Magic has a lot of villains. Some are ancient gods with fragile egos. Some are cosmic hunger with tentacles. And some are the guy who says he’s saving the world while quietly turning it into a factory, a lab, and a child soldier program. Today I’m ranking the contenders for the Greatest MTG villain, and yes, i know you already have opinions. Hold them for like five minutes.
This is a lore list, not a “strongest card” list. I’m judging by a mix of impact, cruelty, ambition, and how thoroughly they ruin everyone’s day across the multiverse. Also: style counts. If you’re going to be evil, at least commit to the bit.
How I ranked the Greatest MTG villain contenders
A “great” villain in Magic usually hits at least a few of these:
- Scale: Do they threaten a city, a plane, or reality itself?
- Intent: Are they doing evil on purpose, or are they a disaster with legs?
- Legacy: Do their actions keep echoing centuries later?
- Personal damage: It’s Magic. Somebody’s found family is getting shattered.
- That special MTG flavor: The kind where the lore makes you mutter, “wow, that’s… a choice.”
And because this is Magic, I’m also factoring in the worst crime of all: making things complicated for everyone else, forever.
Dishonorable mentions
Geyadrone Dihada
Dihada is the kind of villain who doesn’t need to conquer your plane. She just needs you to sign a “totally normal” agreement and hand her a cursed artifact you forged with your own hands. Ancient, demonic, manipulative, and still very much the sort of problem that comes back when the writers feel like hurting us again.
She’s here as an honorable mention because her full list of crimes feels like it’s written in invisible ink. But the vibes are elite: “I will ruin your life and you will thank me for the opportunity.”
Baron Sengir
Baron Sengir is what happens when a vampire gets stranded and decides, “well, guess i live here now” and then immediately makes it everyone else’s problem. Ulgrotha suffered the full invasive-species experience: violence, domination, generations of slow rot, and the looming threat that he might eventually walk through a planar portal and bring the party somewhere new.
He’s not a planeswalker, which is honestly refreshing. Just pure commitment. No spark required.
Top 10 MTG villains: gods, planeswalkers, and cosmic nightmares
10) Heliod, God of the Sun
Heliod is proof that immortality does not automatically come with emotional maturity. He’s paranoid, controlling, and the kind of divine authority figure who treats devotion like a scoreboard. The highlight, if you can call it that, is what happens when he realizes mortals might admire someone else more than him.
Nothing screams “villain” like murdering your own champion because your ego can’t handle competition. And of course it blows back on him, because Magic loves poetic punishment almost as much as it loves tragedy.
9) Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools
Tevesh Szat starts as a classic “leave me alone, i’m busy being a sorcerer” type, then becomes something worse: a planeswalker who decides the ultimate peace is a plane with no living things. He’s not trying to rule. He’s trying to erase.
Also, he has that very MTG trait where betrayal is treated like a casual hobby. If your team-up plan includes “and then i kill two teammates,” you might be the problem. Shocking, i know.
8) Mairsil the Pretender
Mairsil is the original cursed-item influencer. He doesn’t need an army or a cosmic hunger. He needs a ring, a grudge, and time.
What makes him nasty is how personal it is. He’s not blowing up planes. He’s worming into minds, poisoning relationships, and turning trust into a weapon. It’s smaller scale than the top of this list, sure, but it’s the kind of evil that feels uncomfortably human. Also, if your soul can survive as jewelry for centuries, you’re basically a problem with customer support.
7) Leshrac, the Nightwalker
Leshrac is the kind of old-school planeswalker villain who shows up, drains mana, manipulates people, and treats whole worlds like resources. He’s been involved in enough messes that “small role in multiple conflicts” undersells it.
And then, in one of the most humiliating villain endings in the multiverse, he essentially becomes magical patch material. Imagine building a reputation for centuries and getting used to seal a leak. “Good riddance” feels earned, but it’s still funny in a dark way.
6) Memnarch, the Secret Ruler of Mirrodin
Memnarch is what happens when a caretaker role gets corrupted into obsession. He starts as the steward of an artificial world, gets infected by something he doesn’t fully understand, and decides the solution is kidnapping living beings from other planes to populate his metal playground.
Then it escalates, because it always does. He wants a planeswalker spark. He wants to become like his creator. He wants control over everything. The tragedy here is that his evil is part ambition, part infection, and part pure entitlement. Mirrodin pays the price either way.
If you’ve ever had a manager who started tracking everyone’s bathroom breaks, Memnarch will feel weirdly familiar.
5) Marit Lage, the Mystery in the Ice
Marit Lage is an MTG lore deep cut that refuses to stay buried. This is an entity with massive power, limited clarity, and a whole lot of “nobody knows what that is, but we all agree it’s bad.”
And yes, Marit Lage isn’t an Eldrazi. But the resemblance is close enough that you can understand why people squint at the lore and go, “so… tentacles, timeless hunger energy, cult activity… sure.”
She lands at #5 because mystery is part of her threat. You can’t negotiate with something you barely understand. You can’t out-politic an iceberg god-kraken thing. You can only hope it stays asleep. Great plan. Historically, that works every time.
4) The Eldrazi Titans
Ulamog. Kozilek. Emrakul. The Eldrazi don’t scheme like Bolas. They don’t build an empire like Yawgmoth. They arrive like a natural disaster and rewrite reality on contact.
What makes them terrifying is how indifferent they are. There’s no grand monologue. Just consumption, distortion, and the slow realization that your plane is being processed like food.
Even when heroes “win,” it feels like a temporary answer to a permanent problem. One titan is still sealed away. Two were destroyed against advice that basically boiled down to: “this might have consequences.” Magic lore loves consequences almost as much as it loves pain.
3) Nicol Bolas
Nicol Bolas is the multiverse’s most patient control freak. He’s smart, ruthless, ancient, and absolutely convinced he should be in charge because he’s the smartest thing in the room. (He’s also very committed to being the only thing in the room.)
What makes Bolas special is the scope of his manipulation. Whole planes become chessboards. People become tools. And the worst part is that it often works, because he plans like someone who has literally nothing else to do for centuries.
He’s also the king of “this is definitely the final time you’ll see me” energy. If you believe he’s gone forever, i have a bridge on Ravnica to sell you.
2) Yawgmoth
Yawgmoth isn’t just a villain. He’s an idea that got teeth.
He starts as a brilliant medical mind, and then turns that brilliance into a philosophy of domination through “improvement.” Flesh becomes raw material. Identity becomes optional. Consent becomes irrelevant. And Phyrexia becomes the multiverse’s most disgusting monument to control.
His evil also has staying power. Even after he’s gone, the corruption spreads. The oil doesn’t care about your timeline. It doesn’t care about your heroic speech. It just keeps working. That’s what earns him #2: a legacy that outlives him, and a horror that keeps finding new hosts.
If you want to build a villain-themed deck and you’re planning to print a few iconic antagonists for casual play, you might like our guide on How to Make MTG Proxies. Just saying.
1) Urza, and why the “hero” might be the Greatest MTG villain
Okay. Here it is. The spicy take.
Urza fights Phyrexia, and yes, that matters. But the way he does it is the reason he tops this list. Because Urza is what happens when genius, trauma, and ego fuse into a single unstoppable force that always believes it’s justified.
He wages war not just with armies, but with ecosystems. He destroys, strip-mines, and remakes entire regions in service of his conflict. He treats people like components. He builds institutions that feel less like schools and more like pipelines for weapons. He manipulates bloodlines like he’s breeding tools, not respecting lives.
And the darkest part is that Urza often doesn’t look like a villain. He looks like a savior. He looks like the one doing what must be done. Magic lore is full of monsters, but Urza is the one who convinces himself the monster is a necessary feature, not a bug.
Yawgmoth is evil in a straight line. Urza is evil in a spiral. He hurts the world, then convinces himself the hurt proves he was right to keep going.
So if we’re asking who did the most lasting, wide-reaching damage while still wearing the mask of righteousness, it’s hard not to give Urza the crown. That’s why, in my book, he’s the Greatest MTG villain.
If this list has you itching to sleeve up “Villains: The Musical” in Commander, and you want clean, readable cards for your table, you’ll also want to nail the basics of print quality and cutting. This guide helps: Mastering Printing MTG Cards: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Final thoughts
Magic is at its best when its villains feel different from each other. A jealous sun god. A mind-poisoning ring. A metal tyrant. A cosmic hunger. A dragon mastermind. A biomechanical nightmare. And, somehow, a “hero” whose idea of saving the world involves wrecking it first.
If you disagree with #1, that’s fine. Honestly, it’s part of the fun. Just remember: the next time someone tells you they’re doing horrible things “for the greater good,” you might be looking at the next Greatest MTG villain in the making.
