MTG Salvation

The community has spoken! Here are the results of this year's Power Rankings voting for BLUE:


A full list of results, with all cards that received votes and the number of lists a card appeared on, can be found on this Google spreadsheet.

A couple quick reminders. No commentary in the voting threads. It can cause undue influence and it screws up my data compilation when your comments reference cardnames. Please pay attention to what cards can't be voted upon (Like Uncards). Also, number your votes please. I think there were only 1 or 2 entries missing them this time so it was much better.

Thanks to all 24 voters!

Trivia, Useless Ramblings, and Facts (TURF)

All the Choices - Blue continues the trend of having more different cards voted upon despite less voters. This year we had 56 different cards among 24 voters. (In 2016 it was 46, among 29 voters). The new voting criteria and increased card options continues to expand the number of cards we see named in this project.

Returning Champions - To no one's surprise Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are still #1 and #2. Mana Drain fell to 5th (3rd in 2016). Tinker and Jace, the Mind Sculptor moved to 3rd and 4th respectively.

Arrivals and Departures - Compared to 2016 the following cards are new to the top 20. Tolarian Academy (#19) (Was 23rd in 2016). Vedalken Shackles fell to 25th (#18 in 2016, #10 in 2015). Otherwise 19 of the top 20 cards are exactly the same but with some variety in slots.

Big Movers- Consecrated Sphinx moved from 20th in 2016 to 12th! Glen Elendra Archmage fell from 16th in 2016 to 20th now.

Just Missed Counterspell (#21), Force of Will (#22), Fact or Fiction (#23).

Stay tuned for the BLACK voting thread which should be up tomorrow or Monday morning.

Looks pretty close to me. Thanks again for doing this!

I agree. Control Magic over Bribery feels wrong to me although I know many people voted exactly that way. Control magic costs 1 less and does take from the opponents board state while adding to yours, but Control Magic's value depends on the creatures your opponent has played, you get no ETB value, and it can be interacted with (Destroyed). Bribery takes the best or most needed creature from your opponent's deck and puts it directly onto the battlefield and in most matchups it gets at bare minimum a meaningful 5CC creature (some very focused aggro decks stop at 4CC creatures), but just as often you are taking Elesh Norn, Griselbrand, or a big ramp target and proceeding to win the game with their threat and they can't interact with the control effect. Your almost always getting some major value even if they have the spot removal which they have to use on their own threat. I've won SO many more games off of Bribery compared to control magic.

A reasonable list. Excluding cards too powerful for my cube, the highest ranking card that I didn't put on my list was Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. I certainly like the card, but I don't think it's that great. Surprised there wasn't more love for Sower of Temptation and Force of Will. I think cubers overrate FoW sometimes, but it's still quite good IMO.

The lack of Timetwister baffles me when I think it's a top 5 card in blue. Crazy it didn't make the cut at all. Other than that the list looks solid. Thanks Waltz!

Quote from NotScottMescudi »

The lack of Timetwister baffles me when I think it's a top 5 card in blue. Crazy it didn't make the cut at all. Other than that the list looks solid. Thanks Waltz!

I definitly should have put timetwister on my list, I sort of blanked on it.

However, it's not a big surprise to me that it's not on the top 20. It's a card that is night and day in power depending on the cube that it's in. These rankings suffer from different people having different cubes, and in many cubes, timetwister is barely playable.

A 360 powered is literally it's highest upside format.

I like Timetwister in the Leovold, Emissary of Trest deck, maybe with a Fastbond to go with it, but in general, I don't include Timetwister in my blue decks. Maybe I'm underrating it, but I don't think of it as one of Blue's top 20. I'd also be tempted to vote Time Spiral over Timetwister.

I'm shocked there were almost no votes for Time Spiral. Although I didn't see it in time to vote so I blame myself.

I think Time Spiral is bonkers is a lot of decks. I definitely think it's better than Timetwister, by a good amount.

To my mind it's also significantly better than many cards that made the top 20, including Control Magic.

This list has me considering swapping Academy Ruins for Shelldock Isle. Seems like the latter has been a lot more successful for people on the whole and Academy Ruins hasn't made waves for me and Tolarian Academy is a bit too costly relative to its expected impact on my cube -- that is, I think it would be better than Academy Ruins, but Isle would be nearly as good or just as good of an improvement for 40 dollars less.

Quote from BlackWaltz3 »

This list has me considering swapping Academy Ruins for Shelldock Isle. Seems like the latter has been a lot more successful for people on the whole and Academy Ruins hasn't made waves for me and Tolarian Academy is a bit too costly relative to its expected impact on my cube -- that is, I think it would be better than Academy Ruins, but Isle would be nearly as good or just as good of an improvement for 40 dollars less.

Shelldock Isle is amazing. I think it's on par with Tolarian Academy, and miles above Academy Ruins.

We've played Shelldock, and we didn't like it at all. Card almost never triggers outside of control mirrors, which makes it way to rare to be playable. Maybe our format was just to fast, but we didn't get any millage out of it.

like Twister more that Spiral since you can splash for Twister in your aggro decks, but then again Spiral can be used in control sometimes to good effect. I should have voted Time Spiral a lot higher.

I don't have as much experience in powered cubes as others here, so I've been sitting on my hands for this whole project. But here's my top 20 under-appreciated blue cards from my cube:

1: Rising Waters
2: Flood
3: Puca's Mischief
4: Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
5: Archaeomancer
6: Hedron Crab
7: Slow Motion
8: Rite of Replication
9: Inkwell Leviathan
10: Vizier of Tumbling Sands
11: Exhaustion
12: Thieving Magpie
13: Eldrazi Skyspawner
14: Dominating Licid
15: Tideforce Elemental
16: Invisible Stalker
17: Dreamscape Artist
18: Fog Bank
19: Realmwright
20: Thought Scour

Quote from steve_man »

Shelldock Isle is a decent supplement to Cheaty Face / Channel type strategies, especially if you support Eldrazi. It's nothing special though, IMO. It's currently my 3rd favorite blue utility land after Tolarian Academy and Faerie Conclave. I don't think it's on the same level as Academy though, and certainly not top 20 blue material in my book.

The overall list is agreeable for the most part. I pretty much divided the blue cards into 3 territories:

- Obviously broken
- Build around
- Value spell

The one value spell that I felt is criminally under-represented is Fact or Fiction, especially over Consecrated Sphinx / Dig Through Time. Fact or Fiction is cheap, splashable, fuels my graveyard, and is very easy to ramp up to early game (especially in powered cubes).

Stuff like Ponder and Remand go into basically any blue deck I ever build, regardless of strategy and I pick them highly and early for that reason. Versatile cards are really high in terms of pick order, and that isn't reflected in this list all that well. Both of those cards are way higher pick than something like Dig Through Time, so they're pretty criminally underrated too.

I would take Dig over both of those cards P1P1. But everybody evaluates pick order differently. I'm far less likely to take a "safe" card that has a high maindeck % than I am to take a card that has a chance of being one of the best cards in my deck if I can build around it. The early parts of my drafts are governed by their ceiling, and the later picks are where I scoop up safer cards in colors I identify to be open. My picks are based on Truly Broken > Build-Around > High MD% and cards like Ponder and Remand fall solidly into that last camp.

I also think Shelldock Isle is highly overrated. I think it's a mediocre cube card at best.

Surprising no one, I agree with everything wtwlf said in the post above. I love Ponder and friends, but I don't pick them that highly and would certainly take Dig over them. FoF is great and it was one of the last 2-3 cards I cut from my top 20.

Cheers,
rant

I think Shelldock is the best blue land and a great cube card.

I'm happy to cube Shelldock because it makes decks without really costing a card slot; very few blue decks wouldn't trade a normal Island for it. But there are plenty of games where it shows up but has absolutely no impact, either because its condition is never reached or because it doesn't hit anything impactful enough to tuck. I definitely prefer Tolarian Academy and Academy Ruins to it.

As for Timetwister/Time Spiral, I don't know about the rest of you but my blue cube decks almost always have more cards in hand than my opponents'. Blue is not lacking for ways to generate card advantage and benefits from patient play. Are there shells where I want to wheel aggressively? Sure. But it doesn't come up often enough for me to justify the slot. Clearing my graveyard is also a negative. Even with Time Spiral giving me first chance at using what I draw, I've usually felt like I'm giving more to my opponent than I'm getting when playing these cards.

Fact or Fiction should be way higher though. I'd P1P1 it over a bunch of the cards that made the list.

Time spiral is harder to justify, but Timetwister is just great. I'll splash for it in any aggro or ramp deck I build. Off color Wheel of Fortune is still a Wheel of Fortune, and goes into any deck that can dump its hand quickly.

Now Wheel of Fortune is a card I rank quite highly, since it's both a graveyard enabler and it's in a color that's more likely to use it for its value in an aggressive shell.

I like Spiral and Twister a lot, but they're usually only cards I take once I'm sure I'm in a deck that wants them.

Time Spiral/Twister have also been narrow in my experience. FoF is too slow to be great nowadays. When I started the cube it'd definitely be a top 20 card I'd splash for. Now it is a card I'm siding out in many matchups, and consequently doesn't always make the main deck.