Ranking the Lieges
General forum
Posted on Dec. 21, 2025, 7:59 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I previously made a thread to rank the "swords of X and Y," so I shall now rank another one of my favorite cycles in this game, the lieges from Shadowmoor and Eventide, and I would like to emphasize that this ranking is purely my own opinion, not based upon any guidelines, so I am not stating that any one creature is superior or inferior to another, although I definitely believe that the five enemy-colored lieges are vastly superior to the five allied-colored lieges, which I hope was simply an unfortunate coincidence, and not a deliberate choice by the employees of WotC. Also, as a side note, I am severely disappointed that the allied-colored lieges all have names that reference locations or factions on Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, which limits the sets in which they can be reprinted, whereas the enemy-colored lieges have names that are generic and would work on nearly any plane of the multiverse. As I did, with my previous list, I shall begin with the lowest-ranked card and end with the highest-ranked one.
Thistledown Liege is clearly the worst of the lieges, as it is merely a 1/3 for 4 mana, and its keyword, flash, is useful, but only once, so I question how WotC could have designed this creature. Considering the other allied-colored lieges, this one could easily have been a 2/3, or even a 3/3, for the same mana cost, but its unfortunate status is why I am ranking it at the bottom of this list.
Ashenmoor Liege is better than is Thistledown Liege, but not by a significant margin, so its is ninth on this list; again, it could have had higher power and/or toughness, being a 4/2 for the same mana cost. Its ability is nice, but, with such low toughness, the creature is likely to die easily, meaning that its ability shall trigger only once; if this creature were to be designed, today, I imagine that it would have ward, as that would be an upgrade from its current ability.
Boartusk Liege is actually fairly strong, compared to the previous two lieges, so I have ranked it at eighth place, here, but it is merely a beater, so there is not much else to say, about it.
Wilt-Leaf Liege has the highest power and toughness among the allied-colored lieges, and its ability is nice, but I cannot rank it as the highest of those five, because its ability, while useful, is too specific, as it shall not be used in every scenario, but it certainly is a useful creature for decks that focus strongly on elves.
I ranked Glen Elendra Liege as the best of the allied-colored lieges because it has flying, a keyword that is always useful, for both attacking and defending, and also because fairies often are very powerful creatures.
Mindwrack Liege has a very useful ability, albeit one that is interesting in the two colors that have the least emphasis on creatures, but that does not justify it costing 6 mana; none of the other lieges are that expensive, so I am ranking Mindwrack Liege as the least of the enemy-colored lieges.
Creakwood Liege can produce a token every turn, which is very useful, especially considering that it makes those tokens more powerful, but it is only a 2/2 for 4 mana, when it could easily have been a 3/3 while still being balanced, so I regard it as the fourth best of the enemy-colored lieges.
Seedborn Muse is a very powerful card, so any card that has a similar effect is likely to be very powerful, as well, even if it works only for a specific group of cards, as is the case with Murkfiend Liege, which balances its ability being more specific by making creatures more powerful.
Black and white are my two favorite color in the game, so I am very glad that Deathbringer Liege, the black and white liege, has two very powerful abilities; the majority of decks use creatures to at least a certain extent, so having a repeatable method of destroying creatures, or at least reducing their utility, is a very powerful ability, indeed.
I dearly wished that I could have ranked my favorite liege, Deathbringer Liege, as the best liege of them all, but I ultimately chose Balefire Liege as the best liege, because of how universally useful its abilities are; it can increase its controller’s life total while also reducing the life totals of its controller’s opponents, which makes it a creature that I believe should be in any deck that contains the colors red and white.
What does everyone else say, about this subject? How do you feel about my ranking of the ten lieges (again, I ranked them purely by my own opinions, not be any strict standards or criteria)? I certainly am eager to hear your opinions, on this matter!
wallisface says... #3
I agree with plakjekaas that you’ve focused on the wrong things here. Particularly, you also seem to have ignored the cards mana costs, and have weird assessment of most if the card abilities (some are far top niche to be practical, others come up with enough regularity to make them much more powerful).
I also think trying to rank cards without a context of format is a big mistake. Card power can change wildly between formats (draft, standard, edh, or modern/pioneer etc) so trying to rank them without that context feels wrong.
December 22, 2025 6:11 p.m.
Lots of great points for the OP, but I'd like to add that certain colour pairs are better at flooding a board, meaning the +1/+1 bonus for each colour isn't actually equal, even if they look identical. For example, if you're giving a weenie player +2/+2 on all of their weenies it's a much bigger buff than giving one or two already tall creatures that same bonus, the 'clock' sees a bigger jump the more creatures affected by this type of Anthem. It's also a big factor for White and Blue that they often get evasive weenies, and the Dimir one looks like an absolute house when you remember they gave Black stuff like Bitterblossom.
December 23, 2025 8:36 a.m.
pookypuppy6 says... #5
I feel there's something to be said for Creakwood Liege over some of the others. It's fragile for sure, getting blown out by Shock is real bad. But it's on the cheaper end of lieges at four mana and, unlike Balefire Liege or Deathbringer Liege, does give its value without further mana investment. Kind of one of those "set-it-and-forget-it" cards. I admit though, those last two are in better colours for token-y, swarm-y colours that like the lord buffs.
The Creakwood point is conversely is why I'd rank Mindwrack Liege much lower. Farting in big blue or red creatures at instant-speed is funny, but it's a huge mana investment relying on you having a creature in your hand you want to cheat in (6 to play and then 4 to actually use). And as you mentioned, odd colours for that effect too - red does have big dragons though!
December 23, 2025 9:12 a.m.
The problem with Mindwrack Liege is that since you already got to 6 mana, you can likely just hard cast the things your cheating in. If the liege is your top end, your likely to just be cheating in another one, but if it isn’t, you have a reasonable chance of hardcasting it, consider most of red/blues top ends are 7-8 mana.
December 24, 2025 1:46 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #7
Murkfiend Liege is great, but it's no Seedborn Muse. Seedborn Muse untaps everything you control. Murkfiend Liege only untaps creatures, which is, fine, but a big part of what breaks Seedborn Muse is that it also untaps lands, letting you use your instants/creatures with flash (and of course block with your creatures) as a floor. The ceiling is that you can activate abilities, such as activating Ant Queen to trigger Aura Shards or Cathars' Crusade or similar.
February 24, 2026 7 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #8
hyalopterouslemur, yes, I fully agree that Murkfiend Liege is not as good as is Seedborn Muse, which is why I ranked it only as the third out of all ten lieges; I likely would have ranked Mindwrack Liege higher if it did not have such a high mana cost and Creakwood Liege higher, as well, if it did not have such low power and toughness.
February 26, 2026 8:41 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #9
Don't worry about it. I used to have a Prime Speaker Zegana deck that did good work with Murkfiend Liege. (tl;dr: You summon Zegana and she gets +2/+2 from the Liege and enters with four +1/+1 counters, essentially letting you replenish your hand and have a vanilla 7/7 to boot.)
plakjekaas says... #2
You focus an awful lot on the stats of these creatures, while the main use of them is to be a Lord-effect for creatures of both colors. If you're likely to have to play a Liege by itself, you should play different creatures in those colors that are better as a solo creature.
That's why I think you're very wrong about Thistledown Liege, which is the only one of all these pump effects that can be used to mess up combat math, secretly swing for lethal or save your own creatures from damage- based removal. And if none of those things need to happen, you can keep up a counterspell or removal and cast it a different time. That makes it at least top 5 in my opinion.
December 22, 2025 5:20 a.m.