Pointed Discussion

Simply not wort the cost, even the effect fails to justify it with yet another high cost.

In my opinion the weakest card from Torment and a strong contender for the unwritten list of "Worst Cards Of All Time".

"Hey what if we print a 1/1 with flying for four mana?"
"That's good. How about we give it a mana hog ability that eats through your hand?"
"That would be excellent, but only if the effect of that ability doesn't amount to the creature being more then a 2/3 with flying."
"Agreed."

What the heck is with the art?
It looks like he is posing for a magazine

The art seems more in place in Unglued.

The art looks like a propaganda poster . . .

this card is hilarious.
I made a deck around it just for fun.
one of my favorite plays id to play Idyllic Tutor, to find Holy Strength to discard for his ability.

but seriously what can be said about this card, it's horrible, one of the worst cards printed.
at least it's strictly better than wood elemental

This card brings back memories.
Horrible, dark, twisted memories.

One of the seven worst rated cards on this site (below .6 stars).

The others are:
Ashenmoor Cohort
Break Open
Crystal Rod
Hint of Insanity
Shelkin Brownie
White Ward

I bet this was supposed to be a 1 drop, or a bad, bad, not funny joke.

...I'm too busy laughing to even describe a rating...

I'll give it a five, just because I'd pay to see someone win with something this bad in their deck.

Point five, that is. How this EVER got over .5 is beyond me-- someone must have misclicked or forgotten that 1 wasn't the lowest score here.

The first card I ever remember looking at and saying, "Why would they ever print a card this bad"

I would rather play Aven Flock.

Bad bad sad card.

The art is the only good part of this card.

Garbage art.

Like face of fear, wotc are treating the ability cost of discarding as a GOOD thing, because of synergy with madness, recursion, threshhold etc. So basically it's a bad ability which is treated as a good ability, which is then double punished by costing 3 to activate and seemingly pushing up the CMC by 2. That really is crazy.

Unlike ashenmoor cohort, which is unfairly rated so low, I would say this really is a 0.5 card, as unlike 99% of creatures, it doesn't actually do anything.

Omniance, i love you. I just laughed for 3 mins straight before i could finish reading your post. Holy crap this card is not much behind wood elemental , but still its a 1/1 flyer for 4 that does nothing good, while wood elemental basically just loses u the game by giving u a grizzly bear sized creature and armagedoning ur lands, a.k.a instantly losing you the game. This card though tries to make you lose the game by discarding your hand, but luckily its not mandatory, and has a preposterous mana cost to activate its pathetic ability. Compare this jank to Oona's prowler .001/5, cause myb it can trade against a stormfront pegasus type card in limited.

Japanbird flies again!

Really, though, this card is pretty miserable, even in Limited...if I really need to discard a card at instant speed that badly, a Patrol Hound should suffice, and that effect doesn't cost mana (and, as a bonus, the card isn't even complete garbage!)

Strictly worse than Chimney Imp.

Well, if you can work yourself into an infinite mana/draw combo, and for some reason your opponent is able to counter every spell you cast, this card would be a nice thing to have on the field.

But it's an extreme understatement to say that you ought to be able to do more impressive and practical things with that many resources.

I WANT YOU!

JOIN THE GLORIOUS STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CAPITALIST CABAL SWINE TODAY!

Probably the worst card I have ever seen. This was worthless when it was printed, and power creep has made it worth less than the cardboard it's printed on. What were you thinking, WotC?

5/5 for being almost as good as storm crow. Almost.

They should have made this a rare for the lols.

the really small print ability at the bottom of the card, "when you win a game using this card, your opponent has to quit magic for life" is pretty cool. otherwise, this card, what the hell? :D

good in edh

@ScissorsLizard:

Your posting has clearly been from a while ago, as all the cards you listed have ratings over 0.6 stars.

The very forums seethe with the player's hatred for the art.

Well, gatherer seethes with our hatred of this card. The best part is that there's probably a worse white creature out there. This is why I hate playing white.

"You're not ready yet!"
"The fight is on!"
"Hay-ya-ya-yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
Pit, Aven Trooper's alter ego who acts in Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Greg Staples: Alright, the art for that Aven is almost done. I still need to shade the clouds and paint the sky. But I'll leave it at that for now. (leaves the room)
Henry Stern: Guys, you gotta take a look at that bird soldier card we made, it's so bad it's funny!
But we still need an artwork that suits this card, any ideas?
Some development team member (pointing at the table): What about that unfinished artwork from Greg?
Henry: PERFECT

I happen to be the proud owner of one of these, and I can tell you that the art is actually worse than it looks on Gatherer. It's at such a low resolution that you can actually see the pixels on the cardboard.

WHOA! That is so terrible. Combined with the art the whole package might just be so terrible it loops over to awesome. I need one.

I... I think I ran this card when I started out.

...I'm going to have to lie down for a while.

Well, this explains the motivation for Squadron Hawk, and to a lesser extent Angry Birds.

Among the worst cards ever.

In the right corner, the reigning champion, the black scourge of the skies, and even if you defeat him, you will be devastated by his fearsome on-death effect, raise the roof for the one, the only, Chimney Imp!

In the left corner, the challenger, don't be fooled by his meek body, for with a minor sacrifice his power rises exponentially, the white protector of the pure, terror of the cabal, Aven Trooper!

Who will dominate the skies in this epic battle?

One of the worst creatures ever printed. So bad it has to be a joke - even the artwork is lame!

I found this card in my local store, This card then began to subtly change my life. I have looked at all other Aven cards out there. Me and my room mate have decided that they are amazing. We then proceeded to buy all Aven cards that exist and we have affixed them to a wall in our room. The Aven wall. What would you guess is at the center? Aven Trooper. He is the leader because the art work just makes him look like a leader.
Aven cards are amazing. I love them all. The deck that I made out of them really is not that good at all, but I still love it.

Art's amazing. I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Hey, it flies at least! It's still better than Numai Outcast... which isn't saying much...

Probably one of the worst creatures ever printed; that said, it's definitely better than Wood Elemental and Chimney Imp. It was also printed in the original graveyard set, so a lot of the time the discard was an advantage. Of course, there were about 50 better options for discarding cards, but maybe, if you were very strapped for playables in limited?

Amusingly a 2/3 Flier for the same cost is still bad!

Karate Kid? ... with birds?

There is something very odd, going on here.... this might not be a Magic card.....

This is rated lower than Wood Elemental......

Why is rated so low? With 19 cards to discard and and mana you should win with 1 single swing!

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Suntail Hawk.

Combos with and 19 extra cards.

Lo and behold, I present... THE WORST CARD OF ALL TIME.

Now, you may point out, stats wise, this isn't truly the worst creature in the game. Bramble Elemental is a less efficient win condition, and there are noncreature cards that have less use (this is still a highly efficient 20 turn clock with evasion!). But as to WHY this is truly the worst creature of all time, let me try and break this down.

First, let's get it out of the way, it is very weak. 3W for a 1/1 flying is only marginally better than Chimney Imp, and that has a pretty sick death ability! The activatable ability is so overcosted that it is mostly irrelevent, but sure, you can sneak a few points of damage in. So this card is obviously weak to the point of being completely unplayable in every situation, but that is hardly unique, every set has a couple of those.

Second, that ability. That ability tempts you. It gives you the promise of "This guy won't just be a 1/1 flying for 4!". With Squire, you have no hope. You lay him down, and you know he'll be just as weak as he looks. Here, they taunt you by giving you a taste of power, but then make the ability so ridiculously overcosted in both cards and mana than it is unusable. In fact, the only time I could imagine activating the ability is if you had another Aven Trooper in hand to dump. Aven Trooper is also more recent than other contenders for worst creature of all time, sure those old Legends cards were overpriced, but they were from Legends! All those guys sucked! This creature was in the same block as efficient creatures like Nimble Mongoose, Basking Rootwalla and Ichorid, I thought WotC had figured out creatures by the Odyssey block?

Third, the flavor/feel of the card. This is the crucial bit. Wood Elemental is a less efficient card stats wise. But, it works better as a card. It makes sense, you cast this Elemental, and he is literally the size of the forests he consumes when he enters play. Pretty flavorful! Most all time bad creatures have that going for them. let's examine Aven Trooper, creature type Aven Soldier. That's how boring this card is, his name is just his creature type with a synonym for the second bit. Imagine if there was just a card Goblin. Or Zombie. No, it's Raging Goblin, or Vengeful Zombie. Those extra words give the cards some nice flavor. This card is literally just a renaming of it's creature type. The creature itself in the art is about as uninspiring as an aven could be, and it is stuck on literally a white background.

Now, along with this flavor, what the *** is that art. Is that even finished? What card has that much whitespace on it? Is that supposed to be the sky in the background? Because the sky isn't white. Where the *** is this bird? The flavor text while bad, is easily the highlight of the card. It resembles a sentence, and the word "seethe" is more interesting than the entire rest of the card.

I honestly want to know what happened with this card. Was this some kind of weird twisted template of a card that made it to print? The mana cost is off by about a factor of 4 (and even then the ability would be negligible), it is just a bird soldier, named as such, even the art is unfinished. So again, I present the worst card in Magic the Gathering history. It is the rare card that fails on every conceivable level. In that way, there is a certain beauty to it. A two year old, randomly hitting buttons on a card generator, would invariably make a more interesting card. This card is so forgettable that it sticks with you. It is truly a remarkable feat.

I really love this art. Too bad it's on such a crappy card.

This card would be really awesome in a madness deck!

Wow. Makes viashino skeleton feel a little better about himself.

At least Carrier Pigeons lets you draw a card...

I don't know what's Sadder, that this card exists, or that 180 "planeswalkers" gave it 1 star instead of .5 ( and that math is assuming no one gave it a 2-5... I can't imagine anyone is that insane )

Is it wrong and immature that I want to make a joke about this card that rhymes trooper with pooper?

At first, I thought the art was kind of oriental. Like one of those tapestries.

But then I noticed it's just plain white. I don't know if Staples gave up, or if he was late, or... who knows why!

All we know is this was a card that has nothing going for it.

People say this card sucks or that it's bad, but think about it this way. Sure, it's four mana for a 1/1, but that ability! That amazing ability! Think for a second. Let's say you have a Reliquary Tower out, which is free, so no mana unfairness. Then, say you have an Enter the Infinite. Now, let's say you're playing using a Battle of Wits deck. That's a potential 200+/200+! Mana cost? Any mana cost is worth that! Everyone loves a big creature, and Aven Trooper is the biggest of them all. Flying is just some additional icing on the cake.

Now, let's talk about that art. You could say that it's uncreative and bland, but you're insulting the skilled and talented Greg Staples. Look closely at that orange circle. Yeah. It's the SUN. If you looked at the sun so long that it turned that shade of orange, you wouldn't be able to see the rest of your surrounding either. The art makes perfect sense. And so does the card's ability. Please stop bashing it.

-Swag_Crow

It's really bad, but it must be evaluated with Madness in mind. Which doesn't elevate it above being awful, but does somewhat explain it's presence.

Combos well as a proxy for another card.