card of bruce tarl. While not technically a vanilla colossal dreadmaw is pretty close and widely regarded as the most powerfull magic creature ever printed so ya cant power creep somethin like dreadmaw without breakin the whole game ya know.

Vanilla's were printed just to teach really, since for a vanilla creature to be good it needs to be overstatted quite a bit. Off the top of my head woolly thoctar is a vanilla creature that saw some play in standard, but it cost RGW and was a 5/4. IIRC they also make a mirror creature like thoctar that was 3 mana for a 4/5, but I can't remember what it cost exactly.