All 17 Monkey Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on August 21, 2026

Kibo, Uktabi Prince | Illustration by Filipe Pagliuso

When I first started writing this article, I could only think of 80s music. So sorrynotsorry, but here's the first song that earwormed me.

Now that you’re also afflicted with a catchy song by a great artist that’s totally not really about monkeys, you’re more than ready to explore the world of monkeys in MTG. Aren’t you?

What Are Monkeys in MTG?

Alchemist's Assistant | Illustration by Eelis Kyttanen

Monkeys are a seldom seen creature type introduced summer 1998 with starter set Portal: Second Age’s Tree Monkey and Exodus’s Ravenous Baboons, originally apes but errata’d to monkey. There are a low double-digit number of monkeys in traditional MTG sets and only a few extras in Un-sets.

I won’t be ranking the Un-monkeys, just the cards playable in Commander, but for completion’s sake, they are:

• Monkey-
• Monkey Monkey Monkey
• Tainted Monkey
• Willing Test Subject

Monkeys are smaller than apes in real life and in terms of Magic stats, most of the monkeys in MTG are a bit underwhelming. But when designs play into the idea of fast little critters with quick fingers, we get some pretty good cards!

#17. Prickly Marmoset

A third-tier wincon in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths cycling deck, Prickly Marmoset no longer really has a home. That’s kind of a shame because the match between the cool art by Simon Dominic and the flavor text is quite good.

#16. Zodiac Monkey

You’ll feel awesome when the forestwalk on a Zodiac Monkey pays off. Until then, you’d rather Wizards made more monkeys so you didn’t have to play this card.

#15. Ravenous Baboons

A 2/2 for 4 is terrible, but Ravenous Baboons destroys lands, so blinking it can be very effective. And it can be downright nasty in Commander, where almost everyone runs nonbasic targets. The trouble is that red’s not the most popular blink color.

#14. Tree Monkey

Tree Monkey’s one of the few 1-drops for your Kibo decks. I guess the reach might matter in a counters deck? This is really about curve.

#13. Hog-Monkey

Begrudging filler in Avatar: The Last Airbender Limited and borderline unplayable anywhere else, you can at least imagine some sort of value on Hog-Monkey before you dismiss it from your mind completely.

#12. Wily Bandar

Gotta have more 1-drop monkeys in your Kibo decks, and Wily Bandar’s activated ability making it indestructible means it's not an embarrassing place to drop +1/+1 counters.

#11. Alchemist’s Assistant

As nice as lifelink is, it’s not really worth the cost of putting Child of Night in your deck. The renew ability gets Alchemist's Assistant over the line of the truly terrible monkeys, but you’re still not going to see this card played all too often.

#10. Elephant-Mandrill

Elephant-Mandrill serves everyone a nice helping of Food when it enters, and hits like a truck against the artifact player. That said, I’m not a fan of giving my opponents anything these days unless I’m explicitly playing group hug, or some specific food payoff like Ygra, Eater of All.

#9. Scrounging Bandar

Not the best counter-moving card, Scrounging Bandar is at least somewhat useful in Hardened Scales types of decks where everything gets counters and the Bandar provides some nice flexibility.

#8. Simian Sling

The equipment creatures with reconfigure from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty are largely playable and sometimes very good. They help solve the classic equipment deck problem of balancing creatures and their tools because they’re both.

It’s an artifact and does a little ping effect when it’s blocked. Not bad. And if it’s attached as an equipment, it'll survive a board wipe and fall off as a creature ready to pick up your other fallen equipment.

#7. Clockwork Percussionist

Clockwork Percussionist was a deadly little workhorse in Duskmourn Limited, but it has had a tough time keeping up anywhere else but Pauper/Peasant Cubes. It’s got just enough knobs between being an artifact and replacing itself on death that it might pop up as a synergy piece in very specific decks.

#6. Hit-Monkey

Hit-Monkey? More like Soup-Monkey. This thing’s loaded with keywords and still incredibly boring. Uncounterable and hexproof is a nice recipe for making sure your commander sticks around for a bit, but what are we doing from there? Note the lack of indestructible, which pushes this below alternatives like Blor the Impervious or either of the Thruns.

#5. Relic Retriever

Relic Retriever is a solid little synergy piece that flew under the radar in Secrets of Strixhaven Commander. Red isn’t the best home for gravebreak effects, but this sort of Treasure generation on a 2-drop shouldn’t be overlooked for any deck with access to retract, flashback, and mechanics of that sort.

#4. Baboon Spirit

Baboon Spirit is much more of a spirit card, but you can monkey around with this in any sort of token or blink deck. These particular spirit tokens don’t get blocked often, so think about them like little Tormented Souls that you get for free just by playing the game. That activated ability has proven useful on a number of cards with similar activations (Mistmeadow Witch, Eldrazi Displacer, etc.).

#3. Kibo, Uktabi Prince

A joke about one of MTG’s more infamous pieces of art, Kibo, Uktabi Prince seems to be the progeny of the monkeys in the background of Visions’ Uktabi Orangutan. The only real commander for ape and monkey typal decks, Kibo synergizes nicely with the classic ape ability to destroy artifacts, from the older Gorilla Shaman to the somewhat new Gearbane Orangutan.

Giving out bananas seems a bit like group hug, but the tide turns when the Kibo deck starts laying down cards like Viridian Revel and Party Dude.

#2. Rashmi and Ragavan

A popular Temur commander and card, Rashmi and Ragavan mashes up Rashmi, Eternities Crafter’s and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer’s abilities to great effect. This tag-team feels like swinging with a Ragavan that never gets blocked, which is pretty cool. Even if you never strike nonlands off the tops of libraries, just making a Treasure token on each of your turns is a reasonable enough bit of ramp and utility. Add that you can sometimes cast cards for free, and you’ve got a lot of potential value here.

#1. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer took Magic by storm and really stretched the concept of what a 1-drop can do. Power creep has caught up to it, but it remains a feared creature to see on turn 1.

The Treasure is a lot, as is the chance to hit a playable card off someone's library. Dash is often a bonus, removing the Pilferer from the battlefield as a target for sorcery-speed removal.

Best Monkey Payoffs

There’s not much in the way of payoffs for playing monkeys, and not enough of a mechanical identity to really justify putting a barrel of monkeys in one deck. Kibo, Uktabi Prince is the one exception, since it buffs your monkeys whenever an opponent’s artifact hits the graveyard.

The only other card that really cares about you controlling monkeys at all is the digital-only Kari Zev, Crew of Two, which is technically referencing legendary monkeys as a restriction, not a payoff.

Monkey Token Creators

The following cards create monkey tokens, which are usually some riff on Ragavan:

• Baral and Kari Zev
• Kari Zev, Crew of Two
• Kari Zev, Skyship Raider
• Monkey Cage

Do Apes Count as Monkeys in MTG?

Ape and monkey are two separate creature types. Some of Magic’s earlier monkeys were given the ape creature type, but they’ve since received errata to correctly assign them one primate type or another.

Wrap Up

Scrounging Bandar | Illustration by Shreya Shetty

Before we go, I wanted to point out the biggest problem faced by MTG monkey fans, which is the lack of an official Banana token for Kibo! Folks have filled this gap with their creativity, making and selling their own versions of these tokens, and I know of at least one person who uses Bananarama Runts.

Of course, some folks object to edible objects on the MTG table, but having players actually eat the tokens when they crack them is pretty, um, sweet.

Do you want to see more monkeys in MTG, or has Ragavan poisoned the well for you? Let us know in the comments or on Discord. And check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

And I have to leave you with a link to the Bananarama song I can’t get out of my head now that I talked about the candy. You’re welcome.