[Free Article] The Best Card in Legacy

[voltron00x]

In which the author lists the 10 best cards in Legacy in order, with special attention to number 1 and why it is number 1, and the next 10 in no order, leaving your favorite off the list and provoking your wrath.

Also some additional thought on Mental Misstep. This article was written and submitted before BoM and the SCG Open this past weekend, and I hope to write something additional given those results.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21893_The_Long_And_Winding_Road_The_Best_Card_In_Legacy.html

[Michael Keller]

I think it is a crime you not only left Dark Confidant off that list, but neglected to even mention it in the "Honor Roll" category.

No excuses.

[luckme10]

Needs more Bob.. honorable mention at least. Actually, just look at the source's banner. :tongue:






Edit: So Hollywood beat me to the above remark (by 1 minute), and I thought about taking it out. But then I thought, "Naw, just leave it up there to reiterate its emphasis of importance."

[voltron00x]

Bob has 16 Legacy Open top 8s this year. It's a pretty solid number for this year, and a good resurgence, but not overwhelming. There were long chunks of time where Bob wasn't that relevant, to be honest; card was mostly MIA for 2010 (trumped by Mystical Tutor and Survival).

Anyway - What would you cut? I mean, I obviously didn't craft this list to provoke actual, honest-to-God conversation, right?

It's not about me making "excuses" for MY list, it's about you rationalizing yours.

Sheesh, the Internet, am I right?

In any case, I'm cool with Bob in the top 20, but probably doesn't make the cut for top 10.

[bakofried]

PM'ed you for Elves commentary.

While I agree with a good bit of your list, I think that a top-ten list right now is either bad or perfect timing. It's perfect because it captures the meta prior to this momentous change that is New Phyrexia, and it's bad timing because the meta will immediately change.

[Michael Keller]

Bob has 16 Legacy Open top 8s this year. It's a pretty solid number for this year, and a good resurgence, but not overwhelming. There were long chunks of time where Bob wasn't that relevant, to be honest; card was mostly MIA for 2010 (trumped by Mystical Tutor and Survival).

Anyway - What would you cut? I mean, I obviously didn't craft this list to provoke actual, honest-to-God conversation, right?

It's not about me making "excuses" for MY list, it's about you rationalizing yours.

Sheesh, the Internet, am I right?

In any case, I'm cool with Bob in the top 20, but probably doesn't make the cut for top 10.

Dark Confidant has a more wide utility in a variety of decks and doesn't require a list to be exclusively built around it, like Counterbalance would necessitate. It serves as the premiere source of card advantage and its cost makes it splashable in just about any deck seeking an edge with the aforementioned. It sees a wide variance of inclusion in more competitive decks in today's meta, and quite frankly the whole "MIA" for 2010 thing doesn't mean a thing considering where the format is today.

2010 is nonexistent and cannot be used as a tool for discussion as that era is now ancient in terms of comparability to today's general meta. The premiere decks of 2010 are effectively dead, so that is negligible. You've placed Mental Misstep on your list, so we can assume you are referencing today's meta and not yesterday's - yesterday's being last year (or month, for that matter).

Look, if you post an article and advertise your writing, you're going to experience a level of feedback criticizing some of your points - or lack thereof. No one is being confrontational, but in all fairness you are the one who needs to rationalize your choices a little more decisively because, well, you wrote the article. I think you overlooked this card (come on now, you would have honestly placed it in the Honor Roll category if you gave it consideration; no one in their right mind would leave this card out without giving it at least a nod as it is arguably the most powerful stationary draw engine in Legacy and has been for quite some time).

You're entitled to your opinion, but you should think in terms of where your validity is flawed in respect to these cards' own meta value as opposed to where people think they belong on the list. Dark Confidant has shown - and placed - in mass quantities and has nearly doubled in value over the course of a few months. It has found homes in decks ranging from Combo sideboards all the way to general Mono Black variants.

Putting up a wall to try and force me to rationalize why Bob deserves to be in the Top Ten cards in Legacy is effectively ludicrous; I challenge you to explain more in depth why you feel as though the now-absentee Counterbalance deserves a spot in your list.

Could your bias be based on your style of play or preference of deck choice?

What makes it so good on its own merit (as you've explained) to make it worthy of a spot that high?

[clavio]

Who is the target audience? I dont really see anybody from the eternal community giving a crap about this and its not too helpful for new players.

I know I certainly didnt give a crap. Brainstorm gets played alot? Wasteland is good against greedy manabases? Fuck me sideways!

[voltron00x]

Dark Confidant has a more wide utility in a variety of decks and doesn't require a list to be exclusively built around it, like Counterbalance would necessitate. It serves as the premiere source of card advantage and its cost makes it splashable in just about any deck seeking an edge with the aforementioned. It sees a wide variance of inclusion in more competitive decks in today's meta, and quite frankly the whole "MIA" for 2010 thing doesn't mean a thing considering where the format is today.

2010 is nonexistent and cannot be used as a tool for discussion as that era is now ancient in terms of comparability to today's general meta. The premiere decks of 2010 are effectively dead, so that is negligible. You've placed Mental Misstep on your list, so we can assume you are referencing today's meta and not yesterday's - yesterday's being last year (or month, for that matter).

Look, if you post an article and advertise your writing, you're going to experience a level of feedback criticizing some of your points - or lack thereof. No one is being confrontational, but in all fairness you are the one who needs to rationalize your choices a little more decisively because, well, you wrote the article. I think you overlooked this card (come on now, you would have honestly placed it in the Honor Roll category if you gave it consideration; no one in their right mind would leave this card out without giving it at least a nod as it is arguably the most powerful stationary draw engine in Legacy and has been for quite some time).

You're entitled to your opinion, but you should think in terms of where your validity is flawed in respect to these cards' own meta value as opposed to where people think they belong on the list. Dark Confidant has shown - and placed - in mass quantities and has nearly doubled in value over the course of a few months. It has found homes in decks ranging from Combo sideboards all the way to general Mono Black variants.

Putting up a wall to try and force me to rationalize why Bob deserves to be in the Top Ten cards in Legacy is effectively ludicrous; I challenge you to explain more in depth why you feel as though the now-absentee Counterbalance deserves a spot in your list.

Could your bias be based on your style of play or preference of deck choice?

What makes it so good on its own merit (as you've explained) to make it worthy of a spot that high?

My point was that, as a long-time contributing member of the Source, you could offer something better to an open discussion than a snide "no excuses" in your initial post. Or, am I expecting too much?

EDIT: To expand on this, I find "No excuses" to be, in fact, quite confrontational, which makes your quoted post somewhat amusing to me in that I guess my response hit home. I also assure you that 2010 did, in fact, exist.

[Michael Keller]

My point was that, as a long-time contributing member of the Source, you could offer something better to an open discussion than a snide "no excuses" in your initial post. Or, am I expecting too much?

If I was explicit in my response because you invoked a "snide" response out of me, you should be proud of yourself for eliciting such a response out of someone; it certainly means you've got at least one reader's attention.

Perhaps as a contributor to the premiere source of competitive Magic that is Star City Games, maybe you could elaborate a little more on your choices and the ones you decided to leave out on such a bold topic for the community to see. You've basically gone into a one-dimensional mode of thinking and writing with this article without explaining why you left a great portion of some of the best cards in Legacy out of the discussion without so much as a single reason why, other than this:


...You might challenge me on some, especially Glimpse of Nature, but I think time will only increase that card's power. I mean, Wizards is going to print more creatures, right? They're going to print more Elves?

Ancient Tomb should definitely be on the list, but it isn't, so complain about it in the forums.

Annnnnnnnd...that's about it in terms of "post-Honor Roll" discussion. It just makes me cringe that articles like this are not given enough thought with so much complexity and parity involved that you didn't even give a single reason why any of the cards you left out weren't included. What's worse is you never once mentioned (arguably) the best draw engine in Legacy - in a TOP TEN article!

Your credibility is on the line here, not mine. Again, your opinion is fine, but your article needs some serious explaining if you're going to market yourself and your beliefs to some very impressionable people reading them, so be a little more courteous to those who already have a strong grasp on the format and a little more informant to the people who don't know what Brainstorm even is yet.

Or, are we expecting too much?

[clavio]

I think a mich better article would have been something along the lines of the ten best cards nobody is running right now. It wouldnt even have to be cards never played, some of them could be cards that just sort of drifted away. Throw some experimental deck lists in and bam! Article is a billion times better.

[menace13]

Great article. I always read your articles but this one felt too short. Only because I wanted to keep reading.

FoW in every winning GP deck is not a surprise although I hadn't known prior.

Deckcheck was great for things like this in terms of stats. Top 50 played cards by Year/ Month/Week breakdown. FoW is always number 1 on that list and was also for Vintage. Wish that was still available(haven't checked since it went down, don't know where to). Wasteland and Brainstorm were the others along with Dual lands(Tropical Island for Legacy and U. Sea for Vintage).

Misstep was a good inclusion. It will maintain a high level of use and I think it gets on to the Most played top 5 card list.

Jace, Bob, Stifle(you did name Nought), Ponder and Dual/Fetches all belong on the honor list.

[voltron00x]

Honor Roll list was another 10, in case you're wondering. Limiting yourself to 10 cards is hard. If I said, Honor Roll: Half the format! that'd be really quite easier to do.

Ponder was on my list of 20ish that I cut to 10 for the ones in the article beyond the top 10, as was Bob, Hymn, Ancient Tomb, GSZ, and Lackey. I considered Stifle, but it had been running cold; definitely on the upswing, it seems, as is Bob.

FWIW, if Zoo or GSZ decks don't heat back up for awhile, then its easy to argue from some of the other hot cards (Metalworker, Ancient Tomb, Stifle, Bob),whereas if you're looking back for the last couple years, you have to balance past performance against what's doing well now. No one is arguing for Goblin Lackey, for example? That's astounding to me, even if the deck is admittedly quite weak atm. Or, how about GSZ?

[Michael Keller]

Limiting yourself to 10 cards is hard.

That about sums it up. I did like the article, in all honesty.

[Koby]

I enjoyed the read, but it felt like you were gushing more about Brainstorm than anything else. The card is amazing no doubt, and probably not enough strategy articles have been written maximizing its use.

That being said, thank you for continuing to offer free articles to the community. For that, we salute you Matt!

[bakofried]

I'd argue for Goblin Lackey if WotC gives me 1 more good Goblin at 2. We have Warren Instigator, who is way stronger than people give him credit for, but I need 1 more to have a strong follow-up play for getting my bomb countered.

[rufus]

I'd argue for Goblin Lackey if WotC gives me 1 more good Goblin at 2. We have Warren Instigator, who is way stronger than people give him credit for, but I need 1 more to have a strong follow-up play for getting my bomb countered.

Unban Goblin Recruiter (just kidding.)

[evanmartyr]

Worth noting that the two cards you named that trumped Bob are now banned.

[voltron00x]

So one could argue that, say, LED, Entomb, and Vengevine are theoretically more powerful than Bob. That's what makes this so hard.

Anyway, Brainstorm is the bees knees, show it some love. Peace out!

[voltron00x]

I think a mich better article would have been something along the lines of the ten best cards nobody is running right now. It wouldnt even have to be cards never played, some of them could be cards that just sort of drifted away. Throw some experimental deck lists in and bam! Article is a billion times better.

Here: Peacekeeper, Ensnaring Bridge, Nihil Spellbomb, Propaganda, Counterspell (called on Twitter before this past weekend), Trinisphere, Vendilion Clique, The Abyss, Lim-Dul's Vault, Genesis Wave.

[evanmartyr]

Not to nitpick here, but Trinisphere and Clique are both played a fair amount. I'd say Living Wish and Standstill, but after this weekend I dunno if Standstill is a fair pick :P

[voltron00x]

Trinisphere is like a ghost on the scg open circuit, and v clique hasn't been as popular as it should be in my opinion.

[Cenarius]

I believe the article is OK. Dark Confidant and Jace, the Mindsculptor should definitely be mentioned, but that's already mentioned in previous posts so I won't go any further in that.
I'm pretty sure that Counterbalance was top 10 material for a long time, before the new additions of Goblins and Zoo and the Merfolk-era shortly before that. Therefore I believe that Counterbalance should not be mentioned as top 10 material, though the card is really good. That cannot be denied.

The rest of the cards are prettty straightforward and therefore you made an almost perfect top10 (which is always subjective and therefore always differ for other people).

Greetings

[Gui]

Pretty good article! Who didn't ever made such list? =)

Btw, I want to suggest something before commenting: you should get a RSS feed for your articles, I'd greatly apreciate that. ^^

Ok, now comments (note: just my opinions. nothing against yours)

a) I prefer FoW in the spot of Brainstorm.
While I know how amazing BS is, I believe that the only other possible card to be Top1 is FoW, and you gave me another reason to keep FoW as my #1 with the GP fact.
It's the first argument for everything you try to do in the format: "ok, but what if he FoW your ...". Besides, brainstorm is made better because of FoW for 2 reasons - Fetches for FoW and pitches for FoW.

b) BS could be well used in decks not using it.
BS could be used in merfolks, and would still be good. they are linear, but fetching a counter, fixing land, and protecting things are still good usages, even without fetchlands, IMO. Besides, Merfolks can run fetchlands as well.
BS could as well be used in Dredge - It's more stable than Breakthrough, and draws more than Careful Study. I'm currently working on increasing dredge draw spells, and BS is making the cut for it.

c)Cheating too much on lands due to Brainstorm is wrong
I keep telling people this, they tend to never listen. When I add more lands to the tempo decks I build, looking to avoid BS-into-land move, I look forward using BS for WAY, WAAAY better uses it might have.
Agreed with you there, just to say ^^

d) Brainstorm >>> Ponder or Preordain
Just plain agreement here too. Brainstorm sculpts the hands miles better than these two.

e) Honor roll, cards in list, controversies
IMO, bob should be @ the honor roll. Also, Chalice should be there too. These are less niche than other cards within the roll, and even if they are not putting results, you always have to think about decks running these.
Lackey is too niche for the roll, but so is glympse, imo.
A card that I'd say to be there too was Life from the Loam, but these days it's less used, so, ok.
Jace could probably see some honor roll too. I believe him to be a better kill con than Dreadnaught
And I'd switch Counterbalance with Dark Ritual, from honor to top 10

This is all I got, it's a fine crafted list, and really good reading. just made my thuesday better ^^

[Mr. Safety]

Wow, solid read. I enjoyed the article...and I agree with it almost 100%...

I saw the article as explaining not only the raw power level of the cards, but the way in which they provide that power. Brainstorm makes any deck that plays it BETTER. Bob can't do that. I saw the list through this lens: decks that play the card (whichever it may be) would be sub-optimal without them, but WITH them, they become top tier in power level. Team America would play 8 Brainstorms if it could, which is why it usually supplements it with Ponder and/or Preordain.

I sometimes forget that Brainstorm is a conditional Ancestral Recall at instant speed...and we all know how powerful Ancestral Recall is. Sure you don't get to keep all the cards in hand, but honestly, you don't always WANT to. You still get 3 new cards available and you get to stack your top cards. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I really see what the guy is saying.

I for one LOVE to see a first turn Brainstorm...it tells me they are fishing for land. Awesome! That means playing Mental Misstep on a turn 1 Brainstorm could potentially put you WAY AHEAD in that game. I have gotten out of the (bad) habit of keeping 1-land hands with Brainstorm.

Jace I feel is too new to really make top 10. I feel that there is still something that will be printed that will break him WIDE OPEN, yes, even more so than he already is. SDT didn't explode until Counterbalance was printed.

What would people put as the 11-20 most powerful cards in legacy? That seems to me to be more in contention than the top 10. I would probably put these there (in no particular order really, just 10 cards in contention):

Jace, the Mind-Sculptor
Dark Confidant
Tombstalker
Natural Order
Glimpse of Nature
Dark Ritual
Burning Wish
Sylvan Library
Knight of the Reliquary
Stifle


Just more discussion fodder...:tongue:

[Tim the Enchanter]

So one could argue that, say, LED, Entomb, and Vengevine are theoretically more powerful than Bob.


Those are all strong cards but they have to be built around. Dark Confidant doesn't. You can throw him in almost any deck that plays black with or without Top, although obviously better with Top.

LED only sees play in a handful of decks and, while I can't research right now because I'm at work, I'm pretty sure it's had less T8 appearances than Bob recently.

[bakofried]

Brainstorm doesn't necessarily make any deck better. Lists which have a lot of redundancy (read: Merfolk) don't need Brainstorm, and in fact, Brainstorm would, in all likelihood, make the deck worse.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Interesting list, although I do agree with the Bob - lobbyists in this thread. It's nice to see somebody finally give Lion's Eye Diamond the respect it deserves though, it is the single most powerful combo card in the format (although recent meta shifts have caused the decks that run it to fade into the shadows).

[Amon Amarth]

I think Bob shoulda maybe been in the Top 10 but I agree with your Top 20 so I wont give you any flak. Good article.

[Mr. Safety]

Brainstorm doesn't necessarily make any deck better. Lists which have a lot of redundancy (read: Merfolk) don't need Brainstorm, and in fact, Brainstorm would, in all likelihood, make the deck worse.

Agreed...merfolk excluded. Hell, some fish decks are dropping Cursecatcher for Mental Misstep. They aren't going to play MORE 1-mana spells, just BETTER ones.

[evanmartyr]

LED only sees play in a handful of decks and, while I can't research right now because I'm at work, I'm pretty sure it's had less T8 appearances than Bob recently.

I'm sure it has. I think the thing holding combo back right now is a reduction in consistency introduced by a large percentage of blue decks with Daze/FoW/(and now, MMS) backup, as well as lacking something really amazing to wish/tutor for. The storm decks like TES and Belcher and such need something like that to be truly good...Yawgmoth's Will comes to mind. Until then, they'll be a significant enough portion of the metagame to crap all over decks that don't take them into consideration, and vary in power and consistency enough not to top-8 with significant regularity. My point! I knew there was one! My point is that LED is one of the things, probably the most important thing, making these decks degenerate, so until combo's matchups become unbearably bad, you'll see a lot of LEDs in Legacy, even if they will only occasionally populate the top tables.


Trinisphere is like a ghost on the scg open circuit, and v clique hasn't been as popular as it should be in my opinion.

I see a fair enough amount of Cliques, but there's a lot of Bant and CB played locally.

Trinisphere is noticeably less frequent, but then again if you're playing metalworker, dragon stompy, or any flavor of stax, you're playing at least 3 and more likely 4 in some combination between the main deck and the sb. It's a pillar of that kind of resource denial deck, and the one thing shutting it out of the metagame is being a turn too slow (with most readily available mana sources) to effect decks when it most needs to. MMS shores up these decks almost as well as it did for Gerry T's Landstill deck this weekend. So your point is taken, but I don't think it's a result of people not understanding how good the card is, but understanding its limitations.

When I read your article, I respected your opinions (most of them), but I certainly appreciate the discussion that's arisen because of it. So, if not a great job on the actual thing, the thing it spawned deserves kudos.

[Skeggi]

I just read the article, not this thread, just wanted to set one thing straight:


Each tournament has a bit of its own flavor; consider that Madrid had no Aether Vial and no Wasteland in the Top 8
Sven Dijt's Zoo list in the Madrid top 8 played Wastelands. It was the reason why he almost won to the reanimator deck, who got lucky and won in the quarter finals to this deck. Just to add some nuance to the story :wink:

[jandax]

That didn't stop him from letting Saito resolve that Ad Nauseum lol

[troopatroop]

I can't agree with Sensei's Divining Top at #4. I'm alone, but I don't think it's that good of a card on it's own.

Dark Confidant and Jace are both more powerful, imo.

[lorddotm]

Interesting list, although I do agree with the Bob - lobbyists in this thread. It's nice to see somebody finally give Lion's Eye Diamond the respect it deserves though, it is the single most powerful combo card in the format (although recent meta shifts have caused the decks that run it to fade into the shadows).

Lol, metagame shifts... Except by that you mean card printings.

[Rico Suave]

Bob is good, but still worse than every card on that top 10 list in Legacy.

[voltron00x]

I just read the article, not this thread, just wanted to set one thing straight:


Sven Dijt's Zoo list in the Madrid top 8 played Wastelands. It was the reason why he almost won to the reanimator deck, who got lucky and won in the quarter finals to this deck. Just to add some nuance to the story :wink:

Good catch, that's my bad for not double-checking.

[voltron00x]

One more card that should more play: Misdirection.

Have you ever Misdirected a Hymn to Tourach? God it feels good!

[conboy31]

Divert is also particularly dirty.

[Grollub]

Note that I am not including duals or fetches because it is my list, and I make the rules.
Aw. I was looking forward to see the top 10 list being:
1-8: Various Duals and Fetchies.
9: Brainstorm
10: Force of Will

I actually kind of agree with the entire list, with a few switches (Vial <--> Top for instance), but still think you should have included the lands (duals+fetchies) they are so important to the legacy format that ignoring them, obvious as they may be, seems a little odd - just lump them alltogether as "superlands" at #1 and I'd be happy. ;-)

Rather than making a top 10 of all card types, wouldn't it make more sense to have it rather be in catagories: Best Removal, Best Creature, Best Combo Enabler etc. In a general "best card" listing you're kind of comparing apples, oranges and bananas.



Who is the target audience? I dont really see anybody from the eternal community giving a crap about this and its not too helpful for new players.

I know I certainly didnt give a crap. Brainstorm gets played alot? Wasteland is good against greedy manabases? Fuck me sideways!
I dunno, I always like to read other players thoughts on cards even if they are more or less the same as mine or the general consensus. But I agree it's as a whole not really helpful for new players to just get a list of strong cards without putting them into context - another reason why I would have preferred the list be split up into catagories, that'd also give a much more precise metric to determine the individual cards (removal vs. removal) and probably be much more helpful for an aspiring Legacy player. :-)
- Plus probably be more interesting for an adept too.


Bob is good, but still worse than every card on that top 10 list in Legacy.
Agreed, and this is also exactly why I think "best cards lists" would be better being in catagories.


But my little rant aside, I thought it was a nice little article.

[voltron00x]

Divert is also particularly dirty.

Indeed, it is. You can also use Divert to counter a Mental Misstep, which is nice. I wonder if my set is still around somewhere.