We've seen some unplayable, terrible, unfit for bird-cage liner kinds of cards so far in our quest to distill the very essence of what it means to bite the big one in Kamigawa. But I promise you, there are some things more despicable, more horrendous, more hideous than... uh...

...Those fifteen other things I showed you before.

5. Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked (Champions)
So let me get this straight. No, just bear me out here. I “get” to sacrifice any number of my permanents to put +1/+1 counters on this guy. This guy, who does not have haste. Or trample. Or first strike. Or vigilance. Or frickin' bands-with-otters. Or you know, any kind of ability whatsoever.

-

I just sacrificed my entire board position for a vanilla creature. A vanilla legendary creature.

No, wait; I'm sorry, I guess he does have an ability. His ability is, “When this vanilla legendary creature comes into play, sacrifice at least five permanents or you'll feel even more stupid than you already do for casting this guy, or even letting him touch the other cards in your deck.”

Dracoplasm had two abilities for half the cost, and used a creature's power/toughness to pump itself. Shimatsu gets the same crappy +1/+1 for saccing a Darksteel Colossus or a Kobold. Yes, Shimatsu can eat lands, but whether he's 4/4 or 8/8 isn't going to matter when he's chump-blocked by a squirrel for three turns until he's Pacified or Dark Banished.

And you stood by and watched while he ate all your lands. You fool!!!

Or take Balduvian Barbarians, or that pig with all the spikes coming out of his face from Darksteel. They're both 5/5 for the same four mana, but they require one discard or sacrificing one artifact. Shimatsu requires an astounding five for the same effect. Not two; five.

Overcompensate much, Shimatsu? Something you need to make up for? You need to prove you're the “baddest” demon on the block, cause your bad self takes sacrificing to such ludicrous and unprofitable extremes?

Wood Elemental costs the same and is also a 0/0, but he only lets you sacrifice untapped Forests. So without a doubt, Shimatsu here is slightly better than the worst creature ever printed.

Well, except he's legendary.

Before we go, I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning that he has a trio of phallic tumors with teeth coming out of his neck. It's okay; he wants to talk about his disability. Don't treat him any different than you would any other crappy apocalyptic demon just because these hideous protrusions are trying to bite your face off.

Also: Watch your back, Shimatsu, because Iron Man is going to be royally pissed when he finds out you stole his Repulsor ray.

4. Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant (Saviors)
I thought this card was a misprint. It had to be a misprint. I read it six times and stared, dumbfounded....

Seven lands.

Not four, not five, not six lands. Seven in your hand. Let me simplify this card's text for you.

"Reveal your hand: You are about to lose this game very, very badly."

Magic designers talk about liking to design cards with "tension,” where the abilities on the card actually hinder each other. That Bloodcurdler guy has it. So does Decaying Soil. Cabal Inquisitor, he has it too. Yes, Virginia, lots of really, really terrible cards have it. In fact, I can't find a single example of a "tension" card that doesn't suck.

But designers love them, because they "force choices" or some nonsense. Sasaya has so much tension in her she's liable to snap and kill her entire family the next time she gets a parking ticket.

So if you have a hand full of land, you get to have lots of mana. She's mana acceleration for the already mana-rich. She's kind of like President Bush's tax cuts, if you want a totally random political analogy. (And even if you don't, for all I care you can go drive like Ted Kennedy.)

Sasaya was actually a preview card for Saviors, which was not likely to inspire interest in the set, to say the least. However, they didn't give her to any of the regular columnists to preview. No, she went straight to the rules manager, which should really tell you something about a) how needlessly complicated both her "reveal" ability and "Mana Flare" ability are, and b) how no one else could figure out how to possibly put her in an actual deck.

Aaron Forsythe changed her reveal ability on a whim to reveal as a cost, as he admitted in one of his articles, so they had to write a special subsection of the rules just for her. Just for this card. The comprehensive rules already runs like forty pages - if every terrible card gets its own subsection, Magic is in deep, deep, trouble. Mindslaver getting its own section, well, that I understand. This fecal dropping? Not so much. That little blunder really made her stand out among the multitudes.

Oh, and I lied before. This is the worst Green creature that has anything to do with mana, ever.

3. Kodama of the Center Tree (Betrayers)
Talk about a letdown. As soon as the Orb of Insight came online, everyone simultaneously discovered that this card would be in Betrayers, and simultaneously posted to every Magic-related message board that they discovered him first. It turns out, actually, that I was first, but that's neither here nor there.

And then everyone speculated away on his abilities and stats. And every single one of them, without exception, every one of those thousands of cards, were light years better than this pud.

85% of the time, he's a 1/1 or 2/2 for five mana. 10% of the time, he's a 3/3, still well below the curve. The other 5% of the time, if you need this guy's help to win with that many spirits on your side already, you probably should set up some kind of psychic hotline instead. Make those spirits start earning their keep somehow.

And his Soulshift X ability... Well to start, Soulshift is one of narrowest keywords ever conceived. It's the only keyword in existence that requires you to run a tribal deck to get any use out of it whatsoever. And guess what? Spirit tribal decks don't use it anyway - they've got phantoms, and Tallowisps, and you know, good abilities to work with. So giving him a special Soulshift ability that is worse than the one on Kamigawa draft commons 95% of the time is not likely to get him off of Eric's naughty list. In fact, it gets him circled and a couple of giant neon arrows pointing at him.

And here's what flavor maestro Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar has to say about Kodama of the Center Tree:

"Wise, ponderous, sheltered. The Spirit of the Center Tree is the oldest of the tree Kami and values history above all else (not the written history of blue but the oral history of the soil, rocks, and trees). Think of it as the ‘hermit,' who knows more than anyone else in the forest but is impossible to find and talk to."

I don't get that part about the blue either — but I'm not the flavor guy, so what do I know? It probably made perfect sense in the drunken orgies they laughingly call "flavor test meetings.” I also don't see any part about "He's sort of like a big Irish Sheepdog with spears randomly poking out of him” here, but that's what we ended up with.

So anyway... Somehow, the hermit tree ended up as the one that absolutely needs a ton of other spirits around. Meanwhile, the Kodama of the North Tree, who hates anybody touching him, does not end up as the hermit guy. Yes, that was a fantastic and seamless melding of flavor and function there, guys. Like raw sewage and ice cream.

And this card was so hated and so reviled that that's the real reason they decided to kill the Kodama's East and West in Saviors. Ha! I started a rumor... Let's see how many angry letters I can get people to send to Wizards.

No, seriously, don't. I'm totally serious, please don't. Please.

Seriously.

2. Hisoka, Minamo Sensei (Champions)
"Hello, I am famed actor, Ken Watanabe. You may remember me from such films as Batman Begins, The Last Samurai, and Tampopo. Before I was famous, however, I was a paid Magic model. They told me I was going to be one of the stars of this whole block. Instead, I ended up being mocked and ridiculed. My honor has been stained by my association with this person. I have told my agent to lose Wizards' number. And Hisoka? You can bite me."

From the moment I opened a Hisoka in my very first Champions prerelease deck, I knew the family of bad legends had just grown by one very special member. The stork was kind the day he delivered Hisoka to my legend-mocking door. I think my eyes misted a little. I felt like sending Wizards a congratulations card. Because from that first moment, I knew, someday he would end up on a list I wrote somewhere. It was sarcasm at first sight.

Hisoka immediately reminded me of General Jarkeld, the absolute worst legend ever. Jarkeld costs 3W for a 1/2 legend. Hisoka costs 2UU for a 1/3 legend, which seems totally fair. And both of them have blank text boxes. Well, I guess there's some symbols and stuff there, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with playing the game of Magic.

He's supposed to counter spells — but Ertai, Wizard Adept is so much better than Hisoka, it's not even a fair comparison, despite the fact that it's a very fair comparison. It's that unfair. For one more mana and the tap symbol, Ertai, who costs less, loses all that extra text. He just counters spells. In his entire career, Hisoka has countered as many spells as there are two hundred-pound Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and every time he's incurred massive specific card disadvantage.

Ertai is reliable. Hisoka is about as reliable as a heroin addict with ADD. For some insane reason known only to the designer of this card, he requires you to discard a card with the exact same mana cost. Not greater than; exactly. And he makes you pay as much mana as you normally would to counter a spell.

So a typical scenario would be that you cast Hisoka. And then your opponent casts a spell. And then he casts another spell. Then the next turn? Another spell. The turn after that? He casts a spell, and you pay mana to discard and counter it, only you screw up and have the wrong cost. The next spell you do counter, spending seven mana and two cards to do what three mana (or in the olden days of yore, two mana) and a lone card can do.

Unfortunately, you were dead three turns ago and your opponent has already left the table. The rest was just your imagination.

In true VH1 “Behind the Magic” style, I'm now going to reveal Hisoka's darkest secret: he actually got his Sensei degree in Fashion. He looks great in billowy robes, but he knows jack squat about wizardry. Somehow most people don't notice, despite the fact that he's as good at countering spells as your average sea tortoise. He's really more like a figurehead. Minamo can't let the world know their leader is actually some unspeakable, anatomy-shaped monster; they needed a bald guy, fast, and Hisoka answered the call.

He was going to leave when this whole "Kami War" thing started, but they gave him some new perks. Every Tuesday, Kaho dresses up as a French Maid and serves him Pina Coladas while giving him a Kami-milk rubdown.

All the fame, but no ability to ever actually affect or do anything at all - sometimes it's good to be a bad legend, baby.

1. Iname As One (Saviors)
We've come to the end, and I know what you're thinking: “This chick is worse than Hisoka? You're crazy! You're sniffing industrial paint-remover! No way!”

Well, to start, she is the most expensive magic card ever printed. Not in the Alpha Lotus way; the other way. There are three cards with higher printed mana costs than her — Draco, Blinkmoth Infusion, and Autochthon Wurm. You'll notice all three of these cards have cost reducers built into them, whereas I swear every time I look at Iname she's added on another two mana.

I can only imagine the conversation where they tried to sell her: “Look, development guys, we took two legends from before that had similar names and squished them together into an exact combination with the minorest of tweaks to their ability! People will totally play it, especially when we add on six anti-reanimation clauses! They love that ‘paying full price' stuff!”

So she's the most expensive card ever, and totally not worth the title. She could have been an interesting combo piece except for all the anti-fun clauses they added.... Because they hates the Johnnies having fun, they do. But even more than all of that, in a block with lots of flavory goodness that I thoroughly enjoyed, I think this was truly the most uncreative legend ever.

Who in their right mind possibly thought that taking one terrible card and one bad card and making them cost twice as much would make anyone remotely amused or happy? I'm not the audience for this card. I don't know anyone who is the audience for this card. I don't think the audience for this card has been genetically engineered yet.

It's the sheer laziness of it that really gets to me. They could have developed some cool new gold legend, but they took those two Iname hags instead and gene-spliced them. That's like breeding Margaret Thatcher and Madeleine Albright and hoping you end up with Marilyn Monroe. You know what? I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I can do better. Here's my take on smooshing two related legends together. Look Ma, I can design Magic cards with the best of them!

Ertai, the Still Sort of Smart, But Also Loosening His Morals
4WUUB
Remove someone's pants: Counter target spell
4/5

Kamahl, Who Continues to Beat People Up, But Tries Not to Do It to Centaurs as Much
8RRGG
Haste
Tap: Destroy target non-vegetarian creature.
G: Reflect on the purity of unspoiled nature.
10/4

Balthor, Kinda Chubby But Losing Weight Fast
4RRBB
Albatrosses, Badgers, Bees, Bureaucrats, Camarids, Camels, Carriages, Cave-People, Constables, Dan-Dans, Dinosaurs, Eaters, Eels, Effigies, Eggs, Entitys, Evil-Eyes, Ferrets (WOO!), Frogs, Generals, Goats, Gremlins, Gypsies, Harlequins, Heretics, Hippos, Infernal-Denizens, Island-Fish, Kings, Kobolds, Lemures, Lepers, Maidens, Masters, Mobs, Mists, Mongers, Mosquitoes, Nameless-Races, Narwhals, Nobles, Oxen, Oysters, Ponies, Poltergeists, Rock-Sleds, Sisters, Smiths, Sponges, Spuzzems, Striders, Toads, Tortoises, Uncle-Istvans, Villains, Wombats, Wood, and Ali-From-Cairos get +1/+1 as long as Balthor has nothing to do with them whatsoever.
R: A completely random creature type that Balthor, Kinda Chubby But Losing Weight Fast totally isn't gets +1/+0 or -1/-13 or +e/-pi randomly.
4/4

Bladewing, the Half-Alive and Half-Dead Like a Schrodinger's Cat Kind of Thing
6BBRRRRR
Dragon
Flying, Haste
When Bladewing, the Half-Alive and Half-Dead Like a Schrodinger's Cat Kind of Thing comes into play, put it into your graveyard, then return a Dragon card from your graveyard to play.
10/9

(I could so break this card with Pandemonium — T.F.)

Kodama of the Straight Line
8GGGGGG
Trample
X is the number of times you read “Kamigawa blck is wurst ever!!!!!!!!!” on a message board somewhere.
Kodama of the Straight Line can't be the target of snide remarks.
10+X/8+X

Phajeskarona, the Kind of Chick Your Mother Warned You About
6BBBBBRRRUGW
Haste, First Strike
At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player gains control of Phajeskarona, the Kind of Chick Your Mother Warned You About.
Creatures of the type of your choice get VD.
When Phajeskarona gives “damage” to a player, that player doesn't lose the game right away, but should probably get tested soon.
12/10

Hope y'all enjoyed this series. It was all in good fun, and lest you think I was too harsh to a favorite of yours... Feel free to scribble your response on the wall of the mental care facility where you reside. For my next project, I'm trying to force Ferrett to let me do Sin... er, Star City Daily for a week, so I can then rant on a variety of shorter subjects. I'll turn in all five ahead of time, I promise. ‘Til then...