Several weeks back, I was asked by one of my clan-mates to compile my list of the ten best cards in Classic. The request stemmed from an article from Brian Demars on StarCityGames in which he compiled a list of the Top 100 cards as judged by himself and a select few of his peers. In the grand scheme of things, compiling such a list doesn’t matter a whole lot, but it is a fun thing to do from time to time. One of my favorite activities besides Magic is Fantasy Baseball/Football, where you are constantly evaluating who the top players are (“do I pick Tom Brady over Michael Vick?” etc.). If there were any way to tie Magic into Fantasy sports besides Booster Drafting, this is likely the best application!
At first, I figured naming the Top 10 cards would be a simple exercise, but boy was I wrong! There are so many cards in Classic that deserve consideration. Before I could even arrange my top 10 from top to bottom, I first needed to pare down the list to 10 cards from the Classic card pool. First order of business was to simply brainstorm all the cards in Classic that see a large amount of play and are the most powerful effects.
Having brainstormed the cards in Classic worthy of discussion, there needed to be criteria by which I was to evaluate each card. I judged their merits on the following:
1. Strict Power Level — Does the card do broken things?
2. Format Defining — Is there a deck built almost entirely off this one card?
3. Widespread Play — Does the card appear in different decks/archetypes?
4. Flexibility — Can the card serve more than one purpose?
5. Current Applications — How good is the card in today’s metagame?
Using these five criteria, I was able to dismiss many cards. Necropotence meets the criteria 1 and 2, but number 5 invalidates its inclusion on my list since it’s practically non-existent in the current metagame. While Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are the best accelerators in the format, they don’t actually do anything; they simply make you cast the cards you want faster. Similarly tutors don’t actually win you the game. The cards they fetch do.
Before I share my Top 10, it’s worth taking a moment to talk about some of the cards that just missed the cutoff. Here are the Honorable Mentions:
Perhaps the most notable omission from my list is Yawgmoth’s Will. I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of heat for leaving it off the list, but while it certainly met the criteria for 1 and 2 and to a certain extent 4, it is not a huge part of today’s Classic metagame. Storm decks are the best use of Yawg Will, but due to the prevalence of Mishra’s Workshop decks and the lack of Power, Storm is not a big part of the metagame. Yawg Will has other applications since simply re-casting cards from your graveyard is great value, it’s certainly not Top 10 material for that application alone.
Also missing from my list is:
Jace is a powerful card, no doubt. In today’s metagame dominated by Shops and Fish decks, Jace is not nearly as useful. When you have to pay 6 or more mana to cast him, or get only a single sorcery speed brainstorm use out of him for 4 mana, it diminishes his overall value. Right now, Jace is probably best in blue mirrors, but little else.
It’s hard to leave what many consider to be the best 2-drop creature of all time off the list, but Dark Confidant narrowly missed the Top 10. Bob is a card advantage engine, but is best played as early in the game as possible. A Turn 5 topdeck of Bob is disappointing and the single largest factor to my leaving him off the list and why a different 2-drop made the list over him.
Without further ado, here is my view of the Top 10 cards in Classic:
Time Vault, when combined with Voltaic Key, is one of the few combos that win the game on the spot. Yes, you need another win condition to actually end the game, and if you have a Bob or a Mana Crypt in play, it’s conceivable you could actually lose without giving your opponent another turn. Seeing that this combo is powerful enough to see heavy Vintage play, it’s hard to justify leaving it off the list. Nearly every blue deck will want to jam this combo into their deck and its power level is undeniable. In a pinch, Time Vault works as it was originally intended without the aid of Voltaic Key, proving even more flexibility.
The inclusion of Pridemage in this list over the likes of Bob and other powerful 2-drops will cause the most concern. My rationale for choosing Qasali over Bob boils down to this: Qasali almost single-handily puts GW Hate decks on the map. Their flexibility in stopping the biggest threats from the top two decks, Oath and Shop, in addition to powering up itself or other hate bears, helps meet more criteria for evaluating the list than does Bob.
Wasteland is by definition a “fair” card. It trades one land for one of your opponents, but it goes far beyond that simple trade. The tempo swing from destroying a key land of your opponent can be back-breaking. Mana-screw and/or color-screw can be the result of a single well-timed Wasteland, practically ending the game on the spot. When playing against a deck with Wastelands, it’s nearly impossible to keep a one-land hand that isn’t a fetch or basic, so you have to pitch the hand and hope to draw more than one land in your next six cards. What happens then if you miss on that second hand? Very few cards demand that much respect when one considers mulligan decisions. For that simple fact, Wasteland has earned a spot on in the Top 10.
Tinker is the single best win condition available to blue decks. With the emergence of Blightsteel Colossus, Tinker demands an immediate answer or else you will lose. Thankfully Tinker is sorcery speed, so you often have one turn to come up with an answer, but when combined with Blightsteel, your answers are often limited. Basically, Jace/bounce spells are your best bet in addition to Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile. There are other options to stop Blightsteel, but they are limited in their applications, such as Goblin Welder and Leonin Relic-Warder. Tinker can also fetch up the missing piece to the Vault/Key combo as an alternative win condition.
In an un-powered format like that of Classic, Oath of Druids has long been a top tier strategy. Cheating out mammoth creatures like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or the aforementioned Blightsteel for the cost of 2 mana and a turn (with help from a Forbidden Orchard or the opponent having a single creature in play) hardly seems fair. Oath meets all the above criteria, especially #2, where an entire deck is built around this one card. Oath also keeps in check the types of removal that people play. Being that Oath is basically the only enchantment worth worrying about, people have to resort to using Nature’s Claim to pull double duty in both artifact and enchantment removal. In the absence of Oath, decks would be able to focus solely on artifact removal, opting for more efficient answers such as Crush and other Shatter-like effects.
There are few Turn 1 plays that nearly end the game, but Lodestone Golem with the help of Mana Vault, Sol Ring, or Mana Crypt and Mishra’s Workshop is one of those plays. Add in back-up from a second sphere on Turn 2 and the game is all but over. Lodestone has the unique ability to be both a lock piece and a win condition, ending games very quickly. If that weren’t enough, Lodestone’s “lock” doesn’t affect the Shop pilot, as their deck is entirely artifact-based! Without this creature, Workshop decks would be significantly weakened, though not completely neutered.
As far as specialty lands go, Workshop is the best mana accelerant for decks designed to leverage its ability. Workshop fits all of the criteria above; it’s powerful in being able to cast large and powerful artifact spells, is played in multiple variants of Shop decks, comprising perhaps the largest share of the metagame, and is flexible enough when considering the types of artifacts that it can cast (i.e. lock pieces, creatures, and answers). Workshop is so powerful, Wizards has yet to print a card that even approximates its power (i.e., a land that provides 2 mana instead of 3 with zero restrictions), though Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors certainly can state their cases.
Bazaar is the centerpiece of decks that break all the traditional rules of Magic. Dredge decks are very powerful and take a good chunk of the Classic metagame making the inclusion of Bazaar an easy choice. Bazaar deserves to be near the top of the list, as it is the only card in the game that is so swingy that one is willing and able to mulligan again and again until they find just a single Bazaar in their opening hand. No other card can make that kind of a statement.
Brainstorm is the single most efficient draw spell available to Classic. The beauty of the card is in its subtlety. Yes, you get to dig three cards, but Ponder does that as well. Where Brainstorm really shines is when it is used in conjunction with fetch lands. In this way, you can cast Brainstorm with a fetch land in play, put back on top of your library your two least desirable cards, then crack the fetch land and shuffle those two cards away. Brainstorm can also act as protection from disruption such as Duress effects. By casting Brainstorm with the discard effect on the stack, you can hide your two best cards on the top of the library to keep them from being discarded. In a format that lacks the sheer power of Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm is welcomed as the best draw spell available.
As you could probably guess (or already knew because you peeked!), there is little question which card is the “Top Dog” in Classic. Force of Will is the card that holds the format together. Without Force of Will, Classic would likely be the Wild, Wild, West with a race to see who can do the most broken thing first. Losing the coin flip is much more palatable when you are playing Force of Will, as it gives you a chance to interact with your opponent if they try to do something over the top on Turn 1. Because of this, just about every deck that plays with blue cards wants to run four Force of Will. If that isn’t the definition of power, I don’t know what is!
For some added fun, I’ve taken the time to expand my Top 10, to a College Poll style, Top 25. I won’t break down the merits of each card, but I believe it’ll be fun to dissect my list in the comments!
1. Force of Will
2. Brainstorm
3. Bazaar of Baghdad
4. Mishra’s Workshop
5. Lodestone Golem
6. Oath of Druids
7. Tinker
8. Wasteland
9. Qasali Pridemage
10. Time Vault
11. Jace, the Mind Sculptor
12. Yawgmoth’s Will
13. Dark Confidant
14. Underground Sea and the original dual land cycle
15. Polluted Delta and the fetch land cycle
16. Mental Misstep
17. Strip Mine
18. Sphere of Resistance
19. Sol Ring
20. Mana Crypt
21. Leyline of the Void
22. Mana Drain
23. Demonic Tutor
24. Spell Pierce
25. Gush
Bonus Section!
I’ve been without my main computer for the better part of a month, as my video card went out. This, after having been busy the prior month with a (much needed) ten-day vacation and moving across the country, essentially left me out of playing in tournaments for roughly two months. Luckily, Classic fired an event on Thursday, Nov. 3rd, which I was able to join. I didn’t fare too well in the tournament, going 0-2 before playing Red Deck Wins in Round 3. Even though I didn’t manage to win these matches, the games were competitive (if unfortunate for me), so I wanted to share them with all of you. Please bear with me and my play mistakes, as I was quite rusty!
Here is the decklist that I shuffled up for the event:
Shop Aggro
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One of the most underplayed cards in Classic is Standstill. It’s one of the best draw engines in the format, and I felt it could have some merit as the metagame was moving away from disruptive Fish decks to more Workshop and Snapcaster Mage controlling lists. Having built the deck a day or two before the event and without any testing, it’s probably not the most effective build. In fact, immediately after the tournament, I added two more lands to the deck and will add a third Jace once I acquire it.
DE Round 1
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DE Round 2
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.Anyway, I look forward to everyone’s thoughts in the comments below. Don’t forget to dissect my Top 10 and Top 25 lists, either. See you in 2 weeks!
enderfall
Follow me on Twitter: @enderfall
Member of Clan Magic Eternal
why did you mental misstep his skullclamp when you had 2 null rods?
@fiff0416 – Well, it’s a good question. I didn’t draw the second rod until after i cast the misstep. So my rationale was that if he had some way to get rid of my Rod, via Relic Warder or the like, Skullclamp was better off the table than on it. Too much card advantage from Skullclamp to let it resolve at that point of the game and risk a blowout from having my null rod removed.
An excellent Top 10/25 list. I don’t think these exercises are as seemingly pointless as people would suggest. It’s a valuable tool to asses where the metagame is currently.
6 months ago, cards like Lion’s Eye Diamond would have been on the list, and Oath of Druids would probably have been higher.
3 Months ago, Slash Panther may have been on the list.
Next week, Snapcaster Mage might be, etc.
Good read, excellent work
Cool deck, but the games were really hard to watch. I could only watch game 1. There were a lot of ‘questionable’ plays I think:
- Why did you constantly play Standstill when you were behind on board?
- Why did you chump block with Ingor when you could’ve double blocked with Ingor + factory next turn? You were at 10 life and had a Crucible in play. Once you’ve gotten rid of Jotun, you could have pretty easily taken over the game with a recuring factory.
- Why did you several times wait till after the opponent had gotten a card off of Bob to bolt him? You knew you were going to, so why give him the extra card?
- Yeah and then there were the Skullclamp, you snap misstepped it without even thinking. You had a Null Rod in play plus an Ingor in hand. There was plenty of more scary MM targets in his deck I think, like Imperial Seal and Demonic Consultation (and probably others that we didn’t see).
I agree with the other posters, the videos were hard to watch. I also had to stop after round 1. Using your fetch to play out a Null Rod instead of Brainstorming, fetching, and then playing Null Rod the next turn seems especially bad when you just talked up how great Brainstorm combos with fetches in the article.
I think there can be a value to videos with play mistakes. The audience can watch and think about the game from the outside without the pressure of actually playing. That perspective allows the watcher to see other plays and apply that to their games in the future
However, the video I watched was beyond just a few errors, it was fundamentally playing the deck wrong. Standstill is a control deck and you weren’t being controlling enough with it. The above post points out some of the specifics.
That’s not to say you should 4-0 in every video you post; mistakes are valuable. But as a writer speaking from a position of authority about the format, mistakes in your videos should be explained either in the video or in text so we know you are aware of them.
Thanks everyone for your comments. The focus of the article was intended to be a discussion of the Top 10/25 cards in Classic; the videos were added as a bonus for those that have been waiting patiently for me to post new videos. I clearly stated that I was not mistake free. I like the idea of pointing out any mistakes next time to help show what the better play should be. I was admittedly not playing a deck that I was able to test all that much and thought it was a metagame call. Unfortunately, my deck was ill prepared to beat a Fish deck based around Aether Vial. I did not have enough removal and coming back from being behind in board position was equally difficult. Nonetheless, I appreciate the feedback and will aim to improve my content in the future.
i agree with your list almost 100% i do feel like brainstorm should be 4th though behind work shop and bazaar, i also feel like sol ring shold be on the list and not time vault. havent watched the vids yet.
I think AJ and I are going to start playing Classic. See y’all soon!
I sooo want to play Classic. I just need to start winning stuff so I can buy FoWs and Wastelands….
Do I NEED them? Probably not, but the decks I want to play have 4 of both. c’est la vie…
Anyway, your justification for not putting tutors on the list was that the cards that you tutor for are better. How is Tinker not a tutor?
Nice write up, and I watched the videos and just enjoyed the bonus.
Hi apaulogy, hope you can arrange to get the cards you need to play some matches. Quite a few people have picked up Classic of late, the more the merrier!
Tinker is an interesting case with regards to tutors. Since it puts the card it fetches into play, it’s much more functional than a straight tutor like Demonic or the top-deck tutors like Mystical and Vampiric.
Chris, we could always use more Classic players! You and AJ can always test against me whenever you see me in the client.
You are right. Tinker is unique in that it puts the target artifact into play as opposed to your hand…Good point. Thanks sir.