All 9 Eye Cards in Magic Ranked

Eyes Everywhere | Illustration by Nils Hamm

As a fantasy game, sometimes Magic delves into horror and similar aesthetics. Innistrad is a plane filled with gothic horror references, the Eldrazi bring to mind eldritch horror elements, and Duskmourn dove into slashers, body horror, and more.

And one of the more unsettling tropes in horror is sentient, singular body parts. On the camp end of the spectrum, we get Thing from The Addams Family. On the other? Eyes, baby, eyes. Floating. Disembodied. Eyes. Eek.

One thing’s for sure. With eyes this big, who needs glasses?

What Are Eyes in MTG?

Eye of Duskmantle | Illustration by Anthony Devine

Eye is a creature type in Magic, mostly represented by nightmarish horrors. The archetype is a large, singular disembodied eye, perhaps levitating or flying somehow. (If you’re of a certain age, think of the Neversoft logo.)

There’re a few creature types with a similar appearance but no mechanical overlap, like beholders from the Dungeons & Dragons sets, cyclopes, and homunculi.

Eyes first appeared in Legends, with another card in Time Spiral, then they disappeared for about 15 years until Strixhaven: School of Mages.

Honorable Mention: Spy Eye

It’s got a silver border, so you know what that means! Not legal for sanctioned play. Spy Eye steals a card from the top of an opponent’s library as a saboteur trigger, though it goes to your hand rather than an auto-cast or exiling form of theft like Kotis, the Fangkeeper or Crabomination. It seems like the art is a callback to the creature over the wizard’s shoulder in the art for Eye Spy, which essentially has you surveil the card on the top of an opponent’s library.

Honorable Mention: Eye of Malcator

While not a creature in its type line, Eye of Malcator is incredibly easy to animate into an eye creature. Just add artifacts! It’s not an eye creature card though, so I must leave it aside.

#9. Atraxi Warden

“Big for nothing”. I hear that phrase used to describe beefy hockey players who don’t use their size to hit or intimidate opposing players, and Atraxi Warden gives me those vibes. Either you hard-cast it at sorcery speed, or you suspend it and wait, or you manipulate the time counters. Regardless, you need a legal target for this alien to hit with its enters ability. That’s a lot of moving parts, and a long sequence of events in which something can go wrong.

#8. Concealing Curtains / Revealing Eye

What a convoluted Thoughtseize. You need to work to get to Revealing Eye by casting Concealing Curtains first then transforming it, and your opponent gets to draw the next card in their deck, too. It’s a cheap body, and I guess it gives you a crime to commit, but this feels destined to sit in our bulk rare binders.

#7. Creeping Peeper

An extremely niche blue mana dork, Creeping Peeper was built for Duskmourn Limited, but it can still play the role of a budget, replacement-level card anywhere you’d want to play it.

#6. Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore

Our first eye in Magic was Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, and at the time, the two lines of text posed an interesting trade-off. Without other eyes in the game, you’d double down on Evil Eyes, but they’re also unblockable except by walls, a creature type that used to show up a lot more. There’s still a few modern use cases, like decks that can donate their cards to their opponents, as well as flavorful, Vorthos/Bracket 1 Commander decks that aim for set, art, or similar nonmechanical theming.

#5. Evil Eye of Urborg

As a Time Spiral card, Evil Eye of Urborg references our first eye, Orms-by-Gore. It flips that one’s power/toughness, and adds an insta-kill to anything that blocks it. Instead of being totally unblockable, it presents your opponent with a choice between their life total and their board state. Like its predecessor, it can still see play in hyper-specific decks like Jon Irenicus, Shattered One. Otherwise, its power is nice for flinging, I guess.

#4. Eye of Duskmantle

Eye of Duskmantle sees the most play in Mirko, Obsessive Theorist decks, which makes sense since they’re both from the Revenant Recon Karlov Manor deck. Surveil decks like bringing stuff back from their graveyard, though this big-butted eye comes in very late and doesn’t help you to bring back anything you bin before it enters. It’s only playable in very specific decks for now, but that could change as more surveil cards join the game.

#3. Ahriman

A 2/2 3-mana flier with deathtouch that offers card draw on a repeatable sac outlet is a tidy piece of work. Ahriman won’t blow you away, and that activated ability is costed for common rarity. But I’m comparing it against fellow eyes, and in this group, Ahriman’s combination of text is decent enough.

#2. Eyetwitch

A 1-drop eye bat that dies into a lesson is a tidy little package. Eyetwitch is also small enough that even the most budget reanimators can bring it back so you can grab more lessons out of your sideboard.

#1. Abhorrent Oculus

Abhorrent Oculus is a great way to fill your graveyard during your opponents’ turns in Commander. Decks that manifest can easily get it out without having to pay the additional cost. It’s also been a part of various Jeskai () decks that get it into the graveyard and reanimate it with the likes of Helping Hand.

Other Eye-Related Magic Cards

Over the years, Magic designers have used eyes in lots of different ways in card names. Here are just some of the mentions of eyes in card names.

Eyes as artifacts are often magical objects or potion ingredients, including the likes of Eye of Jace, Puca's Eye, Witches' Eye, Kraken's Eye, and Jar of Eyeballs.

Eyes are also occasionally referenced in spells to suggest mystical surveillance or to enhance a scout’s vision. Think of cards like Eyes Everywhere, Sentinel's Eyes, and Eyes of Gitaxias.

“Deadeye” is the name of a pirate fleet on the plane of Ixalan (Deadeye Rig-Hauler, Deadeye Quartermaster), but the term was also used on a cyclops that destroys something when it enters (Hammerheim Deadeye) and an assassin (Lurking Deadeye), among others.

Some archers, snipers, and scouts are occasionally described as “keen-eyed”, including legendary creatures like Nylea, Keen-Eyed and Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator. And in our world of Universes Beyond, I can’t go without mentioning the Hawkeye and Bullseye cards.

Like “Deadeye” and “Keen-Eyed”, “Eye” is sometimes invoked to describe a creature or character. We get creatures like Jewel-Eyed Cobra, Cold-Eyed Selkie, or Warteye Witch. There’s also a reference to pests on Hunter of Eyeblights.

Notably, Glint-Eye Nephilim gave its name to the 4-color color identity that omits white.

We get other eye-related lore descriptors and names for characters and legendary creatures, like Garth One-Eye, Old One Eye, Inga Rune-Eyes, Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea, Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni, and many more.

On top of the homunculus Private Eye, we also have Universes Beyond detectives that use the moniker: Nick Valentine and Jessica Jones.

The monks of the Jeskai Way () on Tarkir use a dragon’s eye as their symbol, and a number of their cards reference eyes. We get card names like Sage of the Inward Eye, Dragon's Eye Savants, and Warden of the Eye.

Beholders also get a few “eye” mentions, namely Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant and Hive of the Eye Tyrant. Also from Forgotten Realms comes Eye of Vecna, one of three cards you need to assemble a Vecna legendary token.

Battlebond introduced a partners with pairing of Okaun, Eye of Chaos and Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom, a cyclops and homunculus that lead a coin flip deck. They even got their own precon with the Heads I Win, Tails You Lose Secret Lair deck.

As for Hecteyes, that’s an ooze, not an eye. And of course, we get Sauron, the Lidless Eye, but no “Eye of Sauron” card.

Idioms and Puns

Because I’m a silly goose at heart, I thought I’d extract the eye puns in card names across the game. I haven’t dug through flavor text, so leave your favorite eye puns you find in flavor text in the comments!

• Blink of an Eye
• Eye for an Eye
• Eye Gouge
• Eye of the Storm
• Eyes Everywhere
• Eyes in the Skies
• Eyes of the Beholder
• Eye Spy
• Eye to Eye
• More Than Meets the Eye (Transformers mechanic)
• Private Eye
• Prying Eyes

How Good Is Eye Gouge Against Eyes?

In a word, terrible. Only two eye creatures die to an Eye Gouge: Creeping Peeper and Eyetwitch. Eye Gouge is templated to work against cyclops creatures, not eyes, most likely because Magic had only two eye cards at the time and hadn’t used the eye creature type in over half a decade. Plus, Eye Gouge is from a Theros set, so the cyclops angle fits the flavor of the plane.

The “Eyes” Have It

Revealing Eye | Illustration by Brian Valeza

Eye creatures have had a very sporadic history in Magic, but sets that lean into horror tropes can use them effectively, though I highly doubt we’ll ever get proper eye lords or payoffs. But if we get another set like Mystery Booster Commander Edition, maybe we’ll see something that makes a typal batch of eyes, cyclopes, and homunculi; beholders are in a weird place as a D&D creature type, so I’m less confident they even could be included.

Do you run any eye creatures in your decks? Where have they performed well for you? What kinds of eyes would you design, whether as creatures, artifacts, or anything else? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord. For more from us, check out our YouTube channel, The Daily Upkeep.

And with that… I should go watch Eyes Without a Face.