Magic: The Gathering - The 10 Most Obscure Creature Types

Summary

• Eye, Serf, and Slith are some of the most obscure creature types in Magic, with unique origins and strange abilities.
• Rebels used to be a popular creature type in Magic, declining in popularity after the Masques block and fading into obscurity.
• Token-exclusive creatures like Camarids, Flagbearers, and -avites are rare and often overlooked, but still have interesting mechanics and lore.

There are tons of weird creatures in Magic: The Gathering, there’s no doubt about that. For every one Elf card, you get a dozen Gargoyles, Unicorns, or Ferrets.

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With around 300 creatures in Magic, there are bound to be a few that are so obscure, you likely have never heard of them. If you’re looking for something a little quirky to them a Commander deck with, or want a peek into the stranger side of Magic, we gathered some of the most obscure creatures around.

Universes Beyond has plenty of obscure creature types, the same as some Secret Lairs, like the My Little Pony ones, or the Un-Sets, where you get creatures with the creature type ‘Expansion-Symbol’. While they’re unique and often only have a single printing, they’re designed to be quirky and obscure, so we’re going to focus on some others to give them the limelight for once.

10 Camarid

A Token Exclusive

There are a few creatures in Magic that are regulated exclusively to tokens and the first one we’re going to dive into are the very strange Camarids. Only two cards deal with this creature type, a strange, crab and amphibian hybrid that appeared first on Homarid Spawing Bed from Fallen Empires, and then on Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII.

Both these cards create Camarid tokens, which are the infant form of the slightly more prevalent but still very obscure Homarids. There’s been some debate about smashing this creature type into just being a Crab, but that’s a lot less fun and they look nothing like crabs so for now, they’re still just a weird, incredibly obscure token.

9 Eye

Eye See You

This rarely used creature type is the Eye creature, one that is generally regulated to black cards, though has dipped into white and blue over the years. The original creature with this typing is the Legends card Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, a long-winded creature that made it so non-Eye creatures you control can’t attack, presumably because they’re being watched.

Since then, the Eye creature typing has popped up a few times in the occasional set, with the most recent one being the Eye of Duskmantle in the Murders at Karlov Manor commander set. There have been a total of seven Eye creatures, though one is from the Doctor Who Universes Beyond and another in Unstable.

8 Flagbearer

Wave The Flag

More of a creature class than a straight creature type, Flagbearers are another rather obscure creature type that has only been seen on a few cards. Classes are often a secondary creature type attached to a main one. For instance, the two Flagbearer cards in Magic are Human Flagbearer, with Human being their main creature type.

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There’s also an enchantment, Coalition Flag, that turns an enchanted creature into a Flagbearer, but it’s not a Kindred enchantment, so there are only two natural Flagbearer creatures. Both the two creatures, Standard Bearer and Coalition Honor Guard, have the ability to redirect your opponents spells to a Flagbearer if it can, protecting your other creatures from removal spells.

7 Hamster

There’s Only One

Found exclusively in the Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set, the Hamster creature type is only found on the only notable Hamster, Boo. You get a Boo token from either Minsc, Beloved Ranger or Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes.

Boo is a brutal little guy, starting off as a legendary 1/1 with haste and trample, and thanks to whichever Minsc you choose to play, you can give it a huge upgrade in power thanks to a few different abilities. Minsc has seen a fair amount of play, but with only one Hamster in the game, Boo remains pretty rare.

6 Jellyfish

Way Too Many Tentacles

When you think of fantasy creatures you might think of Dryads, Unicorns, or a Phoenix. You very likely wouldn’t have Jellyfish anywhere near your top critters but thankfully, Magic is here to fill the void.

With 16 Jellyfish creatures, there are plenty to pick from, with the majority of them being blue creatures, though green and white have popped up over the years. There’s rarely any synergy between these creatures, instead they’re kinda just a random creature type that is just a little strange in their normalcy. There are a few notable Jellyfish though, like Gluntch, the Bestower, and Hydroid Krasis.

5 Rebel

Obscurity In Numbers

The most populated of these obscure creature types at 59 cards, the Rebel creature used to be a popular type, being so good that Kai Budde piloted a Rebel deck to victory in Pro Tour Chicago 2000. The crux of the deck was Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, which lets you tutor up any Rebel creature and put it directly into play.

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Since the Masques block, Rebels went on a steep decline, not being printed again until the Time Spiral block, only to fade to obscurity once again. The creature type was briefly resurrected again in Phyrexia: All Will Be One and Universes Beyond Doctor Who, but has almost entirely been dropped as a subclass.

4 Serf

He’s Not Having A Good Time

Tokens are a weird thing in Magic. Sometimes they’re common, like Goblins or Elementals. Other times, they’re unfortunate folk living in an oppressive and complex feudalistic culture. There’s only one way to get a Serf in Magic, and it is highly unlikely you’ll ever really need to.

The Serf token was first introduced in the Fallen Empries set on the card Sengir Autocrat, which created three 0/1 Serf tokens. This was years before tokens were actually printed in Magic, however, so it wasn’t until the card was reprinted in Eternal Masters that it got its own token.

3 Slith

Where Did These Come From?

Sliths are an anomaly in Magic, not only are they super obscure creature type, but their origins are very strange too. First printed in Mirrodin, the Sliths share the same ability, that when they deal combat damage to a player, they get a +1/+1 counter on them.

There’s one Slith for each color, an artifact one, and then two more in Modern Horizons 3, one for the Phyrexians and one for the survivors. Like all living things on Mirrodin, the Slith are not native to the plane, but there’s never been any hint as to where they’re originally from.

2 -Avite

More Confusing Than It Had To Be

Okay, so technically these are three different creature types that are just very similar, but they only have one card each that creates this token-exclusive creature, so we lumped them together. The -avite creatures are Triskelavite, Pentavite, and Tetravite, though Tetravite doesn’t get its own token, so there’s never been a printed version of the creature type.

The -avite tokens all come from creatures that share a similar naming convention; Triskelavus, Pentavus, and Tetravus. All three creatures share a similar mechanic, of generating tokens and putting +1/+1 counters on them

1 Azra

Battlebond, We Hardly Knew Ye

Every now and then, the Magic design team experiments a bit with different creature types, with some being more successful than others. The Azra were unfortunate enough to be stuck in the Battlebond set, which takes place on the plane of Kylem.

These vaguely demonic creatures have been found on only nine cards, and are unlikely to be revisited anytime soon. The Azra have the unique distinction of being the only Magic-specific creature type that has never been printed in a Standard-legal set. Since Kylem is designed specifically for Battlebond, it is highly unlikely we will ever see the Azra again anytime soon.

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