21st Card - Rashka the Slayer (Homelands)
No, not Raksha the Cat Guy from Fifth Dawn. I'm talking about the overpriced white legend chick that they stole his name from.

I really wanted to find room for her on the list, since a reasonable case could be made that she's worse than several of the Legends on the list. But her ability is just sooo boring that I decided to cut her because I was having trouble making fun of it properly. I don't want any Legend to feel I haven't properly made fun of their awfulness.

Plus, I think I've subjected you all to enough Homelands-based torment. She's no Serra Angel, that's for sure. And I mean both in the sense that she's a "fairly hot chick, but not as hot as Serra" and that Serra is like 10,000 times the better card.

Worst Combination of Abilities - Sword of Kaldra (Mirrodin)
More than any other card in Mirrodin block (and that's saying something) this card really, really annoys me. As a judge, at the Mirrodin prerelease and every single limited tourney for the next nine months, I had to explain to some poor kid that the sword did not actually remove any creatures from the game.

Yes, I know it says it does that right on the card. Yes, I know your opponent shouldn't be able to Betrayal of Flesh his Platinum Angel back into play, because you shot it with your Sworded Spikeshot. But he can. And judges all over the world were stuck explaining this to a stream of uncomprehending kids - that you can't remove the creature from the game, because it dies before the triggered ability resolves, and it doesn't say "remove creature card" it only affects creatures in play. (I was a little skeptical on this one, since our "Ask The Judge" database begs to differ - but John Carter's Saturday School seems to back him up - T.F.)

I'd like to lock whoever designed this in a room with a bunch of sullen nine-year-olds and hold nothing but three days of Mirrodin-Mirrodin-Mirrodin draft. They say hell is other people? Hell is explaining this card to a kid, and his friends, and then his parents, and having him start crying in protest. And it was the pre-release card, too...

Most Disappointing - Gerrard Capashen (Apocalypse)
The Luke Skywalker of the Magic World. They told his story over the space of five blocks. Five years of kids imagining they were Gerrard in his swashbuckling adventures, fighting their way through Rath and Mercadia. And when they finally decided to print a Gerrard card...

Well, they gave it two abilities that a) have nothing to do with each other, b) aren't interesting or inspiring to deck-building in the slightest, and c) have nothing to do with Gerrard altogether.

It's like they rummaged around the "discarded crap mechanics drawer" found a handful that were too innocuous to use anywhere else, and pasted them onto a picture of Gerrard.

There is no other card in Magic that has had such a massive buildup, only to be such a massive letdown. They didn't even make a token effort to tie the abilities into Gerrard's history or portrayal in the novels.

And his tapping "ability" is just plain terrible. Crowd Favorites, Onslaught common, got to tap creatures for the same mana cost, but weren't required to be attacking first like some berserk minotaur.

But the funniest thing about Gerrard's card is that every single villain he beat in the books can kick his butt from here to Mercadia. Volrath the Fallen? He doesn't even need to use his ability. Tsabo Tsavoc? He can just tap to kill him, or take him in any combat. Go through all of the villains across five years, and there's not a single one Gerrard can actually kill, despite the Magic storyline.

He didn't need to be Superman, but did he have to be Clark Kent?

Coolest Ability, Totally Useless - Mistform Ultimus (Legions)
I really want to find a cool use for this card. It's innovative, it's reasonably priced, and it's in a color with a lack of nifty legends. But apart from making tribes with only 4 members qualify to be played in Magic Online Tribal, and being the (*) asterix at the end of thousands of Magic trivia questions, I have yet to see anything done with him. Someday, he will be the focus of a cool deck. Until then, he's the winner of this award.

Worst Name - Skeleton Ship (Ice Age)
There have been some weird Legend names, especially recently, (So, is this Mannichi like a Legendary infection or something?) but this is the only one that routinely causes people to go "Hummuna? Wazzit? That thing's a Legend?!?" There are Merchant Ships, Air Ships, Pirate Ships, and even frickin' Ghost Ships, but none of them get to be Legends.

No, rather than call it "Maurice, Cursed Transporter of Cursed Tropical Fruit" or "Blackbeard Presents Galleon of the Damned" or anything like that, it gets one of the most generic names in Magic since Black Knight.

Also, it's kinda weird that there's a dolphin playfully leaping into the air right next to the death ship. Unless it's a... cursed dolphin!

Ooooooh. Scary.

Worst Legend "Helper" Cards - Bands-with-other Lands (Adventurers' Guildhouse, Cathedral of Serra, Mountain Stronghold, Seafarer's Quay, Unholy Citadel) (Legends)
What list would be complete without mentioning what are widely regarded as the worst lands in Magic, and the certainly the worst cards with the word Legend ever printed on them? Problem is, there isn't much left to say on them. Many others have done admirable jobs pointing out how bad these are, from Ben Bleiweiss and his 100 Worst Magic Cards to Wizards themselves.

Me? I'd just like to point out that I still own a complete set of them. It's just for the art, I swear! But then that voice deep inside me says, "Well, Eric, then why do you still own four of each? Are you still convinced you can break these cards? Haven't you given up yet? No one can find a use for these, not even you! Mwa-ha-ha-ha."

My head evil-laughs at me sometimes.

Worst Legendary Enchantment - Day of Destiny
Eh, I'm a completist. Out of all seven that have been printed so far, this is probably the worst. If people just would have voted Crusade into the base set, we wouldn't get cards like this, because they're so shoddy in comparison no developer would have costed this out to four. So you only have yourselves to blame. I should also point out that its ability is similar to the...

Worst Legendary Artifact - Sword of the Chosen (Stronghold)
I told ya it would be here. The first-ever Legendary artifact - it's a very terrible card, no doubt. It's sort of proto-equipment, in the same way that shopping carts are sort of proto-cars. Darksteel has that Vulshok Morningstar that, yes, costs two to equip, but isn't Legendary and can target anyone. Darksteel also has them Swords of Polar Opposites that are just a wee bit better than a generic +2/+2. Champions has Konda's Banner, which gives the equipped creature and all other creatures like it +2/+2, and can also only equip Legends.

So there's tons of cards that give +2/+2 better and for less than this. It's real bad.

*Update* However, Betrayers of Kamigawa has brought us the first ever cool combo with Sword of the Chosen. Yomiji, Who Bars the Way + Krark-Clan Ironworks + Sword of the Chosen = infinite Yomiji! Not as cool as using Visions' Griffin Canyon to make an infinite griffin land, but still cool.

Worst Legendary Land - Teferi's Isle (Mirage)
This one wasn't even close. This one made Ben Bleiweiss's list, too, and for good reason. This is a blue mana accelerating land that actually provides less mana than a basic island over the course of the game.

If you do the math, which involves reading the rules for phasing (and I don't recommend that), you'll find that because it comes into play tapped, you'll get to use UU from it first on turn 3, then on turn 5, etc. By turn 7, you'll have gotten six mana from it, where an island on turn 1 would have netted you seven. Turn 8, you can use your island again, but the isle has phased away... And so on. You'll always be one or two mana in the hole.

So this card was obsoleted three years before it was printed. Way to be ahead of the game, Wizards!

Second-Worst Legendary Land - Tolaria (Legends)
Tolaria is truly awful compared to the other four Legendary Lands from Legends, although here I have to admit it's not actually all that much worse than a basic island. Part of the problem was that even if by some Virgin-Mary-shaped-potato-chip chance someone did bring a banding deck to a casual game, you could remove banding from one creature during his upkeep. Which is not really worth spending a blue mana on, no matter how you slice it.

You may think that text about only using it during an upkeep is a stupid and pointless addition - but trust me, it's there for a good reason. In a multiplayer game many years ago, I attacked with a band (I was playing Helm of Chatzuk; don't ask) and someone at the other end used Tolaria to remove banding during combat. And then we just stared at each other for two minutes.

We slowly realized we had just annihilated the rules of Magic.

Two certified Magic judges were playing a game where neither of us had any idea of what would happen next - how they could be blocked, who could assign damage, etc. Then, thank God, he re-read Tolaria and remembered it could only be used during upkeep. Whew!

We sort of laughed it off from there, without thinking about how close we had come to destroying the game we loved.

The other part of Tolaria being awful has to do with its name. Because we all know what famed institution of higher learning resides on Tolaria, yes? The good old Tolarian Academy! Now, the entire island of Tolaria provides one blue mana when tapped - yet tapping Academy once typically provides eleven or so blue mana. That does not make sense. How can one tiny part of Tolaria provide more mana than all of Tolaria provides? We're getting into some abstract philosophical chicken or the egg territory here, but you see what I'm getting at.

I find it hilarious that the best Legendary Land of all time resides on a small corner of the second-worst one of all time. Of all the places they could have possibly picked for Academy, they put it on Tolaria? I'm sure the architects were agog. "Tolaria? The anti-banding land? You're serious?"

I'm not sure who was in charge of names during Saga - but much like everything else about Academy, its name was apparently not put through the wringer of common sense.

Bonus Question:
In this epic multi-part undertaking, I have managed to mention every tournament-legal Magic set except one. First person in the forums to name which one I omitted earns bonus points for life.

Note: Portal, Portal II: Son of Portal, and Portal Three Kingdoms: This Time, It's Personal don't count because they're not legal yet. And I just mentioned them, so ha!