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There are thousands of creatures inMagic: The Gathering, each with effects, abilities, and the power to help you win a game. Among the Humans, Elves, Krakens, and Dragons of Magic’s expansive universe, there is one creature beloved by fans: the Storm Crow.
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This unassuming Bird is a fine creature, a 1/2 with flying for just two mana. Not the worst creature Magic has ever printed, but certainly is not worthy of generations of memes circling around it. To get to the bottom of the Storm Crow meme, you have to go back to the earliest days of Magic’s history, both in the lore and in the cards.
“I Am A Storm Crow”
Before we get too lost in the lore, let’s take a look at the Storm Crow. Having seen 13 printings across multiple sets, as well as two very strange tokens, Storm Crow is a common face in Magic. First released as a common back in Alliances, Storm Crow didn’t make the biggest impact on the game. More recently, as a fun nod to the card’s popularity, Magic has released several cards in their non-tournament legal sets Unfinity and Unstable that produce Storm Crow tokens.
Much of the early popularity around Storm Crow rose from a single line in 1998’s The Brothers’ War novel by Jeff Grubb. During a tense conversation between apre-planeswalker Urzaand the artificer Tawnos, Urza describes himself as a ‘storm crow’ for the doom and misfortune he has brought upon his wife Kayla bin-Kroog and the world.
“I am a storm crow, Tawnos. A bird of ill omen. Disaster follows in my wake, and I don’t want to hurt her anymore.”
From that one line, a joke emerged that the mighty, god-like Urza was only as strong as a weak little Storm Crow. The inverse also happened, where a Storm Crow is equally as strong as the planeswalker Urza, and Magic had to significantly reduce the power of the card down to keep it in the game.
Any Blue Card Is Automatically Better
Comparing Urza to a Storm Crow isn’t the only reason why players came to love the card. A few years earlier, in 1996, Magic: The Gathering released the Alliances expansion to much fanfare. After a disappointing release from the Homelands set and a long eight-month gap between sets, many players were excited about something new. While Alliances did not introduce any new mechanics to the game, it did bring about cards that have alternate casting costs.
Of these cards, one uncommon became the pinnacle of control spells, Force of Will. By paying one life and exiling a blue card from your hand, you could counter any spell your opponent played, getting around the normally prohibitive five mana casting cost.
Storm Crow comes into the mix simply because it is a blue card, which by nature allows you to exile it to Force of Will. You can exile it for a free counterspell or cast it to put your opponent on a 23-turn clock if you play Storm Crow on turn two. Your opponent might as well concede as soon as they see you cast it since there’s not much they’ll be able to do.
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Don’t Stop Memein’
Part of the meme involves hyping up Storm Crow in every single possible way. Do you know the storm mechanic and the whole deck archetype built around it? Inspired directly by Storm Crow’s sheer power on the battlefield. Trying to find a card to fill that last slot of your Commander deck? You should have already included Storm Crow in your deck but since you haven’t, you should play Storm Crow.
Storm Crow has flying, making it ten times betterthan cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Murktide Regent, and even Urza, Lord High Artificer. And if you attach literally any equipment or enchantment to Storm Crow, it’s just the icing on the Storm Crow cake. Why Magic has even bothered to print creatures after they reached perfection is only a decision they know.
If you’re following social media accounts of your favorite Magic: The Gathering content creators, you might notice Storm Crow making an appearance on popularity polls, especially those that let voters write in an answer. All these jokes and more have kept Storm Crow around in Magic player’s collective consciousness.
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As The Storm Crow Flies
More recently, with the release of two Un-sets and a very special Secret Lair Drop, the whole routine of hyping Storm Crow up to be one of the best cards in the game has taken a very silly turn.
For June 30, 2025, Magic released an April Fools-themed Secret Lair called - Secret Lair Drop Series: April Fools, or Wizards of the Coast Presents: After Great Deliberation, We Have Compiled and Remastered the Greatest Magic: the Gathering Cards of All Time. Ever.
This four-card Secret Lair included Storm Crow, Goblin Snowman, Mudhole, and a white-bordered Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, the first white-bordered card to be printed in years, and the first planeswalker with a white border.
Storm Crow received a glorious full-art foil card, featuring a bird flying through a vicious thunderstorm. While initially done as a joke, the card became a collector’s item due to limited availability.
There are also two cards from the non-tournament legal sets Unfinity and Unstable that make Storm Crow tokens, the aptly named Crow Storm, and Attempted Murder. Crow Storm is the funnier of the two cards, though both are very silly. Crow Storm creates a 1/2 Storm Crow token with flying, andthen it has the storm keyword, letting you copy it for each other spell cast before it this turn. If you’ve cast five spells before you cast Crow Storm, you’ll get five copies of it, giving you six Storm Crow tokens.
Storm Crow might just be a little creature in the grand scheme of Magic, but players' love of this little bird has endured through decades. While it might seem like the Storm Crow meme has flown the coop, just wait for Magic to print another two-mana flying creature, and the Crow hype train will be back.
