A large chunk – the meatiest chunk, in fact – of this article was written about three or four weeks ago, after Champs and well before Worlds, the first week I missed my Friday. I am adding stuff and re-working certain angles but leaving my Top 10 as-WAS for the thrust of it, which I think will be an interesting compliment to Josh Ravitz article today (I haven’t read it but I assume Josh is going to write about his Worlds Standard deck). I will probably follow up soon with one or more companion pieces about post-Worlds Standard after I catch up with more MTGO, but for now, here goes:
I have had some controversial opinions on "the best card in Standard" over the past couple of months and years. Sometimes people rolled their eyes, other times they jumped on board. This time I’m going to borrow a few lines from Jeek.net before stating my opinions on the matter.
First up, the 10 most popular cards in Champs Top 8 decks (by pure population):
Wrath of God
Island
Remand
Plains
Condemn
Forest
Compulsive Research
Flagstones of Trokair
Swamp
Godless Shrine
Wow.
WOW.
Wrath of God beat out any basic land for most popular card with 627 main deck and 36 sideboard slots. You go, God!
Frank Karsten recently said that Wrath is hands down the best card in Standard "and it’s not close," and on the weight of this single statistic, I think that I’m going to have to agree.
However, as far as those next nine cards, we learn essentially nothing. Island is more popular than Plains. Island is more popular than Forest. Godless Shrine is apparently the "best" Shock dual. Anyone see anything wrong with rating the best cards in the format on pure popularity? I mean it’s pretty obvious that Godless Shrine was showing up in Solar X decks not in Orzhov beatdown or mid-range decks… The cut-off at ten kind of masks the fact that Hallowed Fountain is humping Godless Shrine’s leg at number eleven… The distinction between the two of them just isn’t there.
So what if we cut out all the lands? What do the Top 10 most popular cards from Champs Top 8 decks look like then?
Wrath of God
Remand
Condemn
Compulsive Research
Call of the Herd
Circle of Protection: Red
Faith’s Fetters
Llanowar Elves
Lightning Helix
Court Hussar
I kind of don’t like this list for one reason. No, it’s not the fact that Circle of Protection: Red (heavily overplayed) was more popular than Lightning Helix, Char, and Cryoclasm (breakers). It’s that as part of my rule of "taking out lands" I necessarily had to take out Flagstones of Trokair.
Ultimately these lists don’t give us more than a wee bit of information (outside crazy statistics like the raw popularity and power of Wrath of God), with very little commensurate meaning. Like Remand doesn’t really do anything in a lot of decks… Solar Pox cut it from the Solar Flare model and lost nothing. The first thing Pierre Canali did at Grand Prix: New Jersey was to idle up to your old pal michaelj and say, "Congratulations! You must be a very good player, because you played a very bad deck!" His justification? No Remand.
I mean you don’t have to convince YT about how good Remand is in some decks. I was basically the first person to play it large scale at Champs last year (believe it or not Yaso Control of the same era, and even the Carvalho version in the Top 8 of Worlds last year had not one copy)… It’s just Remand doesn’t do anything in so many decks. Either you overload on permission (like Jushi Blue) or you seize tempo and flip the game over with a devastating turn or series of turns (URzaTron, Erayo, Heartbeat). It’s just not a universal automatic in the abstract.
Circle of Protection: Red is just overplayed. It’s horrible so often. Anyone who doesn’t have an answer to it deserves to lose. A good amount of the time, you don’t even need a real answer because your Demonfires go right through it, or you can win some oddly angled way, like Compulsive Research to the face. In his analysis of Solar Pox, the Fanatic removed Circle of Protection: Red from the Ken Adams list as I did. The card is just worse than aggressively reactive cards like Faith’s Fetters and only marginally less horrendous than Shadow of Doubt or Trickbind against Dragonstorm (a well placed Gigadrowse stops all three). I used to think it was all about the Arbiter there, but with the Dragonstorm decks stealing the beautiful Calciform Pools (which were never intended to allow an evil combo deck to overwhelm Grand Arbiter disruption, but to force down a powerful Gigadrowse in good, um, beatdown deck Pickles), Arbiter is much weaker than before.
So anyway, without further preamble, here is my Top 10 list for the best cards in Standard (post-Champs, pre-Worlds Standard, again). This list is irrefutable, empirical, statistically valid, and stamped all over with the Mike Flores Seal of Approval. Do not argue about it in the forums if you disagree. You are just wrong.
Wrath of God
Demonfire
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Lightning Helix
Remand
Flagstones of Trokair
Compulsive Research
Smallpox
Condemn
Llanowar Elves
I did a ton of testing pre-Champs and would even hazard a guess that I did more testing than any other human for the event. Because of this, Zvi was very critical about my decision to switch decks at the last minute, erring toward a completely untested version of a deck that wasn’t that good in testing, this time with no Remand. The answer was that all the other decks in the format seemed "blunt." They had no edge. Rakdos would eat all the 1/1s in Ghazi-Glare or U/G Aggro, but be overpowered by Zoo. U/G Aggro was the single best deck against the Solar Flare or true control decks, but had no game against a resolved Glare of Subdual. By Contrast, This Girl – the Brian Kowal-designed deck I eventually played and used to win New York States – didn’t fit into the metagame puzzle cleanly. Its Lightning Angels and Lightning Helixes made it robust against beatdown. It’s card drawing, Signets, somewhat reliable early game rush, and ultimately four pack of Demonfires made This Girl a heavy favorite against control. The deck was not great against Dragonstorm, but I at least had the chance to develop a powerful sideboard.
I had a lot of difficulty articulating why the U/R/W decks, as a class (This Girl certainly, but also Solar Fire, Flag Burner, even boring Firemane Control) seemed so much better than all the other decks in Standard. I kind of understood it, when looking at the deck lists, that these decks, as a class, did not fit into the puzzle in the same way as U/G Aggro, Rakdos, Zoo, U/W Control, and so forth. Billy was very helpful in helping me to understand: The best cards in Standard are all Blue, Red, or White [stamped]. Of course the U/R/W decks were better!
To wit:
Wrath of God
As above. This card was more popular than any basic. What can I say? It’s the ace against beatdown, it is one of the few reliable sources of an Akroma corpse in Standard, and with Lightning Helix, can even tag team to beat Dragonstorm. The card is just too sick and has been for more than ten years.
Demonfire
Before reading Frank’s quote and seeking the jeek.net statistics, I had Demonfire in first place. Demonfire is sick, but I had to grudgingly give top honors – and deservedly – to Wrath for all the reasons listed ad infinitum so far (and probably others). This was hard for me because I get certain shall we say normative ideas in my head and run with them even when no one else agrees, viz. "Skred is the best card in Standard." To me the difference between these cards is colossal on the play skill side. Wrath of God is a cross between a slot in a tackle-box and a Get Out of Jail Free card. I don’t know if learning to play greedier is learning to play better, but Wrath sure inspires greedy play from me, at least. It’s a backbreaker for sure, and (again) the best… But Wrath doesn’t do for your game play what Demonfire does.
I spent a lot of time over the summer after Pro Tour: Charleston just tuning Demonfire decks, learning to win with Demonfire in creature-poor Rakdos or eventually using it as the primary kill in the original KarstenBot BabyKiller. Sometimes you’ll read on forums on this site and elsewhere players suggesting that you cut one or all the Demonfires. These players clearly don’t understand that this game is played in one of three broad areas, and that Demonfire is the most reliable and most powerful trump in the third one [in Standard]. I actually find it comical that so many players ran Circle of Protection: Red when it does nothing – literally nothing – in the long game against Demonfire.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
I declared this card the #3 card in Standard to Billy and BDM with the intention of starting a fight. Surprisingly, they both just nodded that she was awesome. Then Patrick [Chapin] is in my ear saying that Akroma is the best White creature of all time. I was trying to be controversial! Apparently there was no controversy. Akroma is just that good.
The initial justification for this slotting was that there are two main end games in Standard, Demonfire and Akroma, and that if you are going to slot Demonfire at #2, you should probably recognize Akroma. Now the interesting thing is that Demonfire is the best non-Wrath card because it is both versatile and inexorable. Akroma is not nearly so inexorable, but she is awfully versatile. Akroma can not only bend the game to Extended-like speed, but she has reinvented the entire metagame. In some ways, the lack of Akromas in the top decks at Worlds is a testament to how radically she has shaped the format. When you see beatdown decks packing Temporal Isolations, you can probably thank Nick Eisel column from a few weeks back. Sure, Temporal Isolation’s effectiveness against Bogardan Hellkite is a contributing nod, but it was the big girl that got the Pacifism rolling. I’d guess almost no Temporal Isolations would have been played just to fight Bogardan Hellkite.
This probably goes without saying, but I don’t have Akroma at #3 any more, and as good as she is – and she is good – I don’t know if Akroma ever warranted this high of a spot (I was trying to start a fight to begin with).
Lightning Helix
From the standpoint of my post-Champs / pre-Worlds self, This Girl and its sisters were obviously at the forefront of my opinion when I thought of this card. Billy was pushing very hard for it as well, which is why I had / have it so high on the short list. Lightning Helix is the tool that This Girl, Solar Fires, and the various Firemane decks used to keep the heat off when dealing with the best of the beatdown decks, and it is the same tool that put decks like Lucas Glavin’s Zoo into their positions. With the success of Boros Deck Wins at Worlds, I think I have to put this card at #3.
Remand
Oh, poor Remand. Down to number five. Whatever will you do? Pierre and Heezy claimed you to be #1!
Remand is clearly not number one, not with Wrath of God in the format, and not with the success of Boros at Worlds. However I think I could accept moving it up in the post-Worlds line-up given that all the best non-Boros decks ran / run four Remands. Remand also goes up in the standings due to the increased presence of Suspend in viable Standard decks (remember, after Champs, motherloving Glare was top lady).
Flagstones of Trokair
Going into Champs, and soon after, Ravitz had this card at #1 (or "virtual #1," I guess… I’d bet Heezy or Pierre would give Wrath #1 over Remand if interrogated point blank). Flagstones is just too awesome. It’s Wildfire protection and color fixing. It’s broken with Smallpox and Greater Gargadon, and awfully good with Weathered Wayfarer. It ruins the day of some opponents without ever tapping for mana and is better than a Plains – sadly the best of the basics since Regionals 2006 hands down – on its lonesome. It’s awfully hard to list all the reasons this card is so good because you know them already.
Compulsive Research
I started working on all these different card drawing cards when Time Spiral came out. I was working with Chapin’s lists, which had these Ancestral Visions, and reading Ben Bleiweiss columns, and trying out Think Twice, falling in love with Careful Consideration. I thought Think Twice might be better but Heezy knew better: Compulsive Research is still the best.
Champs rolls around and lo and behold, this card won me both my Top 8 match (finding me the Demonfire against Blue) and Top 4 match (dumping a pair of Firemanes early in the pseudo-mirror), not to mention innumerable Swiss fights. The "draw three" element of the veteran sorcery puts it ahead of Think Twice despite the almost guaranteed card advantage of the new card when you are going for Wrath of God (which is number one). All the best ‘Tron decks from Worlds – even with their Mystical Teachings and Think Twices and Whispers – ran four copies.
The synergies with your graveyard are just obvious.
Smallpox
The first time I ran this list, Smallpox was the only non-"good colors" card in the Top 10 (the final version has another at #10). This card gave birth to a new and dominating archetype… Which for some reason seems to be short-lived. Smallpox – being an Edict, Sinkhole, and Specter’s Wail – that sets up your own gas is so good it’s scary (more on Black, below).
Condemn
"What does it mean when your creature removal is good against the control decks people play?"
This is a question Josh asked me right before Worlds. Condemn is the most reliable answer to fast Akroma / Dragon, and in the right spot can’t be countered. It screws up reanimation strategies (but, oddly, helps out combo decks). It’s basically Skred* for non-Snow.
There are a lot of matchups where this card isn’t even worse than Swords to Plowshares.
Llanowar Elves
I was thinking very hard about which Green card to give the nod. I ran through Call of the Herd (the most popular), Glare of Subdual (namesake of the most popular Champs deck), and Loxodon Hierarch (a former number one). But the fact of the matter is that Call of the Herd sucks a truly disturbing amount of the time for a near-Tier 1 (and doesn’t even get played universally); Glare I liked quite a bit and actually had it in the Ten Spot for the second draft of this article. However, I try not to fight numbers, and this little man has been kicking ass since Alpha. Today he forces down the Call in U/G and G/W, taps knuckles with Scryb Ranger to force down the Force, and sets up the pins for Scab-Clan Mauler to knock down. You can make the argument for Birds of Paradise (one of the all time greats) but Llanowar Elves sees more pure play despite being expressly less powerful.
Firemane Angel
This card just missed out. I might be biased in the sense that Lightning Angel is largely overtaking Firemane Angel’s spots in Standard decks, but it seems to me that Firemane Angel is a legitimate Flagship, albeit Tier 2. Billy said there was no way she was Top 10, so I worked my list around. Like I said, I am probably biased (and post-Worlds, there is no way she is Top 10).
Glare of Subdual
Man, is this card good. I don’t know what else to say.
Where Are They Now?
The following cards are all former #1s, or have at least been spoken of as #1s. So… How are none of them in the Top 10?
Loxodon Hierarch
Quite simply, most decks including Loxodon Hierarch suck in Ravnica-Coldsnap-Time Spiral Standard. I have a weird love / hate relationship with Glare. Going into Champs I was set to "hate," certainly on it for after Champs when the other most popular decks started with "Solar… " but post-Worlds I think I am going back to Glare with Boros at the clear #1. I really laid into Luis’s deck even when he won our last pre-Champs mock tournament… Are there any other good Loxodon Hierarch decks?
Dark Confidant
I had this as the best card in Ravnica early, but months and months of playing against Dark Confidant across the formats has taught me one simple word: overrated. Way. There was a brief window when players were finally playing Bobby with Tops correctly and it was legitimately knocking over multiple National Championships, but that time is over. A couple of well-known Internet pundits had Bobby on #1 even after Champs, but this is clearly an absurd position. Here are some cards Confidant was behind in Champs Top 8 popularity: Smallpox (okay), Persecute (obviously), Dread Return (okay, I can see that…), Skeletal Vampire (I wouldn’t have thought that…), and Nightmare Void (what!?!). Nineteen Top 8s… one win. I probably have less respect for Dark Confidant than I should, but this card just isn’t scary to see on the second turn in this Standard (as opposed to, say, Watery Grave or Hallowed Fountain, or definitely Steam Vents, the scariest card of all) and it certainly doesn’t have the numbers either on the popularity side or on the performance statistics to warrant Top 10, let alone a #1 nomination.
Wildfire
I think this card is awesome. Though it loses a fair amount of equity due to Flagstones of Trokair being in the format, Wildfire actually still beats a lot of the best decks in Standard (including many that pack quad Flagstones). The problem is that no one plays Wildfire (that didn’t stop it from beating Dark Confidant by three copies in popularity, and logging four first place finishes). If this card got more play, it would clearly move up. The definition of a breaker.
Spell Snare
When Spell Snare was the best card, it frequently bullseyed Umezawa’s Jitte but was fine against Signets in control-on-control; most importantly it stopped Eye of Nowhere on the draw. Current Standard has not that many counter wars and no Jittes. Few Wildfires means no copies of Eye of Nowhere. Spell Snare is a kryptonite bullet in a world with no Superman.
Skred*
I think Top dragged poor Skred down… With less incentive to Snow, there is less incentive to the best Snow-stamped card.
Post Worlds, here is my first pass at a Top 10 list:
Wrath of God
Demonfire
Lightning Helix
Remand
Compulsive Research
UrzaTron Package
Char
Flagstones of Trokair
Llanowar Elves
Martyr of Sands
Additions:
UrzaTron Package
Well, let’s put it this way, Triskelavus and Martyr of Sands ain’t broken cards.
Char
Boros is the winningest deck. We have a whole class of decks (Boros, Gruul, Zoo) that we call "Char weenie" … We might as well have Char in the inner circle of influence.
Martyr of Sands
I wasn’t sure which card to put on the list out of the Martyr package. I think Proclamation of Rebirth may be the true power card (you can lace it with Weathered Wayfarer to lock up the game against a Blue deck without ever exposing one spell to permission), but the fact that Martyr randomly shows up in B/W beatdown decks draws the nod.
I am thinking about a lot of things surrounding the recent unfolding of events. Like clearly Steam Vents is the scariest dual to play against on turn 1. The opponent might be a powerhouse ‘Tron deck, might manascrew any non-Zoo deck with Boomerang on the second turn into Stone Rain and Wildfire, and frankly marries the two most powerful colors in the history of Magic: The Gathering. The World Champion rode Steam Vents into Dragonstorm… but Dragonstorm clearly isn’t the broken element of the deck. Is it Bogardan Hellkite? More and more I am leaning towards that Dragon as being potentially better than Akroma as a reanimation target (though Akroma certainly retains her incentives, not the least of which is an opposing Circle of Protection: Red). Sleight of Hand… Could that be a Top 10 card? Sleight of Hand was a key member of the first tier (or at least close to it) in ‘Vore and Bracht Ninjas… and arguably the scariest "fair" deck of all time, Miracle Grow. Is it any wonder that Sleight of Hand just won Worlds? This card might be the Robert Horry or Steve Kerr of tournament Magic.
What about Sacred Mesa? More and more I am seeing the singleton Sacred Mesa as legitimately relevant in mid-range control (certainly mid-range versus mid-range). This card may even graduate to legitimate finisher of the Demonfire and Akroma order (may even eclipse Akroma) if the moons align.
Standard seems like it will be a tough nut to crack for JSS and City Championships!
See you (hopefully) next week.
LOVE
MIKE
* Remember when Skred was the best card in Standard?