Top Eight Dumbest Creatures on the Reserved List
Mold Demon, by Jesper Myrfors
I know the Reserved List (RL) gets a lot of flack from people. It's a pretty common complaint regarding the RL that it financially restricts players, especially new ones, from acquiring certain cards.
And yes, I get that. No one wants to feel priced out of a hobby. No one wants to sit down for a game of Commander and get absolutely bodied by a $200+ card like Survival of the Fittest.
We're not here to debate the relevance of the Reserved List, though. We covered that several times now, like here and here and also here. Maybe not so much that last one: I got a little esoteric with the intro, for which I accept no blame and instead assign that to my editors.
If you're a person unable to justify the cost of some spicy RL cards, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't think that there's some shame cast upon you because you're playing Golgari Guildgate instead of Bayou. Use what you've got. Don't go into debt for Magic. And hey, if I was able to impart on you anything during this series of looking at the Reserved List, I hope it's that there are so, so many cards on the RL that are just straight trash.
Let's make fun of them together! Today, we're going to look at the Ten Dumbest Creatures on the Reserved List. Unlike last time, when we discussed Enchantments, we won't get anywhere near quality by the time we're done. We're slumming it all the way down, from top to bottom, although I hope that you'll leave a comment to tell me of some wild corner case in which one of these cards actually proved useful for you in a game of Commander.
Mold Demon
We're starting off this time with the most played creature in our Top 10 to give you a little sneak peek into exactly how terrible these cards will be. That's right, Mold Demon is the least worst of today's cards.
According to EDHREC, Mold Demon is played in exactly 32 decks. The plurality of those decks, with three, is Ghave, Guru of Spores, which tells me that there are three people out there that built invasive fungus theme decks, as if they had a bout of black mold in their walls and, during the cleaning and restoration process, figured "you know what? This might make a sick deck."
Either that, or they dropped their collection in a puddle one day coming out of their LGS, and weeks later noticed an unpleasant smell coming out of their backpack. I don't presume to know if this is a regular occurrence for these players or if it was induced by the water absorbed by their cards. But I would applaud their dedication to theme if their Mold Demon was itself infested with mold.
And for our UK English readers, it's "mold." There's no U. Stop sticking a U where it doesn't belong.
As for the card itself, there isn't much to say. It's a Demon, which certainly gives it traction among players who are fans of that creature type, but unlike most of its infernal compatriots, it doesn't fly, and it doesn't trample, and as much as I like Jesper Myrfors and appreciate what he did to create Magic way back in the beginning, most Demons today don't look like a Jim Henson napkin sketch of a nightmare he had, or something a production assistant working on an early 2000s movie set would crank out in ten minutes when the director asked for something a troubled child character would draw in a psych ward.
With most contemporary Demons, the drawback can usually be mitigated in some way, if there's a drawback at all. With Mold Demon, you're sacrificing two Swamps. That's in the contract, ironclad, no getting around it. Legends loved making you sacrifice lands to keep mediocre creatures, as illustrated by Elder Spawn, or the notorious Wood Elemental.
Both of those are also on the Reserved List, by the way, but we're not going to be discussing them today because they've been hipster-fied. Wood Elemental, for example, is widely considered the worst creature ever printed in Magic's history, but it's still in around a hundred decks on EDHREC. There is something to be said about the cyclical nature of something being so bad it swings back around into being ironically desirable.
Icatian Lieutenant
Next up is Icatian Lieutenant, which are two words that for some reason I can never spell correctly on the first try, so we're just going to call this card Louis.
Anyway, we see on the flavor text just what kind of rigors Louis had to endure to earn his place in the military:
To become an officer, Louis had to pass a series of tests. These evaluated not only fighting and leadership skills, but also integrity, honor, and moral strength.
So we can surmise that Louis is a man of principle, and judging by that sick bowl cut/goatee combo, he's a man of fashion as well. And to be fair, Louis isn't even really that bad of a Magic card, either. He's a popular creature type in Soldier, as we know from his training and the fact that his typeline says "Soldier." He's pretty reasonably costed at , and his stats won't wow anybody, but at least he's not just a vanilla 1/1. His moral strength gives him that extra point of toughness.
His ability is also not awful, it's just meager in its impact-to-cost ratio. Two mana for a single point of Firebreathing is expensive, but coming from Fallen Empires and being on the RL, I'm surprised Louis doesn't tap to provide this boon, or make you sacrifice the targeted Soldier at the end of the turn, or ask you to steal all the booze from your parents' liquor cabinet and replace it with water and hope they don't notice. Of course I'm joking with the last example, as we know Louis has moral strength.
Why, then, are there only 27 decks on the entirety of EDHREC that include Louis? I for one do not care for this level of Louis erasure. Play more Louis, friends, if you've any hope of emulating his moral strength.
Heart Wolf
With Heart Wolf, we've got a case of a creature that is objectively not terrible. It's fine. Mediocre, but not actively bad. It's something that in today's Magic, we'd pick 15th in the draft but in a pinch, at least it's got a power and toughness and can block. And hey, it's even got first strike.
But we're not talking about a draft chaff common, we're talking about a card that occupied a rare slot in Homelands. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar in terms of expected quality, sharing a rarity with things like Baki's Curse and Rysorian Badger. Both of those, along with Heart Wolf, are on the Reserved List.
We can compare Heart Wolf with the nine other cards in the history of Magic that are four-mana 2/2s with first strike; would you rather include a Heart Wolf in your deck, or something like a Narwhal? What about Valor? And regarding its love of giving Dwarves piggyback rides, it's similarly synergystic as Dwarven Pony, which notably does not die if the Dwarf dies, which in terms of flavor seems to indicate that the Pony is willing and able to drop a dwarf off a cliff in order to save its own skin. And really, who can blame it?
Despite its tiny but quantifiable value in a deck centered around dwarves, Heart Wolf is only seen in 26 decks, as per EDHREC, with eight of those led by Magda, Brazen Outlaw. Compare that with its cousin, Pyreheart Wolf, which is played in more than 7,000 lists. At least I think they're cousins, I don't know how canine family trees work. Who really knows? Maybe Heart Wolf is just a reference to the 1985 song "The Wolf" by the band Heart?
Leering Gargoyle
In terms of flavor, Magic designers took a few tries to get Gargoyles right, and I appreciate that fine-tuning. We started with Granite Gargoyle, Abbey Gargoyles (which are plural for some inexplicable reason) and Ivory Gargoyle, none of which were really reading as "Gargoyles" other than the fact that they're winged creatures made of stone. In other words, the art was doing the heavy lifting. After that trio, Leering Gargoyle came into being, and finally the ability of the card matched the creature type's trope. Sort of.
We know Gargoyles like to protect buildings, and are based in part on the concept of a chimera. They're good guys, in other words, despite being grotesque, like Swamp Thing or medicinal leeches. That's more or less evident on the card, as it plummets from the sky and gains toughness, presumably to protect you as it descends from its perch atop a building. Also, according to the art and flavor text, it's getting some kind of NSFW pleasure from a strategically placed bolt of electricity; ironic, since it dies to Homing Lightning.
A 2/2 flyer for feels pretty classic, but it's actually not as common as you might assume. In total, there have been 10 such creatures over the years, and one of them, Angelic Harold, is from an Un-set and is therefore dead to me.
Only 25 lists on EDHREC include our little Gargoyle buddy, with the plurality of those lists belonging to Raffine, Scheming Seer for some reason I fail to see.
Martyrs of Korlis
We have our first non-rare to discuss, as Martyrs of Korlis is technically an uncommon. There's a lot going on with this particular card, and not a lot of it is good.
First off, I want to direct your attention to the artist attribution. Long-time Magic players probably don't even need to read it to know that the art was created by Margaret Organ-Kean, an artist who joined the game in Antiquities and is a prolific lover of checkerboard backgrounds. You may notice I spelled it "Kean" and not "Keen," as it appears on the card. That's because the card is wrong. All three of her cards from Antiquities get her name wrong; you see similar errors on Amulet of Kroog and Ivory Tower. Reprints of those two do eventually correct the mistake, but we know thanks to its appearance on this list that Martyrs of Korlis doesn't have the luxury of a reprint.
Secondly, let's look at the card itself. We've got a mana value of five for a 1/6. Not stellar, by any stretch. We're used to, in this day and age, getting a lot more bang for our mystical buck for five mana. Even if we limit our comparisons to white, like the Martyrs, we've got stuff like Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines or Archangel of Thune. Hell, even the uncommon Herald of the Host is objectively better in every way. And yes, I know it's apples to oranges, power creep is a thing, blah blah. But Martyrs of Korlis is on the Reserved List and is therefore asking for ridicule.
As for that wall of text, Oracle sums it up in a much more succinct way: "As long as Martyrs of Korlis is untapped, all damage that would be dealt to you by artifacts is dealt to Martyrs of Korlis instead." It's also just a "Human" now, as the creature type of "Bodyguard" no longer exists.
In other words, you can't attack with it if you want this benefit, since it doesn't have vigilance. And while back in the day, this thing could fog a Phyrexian Dreadnought (for one turn) like nobody's business, it's not going to stick around very long to jump in the front of too many artifacts. I will say this, though: if you were playing against a The Rack deck in 1994, Martyrs of Korlis didn't look quite so useless.
Regarding its modern-day usage, we see it used in 23 decks, with the highest concentration in Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant decks. Unlike Leering Gargoyle with Raffine, I see the connection here, since when you flip Rune-Tail, Martyrs makes you effectively immune to all artifact-based damage. It's a hell of a hoop to jump through, but I bet it's very satisfying if you pull it off.
Lurker
In researching this article, I was actually surprised to see Lurker, uh, lurking so far down the list of playable Reserved List creatures. It's not that bad, friends.
For a card from The Dark, three mana for a 2/3 is a pretty competitive rate, and the Anson Maddocks art is downright chilling. It's just a gross little guy, looking like someone I'd see hanging out in the parking lot of an Agalloch concert in 2008. That's a very specific reference that no one will understand, but sometimes you need to say things for yourself. As a little treat.
Like the previous entry, Oracle buttons up the language of the text box, thusly: "Lurker can't be the target of spells unless it attacked or blocked this turn." So shroud in your first main phase. Is it powerful? Nope. But way back in The Dark days, knowing it's not going to get Fissured before it has a chance to block the opponent's Murk Dwellers could mean the difference between winning and losing.
This is the first card on the list that I actively enjoy. It's green for some reason despite looking an awful lot like it should have been black. It's got flavor text that conjures a somewhat amusing image of this weird fella eating people's horses while they sleep just to inconvenience them. And it's a one-word card name, and we know I love those. Unfortunately, players logging their decks online do not agree. As per EDHREC, Lurker is seen in only 23 lists, with three of them being Kogla and Yidaro.
Mountain Titan
I know that the art depicts a giant, considering the card's called "Mountain Titan" and all, but the only thing I can see is a regular sized man crouching next to his model train village. It's like asking if you can see a vase or two Victorians kissing. I also want to point out that I combed my beard like that once and I will never do it again. I still hear the taunts.
We get some flavor text from Disa the Restless, a character who waited nearly 30 years to get a card; and it should be noted that she's kind of throwing rocks in a glass house with her quote, considering her fondness for bizarre monsters giving her power.
As for the Titan itself, it's not that great, but like many of the cards we've talked about today, there are certainly niche cases where it could shine, if you're willing to put in the work. For the low investment of seven total mana, plus, say, the combo of Corpse Dance, Priest of Gix and Ashnod's Altar (which would cost 11 more mana in initial investment), you could have an infinitely large Mountain Titan. Thanks to Commander Spellbook for that nugget of deckbuilding inspiration. What do you do from there? That's totally up to you.
Despite the errata that turns the creature type from "Titan" to the much more popular "Giant" (considering "Titan" no longer exists, and all), Mountain Titan is only played in 21 decks, according to EDHREC. The top choice is Sol'kanar the Swamp King, with a whopping two players out there leaning hard into the "black spell" theme. And of course, there's a single Disa superfan out there with a Disa deck featuring Mountain Titan.
Sawback Manticore
Before we wrap up with our final entry here, a few caveats: there are actually two more creatures less used in Commander than Sawback Manticore. The least-used Reserved List creature of all time is Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, and that's because Wizards of the Coast repeatedly ignores my hand-written letters advocating for his unbanning. The second-least popular creature in Commander is actually Timmerian Fiends, but we talked about these goofy fellas already.
So that leaves us with Sawtooth Manticore, a monster with my high school AP US History teacher's face. In total, there are 12 Manticores in the history of Magic. These are not to be confused with Masticores, of which there are six and are overall way better and cooler. There are two primary differences between Manticores and Masticores, namely that the first ones sometimes fly and are usually squishy and fleshy in some capacity, while the latter always walk around on the ground and are made of metal. Other than that, they're basically the same thing.
Sawback Manticore is objectively the worst one of the dozen, which is saying a lot since four of them are commons. There are a few standouts, like Chromanticore and Conquering Manticore, but overall, the creature type isn't one for which people are clamoring to get a dedicated commander.
So who's using Sawback Manticore in Commander? Apparently, 17 people. And amusingly, the card with the highest synergy with the Manticore, according to EDHREC, is...Indentured Oaf? 53% of all decks playing Sawback Manticore (which to be fair is like eight) also play Indentured Oaf.
You could have offered me millions of dollars and hundreds of hours, and I don't think I would have ever guessed that one.
If You Don't Have Your Health, You Don't Have Anything
It's always fun to look at the dregs of the Reserved List and pick away at the low-hanging fruit. Three decades ago, Magic was a very different game, and the Reserved List, with all its high-cost and high power cards, also freezes in time a lot of duds. If it weren't for the RL, it's likely that nobody would be talking about these cards.
Do you have a favorite among this group? Do you have a terrible pet RL creature you stick in every deck, like maybe a Wormwood Treefolk or something? Let me know.
