One of Magic's weirder creature types, Sphinxes are relatively uncommon. When you consider how wordy they usually are, and how the vast majority of them are higher rarity cards, their tournament pedigree is surprisingly unimpressive. Unfortunately, a lot of the words on sphinxes end up being "cool and flavourful" rather than just, you know, "good." Still, there have been plenty of good ones over the years, too. Here are eight of the best, in no particular order.

Quantum Riddler

The latest and arguably the greatest. This card is showing up everywhere, whether that's flicker decks in older formats or just playing it "fairly" in Standard. I use quotation marks there, because this card rarely feels fair at all. It was even one of the best cards in its Limited format - a real cross-format all-star and maybe the best Sphinx of all time. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but you know how good this card is.

Dream Eater

With certain creature types, lists like this are a matter of trimming down a huge selection to something that fits in a neat word count. With sphinxes, we're reaching a bit to even find eight. Still, Dream Eater has seen competitive play. Not a ton, and basically never outside of Standard, but it did show up in a few mid-level tournament decks. It started life as a finisher in grixis control decks, and showed up in some Yorion, Sky Nomad and Gyruda, Doom of Depths lists, but not many.

Stoic Sphinx

Another flash in the pan (geddit? because it has flash), that people did try out in Standard before moving onto other, better cards. When you search this card up on mtgtop8.com, most of its entries are store championships level tournaments, so does that even count for a list like this? I did say I was stretching for some of these and a top seven would have felt weird, right?

Consecrated Sphinx

All right, here we go, another bone-fide banger. I'm sure commander players know this one well enough, but competitive players of a certain age will remember this with either a wistful smile or an angry tick, depending on your preferred archetype. It showed up all over the place during its time in Standard, usually in control decks of course, where it won two Grand Prix. It was a fascinating card for mirror matches, especially in the era of Nephalia Drownyard later on. Figuring out when to draw and when not to was a fun little mini-game and a 4/6 flier, at the time, was evidently a viable stat line.

Raffine, Scheming Seer

Hi, there. I'm Raffine, Scheming Seer. You may remember me from such articles as "The Top Ten Demons for Competitive Magic" and "every article about Standard from 2022." Like a lot of the creature types that are usually expensive, it's the unusually cheap creatures that makes the list (see warped Quantum Riddler above). This traded power and toughness for efficiency and it was all the better for it. As a six-mana 5/5 for something, Raffine would probably have seen minimal play, if any. Priced to move, with such a strong ability, it saw a huge amount of play in Standard, and has tournament results to back it up.

Dream Trawler

This card's most famous tournament story involves a pro train-wrecking his draft to pick it. Dream Trawler was the control finisher du jour back in the days of Teferi, Time Raveler and Elspeth Conquers Death. It was incredible against aggro where the lifelink was a huge pain. It was incredible in the mirror, where it demanded either a one-for-one sweeper or multiple removal spells. It won Worlds in 2020 and continued to be a big part of Standard until rotation.

Sphinx of Foresight

Oh, yeah! I almost forgot this card existed. This is yet another sphinx that is a) relatively cheap to cast and b) never made it outside of Standard. It did also have a very solid tournament resume, though. It won Magic Fest Brisbane and GP Oklahoma in 2019 as part of the Fires of Invention deck, and have several good showings in Winota, Joiner of Forces decks toward the end of its time in Standard.

Sphinx of Jwar Isle

Largely in the sideboard, this was a bit-part player against control decks of the time. It looks quaint by today's Standards, but a big flier with shroud was good against the control decks of the era. The other stuff wasn't entirely flavor text either, since fetch lands were legal at the time. So, being able to shuffle away a dead card was not nothing.

Sphinx of the Steel Wind

Another sideboard all-star, although this one has seen main deck play over the years, if a particular meta-game calls for protection from Red or Green. This is an unusual entry in this list, however. Where many of the cards here were only relevant in Standard, Steely Dan here never saw serious Standard play but was important part of unfair decks (Show and Tell, Reanimator, Oath et cetera) in Legacy and Vintage for years. It still sees play in the latter, but has been usurped in the former for quite a while.

Sphinx of Lost Truths

Closing things out, Sphinx of Lost Truths was part of Brian Kibler's GP Sendai winning deck in 2010. It never quite dominated the format before or after that tournament, but it was a solid bit of card advantage for decks that needed it.