Top 10 Most USELESS Magic Cards
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 มิ.ย. 2024
- With so many sets and individual cards existing in Magic the Gathering, it's understood that not every card is going to be viable at a competitive level. And while many cards do find homes in commander or even more casual forms of play, there are several cards in the game that are pretty much useless. Between terrible effects that were never good to cards that just simply do not function within the modern rules of the game, there are more than a few cards that have little to no reason to ever be played at all.
Script by Uncrowned Jules
Editing by Pumkinswift
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
10. Mudhole: (0:22)
9. Scornful Egotist: (2:07)
8. Nine-Ringed Bo: (3:53)
7. Great Wall: (5:44)
6. Common Cause: (7:29)
5. Wood Elemental: (9:11)
4. Power Surge: (10:32)
3. Apocalypse Chime: (12:01)
2. Break Open: (13:47)
1. Master of Arms: (15:15)
#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering
(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.)
I dunno, 2/2 first strike for 3 is of course not very good especially by modern standards, but "most useless" that card is not. It's still a 2/2 first strike creature after all. Wood elemental, which is lower on the list is far worse, and so is Egotist (which is at its best 2/2 for 3 without first strike). The fact that it has an ability that it's kinda irrelevant most of the time doesn't really make it most useless, there's worse creatures than that.
Worst card should definitely have been the usually Literally unplayable, almost always actively harmful to you, Break Open.
Grey Ogre is a 3 mana 2/2 with no text, flow of maggots is a 3 mana 2/2 with cumulative upkeep 1 (and it cant be blocked by non-walls... but who cares, its a 2/2 that drains all of your mana), and Taoist Mystic is a 3 mana 2/2 who can't be blocked by creatures with Horsemanship- and if you don't know what Horsemanship is, yeah, thats the problem.
Yes, a 3 mana 2/2 First Strike isn't the greatest card, but I can see it being played in many limited formats.
Hardly useless.
But that ability is usless.
@@dyne313 yes, and no... It can clear blockers for future combat phases, theoretically. It's not particularly useful, i'll grant you, but not useless, just incredibly narrow.
With a Horobi on the table, it's technically hard destroy removal in white... Which means that you can do incredibly stupid stuff in, say, an Atheros commander deck, for lulz and learning purposes.
I agree. Certainly not a good card but not the worst card ever. In fact I was versing as opponent in a game of commander who plays some very strange decks. Master of Arms was on the board and my opponent equipped Lure to it, so when it attacks, everything has to block it. He attacked the opponent who was winning, who had to block with all four of his creatures. He payed 8 mana (not easy but still did it), meaning that the winning player tapped all his creatures. The next two players were able to attack with everything and collectively do fatal damage to the winning player.
I know there are easier ways to achieve a similar outcome, but it certainly turned the game on the otherwise winning opponent.
Master of Arms is still a 3 mana 2/2 with first strike, strictly better than any 3 mana vanilla 2/2
Scornful Egotist is definitely the best card on the list. The reason it has such high CMC is because Scourge (The block it originated from) had a mechanic where CMC matters (Such as the card "Torment of Fire") so being able to "cheat out" an 8 CMC card for 4 mana was actually somewhat useful. The card is still terrible, but does have some niche use with cards that care about CMC
At that point, you're better off using Earthquake Dragon or Shadow of Mortality.
Draco even saw play just because its mana value is so high, comboing well with Erratic Explosion.
This. Card is bad in a vacuum but i distinctly remember opening Egotist on pre-release and putting it in just to add high-cmc cards in the deck. It served it's purpose during limited
yup, like if you have a way to cheat out a better high-cmc card, sure that's better, but scornful egotist cheats ITSELF out. not terrible in limited.
@@kennydarmawan13 how do you propose to use those cards in 2003
I mean, it's a 1cmc 2/2 in blue with zero drawbacks. Where else are you getting that?
Gonna agree with the chorus here. Master of Arms is definitely not useless. There's a difference in saying its ABILITY is useless vs the whole card being useless. A 3 mana 2/2 with First Strike may not be amazing, but that baseline alone puts it leagues above everything else on this list. Genuinely no reason to include it, especially since the useless ability happened due to a rules change, which means the card isn't even being judged fairly for the intended design space it originally had.
Yeah. I feel like this was one time where Wizards SHOULD HAVE errata'd the card to keep its intended purpose.
How is Master at Arms the worst of all of these? Even if its ability does nothing these days, it's still a 2/2 with first strike for 3 mana. Not great by any stretch of the imagination by today's standards, but at least it's something. Even without its ability, a first striker with that power and toughness for that CMC wasn't terrible for the time it was printed in. It is terrible now, but so are many other (very similarly statted) cards from back then. Bad card, but not nearly as bad as most of the others on this list. Surely not deserving of the top spot in a top 10 list of useless cards.
There's a whole lot of 2/2s for 3 that have no first strike. Master of Arms is already better than those.
You can still use its ability too to synergies with tapped matters spells, particularly the wandering emperor. I can think of scenarios where you can use it to force a card to get tapped that they wouldn't expect it, particularly Atraxa.
Heck if you wanted you could still combo it with something like royal assassin.
Aw face it guys, it's just a 1/1 for 8 mana! Not only that, bu-ALL HAIL THE GREAT LORD EGOTIST!!!
Glad to see people still remember the classics
blue, 8 to cast, vanilla 1/1 with no other abilities? heck this should be the wors-ALL HAIL THE GREAT EGOTIST
@@breawycker Classics? What clas-ALL HAIL THE GREAT LORD EGOTIST
Nine-Ringed Bo is meant to interact with the Soulshift mechanic from original Kamigawa block to prevent it from triggering and getting your opponent a spirit back when a creature with Soulshift dies. Mudhole was meant to turn off Threshold which was in Odyssey block.
Mudhole was still terrible back in the day because in Odyssey it'd be rare a land went to the graveyard unless you used land destruction. It was unplayably bad then and it's even worse now.
@@matthewgagnon9426There were a number of sac lands in Odyssey block as well as self-discard effects to get to Threshold so there were numerous ways to get lands into graveyards.
Yeah Mudhole wasn't great but it wasn't useless, just a block-specific sideboard card.
Like, which would you rather have in your deck, Great Wall or Master of Arms? An actively useless Enchantment or a 2/2 First Strike?
Definitely not Brownie.
I think the more accurate title of the video would be "Top 10 Most WORTHLESS Effects and Abilities of Magic Cards."
That way, I can see why Master of Arms is number 1.
Regarding Scornful Egotist, it's meant to synergize with cards that work better with higher mana values, like Rush of Knowledge and Calibrated Blast. But considering cards with higher yet self-reducing costs exist that have strong abilities, like Earthquake Dragon and Shadow of Mortality, it does become useless in hindsight.
Scornful egotist is the best card on the list so long as you see it in a vacuum called "scourge draft"
Sadly this is a clickbait channel with no actual understanding of what they talk about, they just harvest youtube comments into clicks.
I don't know if this person even plays magic, based on how they pronounce "gaea's cradle"...
It also pairs to make a 4 mana counter spell (If none have flipped yet, cheaper if flipped) with Voidmage Prodigy as it's a wizard
Scornful Egotist was the product of one of the more interesting but insanely clunky themes WotC was trying to do at the time... which was Scourge's mechanics of spells relying on casting cost for an effect. It was meant to be a "combo" piece for those spells where you place them face down so your opponent and then flip at the right moment so suddenly throw out a big combo....
...the biggest issue of course was the fact Morph was such a clunky mechanic where you are wrecking your own tempo since you are forgoing spending on another creature by flipping the Morph creature instead and rarely did Morph creatures have any effects worth the double investment and the fact there was soooo many more effective ways to do the mana cost mechanics ie. just have an actual big card that can not only synergise with those spells and actually be able to be a board prescence.
@@RocKM001 funnily enough, the idea of Morph is done WAY better in Runeterra. A 2-mana 2/2 alternate summon that either discounts a unit later or promotes a slower, more rewarding playing style.
Really, the regenerating, regrowing mana system alongside the Spell Mana system REALLY is where a Morph-like mechanic works best.
That #1 is... contentious. The card as a whole is ok, it's just the activated ability that serves no purpose. Certainly better than the #2 that actively hinders you.
We can still find a use for #1s ability. White has a few cards that care about targets being tapped such as seek vengeance. It's not great and really slow, but it's still better than probably the majority of this list.
I do not understand how master of arms is "useless". Sure, it's ability is bad nowadays, but it's still a 2/2 body with First Strike for a reasonable cost. It actually adds to the board. Would you play it? Of course not. But it's still so much better than so many other cards that do nothing for your board state (like Fasting)
Scornful Egotist DOES have a use. In the set it was printed (Scourge), several cards cared about mana cost, and this got you an 8 cost for 3 mana.
For example, with SE on the board, Torrent of Fire would deal 8 damage to any target, or Rush of Knowledge would let you draw 8 cards.
It still wasn't that good (Both of those cards cost 5 mana, meaning it's a total of 9 mana for either effect, even if you can play it turn 5 with no acceleration), but it did do the thing it was meant to do.
It is also one more morphed card on the field. Letting the opponent gamble on which critter to shock.
@@Xaxares but u could just play a better morph card for this reason😅
I think the point of Break Open is to mess with morph creatures that have a triggered ability when turned face up that is only useful when used at the right moment. Not much use for a Voidmage Apprentice if it's flipped when the stack is empty.
Of course, they'd get even less use out of it if you just Shock it instead. Costs a mana less too.
Mudhole is good in izzet delver decks against lands decks trying to put together Marit Lage with Life from the Loam, Dark Depths & Thespian Stage, and other dredge decks that mill themselves then use Splendid Reclamation to put themselves way ahead in the curve.
I'm surprised One With Nothing wasn't on this list.
One with nothing is crazy with madness! Or that is what I would say if LED wasn't a thing
Master of arms at the very least allows you to tap a creature you need tapped for you to use an spells that interact with tapped creatures. You could have a scenario where you need to tap Atraxa who has vigilance so you can flash in wandering emperor so you can exile them. It might be niche but it has an actual USE.
It's kinda disappointing that Wizards didn't errata Master of Arms to make its ability prevent the creature it tapped from dealing combat damage this turn, since that's clearly what it was meant to do.
I'm surprised that One With Nothing isn't on this list. It's not a mistake but that's usually the go to "useless" Magic card.
One with Nothing does *technically* do something to your game state, its not advantageous, but it doesn't whiff because the rules have outdated its affect.
I suppose if you cast it when its the last card in your hand that would be the most useless card...
Unless you were playing Uno...
I should note why Egotist exists - Scourge had a “high CMC matters”, with cards like Ancient Ooze, Dispersal Shield, Rush of Knowledge, Kurgadon, and the Dragon aura cycle all benefiting from playing creatures with CMC 6 or more (or “mana value” in today’s parlance I guess, still not gonna get used to that), so Egotist actually had a purpose in the Limited environment as an enabler for those cards you could cheat in with Morph.
Also can’t see why Master of Arms, a 2/2 first strike for 3, is ahead of something like Wood Elemental which is perhaps the worst Magic card of all time.
eldraine and the modern horizons block need their own apocalypse chimes
Mudhole was printed back when Block Constructed was still a thing, and when one of the stronger lands in the block -- Riftstone Portal -- only did something if it got itself into the graveyard somehow. There was also a cycle of lands that sacked themselves for effect when you hit threshold (Cabal Pit, Cephalid Coliseum) and could be recurred by the reprinted Cartographer. Mudhole didn't need to cost that much mana and didn't need to be a rare, but it wasn't an unreasonable card at the time it was printed.
And the list here is the most useless cards as rated today.
I used riftstone portal with harrow and Crosis's Catacombs which mad it a 5 color land and 2 others become 4 mana land
Scornful egotist is an 8 cost card for 4 mana to sacrifice to a pod effect. That is a useful skill in itself.
Scornful Egotist was probably meant to be played with Dispersal Shield as a cheeky counter or with the other 5 cards printed in Scourge that had the "highest mana value among permanents you control" text. It certainly won't see play in any format these days but that probably why it was printed as it was.
Power Surge actually sees play in Yurlok of Scorch Thrash decks, where mana burn is essentially brought back.
It also combines well with Price of Glory
I def don't think it belongs on this list. For example, Sorrow's path or Aven Trooper may be better here.
Scornful egotist is one of the best 8 cmc cards to run in a birthing pod deck, you don't need to flip it to sac it to pos to get a 9 cmc creature and you put it out for just 3 mana means you can often put it out the turn before you play pod as pod cost 4 mana total to use. 3 and 2 life to cast then 1 and 2 life to use. It simply is not a bad card there are much better examples of bad cards.
Edit: I was wrong you do need to flip the morph first but even then it's still 4 mana for a 9 mana creature in any pod deck.
You don’t need to flip it? I get that it’ll be face up in the graveyard but the MV of a morph is always 0.
@@poiri interesting, when I looked up the rules in the past I read that it looks at the cost of the creature as it exists after being sac'ed, but you are in fact correct. But that also means I've been playing wrong with tokens that copy the creature mana value as I assumed if the token is exiled pod sees a 0 and always grabs a 1 cmc instead of the cmc of the creature the token was a copy of.
@@stigmaoftherose The mana cost/value of a token copy usually doesn’t matter, but as you’ve discovered, yes, it is copied over from the original. Which I suppose makes the Birthing Pod interaction even better. (For those who don’t know, tokens by default have no mana cost/a mv of 0, but it is a copyable characteristic.)
Apocalypse Chime, you mention sideboard. It DID find its way into a few Standard sideboards in its day. Autumn Willow was really hard to get rid of in her day and she was the backbone of a reasonably popular deck (Willowgeddon, the successor to the more successful Erhnageddon, which used Erhnam Djinn). If you weren't in white and didn't have access to Wrath, this was one of the only ways to get her off the board. And frankly, it's not bad for that purpose. Colorless and 2+2 mana (easily usable after an Armageddon wiped your lands) to kill a Shroud creature at (presumably) no cost to yourself since you weren't playing any Homelands cards.
Yeah they even had a rule for a short time about it being compulsory to include at least a certain number of cards from homelands in constructed decks IIRC and being able to kill serrated arrows back then with this was genuinely good because serrated arrows would destroy a lot of the early inefficient creatures at least by modern standards.
@@dstreetz91 That rule existed for only the very first Pro Tour event.
Seriously? Not even a nod to One With Nothing? One of the lost iconic "useless" cards ever.
Egotist was in a cmc matters set
Video Ideas:
* The Dredge Engine Explained
* The History of Time Vault (a.k.a. the reason Wizards doesn't do Konami-style power level errata)
* Cards made better or worse by rules changes (e.g. Sunforger and split cards, or Captain Sisay and planeswalkers becoming legendary.)
* Best double-faced cards
* Most powerful tribal lords (creatures designed to assist one or more creature types)
* Best/Worst Legendary Creatures
* Best cumulative upkeep cards
* Best/Worst mana dorks
* Ten cards that fulfill a weird niche that are incredibly good in the right deck. (e.g. there's a 2 mana white wall that makes your green and blue spells cost 1 less)
What happened with time vault?
@@lord_wyran essentially what happened with "Necrovalley", it had a lot of erratas that changed how it works
@@lord_wyran The TL;DR is that Wizards made a bunch of different attempts to change the card so you couldn't take infinite turns with it, all of which were exploited by the players. There's an article explaining it all somewhere
@@williamdrum9899 yeah I looked it up. Go's I love mtg players casual disregard for wizards
For the time vault thing, i think he already did a video with a segment detailing this. Something like 10 cards with thr most erratas?
Scornful Egotist was designed for a series of cards that allow you to draw, counter spells, deal damage, and even make mana. Energy Tap, Living Armor, Mercurial Chemister, Neoform, Birthing Pod, and Rush of Knowledge are some cards off the top of my head that work with Scornful Egotist
If Scornful Egotist was green it would be amazing for any of the sac to summon cmc+1 effects like birthing pod or vivian
In casual commander, my favorite deck is Yurlok of Scorch Thrash. Since he essentially puts mana burn back into play, I do get to use Power Surge on occasion. It's fun when you also have Helix Pinnacle or Horizon Stone out so that you can still tap out and not get burned but your opponent can't.
glad someone mentioned my boy Yurlok
Scornful Egotist's selling point is its CMC. It came in a set where CMC mattered, so getting it out cheap then morphing it was a big deal in limited.
Scornful always makes these list yet nobody ever references what the initial intention was in the Scourge set.
I played back then, no one used Egotist because you'd be using a terrible card just to make mediocre cards better. The intention was there, but it was a terrible idea.
I could see Common Cause getting use when you know your opponent is playing with only artifact creatures. In that case it is a single-sided ability so long as all of yours share a color.
I was thinking that the only place it could even see play would be in vintage as a sideboard card for monoW initiative against shops decks.
Next year there will be "Tarv who risks everything", a legendary dwarf shaman for 1rb with "whenever a land leaves a players graveyard deal one damage to every opponent". The idea is that you make a mill/spell slinger deck where Mudhole is your wincon
Maybe the egotist can work for something that depends on converted mana cost… idk
That was the card's original purpose. The set it came in had a lot of cards that benefitted from having a creature on board with a huge mana cost
I think if the video was titled "Most Useless Abilities" it would cover all the points while being slightly more accurate.
Great topic! Thank you for making this video 😁
Citadel of Pain should have gotten a mention here. It still has a slight amount of utility, but it was largely rendered useless in the same way Power Surge was by removing mana burn.
The point of Scornful Egotist is to synergize with MV-matters cards
Chaos Lace, Life Lace, Death Lace and two more whose names I don’t recall were a cycle of five cards which changed the color of a spell as it was being cast.
Yes, your fireball could be a black spell by interrupting it with Death Lace. And such. All five of these should be on the list. But they aren’t.
Edit : PureLace. ThoughtLace. Were the two others in the color cycle.
Later they added Prismatic Lace and Moon Lace to cover the ability to change spells into multiple colors and into colorless spells.
All seven are nearly useless.
Break open comes from the same set as Blistering Firecat so could use it at the end of their turn to force sacrifice it. I'm assuming that may have been the main target
also, forcing a card to go face up removes it from combat.
Break open would also be really good against the new Praetors in MOM, basically making it so they wasted all their mana from flipping it over to the saga side. Even the other cards in the set that cost a good amount to flip over will be set back a turn. Really awkward timing for this top 10 list to come out when the latest set could make this card the most relevant its ever been.
@@theasternaut as counter intuitive as it may seem, this interaction doesn't work. I believe Break open only works are cards that the game has specifically declared to be face down (manifest and morph). This is why the card doesn't work against double sided creatures
@@danielgraves13 i thought the whole point was to attack with a morphed creature and then paying its morph cost for a cheesy effect before the damage resolves... Am I missing something ?
@@theasternaut You couldn't target the flipped Praetors anyways, since they aren't creatures
With Apokolips Chime: you forgot it also hits Serrated Arrows
Entertaining video thank you
It was a smart move leaving One With Nothing off this list. It's a terrible card, but people would have lost their minds if you called it useless
I think this already happened in an old video, you're 100% right.
I'm surprised one with nothing didn't even make the list😮
Scornful Egotist is not that bad for one specific use case - using its converted mana cost for something. While it's face down converted cost is zero, but if you face-up it becomes 8 mana creature for 4 mana.
A 2/2 first strike isn't useless
Scornful Egotist had set design that it was intentionally breaking. I got blown out by this card when I learned to play magic by a wizards deck.
Even mudhole has set design going for it - a red way to turn off threshold.
You can still say those are useless, but at least give context.
I'm shook that Force of savagery - a 3 mana 8/0 isn't on this list.
Master of Arms is actually a build-around. There are numerous cards that want your opponents to have tapped creatures. Two examples I could mention:
Enthralling Hold is a blue enchantment that lets you gain control of a tapped creature an opponent controls, for as long as that creature is enchanted by Enthralling Hold.
Sleeper Dart is a two mana artifact that draws a card when it enters play. You can tap and sacrifice it to keep a creature tapped for longer.
There are uses for many "bad" cards. You need only explore the library for answers.
I disagree with your take on the Egotist. It's ment to manipulate CMC with cards like Eldritch Evolution. You get a turn 3 CMC 8 creature and turn 4 or sooner get a CMC 10 creature.
It's not useless, just not used much.
I stopped playing more than 20 years ago, so your video was informative in bringing me up to speed on some of the rules changes. I am not sure if it’s fair to single out cards that were designed to work under the older rules though. I still don’t get why scornful egotist was designed the way it was. Is there a reason a 8-cost creature was ever useful at the time?
Scourge had a mana values matters theme such as Rush of Knowledge, so egotist was a way to get a high cost creature into play without actually spending 8 mana.
No way Scornful Egotist is useless, that's the kind of card that has to be useful just because of his cost
Now that we had Praetors without titles, what about top 10 legendary creatures/planeswalkers with the best titles in their name? At the very least it has to be better than Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant.
Kmahl, Fist of Krosia!
@@danielgraves13 I'm talking more like Emrakul, The Aeons *Torn* but mostly I want TDL to do the video. There are some titles that at least to me sound rhythmic, rapturous or overall impactful. You know, like an Evangelion fan exclaiming "here comes Zeruel, The Angel of Might!!" in the kind of emotion that Jules puts into the quote from The Bodyguard in Pulp Fiction. I will be quite hyped if he ends up doing it.
the funny thing is, nowadays white can be excused to have card that can block any creature with "cannot be blocked" ability
1) Scornful Egotist's usage is linked with being able to get a high CMC card into play for a low mana investment. "CMC matters" is a thing to keep in mind, especially in its particular set block - being an 8 mana card that you *can* use for only 3 mana is actually pretty okay in scourge block.
2) Common Cause is *really* niche in how you'd have to eke out usage. If you play Darknest Night, all creatures will share a color (black) and if you have more creatures (or, if your opponent uses Artifact Creatures) you'll get more benefit than your opponent.
3) Master of Arms is, baseline, a reasonable creature. 2/2 with first strike for 3 is not the best rate, but it is a good baseline for a creature - just look at Paladin en-Vec, Phyrexian Crusader, or Danitha Capashen.
Egotist saw play in standard in a deck I think was known as "cost's more". There were several card effects that counted the highest converted mana cost and Scornful Egotist was one of the easiest ways to get a super high casting cost card into play early. You forgot the "Bands with other Legends" lands from Legends, considered by most to be the 5 most useless and worst cards ever printed in Magic.
Scornful Egotist had a use as it was part of a cycle with "check the top card of your deck and do X where X is its converted mana cost" cards
I made a pauper deck with egotist and I win several matches. Of course it's an weird deck but playable. It was a top of library manipulation deck with erratic explosion and miracle cards.
Master of Arms is a perfect flavor addition to an Equipment deck!
Even today, I would happily play a 3 mana 2/2 with first strike in a sealed or draft deck. The evergreen ability interacts favorably with burn spells, pump spells, aura and equipment, deathtouch, infect and wither, and a number of other on-damage triggers. Human and soldier are also both very popular tribes with substantial support in white.
If anyone is wondering why scornful egotist is like that, scourge, the set it’s from, had a theme with wanting you to have creatures with high mana costs so scornful egotist was a cheap way to get an 8 mana creature. This didn’t mean it was ever good however as it has always been a joke, and was likely designed as such even if it technically had a role.
The Egotist reason to exist was that it was a way to put a (very) high converted mana cost creature into play relatively easy. And since Scourge had a "converted mana cost matters" theme, it made some sense. Maybe in Scourge limited it had some play somehow, I don't know. But still...
Nine-Ringed bow (which I didn't even knew existed until now) was somewhat relevant in the set it came out (and the whole block actually) which was very spirit heavy and had a very common ability called soulshift which returned spirits from the graveyard to the hand.
Cards that prevents specific landwalk are all historically pretty useless but I see common cause (which is another card which I didn't knew existed) being actually very good and being played in a lot of decks. Power surge (and citadel of pain) have some relevance even now because you can force your opponents to tap all their lands and don't have mana for counters and stuff.
Does break open work on double sided card? Becuase if a format has alot of them then it s good counter ig
Doesn’t break open work on night/day creatures and transformed creatures from the newest set?
3:45 Egotist is terrible, but it was a design gamble around Morph. There were a lot of CMC and Highest CMC dependent cards introduced in Scourge where Scornful Egotist was maybe meant as a "gotcha" flip on the table. It never ended up working that way, but there are interesting ways to use it with a bit of imagination and a willingness to lose.
Wouldn’t Power surge still work as upkeep is after the untap step, meaning they would have to tap out on the upkeep?
Scourful egotist gets better in a scenario based off high mana values like the limited it was in an early game 8 mana creature is good if you have spells based on your highest mana cost or things that you reveal or exile it based on it's mana cost
I believe there is a card that says, when creature enters the battlefield it deals damage equal to its mana cost. This would make scornfull egotist pretty strong.
Cards from Legends (or other similar early sets) could never have anticipated where the game would grow to. That’s why so many of the early cards are either banned, worthless, or too expensive mana wise to be used. Coming from a person who played during Beta, Revised, Legends, and Arabian Nights, it’s truly a bummer, but understandable for the growth of the game.
There's a theoretical called Busy Work that's fun to think about. The whole point is to put as many irrelevant things as possible without doing anything more than. drawing a card.
Example:
Busy Work U
Instant
Choose a color. Choose a number. Choose a card type. Choose a creature type. Look at the top card of your library. Look at all face down cards you control. Flip a coin. Roll a Die. Creatures you control get +0/+0 until end of turn. Exile all exiled cards....etc.
Draw a card.
Scornful Egotist has to be considered in the context of its block, where Wizard tribal was a thing, highest CMC mattered, and to a lesser extent morph was popular enough that having extra bait was also valuable. It wasn't anything incredible by any means but it was a draft/sealed card through and through.
Common Cause could give you some advantage if you keep up on removing your opponents creatures. Still unplayable, but I could see some sort of removal tribal getting some value out of it.
I can also. Trade all your bad cards to that player. That's the use.
Scornful Egotist was actually really good, when it came out. There were a lot of CMC matters cards.
Kinda crazy that Wrenn and Six is such an absolute powerhouse, everyone knows how insanely strong it is and how it does what it does, and here the first card is essentially stopping exactly what W&6 does, but it's entirely useless? You got me, dawg
I was going to provide the obligatory reminder that Scornful Egotist's value lies in its printed mana cost enabling mana-cost-matters strategies (beyond just Scourge's), but instead, let me remind you folks that there are plenty of cards that cost more than they otherwise might if they didn't provide flexibility. All the charms would suck at their mana costs if they only had one of their modes. Reckoner Bankbuster is effectively "pay 4: draw a card" if you get nothing else out of it. Every card with cycling is underpowered.
My point is that putting SE on the battlefield (either face-up OR face-down) is the BACKUP PLAN. It's probably still the best way to get that much mana value on the table early. It's almost too bad there aren't more blue mana symbols on it to trigger devotion/chroma.
Anyone who includes Scornful Egotist on these list is unaware of the context of the creature in Magic History. The set it was in included a "high cmc matters" mechanic. Getting an 8 cmc on turn 4 was pretty good for the strategy
I forgot which cards they were, but I used to use effects that scaled bases on a creatures casting cost with Scornful Egoist. The deck surely wasn't competitive but it had a use.
Master of Arms at number 1 on this list (or even being on it at all, tbh) is literally just incorrect. Lots of creatures are worse than a 3 mana 2/2 with first strike, especially from old magic before creatures were allowed to be good.
I think you got super hung up on the vestigial activated ability and ignored the fact that it's a strictly better creature than a ton of creatures that never would have made this list. Break open is worse by a wide, WIIIIDE margin.
Really surprised to see that the gem leech cycle from Invasion didn't make this list. Not only are they underwhelming creatures that, granted were considered undercosted at the time, their drawback of making your things cost more is actively harmful.
it would actually be really cool if there was like a series doing "top ten useless/bad cards" of each set and would be cool if that series started at the first set WotC can reprint cards from. If i'm right then that means starting at Mercadian Masques is the first set after the reserved list WotC can freely reprint cards.
From doing some research it seems as long as it's not a rare or mythic from what would be the "reserved list sets" WotC can freely reprint those cards. And what i'm looking for is if someone is willing to do "top ten useless/bad reprintable cards."
In all honesty, Master of Arms doesn't even belong on this list. You could have just put ten different versions of the old "Vanilla 2/2" on the list. He shouldn't even be on the list at all.
30 years ago, land walk was way too powerful, so they abandoned it. Remember, there was Terror, Lightning Bolt, and Swords to Plowshares. No one wanted to give an opponent life gain, black creatures were out to terror, and the fatties didn't die to Bolt. Now, there's a myriad of ways to kill something.
Try to play against a Sol'Kanar deck with only cards from Legends or earlier while running swamps. It was nearly impossible to remove without double lightning bolt.
My friend runs Scornful Egotist in his Animar deck just for the meme. Generally we all live in fear of the morphs, but if we're lucky it might just be the egotist.
I'm assuming the point of Common Cause as seen in the flavor text is all your creatures share a color and your opponents have no creatures which is a little better but still pretty useless especially in Commander and there are much better ways of getting +2/+2
Scornful egotist came in a red/blue starter deck that had some other card that dealt burn damage or did something else based on "converted mana cost". I'm pretty sure. It wasn't a good combo but that's what it was for.
When I saw the thumbnail, I immediately thought of one of LoadingReadyRun's comments from their Friday Nights series:
"Might I recommend Darksteel Relic? It's the hockey puck that costs nothing and does even less."
Darksteel Relic? You mean "Ensoul Artifact target", the 5/5 indestructible for 2 mana?
@@calemr Well, in the episode they were building a cube of the worst cards possible, so I don't think Ensoul Artifact was in the list.
Phylactery Lich: "UNLIMITED POWER!"
How come the number 1 is a 2/2 with first strike and FASTING is not even on the list.
Would Break Open be useful against cards in MoM that transform into stronger cards and battle cards?
They aren’t considered face down, so unfortunately it wouldn’t work.
I just want to point out that when Great Wall was printed, there was only ONE other Plainswalk creature in the game, Righteous Avengers, a 3/1 Plainswalk for 5. The only other way you could encounter Plainswalk is if someone used Magical Hack to change a different "walk" creature to plainswalk. So the card was basically printed as a 3 mana counter for a single card that was terrible and no sane person would ever play.
Putting Common Cause ahead of it is kind of insulting. At least you can force Common Cause to work with a control deck.
Break Open was designed to turn up Morph cards to (potentially) neutralize turn face up effects that would fizzle with no target
Break Open can be useful on some (quite niche, that's true) occasions though...
Ascending Aven, Bane of the Living, Blistering Firecat, Charging Slateback, Foothill Guide, Hidden Dragonslayer Jeering Instigator, Karona's Zealot, Kolaghan Stormsinger, can be thrown off balance quite easily when prematurely opened, but none worse than Unstable Hulk, which then makes its controller skip his next turn... Which, if opened after the combat phase, means a second nearly free turn for the opponent
Scourge, the set Scornful Egotist was printed in, had a ""Highest Converted Mana Cost Among Your Permanents Matters" subtheme. The point of Egotist was to allow you to cheat your way to having an 8-mana permanent for only 4 mana across 2 turns.
It was an early example of a draft card, being a common meant to juice up this theme in your deck, and the mind games of having a morph out were just icing on the cake.
Did it work out? Not really. But that was the point, and the fact that you didn't do the research necessary to find that out is why this is a clickbait content mill channel.
Does apocalypse chime hit basic lands?
While master of arms is useless in a 1v1, as soon as you delve into multiplayer magic, taping the defender becomes a thing. Sometimes.
Imagine you had 6 open mana (3 of which is white) and the opponent blocks the Master of Arms with a Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (or any other annoying, high value creature - Atraxa, Grand Unifier comes to mind). You could spend two of the mana to tap the creature and then flash out Wandering Emperor to exile it. An interesting, potentially reusable and hardly useless combat trick. In fact, if this card were standard legal, I imagine some mono white decks would play it. With 6 open mana, blocking it with a high value card would be risky. It would fit into a Soldier deck nicely.
Apocalypse charm v2: destroy all permanents originally printed with the old card face, lmao. That would legit be super good imo
A bit too good since that includes basic lands
@@williamdrum9899 there is totally a way to word it to target everything but basic lands, but I couldn't parse it out quickly. If it leaves nonbasic lands alone, it could be reasonably playable
Did you check that set and compare it to what it fights about in it's set and year
Normally these videos compare to just modern Magic. But these cards in particular (except the ones where rules changed) were actually useless since day one.
It seems that common cause would be beneficial if your opponent had an empty board while yours was full of same color creatures
I can think of a fun build around with Wood Elemental + Awaken the Wood + a sac payoff, but that is a LOT of build around. It's not compleely useless with Awaken the Woods being a thing tho, if you absolutely positively want to build a sac deck in green for...reasons.
What a weird selection o.O
I was waiting for, at least, Zephyr Spirit, which is my favourite nice-looking-though-useless card ever ! Master of Arms was ... unexpected, btw.