The year is finally coming to a close and over the past few weeks, I've covered the best cards from basically every color of Magic. Now there's just one aspect left: the Colorless cards. It's debatable whether or not this should be treated as a color in the first place, but hey, I'm opting to roll with it here. These are cards with no colored mana symbols on them, "excluding" Colorless mana, of course, if you count that. There's no devoid cards to be found here, as shown with the top Green cards including Basking Broodscale.

As a note, for the sake of this article I'm excluding lands and am instead just focusing solely on Colorless spells and Colorless artifact cards. This is because when it comes to lands, there's not really a lot to pull from. Additionally, there's arguments you can make about whether or not they should be included with their respective colors. For example, Shifting Woodland being arguably more of a Green card than Colorless. So instead, we're going to focus on the actual Colorless cards.

Ready? Let's dive in!

Nuka-Cola Vending Machine

Universes Beyond tends to be quite contentious among players. Sometimes, though, there comes a design so perfectly made that you can't help but appreciate it whether or not you're a fan of the original property. Nuka-Cola Vending Machine is an excellent example of this, bringing to Magic one of the more iconic aspects of the Fallout franchise in the form of Nuka Cola.

What makes this one work so well is a combination of flavor and function. On a base level, playing with it feels great. Make a food token, then you get a small rebate for sacrificing that food token. In terms of flavor, though, this represents the fact that Nuka Cola bottle caps act as currency in the Fallout universe, meaning this card generates a drink and then once you finish it, you're left with some "money" in return. An all-around home run that's become an instant mainstay of Commander play.

Ulamog, the Defiler

Both of Ulamog's previous versions - Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger - were major players in a number of formats. Both were Commander and Cube all-stars and they each provided powerful options for players to either ramp into or cheat into play. Both were even considered arguably the best amongst the original two sets of Eldrazi titans thanks to their cast triggers getting rid of problematic permanents before they themselves ran away with the game.

Now with Modern Horizons 3 comes Ulamog, the Defiler, and this one is truly bonkers. Unlike previous versions of the famous legend, this one doesn't get rid of permanents, but rather Traumatizes an opponent into exile. From there, Ulamog gets huge, and in turn ends up with a massive annihilator number as well. This has made Ulamog arguably more dangerous than ever before, becoming a major contender in Modern Goryo's Vengeance and Eldrazi Breach decks, as well as the top choice of this set's three titans for Commander play.

Lavaspur Boots

Commander players everywhere have loved both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots over the years. As such, it's almost a no-brainer that when a new version of this kind of effect is released, it's bound to be popular. This is true with Lavaspur Boots due to recency, being a lesser effect, and better overall accessibility making it a fairly affordable version. As both shroud and hexproof have been largely phased out of modern Magic design, Lavaspur Boots provides a newer ward-based treatment of the effect.

You may be surprised to learn, though, that unlike many Commander-centric artifact cards, Lavaspur Boots also ended up becoming a solid player in competitive 60 card formats as well. In older formats like Modern and Legacy, you can tutor it up easily thanks to the popularity of Urza's Saga from Modern Horizons 2. Because of this, many Urza's Saga-based decks have begun using the card as a one-of to go for massive damage swings. Just wait until your Affinity opponent makes a Karnstruct only to put the Boots on it a turn later and you lose!

Kozilek's Command

From the moment it was previewed, players knew Kozilek's Command was going to be a playable card. After all, Tron was a regular player in the Modern metagame, which had access to no shortage of colorless mana. This ended up being exactly where it landed right out of the gate, with the newest build of Eldrazi Tron utilizing it well alongside the likes of Eldrazi Temple and Ugin's Labyrinth to get up to all kinds of nonsense in the Modern meta.

Not only was this card extremely good in Modern, but it also broke out tremendously in Legacy as well. As Mystic Forge combo MUD decks rose to the top tiers alongside classic Eye of Ugin-based Eldrazi decks, Kozilek's Command became a staple of high level Legacy gameplay. This became so prominent that many Legacy players were actually calling for Kozilek's Command to be banned. That alone should be a huge alarm bell for just how good this card is.

Vexing Bauble

It's a bit weird saying such an innocuous little card is the best card of the year, but sometimes the simplest options can bring the most devastating results. Vexing Bauble was created as a way to combat many of the free spells released in previous Modern Horizons sets to offset the power of cards like Grief, Fury, and Solitude. It's shown up in a number of Modern decks since the release of Modern Horizons 3, albeit in smaller quantities, showing it can have some impact on the format.

It turned out that this had an even wider impact in older formats like Legacy and Vintage. This became apparent fast in the latter format, as Vintage is heavily defined by the Power Nine, several of which cost zero mana to cast. By using Vexing Bauble, it shuts down players looking to use their Power, and as a result, the Bauble was quickly restricted. In Legacy, its impact was more about the fact that it stopped Force of Will, thereby allowing powerful combo decks to be difficult to deal with and eventually leading to its banning in the format recently.

Paige Smith

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/themaverickgirl.bsky.social

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal