For the past few weeks, I've been having a lot of fun talking about the Weatherlight Crew - both the original one and the newer one from the recent Dominaria expansions. The Weatherlight Saga was one of the more formative tales I experienced growing up, and the characters were all incredible creations with their looks and character design permanently burned into my brain. This series has mainly been involving the heroes thus far, ranking various iterations from worst to best. After three separate pieces focusing on the good guys, though, how about some bad guys instead?

For today, we're going to be ranking all of the villains of the Weatherlight Saga, focusing on the classic characters who tormented the original crew with such glee. There's many great and iconic monsters who terrorized the crew and brought about the first Phyrexian Invasion. Today, I want to cover them all and rank the cards of the ones we got over the years! This includes both the original iterations as well as later printings of them that came about in more recent years, often to give cards that were rough the first time around a fair shake with modern card design.

For this article, I'm establishing only a handful of criteria for this as far as exclusions go.

• No protagonists. There's a couple exceptions to this rule (I'll explain why in each of them) but naturally, though we're covering the Weatherlight saga, we're covering the antagonists, so no truly good guys here.
• No alternate timelines. Sorry Mirri the Cursed fans, she's not getting any love here.
• Original Weatherlight Antagonists Only. Listen, this list is already going to be long as is. If we were to add in all the ones from the later sets - which includes the likes of Belzenlok, Sheoldred, Rona, and more - then we'd be here for days. For the sake of simplicity, we're sticking with the ones from the storyline of mainly Weatherlight through Apocalypse.
• No secondary antagonists. This is a bit of a minor thing, but I want to focus on the main villains who presented a clear threat throughout the story and were pivotal. Tevesh Szat and Dralnu were sort of incidental villains in the overarching narrative, and not always necessarily directly connected to the Weatherlight crew themselves. And, uh, let's not open that whole Urza can of worms, shall we? And that whole thing with the Primeval Dragons.

Let's dive in with a quick honorable mention!

Honorable Mention: Starke of Rath

I'm giving Starke a nice little honorable mention here so as to give him his due as an antagonist. I somehow failed to mention it in my ranking the original Weatherlight Crew cards, but Starke himself had a tendency to switch sides a lot in the story. This was due to the Phyrexians holding his daughter hostage and him doing what was needed to keep her safe. While he did end up helping the crew and doing the right thing - albeit for very selfish reasons - he enabled Volrath's rise to power, abducted Sisay, and led the Weatherlight crew into Rath with the intention of delivering them to Volrath on a silver platter. The card itself represents this deceitful manner well, and I think is worth a mention here, even if he's arguably not really that villainous at heart.

Morinfen and Gallowbraid

I'm putting these two together because they came as a pair in the story and are clearly a somewhat mirrored pair of one another in card form as well. Let's face it: these cards are dull, boring, and just plain bad. These come from the super early days of legendary creatures when previously, you only saw them in six sets: Legends, Ice Age, Homelands, Alliances, Mirage, and Visions. What was in most of those sets legend-wise was fairly dull, low powered cards because they weren't as certain on how to balance them at the time. For the era, it's clear that these two cards were trying to push the boundaries of how big creatures could be for a reasonable rate (with some risks in the mix), but today and even several years - if not decades - ago, these cards were and are painfully weak.

They did kill Rofellos in the story following their torment of Crovax, though, so that's notable.

Commander Greven il-Vec

When I was a kid, Commander Greven il-Vec just seemed like the coolest card and everything I wanted to be doing in Magic. That artwork by Kev Walker is truly iconic and those stats seemed tremendous for a creature that seemed fairly reasonable to cast. Compare it to something like Teeka's Dragon and you'll see what I mean. The problem, though, is that back when I was absolutely entranced by this card, I was 10, and looking at it now all I see is an expensive French vanilla creature with a sacrifice drawback. It's not good, and despite the iconic look, more than earns this low of a spot here.

Belbe, Corrupted Observer

When it comes to a list like this, Belbe is actually somewhat hard to classify as to where exactly she fits. She was the daughter of Eladamri but was repurposed by the Phyrexians to do their bidding. She was to be the officiator to help determine who would become the next evincar of Rath after Volrath traveled to Mercadia to stalk the Weatherlight crew. So, that should make her evil, right? Well, she fell in love with Ertai, tried to block out Yawgmoth (who used her as a means to observe the goings on), and helped Eladamri, Lin-Sivvi, and Takara escape Rath to Dominaria. As a result, she's a bit more of a gray area on the whole, but I'm including her here because of her Phyrexian allegiance.

As for her card, well, she's not so much a French vanilla card like so many of the ones in the early part of the list. The thing is, though, her ability just isn't all that useful in most situations. It's good if you like politics and want to incentivize opponents to fight amongst one another rather than coming after you. That might be very flavorful and fitting for the character, but in practice, it's not always the best idea to be ramping your opponents like this. In the most casual of settings, this card is interesting and has some potential to be fun. For everyone else, though, there's just not enough here.

Selenia, Dark Angel

I actually wanted to place this higher on the list originally because, frankly, the stats here are quite good for the era they were in. Selenia was obviously meant to be a sort of nod to the powerhouse that was Serra Angel - a trend we'd continue to see going into the Urza block proper with the likes of Radiant, Archangel. She even has built in evasion in both flying and the ability to get bounced back to your hand, making her an interesting build around. Her spot ends up so low, though, because despite being cool and a fun nod with context, she does barely anything relevant and is quite rough to try utilizing by today's standards.

Volrath the Fallen

Volrath isn't really that much better than (most of) the previous cards in that for the most part, he simply acts as a big "vanilla" beater. The difference here, however, is that there's a little more in terms of utility by way of using his discard ability. By tossing away some really big creatures, you can not only swing in for some massive damage, but also it can be used for strategies such as Reanimator or something along those lines. It's not much for such an otherwise dull card, but that added little bit of utility definitely puts it above the others on this list thus far.

Vhati il-Dal

Vhati il-Dal is honestly a pretty weak and paltry card by most metrics. The ability isn't the greatest in the world, and oftentimes simply feels more cute than it does backbreaking. Still, he's a creature who feels like he does something much more interesting than just being essentially a French vanilla creature. There's things you can do here, like how he pairs up with cards like Disfigure better than most cards would in a casual setting (which is the only place you'll see him nowadays) but it's not much. Still, it's an inventive card to try building around, and he gets some solid points from me for that.

Ertai Resurrected

In Constructed Standard as well as Limited, this card can be an absolute house, as it can easily shut down whatever it is that your opponent is doing. In formats beyond Standard, though, he's not doing a ton. You might see an occasional one-of in some sideboards or fringe lists in, say, Pioneer, but that's about it. In Commander, he can be a fun political tool, but in most cases there's better counter magic and removal to be had. He's also downright terrible in the Command Zone itself, requiring a tremendous amount of heavy lifting from the deck-building to really make him work well compared to other options. Essentially: what Ertai Resurrected does, he does it well, but he does too little of it for me to put him higher up on this list.

Ascendant Evincar

I hate that this card lacks Crovax's name, and it's arguably a bit more one-note than the last two cards, but there's just something iconic about Ascendant Evincar. The card looked cool as hell when Nemesis came out over 20 years ago now and it still looks outstanding in both aesthetics and mechanics. The ability is painfully simple and basic, but sometimes that's all it needs to be, and here it works to great effect. It's still something we see today, with Kaervek, the Spiteful coming with Core Set 2021 and having an awfully similar effect. The card was so iconic it even got a mirrored version in Crovax, Ascendant Hero in Planar Chaos. Not the greatest, and certainly not the most powerful, but it more than deserves the love it gets.

Crovax the Cursed

Putting him on this list when he was also on the original Weatherlight crew list article almost feels like cheating a little bit. However, this depicts Crovax right as he starts to enter his villainous arc, and being right on the cusp of that while also not having an actual hero version that wasn't an alternate timeline made me want to include him here. As for the card itself, Ascendant Evincar may be more iconic, but Crovax the Cursed simply does more, offering a decent beater while simultaneously providing a sacrifice engine that makes him a one-man Arisocrats player's dream.

Volrath, the Shapestealer

As a kid, I always remember being disappointed by Volrath's card. It seemed weak and uninteresting (funny given how much I loved Commander Greven il-Vec by comparison) and I felt let down by what was supposed to be Magic's biggest bad up to that point, short of perhaps the unseen Yawgmoth himself. Seriously, if you were playing during the Tempest block in particular, the guy was just everywhere and it was made crystal clear just how much of a villain he was for a period of time. He even had the extremely menacing character design to match, and he felt like an all-timer. So, you can see how I may have felt a little let down by Volrath the Fallen.

Because of this, I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled I was to see Volrath, the Shapestealer in Commander 2019. This iteration of Volrath is excellent. On his own, he's extremely powerful, with strong stats that mirror Commander Greven il-Vec's powerful 7/5. From there, he dishes out -1/-1 counters, which is flavorful given his tendency to surgically torture and alter his prisoners. He can even take their form and does so in Mercadian Masques where he poses as Takara in order to follow the Weatherlight crew, kill Starke, and attack the crew before being defeated. The flavor here is perfect and the card itself is no slouch either - exactly the kind of card that's awesome to have. It's great to see a classic villain finally get his due like this.

Greven, Predator Captain

I have one word to explain this card: Hatred.

Hatred was a particularly famous Black card from Exodus that saw a respectable amount of play in your Suicide Black decks of the era. The reason was simple: for just a few mana and most of your life, you could one shot kill your opponents with ease. The card also famously depicted Commander Greven il-Vec on it, and is still a beloved - if less talked about - card from Exodus to this day. Given the fact that Greven is on the art of this extremely famous card, it's no surprise that when Wizards revisited the character for Commander 2018 they riffed his abilities off of Hatred itself, making him stronger the more life you lost in a given turn. His sacrifice ability also harkens back to his original card, only here there's ways to make it synergize much more effectively as opposed to just being a French vanilla beater, and that makes for a much more enjoyable experience playing with.

Ertai, the Corrupted

I've written about Ertai on a number of occasions now because he always seems to get some really cool cards! Ertai, the Corrupted is easily my favorite of the bunch. It's both a great way to do some sacrificing shenanigans - including with enchantments, which feels somewhat rare - as well as countering whatever your opponents are trying to do simultaneously. It's playing an interesting control deck at its finest, and the ability to sacrifice enchantments in addition to creatures provides a cool angle on your typical control list. Rather than just being your usual draw-go strategy, it allows you to take full advantage of stuff you actually want to sacrifice and you can bake in additional strategies like Blood Artists and such to help take advantage of it. This iteration of Ertai simply feels like the complete package and he absolutely rocks.

Tsabo Tavoc

Destroy. Target. Legend.

Three simple words that leave one hell of an impact. Tsabo Tavoc is a painfully difficult card to cast, requiring seven mana. That's even more difficult in Rakdos - a color combo not always the most well-known for mana ramp. The payoff sure is worth it though. In most formats, this more or less does nothing, but when you look at Commander, she often feels borderline egregious and is downright terrifying to stare down. She basically reads destroy target commander, and most decks usually have some incidental legends in the 99 as well. She's no slouch on the offensive front either, being a 7/5 first striker, meaning you can even use her to block big creatures and then use her to tactically destroy opposing legends after the fact. A uniquely powerful card with iconic artwork to boot, this Phyrexian general more than earns her place on this list.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

The man, the myth, the legend. It all started with Yawgmoth's crazed schemes in the Thran city of Halcyon that enabled the rise of Phyrexia and the man's ascension as The Father of Machines. It's probably debatable if he should be here on this list in this form, but honestly, I don't care. I personally feel that it's impossible to have a list of Weatherlight Saga antagonists and not feature the biggest bad of all working behind the curtain: Yawgmoth. We barely see him through most of the story - minus The Thran - until Gerrard and Urza end up in Phyrexia and encounter him, which ends up with the two men fighting to the death and Yawgmoth soon after entering Dominaria as a death cloud before being defeated for good.

In his card form, Yawgmoth is an absolute beast. Do you like sacrificing things? How about drawing cards? Spreading counters all over the place? Maybe picking off your enemies slowly one at a time? He's the whole package and is outstanding in several areas of Magic. Hell, in both Modern and Historic he even has a whole deck named after him thanks to how much it combos with him at its core. He's a great card that's playable in many decks and cubes and is more than deserving of the top spot. A fitting placement for the Lord of the Wastes.

That just about wraps it up for the villains of the Weatherlight Saga, a fitting list for such an endearing cast of horrific foes. It also closes my efforts to gush and go on and on about the Weatherlight Saga - at least for a bit. The villains were just as important to me as the heroes were, which helped make that saga all the more compelling all those years ago. In time, that fondness has only grown and it's great that it started a lineage of great overarching narratives with characters players love. For me, that's what makes Magic so lovely, and it's been a true delight covering these all with you.

So, with all that said and done: which card would you say is your favorite of the Weatherlight Saga villains?

Paige Smith

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