Despite the fact that Magic The Gathering has a large focus on its color system, the Clueless boarders of artifact cards have developed their own following within the trading card game. Not only will you find some of the best artifact cards in Magic’s most popular decks, but players are even gone as far as to create entire decks based on the colorless card type.
If you have played Magic long enough, the thought of building an artifact deck or MUD deck has across your mind at least once – I have built my fair share at this point!
Below I have put together some of the best artifact cards in Magic The Gatherings history for you to browse and see if you think they are worth adding to your deck.
Important Note: I have avoided putting the “Power 9”, the “swords” and a whole bunch of other sub-classes of artifacts on this list as they honestly deserve their own list. Below you’ll find my general list of artifacts, but feel free to check out any of my other lists that go into detail about specific types of artifacts.
ALSO READ: Best MTG Equipment Cards [Equipment Guide]
Best MTG Artifacts
1. Arcbound Ravager
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Modern, Vintage |
Modular 1 (This creature enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. When it dies, you may put its +1/+1 counters on target artifact creature.)
Pros
Cons
| Cheap: Only 2 mana | Base 0/0 For Power & Toughness |
| Sacrifice Outlet |
We start off with an artifact creature. Since its inception, this card has seen regular play, especially in “Affinity” decks. You’ll often see this card in low-to-the-ground decks; decks playing low mana cost creatures with a focus on aggression.
The significant element of this card is that it is inexpensive and lets you increase its power and toughness by sacrificing other artifacts. Your opponents have to think twice about using their removal spells on other artifacts you control, as you can just sacrifice them in response and gain additional value.
If left unattended, this card easily swings for lethal if you have enough artifacts on your board!
Even if your opponent decides to deal with your Arcbound Ravager and spell a removal spell on it, you’ll still get great value out of the exchange as when the card is sent to the graveyard it allows you to place a +1/+1 counter on any target artifact creature you control.
It was likely due to Arcbound Ravager’s ability to end games and provide value that saw 14 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and an astounding 37 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
2. Ethersworn Canonist
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Legacy, Modern |
Pros
Cons
| Cheap: Only 2 mana | Requires White Mana |
| Powerful Artifact Ability |
This card can cause quite a problem for decks that do not have artifact spells in them. Luckily if you are planning on playing this card, that won’t be an issue for you!
Its ability locks both players into only casting a single nonartifact spell each turn this turn. The ability is symmetrical, but if you are building your deck around artifacts you’ll hardly notice – just be mindful of the fact that this will affect your instant and sorcery cards.
As you can see, this static ability can give you an amazing upper hand in limiting your opponent’s potential plays.
The significant aspect of this card is that it has such a potent ability but costs almost nothing to cast at 2 mana. This means you can get it out in the early game and seriously put your opponent at a disadvantage.
It has seen over 8 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and 54 Grand Prix Top 8 Finishes.
3. Hangarback Walker
| Recommended Formats: | Modern, Commander |
Pros
Cons
| Flexible Casting Cost | Requires a lot of mana or time |
| Mana Sink | Weak to exile effects |
When this card came into print, most players would try to cram it into their decks no matter what deck they played, and for good reason!
It’s a great card due to its initial low investment cost and it almost always leaves something behind for extra value. However, later in the game if you have extra mana, you can sink all of your mana resources to make this card huge!
Even if it starts out small, it can get progressively larger as the game goes on. A common way to use this card was to wait until the end of your opponent’s turn and then dump all of your unused mana into its ability before untapping for your turn.
Great for early or late-game plays, this card has seen over 9 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and 56 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
4. Sensei’s Divining Top
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Vintage |
Pros
Cons
| Very Cheap: Only 1 mana | Effects to shuffle deck recommended |
| Card manipulation with shuffle |
This is one of MTGs most loved and hated cards depending on who your ask. Affectionately given the nickname “Top” by the MTG community, this card was a staple in the legacy format until it was eventually banned!
This card helps you increase the consistency of your deck by allowing you to look at the top three cards of your library, putting them back in order. Combined that with any simple effect that requires you to shuffle your check, such as Fetchlands, and suddenly you have a way to get rid of all of the cards that you don’t want to draw from the top of your deck.
But it doesn’t stop there, the top card of your deck looking good? Then spend the extra mana to immediately draw that card and put Sensei’s Divining Top back on top of your deck. Having to put “Top” back on top of your deck might sound like a downside, but the ability makes the card extremely slippery and almost impossible to get rid of it without spending 2 remove spells to do so.
This card was great in the Block format because of the small card pool that allowed it to shine. This card was in 7 decks of the Top 8 finishers in a single Block Pro Tour.
All in all, it saw 13 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and 52 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
5. Chrome Mox
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Legacy, Vintage |
Pros
Cons
| No Mana Cost | Card Disadvantage |
| Colorless Ramp | Requires a non-artifact card |
This card is great because it allows you to quickly get your large threats out and ramp in Magic Colors that normally don’t get the chance to.
If used correctly, the downside of this card which makes you exile a card is almost always worth it. It does this by allowing you to tap it and add any mana color of the exiled card’s colors – So make sure you exile the right card.
It first saw play in Standard when it was placed in Goblin and Infinity decks and hasn’t stopped seeing play since. These were Aggro decks, and it did pretty well In Infinity decks due to the fact that it was an artifact.
It has over 18 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
6. Ratchet Bomb
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Modern, Legacy, Pioneer |
Pros
Cons
| Cheap: Only 2 mana | Slow – Needs time for counters |
| Can be Onsided | Narrow Boardwipe Effect |
This card is primarily used as a sideboard card and allows you to kill several of your opponent’s creatures while ignoring abilities such as Hexproof.
It does take some time to set up due to the fact you have to tap it to place a counter on it, but can be a quick way to deal with a board full of tokens since normally tokens will have a converter mana cost of 0.
However, if you have a card that allows you to untap a target permanent, the setup time can be halved to have this card do some serious damage to your opponent. With enough planning, you can set up the board so this card hurts your opponent’s board far more than it does yours.
It saw a massive 25 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and 54 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
7. Umezawa’s Jitte
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Legacy |
Pros
Cons
| Cheap: Only 2 Mana | Costs 2 to equip |
| Versatile Ability |
This card was originally somewhat overlooked when it was initially printed. Costing two mana to cast and then another two to equip before getting any real benefit was thought of as a bit too slow. However, it didn’t take too long for the Magic The Gathering community to realize that this card is busted!
It turns out that once Jitte gets through, it starts to snowball – Hard. This is because you can use the charge counters for various things and you keep getting more counters.
By removing a charge counter, you are able to grow your creature by +2/+2 until the end of the turn, or you can gain two life. If you don’t like those options, you can also choose to give a creature -1/-1 until the end of the turn.
That’s right, you have damage, creature removal, and even life gain all packaged nicely into one card.
The flexibility of this card was great because all of these abilities have a time and place. Everybody that played Block and Standard at the time crammed it into their decks no matter what theme it was – it was just that good.
It saw 19 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and an unbelievable 70 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
8. Engineered Explosives
| Recommended Formats: | Modern, Legacy, Commander, Vintage |
Sunburst (This enters the battlefield with a charge counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it.)
Pros
Cons
| Flexible Mana Cost | Requires Multiple Land Types |
| Narrow Removal |
Although this card is pretty incredible, the one thing to note is that it never saw in play in Standard. The reason is, to be able to make this card shine you need to be able to play it in a format where multiple colors of Mana are easily accessible – that typically means having access to Fetchlands or Dual Lands.
However, It has put up some insane numbers in every other format where those requirements have been met.
Its ability allows it to come into play with as many counters on it as colors of mana used to pay for it. The kicker is that when you sacrifice it, you destroy each nonland permanent with a converted mana cost equal to the number of charges on it.
It had 11 Pro Tour Top 8 Finishes and one of the highest counts for Grand Prix Top 8 finishes coming in at 100!
9. Pithing Needle
| Recommended Formats: | Commander, Modern, Vintage, Legacy, Historic, Pioneer |
Pros
Cons
| Very Cheap: One Mana | Format Knowledge Required |
| Great Against Combo |
Arguably one of the most skilled testing cards in Magic The Gathering – You need to have good card knowledge about the format you are playing in and the current state of its meta.
Being able to name one of your opponent’s key combo pieces with this card can sometimes lead to a game-winning advantage. However, naming the wrong card with Pithing Needle can end up being a complete waste of resources and put you behind in a game.
This card can most notably shut down Planeswalkers, but there are many other activated abilities for various cards Pithing Needle is great at turning off.
If you’re new to Magic the Gathering I would maybe stay away from this card initially until you have more experience with the game and format you are playing in, as it can be pretty easy to go wrong with this card.
It costs only one colorless mana to cast, and thus, there isn’t much of a downside to putting a copy of this in your sideboard for those matchups where I go really shines once you what you are doing with it.
It has 33 Pro Tour Top 8 finishes and an incredible 120 Grand Prix Top 8 finishes.
