If you were playing Magic back in 2015, you may recall the whole game being rocked by one major piece of information: three set blocks were going away! To help compensate for this change, Wizards announced that there would now be two blocks per year and the annual core set would be going away. As a "final" send off (that would later be retracted with Core Set 2019), WotC released Magic Origins - a capstone release meant to showcase the origin stories of the main five planeswalkers that made up the Gatewatch.

This set has all kinds of cool mythic rares - including the iconic flip-walkers that are still being riffed on to this day - and we're going to rank them all! Ready? Let's jump right into it!

Number Sixteen

This was basically a crazy sort of Warp World in Green that didn't actually replace permanents and it was largely little more than a game reset. I believe there was some deck in some format that for the briefest of moments did something with it, but it didn't last. The card was too expensive and did too little - or at least too little in an enjoyable sense - and ended up not even being great in games of Commander where these kind of effects would seem destined for.

Number Fifteen

During preview season, this card had a decent amount of hype behind it. 4 mana 5/5 with no drawback was no joke, and then it could get indestructible and easily return from your graveyard as well? That all made Erebos's Titan seem like a shoe-in for Standard all-stars! As it turned out, though, the card just couldn't quite hack it, and in a format still dominated by the multicolored angle of Tarkir, the triple Black pips made it harder to cast than it seemed at first glance. This combination of factors led it to ultimately being played nowhere and landing squarely in bulk bins everywhere.

Number Fourteen

Woodland Bellower also had a little bit of hype behind it because even if you're mostly just getting a vanilla body once the ability goes through, you're still tutoring up another creature. That seemed like a pretty solid value play all around. Unfortunately, though, that tutor effect came with a lot of restrictions in that it needed to be Green, it had to be nonlegendary, and it had to have a mana value of 3 or less. All that combined made it hard to find anything really worthwhile, so while it has some fringe Commander applications these days, it's largely worth just running any other creature instead.

Number Thirteen

At this time, we were only a few years removed from Aetherling absolutely dominating Standard in Azorius Control lists. Players had high hopes that Disciple of the Ring might prove to be another strong Morphling-like card to give control decks a strong finisher, but ultimately the costs proved too high to be worthwhile. The card was a pretty powerful Limited bomb, however.

Number Twelve

Drawing an extra card rocks, though discarding your hand is really rough. For Mono-Red decks, though, that didn't matter all that much. The body on this was rock solid and by the time you hit 4 mana, you were usually down to no cards in your hand anyways. Turns out that the Red decks didn't really need it, though, so while it had a minor showing in the format, it proved to be another case of a card being a little too overhyped.

Number Eleven

Opalescence was a particularly famous card for years that was notorious for its interactions with the card Humility. However, it had the unfortunate problem of being stuck on the reserved list, meaning it couldn't be reprinted. Thus we ended up with Starfield of Nyx, a reworked version of the card that could get around that pesky reprint limiter. It's been a really great casual all-star ever since, though its initial showing wasn't anything particularly special once the novelty wore off for many players.

Number Ten

Nowadays, this iteration of Chandra doesn't see much play. It's too expensive to actively go off with in most situations and doesn't exactly lend itself well to casual play (i.e. Commander). The most you'll often actually see it show up is maybe in Cube, but there's a lot more better options out there at your disposal. Despite this, Chandra showed up quite a bit in aggressive Red decks of the era, making it yet another great iteration of this classic walker following years of mediocre showings.

Number Nine

Liliana largely played a similar role to Chandra, playing extremely well in Standard due to being a solid body with a really potent backside. The difference was that it also had the benefit of playing extremely well in Commander settings thanks to the ability to force all players to discard while also being able to reanimate stuff provided you had enough mana. This made her not only great in the 99 but also as an actual commander, giving her some extremely well-rounded appeal as a result.

Number Eight

Of the handful of mythics in the set that had both a minor Standard pedigree and a rock solid Commander showing, Archangel of Tithes is the best of the bunch. I'd argue that Liliana was likely better for competitive formats, but right from the outset Archangel was huge for Commander. Cards like Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, and Sphere of Safety have been huge boons for pillow fort decks, making this an outstanding addition to those kinds of decks.

Number Seven

Day's Undoing was the little overhyped card that could. Everyone saw the card and was practically dumbfounded since it was effectively a one-to-one printing of Timetwister with one small line of text. Turns out that one line of text was particularly important, though, as it ended the turn for you on the spot. That didn't stop players from trying to make it work, though, and while players couldn't crack it early on, it's proven to be a pretty sweet piece when combined with Narset, Parter of Veils and Teferi, Time Raveler, among others. Even if players haven't totally broken it yet, it's provided an extremely unique puzzle for players everywhere to figure out over the years.

Number Six

No one was ever seriously playing this in any competitive format, but the Commander bait levels were off the charts! It made gaining life and drawing cards wildly trivial, providing any player that cast it with ridiculous amounts of value. Just about any deck that cared about doing either side could do absurd things with it, and it proved especially potent in the likes of Oloro, Ageless Ascetic at the time.

Number Five

I feel like you'd be somewhat hard pressed to find anyone who has treated Demonic Pact as a serious competitive card, but that certainly hasn't stopped people from trying! There's very real allure in getting through most of the options on the card only to sacrifice it or donate it before it can take you out, which has led to players constantly trying to brew with it. Even long after its Standard tenure, it continues popping up from time to time in decks like Orzhov Yorion in Pioneer. It's an eternally cool card that begs players to find ways to use and abuse it.

Number Four

When Magic Origins first came out, Pyromancer's Goggles was treated like a joke. Players lamented it as being far too expensive to do anything relevant and as such it was considered bulk for quite a long while. Then it eventually started seeing major Standard play and became an unexpected sleeper hit, jumping to $15 before it rotated out of the format soon after. Its major competitive tenure was brief, but boy did it burn bright in the moment.

Number Three

A Savannah Lions that does nothing else is always going to be playable, and the fact that you can make this one indestructible is huge. Couple that with the fact that you can easily turn it into a planeswalker by swinging out with a few additional creatures and you've got yourself an absolute monster of a card. Even now, Kytheon sees solid tournament play where he shows up oftentimes as a one-of in Mono-White Humans lists in Pioneer and he's great in all manner of Cubes also.

Number Two

It didn't take players very long to realize how good Nissa, Vastwood Seer was. After all, the front side of the card was basically a riff on an already beloved card in Wood Elves. While Nissa couldn't find you a non-basic Forest, just that little extra ramp on a body went a long way. She was a big player in Standard and remains a tremendous staple in Commander and Cube to this day.

Number One

Right out of the gate, everyone and their mother underrated and even wrote off Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Then he started showing up in Standard lists. Then he was a four-of in almost every list. Then it was roughly $400 for a playset while the card was still in Standard. Needless to say, for a card that no one thought much of early on, the card has gained quite a reputation and is heavily lauded as one of the best Blue cards of its era, and for good reason.

Paige Smith

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