Welcome to the last part of my look at Fifth Dawn across the various Constructed formats. On Tuesday we looked at Type One. On Wednesday, we moved forward towards Extended, and yesterday was a peek at Fifth Dawn in a post-Skullclamp Standard. This leaves only one format of note left to explore (sorry guys, not touching 1.5 or 5 Color) – Mirrodin Block Constructed.
Before I get started, there’s one important issue to address: Skullclamp. Assume for all the reviews below that Skullclamp is banned on June 1st, 2004 for Standard play. If this is not the case, then discard all opinions below and put Krark-Clan Ironworks, Engineered Explosives, and Steelshaper’s Gift as the playable cards in the set. Heh.
Metalworker/Trix
If any deck was the big winner in the Fifth Dawn sweepstakes, it was this deck. There are so many cards in Fifth Dawn that have the potential to push this deck over the top that it would be hard to see how this deck couldn’t dominate, were there an Extended season right now. Likely candidates include Staff of Domination, Pentad Prism, Clock of Omens, Krark-Clan Ironworks, Trinket Mage, Artificer’s Intuition, and Roar of Reclamation.
Type One – vast wasteland of Magic cards, where over ten years worth of clutter dot the landscape in pockets of Haves and Have Nots. For every Ancestral Recall, there are three Carnival of Souls. Wait, Carnival of Souls is being played in competitive Type One decks now. I meant for every Ancestral Recall, there are three Food Chains. Wait…. Screw it – for every good card in Type One, there’s an equally good card out there just waiting to be broken in the right deck. With the complex interactions between so many different cards there, you’d think there’d be many more viable decks out there than what the current crop of Type One players have come up with so far.
Welcome back from the Fifth Dawn pre-release! The set looks really fun for sealed play, and compliments the rest of the block perfectly for draft. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
On Sunday, May 16th, the Star City Game Center will be hosting Ben’s Deck Challenge. What are the thirty-two decks and their prizes? Read inside to find out!
You’re going to hear a complaint aired here today that probably has never been aired before in Magic’s history. The upcoming discussion I’m foisting on you today is partly about the power level of a card. It’s partly about the mana cost of a card. It’s partly about the mechanic of a card. But mostly, it’s about You, the consumer.
What card am I talking about? Well, hold on just one second…
On Sunday, May 16th, the Star City Game Center will be hosting Ben’s Deck Challenge in-store. What is Ben’s deck challenge? Read inside to find out!
This is it, the final installment of Ben’s masterful look at the lowest of the lowlights in the game of Magic. You know you’ve been waiting for it all week, and now it’s here. Ben finally gives you an answer to the question:
What is the worst Magic card of all time?
First of all, why does this list even exist? Part of me wanted to have a definitive list of bad cards, one that didn’t include mistakes such as Phyrexian Dreadnought or Lion’s Eye Diamond. It took me a long time to do research for this article, and a long time to write all the pieces. While there are a couple of cards which have slipped through the cracks (Divining Witch/Deathlace), for the most part I feel like I’ve done a good job of covering all the bases.
And yet, there are arguments that certain cards are/are not the worst cards of all time…
You’ll notice that virtually every creature on this list would be considered a weenie. That’s because even overcosted fatties can swing a game if they hit play. Kasimir the Lone Wolf originally was the 100th card on my countdown, until I realized that I myself had used him in casual Legend decks, just because I could. Even though he’s a 5/3 for a whopping six mana, that doesn’t make him horrible – just very expensive and bad for the mana cost. To truly be bad, a creature had to fit two major criteria…
Welcome back to the second part of my Top 100 Worst Magic Cards of All Time countdown! I’m glad you’ve decided to rejoin me for the next in our hit parade of the inept, as we examine the whats, whys, and hows of bad Magic cards. Today’s breakdown features platinum hits like Saproling Infestation and Goblin Game. Where will they rank in terms of Magic booby prizes? The answer is only a click away.
There are over 6000 unique cards in Magic. Only one hundred cards made this list (0.6%). Considering that virtually no two cards are created equal, that’s quite a testament to both R&D’s ability to design useful cards, and the flexibility players have shown in finding strange uses for seemingly underpowered spells. Previous”worst of” lists on the net have named cards such as Phyrexian Dreadnought or Lion’s Eye Diamond as”worst cards of all time,” which is a farce, given that both of these cards appear in tier one Type One decks. You won’t be seeing any rubbish like that in my list.
So how would I define a card which would belong to the Magic Hall of Shame?
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve cast an eye towards the state of White in Magic. One might think from these articles that I’m wholly unhappy with how the game has been developed. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As far as I’m concerned, Magic is healthier than it’s ever been before, and the person who deserves the most credit for surge of vitality the game experienced from Invasion forward is none other than Randy Buehler.
White’s most often reiterated themes have been lifegain, enchantment kill, protection-from, and sucking. If a card says”Counter target spell”, you could be pretty sure it’s Blue. If it says”pay X life to do something”, it’s probably Black. Is it a creature which produces mana? Most likely it’s a Green elf-type card. Does it blow things up good? Red. What themes are White? White has the lowest incidence of”look at this card and figure out what color it’s from” of any color in Magic. I take that back – chances are if the cards are bad en masse, they are easily White cards.
Thankfully, I’ve got some ideas on how to fix things…
