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Hello folks and welcome back. The first set, Alpha, set a lot of trends and concepts. It established the color wheel. The core concepts of the game. And yes, there have been a few changes to rules since then, such as the loss of card types like interrupts and poly artifacts, but very little comparatively. This was such a well-designed game!
The initial pieces of the game were so compelling that we often forget to just how they did real justice to the game. I think this is especially true due to the first couple of sets having a few mistakes in them. People look at the overpowered Power Nine, and see cards like Mox Pearl and Sol Ring as clear mistakes. Spells such as Balance, Time Walk, and Mind Twist are viewed as way too powerful, while the ante mechanic was unpopular from multiple angles.
But there were no overpowered creatures. The game shipped with a good chunk of solid creatures, and there was a layer of weaker stuff as well. The game would eventually push the quality of the rest of their creatures to the power level of the top echelon of critters in Alpha.
Now the creatures in here are among the most iconic in the game. For the most part, creatures were made right.
So, among these iconic players, what are the best? And where do they land?
What are the top ten creatures from the first set that shipped with the game? And where do they fall on that list? These are great questions!
Let’s take a look below:
Honorable Mention – Nightmare
This is an awesome card! It can be one of the best creatures in the era with the right build. And, by the way, it was the rare in my first booster pack too. Pretty cool, right? Anyways, the idea of fleshing out this design by running a lot of Swamps and thus committing to Black was very important to success. Check out Drain Life for another card that rewarded you for your selling out service to Black.
10. Lord of Atlantis, Goblin King
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Magic shipped with a tribal theme in Zombies, Goblins, and Merfolk. But the last two had great Lords that pumped their creature type in size as well as giving them landwalk. Both of these are solid, although the cheaper Lord of Atlantis is clearly the best. I suspect Goblin King cost another mana because there were twice as many Goblins in the first set as Merfolk, thus making him more effective. Get your Tribe on!
9. Black Knight, White Knight
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The Knights are back, and this time, it’s serious! Get ready everyone, the Knights are here to party. They are designed to reflect each other. They each evoked entire archetypes later, as aggro grew up around White Knight and Black Knight, with Crusade and Savannah Lions on one side, and Bad Moon and Dark Ritual on the other. They were strong, and the first strike ability was great at holding down some impressive battles, and the protection would often show up and really help randomly. It’s Knight Time again!
8. Royal Assassin
Other than this entry, virtually no other tap-creatures made the list. But this had a powerful impact on the board, often stopping attacks single-handedly. No one wants to lose two creatures because they attacked you. (They attack. You tap and kill one. After you untap, you tap and kill another). It’s a powerful force for decks everywhere, and was heavily desired, and yet pretty fragile. One of just a handful of expensive 1/1 creatures that just dominated a table. Let’s hear it for our good friend, and my favorite artist who captured the Assassin in watercolor.
7. Mahamoti Djinn
Big, dumb, flyer. That’s pretty much the Djinn in a nutshell. I know it’s a French vanilla creature, but that’s okay. Big dumb flyers win the game. They trade or outright kill every flying creature in combat save for Lord of the Pit and a big, giant Nightmare. They were often the most commonly targeted by the creatures below at #6. These big, dumb, flyers dominated the game in a major way on the battlefield!
6. Clone, Vesuvan Doppelganger
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Score one for the Clones! They copy! And the Doppelganger will copy something and change each upkeep. My favorite trick, of course, was to Clone a Doppelganger. These guys were seriously serious. I can remember a big fat Blue deck often running a few Djinns, 4 Clones, and 2 Doppelgangers. These are great as creature equilibrium. If your foe has a fat Clockwork Beast, now you do as well! Whatever your opponent’s best creature of the moment is, you now have. Or you can just double down on your own goodness, whichever makes more sense. They are flexible, powerful, and fun!
5. Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves
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If you want to play Magic, then you need to make the right mana so you can cast your spells. Force of Nature isn’t going to do anything for you without casting it and upkeeping it. The same is true for a litany of great stuff all over the block. You can’t play stuff until you can produce the resources to play stuff. These two 1-drops are perfect at that. Their presence guaranteed that Green never had to worry as much about their curve. You were guaranteed a 3-drop on the 2nd turn, a 4-drop on the 3rd, and so forth. It’s basically a Time Walk in Birds of Paradise form. You’ve got this.
4. Sengir Vampire
One of the things I learned by playing Sengir Vampire is how an ability on a creature will scare people into playing around it, and lose as a result. For the most part, the creatures of this era were 4 powered flying threats (or fewer) and/or with 4 toughness’es. Air Elemental. Phantasmal Forces. Serra Angel. And getting just one +1/+1 counter on our good Sengir Vampire would be enough to kill Wall of Air, Wall of Swords and stuff, to win in battles vs all 4 power or toughness’s, and to trade with bigger stuff. In order to keep that math from happening, people would play around the Sengir, and often do such a bad job that you could win.
3. Serra Angel
By the time that the first expansion sets were hitting, and Unlimited was replaced by Revised, and tournaments become more regular, Serra Angel was arguably the most played of these creatures, due to her threat level and consistency in defense as well as offense. She became a key winning ingredient for decks like Stasis, Prison (built around Winter Orb, Relic Barrier, and such), and The Deck, a winning control deck with Moat running around. She wound up as the dominant force in tournaments later. But our good Serra Angel was always on point, and always doing something. Now I think she was third in strength for the era. She was never feared like #1, and she could not handle the bigger boys like #2 and #7. But she was great. And we all knew it. Especially Douglas Schuler.
2. Shivan Dragon
Anyone who disagrees with my #1 choice below really has just two other options, two other choices for the best creature from the era. But Shivan Dragon was a real winner. Now, as a quick reminder, in the first set, Red had a lot of flying. Don’t believe me? Here:
Potentially Stone Giant throwing something into the air
Compare this to Blue’s list:
Or White:
Black:
Green:
That’s right, White had just two non-Wall flyers that could attack, and Green had two non-zero power creatures that could swing as well, and both had a 1/1 chump. Black, Blue, and Red all had five (ish) flyers, and each had one creature weak for swinging.
Fun to see the context right?
I digress. Shivan Dragon rules that list. How many creatures can kill a Dragon? An inflated Dragon Whelp, Cockatrice, Mahamoti Djinn, Lord of the Pit. Maybe a Nightmare. That’s it. Of that list, all of them will trade with the Shivan Dragon.No one survives an encounter with a Shivan Dragon, assuming you have the mana for a pump. Your Dragon is the best flying threat and game-winning creature in the first set. It’s your top end closer. Your game winner. And with some firebreathing, I’ve often killed in just two turns after you start getting home. It plays well with Red burn too.
1. Hypnotic Specter
No one questions Hypnotic Specter being on this list or getting high on it. But I might get a little pushback from it topping the list. Get over it. This is the best and most dangerous card from the first set. No card in Magic exists in a vacuum, not even a basic land. They all work together. This is the era of Dark Ritual, a card so powerful it warped games around it, and the Specter is the reason why. It was the most feared creature during its era. Do you have Lightning Bolt? No? Do you have Swords to Plowshares? No? Good game! Not really, a lot of folks would play it out, hoping the random discard would leave them other outs. But you get the idea. And even later on turn three, it’s strong. I remember getting two at a Magic 2010 draft, and let’s just say it didn’t matter what else I rocked. Specters are awesome, and have heavily influenced the game since being printed.
There is a lot of depth here, and creatures like Juggernaut, Savannah Lions, Clockwork Beast, Cockatrice, Dragon Whelp, Thicket Basilisk, Craw Wurm, Force of Nature, Sedge Troll, and more are not on here.
So, what did you think of my list? What are the best creatures from Alpha? What did I miss? What creatures do you love?
