The 21 Best Colorless Pump Spells in Magic Ranked

Caged Sun | Illustration by Scott Chou

Hello Planeswalkers! Let’s get pumped! Specifically, we’re getting pumped for (and by) colorless pump spells today. Pump spells turn little or even medium-sized creatures into massive threats for your opponents. These spells and permanents can provide you with the battlefield advantage to win a game.

Pump spells come in all colors, casting costs, and for myriad strategies. Today, let’s take a look at the colorless pump spells. These cards might be some of the best pump cards because they fit into almost any kind of deck without a mana requirement. From creature-typal decks to the full-on colorless decks, let’s dive into the best colorless pumps in MTG.

What Are Colorless Pump Spells in MTG?

Eldrazi Monument | Illustration by Mark Tedin

“Pump” is an MTG slang word to describe spells and abilities that increase one or many creatures' power and/or toughness. Colorless spells don’t have one of the five colors in their mana cost or text box, and can be paid for with any kind of mana. Colorless pump spells are going to be the colorless spells and abilities that increase your creatures’ stats.

Pump spells come in many different styles (the best examples are probably in green), and so to get to the best of them, we’ll limit our definition a bit. This list focuses on colorless cards that pump other creatures in a significant way, and targeted pump spells that give a significant power/toughness pump. From banners like Patchwork Banner to equipment cards that give a significant stat boost like Blackblade Reforged rather the +1/+1 or +2/0 of so many equipment cards.

#21. Staff of Titania

We’ll start with a potentially large colorless pump equipment. Staff of Titania‘s stat boost scales with the number of forests you control, so it has a high ceiling. Add that it provides forest mana dorks with its Forest Dryad tokens, and you have an ever-growing colorless pump equipment.

#20. Argentum Armor

Argentum Armor is an expensive equipment card with a huge pump. The kicker here is that it also works like a Meteor Golem (except it can even destroy lands!). You get a massive pump for any creature, and attacking turns into wonderful removal.

#19. Andúril, Narsil Reforged

Andúril, Narsil Reforged can be a massive colorless pump for attack-heavy decks. This card focuses on the city’s blessing mechanic. With the blessing, when you attack with a creature equipped holding this sword, all your creatures get two +1/+1 counters. A cheap mana value and ok equip cost should help throw this sword around and continue your pumped-up attacks.

Andúril, Flame of the West has another attacking vibe, with “Only the king of Gondor…” kind of vibes.

#18. Rhonas’s Monument

Rhonas's Monument is a solid colorless pump artifact for creature-heavy decks. Whenever you cast a creature, it gives a great targeted pump. With the reduction for green creature spells, this is a great colorless card for midrange green decks, though note that the pump ability works with any sort of creature spells.

#17. Batterskull

With Batterskull, you get a 4/4 Phyrexian Germ with vigilance and lifelink, and you can return it to your hand when the token is removed. Batterskull is a versatile equipment that really pumps some of your stronger creature cards in the mid-to-late game. It’s nice to have answers for board wipes, removal spells, and control decks.

#16. Eldrazi Monument

Eldrazi Monument comes with a price. The stat boost isn’t the biggest at +1/+1, but giving your creatures flying and indestructible is incredible. And now the price: You have to sacrifice a creature each turn or lose this pump. With token-creators and a few weeny cards, this shouldn’t be a problem.

#15. Kaldra Compleat

Kaldra Compleat aims for those big final swings. Seven mana to cast and 7 mana to equip is quite expensive, but you get a great creature that leaves an equipment behind. The pump, keywords, and exiling of any blocking creatures is tremendous. This is just an amazing threat if you can cheat the costs.

#14. Excalibur, Sword of Eden

Let’s mix the massive stat boost of Colossus Hammer with the low equip cost of Blackblade Reforged!

Excalibur, Sword of Eden is a massive equipment made only for your legendary creatures to wield. The mana cost seems astronomical until you include the easy-to-stack cost reduction. Get your artifacts and legendary creatures out, and attach Excalibur to a perfect card like Captain America, First Avenger for wonderful results.

#13. Colossus Hammer

Colossus Hammer is the iconic “big boy” equipment. This colorless equipment card is made for unblockable creatures, and alt wincons like commander damage or infect. It costs you almost nothing to get it onto the battlefield, but as a drawback, it has a high equip cost. This shouldn’t be a problem when you build around effects from cards like Bruenor Battlehammer.

#12. Mirror Box

Negating the legendary rule is insane! Mirror Box allows you to make or play copies of legendary creatures without losing any. This card then pumps all of your legendary creatures, and gives your non-token creatures a boost for every card that shares a name with it.

#11. Eldrazi Conscription

A colorless aura can be a powerful thing since it fits into so many decks. Eldrazi Conscription is a massive colorless aura pump card. The 8 MV will really cost you, but now any creature can become a lethal threat. +10/+10 and annihilator 2 are absurd things to give to any creature. Unlike the equipment cards in this article, you have to be extra careful about removal when playing this card.

#10. Tarrian’s Soulcleaver

Tarrian's Soulcleaver is a wonderful equipment whenever it’s attached to one of your creatures. This equipment card is made for an aristocratic deck or a deck that uses artifact tokens as a resource. Every time artifacts or creatures go to the graveyard from the battlefield, your equipped creature gets larger. This card is useless when not equipped, and be careful to not let removal against your equipped creature totally throw off your plan mid-stack action.

A very similar card that almost made the list is Blade of the Bloodchief, with an even bigger pump for vampires.

#9. Commander’s Plate

How could we not mention Commander's Plate in a piece about colorless pumps? This equipment adds great protection for your commander, as the name implies. A +3/+3 pump is ridiculous, the protection is solid, and the mana cost is just right!

#8. Nettlecyst

Nettlecyst is a living weapon equipment that boosts a creature’s stats by the number of artifacts or enchantments you control. This equipment meets the requirements I set above because of the sheer size you can make an equipped creature. You can go all colorless artifacts, or play this colorless pump in any enchantment deck.

#7. Steel Overseer

Steel Overseer is the weenie pump creature for artifact creature decks. This simple creature sits back and taps each turn to pump all of your artifact creatures. Pair this Overseer with an artifact untap card like Manifold Key or Tezzeret, Cruel Captain, and you have a colorless pump engine.

#6. Loxodon Warhammer + Shadowspear

Loxodon Warhammer and Shadowspear are stellar equipment cards that provide power, trample, and lifelink. With their reasonable mana and equip costs, these cards provide incredible upside to any creature. Equip, attack, and if the equipped creature dies, move the equipment to any other creature. Shadowspear provides more upside with the cheaper costs and activated ability.

#5. Swords

The dual-color swords of MTG have been staples over many sets and across many reprints. The swords listed below represent two colors in MTG and have abilities that align with those colors, as well also giving protection from those colors. The swords are colorless but have the style and flavor of two MTG colors whenever an equipped creature deals combat damage to an opponent. Some of my favorites are Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Hearth and Home, Sword of Fire and Ice, and Sword of Wealth and Power.

And never forget the Unstable Sword of Dungeons & Dragons!

#4. Typal Banners

Banner cards are artifacts that have you choose a creature type and pump them. We have a good amount of these banners, and they usually offer a +1/+1 anthem pump, as well as another effect. The best of these banners include:

• Vanquisher's Banner
• Patchwork Banner
• Heraldic Banner
• Coat of Arms
• Door of Destinies
• Banner of Kinship
• Obelisk of Urd
• Adaptive Automaton
• Icon of Ancestry

Of all of these cards, I like Vanquisher's Banner for its awesome card draw, Coat of Arms for its potentially large pump, and Door of Destinies for its great typal support.

#3. Caged Sun

Caged Sun is a banner-like artifact that stands out. Instead of a specific creature type pump, this banner card focuses on a color. This can greatly diversify your deck build and gives you many options with multicolored cards. Aside from the pump, Caged Sun doubles the output of your lands that produce the chosen color. Gauntlet of Power is a similar card that doubles mana production from basic lands of the chosen color.

#2. Forsaken Monument

For our last special banner card, we’ll check out Forsaken Monument. This is a banner card for your colorless decks, with a large pump, an ability to double colorless mana, and a great lifegain ability. With some simple ramp like Palladium Myr to get Forsaken Monument onto the battlefield, you can take over a game.

#1. Blackblade Reforged

Blackblade Reforged gives a massive pump to the equipped creature based on the number of lands you control. This equipment is easy to get onto the board, but has a large equip cost—unless you equip a legendary creature that can use this large equipment to the fullest.

Best Colorless Pump Spell Payoffs

Now that we have our colorless pump spells, what’s next? Colorless spells are wonderful because, in theory, they can fit into any deck that can effectively use the pump. So, we won’t have anything color-specific or too many strategy-dependent payoffs.

Many of our colorless pump spells are equipment cards and can be greatly helped by equipment support like Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale and Puresteel Paladin. Some great creatures you might think about equipping could be Danitha Capashen, Paragon or Baleful Strix.

Colorless pump also fits quite well into artifact decks. Whether you have an affinity payoff like Emry, Lurker of the Loch, build around a commander like Urza, Chief Artificer, or equip a card like Bronze Guardian, artifacts and pump spells work together—in part because of how many of these cards are artifacts.

For those banner effects, changeling cards like Realmwalker and Soulstone Sanctuary are great!

Wrap Up

Thank you so much for reading through this article. I hope you gained something from the almost endless possibilities of colorless pump. They can fit into so many decks efficiently and provide a ton of support and pump. I’m sure most of you are aware of at least some of these cards, but let’s hope you still took something away from this article.

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Stay safe, and get your pump on!