The "Best" Worst Cards

For this round: Probably some of the classics like Wood Elemental or Aven Trooper.

Just complete, utter garbage that nobody would ever use. A card that would make you stop and say "Wow, that's a bad card [to play]."

Bashful Spirit 
Creature - Spirit 
Flying
Whenever Bashful Spirit blocks or becomes blocked, return it to its owner’s hand.
1/1

I'm a bit confused about how this works on a mechanical level. Can you only target a creature you don't control? If you can target any creature, what happens when you target a creature you control?

Okay, a week has passed, so let's look at this batch of hot, stinky garbage.


gluestick248 - An overcosted burn spell. For how cheap and crappy it is, I'm almost disappointed that there was no render, because this feels exactly like a crappy Portal: Second Age spell forgotten to time.


Overall though, this spell does burn players, and could win you the game in a multiplayer, so it isn't completely useless, even if in 1-on-1 a Shock is better.

Daij_Djan - Hmmm, okay, a spell that makes target spell or permanent the color of your choice until end of turn. At Overload, that's actually some niche utility for EDH to allow interaction with ruining all sowrds of a certain type at the table, or can make color hate against red more versatile, and at 0 mana there's some interaction with Storm that can be exploi-

Shhfffffshshshshffshshshshshssfhsfhsfhshffshsfh

What's this? I'm being told that the card only targets... spells. Wow, that sucks. Free cost or not, if you're going to use two cards in blue to counter a spell for less than 2 mana, the other component probably shouldn't be Blue Elemental Blast. Even with the interaction with Mother of Runes, there's no reason not to just eat the extra mana and run Turn Aside instead. The best part is the overload there for no good reason. Well, one reason, it makes the card 'combo' with two Blue Elemental Blasts for whenever your opponent tries to get into a countermagic war against your hard-casted Scornful Egoist. I'm sure there's some value that you could eventually reach (if for whatever reason every copy of Counterflux just bursts into flames, and burns down almost every other card in the game as it sizzles), but realistically this is just silly nonsense.

I love it.

melono - This is THE card you keep in your sideboard to swap for the copies of Lava Axe you run in your main deck after you're certain your opponent isn't running any copies of Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, or Bee Sting. Or creatures. There's just no question about it. Sadly, though, this is a creature, and one that activates Temur Battle Rage, which means it has a place (specifically for janky pauper newbies), so it isn't 100% garbage.

viriss - Going for the Zephyr Spirit route, I see. Sadly, you were off the mark by 1. Having one power means that unlike the Zephyr Spirit, you can attack without any of those cheap "combat tricks" or "enchantment auras" the kids are talking about these days, and expect something to happen. At the very least, it encourages the opponent to block because of the mana investment you would need to recast it, leaving one of your other creatures to pass by unchallenged. In a grindy limited game, this makes an awkward situation since if they block your creature, you can just recast if afterwards, it's practically indestructible to combat damage there. Bad, but 1-star bad.

gateways7 - Ah, going for the opponent choice route, because letting the opponent decide for you is always bad. Good angle. The clause for being able to target your own creature is a nice touch, and unlike Browbeat (probably the closest card I can think of to this), it doesn't offer any real card advantage, so if you're looking to burn, they can just make you mill, and if you need spells, they can just eat the damage. There's pain, but it's mitigated. It's practically useless.

Sadly, though, that only stops at "practically" useless, since hypothetically it can still win the game. In fact, all of the entries do, save for our winner.

Daij_Djan 's entry was the worse of them all. It does absolutely nothing to help advance the game, and has too narrow of a niche to actually do anything *while* simultaniously being built for a specific archetype in spellslinging. If I pulled that card as my promo at a set prerelease, I would cut my losses there, throw the rest of my unopened prerelease kit in the nearest garbage bin, and leave the store.

Congratulations on winning the first round!

@temawimag: Is it the "(2:50 D-grade, 5:13 build around)" part that's unclear? If so, by that time in the video the ratings are explained..

So if I have this correctly, the challenge boils down to: Barely playable on its own (in draft), but playable to good if conditions are met.
Because the card I made is accidentally really good in the right deck.

Really sorry, I completely forgot. This challenge is now closed - expect my judging tomorrow! (as usual I'm taking care of CotW stuff today)

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EDIT: And here we go!

We only had four entries, but this was an interesting challenge to judge nethertheless. To reiterate the challenge, melono actually said it best:



So with this in mind, let's take a look at our entries, shall we?

In a world,

Where there are two black eyes.

One man asks, "What else do we need to smile?"

To which society replied,

'Teeth...'

And the man set to work, ready to unveil his creation, which get met with praises of...

'Well, actually, it's the lips, not the teeth, or really any mouth hole that can curve upwards...'

...But the man had already made the trading card, and so nobody actually said this out loud.

It would look badass to offset how stupid the card would be.




Okay, we've been making a lot of bad cards for power, but let's mix things up a bit and make a badly designed card.

For this challenge, I want you guys to design an overpowered legendary creature that DOES NOT include any "immediate" game-ending stats or abilities (things like 20 power, "target player loses the game", "each opponent discards their hand" effects, etc. Anything short of that is fine).

(And don't just post a picture of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn)

I had something more along the lines of this:



Think a legend you would find on whymtgcardsmith.

I don't mind giving that example because I'm not judging. You are now!