Hello readers earlier we examined what I felt were the best multiplayer mechanics and for this article I thought I would examine the worst ones, including one that is particularly irksome for Magic online so without further ado let’s dive in.

Unlike our previous edition the bad cards in Magic are too numerous to contain in just five examples so here are a few dishonorable mentions.

#0 Desertwalk

Appearing on a whopping one card Desertwalk and Desert Nomads provide that much needed evasion against decks running Desert and to boot this card even has the ability to not be damaged by Desert. The fact this ability appears on a single card to combat a single card makes it pretty unappealing and really what are the chances your opponent’s deck is built around abusing Desert?

 

#0 Bands with other Legendry Creatures

Not quite an ability but this cycle of uncommon lands from Legends is pretty useless. Being able to give legends a near worthless ability if they share a color and is certainly bad enough, the fact it does not tap for mana just makes it worse.

 

#5 Graft

Graft while an interesting mechanic causes a lot of headaches especially online with each creature coming in a graft prompt is brought up, the chances I want to put a +1/+1 counter on opponents creatures are far and few between but relevant I guess..? Also don’t get me started on something that makes a boatload of tokens such as Elvish Promenade or Nomad’s Assembly. This makes the list due to its Magic Online component whereas in real life casual play its much smoother and has combo applications.

 

#4 Chroma

I hate Chroma more than any other mechanic a color intensive, unintuitive mechanic that isn’t worth the pay off for playing the cards. Chroma also involves mana symbols in various ways making it an uniform mechanic and the cards actually are pretty unimpressive aside from a few examples making it an overall disappointing mechanic that doesn’t reward players enough.

 

#3 Splice Into Arcane

My personal love for Kamigawa aside Arcane is a narrow parasitic set mechanic that unlike something like poison doesn’t have a fundamental change on the way the game is played, and also unlike Spiritcraft doesn’t play well with sets released years later. The fundamental power of arcane lies in the variety of spells available and the ability to splice them; this is a mechanic that needs revisiting to fully flesh out its potential perhaps in a revisit to Kamigawa?

 

#2 Hellbent

You are sitting around the kitchen table with three of your buddies and you have no cards in hand, is this good or bad? Trick question even if you’re playing with the hellbent cards, purposely draining your hand is suboptimal, each of your opponents has more resources then you now and your durdling around with cards like Slithering Shade or some such it just puts you behind your opponents in card advantage and when your facing multiple people you need every little advantage you can get.

 

#1 Echo

In a similar vein properly utilizing your mana is an important aspect of multiplayer and having to pay for a spell twice will set you permanently behind your opponent in the case of cards like Albino Troll it may be worth it but the vast majority of times you would be better off just putting a creature without echo into that slot in your deck. While some Echo cards are powerful overall their downside is too severe to waste time in multiplayer paying for something twice.

 

So there we have it some of the worst mechanics for multiplayer once again if you disagree or feel there is anything for you to add shoot me an email at PlatinumFUBU5@hotmail.com or check me out on Magic Online at EnderWiggan1337.