Have you ever watched a movie that’s so bad, it’s gone past the event horizon and come out the other side as somehow good again? These movies aren’t just bad. They are epically bad. They have succeeded at being some of the worst films of all time. Of the thousands of movies ever made, some are just so bad they aren’t worthy of the film they were printed upon.

And that’s the way of Magic, as well. With 18,000 game pieces and growing, Magic has some that are really, really bad. Some were designed bad on purpose, like Mindless Null, which was created to be bad from the beginning. Other’s just sort of fell into it by mistake. They were neutered due to a fear of how powerful their mechanic might be.

Some cards are so bad it’s epic. They push you to do wonky things on purpose. So no Magic card here is so bad that you can’t play it. In fact, I’m sure there are some Johnny players out there that see this list as challenge to build some decks around these cards, and that’s fine by me!

Some cards might look bad at first, but are designed to be fuel for Johnny deck-builders — Scornful Egotist, Ornithopter, Kobolds of Kher Keep. Stuff like that. In a box by itself, Cloudstone Curio is a pretty weak card. Why would I want to bounce my own stuff? But with a variety of cards with enters-the-battlefield triggers and more fun times, you can see what there is to see, you know? Scornful Egotist was designed to work with cards like Torrent of Fire and Rush of Knowledge.

So let’s get started.

10. Bad Mechanic Hosers (Nine-Ringed Bo, Tombfire, Root Cage, Trapfinder's Trick, etc)

There are a number of mechanics Wizards of the Coast were clearly worried about when they printed them. So they printed in-set answers to those mechanics. While some of those answers were clever, many of them were blatant sledgehammers designed to blow out the mechanic. Often, those cards were really, really bad themselves. There’s a whole litany of this crap. Take Odyssey’s Tombfire as an iconic example. It’s clearly an answer for Flashback. Pay 1 mana, and then target player exiles the various Flashback cards in their graveyard. But outside of a potential sideboard card for tournaments designed to keep Flashback in check, it has no use. It even sucks as a Flashback hoser! Flashback would have to be seriously dire if Tombfire were to have any merit. (Want to hose Flashback, try in-set Catalyst Stone, of any color, and it helps your own as well). You can also see some similar subpar cards like Root Cage here as well. Because the handful of Mercenaries printed in Masques Block were just too powerful. What if Molten Harpy Black gets out of hand? You have to have an answer!

9. Mudhole

Mudhole has an epic reputation for being bad. Now I want to be fair. I have played Mudhole. I had Mudhole in my wishboard for Cunning Wish back when lands had a tendency to get graveyard abuse with stuff like Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds. I would cast Cunning Wish and grab Mudhole and play it as an instant to slow that engine down. But that deck was an Izzet-only deck, and thus I couldn’t play instant graveyard removal stuff that’s better (like Rakdos Charm or Ravenous Trap).

8. Chimney Imp / Aven Trooper / Viashino Skeleton / Takeno's Cavalry

There are a number of small, expensive Limited commons that are both very weak and tend to be tied, often loosely, to a mechanic in the set. Take Takeno's Cavalry, a 1/1 for 4 mana that can tap to shoot an attacking or blocking Spirit for a mighty one damage while swinging for one itself (unless it’s blocked, and then you get a 2/2 for our 4 mana investment). It’s clearly bad Limited fodder. Viashino Skeleton has an off-color activation cost which requires you to discard a card to regenerate it and it’s numbers are very weak. But you can see where they were going with stuff like the Unearth mechanic. Aven Trooper was in an era where Madness was a thing, so it’s a very, very bad Madness enabler. You can see the hunt of where the developers were going with the card, even though they clearly went off the rails there.

7. Great Wall and other Landwalk hosers vs Aysen Highway and Hidden Path

You’ll regularly see these cards on a lot of “Worst of . . . ” lists. There was precisely one card Great Wall shut down when It was printed: Righteous Avengers. That’s not exactly a sterling recommendation of power. There was a whole cycle of Great Wall enchantments in Legends, one in each color. Not only were they bad then, but Staff of the Ages does the same thing for all landwalking (even Desertwalking) and it’s an artifact too boot. So Great Wall? Yeah ,we feel you. And there’s another set of cards you’ll commonly see here, Aysen Highway and Hidden Path from Homelands. These are both very expensive cards at 6 mana, and they give your whole White team Plainswalk or the Green team Forestwalk. But they give all creatures those abilities, so you can be ‘walked back. So if it works at all, it can be used against you. That’s bad. I mean we normally give landwalk to creatures as a gentle way of hosing other colors like Anaconda and River Boa. It’d be one thing is Hidden Path were a Black enchantment that hosed Green for 6 mana. But this? Wow. Even Lumbering Satyr is 4 mana and gives you a 5/4 body to work with.

But those are at least permanents that let you manipulate a board. What about the temporary and weak Part Water?

Also, some cards got a lot worse after rules changes. Take Vibrating Sphere. You used to be able to run it on your turn to pump your stuff in the front, and then tap it, which turned it off. Originally, artifacts that were tapped were turned off, and that was the rule until 6th Edition. All you needed was to find a way to tap it and you’d be fine (like Icy Manipulator or Relic Barrier). So someone heading to a list of bad cards might see a horrible card that kills your stuff today, but when it was made, it wasn’t. So I’m not putting it on my list. Understanding cards in their initial context is important to valuing how properly suck-tastic a given card might be.

6. Self-Bounce Pricey Artifacts – Rakalite / Cyclopean Snare / Razor Boomerang

This Trio of Torture gives people the ability to do something decent at best, and then to bounce it back to your hand as part of its effect, thereby requiring to recast it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. (Was that sentence redundant? Imagine how Rakalite players feel!). None of these cards have game-breaking abilities where a self-bounce is a useful restriction. Cyclopean Snare just taps a creature, both Puppet Strings and Icy Manipulators have better taps for less than 3 mana (one can untap creatures, the other can tap down non-creatures as well). So it’s not like you’re getting them at a cheap benefit as well. So really, what is Cyclopean Snare doing being printed as is? Sure, some Johnny somewhere will have a deck with a bunch of ETB triggers for Snare and friends to exploit, but until then, these are too much cost, for too little results.

5. Malicious Advice

I don’t get this card. Were we so worried about a simple little two-color tap spell in limited that we made it cause you to lose life? If it were printed as is, without the life loss, I still wouldn’t play it. It doesn’t matter how many cards you are locking down. It’s a one-off effect. Now, you could use it to tap down a defense and swing, but that’s not any better than Word of Binding. You could tap down some lands to keep them from casting spells, I guess, but then they tap them in response and draw that mana for later anyway if they needed it. It’s just not that good of an effect to give a life-loss requirement as well. Yuck.

4. Avizoa

Take a look at Chronatog. It’s a card with a certain tournament pedigree. Skipping your next turn is something a Johnny might rarely (but occasionally) want, with something like Stasis out or an about-to-die cumulative upkeep card like Naked Singularity. Shoot, maybe I just want to skip drawing a card so I won’t die, and maybe I have a winning condition that triggers on your turns to kill you like Magmatic Force. So there are some random yet legitimate ways to use Chronatog’s skipping of your next turn. But why would you want to take everything in your next turn except your untap? And why would you skip your untap step for pumping Avizoa? What value is there in that?

3. Dispersing Orb

To this day, I’m surprised by why a lot of lists are leaving off this uncommon winner from Onslaught. Let’s unpack it’s grandeur.

“Step right up and get your Dispersing Orb! It’ll blow your mind away!”

“All right I’ll bite. What does it do?”

“Well lad, before we talk about what it does, let’s examine it’s cost. You get to drop it for just 5 mana. That’s the same casting cost (mostly) as enchantments Blue rocks like Dream Halls or Future Sight. So for your 5-mana investment you get the real deal!”

“Fine fine, but what do I get?”

“You grab a recursive engine of tempo-based bouncing fun times!”

“Well, that sounds good. Lots of powerful Blue effects do that in permanent form, and really impact the game. Take Equilibrium for example. It costs just to play. Spend mana anytime I cast a creature and I can bounce another creature. That certainly qualifies as “tempo-based bouncing fun time” in Blue. This costs two more mana than that. Is it better?”

“Nope it sure isn’t”

“Well is it at least as good?”

“Nope!”

“Is it in the vein of at least tap stuff down for no mana like Opposition?”

“Nope!”

“Is it a frustrating reprint in Blue of Winter Orb or Rising Waters?”

“Nope!”

“But you say it’s repeatable and an engine. And it costs five. So what does it do? Exactly?”

“Great ready for this! You can spend mana, any time you want, and bounce target permanent!”

“Now that I can get behind! So it’s like a repeatable Treasure Trove?”

“Right! Spend and you can bounce any permeant you want! Your own, your foes, whatever can be targeted can be bounced.”

“Well all right then. That doesn’t sound too bad. So what’s it doing on this list then?”

“Well you see, it has another cost in addition to the mana that you have to pay.”

“And that cost is?

“Merely the sacrificing of another permanent.”

 . . . wait . . . what? I have to sacrifice another permanent and pay four life too?

“I know, think of the synergy! Start with Homarid Spawning Bed and sacrifice Camarid tokens or . . . ”

“ . . . we’re done here.”

And you can see what there is to see there. Dispersing Orb is tragically bad. End scene.

2. Wood Elemental

Sigh, fine, here’s your Wood Elemental. I know a lot of you won’t feel complete without seeing the Wood Elemental here. You pay mana and you get a 0/0 creature . If you sacrifice an untapped Forest, you get a 1/1. Sacrifice 4 Forests (and they have to be untapped to boot) and you get a 4/4 creature for basically mana that lost you four lands. There is no price at which Wood Elemental looks good. Sorry gang. As a result Wood Elemental has earned a reputation as the worst creature ever printed. And I have to agree with that assessment. Wood Elemental? You suck!

1. Bargain

Your opponent draws a card, and you gain seven life? That’s card advantage for 7 life? Who would want to do that? You can find lots better card drawing spells out there for White . Shoot, if you are using it to make friends, there then are better effects for that too. Shoot, I’d rather run Truce or Temporary Truce than Bargain, and those cards aren’t exactly world beaters. Bargain is a 2-for-1 loss of card advantage so you can gain seven life. For 3 mana. At sorcery speed. So unless you are looking to grab one for your Phil Foglio deck, it’s not worth the price of admission for anyone.

But Abe! Where is insert card X on this list? It’s really really bad?

I hear you. Here’s my, “They Aren’t That Bad” list for you with four cards you might have expected here because they are often considered essential to these lists:

One with Nothing

It was played in the sideboard of a major tournament. It works with Madness. It gives you Hellbent. There are players who want it and like it. It does precisely what you need it to do.

Carnival of Souls

I don’t think Carnival of Souls belongs here at all. It’s just a combo engine. Nothing else to see here. Sure, combo engines don’t appeal to everyone, but Carnival of Souls is actually quite interesting in the right builds. It’s gotten better over time as well.

Shaman's Trance

Shaman's Trance is better than some folks think. Commonly thought of as a Flashback hoser (which it excels at), it stops folks from playing any cards from their graveyard. And as a Flashback disabler, it works against the heavy Snapcaster Mage quite nicely.

Sorrow's Path

Given that Sorrow's Path is run effectively in decks as an ideal “give-away” card along with stuff like Donate, Bazaar Trader, Political Trickery and Zedruu the Greathearted, it clearly has some value at the table. Given that, it can’t be worse than something like Malicious Advice, which is so bad no one plays it or remembers it exists. Sorrow's Path is so bad it’s good. But where are the defenders for Malicious Advice?