Funniest Overall Playable Cards
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar It almost feels unfair to the other cards on this list to start off with Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, but here we are. Its name is functionally impossible to pronounce, it has no casting cost, when it’s played (by discarding it…), it fetches a book from your deck, and it has an ability that sacrifices food to force creatures to hurt themselves. What?! The ridiculous name is a reference to the flavor text of Granite Gargoyle, which references a quote from The Underworld Cookbook (the book Asmo summons) about gargoyles being delicious.
Quarum Trench Gnomes Frequently referred to with affection and love as the “Quantum” Trench Gnomes, this four mana creature from Legends is pretty terrible. It taps to turn Plains into lands that produce colorless mana and…that’s it! Goofy name and terrible ability aside, the art depicts a very goofy gnome that must have back problems. He does look very distinguished, though! It’s hard to not look at the art on this card today and immediately think of the tunnel-digging meme.
Goblin Game It’s kind of incredible this card is black border and not from an Un- set. Goblin Game requires players to hide random objects, something no other Magic: The Gathering card involves, and then punishes whoever hides the fewest number of objects by removing half of their health. Think about the flavor here. Goblins apparently enjoy playing a game where you hide random junk and the winner is whoever hides the most nonsense wins. Super fun game, huh?
Steamflogger Boss Steamflogger Boss may not look particularly funny at first. It’s a 3/3 that grants Riggers +1 attack haste, and then it lets Riggers assemble an additional Contraption whenever an ability or effect causes Riggers to make Contraptions. Here’s the thing, though—there are no Riggers or Contraptions. The card buffs something that doesn’t exist and impacts a mechanic that doesn’t exist! Wizards of the Coast would later print Riggers and Contraptions in an Un- set, which are non-black border cards that can’t be played in any competitive format, as a punchline to the joke created by Steamflogger Boss.
Goblin Test Pilot In the worlds of Magic: The Gathering, goblins tend to be very goofy, chaotic, and accident-prone. Goblin Test Pilot exhibits this very well. It taps to deal 2 damage to a random target or player. What makes its random ability even funnier is that it is an 0/2, meaning it is likely to eventually kill itself. It’s a little dark, but it’s also very funny.
Gingerbrute Just look at this little guy run! Gingerbrute is an animated cookie that’s in a full-blown sprint! It has a devilish little look on its face too, which only adds to the overall vibe. To top it off, the creature is a “food golem.” As you can probably imagine, there are no other food golems in MTG. Alongside Emrakul and Asmo, Gingerbrute is probably the most often-played card in this list. It’s surprisingly good in certain Affinity decks.
Uktabi Orangutan Uktabi Orangutan almost made our funniest art list, but the art isn’t the only funny thing about this card. Alongside the giant screeching orangutan art, it’s kind of funny that the card destroys a target artifact when it enters play. Just picture a giant ape showing up and smashing a random object in your home. The flavor text is very weird, too: “‘Is it true that the apes wear furs of gold when they marry?’ —Rana, Suq'Ata market fool.” Huh?
Hot Soup Hot Soup makes a creature unblockable but destroys that creature whenever it deals damage. The art depicts a goblin carrying a giant cauldron of soup through a battle. You can kind of see why this is hilarious; picture a dude just being totally ignored in battle because he’s carrying a big thing of soup.
Incite Hysteria Incite Hysteria is hilarious in a very subtle kind of way. It makes creatures that share a color unable to block creatures of a given color for one turn. Flavor-wise, picture everyone freaking out and running away from a particular creature before just going back to normal. This card’s ability is often associated with goblins too, so you can kind of picture everyone in the art turning into a goblin for like five seconds.
Permeating Mass Permeating Mass is the rare “hilarious, but also spooky” combination. This spirit creates copies of itself whenever it deals damage to a creature. It’s sort of like a virus, gameplay-wise. The thing just punches other stuff and turns it into itself. You can picture an entire battlefield being overrun by the same identical ghost. The art for the card is kind of funny, too. The face on the forest spirit is sort of goofy with its mouth agape.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn Back when you could post comments on Gatherer, the top comment for years running on this card was, “R&D had to be high when they designed this.” Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is a flying spaghetti monster that can’t be countered and has protection from spells that are more than one color. It also gives you an extra turn and destroys 6 of your permanents when it hits you. It basically ends every game it gets played in. Beyond being absolutely ridiculous on its own, it’s very funny that the most powerful creature in the history of Magic dies to 15 squirrels.
Totally Lost Ah, poor Fblthp. Totally Lost depicts a poor little homunculus named Fblthp who is hopelessly lost among a crowd. Hilarious? Yes. Moving and emotionally powerful? Absolutely. The art and flavor text of this card became so beloved that Fblthp (pronounced “fibble-thip”) became a de facto mascot for Magic: The Gathering. He would go on to appear in multiple other cards, get a card all of his own, and even get his own Funko Pop!
Funniest Un-Set Cards
Flavor Judge Flavor Judge is not only a rooster refereeing a fight, but it’s mechanically hilarious, too. It forces a random person to justify what’s happening in the game, which can lead to some very funny interactions. What are Un-Set cards? The Un-Sets refer to a collection of silver-bordered sets that all start with “Un” (Unstable, Unglued, etc.). These sets are released periodically as a kind of joke, and they’re not allowed to be played in any official format, so it feels unfair to hold them to the same humor scale as the other cards in this article.
Yet Another Aether Vortex “Aw man, we’re getting sucked up into another vortex?!” says the giant giraffe flying through the sky. The card is also kind of sweet—it accelerates through each players’ libraries by allowing creatures on top to be in play.
Frazzled Editor There’s a penis in the flavor text of this card. That poor editor just didn’t have enough time to fix all of the typos! We sympathize with you, Mr. Editor.
Hurloon Wrangler Yeah, you’re looking at a minotaur wearing jeans. Not only is he rocking the butt off of those fancy jeans, he’s also looking seductively back at the viewer like he’s in a commercial. We love you, Mr. sexy jean-wearing minotaur man.
Frankie Peanuts This mafia don elephant lets you ask your opponent a yes-or-no question every turn. The player must answer truthfully and abide by that answer until the end of the turn. This doesn’t seem very funny at first, but think of the possibilities! You could ask: “Are you going to attack me this turn?” “Do you have a counterspell in your hand?” “Are you able to win the game this turn?” “If I were to ask you if you concede the game, would your answer to that question be the same as the answer to this question?”
Spark Fiend Spark Fiend is hilarious because it’s not entirely clear what the card does, why it does it, or how it does it. There’s a lot of dice rolling involved; we can tell that much at least.
Sole Performer Sole Performer grants a very straightforward ability: it lets you grant other creatures the ability to double any tap abilities. That doesn’t seem very funny at first, but imagine all of the whacky possibilities! Not only can Birds of Paradise tap for three mana now, but Time Vault exists! Heck, you can use Goblin Test Pilot to deal 6 damage at random!
Thopter Pie Network It’s not technically an Un- set card (it was released as an unplayable holiday gift), but it is silver-bordered so we’re counting it. This hilarious card is a reference to the card Thopter Spy Network, except it makes food instead of autonomous robots.
Better Than One This very bizarre card allows you to rope in a friend to get a teammate. It’s not only super powerful if you choose someone who is also playing Magic at the time (you get access to their cards!), but it’s also very funny to just randomly add a player to your game.
Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental It iss neither good nor particularly fun to say out loud when you cast it, but it is very funny to see a card name wrap around the entire frame of the card.
Funniest Flavor Texts
Werebear “He exercises his right to bear arms.” Incredible. 10/10, no notes.
Goblin Offensive The simplicity of the flavor text on Goblin Offensive is just pure art. It’s also funny because it plays on the meaning of “offensive.” The goblins are not only attacking, but they’re also just gross!
Goblin Spy Goblin Spy, like most goblins, is not very good at his job. In fact, the flavor text reveals that Goblin Spy isn’t even trying to spy on the correct target. He also has a really cool effect, to boot—he reveals the top of your library.
Gorilla Titan Gorilla Titan’s flavor text is just really, really dumb in the best way possible. We aren’t going to ruin the joke here since it’s a bit of a visual gag, so just check the card out.
Aggravate We do not know who Anje Falkenrath is, but they’re quoted in the flavor text of Aggravate saying something very strange. “Barbarians! They burned my favorite chair! We'll kill them all!” It must have been a very nice chair.
Tar Pit Warrior Tar Pit Warrior’s flavor text implies the giant doesn’t mind physical violence so long as nobody says anything mean to them. Poor Tar Pit Warrior!
Goblin War Strike In another case of goblins being lovable, goofy goobers, the flavor text of Goblin War Strike suggests that the little guys are still struggling with the basic order of operations when it comes to using weapons.
Last-Ditch Effort The flavor text on this card is actually pretty good advice for life if you want to be vindictive: “If you're gonna lose, at least make sure they don't win as much.”
Repulse You know that gif with the kids freaking out because someone got roasted? That’s what we picture when we look at the flavor text on Repulse.
Fodder Cannon It’s not entirely clear why the characters in the art for Fodder Cannon want to launch their cousins through the air, but it’s funny. The final instruction in the flavor text is just the cherry on top.
Funniest Art
Indestructible Aura If you don’t look at this bird person throwing up the heavy metal devil horns and immediately think “Radical!” then we don’t know what to tell you. The bird in Indestructible Aura rocks! This might be the only card in the game named “aura” that isn’t actually an aura—it’s an instant. It’s also not indestructible, which potentially makes it the most misleading card of all time.
Word of Command The art here is astonishingly bad and wonky, but there’s kind of a fun story here. Word of Command was slated to be printed in the first MTG set, and the art director, Jesper Myrfors, sketched the art on the card out as a preliminary idea for the real artist to use. Instead, the game’s designer and creator, Richard Garfield, loved the mock up so much that he just used that. Don’t feel bad about poking fun at Word of Command. Myrfors also hates the card and thinks it’s dumb that his terrible art was used, so he’s in on the joke.
Outmuscle The art for Outmuscle depicts a bear being body slammed. That’s it. That’s the art.
Savage Punch If we had a nickel for every MTG card depicting humans violently attacking bears, we’d have two nickels. That’s not a lot of money, but it’s still weird it happened twice. Savage Punch depicts Surrak, the leader of the Temur tribe on Khans, literally punching a bear. This card is the inspiration for Really Epic Punch, the Un- set card that depicts a bear punching a dragon. All we need is a card depicting a guy punching a dragon and we’d have the full set compl…oh wait, that actually exists.
Throat Wolf It’s not technically a playable card (it’s a playtest card that was jokingly released), but come on now. Just look at that goofy wolf.
Hyalopterous Lemure The original art for the Hyalopterous Lemure depicts a harmless little monkey squirrel. Not that funny on its own, but it gets better. The artist was inspired by the name, “Lemure.” If you play Dungeons & Dragons, you’d know a lemure is an evil spirit. The artist was thinking of lemurs.
Aerathi Berserker Aerathi Bersker is notable for two reasons. First, the card contains a typographical error that is extremely rare in MTG’s history: the card’s name is missing the “Ae” at the start of the word “Aerathi.” Second, the dude depicted in the art has a 36-pack of abs and a look on his face like he took too much LSD.
Forest Bear Forest Bear has his hands in the air like he just don’t care and we think that’s awesome. Party on, bear!
Charging Rhino The art for Charging Rhino gets funnier the longer you look at it.Not only are the body proportions completely off (why are the hips so narrow? Just how big is that horn exactly?) but the artist really struggled to depict running. The result is that the rhino appears to be dancing.
Gift of the Woods This is not a gift we’d ever want, frankly. Gift of the Woods is still magical, though. Just look at that hunk with the 4-inch waist and his jeans! And the floating wolf head! So emotional! We like to think Gift of the Woods is the inspiration for the iconic three wolf shirt.
The History of Humor in Magic
Comedy has always been a core part of Magic’s identity. The first set of MTG was released in 1993 by Richard Garfield and a few friends on a shoestring budget. Like most fantasy games and worlds, the buy-in requires a ton of suspension of disbelief, and breaking that tension every now and then is a natural human response. Take a look at some of these early examples: Chaos Orb: Just look at that floating brain! Beyond that, the card literally requires you to throw it in the air. Beyond silly. Ancestral Recall: Oh man, that poor guy’s head must really hurt. Swords to Plowshares: It’s just a guy hanging out in a field...
Comments
0 comment