[Official]
The Top 50 List (Indefinite Hiatus)
Poll: Which WHITE CREATURE should be removed from the list?
Ended Feb 16, 2019
Poll: Which BLACK CREATURES should be removed from the list? (Pick 4)
Ended Feb 16, 2019
Poll: Which GREEN NONCREATURE should be removed from the list?
Ended Feb 16, 2019
Poll: Which COLORLESS NONCREATURE should be removed from the list?
Ended Feb 16, 2019
Nominate Kataki, War's Wage.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
URXSurf's Up, Mizz Magnus!XRU
URGWKynaios and Tiro's Multiplayer MenagerieWGRU
There was a three way tie for the third spot on last weeks poll, so we'll just be voting for two slots this time around.
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
Adjustments to the list!
CUTS:
ADDS:
We are taking nominations this week for white non-creatures so please get your nominations / supports in.
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
Nominate Silence. Forces permission, disrupts combos, thwarts Doomsday/Ad Nauseam/etc. kills, hoses Storm strategies, protects your own non-interactive win conditions, etc.
FWIW I'm really sad that I can't also nominate Grasp of Fate. Card is absurd. Hell, it makes Return to Dust look like a freaking joke.
Why is Replenish on the list? What deck plays that card other than Pillow-Fort Prison? Don't get me wrong, I love Replenish as much as everyone else, but it's not a freaking staple by any metric. People seriously need to vote some of that garbage off to make room for legitimate bombs. Silence has a bonkers effect that no other card in the game possesses. Stony Silence can frequently take a player out of the game entirely. Grasp of Fate is the bomby-est Oblivion Ring ever conceived.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
One for Grasp of Fate from me too.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
Aura based voltron and enchantress want Replenish. Silence can fog a spell based win con or eat a counterspell to protect other important cards, but there are other cards that serve both functions better. You could at least choose Orim's Chant instead because it can stop Overrun/Kikki kills in addition to the infinite spell combos.
As long as we're calling out the overrated junk Path to Exile is a worse Swords to Plowshares and StP misses the cut more often than not.
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
I have been here more and more since Unexpectedly Absent got printed. I like cheap removal but sometimes being able to only target creatures is not good enough. I more or less have not run Path to Exile since Unexpectedly Absent was printed.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
Yes, a small number of extremely niche + specific decks that want it. The overwhelming majority don't. Take a look at every White deck posted in the first 3 pages and see how many run Replenish. It's probably close to 0.
I vehemently disagree with this opinion. Name me any other card in this game that says "your opponents can't interact with this turn" for 1 mana. It doesn't exist. The fact that you're arguing that there are cards that serve both functions better is ridiculous. The fact that you hold Orim's Chant in higher regard is absurd. One player? Yeah, no, sorry, it's not on the same Universe. When I'm going for my Hermit Druid win (or whatever) one player doesn't cut it. If there's multiple Blue mages I don't want to flip a coin and bet on a 50/50 or 1/3 that I'll target the right one. I don't want to guess who's holding a Nature's Claim/Swan Song/Snuff Out/Force of Will because it's usually all of them. I'm going to cast my Silence and protect it with my Pact of Negation/Swan Song/Flusterstorm/Force of Will because as soon as it goes off I win. I get to jam my combo unimpeded and it doesn't matter who's holding what nor how much of it that they have. Orim's Chant doesn't do that. You can Chant a Blue Mage only to get Nature's Claimed or Snuff Outed right out the game. It happens all the time. You cannot possibly argue that the targeted spell is strictly better because it's objectively not. Silence does something that no other card in the game does and it's played in 100% of competitive combo decks as a result. If you want to pose this question over at the cEDH subreddit I'm all for it. I'll let you make the post and I'll chime in with my defense for Silence and we'll see what the public thinks. Orim's Chant is so many orders of magnitude weaker that it's not even a relevant discussion topic in the competitive communities.
Both of those cards have votes from me so needless to say I agree with you.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
To turn this argument around a bit, how many white decks in the first 3 pages run Silence?
Leaving aside the awkward issue of competitive EDH, the biggest problem Silence illustrates is that you have to be playing combo, in a very specific environment, before it gains value as a card slot. Most people don't, so it is not one of the best cards in EDH.
For the record, I also think Replenish is narrow, just that Silence is narrower
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
Non-interactive combo kills are the most competitive EDH win conditions by an order of magnitude. This is because they're the fastest, most reliable ways of closing games out while simultaneously limiting opposing interaction to a bare minimum. This makes Silence a must-have staple for the vast majority of White decks trying to maximize their overall win %. From Zur to Karador to Sharuum to any number of 5CC builds the overwhelming majority are going to field Silence as a hyper-competitive 1 CMC interaction spell. It's easily one of the best White cards in EDH because it's ubiquitously played in the best versions of the best decks. The "specific environment" that you're referring to is "people trying to win games." Hell, it's even great against "people trying to lose games" because even if no one has anything worth Silenceing the peace of mind is always relevant since it removes any fear or doubt from the equation. You can jam your Hermit Druid, Ad Nauseam, Boonweaver Giant, Tooth and Nail, whatever without having to think twice about it. Even if you're not on combo, doesn't matter. Stax decks will still always play it to help push through their Armageddons and whatnot. Hokori, Dust Drinker doesn't like seeing its Ravages of War pegged by a Swan Song so it's always going to field Silence as a defensive measure. Brago same thing. You want something to protect him the turn that you cast him to ensure that you can equip him with Lightning Greaves or whatever. I can't think of many reasonable White decks (be it Stax/Control/Combo/etc.) that wouldn't want a Silence in its 99. It's White single strongest answer to Blue-based permission and it utterly demolishes Black/Red/Green spot removal by removing them from the equation entirely. There's virtually no counter-play to Silence outside of permission so if they don't have it then you get to combo off/force your spell through against any number of players regardless of what they're collectively holding. In that sense it does something that no other card in the game can replicate and all for the low cost of 1 mana. It's a ridiculous Magic card that easily earns "staple" status in the context of someone trying to plot out the color's key multiplayer offerings. There's ton of removal in EDH. There's tons of finishers in EDH. There's tons of tutors in EDH. There's ton of MLD in EDH. There's only 1 Silence in EDH.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Nominate disenchant - white doesn't get natures claim or things like rec sage this cards always been solid in just about anything
Support grasp of fate
Damia http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=410191
DDFT Legacyhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=505247
Domain Zoo http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10212429#post10212429
The lists clearly aren't designed with functional utility in mind or it wouldn't waste slots on things like Imperial Seal and Timetwister. Do people actually need to be told to play the Power 9? What % of the playerbase drops $800.00+ on singletons? Moreover, the fact that the Black list wastes multiple entries on 1 mana spells that "top" a card from your library and cost 2 life is proof enough that people care way more about form than function. Moat? Seal? Twister? Those are your go-tos for people who're trying to break in to EDH? Stop kidding yourself. These lists are laughable if their goal is to help newer players discern what their most relevant options are because only an insignificant fraction of them can actually afford the cards being lauded as "staples." Moreover, the ones that can don't need to be told what to play and why because when you're literally spending tens of thousands of dollars on a hobby then you probably know a thing or two about it. Nothing about these lists supports your argument that they're designed to be relevant for newer and/or more casual players.
I've asked this question before and I'll ask it again. What is the probability that having Timetwister on that list has served a practical, functional purpose for someone building an EDH deck? It's 0%. No one has looked at that entry and gone "oh, hey, time to pick up that card from my deck!" It serves no practical functionality whatsoever. Until worthless entries such as those are removed I refuse to acknowledge these lists as being "practical, helpful tools for casual players." Call it whatever you want but don't come here and argue that telling people to pick up Timetwister and Imperial Seal legitimately helps them. We all know that it doesn't.
If you don't agree with my position, riddle me this. Let's pretend that the best Blue card not currently being showcased is Engulf the Shore. Which card has the most functional utility and does the most aggregate "good" if it's listed? That is, what % of decks are directly improved as a result of seeing Engulf the Shore as opposed to Timetwister? Hundreds? Thousands? If the goal of these lists is to help people isn't it clear-cut as to which card should be listed? Is there any compelling argument to showcase Timetwister? I don't give a duck about technicalities. Technicalities don't have functional utility. You go to the Black list and you lop Imperial Seal together with Vampiric Tutor so that you can add Necrologia to the list. Does that hurt anyone? Does that help anyone? Hint: no, yes. There's so much more that the advisers could be doing to make these lists practical and functional for casual players. Until they cast aside their draconian loyalty to technicalities and embrace functional utility these lists will never be designed with the best interests of casual players.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
"Q: Imperial Recruiter and Mana Drain are so expensive! Why are they on here?
A: Because this list does not care about budget. This list is comprised of the best cards in a section and thus price should not be a factor in voting and selection. "
Now I can see how you might get confused with that word "best". It does not mean "in the best decks" it means this card is so good you could throw it in almost any edh deck and it would be great and that is very true for time tiwster. I used to play at a shop where players used ancestral recall and Roc Egg in the same deck and no one cared that he used recall because his deck killed you with cards like Roc Egg. If recall was leagal it would make the list because its really good in any list. Keep in mind this is a player made voting system there is no greater authority its all based on peoples votes. If everyone decide they wanted to have Roc Egg on the list to troll everyone it would be there. There are many more cards that are completely unplayable in the kind of meta you describe but are great in casual 10+ turn meta environments represented here. I personally only vote for cards i would give a blanket recommendation too IE Crucible of worlds requires a fetchbase but i can give it blanket recommendation because if im not looking at budget the card is generally very good.
Look at the first criteria
"Q: What makes _________ a good enough card to be on the list?
A: We are looking for all around usefulness of cards. If a card is an amazing combo piece in a niche style of deck or way then it usually isn't something we want to consider. We want cards that belong in a large variety of decks. The cards that should make this list up should be very versatile and useful to a lot of decks. "
Perhaps silence indeed does meet this criteria but " this should be on here because its played in all the white decks I consider to be tier one decks" is not a argument that supports this, a better argument would be " silence is good in any deck especially combo decks because X Y Z"
This is a community thread a large part of it is not competitive if you really want to get silence or any other card on the list I don't think describing a meta game more than half the players will never see is the way to go about it. I personally do believe this resource is best used to help new players as veterans don't really need to look at a list to know what cards are good.
Damia http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=410191
DDFT Legacyhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=505247
Domain Zoo http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10212429#post10212429
There used to be law stating that you couldn't beat your wife with a stick thicker than your thumb (now you know where the phrase "rule of thumb" stems from). That isn't a God-issued Commandment that we're obligated to follow; it's an arbitrary rule that someone conceived a long time ago. We're not contractually obligated to adhere to it for the rest of our lives.
I'm not confused. Silence is a card that I add to nearly 100% of my White decks with the goal of bolstering my overall win %. If that doesn't qualify as one of White's "best" offerings then I don't know what does.
3 mana each opponent draws 7 cards? That's good in any deck? That's a card that will significantly improve your win % in casual metas? Yeah, no, sorry. I can guarantee you that your casual deck would win more games on average if your removed your group-hug nonsense and focused on selfish draw engines such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Consecrated Sphinx, Recurring Insight, etc. People don't realize just how bad Wheels are in the context of fair decks. When you're not doing anything unfair with your newly acquired resources then all you're doing is prolonging the game by digging everyone into action. What logical, rational or mathematical argument can you provide to indicate that spending resources in order to have each player draw up to 7 cards directly benefits you more than the rest of the field (in the context of a casual meta)? How can you possibly argue that you routinely figure to be the primary beneficiary of that sequence? Because you got to "time" the effect? Nope, sorry, that's not how Magic works. When you're facing down up-to 21 new cards (or more) then there's no way that you're routinely surging ahead of the pack if you're playing a "fair" game of Magic. You're the only one who "starts their turn" down 3 mana so presumably you're almost always going to be the last one to extract maximum value from their cards. That's why Wheels will virtually never boast a higher win % than 1/N (where N is the number of players) since all other things being equal everyone has the same number of cards and you're the only one who can't spend all of their mana to exploit them. If you have a broken deck that does broken things with Wheels, sure, the cards are great. If you're slamming Nessian Coursers into Grizzly Bears then I fail to see how you're significantly advancing your position.
Groups of people have been shown to make better decisions that uniformed individuals but worse decisions than experts. They also make riskier decisions given that there's a sense of diffused responsibility when decisions are made as a team. After all, no one person can be held accountable if it was made as a consensus. As such leaving everything to the masses will virtually never produce an optimal decision that an informed individual could feel confident in. They're still better than the best guess of a random schmuck who doesn't know much about the subject but they couldn't compete with one made by a veteran who's poured tens of thousands of hours into their craft.
I clearly explained why the card is so ubiquitously powerful. I stated on numerous occasions that it's a 1 CMC interaction spell with a unique and powerful effect that cannot be replicated by any other card for the same amount of mana.
You don't think that it's hypocritical for people who aren't playing the game "competitively" to vote on the "top" cards. Isn't this thread (by definition) geared towards competitive attitudes? If your criteria for what makes a "top" card isn't "cards that win multiplayer games of Magic" then what incentive does anyone have to listen to you? Why should a casual opinion hold the same weight as a competitive opinion in the context of a list seeking to discern the "top" cards in a given format?
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
The size of the rift is up for debate, but there's no denying there is a rift between casual and competitve edh. CEDH communities on the internet do exist, like the subreddit r/competitiveedh. Trying to operate from a competitive mindset in any more casual edh forum seems pretty pointless. You can pick your battles! If you don't want to deal with the hypocrisy and absurdity that's typical of EDH players, you can just walk away.
Not that I want you to stop posting or anything, but I'm not sure what you're trying to gain or accomplish here and I don't want you to beat your head against a wall.
Knowledge is power, money is power, time is money, you are actually gaining time by reading my posts
Click here and check out my Formerly Pauper Cube.
check out my EDH and Pauper EDH decks here
I will support Disenchant and Stony Silence.
I never said that I didn't want to have to deal with anyone's hypocrisy. I haven't been posting on these forums for over a decade because it's arduous chore that upsets me. I do what I do because I enjoy it.
As someone who's been debating for most of his adult life I've learned a long time ago that your goal should never be to convince your opponent of anything. After all, they're rarely defending their ideas and claims using logical and/or rational arguments and virtually none will ever back down even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their position. They'd much rather stick their head in the sand than concede the point. When I make those kinds of posts my goal isn't to convince random internet stranger #1853 that Silence is a great Magic card. I'm trying to raise awareness for key concerns/issues that I want the community as a whole to reflect on. I legitimately think that it's moronic to have Timetwister on a list of top playables when only an arbitrarily small fraction of the playerbase can afford one. I don't care if someone made a "rule" saying that we have to ignore cost. That's no different than saying "yeah sorry we'd love to abolish slavery but you see this rule here says blah blah blah." We, as a society, are allowed to grow and evolve beyond our previous limits. We can abolish ridiculous rules and laws that no longer adhere to our societal values. I want these lists to, above all else, have functional value for real-world EDH deckbuilders. Others probably don't and that's fine. That being said it's impossible for me to know the degree to which the community is split until I raise these kinds of points. After all, most people are happy enough to maintain the status quo. If it turns out that 95% of you don't care about the functional utility of these lists that's fine. I can live with being a minority. People are generally stubborn and highly resistant to change so it doesn't surprise that so few people are bothered by the fact that these lists contain cards that costs thousands of dollars that only an insignificant fraction of deckbuilders can afford. In their mind they think "Timetwister = Power 9 = Good" and nothing else matters to them. That mindset seems wildly outdated and overly-simplistic and I personally think that it's time that we all evolved our thinking to match real-world societal values. We, as a society, value more than raw power. To argue that it's the only thing that matters is to argue against our observable reality. To all the people who vote for Timetwister, is that a card that you own? Is that a card in your EDH decks? Have you ever played with a physical copy in a live setting? Is this actually a card that you've acquired because of its EDH value? Is that a card that you, as member of the EDH community, purchases for their Blue decks? No? Why the Hell not? Probably because it costs 800 bucks. That matters to you. That matters to almost everyone else too.
If you want to know what I'm trying to accomplish look no further than my sig. The reason why I make threads like these is because I like helping people build multiplayer Magic decks and want to do everything in my power to help them out. Real-world people don't put Timetwister in their EDH decks. Anyone with a minuscule fraction of critical thinking prowess can probably ascertain as to why that is so I don't understand why I have to sit here and spell it out time and time again. You people are, presumably, trying to build a list of staples that people can blindly jam in their decks right? If so I'm asking everyone in this community what they're accomplishing by keeping Timetwister on that list. Everyone here knows that you can't start an EDH deck with Moat or Imperial Seal or Timetwister because real-world people have real-world budgets. I couldn't care less what some arbitrary rules says because I'd rather help people than adhere to archaic rules that don't have any functional value. If you want to help people, actually help people, don't pat yourself on the back just because you accomplished the bare-minimum of what was asked of you. You are all failing. You've built a list a staples that people can't actually add to their decks. I don't have to pretend like we play this game in a vacuum because we don't. It's a game played by real people with real budgets. Want to know something else? It doesn't matter if that fact makes your job more difficult. You don't get to pretend that we live in a Utopian society where cost isn't a relevant factor because that's not an accurate representative of our observable reality. Your efforts are failing to produce a relevant deliverable and many of you need to grow, evolve and adapt your way of thinking about this problem until you're capable of creating something of significance. Something of value, real-world value. Enough with this blind obedience to antiquated values, it's high time that we started matching our actions with our goals.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I'm gonna back this. I understand the rules and all, but it sure doesn't foster the widest pool of new players to come and play. Seeing some of the top cards with triple digit price tags really pushes players away from the game. I think it'd evolve even better conversations and debates here because it removes the obvious. At this point, it seems like only those with these actual cards can even participate in the debate. I think it's safe to say the % of decklists on the site that can afford duals or fetch or what have you is a lot lower than those who can't- and I'd like to think our community should be more geared to helping them. A lot of these cards need some form of list like "goes without saying"
URXSurf's Up, Mizz Magnus!XRU
URGWKynaios and Tiro's Multiplayer MenagerieWGRU
I'm gonna back this argument as well. Keep going towards more competitive mindset and this thread / forum devolves into r/competitiveEDH : Lack of original posts and douchebag responses.
I voted for Moat to be removed from the list.
Marath, Will of the Wild
Friendly Kess Twin Combo
Tatyova - Sir Bounce A Lot
Gonti's Luxury Pie
Prime (Eldrazi) Speaker Zegana (Retired)
This entire list is a resource for those who are starting to build their fundamentals. They don't have the web of knowledge on the effective tools of multiplayer that a lot of us have spent years to acquire.
Naming things that they are very likely unable to ever acquire is a disservice to the resource.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.