Rakdos Deck Wins

I have been rigorously building decks using Deathrite Shaman so as to find his most suitable homes and confirm my suspicions about his vast power levels. Thus far the most impressive he has been is within a red deck wins style deck incorporating black. We have now had this new "Rakdos Deck Wins" built around 4 times each occasion taking a different slant on the idea. Some have had just a dash of black for the few very best cards such as Dark Confidant and some of the gold cards. Some have gone much heavier into black to make use of the intense black mana spells, one has had a zombie theme in it and made use of Geralf's Messengers. Another was using Chocking Sands and Sinkhole and another decided to forgo Sulphuric Vortex in favour of Necropotence. One of the best things black offers a red deck wins style deck is a bunch of solid one drop, two power beaters and so just splashing black seems less worth the effort. Regardless of the one drops the addition of black makes the deck much more robust with card advantage and removal that can deal with high toughness dorks efficiently. The Deathrite Shaman alone offers a cheap way to get through unblockable damage as well as a huge tempo boost when used as an early mana critter and is comparable to Confidant in his value in the deck. Part of this is because Confidant has bad synergy with Fireblast and Sulphuric Vortex which are two of reds best cards and not because the Shaman is a more powerful card. This list is not one that has actually been built but a midrange representation of what this sort of deck should look like. It has no particular emphasis in terms of land destruction and while it has some synergy in the discard and the zombies it is only a mild inclusion and has no cards that are weak in isolation just to support the synergy. This is a cheap list as well, one of the temptations when adding black is throwing in lots of powerful cards like Olivia Voldaren however I think this is the wrong way to go unless a specific meta choice. The deck is still based on red deck wins despite having many more tempting options and still wants both redundancy and the ability to play at near full capacity off just two lands.


24 Spells

Lightning Bolt
Chain Lightning
Goblin Guide
Diregraf Ghoul

Grim Lavamancer
Deathrite Shaman
Gravecrawler
Faithless Looting

Burst Lightning
Sarcomancy
Rakdos Cackler
Firebolt

Stromkirk Noble

Dark Confidant
Incinerate
Plated Geopede
Bloodghast

Dauthi Horror
Rakdos Charm
Dreadbore
Searing Blaze

Arc Trail

Sulphuric Vortex
Liliana of the Veil

16 Lands

Badlands
Blood Crypt
Sulphurous Springs
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Wooded Foothills
Verdant Catacombs
Taiga
Bayou

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Teetering Peeks
Graven Cairns
Blackcleave Cliffs

Swamp
3 Mountains




Liliana is the most controversial card in this deck despite featuring in all the Rakdos deck wins built barring the black splash. In this list she has least synergy and is a lot of mana for a card that deals no damage. Unless you go the Necropotence route and have abundant card advantage I don't think you can afford to play discard spells as they become dead draws in the late game and are a slight tempo loss even when they are best in the early game. Discard is still a good sideboard solution to anything you are struggling against and not the worst filler however in ideal situations you want to follow the general rule of including only cards that deal damage. Returning to Liliana (that poor literary tangent was supposed to illustrate that without targetted discard Liliana is a little weaker), although she is a bit late to work brilliantly with the Bloodghast and Gravecrawler and doesn't follow the general rule of dealing damage she works well with the deck. Cheap burn to clear away small critters makes her edict ability much more potent and the cheap nature of the deck makes the discard ability rather one sided, not to mention filling up graveyards for Lavamancer and Deathrite Shaman. She is a difficult to deal with threat that will slowly win the game verses certain decks, a little like Vortex, and so merits one of the few top end slots.

Speaking of Vortex, it is a restrictive card in this deck as it many black spells cause you pain. Both Confidant and Vortex are a little weaker in this deck than they can be in others however they are still fine if you take them into account while building and forgo things like Fireblast (which is weaker with lower mountain counts any way) and Carnophage. Although this deck does reduce two of the most powerful cards potency a little it makes up for this by increasing the average card power level and is a rounded deck as a result.

Dreadbore is another card that doesn't deal damage yet comfortably merits its slot. It kills things much cheaper in both cards and mana. If someone gets an Elspeth online or a Baneslayer Angel before they are in direct burn range you will do whatever it takes to get them gone before they do irreparable damage. This can often mean putting most of your lands and hand in the bin and is therefore usually too much damage anyway. Dreadbore not only cleanly deals with these problem cards but also allows you a bit of spare mana to continue pulling away with the tempo. Zoo and Boros decks frequently pack Path to Exile even though it can be dead in certain matchups for much the same reason Dreadbore is a staple in this deck and one of the main reasons it is durable and rounded.


Another big contributor to the well rounded nature of this deck is Rakdos Charm. I have been highly impressed with this new Charm and place it comfortably in the top two gold charms of all time and this deck is one of the best homes for it. In the cube main deck artifact removal is always a good thing as the majority of decks contain them and many of those you will face are brutal and game ending and are much easy to play against when in the graveyard. A card like Smash to Smithereens would seem outstanding in this deck or other agro red burn decks however it is a mixed blessing. When Smash is good it is outstanding but when it is bad it does nothing which is unacceptable in a deck that requires redundancy and consistency while lacking much in the way of card quality and draw. A card was the same in all other ways to Smash to Smithereens that said "Destroy target artifact OR deal 3 damage to target player" would be vastly better in the main deck. As a sideboard card Smash is again better but I avoid putting cards into the cube that are specifically for sideboards. As a result of the inconsistency of Smash to Smithereens it will typically be replaced by much more reliable yet far lower power cards like Torch Fiend.


Rakdos Charm almost is this more maindeckable version of Smash to Smithereens and takes the slot of lower powered cards thus upping your decks overall power. Charm might not be quite as predictable as my imaginary Smash, nor as easy to cast, but it offers quite a bit more overall. The graveyard disruption is not to be underestimated in cube where many strategies try to abuse them and gives you something against some of the less interactive decks such as Reanimator. Lastly, the damage aspect can often be quite small or even nothing but it is still a damage dealer and one that every now and again will be a truly stupid amount for the mana and will lead to surprise wins out of nowhere. Any card that does something useful and and has a damage alternative is worth a look for this kind of deck. Dark Confidant, Dreadbore and Rakdos Charm are your main reasons to dip into black with your agro red deck.

Bloodghast is quite nice but this is not really the best deck for him, the double black is a touch awkward, you have no synergies with Skullclamp or sacrifice effects nor any real way to pump him. You do have a few ways to discard him profitably which is nice and the haste is fairly easy to activate which again starts to make him look pretty good. The recursion is all a bit slow however and occurs less that you might expect. He is one of those cards that will shine in some matchups and be basically irrelevant in others. A cool card and very playable but far from essential in the deck, and without good support cards, one that gets less and less good.

Dauthi Horror is the opposite end of the spectrum to Bloodghast in that it is quite weak against some matchups but very strong in others but always to different ones. They compliment each other quite nicely in this regard and allow you to keep a rounded deck even with "spikier" creatures. Horror gives you reach in an area red has nothing really going for it and is a decent tool to have at your disposal.

After goblin guide red lacks much in the way of good one mana, two power beaters. This has always been the main strength of adding white into the deck but now black has a comparable collection of one mana, two power dorks and offers other things that white does not. Diregraf Ghoul, Sarcomancy and Gravecrawler all have negligible drawbacks and give great redundancy and tempo to the deck. Gravecrawler has additional synergy with discard and any other zombies you have but like the Bloodghast these are pretty minor, in Gravecrawlers case he would still be playable in the deck as just a 2/1 that couldn't block and would be the worst of the one drop creatures. As it stands Rakdos Cackler is the weakest dork as it has no frills and offers no synergy. The only reason it is being played is because he is so consistent, having both hybrids you can always make him with any lands.


Presently this is the deck to beat in the cube, it will roll over anything silly and has good matchups across the board against the sensible decks. It can even hold out very well and go close to even against decks dedicated to beating this kind of strategy. It is harder to draft a good version of the deck as your mana base is so important however you have a much greater depth of coloured cards to chose from so you can compensate as required. It is also harder to build as you have tempting cards and synergies leading you astray while also having more cards and more viable build directions at your disposal. By using black you do make a lot of cards that are normally great in red deck wins quite a bit weaker. Sulphuric Vortex is a good example but is still suitably powerful to merit a slot. Cards like Kargan Dragonlord, Koth of the Hammer (who I think is pretty awful anyway), Figure of Destiny, Ball Lightning and Fireblast are weakened to the point of not really wanting them. Deathrite Shaman is the MVP in this deck and makes near equal use of his abilities. The early mana boost is grossly unfair when coupled with loads of cheap dorks and removal as you can get really far ahead. The later game unstoppable 2 damage per turn makes him a must kill threat who typically has more fuel than Grim Lavamancer with which to deal damage. The cheap disruption he can provide against loads of cards has also been frequently turning games, being able to exile the Kitchen Finks before it returns to play or eat up the target for Snapcaster Mage. It not only hoses these powerful cards but also entire archetypes such as the previously mentioned Reanimator which is not something red decks are used to having on tap and is proving to be a real aid in their quest in living up to their namesake - Red Deck Wins.

Top 10 Lands

Lands have some of the most broken effects, this is unsurprising as they are quite hard to balance as they each have the same "cost" as it were. Subtle changes to balancing drawbacks can drastically effect how good it is. There are a few broad categories of lands, those for fixing, those for ramping and those for utility. The latter category brakes down further into card advantage, removal and threats. It was hard to decide what constituted a cycle of lands and which should be viewed individually. The various dual lands are identical except for the colour production and so are reasonable to treat as a single kind of card. Except for the man land duals I have treated cycles which differ by more than just colour as individual cards. The reason for grouping the dual man lands together is because they would clog up too much of the list with most of them being contenders for slots.


14. Karakas
13. Treetop Village
12. Lake of the Dead
11. The Artifact Lands
10. Ancient Tomb
9.   Wastelands
8.   The Shock Lands
7.   The Dual Man Lands
6.   The Original Duals
5.   (Mishra's Workshop)
4.   The Sac Lands
3.   (Strip Mine)
2.   (Library of Alexandria)
1.   (Tolarian Academy)





Poor old Gaea's Cradle not making the cut, it turns out mass removal is just too brutal making it unreliable and/or far slower. The other notable omission is City of Traitors, lands that can tap for more than one mana are instant eyebrow raisers always worthy of much consideration. Tolarian Academy is one of the easiest lands to use that can get you more than one mana. Not only will it often tap for more than one early it starts to tap for vast amounts of mana a little further into the game. It was beyond unfair with the power still in the cube and wasn't hampered much by removing it. Mana might be the most important thing in magic but it is closely followed by cards for which Library of Alexandria is one of the most effective at getting lots of. Drawing double every turn will win you most games, even at a tempo cost which on Library is optional. Most games where you start with this in your opening hand are won by it.

Stripmine is very powerful but not quite as broken as the Library or the Academy, even Workshop for that matter. It is banned mostly because it wins games in a very tedious and un skillful manner. It is very hard to disrupt or play around and leads to more fun games when sat on the sidelines. The cycle of sac lands are the outright best dual lands in the cube, much of which is down to the existence of the other duals with the basic land types. They do still thin decks, fill up graveyards. shuffle libraries and offer countless other synergies. It is rare that any sac lands are left unplayed in a given cube session.

Mishra's Workshop is kind of a fairer version of Tolarian Academy. It only works well in artifact heavy decks but doesn't scale quite as well nor offer the most useful form of mana. Even so, 3 on one land is absurd and leads to really swingy openers. Without other unfair cards like Black Lotus, Sol Ring and an abundance of moxen Workshop is left alone as an easy and overpowered ramp land and is less unfair than when a cube is powered. As such I think it needs to be grouped with the power and only included in a cube if the rest is.



The original dual lands have no drawback other than to certain hosers which don't really have a place in cubes any ways. There is not much to say about them as they are so plain and simple. Appreciating how good these cards are is down to understanding the importance of being able to cast what is in your hand, it goes to a basic understanding of the magic mechanics. Rather than being good themselves dual lands make all your other cards better and they do this without costing you a card slot. The original duals don't even cost you life or tempo.


The dual man lands are not great duals as they go, nor are they the most exciting of threats however they are both of these things, and as previously mentioned, they do this without costing you any card slots at all. This cycle has almost single handedly made sorcery speed removal un-viable to be relied on for the control player. The shock lands are the backup for the original duals, the cost is very minor and often avoidable due to the kind optional nature of the cards. They are clearly worse but not by a significant amount. Wastelands is the fair version of Stripmine that only punishes those who are greedy with their lands and colours. It suffers some of the same problems as Stripmine but is far easier to play around.

Ancient Tomb is a fair land within the cube, it taps for two which is fantastic and just what some decks need yet the drawback keeps it in check. It is reliable and explosive but scales down in power as the game progresses rather than Academy which goes up or Workshop which stays the same roughly. The artifact lands are fantastic enablers working with affinity, metalcraft, Tinker, Goblin Welder, Trinket Mage and many other good things. They are slightly more vulnerable than normal lands but otherwise have no typical drawbacks for lands with bonuses. They wind up in a lot of decks serving a lot of different purposes. Lake of the Dead is one of my personal favourite ramp lands and is one of the more powerful cube cards to still be under the radar as it were.  You can get 5 mana on turn two without anything more fancy than another swamp! The cost of this mana boost is steep but easily recoverable in black. The set back is also less damaging than you might imagine, should you lay it on turn three and use it every turn there after and compare that to someone just making swamps and using all their mana every turn it would take till turn 8 before the swamp only player had made more mana.

Treetop Village is the best man land being robust, powerful and cheap to use. Faerie Conclave is decent but a little vulnerable and slow and the rest of the cycle are pretty weak.Village is not however a mana fixer as well and so is still weaker than the average dual man land. Karakas is a card I used to have banned as it reads "bounce a legend" which was rather over powered against lands making things like Pendlehaven and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth unplayable, it also made it very hard to kill as it could bounce itself. Using the oracle rules to only bounce legendary dorks makes it much fairer but still powerful to the point of making legends very weak in the cube (compounded by the blue clone effects). While it can do nothing for you it is still a coloured land with no real drawbacks beyond a vulnerability to Wastelands.

Top 10 Gold Cards

This list has been one of the hardest to do thus far as it includes lots of new cards that have not been fully tested. It also contains lots of cards that never get played in the same decks at all and are really hard to compare in many ways beyond abstract power and amount played. The last two slots were also incredibly close, more so than any other group, and could have included almost any of the following; Bloodbraid Elf, Qasali Pridemage, Rakdos Charm (which has been performing incredibly well so far), Izzet Charm, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Olivia Voldaren, Lotleth Troll, Edric Spymaster of Trest, Lightning Helix, Shardless Agent or Geist of Saint Traft all of which are so similar in their power. Another thing that has made this list very hard is the combination of gold cards and hybrid/split cards, the former being a drawback and the latter being a boost to the playability of the spells.





11. Figure of Destiny
10. Knight of the Reliquary
9.   Abrupt Decay
8.   Dreadbore
7.   Baleful Strix
6.   (Lingering Souls)
5.   Kitchen Finks
4.   Deathrite Shaman
3.   Pernicious Deed
2.   Vindicate
1.   Fire / Ice







I am at least very content with my top 3 in this list which have been in my cube since the beginning. Fire / Ice is beyond all round good, it has everything and is never dead. For a supposedly subtle card like Brainstorm it can have some seriously impactive uses that pretty much end the game which on a two mana utility card feels a little gross. Vindicate is a little more reliable removal than basically any other spell but it clunkier than Fire / Ice and harder to fit into decks. They are both of a power level that ensures you auto include them if your of the right colours and have the option to play them. Pernicious Deed has remained strong despite an inability to kill planeswalkers. It is also still one of the quickest and cheapest ways to employ mass removal in magic with the added bonus of having control enough to have the result being one sided in your favour. One of the best control cards ever printed.



Deathrite Shaman is so new it is quite hard to tell how close to the mark this mighty 4th position is. The mana aspect has been less reliable than Bird of Paradise and is closer to Arbour Elf however the other abilities have been winning games in a wide array of decks. Kitchen Finks is the epitome of a solid monster, it gives loads of board position, loads of tempo and is easy to include in decks. It is so solid that it would be in the top 10 list of control dorks and in the top 10 of agro dorks. Lingering Souls is to Call of the Herd as Tarmogoyf is to Ernham Djinn. It is versatile, good value and difficult to deal with in a way that keeps you ahead in cards and tempo. I consider it a gold card rather than a white one however it is playable in both mono white and mono black decks that have just a small amount of ability to produce the other colour from something like a Mox Diamond.


Baleful Strix is the ultimate in speed bumps where before the crown lay with Wall of Omens/Blossoms and Sakura-Tribe Elder. When you compare these cards you begin to appreciate the power of the Strix which not only provides a cheap, self-replacing body like the others but trades with almost any monster it blocks and is able to block fliers. It is also able to go on the offensive effectively with evasion and power and offers good synergy with artifact style decks. Strix is the complete package and nothing will make you feel safer as a two drop when you are the control player. Dreadbore is a bit of a Vindicate, it never goes better than one for one and can't be used in a tricky way as it isn't an instant. It makes up for this by being very fairly cost, versatile and totally unconditional. Planeswalkers and creatures are two of the most common threats in the cube and killing your choice of either, dead without question, for the same cost as a Doom Blade or an Incinerate  is a bargain.

Compared to Dreadbore Abrupt Decay trades some reliability for some versatility and trickery. It deals with most things you need and is a great early tempo removal spell. As it doesn't hit most of the most serious problem cards it is not quite the auto include that Dreadbore is however it will cause greater swings in games when it is good. Knight of the Reliquary combines a cheap powerful beater with a great utility card. You either lay it as a 4/4 or a 5/5 and beat the face in of your opponent or you use it to accelerate, colour fix and tutor up tricky lands as you need. Should you opt to use it in the latter capacity you will still have a fat beater at the end of it!

Should you not accept Lingering Souls as a gold card then the final spot on the list goes to Figure of Destiny. As a pure one drop beater it is comparable to Pouncing Jaguar as it consumes a chunk of mana, obviously it is way better but you get the idea as to why Isamru is going to better when you have a good curve out draw. Figure shines when you get flooded or when you rip him in the late game in your weenie deck full of bad late game draws. He is an acceptable one drop beater that doubles up as a serious threat without any of the drawbacks of damaging your early draws. Being playable in both red and white decks is also a great boost to the playability of the card as both of those colours employ the weenie strategy effectively.

Top 10 Colourless Cards

The colourless cards rival blue in their power and have more banned cards than any other grouping. I say colourless but that is really only to give a home to Karn Liberated. All is Dust is a solid B cuber and probably the second best non-artifact colourless card but neither come all that close to the vast quantity of good artifacts available so it is really a top ten artifacts list.



13. Wurmcoil Engine
12. Grim Monolith
11. Zuran Orb
10. Sensei's Divining Top
9.   Mana Vault
8.   Skullclamp
7.   Chrome Mox
6.   Mox Diamond
5.   Umezawa's Jitte
4.   Mana Crypt
3.   (The Moxes)
2.   (Black Lotus)
1.   (Sol Ring)






An honorary mention is needed for Tangle Wire which was so so close to the last spot and should be rated higher than I have in my first review of the card. Metal Worker, Memory Jar, Voltaic Key, Crucible of Worlds, Myr Battleshpere, Sword of Fire and Ice, Guilded Lotus and many more are all strong cards that at one time may well have been in a top ten list. Mana is power and so this list is dominated by artifacts that either give you a huge burst in mana or cheaply ramp you. Most games don't end in one turn and so Sol Ring is the best return of mana over the course of most games and is therefore the consistant best card in the cube. Black Lotus gives some more brutal starts and has some good combos however these things come together infrequently and so the Lotus is not as good as Sol Ring in most decks. The Moxes are like Sol Ring  but less bursty. They are still very close in power as they come down for free allowing you to go off more easily with them and provide more useful coloured mana.

Mana Crypt is obviously better than Sol ring in terms of pure mana however the life loss is very significant and makes it playable only in decks winning quickly. It remains the case that the decks that can abuse Crypt are less powerful on average than those that can't and so I am happy with it staying unbanned for now. Although more powerful than the top 3 (or 7 depending on how you count the moxes) cards the Crypt only gets in at number 4 (8) due to its comparitivly narrow playability. Jitte is the first of the non mana producing cards, it wins most games when in combination with a creature. It is bomb-like unto itself rather than allowing to make other bombs quicker. Mox Diamond and Chrome Mox are a little more versatile in the colour they can offer but the cost of a card to make your Mox makes them quite a bit fairer than the original five. Diamond is slightly more abusable than Chrome as there are lots of ways to get extra lands or recur them later, it also offers better colours.

Skullclamp doesn't end games like Jitte does but almost always allows you to keep pace with any other deck  and is probably the best card advantage artifact out there. Being so cheap and easy to use makes it painless to throw into lots of archetypes. Mana Vault is a kind of fairer Black Lotus offering less burst in only colourless and then causing you pain or mana to afterwards. Divining Top is the card for miracles and is the card quality spell for non blue decks and even they employ Top sometimes too. Like most good artifacts it is very cheap and easy to throw into any control or combo deck with sufficient shuffle effects. Zuran Orb is an odd little card that is only for the purpose of life gain which no other card in the cube does which is unsurprising as life is the least useful resource in magic. Zuran Orb will decide any game that is close and buy you several extra turns in any given game, it also has some combo applications

Grim Monolith is the poor mans Mana Vault, it is less bursty and doesn't have a life penalty to compensate for this. When you want burst though life is not something you care about and so this is almost always seen as redudancy for Mana Vault rather than an alternative. Last in on my list is the only dork to make the list -Wurmcoil Engine. It is durable, a great tempo boost and lots of value while being playable in any colours of deck. He also fills two roles as a threat and way to gain life if you don't want to dedicate a whole slot to the effect.

Top 10 Blue Cards

Blue, the undisputed colour of power in magic with the most depth, high power cards and banned cards. Blue has about 30 cards that are all better than most of the cards in each other colours top 10 list and the quality doesn't really dry up beyond this. Blue has most of the direct card draw, all the good counter magic, most of the good card quality spells and is usually first in line to get interesting and different new spells. Blue is even starting to get some impressive looking creatures which all ends up making blue a very strong colour in cube for all types of deck. In many ways this is the most harsh list as so many worthy spells that would be high on other lists don't make the cut and all of them are of comparable power and playability to the last few cards on my list. These worthy cards include Actual Counterspell, Upheaval, Vendilion Clique, Remand, Consecrated Sphinx, Arcane Denial, Fact or Fiction, Trinket Mage, Frantic Search, Force Spike, Tezzeret, the Seeker, Spell Pierce, Grand Architect and so on and so on. Here at least are the cards that do make my top 10:



13. Brainstorm
12. Treachery
11. Timetwister
10. Tinker
9.   Opposition
8.   Cryptic Command
7.   Jace, the Mind Sculptor
6.   Time Spiral
5.   (Mana Drain)
4.   Force of Will
3.   Snapcaster Mage
2.   (Ancestral Recall)
1.   (Time Walk)




Many think Ancestral Recall is the best blue card but I'm all about Time Walk which is better tempo, more abusable and scales better as the game goes on. Recall however is also really rather good and comes a comfortable close second. Snapcaster is the ever impressing new kid on the list, it is too good in other formats but in cube it is even better suited to abuse. I rate Force of Will very highly as it is the ultimate counterspell, when you need to stop a spell Force is the most reliable. Mana Drain is more powerful but this is in areas that are not countering spells at which it is only as good as Actual Counterspell. Mana Drain is banned because it is really swingy and random while being stupidly powerful. Force is fairer despite being the better counterspell in a purist sense hence not getting the ban. Time Spiral is one of the best combo cards and many other things as well. It is the best of the symmetrical draw seven effects as it effectively gives you first use on the cards with all your mana free.

Original Jace is still one of the highest power all round planeswalkers and does a lot of good work in all manner of blue decks. The fact that it sees so much play as a four mana sorcery speed card in blue is testament to its power. Cryptic Command is the other all rounder blue four drop that does almost everything you need it to in any situation. Jace is more awkward to use but will win games while Cryptic tends to swing games in your favour enabling you to win with something else. Opposition and Tinker are both cards that you build your deck around due to their incredible power. Opposition is far easier to throw into a deck as it is more common to have creatures than it is artifacts. Timetwister is the safe draw seven spell and the only one of the original power nine I have not banned. As symmetrical cards go it is hard to really abuse Timetwister and so it tends to help your opponent out rather a lot too. It does have some advantages over Spiral in that you can reuse it or cast it before you have 6 mana but the fact that in even situations it helps your opponent more than you makes it far fairer.


A theme in this list is cards that offer tempo which is unsurprising as lack of tempo is one of blues weaknesses. Creature kill is another area blue struggles with and so Treachery is a supremely good card for the blue mage. Brainstorm is my final card to make the list, it is subtle and often hard to appreciate the effect it has on a game but is has lots of synergy with many different cards and mechanics and is one of only a few cards that offers the ability to put cards into your library. It sees loads of play in all kinds of deck and is just a lovely little spell. As you can see, blue not only has a great wealth of the most powerful cards in magic but it also has great diversity among its best cards. There are cards to build around, a variety of answers cards, card advantage spell, enablers, finishers and even removal. Given the vast scope of the cards combined with their consistently high power level I have rather failed to justify why each falls where it does on the list...

Top 10 White Cards

White is a colour rather like red in the cube, it has some extremely powerful cards then a sharp fall off into lots of fair redundancy, either in mass removal, big threats or efficient little critters. I find white the dullest colour and although it probably has more scope than red I find its style of cards to be less interesting and fun.  Along with red and gold white is in the minority of groups that have no cards too powerful for cube play however my list does go to 11 as Lingering Souls is more of a gold card than a white card and so I leave up to the readers discretion where they chose to place it.




11. Gideon Jura
10. Cataclysm
9.   Baneslayer Angel
8.   Armageddon/Ravages of War
7.   (Lingering Souls - as its kind of a gold card)
6.   Path to Exile
5.   Stoneforge Mystic
4.   Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3.   Land Tax
2.   Swords to Plowshares
1.   Balance







Balance is one of the most powerful cards in magic, its total effect on the game is comparable only to spells like Upheaval, Jokulhaups and Death Cloud, all of which cost significantly more mana. It is a card than may be abused and set up so as to be horrendously unfair. It is not played as often as the other top 6 or so in this list because it tends to require more building your deck around. Also without Black Lotus starts you no longer need a two mana Wrath of God against a lot of decks and if you really do you are probably safer with Terminus than Balance. While the amount of play Balance is seeing is on the decline it is still getting the love and winning unwinnable games frequently which few other cards can claim to do. Swords to Plowshares is the best removal spell and removal as we all know, is very good. With creatures getting better and more durable all the time Swords continues to grow in strength and sees play in any white deck than can get its mits on one.



Land Tax is the most powerful card advantage spell in magic, usually outdoing both Library of Alexandria and Ancestral Recall in both total cards gained and least mana spent per card. There are a number of reasons it avoided the ban including your opponents having some choices to affect the Tax and a requirement to build your deck around it to some extent, not to mention it only gets lands not action spells. This latter thing is barely a drawback however, I can think of many occasions I have lost because my Ancestral Recall failed to hit me a land. Not always playable but always included when it is! Elspeth of the four mana is still in my opinion the best walker in the cube despite it being very close, great in both agro and control with a lot of wins under her belt for both.

Stoneforge Mystic is made strong by the stupidly powerful equipment available to it in the cube. This gives it versatility to be played in combo, control and beatdown although the latter is the most common. It is card advantage and tutoring in a colour that lacks the former and has great synergy for the latter. Decks do need building with Stoneforge in mind but not to the extent of cards like Goblin Welder or even Land Tax. Path is the poor mans Swords to Plowshares, it can be better rather like Hierarch to Birds, when they have no basics or you want to trigger you Tax, but in general it is far worse. It is still the second best removal spell in the game despite this and is probably the second most played white card, although I would argue this is due to a shortfall of similar cards in white and not due to it being more powerful than Balance etc.

Lingering Souls has been performing incredibly well and has frequently cause decks to splash the appropriate 2nd colour for it alone. As a card this is where I rate it relative to the other white spells but I do see it as a gold card. Armageddon is functionally indentical to Ravages of War and so I am going to give them only one slot total unlike Path and Plow or Birds and Hierarch. Armageddon ends games, lots of decks can't cope without lands and white is great at getting a powerful board presence down early. A very scary spell that will force you to play around as soon as you know it is a possibility. Baneslayer Angel was the first in a new age of really powerful monsters, when it arrived the cube and the meta was not at all ready and it dominated most games. Other creatures, cube inclusions and the meta has now calmed this somewhat but Baneslayer still remains one of the best pure threats you can make for the mana and will tend to win any game where it is not dealt with right away. Trying to beat a Baneslyer always feels like trying to beat a dork equipped with a Jitte, your just better off killing it.

Cataclysm is an awkward mix of Balance and Armageddon. It is harder to set up and generally a bit less game ending but does still have a very powerful effect on the board for a very cheap price and has the added bonus, unlike most other white mass removal, of dealing with planeswalkers. Good old Gideon gets my final spot. He is a bit of a fall off in power from the other cards in the list but is none the less very good. An all round walker that is very robust, a bane to agro decks and a solid threat against control.

Top 10 Green Cards

Green is lacking much in the way of serious bomb cards and has nothing that competes with the power of the top cards in most other lists however to make things difficult green is highly diverse (unlike red or white) and has a huge depth with lots of redundancy and continued quality throughout the colour. It is one of the most represented colours (along with blue) and has spent the longest time as the colour with most cards in the cube. As such this list has a wide array of cards serving different purposes all of which are very very close in power. Not only is the exact placing very subjective but there are a vast number of cards that seem rather hard done by to not be on this list including Sylvan Library, Joraga Treespeaker, Birthing Pod, Rofellos, Natural Order, Wall of Roots, Lotus Cobra and many more. One omission that might surprise people is the lack of Tarmogoyf which is of course a solid monster that has dominated constructed formats, yet in cube is not broken enough nor serving of any specific role to be up there in the cream of green.




11. Scavenging Ooze
10. Strangleroot Geist
9.   Wolfir Silverheart
8.   Noble Hierarch
7.   Beast Within
6.   Overrun
5.   Survival of the Fittest
4.   Eternal Witness
3.   Bird of Paradise
2.   Garruk Wildspeaker
1.   (Fastbond - banned)






Fastbond is totally stupid and the only green card to be comparable to the top power in other colours. As it combos too well with many other cards leading to rather one sided games it was banned which leaves Garruk Wildspeaker as the best playable green card. This conclusion surprised me as he is not even the best planeswalker coming in at about number 3 on that count. He is very good, and very rounded offering a wider variety of abilities that work well in any deck and as a result I find I play him in almost every green deck I build and 100% of the heavy/mono green decks. No other green card has this wide scope of uses while retaining such a high power level and so he takes the pole position. The classic Bird of Paradise comes in at number two with it being one of the very best things you can do on turn one offering fixing, ramp, tempo and a meagre amount of board presence. It is not that Bird is so high on this list that is surprising, more so that there are four other cards between it an Noble Hierarch which is a very similar card and situationally better than the Birds. This should just highlight how close the green cards all are in this list. Witness would have been top of the green list back even when Garruk was first released. It is the increase of creature power and tempo in the cube combined with a decline in combo that has made Witness fall a little out of favour


Survival of the Fittest is not as widely playable as most of the other cards in this list but will still fit in a lot of decks as cube decks are full of one offs and green decks are pretty high on creatures. Being able to base powerful engines around a card or simply use it as recursive tutoring and card quality make it one of the big names in green. Overrun is one of the defining green cards, a little like Death Cloud for black in that you set it up and effectively end the game with it, it is what you get as reach in green creature decks and does very well at ending games promptly. Overrun is not quite as flexible as the Cloud and requires you to have a decent dork count and so I rate it less highly but it is a similar style of card that in the power levels of cube you need to employ to be able to get you there against a lot of decks. Beast Within is a fantastically versatile card with great balancing that sees play all over the place, any deck with a weakness to certain permanent types or any deck that really doesn't care about 3/3 tokens generally ends up playing it. I won a game last night that was a  bit of a stale mate using Beast Within to blow up my own land at end of turn, then I played Sundering Growth on my Mox to populate my 3/3 so I could swing in out of nowhere to take the game.


Noble Hierarch is just the other Bird of Paradise that is worse for decks with black and red hence being so much further down the list. It is generally better if you only want G, W or U mana and even sometimes when you want other colours due to the aggressive nature of exalted. Wolfir Silverheart is the green Baneslayer Angel as it costs five and represents a monumental threat on the board despite bringing no other value or utility to the table. It turns out 12 power and toughness is just too much to deal with for most decks at that kind of point in the game where 5 mana is obtainable. So far, either Wolfir eats a removal spell of the game is won by him in very short order. Strangleroot Geist is another very new card that has secured a slot in the top ten. It is cheap, great tempo and great value and crops up in almost every agro deck using green. If it were 1G I am sure this would become 100% of green agro decks. It is also popular in Recurring Nightmare and Birthing Pod decks for the synergy with undying. The final card to make the cut is Scavenging Ooze which I deeply dislike as it seems to do too much and ruins quite a lot of different decks single handedly. It is a perfectly sound agro two drop which acts a bit like a level up creature. On top of this the life gain is very powerful against other agro decks and the graveyard disruption is ruinous for a several different archetypes. It is a bit too easy to hose with the card unlike Dryad Militant which is a far better hoser in the sense that it wont ruin games. Disliking a card is no reasons however to deny it a well deserved slot in the top 10.