MTG TOP 10: These GREAT Magic Cards Used To Be USELESS!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]In Magic the Gathering, there are lots of cards that have just always been good ever since they first made their debut.

[00:00:06]Stuff like Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt, and Sol Ring are some of the most prominent examples of cards that have always been great and always will be great. However, not all Magic cards have such a straightforward history.

[00:00:19]Sometimes a card gets printed and at first it's really not very good. But one of the great things about Magic is that it's always changing and there are some cards that were not good with them seeing very little to no play. But then some new cards and or formats and or strategies get created and a card that was once terrible suddenly becomes really really good. And those are the kinds of cards that I want to look at in this video. Cards that had been considered bad for a significant amount of time but then became good. And in most cases, the cards we're looking at are still good today. I've done several top 10s on bad cards that used to be good and this is kind of the opposite.

[00:00:56]It's bad cards that suddenly got good.

[00:00:59]While most of my top 10s are ranked in one way or another, this isn't one of those. Instead, it's just a survey of 10 good cards that used to be bad. This video is sponsored by Card Kingdom. If you want Magic singles or sealed product, use my link in the description.

[00:01:20]Let's get things started with Goblin Lore. From what generic and a red, it's a sorcery that draws you four cards and then you discard three cards at random.

[00:01:28]That really doesn't sound very good. You spend two mana on a card to draw four, so you're not actually netting cards at all and the random discard makes it a lot harder to abuse this in graveyard centric decks. When this first debuted, there weren't really any draw or discard triggers that made this worth it and that's what a card like this really needs to go off. Goblin Lore is also from one of Magic's portal sets, which means that it started out at a disadvantage. That's because cards from portal sets, originally intended to be stand-alone introductory products, didn't become legal anywhere since 2005.

[00:02:00]However, even after Goblin Lore became legal, it would be another 7 years before it put up a top 10 at all. It got a standard legal reprint, and while that didn't immediately reap rewards, it would eventually prove to be very important for Goblin Lore. This is because the first time it found a bit of success was in modern, where it made some appearances in graveyard-based storm decks that looked to use Past in Flames to cast lots of cheap stuff from the graveyard before winning the game by casting Grapeshot for lethal. Past in Flames even has flashback, so who cares if you discard it? However, that success in modern was relatively short-lived, and Goblin Lore wouldn't really take off until 2017 when Hollow One got printed.

[00:02:39]Hollow One costs two generic less to cast for each card you've cycled or discarded in a turn, so if you cast Goblin Lore or the similar Burning Inquiry, which isn't on this list because it actually saw some play in Dredge decks before ending up in Hollow One decks, if you cast either of those, you end up with free Hollow Ones that turn, and a 4/4 or 2 on turn one or two is pretty insane, especially because these decks were well equipped to take advantage of the discard beyond Hollow One. Basically, modern now had a critical mass of cards that you were happy to discard and/or paid you off for doing it. Like throwing your Bloodghast or Flame Wake Phoenix into the graveyard was no big deal because they were so easy to get back, and Flame Blade Adept could hit very hard for a one-drop if you cast one of those spells. This ultimately spawned decks that are often simply called the Hollow One, that would only get better with the printing of stuff like Phoenix, and Blazing Rootwallop, all of whom love it when you discard.

[00:03:34]Hollow One decks packing Goblin Lore is still a thing in modern right now, and it doesn't appear likely that it's going to change anytime soon. As I just said, it's more like these decks only seem to be getting better and better.

[00:03:46]We just looked at a card that helps you put a bunch of cards in the graveyard.

[00:03:49]Now, let's look at a the that likes being in the graveyard, Salvage Titan.

[00:03:53]For four generic and two black mana, it's a 6/4 artifact creature, and you can sacrifice three artifacts rather than pay its mana cost. And when it's in your graveyard, you can also exile three artifact cards from your graveyard to return Salvage Titan from your graveyard to your hand. Even though this was printed in artifact-happy world of Shards of Alara, Salvage Titan didn't see play anywhere for the first dozen years of its existence. Alternate casting costs are cool and all, but when originally printed, giving up three artifacts to get a shrug-worthy 6/4 isn't exactly worth doing, even if it did have a recursive ability, which by the way also requires you to cash in a bunch of graveyard artifacts to even matter. And sure, if you cast him with the alternate cost, you probably have three in there, but you're doing a lot of work for this thing and just spinning your wheels. And that's why, despite the presence of artifact exit could have played the Titan in basically every format, nobody did for the first 12 years of its existence. So, what changed to lead to it suddenly becoming a good card in 2020? That would be the printing of modal double-face lands in Zendikar Rising. These were cards that were spells on the front and lands on the back, and you could choose to play them either way. That might sound like it has nothing to do with an artifact-loving card like Salvage Titan, but I'm getting there. The printing of these types of lands suddenly made it possible to run zero cards in your deck that would actually be seen as lands while they're in your deck. And that meant you could use both Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer to simply mill your entire library. And this suddenly made the Titan relevant in modern, salvaging its playability. When the entire deck got milled, there would be four creeping chills among the cards, which drain your opponent three life when they get milled. Your graveyard would also have Swords of the Meek and Narcomoebas in it. Those would all return because Narcomoeba's mill trigger would make it come to the battlefield, and then the Swords would return to the battlefield from the graveyard when the 1/1s came to the board. At that point, you could then exile three of the artifacts in your graveyard to put Salvage Titan back into your hand, then sacrifice those three swords. At which point, you have now cast your second creature spell in a turn, since you would have also cast the creature that milled your entire library. And that also meant that your Vengevines all came back, giving you lethal alongside the Creeping Chill effects. Basically, the Titan became good because you could return it to your hand for free and cast it for free. And while doing all of that didn't used to matter a whole lot, it did in this new deck that could mill itself so easily.

[00:06:12]The Titan has also enjoyed a bit of a renaissance of late as a result of the printing of Weapons Manufacturing in 2025, which resulted in a new style of Affinity deck. That card makes it easy for you to have spare artifacts to cast for free, since it gives you a Munitions token every time a non-token artifact enters, and those tokens are great to sacrifice to the Titan since they do two damage to any target. If you combine Manufacturing with Pinnacle Emissary, as these decks do, you just have tons of artifacts worth sacrificing for the Titan. And these days, it sees more play in these Affinity decks than in its original home in the format. It took a while, but it turns out having two free activated abilities actually was enough to make Salvage Titan good once you could go wild with artifacts on board and/or in the graveyard.

[00:06:56]Now, let's look at Inverter of Truth, another creature that costs black mana and can do some wacky stuff with the graveyard that eventually made it an important combo enabler. For two generic and two black, it's a 6/6 with devoid, meaning it's colorless. It has flying, and it comes with something that was likely originally intended to be a downside to balance out how efficient it is. When it enters, you exile all cards from your library face down, then shuffle all cards from your graveyard into your library. And it took a series of some pretty specific events for the Inverter to suddenly become a great card. First, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Thassa's Oracle both got printed in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Jace when you draw from an empty library, and the Oracle when it enters, provided your devotion to blue is greater than or equal to the number of cards in in library. Those two cards being printed would not have been enough on its own for the Inverter to see play, and that's because they weren't all in standard at the same time. The Inverter had long since rotated and was an unplayed card while it was there. However, the Pioneer format was also created in late 2019, and that would become a format where all three of these cards could be played together, and indeed they were, spawning the first truly broken deck of the format. It dominated the metagame entirely, putting up eight top eights across the two Pioneer Pro Tours it was legal for, which was the first two Pioneer Pro Tours. Ultimately though, the Inverter was a victim of its own success. It was so good at setting up these cards that Inverter of Truth became the first card to ever be banned after the announcement of Pioneer, and it wasn't even allowed to finish out 2020, meaning all of its success in the format came in the span of about eight months. That's quite the glow-up, going from being a card no one cared about in Standard to becoming a card that had to be banned in the span of a few months.

[00:08:36]Inverter decks still make super occasional appearances in Modern, but it remains banned in Pioneer.

[00:08:42]Let's look at another colorless creature that took quite a while to take off, Pili-Pala. For two generic mana, it's a 1/1 flyer, and you can pay two generic and untap it to add one mana of any color, meaning you have to find a way to tap this and have it survive when getting tapped before you can even access the ability. This card really doesn't look very good. It has subpar stats, and the best it can do is badly filter your mana, which it can only do if you tap it somehow. That's why it's not a huge surprise that this didn't initially see play anywhere. However, starting in 2017, Pili-Pala began seeing play in modern artifact-based combo decks. This isn't an instance where a new card being printed is what unlocked all of Pili-Pala's potential, because all you needed to really combo off is Grand Architect, a card that had been around since 2010. It allows you to tap an untap blue creature you control to add two colorless mana, and you can only spend that mana on artifacts and their abilities. Luckily, the Architect also comes with a way to make Pili-Pala blue, and once you did that, you could tap Pili-Pala for two colorless mana, use that mana to untap Pili-Pala and add one mana of any color, and you just keep doing that until you felt like you had enough mana. And Pili-Pala's mana didn't have the same restriction, you could use it on anything. So, it wasn't hard to find a way to win at this point. But, as nice as that sounds, decks using that combo didn't have a consistent enough win condition to make that especially viable. But, the printing of a good win condition for the deck in 2017 suddenly made the combo more viable. And that card was Walking Ballista, which you can pump all of your mana into, then remove all of its counters to machine gun your opponent. While it's true you could use Pili-Pala mana on anything, and you don't have to only use it on artifacts like the Ballista, having the win condition be an artifact meant the deck was a lot more consistent because your other artifact payoffs worked with the Ballista, too. You could power it out pretty easily even without Pili-Pala around, and you could tutor it up with Trinket Mage. The deck didn't stay super relevant in modern in the long term, really only finding sporadic success there for a couple of years, but Pili-Pala would later go on to some more success in Pauper, a format where only commons are legal. There, it's been combined with Careful Cultivation for a similar combo, one where you can tap Pili-Pala to make two mana, and then use that mana to untap the Scarecrow, netting a mana every time you do.

[00:10:51]Pili-Pala has been played in Pauper as recently as 2025, and there are likely more combos in Pili-Pala's future as more and more cards get printed.

[00:11:00]Now, let's look at another card that could allow you to combo off with a bunch of mana, but took a while for it to actually start doing it. Talking about Food Chain. For two generic and a green, it's an enchantment, and you can exile a creature you control to add X mana of any one color, where X is one plus the exiled creature's mana value, and you can only spend that mana to cast creature spells. Normally, giving up something on board for a boost of only a single mana isn't worth doing, and that's why this languished as a card no one really cared about for several years. However, in 2003, it suddenly became a viable combo card in extended.

[00:11:31]This was a result of goblins receiving tons of support in onslaught block. A green card that exiles creatures for mana may not immediately sound relevant for goblins, but it was. The trick was to use goblin recruiter to stack your deck in such a way that you could rip through the entire thing and swing for lethal. This was pretty easy because a recruiter simply let you tutor up all the goblins you wanted and then put them in any order on top of your library. The plan was to use goblin ringleader and layer things in such a way that every ringleader drew you four goblins that you could then play by exiling the recruiter. While the recruiter and ringleader had both been around for a while, it was the powerful new goblins you could stack your deck with thanks to onslaught that really made this deck go.

[00:12:11]Most notably, goblin war chief and goblin piledriver. The chief could reduce the cost of your goblins making it even easier to go off while also giving them haste, meaning you would swing for lethal on the turn you rip through your entire deck. Ultimately, this resulted in the recruiter getting banned in extended and later legacy. The deck lived on in vintage where it wasn't quite as busted and there were some similar elf decks that would later use food chain in legacy, but it didn't really get bumped back into high-level play until the printing of mist hollow griffin in 2012, which led to food chain becoming relevant in legacy all over again. That creature can be cast from exile and you know what that means, you can exile the griffin to food chain and recast it every single time netting a mana each time you do. The griffin food chain deck kind of started out on the fringes of legacy, but then they printed eternal scourge in 2016, another creature that can be cast from exile giving the deck a second efficient creature to combo with food chain for infinite mana. And then the printing of the aforementioned walking ballista in 2017 gave the deck easier access to a win condition since you could just sink all of your mana into it and win the game. Goblin food chain decks are also experiencing a revival in the format.

[00:13:19]While they can't stack the deck with the recruiter, the fact that the ringleader has been joined by moxis goblin grandee now gives the deck two creatures that can quickly populate the board with goblins and food chain can make it easy to rip through the deck even when it isn't stacked perfectly. Food chain decks are still very much a factor in legacy right now, but there was once a time where no one thought it was a good card.

[00:13:40]I just told you about food chain and Pili-Pala, a couple of cards that enabled infinite mana combos, but let me tell you about something awesome you can do that doesn't require any mana at all, subscribing to this channel. If you're enjoying this video, you'll probably enjoy my other content, too. I put out three MTG top 10s like this one each and every week, and I've made over 1,000 of them over the years. So, if you'd like to keep aware of my future top 10s while also having easy access to my massive catalog of videos, do me a favor and subscribe.

[00:14:09]Now, let's look at Gamble. For one red mana, it's a sorcery that lets you tutor up any card and put it into your hand, but then you discard a card at random.

[00:14:16]When you read this card for the first time, it's hard not to think about the fact that there is a chance you're going to discard the exact card you tutored up. And no matter what, this is a tutor that does two for one you, which doesn't sound great. That's a big downside to be sure, and it scared people away from playing this card for the first seven years of its existence. And it didn't hurt that there were plenty of tutors around in those days that didn't come with the inherent risks this one has.

[00:14:38]And all of this led to it not being viewed as an especially good card in its earliest days. However, to a certain extent, I think part of that was just people being worried about the fail case. It would put up its first top eight in 2005 in a Sneak Attack deck that Hall of Famer Tsuyoshi Fujita piloted to a top eight finish at an extended Grand Prix. His deck really didn't have anything in it that synergized super well with Gamble. He just, well, thought it was a good gamble to use the card in a deck that really needed to get either Sneak Attack or Through the Breach alongside a great creature to cheat into play like Symbiotic Worm. Sure, sometimes he would discard the card he wanted, but it ended up allowing him to set up his combo and made his deck more consistent on the whole, making it a worthwhile inclusion.

[00:15:18]Still, Gamble wasn't incredible at this point, but people had realized its power. It took the rise of Lands decks in Legacy for it to really take off.

[00:15:26]These decks were all about Life from the Loam and generating tons of value with it by milling cards with Dredge and then getting lands back three at a time with it. Many of these lands were cycling lands that you could just keep cashing in or utility lands like Wasteland, which could an opposing mana base when you kept getting them back.

[00:15:42]So, Gamble's downside was even smaller here, especially if what you really wanted was Life from the Loam or a land to combo with it. One way or another, you'd get your Life from the Loam and or that land back from the graveyard, so it didn't really matter if you discarded them. It remained a fixture in these graveyard-based land decks for quite some time. It has continued to be featured in decks with graveyard themes or subthemes in Legacy, and these days you'll find it the most often in Storm decks. Today's Storm decks run important cards like Echo of Eons and Faithless Looting, both of which are perfectly happy to be in the graveyard. In fact, the Echo would actually prefer to be there because it's so much cheaper to cast once it is. These days, Gamble is one of the best tutors in Legacy, and it's also classified as a game-changer in Commander, a singleton format where tutors are even better than usual. In short, Gamble went from being a tutor that players turned their nose up at to being one that's incredibly important in multiple formats.

[00:16:32]Let's move from a tutor that gets better when you don't mind cards ending up in your graveyard to an instant that can do some crazy stuff with your entire graveyard, Second Sunrise. For one generic and two white mana, it's an instant that has each player return to the battlefield all artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands in their graveyard that were put there that turn. While this card undoubtedly has a strong text box, I mean, there just aren't very many cards in Magic that can reanimate so many different permanent types at once, the fact it was symmetrical and had such a narrow window in which it could work kept it from seeing any competitive success for almost a decade. Some people tried to find a way to unlock its potential in Extended in 2006 in a deck that used a cycle of eggs from Odyssey to keep producing mana to cast Second Sunrise over and over again and get those eggs back, but that deck never achieved a top eight. It just wasn't consistent enough.

[00:17:20]However, that changed in 2012 when Faith's Reward got printed. It's a very similar card except it's not symmetrical and it lets you return all permanence from your graveyard that were put there that turn. Now, the deck had two cards that could conceivably reanimate your whole graveyard and that meant there was finally a reason to play Second Sunrise as you were no longer entirely reliant on that card alone and it also made it easier for you to chain multiple instances of this effect together in a single turn. These decks also used the egg name and the even more humorous Sunny Side Up, which was another combo deck in the long tradition of combo decks having breakfast food names. While the eggs from Odyssey weren't legal in modern, the plan was instead to use cheap artifacts that can trip when you sacrifice them and also generate mana, most notably Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star, and combine those with artifacts that could also just generate lots of mana by giving themselves up like Lotus Bloom and you can chain all of this together to eventually win the game by activating a Pyrite Spellbomb 10 times. You might think you'd run out of cards before that happened, but not with Conjurer's Bauble also kicking around and getting used over and over and over again. The deck caused some significant problems and not just because it was good. The deck's cracking of artifacts and recursion of them while drawing lots of cards meant the deck often had 15-minute turns, really causing problems at competitive events. Normally, when time expires at a top event, players are given five additional turns to complete the game. Most of the time, these turns are completed pretty quickly, but Second Sunrise players can make these five short turns last for an eternity.

[00:18:49]Ultimately, both the deck's power and how slowly individual turns with the deck could go resulted in Second Sunrise getting banned and it remains banned in modern today.

[00:18:59]Let's move from one card that lets you cast your whole library in a single turn to another, Glimpse of Nature. For one green mana, it's a sorcery and whenever you cast a creature spell for the rest of that turn, you draw a card. Like Second Sunrise, this card has some serious power even the first time you read it. But in practice, no one could really find a viable competitive way to go off with it for the first several years of its existence. If you're spending mana to cast creatures, you're going to quickly run out of mana, and thus stop drawing cards pretty quickly.

[00:19:25]And because you have to use up a card up front to cast this, you don't really end up with that much value. That would change in 2008 with the printing of both Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel.

[00:19:36]Glimpse and these new cards were all legal together in extended, and that ended up spawning a powerful new combo deck that year. One that put up six top eights at a single Pro Tour. The Druid lets you tap three elves to add three green mana to your mana pool, and Nettle Sentinel untaps anytime you cast a green spell. So, if you could cast Glimpse and get an assortment of elves into play, including the Druid and the Sentinel, you could ultimately just draw and cast all the elves in your deck. untapping to be tapped for mana, and each new elf on the board increasing your mana production, too, thanks to the Druid.

[00:20:07]Importantly, the cost of that ability even lets you tap brand new elves, so you could just keep the chain going. You could then win the game in any number of ways, like with a Predator Dragon that would devour all of your elves and swing for lethal, or a lethal Grapeshot. This powerful combo ultimately got Glimpse banned when Modern was created in 2011, but the deck has lived on in Legacy, where it's still relevant today. While the win conditions are different, Craterhoof Behemoth and Ezuri, Renegade Leader are often the go-tos these days.

[00:20:34]The way to combo off and draw your entire deck is pretty much identical, even almost 20 years later.

[00:20:41]Let's move from a card that can allow you to draw your entire library in a single turn to one that allows you to mill your entire library in a single turn, Cephalid Illusionist. For one generic and a blue, it's a 1/1, and when it becomes targeted by a spell or ability, you mill three cards. It also has an activated ability that isn't super relevant. What really matters here is that trigger. If you combine it with something that can target the Illusionist for free, you can mill your entire library by repeatedly using the ability. And there were ways to do that, like the Incor creatures, all of which allow you to redirect the next one damage it would be dealt to this creature this turn to target creature you control instead, and you can use that ability whenever you want, not only when damage is incoming. While all of that was great, the deck just wasn't consistent or fast enough to be worthwhile for several years. That changed with the printing of Shuko in 2005. That's an equipment that costs only a single mana and equips for zero.

[00:21:31]This gave the deck, which would come to be called Cephalid Breakfast, a second one-mana way to repeatedly the Illusionist, and it was generally a better way to do it since your Incor creature could easily be removed. So, now you could play Shuko on turn one, the Illusionist on two, and mill your whole library. Amongst the milled cards would be Sutured Ghoul, who would get reanimated and gobble up all of your graveyard to be massive, and there would also be a milled Dragon Breath in the graveyard, which would come into play attached to the Sutured Ghoul, give him haste, and allow you to smash in for lethal immediately. For a while there, Cephalid Illusionist did become irrelevant again, but then Thassa's Oracle got printed, giving you way more consistent ways to win the game after milling your entire library. The later printing of Nadu Winged Wisdom also powered up the Illusionist, giving you another great card for targeting with your free stuff, and often allowing you to draw or mill your entire library. The Illusionist is still a relevant card in Legacy right now, and it's had a pretty good career in the long run. It just turns out being able to mill your entire library so efficiently has a lot of upside.

[00:22:33]Let's close things out with a look at Summer Bloom. It's the oldest card in this video. It was originally printed in 1996's Visions, and of all the cards in today's video, it's the one that took the longest to put up its first top eight, as it would be 18 years before it achieved its first. For one generic and a green, it's a sorcery that lets you play up to three additional lands in a turn. This is another card in the list that sounds pretty powerful when you read it, but additional land effects like this that also don't let you draw cards tend to be pretty mediocre. Sure, maybe you ramp your mana in a huge way, but if you have the lands to take advantage of this, you probably don't have something to spend that mana on.

[00:23:09]And drawing this when you have no lands or very few in your hand is very much on the table as well, and that's a big problem. That's why it went so long without anyone finding something to do with it. However, that changed in 2014 when it went from being a card no one cared about to being a huge problem in modern. This isn't really a case where there was suddenly some brand new card that came out and unlocked the Bloom's potential. It was just a case of people finally realizing a way to abuse a super weird card, Amulet of Vigor, which is itself a card that took a while for people to find a way to make use of and one I talked about in past videos. The amulet untaps any land that enters tapped, and combining the amulet with the Ravnica bounce lands is where things got really interesting. This is because these lands can each tap to produce two mana, and while they entered tapped, with the amulet in play, they immediately untapped, and you can tap them for two mana, and then bounce them back to your hand. That alone wouldn't really be enough to make the amulet strong, but it's more than enough when you combine it with effects that allow you to play multiple lands in a turn.

[00:24:09]And that's where Summer Bloom comes in.

[00:24:11]With the amulet plus a single bounce land and Summer Bloom, you can just play the same bounce land three times or four if you haven't already played your land for the turn, and that means you can generate six plus mana on turn two. The nastiest thing these decks could do was play a Hivemind and then cast a Summoner's Pact. Hivemind would make your opponent copy it, and then and if they couldn't pay the cost on their next upkeep, which there was basically no way they could, they would just lose the game. These Amulet Titan decks could also use that six mana to slam the other card onto the table that the deck is named for, Primeval Titan, a six mana 6/6 trampler that fetches two more lands that normally enter tapped, but with the amulet, they untap, opening a whole world of possibilities. For example, when the Titan entered, you could search up Boros Garrison and Slayers' Stronghold to give the the haste, swing with it, and immediately search up two more lands and at that point there were any number of ways for you to just win the game right away. Most notably Sunhome Fortress of the Legion which could give it double strike. Ultimately, the speed with which this deck could win and the fact it could be accomplished in two different ways on turn two, all thanks to Summer Bloom, got the Bloom banned in modern in 2016. So, it had a pretty wild couple of years there where it went from people's bulk binder to the top of modern and then back into people's bulk binder because it got banned. It's one of the most notable examples of a bad card that suddenly became good.

[00:25:28]So, those are 10 magic cards that were pretty useless, but then suddenly became awesome. If you want to own any of them because most of them are still awesome today, check out the description where you can find a direct Card Kingdom link for each card that appeared in the video. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like it and share it so that others can enjoy it, too. If you want to catch up on past videos, you should see a playlist on your screen shortly. And if you want to stay aware of future videos, don't forget to subscribe.

[00:25:51]Thanks for watching.