In honor of mmyoung, who has been writing lists all week, here is my list of the Top 20 underplayed cards in Standard:
20. Bottled Cloister
19. Temporal Adept
18. Silklash Spider
17. Fellwar Stone
16. Ryusei, the Falling Star
15. Genju of the Fields
14. Execute
13. Slay
12. Sleight of Hand
11. Time Stop
10. Thoughts of Ruin
9. Life from the Loam
8. Battle of Wits
7. Shadow of Doubt
6. Sensei’s Divining Top
5. Kodama of the North Tree
4. Godo, Bandit Warlord
3. Tendo Ice Bridge
2. Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1. Umezawa’s Jitte
To wit:
Bottled Cloister
BDM tells me that this card will be “all over Wisconsin,” so its position on the underplayed list may be temporary. I don’t think every deck should play four copies of this card or anything, but I do think that it is underplayed in the archetypes where it works. Gadiel was a trailblazer, reporting on playing this in his Boros Deck beatdown from Worlds (Attacking is the Nut Low et al), and that isn’t even (necessarily) its best home. This card is more-or-less better than Grafted Skullcap in every conceivable way.
Conclusion: No lesson; I guess we’ll wait and see.
Temporal Adept
Where’s the love? I’m not building with the Adept, either, but it just seems, I dunno, odd, that a card that was so dominant eighteen months ago would be completely unplayed now… especially given the controllish sorts of decks that are being played (by population). I guess the Blue decks have Lightning Helix now; even though…
Conclusion: Utility creatures are best in formats without creature control. The strength of Napster came in large part because other decks couldn’t, say, kill a Ramosian Sergeant; similarly, the deck itself developed around the idea of a Black deck being able to remove an opponent’s Phyrexian Negator. In the same way, today’s removal-heavy format, where even (ostensibly) G/W decks pack Mortify and Putrefy, is hostile towards Temporal Adept whereas when it was hot tech, Affinity decks no longer played Electrostatic Bolts and poor Tooth and Nail decks had basically nothing on turn 3.
Silklash Spider
It’s well known that I think that Meloku and Keiga are the bee’s knees, i.e. “the best threats,” and this card – beloved of Jon Becker – seems like a fine response to a monolith tap out. No Illusion should ever pass the ‘lash, and no Dragon will be safe. Remember, kids: You don’t actually have to slay the Dragon to keep it under control.
Conclusion: As with the Ice Age and Apocalypse dual lands, I’m pretty sure that when this card is missing, it’s mostly because somebody forgot it was available.
Fellwar Stone
This card is probably “long-run worse” in most decks that play Signets than the appropriately-colored Signets, but even in those decks there are curve points where it is probably better. For example: on turn 2, Fellwar Stone can tap for a mana, which might be relevant to, say, a Sensei’s Divining Top activation.
Conclusion: Players under-appreciate certain elements of design. I’m not certain this card should be played alongside or instead of Signets most of the time, only that overall, it is not played enough in decks like those. The contributions of Fellwar Stone are subtle, but strangely no different than in 1996, when some Big Blue decks figured they could piggyback White mana to activate their [stolen] Kjeldoran Outposts and others, um, didn’t, passing cleanup with unspent Sky Diamonds on their boards.
Ryusei, the Falling Star
Ironic that this card is called the Falling Star, because his rise in Standard is about to go meteoric. Osyp’s performance in Honolulu has propelled Ryusei to heights heretofore reserved for Legends few and far between. Remember when just a small number of top Japanese players ran Godo, Bandit Warlord in their sideboards… then all the travelling Japanese seemed to adopt the tech, until in international Grand Prixes, the talk of the feature match tables was Dutch Gifts sideboarding versus Japanese, until Godo really tipped? Ryusei is going in that direction.
He was a singleton sideboard card in Honolulu, and Osyp and I have already publish lists where we talk about two or three copies, and Josh has said that the side should have featured all four copies, and… Long story short, this guy will be in maindecks this weekend, a position from which only the editor was bad enough to deploy Ryusei before. Will it be “move over Meloku” time in the land of cheese?
Conclusion: If there is a cycle, and three of the five cards seem absolutely busted, and the ugly Green version of the five cards gets played by a designer on the order of Tsuyoshi Fujita – even if he is on the wrong end of the “I hope I play you,” by Antoine Ruel – it might not be a good idea to dismiss the last card in the cycle on account of “It killed a bunch of my own guys in Draft once.”
Keiga and Kokusho were obvious… But did it really take a year and a half to figure out that Ryusei was good against little guys?
Genju of the Fields
“I can’t imagine beating a Genju of the Fields. Just one. Can’t do it.”
That is what a good player (Top 8 GP, Nationals, whatever) will be heard saying every time he passes a Genju of the Fields at another table. Do you know why? Genju of the Fields can’t be beaten. Do you have any idea how many decks fold to Genju of the Fields? Think of all the decks that say “No way I can possibly beat Genju of the Spires,” and pick the other decks. Genju of the Fields is annoying, it’s a clock, and it can gain twice as much life as you probably think it can, thanks to the old double activations trick… a feat that can be performed – but to nowhere near the commensurate level of efficacy – by other Genjus.
I actually had one in my Nine Dreams deck (Three Dreams finds it) as a combination life gain and win condition card… The only problem was that I didn’t have so many Plains in my deck to break the card long game.
Conclusion: “Life gain is for girls.” Congratulations – You just lost to a girl.
Execute
I was pretty sure of my Blue deck’s matchup with Boros Deck at States, but I still wanted something to ensure that I won. So I played four copies of Execute, alongside four copies of Drift of Phantasms and four copies of Threads of Disloyalty. There isn’t much Boros Deck any more… but there are still Watchwolves afoot, not to mention that the most played deck in Standard is B/W, with Goodman writing, posting, and arguing about his Ghost Dad deck at about twice the clip of Zvi publishing about actual Top 8 deck My Fires back in late 2000.
Is Execute bad? Isn’t it basically everything you could possibly want in a sideboard card? How about this:
Ghost Dad: Look at my Tallowisp. I have bent my deck around this mighty creature.
Random Black Deck: Shrug.
Ghost Dad: Fear my powerful synergies! Your strategy is a mystery to me, so let us part the veil of your mysterious tech by binning cards times two…
Random Black Deck: Are you saying that you are playing that – what is that? – Strands of Undeath on your Tallowisp because you want to see what cards I’m playing?
Ghost Dad: Strands is not all… Later I will make other creatures difficult to destroy with Indomitable –
Random Black Deck: Okay. Strands on the stack, Execute. Happy now? I showed you a card.
Conclusion: Honestly, I think they forgot again.
Slay
At least Oli played Slay in his sideboard (two copies). He also played two copies of Seize the Soul. Seize the Soul can’t target White or Black creatures. What colors does that leave? Okay, I guess it’s better than average against Keiga… Most of the time, though, you can save a mana and just smash some Watchwolf or whatever… Probably pick up some life points that way, too.
In all of Honolulu, there were a total of 67 Slays played (all sideboarded). That breaks down to less than one Slay per Aggro B/W deck. Underplayed much? I point this out mostly because from the coverage booth, whenever Oli was behind, Randy and I would ask each other “How is he going to get out of this…” and then he’d rip a Slay, two-for-one some threat that was on the verge of killing him, and that one card was always Ghost Council or Jitte or something that would let him turn the game around.
Conclusion: I’m a huge fan of cards that keep your deck flowing. Velocity is a pet theory of mine. I think that when you move the elements of your deck, you get to see more cards, you get the cards you have to do more work, you have a greater chance of winning, even if there isn’t necessarily card advantage included in the exchange. Slay, and the previous card Execute, seem just superb to me in decks that want to hold tempo. When Slay came out, the problem Green creatures cost one mana, and by the time you had three mana they had already done their damage – putting out Fires of Yavimaya and untargetable Juzam Djinns… The world doesn’t work like that any more.
Sleight of Hand
I’ve only ever played Sleight of Hand once in my life. I won that tournament.
As such, I am as guilty of slighting Sleight of Hand as anyone. As this card costs one mana, it might have been better to play two copies in URzaTron instead of Telling Time, which was only marginally better at searching than Remand (but did not counter a card); however, I never tried it.
Conclusion: Manipulation cards sometimes take forever to find footholds. How many years was it before Accumulated Knowledge became an Extended staple, with or without Intuition? Demonic Consultation was in the same set as Necropotence, but it wasn’t until Chicago 1997 that anyone thought to play four copies of that card… but after it tipped, there were four copies of Demonic Consultation in everything from straight Black beatdown to Slivers. Right now, Sleight of Hand is basically only played in ‘Vore… Is it possible that other Blue decks – which usually do nothing on turn 1, mind you – might want to try it?
Time Stop
Back before people figured out to play Hisoka’s Defiance and Hinder as parts of an overall serious strategy, Time Stop was the counter in Kamigawa Block. And by “the” counter, I mean Ishida and Kenji played a couple of copies.
Time Stop saw some small amount of love in Standard as well. The card is a powerful answer to Boseiju, Who Shelters all, and can have other interactions, like keeping Ghost Council of Orzhova from ever returning from his grey limbo. Expensive, yes, but effective in ways no other counterspell – in Standard, or any format for that matter – can claim to be. What else can counter Transmute or stop all the copies of a Storm or Replicate spell?
Still… No play, no love.
Conclusion: Even when a card does something unique and strange and powerful, its cost is one of, if not the, most important factor. The difference between the expensive Time Stop and a card like Mind’s Desire or Time Spiral, or even the insanely pricey Sway of the Stars, is that it is a reactive spell.
Thoughts of Ruin
Isn’t Armageddon, like, the scariest thing ever? Like, they made that movie about it with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, and… Wasn’t Thoughts of Ruin meant to precipitate the Red beatdown revolution? Maybe the Red beatdown decks are good enough without it?
Conclusion: No clue. People don’t even play Life from the Loam
Life from the Loam
As per the previous entry, no one plays this card.
How is it possible Loam is the most busted card in Extended but can’t buy more than one sideboard slot in Standard? We fielded a dedicated Loam deck at Worlds, and Josh was just one game out of Top 8, but even Stuart Wright went Kird Ape with Guildpact.
Life from the Loam’s missing is pretty legitimate. Its presence, or lack thereof, maindeck has a lot of implications in the current Standard. If you’ve got it, Zur’s Weirding can’t deny your kill conditions long game, assuming, that is, that your kill conditions are lands. You can recoup Miren in Gifts against URzaTron or Ghost Dad. You can, I don’t know, cycle to your key cards with Sensei’s Divining Top or draw essentially three cards per turn.
Conclusion: Players at large are either playing the metagame rather than the good cards or are not playing the “right” Green decks to exploit the mighty Loam. Gifts Ungiven, the best candidate, is a bit dismal right now, and that has got a lot to do with it… But in a world with Annex/Wildfire, ‘Vore, and Ravenous Rats… Isn’t there maybe a place for this spell? It is the most busted card in Extended, after all.
Do you want to know why I largely dismissed B/W aggro as a deck to play (obviously not as a deck to test) for Honolulu? I got hit with Ravenous Rats on turn 2, and got to discard Life from the Loam in testing. It was the sickest ever! Who beats that?
Battle of Wits
Explain to me which decks in Standard beat the goldfish of turn 3 Transmute Dimir House Guard or Clutch of the Undercity for Diabolic Tutor, turn 4 Diabolic Tutor, turn 5 Battle of Wits? Not B/W certainly. Most of the “control” decks can’t control against that open at all. Forget about the lucksack games with one of your 24-odd Signets and Fellwar Stones that go turn 3 Diabolic Tutor, turn 4 Battle of Wits.
Is the combo kill so consistent that you always pull it off on turn 5? Obviously not. But you should have about twice as many answers in your deck as the opponent has problem cards, and the rest of your deck is card drawing!
I played Aaron Forsythe Battle deck in Honolulu and it was a blast. It was basically an “every Kamigawa Legend” deck with a few Battle of Wits and Mana Leaks thrown in. With a deck like this, you can win with Ink-Eyes, Meloku, Kodama of the North Tree, Jushi Apprentice dominance… or that combo if you really want to.
Honestly, if people are still playing Ghost Dad in a few months, I’m short-listing Battle for Regionals. I can’t actually imagine losing that matchup. That statement, specifically, is not meant to be a knock against Ghost Dad, just a statement of thought moving forward… why not play a “one card combo” kill?
Conclusion: You don’t play rogue because rogue is different. You play rogue because different wins. Honestly, how many opponents do you think tested against a 244 card deck?
Shadow of Doubt
I thought this card was brilliant when Ravnica came out, and had it in all my U/G and Mono-U decks… and promptly replaced Shadow of Doubt with Remand after working with Steve Sadin.
That said, there is nothing wrong with this card, and I expect it to pick up soon. Shadow of Doubt is not conditional. It’s not a pure answer. You can cycle it at any time, even if it, like Time Stop, operates much like a Counterspell. Don’t forget it stops Cranial Extraction and Gifts Ungiven… and is one of the few spells that can profitably trump Transmute or a Tallowisp.
Conclusion: No lesson. I don’t think this card is being ostracized or anything… It is just a matter of designers tuning for the complicated decks with the greater card pool in mind; I think we’ll get there, and soon.
Sensei’s Divining Top
Gifts didn’t do well at Honolulu. Check out the superstar Gifts players. How many Tops did they play? The answer is (mostly) three. I got bagged on for criticizing Top some last year, but at least I eventually came around and played four copies in every deck… even though I didn’t like it.
By contrast, upstart Sakura-Tribe Elder deck Heartbeat of Spring made Top 8 on the strength of all the Elders, all the Reaches, and all the Tops. It was whispered that Bracht didn’t ever lose when he played first turn Top. Exaggeration? Maybe… But legends always have some root in reality. I found with Kuroda-style Red that playing a game with Top versus without Top was like playing two different decks; both could win, but one was always calmly in control, and the other was struggling to stay alive. I wouldn’t have considered cutting a copy, even if a redundant one isn’t particularly broken.
Conclusion: Didja miss it? I learned my lesson, “eventually came around and played four copies in every deck even though I didn’t like it.” For this card, “three copies” = “underplayed.”
Kodama of the North Tree
Where was he?
Half the emails on our group before Honolulu were ideas on how to keep from getting killed by Kodama of the North Tree. The appearance of Ryusei was almost entirely in deference to this creature. North Tree’s disappearance is doubly weird given that Jitte – one of the few cards typically played alongside North Tree that didn’t synergize well with it – is now underplayed.
Conclusion: The Green decks have moved more towards fast, individually useful creatures (Kird Ape) rather than ramp and synergy. As such, the games are maybe too fast for five drops. Note that many Green decks are willing to pay for puzzling fours, but not a five. They have few accelerators and really low land counts. It’s unclear if this trend will continue; on balance, Tsuyoshi Fujita’s crew ran Golgari Grave-Troll in the board, which is also a five…
Godo, Bandit Warlord
For that matter, where was this guy?
One of our first email exchanges pre-Honolulu was how other people misbuilt their URzaTron decks. Cuneo said he didn’t understand their setups, and that there wasn’t much incentive to bending your lands to the ‘Tron if you weren’t going to play with Godo. I agreed with Andrew initially, and replaced the Blazes in the stock ‘Tron with this guy, reaping reasonable success.
The problem was that even two copies of Godo take up at least four slots (Jitte and Dragon Fang). I only had two Remands in the deck, but the Remands were the best cards, especially against Gifts Ungiven. I scoured the list over and over and couldn’t find anything other than Godo to cut in order to get the Remand count to four. All that said, I always regretted not having Godo – primarily because I respect Andrew and will listen to whatever he says, even if I don’t ultimately end up agreeing – but we didn’t even have room in the ‘board (though those two Repeals always seemed loose to me).
Conclusion: Godo was strongest when two board control decks were going at it; they would both have accelerators and a control midgame, but this card could single-handedly create an insurmountable tempo advantage and win the game very quickly (simultaneously defending against the then-format’s best threat). Today, that aforementioned threat is greatly underplayed, and the kinds of decks that Godo was geared to beat are no longer at the top tables. Look for him to return come the Championship season, maybe due to a metagame shift, maybe out of left field.
Tendo Ice Bridge
I just wrote how this card is being forced out by the Guildpact duals, but Tendo Ice Bridge was never played to its equilibrium point. This is one of the most consistent lands ever produced by R&D… That it wasn’t played as a four-of in most two-color decks – and certainly the more colorful ones – is just a sign of bad deck design (BDM says I only think this because all my decks play four Meloku the Clouded Mirror).
Conclusion: The reason I always liked the Ice Bridge is that I like to be able to play my cards. I hate the inability to play my cards. I try to avoid being “manascrewed” by playing lots of card drawing and not playing extravagant costs that are inconsistent even when everything is going my way. I like to be able to topdeck a card and have it be useful when I am under pressure. Tendo Ice Bridge is helpful when that is your paradigm… and really, it never stops being at least marginally useful… At this point, don’t look for it to pick up a lot of new adopters.
Meloku the Clouded Mirror
How is this on the list?
A better question is “Why doesn’t everyone play four copies?”
Meloku is arguably the most insane threat in Standard. Half the time when you win, the opponent says something like “that was the only card you could draw.” Well, luckily you drew it then… it’s insane.
And yet… A good friend of mine – and quite a decent designer – is playing 4 Keiga, 2 Ryusei in his ‘Tron deck… No Meloku at all! I mean, it’s cool that he’s gotten on the Ryusei bandwagon, but I don’t understand why he wouldn’t play this mighty card. The answer is “Char.”
Conclusion: People are more scared of Char than they are of playing bad decks. Sadly, I think that many teams will have 1-2 Meloku between three players this weekend. Maybe it’s right for their configurations. To me, it still seems sad.
Umezawa’s Jitte
No. Comment.
Firestarter:
When trying to assemble this list, my friend BDM suggested Megrim and Lore Broker (“Is that the one where you both draw and then both discard?” -me). Discuss in the forum.
Dissenting Voices:
BDM claims that he was just naming cards to help put together my list, that he wasn’t serious about Megrim and Lore Broker, that if I put the above “Firestarter” in the article, he would… Well, he’d rather I didn’t put it. Discuss in the forum.
The Top 5 Overplayed Cards in Standard (in no particular order):
Ghost Council of Orzhova
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Debtors’ Knell
Compulsive Research
Telling Time
Firestarter:
We all know Ghost Council of Orzhova is insane, probably the single best card in most Orzhov medium-to-aggressive decks. If that is the case — and I think most of us will agree – why might it be overplayed? Discuss in the forum.
This week, Jamie came back. He wrote some reviews. Mise well, amiright?
MICAH, by Laurel K. Hamilton
The last several Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels have all been basically animal/monster porn (“Why is that a problem?” -MikeyP). I guess if that’s your thing, find your bliss or whatever, but the early novels were progressively better – and better crafted – adventure stories with only mildly erotic or romantic elements. Back in the dizzle, Anita was all about killing vampires (hence the whole “Vampire Hunter” bit), avoiding Lycanthropy, and solving supernatural murder cases; as such, I find the change to be a betrayal of the character and series core values, kind of like I would think it a bit odd for Orson Scott Card to spout religious rhetoric in a book called, let’s say, Ender’s Saved!
The past three or four have gotten so mired in the “sex with monsters” part, though, that the police work almost disappears. I think in the last book she never got around to solving the case and the book just ended. I wrote in my fake polysyllabic spree blog entry that even if I were going to continue reading the decaying Anita Blake novels, I wouldn’t buy the next one in hardcover; I can only assume that Laurel K. Hamilton reads my blog, because she released Micah in paperback.
Thankfully, Micah is short. Thankfully because it therefore has very little space devoted to sex with monsters, at least in comparison to other recent books, particularly Cerulean Sins, which was about 75% sex with monsters, 12.5% local politics, 12.5% justifications why a woman who routinely has sex with, say, five or six different vampires, wereleopards, and werewolves is not just not a slut, but a highly competent and professional Federal Marshall who should not be whispered about by other police, um, people. While Micah was not as good as, say, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, nor was it bad enough that I won’t buy the next Anita Blake adventure.
Interesting notes on MICAH:
1) My wife says that the cover looks like Fabio and that she won’t have the book in the house. She says she is going to throw it away, but I said I would give it to Becker instead.
2) It is, I think, the only Anita Blake book that doesn’t take a location as its name (could be mis-remembering this one). Certainly it is the only one with a principal as its title. No “Richard the Wolf-King” or “Jean-Claude, Master of the City” books… yet.
Live From Central Park, by Sheryl Crow
This album is about seven years old, but it’s basically insane. Sheryl Crow is one of the most consistent chick rockers – she always wins a Grammy – and Live From Central Park may be her best effort in a career that has spanned dozens of chart toppers and teenage fantasies.
Lucky track #13, “There Goes the Neighborhood” was originally released on The Globe Sessions, but after the live performance, it snagged Best Female Something-or-other at the 1999 Grammy Awards… and it’s not even the best track. Live From Central Park features then-Lilith Fair frontwoman and superstar Sarah McLachlan, music legends Chrissie Hynde and Stevie Nicks, and former Crow boyfriend Eric Clapton. GWB haters can enjoy a guest spot by the Dixie Chicks.
I have nothing negative to say about this album. I’ve had it since it came out, but have been rocking in my cubicle all week, thanks my iPod. There are very few objects to which I would attribute having a higher quality of life, but my iPod definitely gets that nod.
Deckade, by Michael J. Flores
Some of the introductions in this book are embarrassingly good. Better than the stuff I wrote, even. How often do I say things like that? Signed copies are still available at Top8Magic!
LOVE
MIKE