The 43 Best Insects in Magic

Last updated on January 16, 2025

Wirewood Symbiote | Illustration by Yohann Schepacz

Insects are fun to watch. They’re colorful, alien, different, and adaptable. So tiny, yet many times so dangerous. Like humans, insects are everywhere on MTG planes, even as sentient species, and for Starcraft fans, it’s impossible not to think about Zerg. Insects appear in all of Magic's colors, in all sizes, alone or in swarms, and with many different keyword abilities like flying, menace, and deathtouch.

And guess what? They can be very, very poisonous. Today we’re taking a look at the very best insects Magic has to offer, and who knows, maybe some legendary insects will even prompt you to build a Commander deck around them.

What Are Insects in MTG?

Vorapede | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

Insects are a very common creature type in MTG, with more than 200 printed cards. Insects are usually found in Golgari () colors, representing aspects of life and death – breed, eggs, tokens, deathtouch, sacrifice – or self-mill and graveyard-matters aspects. Like snakes, insects are also tied to themes like poison and infect, mimicking their venomous bites in real life.

For the purposes of this list, we’re considering only creature cards (with one exception) that have the insect type, so cards that aren’t insects but create Insect tokens aren’t listed. I won’t include cards that transform into insects – sorry Delver of Secrets.

#43. Nullmage Advocate

Nullmage Advocate is a repeatable Naturalize effect, but the price to pay is very steep. Giving them two cards for free is harsh, so the graveyard hate plus artifact destruction must compensate. It gets a little better in EDH because you choose who’s drawing and who’s losing the permanent.

#42. Nantuko Vigilante

Nantuko Vigilante harkens back to the first iteration of morph, and with this insect around, you get to have a hidden Naturalize effect. It’s not the end of the world if you have to pay 5 mana for a 3/2 green creature that has this effect, too. Ainok Survivalist is a little better, but this is an insect list, after all.

#41. Caustic Wasps

Caustic Wasps is just Trygon Predator, just a little bit smaller. It only works for artifacts too, so I’d advise against playing this green card if you’re not fully into insects, there are better options available on the market. 

#40. Bilious Skulldweller

Bilious Skulldweller is a simple 1-drop that’s a 1/1 with deathtouch and toxic 1. It serves its purpose as a 1/1 drop that can start the poison chain, and it’s hard to block profitably. 

#39. Nantuko Husk

Nantuko Husk’s value comes from being a free sacrifice outlet, and a very relevant card in Limited archetypes every time it shows up. It also works very well with Fling in sacrifice decks. 

#38. Virus Beetle

Virus Beetle is the right power level for Standard play, where you can have a little value by making them discard and blink it, or Unearth it. It’s a little better than its predecessors in EDH because it makes everybody discard a card, unlike cards like Ravenous Rats.  

#37. Broodhatch Nantuko 

Broodhatch Nantuko is a variation of Hornet Nest, although a weaker one. The fact that you can keep it hidden is a little advantage, and sometimes you’ll get to block a giant creature.

#36. Bane of the Living

Not many players expect Bane of the Living in a regular game. This black creature can be a secret sweeper, and even if it dies, you’ll probably get a lot of value. In a morph format it’s even better, seeing as you can give them -2/-2 and still keep the Bane around.

#35. Vorapede

Vorapede is a 5/4 creature that dies into a 6/5. Not bad, and with this card around you’ll have a chunky and reliable creature. It also plays offense and defense reliably, and with trample you can turn on a few saboteur payoffs. Not a lot of support required here, just play the card.

#34. Hornet Nest

You don’t want to mess with the Hornet Nest, or else you’ll have to deal with a lot of deathtouch wasps. If you control this card, you’re more than happy to chump block with it, and players probably won’t attack you. With a pinger, you can even milk the nest, extracting wasps each turn.

#33. Crash of Rhino Beetles

Crash of Rhino Beetles packs a punch as a common. Being able to have a 15/15 trampler in the late game is huge, and the normal version isn’t weak at all. 

#32. Moldgraf Monstrosity

Moldgraf Monstrosity also isn’t your common insect. It’s a huge 8/8 trampler that must be dealt with, but at the same time, your opponents won’t be too keen on doing it, fearing what the dead monstrosity can reanimate to the battlefield.

#31. Iridescent Hornbeetle

In a +1/+1 counters deck, you’ll get more insects from Iridescent Hornbeetle than from Ant Queen. This card is a huge payoff for +1/+1 counter effects, especially if you have cards like Good-Fortune Unicorn around. 

#30. Nantuko Cultivator

Nantuko Cultivator allows you to cycle through your unneeded lands, while growing the creature and drawing that many cards. It’s like cycling a land for a +1/+1 counter. The best use for this card is when you have land recursion available, be it Splendid Reclamation or Crucible of Worlds.

#29. Phyrexian Swarmlord

The infect mechanic doesn’t leave room for big creatures, aside from a few rares like Phyrexian Swarmlord. It’s also a big payoff for having poison counters spread around. Playing this insect horror after something like Ichor Rats is huge, and you’ll make a ton of infect tokens this way.

#28. Agitator Ant

Goad is such a cool mechanic, and Agitator Ant helps you to goad the best creature on the table every turn for additional mayhem. There are a few things funnier in MTG than having your opponents fight against themselves, and this card is a great political addition to the table.

#27. Giant Adephage

Don’t let Giant Adephage hit you once, or else it gets really hard to stop this creature-cloning train. This card must be killed on sight because you’re probably not blocking, chump-blocking, or trading with a deathtouch creature profitably.

#26. Ant Queen

Ant Queen is a pet card of mine, and at the time it looked like an incredible bomb. Everything is great on this card, turning 2 mana into insects, making more tokens…. And insects are just cool. It’s nice that you can draw this late into the game and it’ll still be useful thanks to all the little guys it can provide.

#25. Caustic Caterpillar + Haywire Mite

Creatures that have secondary functions are good to have, especially in Limited or low-level Constructed formats. Although Caustic Caterpillar does the trick, Haywire Mite is a tad more efficient at that, but the noncreature restriction hurts.

#24. Skittering Cicada

Giving all your creatures flash is such a cool ability, like with Vedalken Orrery. Skittering Cicada is the insect version of that, and it works wonders in decks like Ulalek, Fused Atrocity that benefit from creatures entering at instant speed. As a colorless creature, it fits all EDH decks, so that’s another positive aspect of the Cicada.

#23. Xira, the Golden Sting

Xira, the Golden Sting works with the “bounty mechanism”, and as long as you target a creature to kill, it’ll explode into a card and a 1/1 flying token. Talk about an incentive to snipe your opponent’s creatures. Fortunately, you can also sacrifice your own creatures, should they bear egg counters.

#22. Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp

Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp is an interesting modular Commander card. Being able to trigger modular at will via Zabaz’s red ability is cool, and you can dump a bunch of +1/+1 counters and fly over the opposition with the white activated ability. This Boros card () also has the “add one more counter” when you use modular abilities, and considering that Modern Horizons 2 has plenty of white and red modular creatures, that’s a nice place to start a deck.

#21. Canoptek Tomb Sentinel

Unearthing Canoptek Tomb Sentinel means business. A 4/3 creature with haste that comes with a free exile effect is Solitude ratings, so be sure you use that aspect well. The unearth ability already means you don’t need support, but a Zombify or Reanimate will work very well on this card.

#20. Luminous Broodmoth

Luminous Broodmoth is trouble when you already have your white weenies on board. Besides being a massive body, what are they going to do? Wipe the board so your creatures return with flying? Outside of cards like Sunfall or Farewell, it’s hard to deal with this white creature in a clean way.

#19. Docent of Perfection

Docent of Perfection is a genius design, being a “Delver of Secrets” creator and lord of sorts. I think of it as a giant Young Pyromancer dragon of sorts, and in a wizard deck, it may very well be one of your strongest cards.

#18. Distended Mindbender

Distended Mindbender is huge as a 5/5 that can make your opponent discard up to two cards on ETB – one more than the usual. And god forbid if you can blink it or reanimate it. As if it weren’t strong enough, with emerge you can cast this eldrazi for cheap, while retaining the “spend 7 mana on a spell” synergies.

#17. Tunneling Geopede

Cards like Iridescent Vinelasher and Tunneling Geopede are awesome win conditions in landfall decks, or landfall combo decks. Decks that can put dozens of land cards at once thanks to Scapeshift and the like should pay attention to this red creature.

#16. Grist, Voracious Larva / Grist, the Plague Swarm

The cost of opportunity to include Grist, Voracious Larva is very low, as it’s only a 1-drop with deathtouch. Once it’s become a planeswalker, you have more things going, like creating 1/1’s and Disenchanting. It’s not very strong, I’ll tell you that, but this Golgari card’s very good for a flexible 1 mana value card that can fit different deck archetypes.

#15. Krenko's Buzzcrusher

Krenko's Buzzcrusher isn’t a dragon, but it's very close. It’s the least insect-like card you’ll see here, that’s for sure. Anyway, with this red card you have a hard-hitter and nonbasic land hate, at the same time.

#14. Hornet Queen

The best aspect of Hornet Queen is to make five flying/deathtouch bodies. When this card is around, you’ll need to have a lot of trample to get past it, and lose a few guys. This creature's trigger is on entering, so blinking and reanimating this card is huge.

#13. Spring-Leaf Avenger

Spring-Leaf Avenger’s ninjutsu is very cheap at 4 mana, and you’ll get a huge 6/5 that hits with an Eternal Witness effect. This insect ninja has big value being a two-for-one most of the time, and being a huge Gravedigger card. 

#12. Amzu, Swarm’s Hunger

Amzu, Swarm's Hunger is a powerful card that needs a little build-around. You’ll want some mill, some delve, and some flashback to make huge Insect tokens at will. It’s also an insect lord, so you’ll want this insect shaman in your insect decks, especially because giving menace to deathtouch creatures is pretty good.

#11. Wirewood Symbiote

Wirewood Symbiote is broken in elf decks, allowing for a lot of combos. Untapping elf creatures mean that they can generate more mana if you have cards like Priest of Titania around, or with the Heritage Druid combo. You can also return elves that have good enter effects like Reclamation Sage or Elvish Visionary. 

#10. Springheart Nantuko

Springheart Nantuko makes 1/1 Insect tokens on a landfall trigger, and that’s not bad for a 2-drop. Things get really ugly when this card is bestowed into a stronger creature. is a low, low cost to Clone creatures, and even if the creature is killed, you’ll have a backup to keep making tokens.

#9. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest can grow a huge army very quickly, and it thrives not only on your sacrifice, but also on the other players’. They’ll think twice about sacrificing that fetch land or that Treasure token, I’ll tell you that. The main weakness here is that you’ll need a bunch of creatures on Mazirek’s side, and it can be weak on its own.

#8. Kathril, Aspect Warper

Kathril, Aspect Warper works very well when you have a keyword soup creature like Sire of Seven Deaths in your graveyard, or Zetalpa, Primal Dawn. You’ll want to mill your library as often as possible, and for that, colors will help. You can also play this Abzan card () with other cards that care about mechanics like Odric, Lunarch Marshal because you’ll be distributing mechanic counters very often.

#7. Canoptek Scarab Swarm

Canoptek Scarab Swarm is very interesting as a way to hate on graveyards while also adding multiple flying artifacts to the board. Just getting two or three tokens is already worth it. It’s awesome with cards like Cranial Plating since it’s evasive and also makes more artifacts.

#6. Scute Swarm

Scute Swarm starts off as a “cute” little bug, but once the lands start coming, there’s no stopping this guy. Just making a token on ETB is already good, but when you start making copies of Scute Swarm, things grow exponentially, and you might start making notes of how many creatures and triggers. Or play on MTG Arena / MTGO.

#5. Vrestin, Menoptra Leader

Vrestin, Menoptra Leader is an X mana value legend, which is already great in EDH. Good in the early game and awesome in the late game, when you have many mana rocks and lands lying around. With this Selesnya card () around, you can make a lot of flying tokens and pump them. Even if your commander dies, it’ll come back stronger and with more buddies.

#4. Zask, Skittering Swarmlord

Zask, Skittering Swarmlord is already great because you can cast insects and play lands from your graveyard, netting you a huge value and pointing at a way to build a deck around it. You can also pump insects and give them deathtouch at will, so they’re harder to interact with and block.

#3. Vishgraz, the Doomhive

Any card that creates three toxic bodies is good in my book. Vishgraz, the Doomhive is an awesome blink target, and it scales with the amount of poison counters they have. It’s also in the correct color identity to take advantage of all toxic, infect, and corrupted cards to build a poison-themed EDH deck.

#2. The Wise Mothman

The Wise Mothman is one of the most popular Sultai commanders () out there. It’s cheap at 4 mana, it flies, and it’s easy to build around. Just include some cards that mill everybody and watch the magic happen. You can also spread rad counters with the right support and definitely include some proliferate in your deck since it’ll hit rad counters and +1/+1 counters alike.

#1. Grist, the Hunger Tide

A planeswalker commander? An insect? A constructed staple? Grist, the Hunger Tide is all of these merged together in a single Golgari card. This card is very flexible, giving you self-mill and removal, and it works wonders with undying creatures when you use the -2 ability. It’s also a planeswalker that’s an insect in other zones, including the command zone, and thus fit to be a Golgari commander as well.

Best Insect Payoffs

Although not a common set theme, some cards reward you for having insects, or interact with insects strongly enough to consider building an insect typal deck. Let’s see the best ones:

• Grist, the Hunger Tide consistently gains more loyalty counters if you’re milling insects.
• Zask, Skittering Swarmlord buffs your insects, while being able to cast them from your grave.
• Vrestin, Menoptra Leader makes your insects huge just by attacking.
• The Swarmweaver isn’t an insect card per se, but it’s a good incentive to have insects around. This card gives you two flying insects, +1/+1 to all of them, and deathtouch if you have delirium. 

Do Spiders Count as Insects in MTG?

They don’t. Spiders are their own type of creature in MTG, and better supported than insects, with classic spider commanders like Shelob, Child of Ungoliant and Arasta of the Endless Web.

Do Pests Count as Insects in MTG?

No, they don’t. Pests are their own creature type, but aren’t very well supported. Cards like Blex, Vexing Pest / Search for Blex boost insects and pests alike, but cards like Blight Mound specifically target pests. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest benefitting from having an Ant Queen pumping out tokens.

Wrap Up

The Wise Mothman | Illustration by Sergei Leoluch Panin

MTG has its fair share of insects, most notably in green and black, ranging from small 1/1’s to giant 8/8 threats. Many of these insects were Constructed staples at a given point, and I’m sure you’ve played plenty of them. Or still play?

What are your favorite insects in MTG? do you play any insect-themed EDH deck? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s discuss it over Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there guys.