Summary
Creatures are the bread and butter of mostMagic: The Gatheringdecks. With all sorts of effects, powers, and abilities, creatures are among the most powerful card types you’re able to find.
With more than thirty years of sets under their belt, Magic has had plenty of time to create some truly powerful creatures, especially ones with great enter the battlefield effects. If you’re on the hunt for some of the best ETB effects in the game, look no further than these creatures.
10Reflector Mage
Keep Your Opponents On Their Toes
The best Magic cards aren’t always rares and mythics or big flashy spells that win you the game. Sometimes they’re little guys who can really be a pain in the butt for your opponents.
Reflector Mage is one of the more annoying cards to deal with, especially if you have a way to repeatedly flicker it over and over again. When it comes into play, you get to bounce a creature back to its owner’s hand, but they can’t cast spells with that same name until your next turn. Reflector Mage takes a creature off the board and ensures you don’t have to deal with it for quite some time.
9Magister Sphinx
Tool Box Tech
A little more niche than most other creatures on this list, Magister Sphinx is a bit of a weird one but does a ton of work. When this artifact creature comes into play, you get to set any player’s life total to just 10 life.
you may use this to drop an opponent down to striking distance if they’re at a higher life total than you can deal damage to, or more importantly, you can put a real damper on any player using combos to gain near infinite amounts of life. While being in three colors and a total of seven mana can be a bit of a pain to work around, it still can be a neat bit of tech to deal with difficult opponents.
8Thassa’s Oracle
Hard To Beat Thoracle
One of the most consistent win conditions on a single creature, Thassa’s Oracle is a creature that close games out all on their own. The way it works, is when Thassa’s Oracle enters the battlefield, you get to look at the top X cards of your library, where X is equal to your devotion to blue (how many blue mana symbols appear in the casting cost of all permanents you control).
If you have fewer cards in your library than what you’re looking at, you win the game. There are all sorts of ways to empty your library in Magic, so winning with the Oracle is remarkably consistent.
7Illithid Harvester / Plant Tadpoles
Highly Specialized For Messing With Your Opponents
Much like Reflector Mage, Illithid Harvester is a great enter the battlefield ability that won’t win you the game, but can throw some massive wrenches in your opponent’s plans.
When the creature side of this Adventure card comes into play, you may turn any number of tapped nontoken creatures face down, forcing them to become 2/2 Horror creatures instead of whatever they were. While it is a little more situational than other ETB creatures, Illithid Harvester has all sorts of potentialif you’re able to blink it at instant speed, letting you turn attacking creatures face down mid-combat.
6Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant
The Dinosaur King
Fan-favorite Dinosaur Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant does so much work with its enter the battle effect that it’s a little ridiculous how one-sided it can make a game. All you have to do with Ghalta is find some way to get it into play as early as possible and suddenly your entire hand can be on the battlefield.
One of the easiest ways of doing this is to stick it in your graveyard through any number of discard effects and then reanimate it as early as you can. You can also just ramp up to Ghalta with all the land search effects green decks have at their disposal.
5Dockside Extortionist
Treasure All Your Tokens
Turns out, ramping up in mana might just be easier in red than it is in green when you’re playing Dockside Extortionist. When this Goblin comes into play,you get to make a ton of Treasure tokens, equal to the number of artifacts and enchantments your opponents collectively control.
When you drop Dockside Extortionist, don’t be surprised if you’re netting 6 or more Treasure tokens, but also there’s bound to be some shenanigans from your opponents to verify you can’t make the most of your newly found Treasures.
4Palinchron
Infinite Mana With Just A Few Lands
One of the most broken cards in Magic, Palinchron can pump out an infinite supply of mana as soon as it comes into play. When Palinchron enters the battlefield, you get to untap up to seven lands, a nice little refund for casting this seven mana flyer.
The mana bank starts up when you make use of its activated ability, where for four mana you can return Palinchron to your hand. So long as you’re able to net at least one extra mana for playing and bouncing Palinchron a ton of times, you end up with all the mana in the world.
3Atraxa, Grand Unifier
Phyrexia, Perfected
Not only is Atraxa loaded up with all sorts of keywords while beinga huge 7/7 creature with an incredibly powerfulenter the battlefield effect. When this Atraxa comes into play, you get to look at the top ten cards of your deck, grabbing a card for each card type in the game and adding it to your hand.
Generally, you’re going to be adding around 3-5 cards at a time, but you may nab up to nine cards if you’re lucky enough. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing Commander or any other format, being able to draw cards and take over the battlefield makes Atraxa a powerful card.
2Craterhoof Behemoth
Look At All That Damage
One of the best cards to close out a game, Craterhoof Behemoth is a monster of a creature that turns all your other creatures into gargantuan powerhouses when it comes into play.
Createrhoof gives all your creatures trample when it comes into play, which is pretty good on its own, but also gives them all +X/+X, where X is the number of creatures you control. If you have ten creatures out, and you play a Createrhoof, all those creatures are getting +11/+11 and you’re dealing more than 100 damage to someone or something.
1Gilded Drake
Two mana to trade up any creature on the battlefield is amazing, putting Gilded Drake at the top of this list. When Gilded Drake enters the battlefield, you get to exchange control of it and another creature on the battlefield that an opponent controls.
This mean Gilded Drake is exactly as good as the best creature in play. Of course, if you may’t make the trade for whatever reason you have to sacrifice Gilded Drake, but since it is only costing you two mana, you’re likely not going to be put out too much. The biggest downside to this card is the cost, when can set you back upwards of $240 for a copy of this card.
