MTG Salvation

Here are the 2015 Cube Power Rankings for the Shards and Wedges. They are now open for group discussion.



Trivia
* Just Missed: Shadow Guildmage (grixis, 0.6), Rafiq of the Many (bant, 0.8), Lightning Angel (jeskai, 0.5), Maelstrom Wanderer (temur, 0.8)
* All first places were clear winners on their groups. Seven among those ten even had perfect scores.
* None of the 15 Shard cards to get a place in the ranking were new. From among the 15 Wedge cards, 13 came from the Tarkir block.
* 50 different shard/wedge cards received votes. The group with the biggest list was was Grixis with nine different cards, followed by Abzan's seven. Both Jund and Mardu had only the same 3 cards ranked by all voters, with the Mardu ones having the exact same order in all votes.

A full list of results, with all cards that received votes, can be found on this google spreadsheet.

Thanks to all 12 voters!
willdice, wtwlf123, Ennex, Cythare, cuttups, Incendiaryspade, Calibreto, Zetsu_Sensei, Metamind, TheRift88, artbnco, rantipole

These results just make it sad how bad some shards are. While I never want a return to alara, as I think it is one of the most boring blocks in modern to draft, and pretty boring while in standard, we really need some good shard cards.

Esper has a good reanimation target

Grixis has a crowd favorite that is mostly there because he is cool, with nothing else close.

The overlord is good, but nothing else in jund is close. (oddly some of his power is in being hard to cast as RGB all want a fatty in the 'yard)

Naya has 1 good card

Bant, while good, has one mana dork... and nothing else remotely close

Abzan is the most solid slot, with 3 actual cubable options. The other wedges aren't bad.

Quote from Incendiaryspade »

Naya has 1 good card

A lot of people don't play her, but Empyrial Archangel is a house. She's extremely tough to attack through, an amazing NO or reanimator target, hard to get rid of. A lot of games have been one with a single Empyrial Archangel on the board, or at least stalled long enough until other parts of the deck can help.

EDIT: I don't know what I'm talking about!!!!!!!!!!

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from Incendiaryspade »

Naya has 1 good card

A lot of people don't play her, but Empyrial Archangel is a house.

Empyrial Archangel is a Bant card.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from Incendiaryspade »

Naya has 1 good card

A lot of people don't play her, but Empyrial Archangel is a house.

Empyrial Archangel is a Bant card.

I can't be held liable for a coherent thought before noon, 'scuse me

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from Incendiaryspade »

Naya has 1 good card

A lot of people don't play her, but Empyrial Archangel is a house. She's extremely tough to attack through, an amazing NO or reanimator target, hard to get rid of. A lot of games have been one with a single Empyrial Archangel on the board, or at least stalled long enough until other parts of the deck can help.

EDIT: I don't know what I'm talking about!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, I did also say Bant had 1 good card, which wasn't said angel. You just quoted the wrong part.

Quote from Incendiaryspade »

Abzan is the most solid slot, with 3 actual cubable options. The other wedges aren't bad.

I think Jeskai's and Temur's top 3 are all perfectly cubable too. And frankly, I consider their 4th places (Lightning Angel and Maelstrom Wanderer) better options than Doran.

Otherwise, I agree greatly with your analysis. Thanks to KTK/FRF the wedges became deeper than the shards.

Yep, I am more than happy to have Empyrial Archangel as one of my two fatties in a ramp or reanimation deck.

The Archangel is a good Natural Order target.

I still have issues considering Noble Hierarch a Bant card. No one puts Birds of Paradise in their gold sections and no one would ever not include Noble Hieararch from their mono green deck. Hell, I'll play Noble Hierarch in most Jund decks.

That said Bant is a fairly shallow Shard. The Archangel is the best option, IMO, but I'm not a huge fan of her so I actually use my Jund and Bant slots to bolster Gruul and Selesnya. Bloodbraid Elf and Mirari's Wake are my honorary Jund and Bant cards. Also, this way I don't feel bad about wasting precious guild spots on Kird Ape and Loam Lion which are necessary to keep Aggro a threat and also strengthen Wild Nacatl's inclusion in the Naya slot.

Bant is so shallow that I've never thought of another bant card, perhaps when a good bant card gets printed I'll be fickle and consider it green.

@rufus: It's simply that there's an intrinsic quality to Hierarch that makes it better when it's in Bant colors, because of how it fixes your mana. Whereas Birds doesn't have that same stipulation. So we just sort them where the card fixes 100% of your mana, which is Bant for Hierarch, and any green deck for Birds.

I guess I just view her differently, I've always viewed her first and foremost as a Llanowar Elf that trades 1 power for the exalted keyword. This to me always made her the 2nd best mana dork for monogreen after Joraga Treespeaker and placed her probably in my top 10 for mono green cards in my cube.

I'm definitely guilty of doing that with quite a few cards. For example I have Avacyn's Pilgrim in green. That one I know is incorrect but GW is a strong guild and I see Pilgrim make green ramp decks that don't run white frequently enough that it feels fine.

Most of my hybrid cards are also in mono color sections unless their cost/effectiveness is restrictive to the point that they aren't really playable in a two color deck with one of the colors being off color (examples Nightveil Specter, Figure of Destiny, Boros Reckoner). Deathrite Shaman and Kitchen Finks are both green cards in my cube...Dryad Militant and Tattermunge Maniac are in White and Red as those colors want aggressive 1 drops more.

If I can take up a Bant slot with a card that's secretly a green card, all the better because the average card playability just went up.

I understand most of your color philosophy arguments and agree Hierarch is bant, but that argument to me just seems like, if I could run tarmogoyf, and call it bant, then I have succeeded at life.

If they printed a Tarmogoyf that gained me 1 life if I controlled a plains or island, I'd happily play that in Bant too, even though we know we'd play it without access to those colors anyways.

Is anyone actually running Realm Razer? He represents such a nutty and unique effect... I'm very tempted to give him a shot. Seems like it would be a decent PW control card and could fit in the odd midrange deck, or maybe even work as an alternate win con in a wildfire type deck (which is often a PW control variant for us). It would be hilarious to have this guy die with a Plated Geopede on the field!