A Tier List of One-Mana Creatures in cEDH

Hiya, folks! Welcome to my first of many cEDH Tier List articles covering the lesser-talked about parts in a cEDH deck: the individual cards themselves! This month I'm covering a topic that is near and dear to my heart, one-drops, so I've scoured the top-performing decks on EDHTop16 and put together this tier list of some one-drop creatures you can expect to see in any given cEDH game.

S-Tier

Esper Sentinel

Starting things off with the premiere one-drop for white, it's Esper Sentinel. This card has a 100% inclusion rate in decks that can run it, and that's entirely because of how good of a card-draw engine it is. A Mystic Remora on a body that can draw you anywhere from one to nine cards a turn cycle, it should be pretty obvious why this is such a great card. Sometimes Esper Sentinel is a reason all on its own just to have white in your deck's color identity.

Birds of Paradise

The only other creature in our S-Tier, we have the greatest mana dork in the game, in my opinion, Birds of Paradise. While not as outwardly powerful as Esper Sentinel, Birds of Paradise is a card that will be found in 100% of decks that have access to green for its ability to provide color fixing in two- to five-color decks. Sure, it doesn't draw you cards or do anything super fancy, but having access to a source of 'rainbow mana' will always be useful especially for higher color decks.

A-Tier

Tinder Wall

Tinder Wall, my beloved, I wish I could've put you into the S-Tier where you belong. Unfortunately, the only thing holding you back is the color restriction. Although Tinder Wall appears in practically all RG+ decks, this covers 8 of the 25 possible color combinations in all of Magic. Of those 8, only roughly half of those are even viewed as competitively viable. A Rite of Flame on a body is incredibly powerful, especially on a 0/3 Tymna the Weaver blocker, but the color restriction really keeps this from being an S-Tier option for me.

I have heard this is an all-star Najeela, the Blade-Blossom card, too.

Deathrite Shaman

The first of my potentially many hot takes on this list, I think Deathrite Shaman (or DRS) is mid. "But Scylla... if DRS is mid then why is it in A-Tier?". Well, dear reader, it's because I have been struck by the most common Scylla ailment: peer pressure.

This card will appear in most BG+ lists, and can commonly be thought of as a Birds of Paradise with upsides. A 1/2 body that survives the dork-culling power of Orcish Bowmasters. A piece of graveyard hate. A source of rainbow mana. What more could you want from a mana dork? My hesitation comes with the potential for this being a do nothing card at its floor. 

Sure, the odds of you and your opponents using fetch lands in this format is very high. Similarly, Underworld Breach is a very common win condition which Deathrite Shaman does an okay job at halting. Me personally, though? I'd prefer to just have a mana dork that makes all the colors I'd want all the time without a condition, especially one that doesn't need to eat my own Breach fuel sometimes.

Even as a DRS-hater, I have been swayed into using it in my personal Reyhan, Last of the Abzan + Kraum, Ludevic's Opus list. I'm not happy about it, but it has been fine. Solid A-Tier objectively, even if I want to put it lower.

Delighted Halfling

A newcomer to the mana dork family, Delighted Halfling shares a lot of traits with Deathrite Shaman. A 1/2 that can make any color mana, but with a restriction. That's a pretty great floor actually, and what lands this card solidly in this tier is that it also makes the legendary spells you cast uncounterable.

Legendary creatures are often considered to be "uncounterable" in this format anyway, but Delighted Halfling just gives you that extra assurance that you can get there without worry (especially on game-winning legends like Emiel the Blessed or Derevi, Empyrial Tactician).

To add even more for this card, Delighted Halfling specifically says legendary spells. This can lead to some game-ending artifacts being unanswerable, like Bolas's Citadel or The One Ring, for example.

If your list happens to run a handful of legendary permanents and you're in green, you should often be including Delighted Halfling in there.

B-Tier

Dragon's Rage Channeler

Surveil is an incredibly powerful mechanic, as we are currently seeing with the new surveil land cycle from Murders at Karlov Manor, and Dragon's Rage Channeler is the peak surveil creature in cEDH. Dragon's Rage Channeler (or DRC) may not be as common these days as it once was, but it still makes occasional appearances in Underworld Breach focused lists. I personally expect at least a slight resurgence of this card while the current meta game is still heavy on the midrange grind, and I'm going to start testing it myself soon to see if I'm right.

The downside of DRC is that it requires the casting of noncreature spells without a clear payoff by itself, which can often be extremely punished by cards like Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, or even one we've mentioned in this tier list, Esper Sentinel. There aren't any combos with Dragon's Rage Channeler in the same way that there are with something similar, like Displacer Kitten, and the value you get from it is only as good (or bad) as the cards you are surveilling into the graveyard.

Serra Ascendant

Similar to DRC, Serra Ascendant was once a mainstay in many cEDH lists. Arguably one of the strongest turn-one plays you can make that don't draw you cards, Serra Ascendant abuses Commander's starting 40 life total to get you a one-mana 6/6 flier with lifelink. The unfortunate part about Serra Ascendant is that sometimes it just doesn't feel like enough.

The recent months have shown an increase in creature-focused board states, which in turn has also increased the amount of answers people have for problematic creatures. Even though it is a brilliant attacker in Tymna the Weaver decks, there are many times where your Serra Ascendant won't go unanswered for long. 

Lastly, since most cEDH decks utilize their life totals as a powerful resource, there are many times where drawing this card when below 30 life effectively means a dead/useless draw. Lifegain strategies are more or less non-existent in this format, and unless you are running cards like Solitude that can make use of having a dead white card in hand, this just ends up feeling bad in the mid-late stages of the game.

The Hierarchs

This wouldn't be a one-drop tier list if I didn't at least mention the Hierarchs, those being Noble Hierarch and Ignoble Hierarch. I'm not going to talk too too much about these cards since they are fairly similar to our other dork-like entries so far, but I will mention the thing that sets these two apart from the rest (and what keeps them slightly higher than other dorks).

Along with providing access to three colors, they also have the exalted keyword. Most of the time, exalted doesn't really matter. However, if you're playing a deck that synergizes with combat damage in some way then you should be running one of these if you're able. It might not seem like it, but turning your 2/2 attacker into a 3/3 might mean the world of difference for if it will connect or not. It's a small thing, but something I definitely think people don't talk about enough.

Here's hoping that Modern Horizons 3 gives us more options for these (fingers crossed for a Sultai or Temur Hierarch, please, Wizards, I'm begging you).

C-Tier

Single Mana Dorks

Not much more to add here personally, we've talked about the different types of mana dorks at all other tiers. This section is specifically for mana dorks that only make a single type of mana, things like Elves of Deep Shadow, Avacyn's Pilgrim, and the classics, like Fyndhorn Elves and Llanowar Elves.

These are commonly run in one- to two-color piles, or the occasional three-color pile that needs just a ton of mana (like Tayam, Luminous Enigma or Dargo, the Shipwrecker + </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thrasios, Triton Hero). This also really just comes down to how badly you need the specific color, or if the color doesn't really matter in your deck and you just need an abundance of creature-based mana sources.

Once you start getting into more streamlined three- to five-color lists, it starts getting harder and harder to justify having a mana dork that only makes a single type of mana. Unfortunately mono-green, Golgari, and Selesnya are not really at the top of the food chain at all (and are often only successful at all in the hands of some of the most dedicated pilots out there).

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

My biggest hot take, and something that I think not many people in the cEDH community are ready to hear, is that Ragavan is bad. Big ol' stinker.

An all-star in 60-card formats, it's undeniable that Ragavan is an extremely powerful card. However, with how cEDH games are structured, Ragavan often comes up short, especially given how creature / "board invested" many decks have become currently. A 2/1 for 1, or 2 if you dash it, that also can potentially net you a Treasure and a card from our opponents deck sounds good. In practice, though, at almost every point in the game besides the first one to three turns, Ragavan is just not very good. Opening on a turn one Ragavan feels amazing, but drawing the silly monkey when you're at the 'time to win' stage of the game feels worse.

For all those reasons, Ragavan is pretty much... fine. If it were to suddenly go away, then folks might start using their turn one Imperial Seal or Vampiric Tutor more. The fact that one card has warped how all players tend to play in this format means that it'll probably never truly disappear, but I don't think that Ragavan is something that needs to be in literally every deck that has access to the color red.

It isn't Dockside Extortionist, after all.

Anything Else

There are a lot of one-CMC creatures that I didn't mention in this article, either because they aren't super common among the 'top' decks or because they are parts of fairly niche archetypes or combos that you might find only in a handful of spots in the entirety of the format. Things like the one-drop Dwarves that Magda, Brazen Outlaw runs, Skirk Prospector + Impulsive Pilferer in Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, or the slew of strange one-drop creatures found in Tayam, Luminous Enigma, like Icatian Moneychanger or Young Wolf.

There are many, many more one-drop creatures that can find niche homes in various cEDH lists, and not being on this tier list doesn't mean they aren't any good there.

That's all! Expect to see a similar article from me next month, where I'm going to be covering the commonly seen 'Free' spells in cEDH (and even some that might not be so common, but you might want to consider running).