The Funniest New Magic Cards and How to Break Them

Who says you can’t teach an old game new tricks? Magic might be almost old enough to run for president, but in the last few years it has been evolving and exploring new horizons at a blistering pace.

Recent sets have embraced tropes and genres from space opera to cyberpunk to westerns to noir detective fiction and modern cinematic horror. The Universes Beyond product line has taken that expansive attitude to pop-culture crossovers: now Magic’s big tent is co-habited by geek staples from Lord of the Rings to FINAL FANTASY to Warhammer 40,000 and Doctor Who!

To realise so many famous characters and concepts within Magic’s rules demands equally ambitious card design, leading to some of the craziest, funniest cards ever. They might not all be tournament-winners, but they’re cards that make you want to sleeve them up just to “do the thing” with them: so let’s look at how to do that.

Jumbo Cactuar

We’ll start with one of this article’s main inspirations. Doesn’t this card put a smile on your face just from reading it? Announcing that you are attacking someone with a 10000/7 is extremely satisfying – but that’s just the beginning. Once the number 10000 is in play we can do all sorts of amazing things: 

• Give it lifelink and gain 10000 life
• Make (roughly) 10000 tokens with Windswift Slice
• Give ALL our creatures +10000 power by attacking alongside Cultivator of Blades and stacking the triggers
• Give the Cactuar +10000/+10000 permanently with Thickest in the Thicket
• You can give it trample to murder one opponent, then Ram Through to instantly take out another!

Perhaps the more important question to ask is how we can count to 10000 in the first place. Jumbo Cactuar costs a ton of mana to cast, plus it has to attack to trigger 10,000 Needles – and it does not have haste.

We can cut the cost down a little bit with cards that put the Cactuar directly into play like Dramatic Entrance or Chord of Calling – and since those are instants, we can surprise our opponents by casting them right before our turn and attacking for 10000 immediately!

A more unusual technique is to try and transfer the Cactuar’s ability to another, cheaper creature: Dermotaxi, Dollhouse of Horrors and Paleontologist’s Pick-Axe can all do this in ways which allow the target to attack for 10000 on the same turn. If we have a multicolor deck then we can unlock many other ways to “cheat in” our mustachioed menace, like Reanimate or Sneak Attack, or duplicate it ala Feldon of the Third Path.

Mr. House, President and CEO

Mr. House is a complicated card, but that just means more layers of fun! 

Are you a Fallout fan? Do you want to make and spend a ton of mana with treasure tokens like a Magic high-roller? Do you love the thrill of rolling dice and letting Lady Luck decide your fate – and those of your opponents? Or do you just want the excuse to put on a smug old-timey voice and shout “the House always wins!” whenever you make a Robot token? There’s truly something for everybody here.

When you make him your commander, Mr. House has another upside: he gives you the excuse to play a ton of other fun and funky dice-rolling cards that your opponents might have never seen before! The cards from Dungeons & Dragons sets are extra-great because those ask you to roll a twenty-sided die… which makes rolling “6 or higher” for Mr. House’s ability a lot easier! 

You can also find die-rolling cards in the same Fallout set Mr. House comes from, as well as the “cartoon sci-fi theme-park” set, Unfinity. While these ones only have you rolling d6s, cards like Comet, Stellar Pup and Attempted Murder will let you roll a LOT of them! You can also find cards which buff your die results or give you even more rewards per roll: the “attractions” mechanic from Unfinity is pretty much all about this. 

Let your friends (and enemies) know that Mr. House’s Intergalactic Casino and Playland is open for business!

Deadpool, Trading Card

We’re still in the very early stages of the Magic x Marvel crossover, which won’t really hit its stride until the end of 2025. Of course, the Merc With A Mouth is somehow already here ahead of schedule with a typically self-aware card to please his fans and annoy the haters! 

4th-wall-breaks aside, this IS a completely real and tournament-legal Magic card. Quite a nasty powerful one at that, as you’re essentially stealing the best creature ability from an opponent’s board while leaving them with a flaming bag of poop in its place. We could go into a lot of detail about how it works, but really, it just does what it says on the tin.

As we saw with the Cactuar, moving text between cards is basically opening a rift to the chaos dimension: it’s step one to making all sorts of very weird and funny things happen. A lot of abilities that are balanced on their original cards become UN-balanced when attached to a creature that’s 5/3, or has different creature types, or that is your commander.

If you want to get REALLY wacky, how about turning non-creature cards into creatures temporarily and having Deadpool swap text with those? It certainly says something about Deadpool’s history that a version of him making mana like Cabal Coffers or treasures like Smothering Tithe can feel on-brand!

Of course, the only thing more canon than a weird parallel-universe Deadpool is having TONS of Deadpools in one place. As it happens, making copies of Deadpool is the #1 strongest and coolest thing to do with him! Any copies of Deadpool enter with his original textbox regardless of what the original is getting up to, meaning every copy can steal text from a new target until the Deadpools have completely taken over the game!

Kudo, King Among Bears

As a long-time Magic fan I have a soft spot for the many in-jokes and references generated by the game itself. Perhaps you are too. If so, then I’m sure you’ll share my affection for Kudo: a legendary 2/2 for two which turns EVERY creature into Grizzly Bears.

Kudo’s not the only candidate for Magic’s ursine monarchy: his queen Ayula actually predates him and offers a more straightforward buff to a deck full of other Bear creatures. But turning everyone else’s creatures into bears is a lot more fun, and I’d also argue it gives you more interesting and powerful options if you do want to fully commit to the grizzly bit and play a ton of mostly-textless 2/2 creature cards.

The biggest upside to leveling the playing field for power and toughness is that you can immediately break that parity and have the biggest bears on the battlefield. That base 2/2 power and toughness can still be modified by equipment, auras, +1/+1 counters and other buffs, which means your opponents will often have one or two bears still punching above their weight. But leaning into buffs that apply based on creature type, like Banner of Kinship and Door of Destinies, should let you easily out-scale them!

The fact Kudo doesn’t alter textboxes or original typing means you could also use him as a “unifier” for a deck full of random creatures so you can still abuse cards like Three Tree City, Steely Resolve or Roaming Throne. But I think most people find it more satisfying to stick to the “may the best bear win” idea, and just turn up the heat with a few precise off-type picks like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

WE COULD ALL USE A LAUGH

I strongly believe that Magic is the most fun when everybody is trying to win and their decks can do powerful things to impact the story of the game. But that does not mean that you can discount the value of cards which make us laugh or smile, or even facepalm when we see them.

The vast majority of Magic games are played casually among friends, with no greater prize on the line than having a good time. Building around the mechanics and cards that bring you joy will blunt the frustration of games that go wrong and make your victories all the richer. I might not have a way to prove which cards are objectively the most fun – but I’m happy to share the love I have for these recent bangers and hopefully, entice some of you to enjoy them in your own games.