Over the last 16 years, there have been a LOT of Magic keywords created. In fact, every new set brings at least one new keyword these days, and often it brings several. Needless to say, not all of these keywords can be as good as cycling, kicker, or cascade. In fact, some of them are downright terrible. Submitted for your approval, at the request of Syd, is my list of the 10 worst MTG keywords ever.
10. Defender - Defender isn't bad because it's a dumb ability in the game, it's bad because they felt the need to keyword this. Before the ability Defender became an ability, there was a creature type called "wall". However, the powers that be decided they don't want a creature type that had rules text associated with it (Wall and Legend were creature types with rules related to them, but no other creature type like elf or goblin had any rules) so they decided to remove the rules from all walls and give them the ability defender. It means the same thing, except now it's 100 times more gay. You see, since this ability is no longer limited to things which are physically walls, they decided to give the ability to some creatures. The only problem is that there was no reason to. See that Opal Eye guy up there? If my opponent is at 1 life and has nothing in play and no cards in hand, why won't he kill them? Is he a fucking pussy or something? And what about that Gatecrasher? Clearly from his name it means he is designed to destroy walls, but he was printed AFTER they made all these non-wall creatures with defender, so now he can just come into play and kill guys like that Opal Eye. This also created a bunch of awkward errata, as the card Rolling Stones which used to simpy say "Walls can now attack" now says "All walls lose defender". I am to believe that with a little sorcery that Wall of Stone, which is very literally a wall made out of stones, can attack, but there is NOTHING on God's green earth that will make Opal Eye take one fucking step forward? I dare you to make less sense!
9. Banding - Here is another ability that isn't inherantly bad, it's just needless complicated. The comprehsive rules normally have three or four sentences for each rule, and then an example. Banding has a full page at 10 point font of legal speak to explain it. Banding works completely differently on offense and on defense, and it's also incredibly useless on offense. In fact, using banding when you attack is actually to your disadvantage in 99% of cases. However, using banding on defense is completely broken in 99% of cases. Sadly, I'm one of the few people that actually knows what it even does, which is why it was discontinued. Oh yeah, and look at that Phalanx: the other problem with banding is that it made creatures cause WAY more than they should.
8. Rampage - Poor rampage. It was such a flavourful ability, and it seemed like a good idea at the time I'm sure. If the rampaging creature was blocked by more than one creautre then it would get more powerful. Seems like a good ability until you look at Aerathi Berserk and see that it's a 2/4 creature for 5 mana thanks to rampage. Sure I COULD try to block it, but why don't I just take 2 damage each turn? I mean, you payed 5 mana for the guy, it's the least I can do. Oh, or I'll block with a Hill Giant and nothing happens. Even though he has berserker in his name, the guy isn't actually that angry, he's just paranoid: he needs to see multiple people ganging up on him before he'll actually fight with all his might. The other problem with rampage, aside from making guys cost too much, is that it's only good on a creature with trample. Why? Because unless the rampaging creature has trample (and preferably at least 3 or 4 power), there's no need to block with more than one creature. The Gorillas have trample which makes them better, but they're still only 2 power so it's not worth blocking with more than one creature anyway. Sure, you can do tricks like Lure and stuff, but at that point you should just be playing some variant of Basillisk anyway.
7. Epic - Epic isn't a bad keyword conceptually. In fact, I really enjoyed trying to win games by making as many copies of Eternal Dominion as I could. The problem with epic is that it has EXTREMELY limited design space because the cards have to be, well, epic! This ability was only ever printed on five cards, and there's not much room for more. Once you play an epic spell, you can't play anything else ever again, so it has to be powerful enough to win you the game. That means it needs to cost a shit ton of mana. Of course, it can't win you the game NOW, because then the epic keyword would be useless, so epic can only be put on a card that will cost a shit ton of mana and has an effect that won't win you the game until it's repeated multiple times. If that doesn't say narrow design space, I don't know what does.
6. Horsemanship - If you haven't heard of Horsemanship, it's because it existed only in Portal Three Kingdoms. The set was based in fuedal China, and the majority of the creatures are humans. Because they were mostly humans, it was decided that there weren't going to be any creatures with flying. They still needed a form of evasion for creatures, though, so they decided to create an ability like flying. Actually, it's EXACTLY like flying. Flying creatures can only be blocked by other creatures with flying (But can block non-flying creatures). Creatures with Horsemanship can only be blocked by other creatures with Horsemanship (But can block creatures that don't have Horsemanship). This is also similar to Shadow from Tempest, but shadow creatures couldn't block non-shadow creatures which gave it an interesting and new dynamic. This is the exact same fucking thing as flying and only exists because they did a theme for the set (The theme being impossible to pronounce card names). The worst part is that now that these cards are integrated into the general population (Portals cards were never originally intended to be legal) it creatures the absurd rule that flying creatures can't block creatures with horsemanship, which makes no sense.
5. Substance - No, I was not too lazy to find images; there has never been a single card with the word "substance" printed anywhere in its name, type, or rules text. This is because substance doesn't DO anything; the ability has absolutely no rules related to it. This "ability" was created because they came up with an amazing idea: creature enchantments that could be played at instant speed, but would only last for one turn if they were played as instants instead of as enchantments. Conceptually, that idea was great and it was on some pretty great cards, most notably Necromancy. But they then had another amazing idea: rewriting the entire rulebook for the game. While changing the rules to make them easier to understand and more consistent was necessary, it had the undesirable effect of completely fucking up what these cards were supposed to do. The one turn effects were written to end "at end of turn". This created two problems: If I played one of them during the end of turn step, it would actually last for the remainder of that turn and into the next turn, which was not what was intended. The other even less desirable effect was that the abilities wore off before damage for the turn did. Armor of Thorns would give a creature +2/+2, but then it would wear off at end of turn whereas damage would stick around until cleanup. That meant that if the armor had kept the creature alive that turn, that the creature was dead. Fortuantely, R&D has gotten much more creative with their wording so that there can still be effects like this without the mess of printing a keyword that doesn't actually do anything.
4. Landhome - Gorilla Pack above has an ability that was seen a couple dozen times through Magic's history. This ability is completely awful, and is almost exclusive to islands. This makes sense, because the creatures that have this ability are almost exclusively boats and serpents. For a brief period in the 90's, Wizards decided that this ability was so awesome that it deserved it's own word. By having all that text as one word, they would be able to create really amazing creatures with Islandhome or Foresthome because it freed up room on the card for more rules text. There were exactly three cards printed with landhome on them (Kukemssa Serpent, Manta Ray, and the 5th edition Sea Serpent), and all of them had islandhome. It was then realized that this ability was completely fucking gay and a complete pain in the ass to build or design around, so they removed the keyword. The ability still shows up occasionally on the perenial Sea Serpent's replacement: Sea Monster, but I don't expect to see the ability repeated in the new core set this summer, so this ability will have gone the way of the dodo. Thank fucking God.
3. Sweep - Mark Rosewater has gone on record as stating that this ability should never have been keyworded. Seeing as the card appeared on only four cards and only in three colours, it's pretty hard not to agree. This ability is pretty terrible. It was undoubtedly inspired by the Visions card Infernal Harvest (Which has oddly enough not been errata'ed to have sweep). The problem is, Infernal Harvest was a good card, and the cards with sweep are not. Sweep is absolutely riddled with problems, the most notable being that the more cards you play with sweep, the less effective they become, and it really, really hurts your tempo. If you play a card with sweep, it had damned well better be winning you the game or buying you enough time to replay all those lands. Charge Across the Araba does indeed win you the game, but it was unplayable in constructed because it would require a dedicated white weenie deck, and that was not possible at any point that Kamigawa was legal. It should be noted that it was amazing in limited, however. These cards are just a giant mess entirely. At least Infernal Harvest let you take out some or all of your opponent's creatures; even if that didn't win you the game, it would certainly buy you time to replay those swamps you just returned. Lots of keywords have been inspired by a single card, but this is one instance where the card was really like capturing lightning in a bottle, and the design can't be repeated well.
2. Chroma - Keywords exist to make reading a card easier. We see a word and we know what the card does because that word stands for something. Flying means it can only be blocked by creatures with flying. Haste means it is unaffected by summoning sickness. Cycling means you can pay a cost to discard it and draw a card. Chroma means...absolutely nothing. Not a God damned thing. Chroma basically reads "Count mana symbols somewhere: do something". Light From Within only counts the mana symbols of one permanent for its effect, but it does it for all your creatures. Primalcrux counts all the mana symbols of all your creatures, but it only effects one creature. Umbra Stalker looks at your graveyard instead of in play, and it counts everything, not just creatures. Sanity Grinding looks at your library. Phospherescent Feast looks at your hand, and it counts each symbol TWICE! Chroma doesn't mean a fucking thing. A lot of people feel the same way about Domain, but domain reads "Count the number of different basic land types among lands you control. Then do something with that number, which will always be 0-5." Chroma counts anything anywhere and the result can be anything. That's not a keyword, that's a fucking mess.
1. Bands with Other - Banding was on this list primarily for being confusing. Bands with Other is on the list because it is flat out terrible. They took an ability that was already complicated, and they made it MORE complicated. And by more complicated, I mean they made it significantly more limited and useless. It's interesting, because this ability was introduced in Legends, which had exactly 310 cards and it introduced 3 new rules: Legends, Enchant Worlds, and Bands with Other. There are 61 legendary creatures in the set. There are 12 World Enchantments in the set. There are 7 cards with the words "bands with other" on them, but there were ZERO creatures printed with the ability bands with other. The Wolves of the Hunt tokens are the only creatures that have bands with other on them without it being granted by something else (There are 5 lands that give all legendary creatures of a specific colour bands with other legends). So they created a terrible ability, and then they didn't even use it. It's like the realized it was terrible and cut all the cards that had the ability, but they were proud of having created a "new" ability so they couldn't axe it completely. Strangely enough, there is only one card that makes creatures with the bands with other ability, but there are TWO cards that remove bands with other (The Shelkin Brownie up there and Tolaria). I'd say it speaks volumes that R&D was far more concerned with removing this ability rather than letting you have it.
And there you have it! The 10 worst keywords ever created for Magic. Maybe I'll make a list of the best ones as well, but for now it's time to stop sitting in this chair.
Best card ever printed? The one that lets me win.
© 2009 by Dr. Jeebus