All 20 Otters in Magic Ranked

Last updated on August 5, 2025

Bria, Riptide Rogue | Illustration by Borja Pindado

I’m just going to get the requisite pun out of the way: These cards are otterly cute! We’ve had a smattering of otters in Magic for a few years, but Bloomburrow brought a whole romp of otters (which is the coolest of the various words used to describe a group of otters!).

Let’s look at all of them and find out which of these otters pops the most.

What Are Otters in MTG?

Lightshell Duo | Illustration by Mariah Tekuive

Otters are a creature type that first showed up in Ikoria with two cards and then continued with two more in Wilds of Eldraine. The rest appear as one of the 10 major creature types in Bloomburrow and the associated Commander precons.

Honorable Mentions: Alchemy Otters

Accident-Prone Apprentice, Indris, the Hydrostatic Surge, Tempest Trapper, and Enduring Friendship are otters created for Arena's Alchemy format and each has a digitally-exclusive mechanic. The cards rotate at a 2-year pace and are not available on paper, but are still cool otters.

Honorable Mention: Ral, Crackling Wit

Ral is somehow transformed into an otter when he planeswalks to Bloomburrow as a Courageous Critter, annoyed to be constantly whacking people with his unaccustomed tail, but of course planeswalkers don’t actually have a creature type. Ral, Crackling Wit is an even funnier name for this card since Ral isn’t much of a joker in the story.

But the card is no joke, with a reasonable chance of hitting its ultimate in a cheap cantrip-style deck, putting storm back on the menu.

#20. Tempest Angler

Tempest Angler is a Pyroceratops variant. Yawn. At least it is easy to cast with hybrid mana.

#19. Alania’s Pathmaker

A fine card in Bloomburrow Limited, Alania's Pathmaker is a worse Irascible Wolverine. It seems unplayable outside of some kind of EDH deck that runs red in a blink shell (an idea that gets better and better with each release!).

#18. Lightshell Duo

I’d rather be blinking Lightshell Duo, although this is definitely still Draft chaff.

#17. Harnesser of Storms

Harnesser of Storms is another fine Limited card that is not quite enough. I cram it into my play from exile commander deck, but that's about it.

#16. Kindlespark Duo

Sometimes you need an overcosted Thermo-Alchemist variant that’s an otter and a lizard. The lizard part of Kindlespark Duo is much more important than otter synergies.

#15. Thieving Otter

The Scroll Thief days are long gone, but Thieving Otter can still do the saboteur's work, usually in Limited.

#14. Frolicking Familiar

Frolicking Familiar is a nice option for a direct damage spell, but 3 mana for a 2/2 flier with nerfed prowess is bad. This is your notice that the Blow Off Steam adventure spell is an instant, and if 1 damage at instant speed is a thing we’ll want, then maybe?

This Familiar has very little competition on the ranking of cutest hats, though.

#13. Daring Waverider

Is Daring Waverider really an otter or three Snapcaster Mages in a coat? It's hard to cut this from various EDH decks, but I manage it. I like this as a strange top end to an Izzet () control deck, especially if you double it with Alania, Divergent Storm.

Instead of go-wide prowess tokens, I present Otter (Utter) Control! You drop this eventually and recur Brotherhood's End?

#12. Rapid Augmenter

Granting haste to tokens just isn’t that great, and Rapid Augmenter’s other abilities are largely inconsequential. I’m sure this otter artificer helps some sort of massive token combo deck win a turn faster, which isn’t nothing, but I continue to find better cards than this to slot into my decks.

#11. Elusive Otter

I’ve had a ton of success with Elusive Otter in my Proft's Eidetic Memory Standard brews. Being usually unblockable is big game, and casting Grove's Bounty for X=0 to get triggers is really useful. This card only gets better as more otters join in, even if I skip fixing mana for green.

#10. Alania, Divergent Storm

I love that Alania, Divergent Storm pays you off for going all-in on Otter Spellslinger and tempts you to use it as your Izzet commander. However, I’m a bit annoyed that we already have too many viable Izzet spellslinger commanders! #IzzetProblems.

I think Alania, Divergent Storm is the best political otter commander, as gifting a card strategically is pretty sweet. And you need that goodwill, as everyone assumes you'll copy Time Walk effects.

I see an Izzet extra turns deck until WotC learns from printing such cards. Five mana is a lot, but copying protection spells on opponents' turn isn’t nothing.

#9. Bria, Riptide Rogue

This is one of Bloomburrow‘s pricier cards, yet it's only available in the Bloomburrow Starter Kit. I like to give my other legends prowess in my legends deck in any format as what I see as the most obvious use case for Bria, Riptide Rogue. It is one of the best Izzet tokens commander, as it turns your token generators like Young Pyromancer, and utility creatures like Archmage Emeritus and Storm-Kiln Artist into swollen rage monsters. A Bria EDH deck around tokens is a simpler and more fun shell than something like Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, which is a deck that always stresses me out to play because it’s so reliant on the one big token and your commander surviving.

The “can’t be blocked” text makes this a reasonably competitive card, perhaps even for Pioneer. If you untap with Bria and a lot of tokens, you only need two or three cantrips to win the game, like Arclight Phoenix decks. It's satisfying to find a late-game board state with a lot of tokens and lands where you drop Bria and cantrip for the win. Do we still have the quaint idea of late-game board states in Pioneer? Barely….

#8. Thundertrap Trainer

This kind of impulse draw on ETB is good on cards like Ingenious Smith, but Thundertrap Trainer is so flexible in terms of its targets and can offspring itself. This wizard is a tapout control staple as well as a prowess deck enabler.

#7. Kitsa, Otterball Elite

I think other cards look better in a prowess deck, but Kitsa, Otterball Elite is sneaky awesome. You prowess-buff your squad, of course, but that ability to either copy a spell or loot after combat gives a ton of flexibility and options for top-deck windfalls.

#6. Stormsplitter

This otter wizard is a Timmy card that I want to prove is busted. Hey, that Rapid Augmenter gives all the Stormsplitter copies haste, so got 'em! I really see potential in this red creature, so I leave this right here and wait.

#5. Eon Frolicker

This card is so mean and so cute at the same time. Thankfully it has a clause that stops it from being a crazy flicker target. In case the virtual goad isn’t quite intense enough, Eon Frolicker just wrecks players.

#4. Valley Floodcaller

Flash, group pseudo prowess, and untapping is large and in charge! Valley Floodcaller is like a mini Settle the Wreckage coming down when you attack into a lot of open blue mana in these creature typal decks. You’d think prowess decks just want to tap out, but this is something new to think about.

This card is awesome even just for the ability to cast noncreature spells with flash, and it rocks in Bloomburrow Sealed or BLB Drafts.

#3. Stormcatch Mentor

Another Goblin Electromancer and cost reducer is always great, and Stormcatch Mentor is much cuter.

#2. Lutri, the Spellchaser

It’s hard to have a card banned in Commander at the top of this list, so Lutri, the Spellchaser chills at number two. Companion is busted, and there are Lutri decks in 60-card formats, which gets easier as WotC continues to print redundant versions of different card effects.

If we imagine Lutri not as a companion, flashing in to copy a spell is cool, but not cool enough to just show up in decks.

#1. Coruscation Mage

Ottersnipe here is amazing, and one of the best cards in Bloomburrow. We already play Firebrand Archer in EDH decks that buff damage, and some of those commanders are recent, like Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might / Temple of Power, Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin, Urabrask / The Great Work, Taii Wakeen, Perfect Shot, Judith, Carnage Connoisseur, and Imodane, the Pyrohammer. I can’t tell if there’s an actual deck in that glut of 4-drops, but Archer wasn't in Standard alongside Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, so we haven’t seen this kind of potential synergy in a while.

If you pay the offspring cost and have Alania, Divergent Storm out, that’s quite a chunk of damage.

Best Otter Payoffs

We’re here for the spells, in any format, whether that’s a Commander deck helmed by Alania, Divergent Storm or Bria, Riptide Rogue, or a Standard Izzet prowess deck highlighting Stormcatch Mentor and perhaps Ral, Crackling Wit.

There's a smattering of cards that specifically interact with otters or make otters, and many of them are nice, efficient cards, even for a spellslinger deck with inexplicably few otters:

• Lilypad Village
• Valley Floodcaller
• Harnesser of Storms
• Otterball Antics
• Pearl of Wisdom
• Rockface Village
• Splash Portal
• Stormchaser's Talent
• Valley Flamecaller

All of this adds up to an Izzet Prowess deck that features otters, which is awesome. If you branch out to Temur cards, you can include Spider-Ham, Peter Porker.

Wrap Up

Valley Floodcaller | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

As a kid in the ‘80s, the Disney Channel had yet to populate the airwaves with tween hyphenate talents, and we’d get a lot of old cartoons and Disney nature films. One that definitely bothered me as a child who enjoyed seeing the otters at the zoo or aquarium was 1950’s Beaver Valley, which somehow won an Oscar even with its persistent anti-otter smear campaign. Disney, all the way back to 1939’s Practical Pig singing “work and play don’t mix,” liked to show off unimaginative and industrious creatures as superior citizens in the grand march of capitalist progress, which left the zany otters of the film and perhaps the “Imagineers” behind the Disneyland I loved to visit in the lurch.

What would Uncle Walt’s anti-fun thought police have thought to see me whiling away the decades on Magic: The Gathering? Bria, Riptide Rogue, with their infectious grin, has it right. You can ride the waves and have fun doing it, too.

Thank you for joining me on a short lesson in Gen X childhood and my ranking of the best otters in MTG! As always, let me know in the comments or on Draftsim's Discord what you think of the ranking, and let me know if any of you saw this beaver movie when you were younger!

Happy brewing in Bloomburrow, and may your work and play mix most wonderfully!

Note: this post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, you’ll help Draftsim continue to provide awesome free articles and apps.