Top 10 cards that make Magic a better game

Magic is a great game, it is varied, involved and most important of all, really good fun. Technically there are better games which have less luck or greater subtlety despite more simple mechanics however I find these all tend to be a lot less enjoyable. These technically excellent games feel dry and all too often end up being very linear. Randomness is not a bad thing in a game and will add new dimensions as well as an element of fun however too much will make playing it pointless and frustrating. Magic does not have too much luck however it does have a lot for both a professionally competitive game and for a top end strategy game. Those games which manage to have very little randomness or at least no imbalanced random effects while maintaining both good variation and good enjoyability are the "best" types of game. Magic does have enough randomness that it could be a better game.




The biggest flaw in Magic is the number of games that are decided by a mana screw or a flood. Best of three matches and good deck design both help reduce the imbalance that random distribution of lands can bring to the game but it is still a frustrating part of it. I have tried playing with separate decks for lands and spells from which you can chose which you draw from or search with spells, I have tried the WoW trading card method of laying any card down as a proxy land and I have tried designing my own games that try to capture the fun and style of game as Magic that use different methods of gaining resources. None where satisfactory and either ruined the balance of the cards or just made the games really dull. Eventually I came to realise that Magic is fine how it is and needs no fundamental changing of the rules or a redesigning altogether to make it a better game. It is the cards themselves that hold the key, there are types of design and certain mechanisms that go a long way to minimising both mana floods and mana screws. By including as many of these cards in my cube as possible I would find that the games that were being played were improving. This is not just about making a fun cube or even about just making good decks that won't screw you very often. This goes right to the design of cards and the balancing of the values given to certain effects within the game. If we could exert a pressure on the Magic design teams to focus a little more on cards that make Magic a better game and reduce the value ascribed to such effects that aid that end then the whole Magic experience could be seamlessly enhanced for both casual and professional play.

Card quality and draw is something that the Magic designers place a high value on. Cards like Ponder and Preordain are getting themselves banned in the newish modern format and seeing less print than before. While I agree that Divining Top needs banning in modern, if not just for power alone then certainly for the extra time it adds to games, however the one off card quality effects do not have these problems. Card quality, card utility and card draw are the best ways in magic of reducing luck based outcomes. Power of cards in Magic is a relative thing and the way the metagame evolves effectively self balances the varied power in the pools. You can say a card is too powerful for a format but it is equally true to say that all the other cards are underpowered. It would certainly change the game a little to reduce the relative value of luck reducing effects in magic but it wouldn't necessarily unbalance the game or the various metagames. There is also always a way in Magic design to compensate for one set of changes, for example if the ability to colour fix becomes too easy in a format then the meta will shift towards multicolour decks cramming in all the most powerful cards it can find. This often leads to a one dimensional format of quirky mirror matches and polarises things to the point of playing really silly cards like Omniscience and Decree of Silence (it is not always an abundance of fixing that causes these issues but it is one way it can happen). You could solve this by making the fixing less powerful or less plentiful or alternatively you could simply increase the colour demand on spells so that instead of a 2B card you have a 1BB card instead. Colour screw can still be bad luck deciding games however it is a core aspect of the game and needs to remain one of the defining aspects of deck building. It should be the aim of card design to allow players to be able to curve out very reliably but not to have the same consistency in their ability to find all the right colours. I do not think there are many formats where fixing is too good except type one and vintage and most of the limited, type two and block formats generally feel like there is too little colour fixing. I, rather obviously from my biased position, find the fixing in my cube to be about right although the recent influx of gold cards has biased things a little towards the three or more colour decks. Two colour decks cannot fill out on dual lands and must still respect high colour requirement cards however three colour decks can ignore these power mono cards and replace them with an abundance of power gold cards instead while having as good, if not better mana than the two colour decks. Beyond this small personal problem my point is that you have to go quite a long way with colour fixing before it ruins the point of the colour pie. Things that reduce colour screws are not as essential as things that reduce mana screws yet they do still enhance the game to a point and typically are found on the same cards.

I have made a list of the cards that I think do some of the most to enhance the game play in the cube by virtue of reducing luck based wins. It is impossible to really quantify how much a card makes the game better. The more powerful a card is the more it will impact games as it is seeing more play than weaker cards. Some of the cards I have chosen are hardly the most significant cube cards and see a lot less play than the staples. I have chosen these cards purely on their design and how they are effective at doing what I have been describing. I have also included all of the cards that sprang to mind from the cube that fulfil the remit of being a game improving card in an honourable mentions section. Finally I offer a list of the best set mechanics that there are in the same terms for reducing luck based outcomes.

The top 10 cards that make Magic a better game:

10. Kargan Dragonlord

Level up is one of my top five mechanics although it gives no card quality or draw. What it offers is a way efficiently using what mana you do get, whether that be a two land screw or an eight land flood. Level up does nothing to effect the random nature of drawing lands but it greatly dampens the severity of the extremes. Kargan himself is a fine example of a level up dork, he is a perfectly acceptable beater when you first make him and invest no further mana into him. His top level is a savagely powerful game ending threat and his middle level is a very healthy midway point between the others. This makes him useful at all three stages and only game state will dictate which is the best way to use him. His level up cost is only one which allows you to efficiently use all your mana and means that you can still win games with and 8/8 dragon off two lands if really needed. It is the way this card and this mechanic offer utility which compliments the way lands work in Magic that makes it a card that improves the game.



9.   Chrome Mox

This is one of the more unusual cards on the list as it doesn't really do what I was describing in the opening sections of this article. Chrome Mox doesn't give any card draw or quality and it is hardly a utility card given that it basically only does one very specific thing. There are a few ways it improves the game of Magic although they do not really relate to the reduction of random effects. The first is that it offers a huge array of options, you can always tell when someone has a Chrome Mox in their opening hand simply because it is the only plausible reason they could be thinking for so long! Options are what make Magic good and when a simple and fair card offers so many you are onto a winner. The second reason I think it makes Magic better is that it disrupts the expected flow of the game, it mixes it up and allows situations where turn two things are happening on turn one. I mentioned earlier that some of the least luck based games can become stale and dry, cards like Chrome Mox are the antidote to this. One could argue the same merits for Black Lotus however I would content that its over powered nature both reduces the options and vastly increases pure luck based wins. The fact that Chrome Mox has such a painful drawback is what makes it both so fair and so good in terms of this article. There are lots of situations where you draw it and don't want to use it at first, perhaps you have lots of lands or only very low costing cards, the Chrome Mox will sit in your hand but instead of being dead it will be a get out of jail free card. Should you miss a critical land drop you can pitch a card and use the Mox or should you need to colour fix the Mox may be able to help out. It is this insurance style of use that helps reduce random screws deciding games however it probably doesn't outweigh the increase of random wins from when it is being used in its intended capacity, the old turn one Mox, Slith Firewalker on the play used to be so good...


8.   Vampiric Tutor

I am not a huge fan of Vampiric Tutor but only because I don't like having to play it. In terms of design it is a wonderful card, highly fair like Chrome Mox yet far less able to make games dull and over before they really start than the Mox. It is the ultimate in card quality as it can get any card for a mere one mana and it is instant to boot. What makes it good in this capacity is its sub par usage of getting you a humble land, it never feels good but we all know just how bad the alternative is. Tutoring is very highly priced in Magic these days and this is not entirely unreasonable but it does make most of it pretty useless at aiding in a mana screw. The loss of life and card advantage allow Vampiric to reasonably just cost one which in turn allows you to keep even one land hands if they are good enough and you have Vamp to get you out of it. While being able to tutor for any card is a dangerously powerful effect we can still learn from what makes Vamp so good at improving the game. A great new mechanic could be a free way to exile the card in question to replace your next draw with a basic land, like land cycling but without getting to draw the card.



7.   Rakdos Charm

This is the current flavour of the month for the many Charm effects in magic. The way these charm style cards improve magic is nothing to do with reducing floods or screws but to do with their utility and how that allows you to improve your consistency. There are many cards that are not charms that are highly versatile and offer similar kinds of utility to that which allows Rakdos Charm to make Magic better. Some even do have card quality, card draw or direct mana fixing attached to them. Fire / Ice and Cryptic Command are examples of these and both are much better than Charm in terms of power however Command costs to much to be an aid in screws and Fire / Ice is just so off the curve in power that it outright wins more games in a dull way than it does rescue games from the clutches of a screw. The reason I have picked out Rakdos Charm is that it does two niche things while still having some more general applications. In Magic it can often be a case of do you have the right thing for my thing, yes, you win, no you lose. In Magic there are lots of cards and lots of decks and therefore many things you need to be able to handle, the larger the format the more this is the case. Agro decks are particularly vulnerable to this and can often lose to one lame card like a Moat or something. They cannot afford to play too many cards as an answer to them as they will lose consistency, nor can they often rely on card quality, draw or tutors to find the required answers. Often these games come down to whether or not you drew the Naturalize for the Moat in time or not and that is a dull game of Magic. Rakdos Charm is the perfect antidote to this kind of problem (although not the specifically the Moat one...), it can deal with a selection of troublesome things while remaining useful outside of this scope and perfectly maindeckable without fear of having dead cards or losing much consistency. There are far far better ways to kill artifacts available in red than Rakdos Charm however they mostly just kill artifacts and are therefore too risky to be played.



6.   Sea Gate Oracle

The Oracle is a perfect filler card, it is far from overly powerful yet I play it lots because I feel it greatly reduces the element of chance in my games. That little bit of extra draw and filtering greatly helps you enter the mid game. Three is quite a lot just for card quality and won't bail you out of savage mana screws however it is typically played in more long term decks which are far less likely to keep land light hands. In these decks it is missing the fourth land drop that is often fatal however it is rare to be throwing back three land hands and it is in finding that 4th land that Oracle shines. Having card quality and draw on a creature is also really nice as it allows you to increase the consistency of decks which rely on high creature counts such as Opposition decks. A 1/3 is a surprisingly useful body however I should like to see more smaller dorks that offer some card quality or draw for less.



5.   Fauna Shaman

When you want the effect of the Shaman then Survival of the Fittest is far far better however that requires a dedicated deck. When you just feel you are a bit clunky or a bit reliant on a few dorks then Shaman is a great smoother of such troubles. It is not the most aggressive of dorks but it is still fine for getting some beat on with and like Rakdos Charm will not overly pollute the consistency of what you are trying to do. Then on the occasions you do find yourself in need from a screw or a flood, even a slight one, you are able to limit the damage they cause by getting card quality out of the Shaman. You don't even really need to have utility dorks or silver bullets for this to be a very good card to add, simply a good curve of monsters to choose from.


4.   The Bounce Lands

Well, they are two lands, in one card which somewhat helps you not getting too mana screwed. You don't need to filter and dig for lands when you just get another one effectively free and so these are fantastic in those two land hands. They are also somewhat colour fixers although the worst in this regard in the cube - try casting a Cryptic Command for 4 with 2 bounce lands in play for less than 5. They do come with a very reasonable penalty in both tempo and vulnerability however as we are finding with Chrome Mox and Vampiric Tutor, no drawback is as bad as being mana screwed. Also like Chrome Mox they do not let you directly cut a land and count more like one and a half lands (or half a land in the case of Mox) which leads to more tunable decks and more precise builds. I like it when you can use a drawback to your advantage which is highly achievable with bounce lands, you can re-use your Teetering Peaks style lands or cycle off a Tranquil Thicket, you can turn on your Land Tax or abuse Cataclysm. I mentioned the WoW trading card game earlier and how it solves some of Magic's problems but is a bit linear and dry as a result. They also have the same problem in reverse, it is impossible to get mana or colour screwed but getting all the wrong actual cards and failing to curve is nearly as bad. The laying of any card as a land is a neat mechanic and solves screw issues although it is not for Magic. The other thing WoW TCG does to smooth resource issues is to give its quests (the land equivalent) token abilities that allow you to regain some late game value and this really helps in mana flood situations. In relative terms such cards would be very powerful in Magic as they would probably just be strictly better than basic land or barely playable. Coming into play tapped or always dealing you damage is often too much of a drawback to have on many or any of your lands and would not be worth it for a marginal effect. Something like having a 5 mana scry for 2 on a land would rarely be activated and thus rarely worth it over the basic land unless it had no drawback at which point it would see play everywhere with no reason not to. It would however improve the game and reduce the number of occasions drawing too much land decided things. This has little to do with bounce lands other than they have a slightly similar feel. Most of the WoW quests draw you a card for around the equivalent of 4 mana, bounce lands sort of draw you a land for two but you are forced to pay that cost when you make it. Most ability lands in Magic are all about the ability, often the land they are on is the nut low at producing mana if it does at all. Frequently using the lands ability renders the land unable to produce more mana. I would like to see more ability lands who are still primarily lands and really only usefully offer their effects in extreme game situations.


3.   The Cycling Lands

The cycling lands are one of the best anti flood lands I was discussing previously that Magic has. They do come with a stiff drawback over a basic land however they need not even be made when you are flush with lands and so never really hurt you with their coming into play tapped. I tend to play these when I am land heavy and want to safely reduce my land count where as I tend to play the bounce lands when I feel I am light and need to give my land count a boost. The cycling lands not only help you avoid floods by turning lands into card draw and avoid screws by allowing you to play more lands in your deck in the first place but they help you curve out as well. You might only have three or four lands total but feel that tempo is more important and therefore cycle your land on turn one to increase your odds of getting a two drop. As with my earlier request for more lands that are good lands complete with weak late game utility I would like to see more cycling lands that are comparable to basic lands as producers but with far more onerous cycling requirements.



2.   Faithless Looting

Card quality for card disadvantage at just the right cost. Careful Study was good enough to be played in decks where you could abuse the discard, Faithless Looting is good enough that you can play it in most red decks regardless. Being cheap it allows you to dig your way out of a screw with nearly as much gusto as the best blue equivalents. It also scales well into the late game where the flashback cost is less steep and you have acquired some dead cards. It is one of the best cards for both screws and floods and it is in a colour which has very little access to either draw or filter effects. As with many of the cards in this list it does cost you and in this case it is card advantage but we return to the simple point that you could have any number of cards, if they are all land or all spells you are not going to be doing much. It is more the case of whether the card disadvantage is worth the effect when you are not screwed or flooded, which the depth of filtering with a nice range of costs and the synergy of Looting with so many effects ensure is the case. Like the cycling lands it can help you curve out even if you already have a good number of lands.


1.   Chromatic Star

Chromatic Star and its various comparable companions tend to be overlooked as they are never doing broken things. I think they are one of the finest examples of a card that improves magic. It is rare that they are an awful inclusion in any deck, they rarely are the reason you lose a game which cannot be said for a lot of cards such a the humble comes into play tapped lands. Unlike so many of the other cards in this list they replace themselves and frequently get cycled away without being used to help fix your colours at all. This means they are less of a risk to play than almost any other card, the worst they can be is a wasted mana and a delay in your information and even in that situation they are still helping by effectively allowing you a smaller deck. The lack of cards like this was the reason that Tolarian Academy was so hard to abuse in the MTGO cube recently. As they are artifacts there are a lot of cards they have good synergy with. When a card is inconsequential to add to your deck and needs no building around yet improves not only your mana consistency but the actual power of your other cards it is a bit of a no brainer. The fact that it is a single use card also makes it a better card design, it will not slow down games overly and it will provoke more difficult choices. So often do people greedily play the powerful card over the humble Chromatic Shape and never see their error as the heroic work of the Chromatic Shapes is so hard to even notice.

Honourable Mentions

Kor Skyfisher
Preordain
Qasali Pridemage
Phyrexian Rager
Quirion Ranger
Arcane Denial
The Vivid Lands
Beast Within
Figure of Destiny
Brainstorm
Shriekmaw
Think Twice
Lighthouse Chronologist
Student of Warfare
Izzet Charm
Muldrifter
See Beyond

As you look over the top ten list and this selection of cards that didn't quite make it you probably notice some distinct themes. There are the cards that have a wide scope of uses or a wide range of allowable mana investments. There are those that give card quality or draw cards, there are cards that do specific things while being on reasonably costed tempo dorks and there are powerful effects tempered by drawbacks that may be used to good effect in times of need. The various cards that require you to return lands allow you to get three mana out of two lands when you are not making your normal land drops and the drawback becomes an aid while suffering the screw. Neat design gimmicks like this are what Magic wants more of. Dull, low powered cards that replace themselves allow you to pad out your deck thus increasing the consistency of getting your key cards and ensuring you have lands and stuff going on as well. There are also some mechanisms that crop up a few times and below is a list of my top five mechanisms that improve Magic. Being more general and touched on already for the most part I will briefly state why these mechanisms improve the game.





5. Evoke

Evoke is like level up but generally in reverse, it allows you to have a really strong late game card that can be used to lesser effect when in the more important and more random early stages of the game. It is not unlike many of the variable mana cost mechanisms like kicker or level up, all of which are good in the same regard however it has this elegance that the others lack that really gives it aesthetic appeal.



4. Level Up

Discussed at length in the Kargan Dragonlord section the only reason level up is better than kicker or evoke is that typically has a wider range allowing you to get going with just one or two mana and carry on being worthy investments all the way up to around ten mana. As floods and screws are the extreme ranges of Magic the range on level up best comes in to play. A Muldrifter does nothing to help your two mana screw while a Lighthouse Chronologist can win the game. Similarly on turn twelve with 9 mana open and nothing else going on the Chronologist is a pretty serious top deck and although the Muldrifter is great here too it does rather depend on what you get with it as to how much it helps.



3. Flashback 

More of an aid against floods where the high flashback costs are much more worthwhile things to be doing (than the nothing you might well otherwise be getting upto). Turning this around though you are more likely to play cheap low power spells in a deck if they have flashback and may be used for extra value again later. This in turn means you can lower the curve of your deck without gimping the power output and will be more robust in games that you are land light. Flashback gives you more to get on with late game but by proxy will afford you the opportunity to have a stronger early game.


2. Scry

A low impact mechanic that simply helps up the consistency of your draws and has no impact on the gamestate at all. I felt scry was a little wasted, both by being a little overcosted but also for not being on any reasonable agro or cheap creatures. Magma Jet is just too weak at two mana to see cube play and would have been reasonable at one and fair at both one and sorcery speed. If Jet were slightly more powerful then it would be out there getting play and making Magic a better game. Scry is a mechanic that helps with both ends of the random issue in floods and screws. It is well designed as it tends to be a one off thus not clogging up game time. With it not effecting the board and the ability to scry for various amounts make it easy to tag on to things in a balanced manner and not make them too powerful.

1. Cycling

Cycling is simple yet highly effective at improving the game at all stages. Early game and while in danger of a screw the late game cards may be cycled in the hope of getting what you need and late game you can cycle off those cheap low impact spells to try and find big powerful cards. Cycling also allows you to play those more narrow out cards you typically try and cram on a dork or a charm without giving you dead cards or seriously hurting your consistency. Part of the beauty of cycling, like evoke, is the simplicity of the mechanism which would make it an excellent candidate to have as a more fundamental magic mechanism like flying that appears in every Magic set.

UGw Heartbeat

This kind of deck has always been one of my favourites in any given format, cube not withstanding. There are lots of ways to go about comboing off, some take infinite turns, some win with storm, some make infinite mana and so on. It is not really that relevant how you actually win just so long as you can (I have played against too many cube decks where a win is never possible for them yet it takes several hours of my time to realise this). The win conditions are typically just one card with a few specific support cards and perhaps a tenuous back up strategy. I did a UR version that used storm cards to win and so just to be different this particular list is an infinite mana combo with Palinchron that uses Brain Geyser for the win with a backup plan of taking infinite turns should the decking strategy fail. I think the storm builds are the most consistent as there is ever more creature disruption in the cube but it is fun to be different! The bulk of all UG land combo decks look the same and are supported by the same core of cards regardless of the actual combo and this is rather different from the other Ux storm style combo decks as green has such good mechanisms to get more lands in play.

The core cards are those from blue that untap lands and those in green that get you more, in addition to this there are the familiar draw spells of choice from blue and some recursion of choice historically from green. These four effects dominate the deck and give it great consistency in redundancy. It is a highly robust form of combo deck as it will not fall to pieces against counter magic and generally stands up well to disruption. Rule of Law effects are direct hosers and require an answer however these cards are typically never played in my cube even in rotissery so the worst you will have to face would be an Ethersworn Canonist. Another unusual facet of this style of combo deck is that you never want to go off early, you want to delay until the last moment, against agro decks this is the turn before you are in range and against control typically when they invest a big chunk of their mana in a threat although the turn before they kill you with it is also an option. Every turn you delay will increase your odds of going off and being able to win and so judging how long you have to set up is one of the more important aspects of playing these decks.

In powered versions of these decks you can really abuse Fastbond and the way I was using the Wish cycle also really helped make these decks one of the best archetypes in the cube. In unpowered versions it is far harder to go off out of no where and the deck is slower, although not less consistent. Moxes for example give you more of an early game boost but don't actually have any synergy with the mana generation engines in the deck. Exploration is not a sufficient replacement for Fastbond and so you are simply better off using one off cards that don't lose you card advantage such as Nature's Lore. Going off in any of these decks involves abusing untap land effects with either cards that reduce the cost of your spells or cards that increase the output of your lands, with this abundance of mana you can use draw effects to cycle through the deck finding more mana generation and more draw until you have the few bits you need to win the game instead of endlessly doing things of no consequence to your opponent. You can go off with only the cost reducers but it is much harder and ideally you want both a cost reducer and a mana doubler in play when you go for the kill, the latter being more powerful but slower to come down and usually more dangerous.

24 Spells

Brainstorm

Sakura Tribe Elder
Nature's Lore
Regrowth
Sunscape Familiar

Moments Peace
See Beyond
Helm of Awakening
Remand

Frantic Search
Eternal Witness
Heartbeat of Spring
Harrow


Timetwister
Capsize

Gifts Ungiven
Turn About
Fact or Fiction

Temporal Manipulation
Mirari's Wake

Time Spiral
Minds Desire

Palinchron
Brain Geyser

16 Lands

Misty Rainforest
Windswept Heath
Flooded Strand
Savannah

Tundra
Tropical Island
Breeding Pool
Simic Growth Chamber

3 Forests
4 Islands
1 Plains

Other Possibles

Garruk Wildspeaker
Force of Will
Remand
Arcane Denial
Preordain
Think Twice
Brainfreeze
Snapcaster Mage
Explore
Rude Awakening


This list is a fairly robust one with two Heartbeat effects and two ways of reducing the cost of your spells. It also has a main deck Moment's Peace which doesn't aid the combo at all but buys a lot of extra time against most decks. What this list does not have is counter magic but then it doesn't really need it. Abeyance is going to be more useful at doing what you most what from any counter magic and isn't really needed any ways as you tend to be so effective at out drawing and out mana producing control decks. You are weaker against decks with less disruption and a faster clock than combo decks tend to be hence playing Moment's Peace where one might expect counter magic. The Capsize is also not at all helpful in the combo but serves as your one out against things you can't beat which is somewhat of a must have when you can't rely on Wishes. Capsize is usually the best choice for an out in this kind of deck as it becomes quite a serious threat when you reach the point of having loads of mana to throw about.


Time Walk effects are surprisingly good in these kinds of decks, even the pure storm ones oddly. Often you start to go off and get loads more lands in to play and could carry on and likely take the win however will be in an even better position to take the game with another draw and untap step. In this particular build I would be happy playing two Time Walk effects, even both at five mana, if I could reduce the overall mana curve a bit. These decks typically do have quite high curves and can get some very awkward opening hands and so cheap card quality spells are very useful, both Brainstorm and See Beyond are well worth of inclusion, even with Brainstorms lack of synergy with Helm and Familiar. The most cuttable top end card is the Mind's Desire which is very powerful but somewhat cumbersome and random, it is nice to have the option of throwing it out there with four storm and hoping to blag a win when all else looks doomed but compared to Time Spiral it is underwhelming and non-essential, even in the pure storm builds, although obviously it is better there as it helps to generate lots of storm itself.


I have less ramp than you might expect in a deck like this with only Tribe Elder, Harrow and Nature's Lore representing. I cut the Explore from my list at the last minute for the Capsize when I realised how vulnerable the deck was to certain cards. The Explore had to go as I was being greedy on lands and playing 16 instead of the far safer 17. I played the Simic Growth Chamber because it has OK synergy with the untap land effects in the deck and goes some extent to counting as an extra land in the list however it is somewhat of a risky play and should just be two land versus decks with land destruction. Tribe Elder is great because it is a real aid against the tempo decks which are your hardest matchups, the Nature's Lore and Harrow are ideal because they can actually generate quite a lot of mana when you have the right effects in play and therefore really help combing off. Normally Lore costs two and leaves you one extra mana once cast and Harrow is the same but costs three and generates two. Once you have both a cost reducer and a land production doubler you will pay one for Lore and generate two and pay two for Harrow and generate four, all the while increasing your land count. Harrow is doubly good in the pure storm decks as it is instant and those decks are able to combo kill at instant speed when needed. The Time Walk effects also double up as pretty decent Explores when you get to five mana and are not at all wasted when used in this capacity. Playing the basic plains is also a bit dodgy and is only really in there so that Tribe Elder and Harrow can fix for white, usually you will want to be sacrificing it to the Harrow however!


Sunscape Familiar and Helm of Awakening are the two reducers in the deck and come with their own pro's and cons. The Helm is easy to cast however it is symmetrical and thus very scary to tap out and cast on turn two. The Familiar however only effects you and provides a reasonable defence as well in the early game. Now a days it is easier to kill the Familiar and it does also require you to slightly weaken your mana base in order to reliably cast it on turn two. They are not essential to the combo but enhance all your other spells and make setting up for the turn you want to go off easier as well as the turn in question. A healthy balance of land rampers, cost reducers and land production doublers provides the most effective overall mana explosions. Heartbeat is pretty essential in the deck, hence the name of these UG combo styles however Wake is not needed. It is safer to play but not overly as it costs so much more. Generally you have to tap out to lay Wake and hope you survive passing the turn so you can win on your next, with Heartbeat you tend to cast it a turn earlier then use the extra mana left after to cast something like a Harrow or a Frantic Search so you can go off that turn. As such I have played many a deck with only Heartbeat in this slot and relied on tutor effects and more card quality to find it.


Gifts Ungiven and the recursion allow you to tutor for the specific things you need to go off with or win with however it is quite slow to do this if it is prior to going off. Both however are still useful in their own right while setting up or going off and although the Gifts is not 100% essential the recursion is in the singleton format even with reasonable redundancy of your effects. Palinchron and Braingyser provide the kill in combination, the Palinchron generates infinite mana with a Heartbeat and six lands in play which is useful enough while going off and then allows you to guarantee a Geyser kill by forcing them to draw all their cards and more. When it can't be used to kill it can be used to draw a decent chunk of cards which is why I prefer it to Stroke of Genius, the extra card you can get on turns three through five in the early game is huge.

Time Spiral and Timetwister are also pretty huge in the deck, you do not need both but they are the most cards you can draw for the mana in blue as well as allowing you to reuse your cards and carry on going off perpetually in the case of Twister (with the recursion). Time Spiral is the perfect card for the deck and although you cannot continually abuse as it self exiles it is so powerful that you rarely need to cast it more than once. All the deck really wants to do is untap lands and draw more cards for which this does both in great quantities. Frantic Search is the smaller brother of Time Spiral and also does exactly what you need it to in a place on the curve where you are most grateful for it. If I could not get both Spiral and Frantic Search for my deck I would probably abort the strategy and go for something else.


Some of the cards that I didn't include in the main list but gave as possibilities are interchangeable with cards in the main list, others are most awkward to include. Explore has been discussed, the countermagic fits in the deck in the few slots available for Moment's Peace and Capsize, the cheap cantrip counterspells tend to be best as they can tenuously replace things like See Beyond. Remand has some nice applications with storm mechanics and Denial can be used as a pure draw spell if desperate. Force of Will is a counterspell I do not much like in the deck, it offers great security but is a hindrance to going off, rarely can you afford to exile a blue spell and still have what you need to get it done.

Garruk Wildspeaker is cute in the deck and acts as decent continual and personal ramp while also being an OK win condition however at a cost of 4 he is a touch clunky. Rude Awakening is in much the same vein as a Garruk, more effect but slower and only as a one off. Brain Freeze is an alternate win card and can replace both Geyser and Palinchron however doing this would make for a subtly different deck for which I would make several other slight tweaks (probably to include remand among others). Freeze is totally dead until it is your win card, both Palinchron and Geyser have uses before that ultimate stage and so are better in that respect. Snapcaster Mage I have not had a chance to really put to the test in these archetypes, the exile side of things is a little frightening and the inability to fetch back lands and early permanents also makes it somewhat of a weaker early draw than other recursion options. Despite this the raw power of Snapcaster probably still makes it a very good choice for these archetypes.


The thing I love so much about these decks is their ability to pull a win seemingly out of thin air. You get the games where you phaff around trying to go off and just die before doing anything, you get the ones where you seamlessly go off and win without your opponent ever really effecting you and they are more fun than the first but not exactly great magic, especially for your bored opposition. The games that make this deck awesome fun to play are the ones where you get your hand torn to bits by discard, then a number of your permanents destroyed and you are desperately trying to stay alive while trying to reassemble the broken bits of your deck. You have no relevant cards left in hand if any and just lands in play when you rip a Spiral or a Gifts and take total control of the game all in a few turns of clever set up and explosion.

Magic Online Powered Cube

In previous articles I have been fairly critical of the MODO cube however I think I have been overly harsh, especially as they are continually changing and improving it. Even if they were not it is nice to have the option of cube drafting and is a good thing regardless. I am most impressed with the latest version they have given us complete with the power although not for that reason. The power itself is a good laugh and leads to some crazy games but will always be a little more random. Fun is always a good thing to be trading predictability for as games are supposed to be fun and the cube is not too serious for competitive play yet either. A lot of the chaff cards have been culled, the fixing has been increased and the reduced size of the pool enables greater consistency of archetypal drafting. I still sorely miss Death Cloud and am surprised to not be seeing Fastbond on the list yet despite this it is a very fun and very well rounded cube list. The prizes changes since my last article are also a bonus and make it much easier for people like myself who only wish to cube to do so.


I have only done four drafts with the powered MODO cube and so am not in a great position to lay down the knowledge. I have also not worked out the meta shift as yet, in my cube the addition of the power made everything a lot narrower, the tier 1.5 decks became unplayable, the agro decks all needed to play outs and take risks to do busted things so as to be able to keep up and the decks that could best abuse the power cards became the dominant decks. Overall I would generalise by saying that adding power to my cube list significantly reduces the converted mana cost of decks (even if you remove the power cards themselves from the equation) and reduces the number of cards that see play. In the modo cube the opposite seems to be happening where decks are becoming much higher in converted mana cost and the whole pool is much more playable. I have faced a lot of decks that simply try to quickly get out broken threats such as Channel plus Emrakul combo or just loads of artifact mana and high end bombs. I think these are great decks but I think they are over populated at the moment and that a draft shouldn't support more than two such decks. They are hard to reliably draft and will leave you with an inconsistent pile of junk a lot of the time. The environment is much better set to exploit these kinds of deck with the more consistently draftable archetypes in my eyes.

The best way to put this is to say that the decks that can most abuse the power like the batty combo decks and the huge quick threat makers will either be 9 and 10/10 decks or they will be 0-4/10 decks. Things like white weenie will always be in the 5-8/10 range and can easily be drafted to have the required outs to the bomb archetypes. You are relying on consistency to beat the broken decks most of the time with your "normal, fair, make a land and a thing then pass the turn.dec" and so ideally want to be proactive. One of my four drafts ended up being a rock deck which was very good but entirely the wrong deck for the new meta. Rock is fair and it is slow and clunky, it can cope with most other forms of fair deck but frequently just folds to an awkward early threat. The main problem with rock is that it is not very aggressive and so gives the bomb decks enough time to get over any inconsistencies in their draws. In other words the delay tactics and consistency in my rock deck were good but not enough to outweigh the slowing of my kill clock. A white weenie deck should always be able to goldfish for around turn five and this will pick up a lot of free wins.


The way to making a white weenie deck better equipped to deal with the bomb decks are reasonably subtle yet highly effective. Path and Plow were already amazing but have managed to go up in value with absurd bombs landing all over the place. Disenchant is now not only main deckable but also a pretty high pick. The ability to take out key mana artifacts or big artifact threats is a huge stumbling block for the big threat decks and most creature based decks try and pack some equipment so it is rarely a dead spell. Karakas deals with an awful lot of the big threats and if they are being cheated into play it is even more brutal. I am fairly happy letting my opponent just have an extra turn when I bounce their Emrukal after they paid most of their life to Channel it out. Stripmine remains one of my top picks in the format, I will take it over almost anything non-powered and later in the draft when I know what archetype I am in it will get picked over power often enough. So many free wins from a card so hard to play around or deal with that fits so wonderfully as disruption in any consistent agro deck. The cards we need to cut from our agro decks to fit in all these cheap disruption effects are the most powerful ones! Things like Baneslayer Angel are just too slow and will either do too little when they come out or will sit in your hand while you crush or get crushed in the early turns of the game. The majority of your standard dork type threats want to cost one and two mana and this feels like it should be the case for most decks trying to win by curving with dorks.

The thing I noticed most in my first three drafts was that red deck wins was always both there and undrafted and that had I taken those cards my deck would have been much better. In the fourth draft enough was enough and I first picked Sulphuric Vortex over Mishra's Workshop and never looked back taking things like Grim Lavamancer over Tolarian Academy. I did foolishly pick up a Sol Ring and probably miss-built my deck as a result. Red deck wins is not one that abuses the power that much, colourless mana is not that useful and every card not dealing damage is less consistency. The only piece of power that is really a high pick for red deck wins is Mox Ruby, even Black Lotus often does less than nothing and costs you the game by not being a Shock... If going for red deck wins you should be prepared to pick Goblin Guide, Strip Mine and Lightning Bolt over Sol Rings and Ancestral Recalls.




23 Spells

Goblin Guide
Grim Lavamancer
Sol Ring
Faithless Looting

Chain Lightning
Jackal Pup
Rakdos Cackler
Spikeshot Elder

Reckless Charge

Kargan Dragonlord
Ember Hauler
Keldon Marauders
Stormblood Berserker

Hellspark Elemental
Torch Fiend
Magma Jet
Searing Blaze

Fire / Ice

Sword of Fire and Ice
Sulphuric Vortex
Brimstone Volley

Koth of the Hammer

Fireblast

17 Lands

Rishidan Port
Stripmine
Teetering Peaks
14 Mountains

Relevant Sideboard

Taurean Mauler
Mizzium Mortars
Molten Rain
Tattermunge Maniac
Price of Progress
Ghitu Encampment
Boggart Ram-Gang







My list ended up more creature heavy than I would usually like a red deck wins to be but it did mean I could play my Big Equipment helped along with the Sol Ring to power it out. I also ran Koth because of the Sol Ring. In a fair number of games I took out both the Sol Ring and the Faithless Looting so as to ensure I wasn't losing any card advantage. The Mizzium Mortars came in a lot simply to up my burn quota and in hindsight it would probably have been better to have it and something else main instead of the Sol Ring and the Looting.  This however would have made me a lot less happy to play both Sword and Koth and would mean I would have to bring in some very sub par cards from the sideboard to replace them. That said it was incredibly consistent and had enough tempo and reach to finish games off well. It looks light on disruption but what it has barely effects it and makes all the difference in a lot of games. The deck didn't drop a game despite having some very close call games against things like turn two Sun Titans from the guy with the Black Lotus and several other bits of power and would be my vote for the best archetype.... still. Best and most powerful are not to be confused however, the most powerful archetype has bomb like blue cards and loads of artifacts and lands that unfairly ramp but it is not the best because you will rarely be able to get all the right combinations of the pieces. Four drafts is a long way off a sensible sample size however and I could have just had good luck with my red deck wins and happened to play against a lot of clunky big threat decks in all my drafts. I believe red has such reach that it is a deck than can be a 9/10 or even 10/10 while still always managing to consistently average a 7/10.

UGw Opposition

Opposition is one of the most powerful cards in the cube and in any draft format in which it has seen print. No surprise that the cube versions of Opposition decks are very capable and have been kicking around the tier one area since the dawn of cube. It is a bit of a tease having Opposition as a blue card, or at least it used to be when blue had bugger all dorks worth playing. Glare of Subdual felt like it was more in the right place on the colour pie but not tapping lands makes it far far less interesting for cube play. Green was always the pairing colour of choice for Opposition decks as all the good ramp and utility creatures scale so well into the late game with Opposition. Blue can now quite comfortably do a mono Opposition deck but it is more difficult to draft, more damaged when cut and not as all round consistent as the UG version. This list is UGw which is probably the strongest of all should you get the appropriate fixing.

The main joy of UG(x) Opposition decks is that they are so wonderfully easy to draft. I do not mean it is low skill, I mean that the colours are very deep and the kinds of card you are after are broad and well catered for in most cubes. I end up drafting this deck an awful lot as it is very easy to slip into and highly reliable, all you really need is the Opposition, which often doesn't get first picked but is easily first pickable and more often than not the most powerful card in the pack, if not, it is still likely to be the easiest to abuse. So many lowish powered first picks out of nothing better in the pack will end up being ideal in Opposition decks. The white in this list helps to significantly increase the overall power level of the cards in the deck but is not needed at all to make the deck work or plug any gaps. I would never aim to go for a three colour Opposition deck and would only do so if the draft kindly gift wrapped that option, or gave me no other...

24 Spells


Bird of Paradise
Joraga Treespeaker
Llanowar Elf
Noble Hierarch

Swords to Plowshares
Force Spike
Skullclamp

Wall of Blossoms
Wall of Roots
Stoneforge Mystic
Viridian Emissary

Arcane Denial

Eternal Witness
Kitchen Finks
Wood Elves
Blade Splicer


Opposition
Master of the Wild Hunt
Restoration Angel
Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Garruk, Wildspeaker

Acidic Slime
Batterskull

Consecrated Sphinx

16 Lands

Tropical Island
Savannah
Tundra
Flooded Strand

Misty Rainforest
Breeding Pool
Temple Garden
Stirring Wildwood

Celestial Colonnade
Yavimaya Coast
Flooded Grove
Simic Growth Chamber

3 Forests
1 Island



Once you have your Opposition the only thing that you are really trying to do is cram as many useful creatures into the deck as possible. As the criteria is being a dork, and the cube is full of really good dorks, you can build multiple versions of similarly good Opposition decks that only have Opposition and lands in common. Talking specifically about the choices of dorks I have gone for in this list is not overly helpful in understanding the archetype which is both broader than BG decks, not to mention better. So, as you want lots of guys it is a good idea to get as many of the effects you want to have in your deck in dork form such as Acidic Slime instead of Naturalize and Wall of Roots over Explore / Nature's Lore. In the latter example Wall of Roots is also far superior to Sakura Tribe Elder because you get to ramp and keep a body in play for tapping things later on. More key that the commonly used strategy of having utility dorks is having spells that double up as guys such as living weapon or planeswalkers that make tokens.

Opposition decks are not without their weaknesses, which include mass removal, enchantment removal, creatures that don't need to tap to be useful or can at least usefully tap at instant speed, and lastly running out of gas. Enchantment removal tends not to be an issue as not all that much gets played and the few that are such as Vindicate are easy to play around. You also have a bit of insurance with Eternal Witness however a counterspell tends to be the best solution when you can't deny them the ability to actually cast it. Counterspells are also a great answer to mass removal and so are worth a few slots but too many is crippling and leaves you with too little a creature count. Gone are the days of Mystic Snake being a big name in this archetype. Arcane Denial is perfect as it at least draws you a card which is the next best thing to having a dork and it is also cheap and easy to cast, you don't even really care about the cards you give your opponent. Typically you are punishing them in one area, be it lands or dorks and only care about the few outs they might have. There are other ways of making mass removal less painful to you such as persistent monsters like Kitchen Finks and planewalkers who tend to avoid mass removal.


Blue and green are the two colours that lack creature removal, Opposition will stop blockers and attackers you don't like but it does little to stop a Grim Lavamancer going to town on your army and you will spend more time with Opposition not in play that you will with it any ways. The counterspells can help in this area but it is not the main, or even a very good reason to include them. You would be far better off with more dedicated removal such as Umezawa's Jitte. Having a third colour as I have done offers the creature kill but it is yet another non-creature card in the deck for the most part and wants to be kept to a minimum. The only half playable single colour removal spells that are also dorks are Flame Tongue Kavu and Shriekmaw. Bounce and control magic effects I find tend to work out pretty well when no third colour is an option. Bounce effects are easy to find on decent creatures and work very well in your deck. Mana critters combined with bounce dorks give you a huge tempo edge, combined with counter magic they offer a more reliable way of dealing with pesky dorks and combined with Opposition they can stop bounced things ever coming back to play. The list I have given is very much on the light side of ways to deal with dorks and is more focused on card advantage and creature power to compensate for this lacking.

The final weakness of the archetype is that it can run out of gas very easily. In a top deck situation you are often in real trouble as so many of your cards are do nothing Elves and you have few serious threat cards. This list is very very high on card draw effects with Jace, Skullclamp and Consecrated Sphinx, all serious card draw engines. You do not need to go this all out on it but some is certainly needed unless you end up only playing really high power cards, which in turn means you will lose to any vaguely quick deck.

I feel I need to rise to my own challenge and make a viable list that uses very few of the same cards to illustrate the depth of the archetype.

24 Spells

Birds of Paradise
Fyndhorn Elves
Llanowar Mentor
Brainstorm

Enclave Cryptologist

Lotus Cobra
Waterfront Bouncer
Fauna Shaman
Coiling Oracle

Tarmogoyf

Squee, Goblin Nabob
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Man O' War
Eternal Witness

Shardless Agent
Trygon Predator

Opposition
Sower of Temptation
Glen Eldandra Archmage
Vengevine

Genesis
Meluko, the Clouded Mirror
Thragtusk
Force of Will

16 Lands including a Treetop Village

Ok, so not quite no overlap, Birds of Paradise and Eternal Witness are too juicy, I very nearly put some two mana walls in the second list as well!

Top 10 Burn Spells

A nice pure Top X list here much like the counterspells one. It would be easy enough to work this out from my ratings however here it is for convenience sake. It is far far easier to compare a narrow style of card like counterspells or burn directly, especially given their colour confinements as they all do the same one thing. Without further-a-do here is my list:


10. Lava Dart                 1 (4)
9.   Seal of Fire               4 (8)
8.   Searing Blaze            2 (18)
7.   Searing Spear           4.5
6.   Incinerate                 4.5
5.   Chain Lightening       9
4.   Burst Lightening       4 (3.6)
3.   Fireblast                  2.6 (20)
2.   Arc Trail                 9
1.   Lightening Bolt        9


Ball Lightening              12
Galvanic Blast              16






I imagine many are wondering where Lightening Helix is on my list and will be assuming I have excluded non-red cards or something similar however I just don't think it is top 10 material. It is the most overrated burn spell going as it is hard to cast and is at somewhat cross purposes. Certainly it is a card that offers huge value and is well above the curve on power but life schmife is all I can say. In a control deck it is a decent tempo card as the life is significant but in the agro decks the simple Incinerate is so much more forgiving on your mana and does exactly the same thing, if not more, for you. I hate gold cards anyway for their lack of playability and stand by my rating of Seal of Fire and Lava Dart above it. To be fair to the card the only other burn spell not on this list I might rate above it is Firebolt and so the very worst Helix is would be the 12th best burn spell.



Another exclusion which deserves honourable mention is Galvanic Blast which is quite significantly better than all the other burn when in the right deck. Burn is very simple to break down into a numerical comparison where you factor in the burn per mana and burn per card. By doing this you can get an all round value score for your card which accounts for both forms of card efficiency. Obviously you will tend to favour mana efficiency or damage efficiency on your burn depending on what kind of deck you are building so the scoring isn't all that relevant beyond a theoretical point of view. More significant are the factors that fall outside the considerations of these efficiencies such as prerequisites for the effects or additional costs or stipulations. Fireblast would technically score infinite due to not costing mana to use most of the time. It is hard to simply mathematically compare saccing two lands to a normal mana cost and my method of removing infinities is somewhat of a botch. The numbers by the sides of the card are suppost to represent the combined score of mana efficiency and burn efficiency, Lightning Bolt is 3 burn for one mana and one card, 3 x 3 = 9, simple.
Galvanic Blast gets a near top score when it is cast with metal craft and has all the benefits that the rating does not account for as well being both one mana and instants speed. Despite this there are not enough artifact decks that really want good cheap burn to merit it having a main cube slot.

Lightning Bolt is a clear winner, the score system doesn't account for instant speed which is always nice. Nine is a good score although not the highest, it gets the top spot for being so consistently good. One mana spells are a premium and with no drawback or downside Bolt goes in every red deck very happily.

Arc Trail gets a more controversial second place. In cube there are far greater numbers of cheap spells than other formats and lots of small utility creatures to boot. Arc Trail is very easy to get a two for one with and can even find it happening against non agro decks. It is at its strongest against the agro decks where it can so easily take all the steam out of their draw. In these situations where you cast it on turn two or three and hit two dorks it is about the best tempo card in the cube. It also offers cheap card advantage in red where it is short supply. The worst it ever is still makes it playable in decks like red deck wins where you want all your cards to be able to do two damage to the dome. The score for Arc Trail can be 2 at worst when it is two mana and a card for just two damage but when you get the two for one it is a high scorer as well.

Fireblast is the narrowest of the burn spells in this list but it is also the most powerful by quite some way. When you can afford so sac two mountains the score is equivalent to 20 which is over double the number one card! When you can't however it is a pathetic 2.6 which is fairly unplayable thus illustrating why the card is narrow - unless you can reliably afford to sac two mountains the card is weak. Usually this just ends the game as the last card the turn before your opponent was expecting however the beefy 4 damage does occasionally make it worthwhile using midgame to wipe out a big dork and keep swinging.

Burst Lightning just pips Chain Lightning to 4th place and this is primarily because of control decks preferring the flexibility and instant speed of the card to the raw power of Chain Lightning. Neither 4 or 3.6 are huge scores which are the respective normal and kicked options however this rating does not reflect the range of the card. One mana spells are premium early game and high damage burn spells are much more efficient late game and Burst gives you a decent offering for both scenarios.


Chain Lightning might as well just do three damage, I have never yet seen the fork ability get used which is quite remarkable. In theory it would be cool on a Swans of Bryn Argoll but further applications for it I struggle to find. In very aggressive decks it is pretty close to Lightning Bolt but in control it is rather more tedious and sees much much less play even with its very solid score of 9 and having the premium one mana cost.

Incinerate is quite a step down in power from the premium burn but like Lightning Bolt is highly consistent. The anti regenerate effect is very marginal but does at least come into play now and again unlike Chain Lightnings ability. Three damage at instant speed is desirable and although it is not very mana efficient it is far easier on your red which is highly relevant in two or more coloured decks.

Searing Spear is obviously just another Incinerate for all intents and purposes. Redundancy is nice but that is not really a thing burn in general lacks, in fact it works against Spear quite often. You want another burn spell but already have Incinerate and find you would rather play something else than Spear which gives you a different kind of effect.


Searing Blaze is rather like Arc Trail in that it can be utterly unfair or somewhat weak. Most decks now run dorks and so Blaze's inherent weakness over other more reliable burn is less and less an issue. When it is weak it is far weaker than Arc Trail at its worst however when Blaze is strong it is the best burns spell in your deck. It scores a massive 18 when it deals 6 damage for two mana and this would theoretically be 36 if you managed to kill off a creature and a planeswalker at once. Because it is so off the charts good when at its best, which is not that hard to engineer, it is well worth playing and risking it being bad.

Seal of Fire is a highly underrated burn spell that does wonders for your mana efficiency and burst output. It is not uncommon in the cube to need to kill something with 5 or more toughness on turn two or three and it is often the case that you have sufficient burn just insufficient mana. Burn heavy hands in general are irksome as you often have to waste the early opportunities to use your mana if you have no targets to kill. Seal of Fire is always happy to be thrown onto the table for later use. It may seem marginal spending just one mana a few turns earlier than you need to spend it but it is just much easier to overlook those kinds of benefits and is far from marginal. Typically this is more of an agro card than a control card but is playable in any deck. A score of 4 is low, probably the cut off point for playable, but if it fulfils the criteria of costing you zero relevant mana then it gets a very healthy score of 8.


Lava Dart is my final burn spell of choice, it is low impact but highly flexible. It can be more game changing that Arc Trail in the right circumstance and also offers high curving efficiency like Seal of Fire. It is also a card you still get most of the value from when you discard it for whatever reason. Another perk it has over cards like Arc Trail is that is is very hard to play around having it kill two of your dorks, against the Arc Trail you can simply stagger your low toughness dorks so that you never have two in play however Dart happily waits around to get its second kill.