personally if theres an april fools vid id hope it to be a Top 10 Silver Border video where he makes up fake formats where all the silver bordered cards are legal
The brownie is actually even worse than you think. Firstly, once a creature with banding attacks in a band, it can't be removed from the band while it's still in combat- which means you have to choose to remove banding BEFORE your opponent decides how they're going to attack. Secondly, the creature with "bands with others" removed can still join other bands. So it doesn't do ANYTHING if the opponent wants to attack with two creatures that both have "bands with others".
Now a creature can't be removed from a band once the band is declared, but back then if bands became illegal you were forced to redeclare them even in mid combat.
@@paolonicolacerea I can imagine the conversation when it came to changing that rule. Designer A: "Hang on, if we do it this way then we'll weaken Shelkin Brownie." Designer B: "Oh no! Anyway..."
So I see it like this: it's a hoser for a set-specific mechanic, like the Elderspell was in its set. (If you think back to all of those cards, they're mostly awful.)
Top 10 suggestions: Top 10 worst cards that made it into a pro tour deck. Top 10 best cards that never made it to a pro tour. Top 10 non-black zombies/non-red goblins/non-blue merfolk/non-green elves/non-white humans.
For number one take a look at Pro Tour New York 1996. You had to use 5 cards from every set in your deck, this included Homelands. As for number 2 there's a Top 10 list of bad cards that suddenly became good, it's probably the closest you're going to see to that
@@HippoInABottle junk draft can be pretty fun, my LGS ran it a few times as a way for people to trim down their collections. First picking Pillarfield Ox is quite an experience.
Ghost Hounds is an odd card. Even though it was printed in a time before the color pie was staunchly adhered to, seeing both vigilance and (sometimes) first strike on a black creature is so weird. I can't even think of another black creature with vigilance off the top of my head.
There are no other pure black cards with vigilance, besides Cairn Wanderer and Soulflayer, but those are the creatures that have ways of gaining keyword soup
For some reason Mogg Jailer really sticks out to me. Imagine opening a booster pack and getting a 2/2 with downside in your uncommon slot. Modern MtG sets still have their problems but I'm grateful they don't have this kind of garbage anymore.
Back in the day a 2/1 for 2 was standard, so it NEEDED a drawback for that extra point of toughness to make up for all those Eager Cadets it could block for days.
"The cautious are wary of their enemies. The wise are also wary of their friends." I often find it a pity that good art and good card names are wasted on bad cards but I realized that wasting good flavor text is even worse.
Spiteful Bully is an "interesting" design in the context of the block it's in and the mechanics surrounding it. It being a mercenary obviously means it can be tutored to field and with it's stat line it could make for an actual good block. Summoning it on your opponents combat allows you to trade down creatures, keep it, or dispose of it during the upkeep, which might trigger an effect. Black Market was in Mercadian Masque (a set around the same time as Spiteful Bully) and that card seems beneficial to the overall playstyle. Bully could also be regenerate fodder for the Mercenary boss monster. In a bubble it's bad, but, overall it just comes off as archaic in its attempt.
I played it years ago with Druid's Call, Saber Ants and Broodhatch Nantuko. I would be allowed to buff them up in 1/100 games so that they would actually survive :D
There's actually one other card with Bands with Other; Master of the Hunt creates wolf tokens named "Wolves of the Hunt" that have "Bands with other creatures named Wolves of the Hunt". That doesn't make Shelkin Brownie any better, but it is a thing. Also, I'm surprised that Goblin Firebug didn't make the list. It's basically Exiled Boggart but replace "discard a card" with "sacrifice a land", and it triggers whenever it leaves the battlefield for any reason. Did I mention it was released in the same block as Astral Slide?
The reason I am late is because in between working on my PC, I've been building a small Stonehenge model. Much like a bad 2 drop, it can be frustrating, but one can also appreciate it. I think I've probably put more effort into this model than the designer of Mogg Squad did into their card though. But what I think would be the most effort, and most rewarding, would be "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
shelkin brownie is actually even worse. since it's ability to turn of bands with others on exactly one creature doesn't actually do anything; firstly you'd need to use it before your opponent declared an attack, since a card can't be removed from a band, so it's bad at its own thing, but thats only the start of the terrible but more importantly, for bands with others, creatures of the Others type can just join the band of another attacking creature even if they do not have banding. though since the only way to get bands with others is to give it to all legends of the colour they can band with, it's a completly moot difference from regular bands in almost every instance, this one difference does mean even if shelkin brownie removes the ability from one legend for a turn, you can still make the exact same band by just using the other legend's bands with others... (if your insane I guess. or you can attack with 2 legends. and get more value)
For some of the first few cards on this list, I thought to myself, "Okay, **maybe** there's a very specific situation where this could somehow be useful..." But those last few...Hoo boy...There's no saving them!
For most of Magic's early history, it was pretty much decided that by flavor goblins would be mostly terrible. They translated their chaotic not-so-bright nature as "tend to seriously nerf themselves". You need something like a Goblin King to unify them. Flavorwise, it makes sense. Bunch of idiots who cannot do anything without someone to organize them. Then Wizards got better at building that kind of flavor into good cards.
I have to think Goblin Rock Sled was designed for The Dark because of Blood Moon. You weren’t probably expecting to attack more than once with it even with Blood Moon and it’s still a bad card, just figure it was intended to be a Blood Moon payoff
funnily enough banding is fairly powerful (if narrow) on defense, since multiblocking is something that happens somewhat often in the game anyways, and being able to do that with minimal to no punishment is a good effect. unfortunately for true banding fans the mechanic got retired before literally a single creature with an acceptable statline got the ability (the best you can do is a 1/1 for 1, which is pretty bad as a baseline).
Yeah, Banding's biggest problem is that Wizards treated the ability like it was very powerful. The ability is however only even useful regularly on creatures with high toughness, and they printed no such creatures because they thought they would be too good. Had Banding appeared on a few reasonably costed 1/3's, 2/4's or 3/5's, I think it would have been much better received.
Exiled Boggart could be useful in Madness, tho that still relies on your opponent destroying which they might not if they know you're playing a Madness deck
Goblin Rock Sled might not be powerful, but it's a flavor homerun. They can only attack if they have a mountain to slide down, and if they do they have to spend a turn climbing back up before they can do it again.
A question about Cephalid Snitch. If something like Progenitus or something, which has protection from MULTIPLE things, i.e. Protection from All Colors, or Monocolored, etc. Could Cephalid Snitch be used to cancel out part of a bigger protection? Or does it have to literally say "Protection From Black"? I know Cephalid cant be used on things that are protected from monocolored, I'm just using this as an example. Also, Rock Sled is funny because the turn where it doesn't untap is him climbing back up the hill.
In the early sets, before the major rule revisions, the Banding ability (which controls who assigns the damage points) was a counter to the Trample ability (which controls where damage point are assigned). The Trample ability was favored for the overkill damage point reassignment effect (because a player could win a game by creature death if their opponent's life point total reached 0). However, Banding deck players would argue that the Trample damage redirect effect was NOT automatic. And, since the banding player was in charge of damage assignments, they could choose to assign overkill damage to a player--OR NOT. So, since they would always choose NOT to assign overkill-trample damage to a player (and let the blocking creature take all the damage), this effectively reduced the power of Trample decks. ... But, as denial, burn, and recursion decks became the norm; creature players felt the entire concept of attack/block-in-a-bands was just too slow to pull off to be of any practical use in a comparative game.
I think you're a little confused as to the history of the rules regarding trample. In the days of yore, back when the rules were a wild west, Trample creatures had their excess damage redirected to the player automatically if it killed the blocker. One side effect of this meant that protection stopped trample cold, because all the damage would be prevented. It also meant that in a double block, you could ignore all but one of the blockers and trample over with almost everything. In the Urza's Saga rules changes, which were basically a tidbit of the 6th edition rules set that was released early because it didn't interact with the rest of the changes that were more pervasive, you had to assign damage to the player in order for it to go through, but this required putting lethal damage on ALL blockers. It was no longer stopped cold by protection, because the overkill damage was assigned to the player before protection prevented it, but it meant you actually had to go through all the blockers and not just one. So where does banding sit in with this? Banding was absolutely OP at blocking with the new trample rules. Since the player controlling the banding creatures assigned damage, they could just assign it all to one creature, and that damage would not get redirected to them as excess damage, because it wasn't assigned that way. My guess is that they waited until Saga to introduce this change so that there were no creatures with banding in Standard, the one format they might possibly see play in if the rules were changed earlier, as they had not been printed at all in Tempest block so once Mirage block rotated out Standard had no banding creatures. I'm not 100% sure how banding works with the post-damage-on-the-stack rules since I stopped playing for the most part right around the time that change was made, but I assume you can do something similar by just throwing it all on the first creature in the blocking order. What I don't know for sure is if the banding defender gets to choose the order of the blockers to receive damage.
@@stevenglowacki8576 Under current rules banding lets you, as defender, use old damage assignment rules applied towards your creatures, so you CAN do that, and you can also just deal less than lethal to a bunch of stuff and lose nothing.
Obviously. That doesn't make it good! It has a very narrow use and if you want to do stuffy doll stuff there are literally dozens of better enablers that are far more flexible.
The black goblin rover you mentioned on this thing is good for graveyard synergies. Trust me, I’m a budget player I can find uses for so-called bad cards.
You know this list is woefully bad when Mogg Flunkies and Goblin Elite Infantry evade the list. Yikes! Tarmogoyf looks like Black Lotus next to all these.
@@stevenglowacki8576 perhaps, but unlike some creatures that were good back in the early 2000s, it has aged terribly. For example, Wild Mongrel is still a good card, and if it were printed with support I could see it played in standard (perhaps), and it’s played in pauper. It’s not quite powerful enough for modern, but it’s still flexible and it enables powerful madness cards while making itself a threat. Mogg Flunkies is just bad; it’s one thing to not be able to attack alone, but requiring another creature to block with it means it can’t even chump block without getting you two for oned. When I was younger and playing “kitchen table” (started in RTR) I played with vanilla creatures like Vastwood Gorger and thought they were awesome. I even played with some of the original elder dragons and tried to make door to nothingness work (and I even pulled it off a few times). But I always laughed at Mogg Flunkies. Even as a child, I could never take it seriously. So in conclusion, perhaps it did have some success in Magic’s past alongside some cards that supported it well, but it’s never been good at face value and it will never see play again, as it hasn’t for years.
Back in the day, I placed second a sealed tournament for Tempest at my FLGS, and Mogg Squad was probably the MVP of the deck! My packs were strong in black creature removal and red direct damage and land destruction, so I had a lot of ways to shut my opponents' creature deployment down, and only ran a few creatures myself (including two of Mogg Squad). Its downside just didn't come up that much, because I could keep my opponents from getting enough creatures in play to kill it, and I wasn't worried about getting more creatures in play (I was happy just to beat them in the face with Mogg Squad). 🤣 Obviously though, this case is far and away the exception, not the rule. I would never play Mogg Squad in any constructed format, or in most limited events either. This just happened to be a sort of "perfect storm" that made it work with those particular cards. 🙂
I use Spiteful Bully in my Kresh commander deck. He can either pop off any tokens you've generated or just kill himself to give Kresh 3 +1/+1 counters.
I can think of a few useful scenarios for spiteful bully. Have a ill-tempered loner and a creature that can take 3 damage and live. Have a temple altisaur and a dinosaur with a good enrage ability like polyraptor (however you will need to run green white black for this).
Yes, but those situations are too narrow and the downside when you don't get the combo is massive. One can just run dozens of other cards that damage your stuff more effectively, so that's why the Bully doesn't see any play.
I could run mogg squad in many standard formats as a sideboard threat vs control in a spell heavy izzet piles. Especially if the control player plays stuff like shock, stomp, or disfigure Maybe that's the state of red creatures in current standard, white and green and even black get 2 mana 3/3's and 3/2's all over the place red has to deal with bad 2 mana 2/2's with some upside in RARE AND MYTHIC slots
I have literally only seen 1 card on this list in use I've only ever seen filthy cur in use once and that was in a deck I made 20+ years ago. Obviously my decision making has improved since then
Some of these cards have really good uses. Looking at them face value they appear bad but they're not in practice: Phantom Whelp - Great for recursion and giving blue constant blockers. Great for Folio of Fancies Mill decks that require a bunch of mana. Exiled Boggart - Literally one of the fastest methods for reanimation decks. Play Boggart, sacrifice it using village rites (draw two cards) discard a huge threat and reanimate. Or turn 4 blood for bones returning Boggart to hand and the threat to the battlefield, since boggart's sacrifice is on the stack you can discard your threat and bring it onto the battlefield instantly. Toxril or Sheoldred are the two I highly recommend for this combo. Spiteful Bully - STOP IT! No way this card is here. This is a staple in Black/Red burn decks using Brash Taunter/Mog Maniac combo. This is even better when it's attached with shadowspear (usually commander only) as now you gain 3 life while draining your opponent for 3.
All of these cards can be used how you suggest, but they are basically really bad versions of effects. Phantom Whelp can't block forever. If it dies, it's dead. So...yeah, not so much a constant blocker. And one of those is pretty terrible in the first place. If you need a bunch of mana, you don't want to recast the Whelp every turn. So, even if it did work that way, it wouldn't be good (though it wouldn't be on this list). The Boggart can set up reanimation, but to say it is "one of the fastest methods for reanimation decks" is utterly ridiculous. There are dozens of better ways to set up reanimation that don't require the additional help of an additional card like Village Rites. Things like Putrid Imp, Faithless Looting, Merfolk Looter, Entomb, Bazaar of Baghdad, Wild Mongrel...I could probably list a hundred if you want them. That's why no one bothers with the Boggart, which is in reality an absolutely terrible way to set up a reanimation deck. Meanwhile, the Bully can definitely work with Stuffy Doll and Brash Taunter, but so can hundreds of other cards without the massive downside of the Bully, which is really unwieldy when you don't have the other card in play, and an utter disaster and a dead card in many situations. Plus it isn't like any of those combos are actually all that great in the first place! If you want to use these bad cards, you can. But you are going to end up with the worst ways possible to up the kinds of things you suggest. You have a game with so many cards that you don't need to rely on these for anything, and that's good, because if the Boggart really was the key enabler for reanimator decks as you suggest...reanimator decks wouldn't exist!
Great list! However, Goblin Rock Sled isn't as bad as the others. The text box is terrible but it's still a 3/1 for 1R, just imagine it has defender and there's no other downside. Definitely bad, but not like these 1/1 creatures with a useless text box. It was fun seeing the card though, such a ridiculous attack condition!
Phantom Whelp isn't too bad. Lots of effects take place when something is exiled or put into play, so you can use this kind of card to essentially take advantage of this effect. It's highly situational, but not outright bad.
As a budget player and I mean really a budget player I don’t generally build decks especially in commander over 50 bucks. I have been pretty creative in finding homes for cards that are less than optimal.
I think I like that bogart, it allows you to cheat things into the graveyard and resurrect a more powerful card that you maybe could afford to cast naturally.
At least the art on Spiteful Bully is cool. I always laugh hard at the sight of a dude with, errr, significant disproportion between the sizes of his hands.
A better option would be to bring the deck your opponent is going to play. You would need rules to limit the amount of lands in the deck, as well as making sure that you can still win with it.
There is "back draft", where you draft the worst cards you can, and you give your pile of cards to each of your opponents to try to build as good of a deck as possible. If you do "well" at the draft part, it will be very hard for the opponent to make much use of the good cards you were forced to take in the end of each pack.
I’d argue banding is far from underpowered. Complicated yes, but it’s quite strong and tough to deal with in many cases, especially defensively as it effectively turns off trample.
It did under older versions of the rules, but it does not under current versions of the rules. Banding could be quite powerful if it appeared on appropriately costed cards with high toughness. In theory, it acts much like 'reconfigure' from the current KamiNeo set, only the cost of the reconfigure is free.
@@celebrim1 Pretty sure it still turns off trample. I'm looking at 701.21j and it's the defending player who assigns combat damage and 510.1c says you can assign more than lethal damage to a creature. So if you block a force of nature with a benalish hero, you can assign 8 damage to the hero. Personally I like to use mesa pegasus and benalish hero in my Taranika EDH deck. attack with taranika and hero as a band, benalish becomes 4/4 indestructible, assign all blocker damage to indestructible hero.
Banding was completely overpowered against trample after Urza's Saga major change in how trample worked (it previously redirected excess damage dealt to defenders to the defending player, which meant protection countered it completely, but you could ignore all but one blocker and get through for most of the damage). I don't know if it's been changed since the reversion of the "damage on the stack", but during that time Banding effectively negated Trample, unless the defender WANTED to get hit, perhaps because he'd prevent one damage on the creature to save it, and had enough life total to not worry about the damage on his face.
@@nathanwilliams2603 It's my understanding that Trample currently redirects 'damage above lethal' to the defending player, resulting in Banding being just a way to spread damage around a group of blockers to avoid the important ones dying.
@@conberate Bit of a late response but trample just gives the _option_ to assign damage to the player (once sufficient damage has been marked on the blockers) rather than applying automatically, so since a player blocking with banding chooses damage assignment they can choose to simply keep assigning that damage to the blocking creature rather than having it deal any to themselves. I'd recommend the video by "Judging FtW" on the topic of banding, it explains different scenarios like that very well.
People have tried to play with Spiteful Bully. I forget what they were trying to do. Direct the damage it does to a creature thst re-directs damage to your opponent? Who knows. Can’t remember but at least people have tried to play it.
The two that cost two mana aren't that bad, they are at least really efficient creatures! Fun fact, the Green one actually saw tons of tournament play!
Rogue Kavu's art is kinda disturbing. Also, back in the day most kavus were kinda bad (obviously aside from the then best creature in the game flametongue kavu). Also, I didn't knew that "banding" and "band with other" were different things.
One time a friend of mine got some mad to at he pulled another Runeclaw Bear that he tore it up. I was kinda new to the game, and wondered why he’d rip up a 2/2 for 2. Seemed fair to me
I think a big step in learning magic for me was learning that grizzly bears was a good card, especially when starring to play limited, learning efficiency as being as or more important than big splashy cards is a decent hurdle. I'm not sure that specific test still exists now with how much better creatures have gotten.
discard just means it goes to the graveyard not exile right? So couldn't exiled boggart be used to get creatures you want in the graveyard or just general graveyard loading? idk all the terms and strats but. i guess the issue is there are way better ways to do that then
Cards that I expected here were Squire and Vodalian Soldiers and maybe Omega Myr, just vanilla 1/2s for two mana. I would argue those are worse than some of the 2 or 3 power creatures in this list.
I’ve been curious: you use EDH data to discuss the worst cards and it’s also currently Magic’s most popular format. Have you considered starting to discuss the EDH playability and relevance of cards in your top 10 best card lists?
The top 10s are based on competative magic, so EDH numbers are not a relevant data point. It makes sense as a data point on worst lists because cards that seem bad in competitive play might be good in EDH and therefore can't be the worst of the worst, but it doesn't make sense in the opposite direction.
Huh, I figured most of this list would be all the bad 2/2s for 2 back when that was seen as a busted aggressive statline. Still got a few of those, but I thought there'd be more.
I would put Mad Dog ever so slightly ahead of the other two dogs, at least the red one can go in a Rin and Seri deck and make you a cat token. Still horrible though.
I'm surprised at some of the picks. Don't get me wrong, they are all bad, but some of them feels like they... fit certain archetypes. Like, Exiled Boggart would go in "graveyard matters" deck, and Spiteful Bully could be used to trigger Enrage. I expected something like Fleshmad Steed in their place
I have addressed those things in the comments in detail - but in short, yes, these cards can do stuff, but they are the worst version of such effects and there is no reason to run them over hundreds of better cards that are less narrow.
In defense of Shelkin Brownie (I mean not really but let's just pretend, ok) I *do* have an EDH deck that runs Adventurer's Guildhouse so if someone played that card against me I would be completely and utterly ruined without any hope of ever coming back from that situation. Ok, not really... But someone's gotta at least *try* defend the worst of the worst cards, right?
Definitely not "great." Better there, sure, but you would never run it when there are hundreds of better cards to load your graveyard/help you discard.
Ghost hounds is contemporary with "Order of X" B/W weenie decks, isn't it? Making sure your frontpumpable opponent dies sounds... ok. And I'm very happy Skulking Ghost isn't on this list, which shows you how bad I am at this game.
Exactly 15 cards in the entire block had or could grant protection from black, two of which can just be activated a second time. Realistically, it's function is as a 2 mana spell that chump blocks and gets you 1 closer to threshold in limited, which is honestly still playable in that format.
Yes, all of these cards could be run in X deck, but they aren't because they are horrible versions of the effects they offer. If you want to do stuffy doll shenanigans, you don't want the Bully because there are dozens of more controllable/less narrow ways to damage your own stuff.
Some of these cards är underpowered, but nice design. I'd love the rock slide as 3/2 for only red. But alot of these cards would be cool for 1 colored mana.
@@NizzahonMagic Weird, I wouldnt put it past em to have made one costing two different colours in Legends with how they costed some other vanilla cards in that one though.
I'm assuming this list is all really old cards or cards with good stats but massive downside. These days a bear with upside is the basics for 2 Drop stats
It's getting to be that time of year, so I'm once again suggesting that for April 1st you do a Top 10 Toppings video as Pizzahon
personally if theres an april fools vid id hope it to be a Top 10 Silver Border video where he makes up fake formats where all the silver bordered cards are legal
@@starduststriker8792 Or top 10 lands, basics included
@@Oimfiel across all formats, I think all 10 might be islands
Top 10 vintage (include power 9)
@@chelseys5192 I wanted to make this joke 🤣
The brownie is actually even worse than you think. Firstly, once a creature with banding attacks in a band, it can't be removed from the band while it's still in combat- which means you have to choose to remove banding BEFORE your opponent decides how they're going to attack. Secondly, the creature with "bands with others" removed can still join other bands. So it doesn't do ANYTHING if the opponent wants to attack with two creatures that both have "bands with others".
Now a creature can't be removed from a band once the band is declared, but back then if bands became illegal you were forced to redeclare them even in mid combat.
@@paolonicolacerea I can imagine the conversation when it came to changing that rule.
Designer A: "Hang on, if we do it this way then we'll weaken Shelkin Brownie."
Designer B: "Oh no! Anyway..."
So I see it like this: it's a hoser for a set-specific mechanic, like the Elderspell was in its set. (If you think back to all of those cards, they're mostly awful.)
At least Goblin Rock Slide is really flavorful. It takes a turn off to climb the mountain again.
hah! I didn't catch that half of the flavor, that's amazing XD
exactly what I thought of when I saw it
I was not ready for Mogg Squad's flavor text to be a Buffalo Springfield reference
Top 10 suggestions:
Top 10 worst cards that made it into a pro tour deck.
Top 10 best cards that never made it to a pro tour.
Top 10 non-black zombies/non-red goblins/non-blue merfolk/non-green elves/non-white humans.
For number one take a look at Pro Tour New York 1996. You had to use 5 cards from every set in your deck, this included Homelands.
As for number 2 there's a Top 10 list of bad cards that suddenly became good, it's probably the closest you're going to see to that
There’s something about the whimsy in terrible magic cards.
They would make for an interesting cube draft
@@HippoInABottle junk draft can be pretty fun, my LGS ran it a few times as a way for people to trim down their collections. First picking Pillarfield Ox is quite an experience.
Ghost Hounds is an odd card. Even though it was printed in a time before the color pie was staunchly adhered to, seeing both vigilance and (sometimes) first strike on a black creature is so weird. I can't even think of another black creature with vigilance off the top of my head.
There are no other pure black cards with vigilance, besides Cairn Wanderer and Soulflayer, but those are the creatures that have ways of gaining keyword soup
For some reason Mogg Jailer really sticks out to me. Imagine opening a booster pack and getting a 2/2 with downside in your uncommon slot. Modern MtG sets still have their problems but I'm grateful they don't have this kind of garbage anymore.
i mean, even today a draft pack is filled with 14 useless draft cards and one maybe constructed playable card.
@@ich3730 obviously not every card in a pack is Constructed worthy, but they can still work in Limited/Sealed.
@@ich3730 yea well atleast they are fun to draft.
Back in the day a 2/1 for 2 was standard, so it NEEDED a drawback for that extra point of toughness to make up for all those Eager Cadets it could block for days.
"The cautious are wary of their enemies. The wise are also wary of their friends."
I often find it a pity that good art and good card names are wasted on bad cards but I realized that wasting good flavor text is even worse.
Spiteful Bully is an "interesting" design in the context of the block it's in and the mechanics surrounding it. It being a mercenary obviously means it can be tutored to field and with it's stat line it could make for an actual good block. Summoning it on your opponents combat allows you to trade down creatures, keep it, or dispose of it during the upkeep, which might trigger an effect. Black Market was in Mercadian Masque (a set around the same time as Spiteful Bully) and that card seems beneficial to the overall playstyle. Bully could also be regenerate fodder for the Mercenary boss monster. In a bubble it's bad, but, overall it just comes off as archaic in its attempt.
Janky but usable.
Probably why its so low on the list.
Now that we have Stormwild Capridor, I feel like there might be room for Spiteful Bully in a jank deck that likes to do damage to its own creatures.
Also with abilities like Enrage or creatures like stuffy Doll, you can actually kind of give it some use.
I played it years ago with Druid's Call, Saber Ants and Broodhatch Nantuko. I would be allowed to buff them up in 1/100 games so that they would actually survive :D
There's actually one other card with Bands with Other; Master of the Hunt creates wolf tokens named "Wolves of the Hunt" that have "Bands with other creatures named Wolves of the Hunt". That doesn't make Shelkin Brownie any better, but it is a thing.
Also, I'm surprised that Goblin Firebug didn't make the list. It's basically Exiled Boggart but replace "discard a card" with "sacrifice a land", and it triggers whenever it leaves the battlefield for any reason. Did I mention it was released in the same block as Astral Slide?
As a fun casual deck years ago, made a Spiteful Bully - Stuffy Doll deck, actually fun, but obviously more synergies.
I respect that!
That sounds hilarious
The reason I am late is because in between working on my PC, I've been building a small Stonehenge model. Much like a bad 2 drop, it can be frustrating, but one can also appreciate it. I think I've probably put more effort into this model than the designer of Mogg Squad did into their card though. But what I think would be the most effort, and most rewarding, would be "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
shelkin brownie is actually even worse. since it's ability to turn of bands with others on exactly one creature doesn't actually do anything; firstly you'd need to use it before your opponent declared an attack, since a card can't be removed from a band, so it's bad at its own thing, but thats only the start of the terrible
but more importantly, for bands with others, creatures of the Others type can just join the band of another attacking creature even if they do not have banding. though since the only way to get bands with others is to give it to all legends of the colour they can band with, it's a completly moot difference from regular bands in almost every instance, this one difference does mean even if shelkin brownie removes the ability from one legend for a turn, you can still make the exact same band by just using the other legend's bands with others... (if your insane I guess. or you can attack with 2 legends. and get more value)
This is because of a rule change though it wasn't good before the change anyways
Gotta admit though, shelkin brownie has to be one of the funniest names for a non silver border card xd
For some of the first few cards on this list, I thought to myself, "Okay, **maybe** there's a very specific situation where this could somehow be useful..."
But those last few...Hoo boy...There's no saving them!
For most of Magic's early history, it was pretty much decided that by flavor goblins would be mostly terrible. They translated their chaotic not-so-bright nature as "tend to seriously nerf themselves".
You need something like a Goblin King to unify them.
Flavorwise, it makes sense. Bunch of idiots who cannot do anything without someone to organize them.
Then Wizards got better at building that kind of flavor into good cards.
I have to think Goblin Rock Sled was designed for The Dark because of Blood Moon. You weren’t probably expecting to attack more than once with it even with Blood Moon and it’s still a bad card, just figure it was intended to be a Blood Moon payoff
funnily enough banding is fairly powerful (if narrow) on defense, since multiblocking is something that happens somewhat often in the game anyways, and being able to do that with minimal to no punishment is a good effect. unfortunately for true banding fans the mechanic got retired before literally a single creature with an acceptable statline got the ability (the best you can do is a 1/1 for 1, which is pretty bad as a baseline).
Yeah, Banding's biggest problem is that Wizards treated the ability like it was very powerful. The ability is however only even useful regularly on creatures with high toughness, and they printed no such creatures because they thought they would be too good. Had Banding appeared on a few reasonably costed 1/3's, 2/4's or 3/5's, I think it would have been much better received.
1. Play Stuffy Doll
2. Play Spiteful Bully
3. ????
4. Profit
Exiled Boggart could be useful in Madness, tho that still relies on your opponent destroying which they might not if they know you're playing a Madness deck
"Summon Rock Sled"
Those were simpler times.
Spitefull Bully can work pretty well in Voodoo Doll decks as a free Lava Spike every turn.
I was actually searching for cards like these, thank you!
I still rock Goblin Rock Sled in my 1000-card Goblin Deck!
Goblin Rock Sled might not be powerful, but it's a flavor homerun. They can only attack if they have a mountain to slide down, and if they do they have to spend a turn climbing back up before they can do it again.
Spiteful Bully + Stuffy Doll seems like it would be some pretty fun jank
Phantom whelp seems like it could be good for triggering ETBs
A question about Cephalid Snitch. If something like Progenitus or something, which has protection from MULTIPLE things, i.e. Protection from All Colors, or Monocolored, etc. Could Cephalid Snitch be used to cancel out part of a bigger protection? Or does it have to literally say "Protection From Black"?
I know Cephalid cant be used on things that are protected from monocolored, I'm just using this as an example.
Also, Rock Sled is funny because the turn where it doesn't untap is him climbing back up the hill.
i suspect the blue dog is more common in EDH decks because blue just doesn't have as many 2/2s for 2 as black
I love the card Ghost Towns.
In the early sets, before the major rule revisions, the Banding ability (which controls who assigns the damage points) was a counter to the Trample ability (which controls where damage point are assigned). The Trample ability was favored for the overkill damage point reassignment effect (because a player could win a game by creature death if their opponent's life point total reached 0). However, Banding deck players would argue that the Trample damage redirect effect was NOT automatic. And, since the banding player was in charge of damage assignments, they could choose to assign overkill damage to a player--OR NOT. So, since they would always choose NOT to assign overkill-trample damage to a player (and let the blocking creature take all the damage), this effectively reduced the power of Trample decks. ... But, as denial, burn, and recursion decks became the norm; creature players felt the entire concept of attack/block-in-a-bands was just too slow to pull off to be of any practical use in a comparative game.
I think you're a little confused as to the history of the rules regarding trample. In the days of yore, back when the rules were a wild west, Trample creatures had their excess damage redirected to the player automatically if it killed the blocker. One side effect of this meant that protection stopped trample cold, because all the damage would be prevented. It also meant that in a double block, you could ignore all but one of the blockers and trample over with almost everything. In the Urza's Saga rules changes, which were basically a tidbit of the 6th edition rules set that was released early because it didn't interact with the rest of the changes that were more pervasive, you had to assign damage to the player in order for it to go through, but this required putting lethal damage on ALL blockers. It was no longer stopped cold by protection, because the overkill damage was assigned to the player before protection prevented it, but it meant you actually had to go through all the blockers and not just one.
So where does banding sit in with this? Banding was absolutely OP at blocking with the new trample rules. Since the player controlling the banding creatures assigned damage, they could just assign it all to one creature, and that damage would not get redirected to them as excess damage, because it wasn't assigned that way. My guess is that they waited until Saga to introduce this change so that there were no creatures with banding in Standard, the one format they might possibly see play in if the rules were changed earlier, as they had not been printed at all in Tempest block so once Mirage block rotated out Standard had no banding creatures. I'm not 100% sure how banding works with the post-damage-on-the-stack rules since I stopped playing for the most part right around the time that change was made, but I assume you can do something similar by just throwing it all on the first creature in the blocking order. What I don't know for sure is if the banding defender gets to choose the order of the blockers to receive damage.
@@stevenglowacki8576 Under current rules banding lets you, as defender, use old damage assignment rules applied towards your creatures, so you CAN do that, and you can also just deal less than lethal to a bunch of stuff and lose nothing.
I could see spiteful bully working on a B/R dinosaur deck if we ever get more enrage effects, though there’s definitely better ways of self damage
At least Mogg Jailor is balanced by the fact that it's an Uncommon.
I swore Shelkin Brownie was from Homelands, it's just so fitting for that set.
Spiteful Bully could work with stuffy doll for repeatable bolt to your opponent
Obviously. That doesn't make it good! It has a very narrow use and if you want to do stuffy doll stuff there are literally dozens of better enablers that are far more flexible.
Shoutouts to that one guy running Mogg Squad in an EDH deck.
That one guy is probably a meme deck
I bought my first ever magic singles after a nizzahon video. It was the dragon spirit cycle from Kamigawa. Still love them and play them.
The black goblin rover you mentioned on this thing is good for graveyard synergies. Trust me, I’m a budget player I can find uses for so-called bad cards.
You know this list is woefully bad when Mogg Flunkies and Goblin Elite Infantry evade the list. Yikes! Tarmogoyf looks like Black Lotus next to all these.
Mogg Flunkies was played quite a lot in Standard, and maybe even Extended. It was very good friends with Jackal Pup and Mogg Fanatic.
@@stevenglowacki8576 perhaps, but unlike some creatures that were good back in the early 2000s, it has aged terribly. For example, Wild Mongrel is still a good card, and if it were printed with support I could see it played in standard (perhaps), and it’s played in pauper. It’s not quite powerful enough for modern, but it’s still flexible and it enables powerful madness cards while making itself a threat. Mogg Flunkies is just bad; it’s one thing to not be able to attack alone, but requiring another creature to block with it means it can’t even chump block without getting you two for oned. When I was younger and playing “kitchen table” (started in RTR) I played with vanilla creatures like Vastwood Gorger and thought they were awesome. I even played with some of the original elder dragons and tried to make door to nothingness work (and I even pulled it off a few times). But I always laughed at Mogg Flunkies. Even as a child, I could never take it seriously. So in conclusion, perhaps it did have some success in Magic’s past alongside some cards that supported it well, but it’s never been good at face value and it will never see play again, as it hasn’t for years.
Back in the day, I placed second a sealed tournament for Tempest at my FLGS, and Mogg Squad was probably the MVP of the deck! My packs were strong in black creature removal and red direct damage and land destruction, so I had a lot of ways to shut my opponents' creature deployment down, and only ran a few creatures myself (including two of Mogg Squad). Its downside just didn't come up that much, because I could keep my opponents from getting enough creatures in play to kill it, and I wasn't worried about getting more creatures in play (I was happy just to beat them in the face with Mogg Squad). 🤣
Obviously though, this case is far and away the exception, not the rule. I would never play Mogg Squad in any constructed format, or in most limited events either. This just happened to be a sort of "perfect storm" that made it work with those particular cards. 🙂
I use Spiteful Bully in my Kresh commander deck. He can either pop off any tokens you've generated or just kill himself to give Kresh 3 +1/+1 counters.
I love this séries of "worst.." are simple the best ;)
I can think of a few useful scenarios for spiteful bully. Have a ill-tempered loner and a creature that can take 3 damage and live. Have a temple altisaur and a dinosaur with a good enrage ability like polyraptor (however you will need to run green white black for this).
Yes, but those situations are too narrow and the downside when you don't get the combo is massive. One can just run dozens of other cards that damage your stuff more effectively, so that's why the Bully doesn't see any play.
Once you see it on Spiteful Bully...you can't unsee it.
Spiteful Bully actually has Stuffy Doll for his punching bag
I could run mogg squad in many standard formats as a sideboard threat vs control in a spell heavy izzet piles. Especially if the control player plays stuff like shock, stomp, or disfigure
Maybe that's the state of red creatures in current standard, white and green and even black get 2 mana 3/3's and 3/2's all over the place red has to deal with bad 2 mana 2/2's with some upside in RARE AND MYTHIC slots
I have literally only seen 1 card on this list in use I've only ever seen filthy cur in use once and that was in a deck I made 20+ years ago. Obviously my decision making has improved since then
Some of these cards have really good uses. Looking at them face value they appear bad but they're not in practice:
Phantom Whelp - Great for recursion and giving blue constant blockers. Great for Folio of Fancies Mill decks that require a bunch of mana.
Exiled Boggart - Literally one of the fastest methods for reanimation decks. Play Boggart, sacrifice it using village rites (draw two cards) discard a huge threat and reanimate. Or turn 4 blood for bones returning Boggart to hand and the threat to the battlefield, since boggart's sacrifice is on the stack you can discard your threat and bring it onto the battlefield instantly. Toxril or Sheoldred are the two I highly recommend for this combo.
Spiteful Bully - STOP IT! No way this card is here. This is a staple in Black/Red burn decks using Brash Taunter/Mog Maniac combo. This is even better when it's attached with shadowspear (usually commander only) as now you gain 3 life while draining your opponent for 3.
All of these cards can be used how you suggest, but they are basically really bad versions of effects.
Phantom Whelp can't block forever. If it dies, it's dead. So...yeah, not so much a constant blocker. And one of those is pretty terrible in the first place. If you need a bunch of mana, you don't want to recast the Whelp every turn. So, even if it did work that way, it wouldn't be good (though it wouldn't be on this list).
The Boggart can set up reanimation, but to say it is "one of the fastest methods for reanimation decks" is utterly ridiculous. There are dozens of better ways to set up reanimation that don't require the additional help of an additional card like Village Rites. Things like Putrid Imp, Faithless Looting, Merfolk Looter, Entomb, Bazaar of Baghdad, Wild Mongrel...I could probably list a hundred if you want them. That's why no one bothers with the Boggart, which is in reality an absolutely terrible way to set up a reanimation deck.
Meanwhile, the Bully can definitely work with Stuffy Doll and Brash Taunter, but so can hundreds of other cards without the massive downside of the Bully, which is really unwieldy when you don't have the other card in play, and an utter disaster and a dead card in many situations. Plus it isn't like any of those combos are actually all that great in the first place!
If you want to use these bad cards, you can. But you are going to end up with the worst ways possible to up the kinds of things you suggest. You have a game with so many cards that you don't need to rely on these for anything, and that's good, because if the Boggart really was the key enabler for reanimator decks as you suggest...reanimator decks wouldn't exist!
Spiteful Bully might be good with a Stuffy Doll.
It might be good in Dinosaur tribal too!
O guess in enrage decks can be a really good card!!
Or brash taunter
Great list! However, Goblin Rock Sled isn't as bad as the others. The text box is terrible but it's still a 3/1 for 1R, just imagine it has defender and there's no other downside. Definitely bad, but not like these 1/1 creatures with a useless text box. It was fun seeing the card though, such a ridiculous attack condition!
Phantom Whelp isn't too bad. Lots of effects take place when something is exiled or put into play, so you can use this kind of card to essentially take advantage of this effect. It's highly situational, but not outright bad.
It isn't like it can block forever though, if it dies in combat it stays dead, so you don't get much value out of it.
I feel kind of bad for the Exiled Boggart. He looks so sad.
So do I, but then again, he was a selfish boggart who did not wanted to share new experiences or discoveries
As a budget player and I mean really a budget player I don’t generally build decks especially in commander over 50 bucks. I have been pretty creative in finding homes for cards that are less than optimal.
I think I like that bogart, it allows you to cheat things into the graveyard and resurrect a more powerful card that you maybe could afford to cast naturally.
There are dozens of better ways to do that though, and it isn't particularly good at it in the first place, since it has to die.
At least the art on Spiteful Bully is cool. I always laugh hard at the sight of a dude with, errr, significant disproportion between the sizes of his hands.
is there a gamemode where you have to construct the worst possible deck and lose with it (without intentionally throwing)?
A better option would be to bring the deck your opponent is going to play. You would need rules to limit the amount of lands in the deck, as well as making sure that you can still win with it.
There is "back draft", where you draft the worst cards you can, and you give your pile of cards to each of your opponents to try to build as good of a deck as possible. If you do "well" at the draft part, it will be very hard for the opponent to make much use of the good cards you were forced to take in the end of each pack.
spiteful bully is like, exclusively good with stuffy doll
The very first booster I ever opened had the Rock Sled in it. It's terrible, but at least the art's okay.
I’d argue banding is far from underpowered. Complicated yes, but it’s quite strong and tough to deal with in many cases, especially defensively as it effectively turns off trample.
It did under older versions of the rules, but it does not under current versions of the rules.
Banding could be quite powerful if it appeared on appropriately costed cards with high toughness. In theory, it acts much like 'reconfigure' from the current KamiNeo set, only the cost of the reconfigure is free.
@@celebrim1 Pretty sure it still turns off trample. I'm looking at 701.21j and it's the defending player who assigns combat damage and 510.1c says you can assign more than lethal damage to a creature. So if you block a force of nature with a benalish hero, you can assign 8 damage to the hero.
Personally I like to use mesa pegasus and benalish hero in my Taranika EDH deck. attack with taranika and hero as a band, benalish becomes 4/4 indestructible, assign all blocker damage to indestructible hero.
Banding was completely overpowered against trample after Urza's Saga major change in how trample worked (it previously redirected excess damage dealt to defenders to the defending player, which meant protection countered it completely, but you could ignore all but one blocker and get through for most of the damage). I don't know if it's been changed since the reversion of the "damage on the stack", but during that time Banding effectively negated Trample, unless the defender WANTED to get hit, perhaps because he'd prevent one damage on the creature to save it, and had enough life total to not worry about the damage on his face.
@@nathanwilliams2603 It's my understanding that Trample currently redirects 'damage above lethal' to the defending player, resulting in Banding being just a way to spread damage around a group of blockers to avoid the important ones dying.
@@conberate Bit of a late response but trample just gives the _option_ to assign damage to the player (once sufficient damage has been marked on the blockers) rather than applying automatically, so since a player blocking with banding chooses damage assignment they can choose to simply keep assigning that damage to the blocking creature rather than having it deal any to themselves. I'd recommend the video by "Judging FtW" on the topic of banding, it explains different scenarios like that very well.
Phantom Welp would be actually good in a budget blank deck that contains blue
Back in the day, Cyclopean Mummy could be on this list. Much more useful card now with "dies" triggers and things like Desecrated Tomb.
People have tried to play with Spiteful Bully. I forget what they were trying to do. Direct the damage it does to a creature thst re-directs damage to your opponent? Who knows. Can’t remember but at least people have tried to play it.
My dishonorable mentions are Balduvian Hydra and Deathknell Kami.
I was expecting to see Squire from The Dark on this list.
I love Exiled Boggart, its bad but I love the art and I pulled a bajillion during Lorwyn days
Only one of these I'd consider buying is Ghost Hounds, and that would be for the art.
Hey, where is the Invasion Leeches cycle? Those needed to be in the list!
The two that cost two mana aren't that bad, they are at least really efficient creatures!
Fun fact, the Green one actually saw tons of tournament play!
The boggart could have some utility in a madness deck. Still not amazing, but it has a small niche at least
spiteful bully could be fun with stuffy doll, but that's extremely narrow use (and a ridiculous long shot in EDH)
Brash Taunter joins that list too.
Rogue Kavu's art is kinda disturbing. Also, back in the day most kavus were kinda bad (obviously aside from the then best creature in the game flametongue kavu). Also, I didn't knew that "banding" and "band with other" were different things.
One time a friend of mine got some mad to at he pulled another Runeclaw Bear that he tore it up. I was kinda new to the game, and wondered why he’d rip up a 2/2 for 2. Seemed fair to me
I think a big step in learning magic for me was learning that grizzly bears was a good card, especially when starring to play limited, learning efficiency as being as or more important than big splashy cards is a decent hurdle. I'm not sure that specific test still exists now with how much better creatures have gotten.
discard just means it goes to the graveyard not exile right? So couldn't exiled boggart be used to get creatures you want in the graveyard or just general graveyard loading? idk all the terms and strats but.
i guess the issue is there are way better ways to do that then
Oona's Prowler is a much better discard outlet at the same mana value, and it's from the same set as the exiled bogart.
@@mrgarneau4895 makes sense
Cards that I expected here were Squire and Vodalian Soldiers and maybe Omega Myr, just vanilla 1/2s for two mana. I would argue those are worse than some of the 2 or 3 power creatures in this list.
I would rather have vanilla 1/2s than anything on this list
Ok hear me out... spiteful bully + stuffydoll. 😏
I’ve been curious: you use EDH data to discuss the worst cards and it’s also currently Magic’s most popular format. Have you considered starting to discuss the EDH playability and relevance of cards in your top 10 best card lists?
The top 10s are based on competative magic, so EDH numbers are not a relevant data point. It makes sense as a data point on worst lists because cards that seem bad in competitive play might be good in EDH and therefore can't be the worst of the worst, but it doesn't make sense in the opposite direction.
I still suggest too ten sideboard
Shelkin Brownie looks so cool. It's a shame it is almost entirely useless.
Next time the worst cards cards that were never printed
Huh, I figured most of this list would be all the bad 2/2s for 2 back when that was seen as a busted aggressive statline. Still got a few of those, but I thought there'd be more.
2/2 for 2 was never a busted statline lol.
@@Zuranthium OK fine not busted but it took red and black a while before they got to have grizzly bears without downsides.
Spiteful bully in a brash taunter deck tho
I would put Mad Dog ever so slightly ahead of the other two dogs, at least the red one can go in a Rin and Seri deck and make you a cat token. Still horrible though.
I'm surprised at some of the picks. Don't get me wrong, they are all bad, but some of them feels like they... fit certain archetypes. Like, Exiled Boggart would go in "graveyard matters" deck, and Spiteful Bully could be used to trigger Enrage. I expected something like Fleshmad Steed in their place
I have addressed those things in the comments in detail - but in short, yes, these cards can do stuff, but they are the worst version of such effects and there is no reason to run them over hundreds of better cards that are less narrow.
i wonder if there's a statline where mogg squad becomes a decent card
A 4-mana 8/8 with Trample or something like that might be interesting. Still not great though.
In defense of Shelkin Brownie (I mean not really but let's just pretend, ok) I *do* have an EDH deck that runs Adventurer's Guildhouse so if someone played that card against me I would be completely and utterly ruined without any hope of ever coming back from that situation.
Ok, not really... But someone's gotta at least *try* defend the worst of the worst cards, right?
Cephalid Snitch is ok against Sword of Feast and Famine 🤷 lol
Worse 2 drops yet the exiled bogart is great in a graveyard based deck
Definitely not "great." Better there, sure, but you would never run it when there are hundreds of better cards to load your graveyard/help you discard.
Goblin Rock Sled is flavor win
Ghost hounds is contemporary with "Order of X" B/W weenie decks, isn't it? Making sure your frontpumpable opponent dies sounds... ok.
And I'm very happy Skulking Ghost isn't on this list, which shows you how bad I am at this game.
Skulking Ghost saw plenty of competitive play back in the day in Mono-Black aggro.
You misunderstand. Mogg Squad is a control finisher. Obviously.
Lawl
The snitch was printed in a set where almost 50% of the cards were black
Exactly 15 cards in the entire block had or could grant protection from black, two of which can just be activated a second time. Realistically, it's function is as a 2 mana spell that chump blocks and gets you 1 closer to threshold in limited, which is honestly still playable in that format.
Spiteful bully could be used in a deck running stuffy doll. Just playing devil's advocate here.
Yes, all of these cards could be run in X deck, but they aren't because they are horrible versions of the effects they offer. If you want to do stuffy doll shenanigans, you don't want the Bully because there are dozens of more controllable/less narrow ways to damage your own stuff.
@@NizzahonMagic So true. Nizzahon 1 - Pack Rat 0.
Some of these cards är underpowered, but nice design. I'd love the rock slide as 3/2 for only red. But alot of these cards would be cool for 1 colored mana.
How could you ever diss my boy exiled boggart, he’s already sad why you gotta hurt him more
Place 1 essentially is a 0/0 with no upside.
Thank God the Commander format came along to nerf the unstoppable “Mogg Squad Winter”.
Dude you ever down like a lot of good beer? Might make things interestin...... ...
predicting a list full of vanilla 2 mana 1/1's
There aren't very many of those. May not be any, in fact.
@@NizzahonMagic Weird, I wouldnt put it past em to have made one costing two different colours in Legends with how they costed some other vanilla cards in that one though.
Treacherous Pit Dweller is really high up there for me, I really hate that card XD;;
Filthy Cur + Harmless Offering + Star of Extinction=not that bad of a combo, considering we use one of the worst card ever in it xd
I'm assuming this list is all really old cards or cards with good stats but massive downside. These days a bear with upside is the basics for 2 Drop stats
Goblin rock sled is good. It has trample
lawl