11. Thawing Glaciers : honourable mention to this powerful land-drawing engine and colour fixer in one.
10. Cabal Coffers : extremely powerful mana ramp for mono-black made even better with the printing of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
9. Dryad Arbor : paired with Green Sun’s Zenith, this is almost strictly better than Llanowar Elves, which is saying something considering it has long been one of the best green creatures in the game.
8. Emeria, the Sky Ruin : very powerful though it can be a challenge to get it going.
7. Kor Haven : a near auto-include for any white decks which gets the nod over Maze of Ith b/c losing a land drop is too costly for most decks to include it.
6. Karakas : Just gets better over time as WotC prints more Griselbrands, not to mention a slick tagteam with Mangara.
5. Leechridden Swamp : Shivan Gorge has long been considered a good MP card, and Leechridden Swamp is a far better card in a much more potent colour.
4. Gaea's Cradle : Green has a lot of ways to generate stupid amounts of mana, but with Cradle it becomes almost effortless.
3. Volrath's Stronghold : Pretty well an auto-include in any deck with black mana.
1. Fetchlands : Fetches and duals together are the undisputed king of multicoloured manabases. Each one is significantly worse without the other. However, arguably the fetchlands are the more important because if you took away the duals, there are a million similar alternatives, but there is no replacement for what fetches do. Being one-half of the best colour-fixing team in magic is just the start of what they do: they also fill up your graveyard for things like threshold and goyfs, they shuffle your library making cards like jace and sylvan library a lot better, they can be abused by cards like crucible of worlds and life from the loam...their usefulness is endless. If fetches were removed from the game, the impact on the eternal cardpool would be massive.
Nice! Stoked to see the final instalment of the MP colour guides. As usual, it's so comprehensive I can think of little to add. This is all that came to mind as I read through the guide...
RESILIENT rainbow efreet - it hasn't aged well, especially w/ the M10 changes to dmg, but it is still one of the hardest creatures to kill in magic. as long as you've UU, it's coming back. maybe OP equip can make this playable again. palinchron - also hasn't aged well, also annoyingly hard to kill
PERSISTENT // THEFT gilded drake - i'd note the gilded drake / waterfront bouncer combo (or any other bounce) is still incredibly annoying reuseable theft
DESTRUCTIVE volcanic eruption - go ahead look it up. bet no one else will see the blue earthquake coming either (provided there are mountains at your table...far from guaranteed)
- you mentioned willbender and these fall in the same category ovinize psionic blast - OK this spell isn't very good but it is quite the shock when the blue mage burns you out from nowhere sleep - this may be a sorcery but it is a classic trap card. one moment you're king of the table and the next moment you're scooping your cards up.
OTHER cunning wish - the way this is worded for casual is IMO ridiculous, for 2U you can have basically any instant in the game at your fingertips whenever you need it
U/G coiling oracle - rampant growth is good and so is drawing cards trygon predator lorescale coatl - not taurean mauler big but it still can get pretty big with little effort on your part
U/R illuminate - it's not gold-bordered but there aren't many options in this rather sorry guild (in MP.) good if you have a lot of mana and looking for something to do with it.
CREATURE CURVES
2cc snapcaster mage - no doubt you are aware of this card, surprised not to see it here
4cc wonder - good rattlesnake that you want to die chameleon spirit - you mentioned elsewhere but this is prob one of the better 4cc options IMO argent sphinx - 4 flying power for 4 is already notable in any colour, a powerful metalcraft evasive ability makes this even better
5cc river kelpie - saw mentioned elsewhere, but the card drawing potential on this card is insane. someone wraths, draw 7. or better yet, play the wraths yourself. not to mention piggybacking off the graveyard abuser. the main danger here is decking yourself.
I don't know why every forum debate must always degenerate into acrimony, adversarialism, and ad hominem, only that it is for whatever reason a law of nature and which is why I usually don't bother anymore. Is it really so hard to be civil and just debate the issues like adults (not politicians)? Little old Top? Not worth getting hot over IMO.
Anyway thought I'd just toss my two cents in the ring despite better judgment...
Top will forever and always be an overrated do-nothing with massive casual appeal.
[...]
This is why you don't see Top in competitive play (again, outside of Doomsday, CounterTop and Miracle decks that are specially designed to abuse it). Even if you have a ton of shuffle effects, the card doesn't do anything worthwhile, eats a ton of mana, and costs you a card. Would not recommend.
I have a lot of respect for you Cz having read all your voluminous MP guides and enjoyed them, but I think this position is a little extreme. I don't think top needs to prove its pedigree having been played in so many top tournament decks over the years I can't even recall all of them anymore. I'm no Pro Tour Historian but even I remember how central it was back in Mirrodin-legal standard, when it seemed to find its way into every standard deck outside affinity, including both affinity foils Big Red and Tooth and Nail.
Since then it's continued on its winning streak -- I mean is Gabriel Nassif some newb? OK you might say it's only great in combo w/ counterbalance but then you look at the diversity of decks it's still being played in in legacy. Here's a quick search of all T8 decks from legacy in roughly the last year. Stoneblade and U/W miracles is playing it and that is already a tier 1 deck. That would be good enough for me there but look farther down the list and you get RUG, MUD, Junk, BUG, Nic Fit, Painter, Tezzeret Control, Stiflenought, Deadguy Ale, etc. I actually had no idea that top is seeing this much play.
And then you say you play RUG and Top is bad in it. I agree, I don't think delver has time to fiddle with toys. But then I look at the GP Indy results earlier this year and BOTH copies of RUG in the T8 have tops in their 75. I mean, did I miss the memo? OK it's for a little classic counter-top transformational sideboard action but that's pretty unexpected.
Again, not a personal fan of it...but I do respect it and know that it's good, and sometimes I will put it into a deck when I think it fits. Anyway, I know you can get carried away with staking out a position and then defending it...which is why I think you might've gone a little overboard with the hate on top.
10. Karn Liberated : double vindicate + a panic button
9. Sculpting Steel : copy artifact in every colour
8. Gauntlet of Might : undercosted ramp + crusade in a colour seriously short on good MP cards. Gauntlet of power and caged sun are more attainable and five-colour, but too fairly costed.
7. Vedalken Shackles : reuseable control magic. mainly held back by need to play with lots of islands, and often impotent against the thing that actually kills you
6. Akroma's Memorial : competitive w/ the best equipment in MP
5. Mimic Vat : the first time i saw this i was like, damn
4. Sun Droplet : this looks weak but that is actually its greatest strength. because it works on everyone's turn, now you have regenerating shields like halo. no one wants to waste a card on it, but it also acts like a life-total sized blocker, sending attackers elsewhere. get 2 out and go nuts.
3. Oblivion Stone : blue and black have been happily abusing the colour wheel since alpha. this gets the nod over nevinyrral's disk b/c it more reliably saves your butt
2. All Is Dust : one-sided wraths aren't bad, plus you can wish for it
1. Mind's Eye : gives every colour access to blue-level card draw
Very surprised about Sensei's Divining Top getting to the top of the above lists? This spell doesn't do anything better in a MP game aside from slowing it down for sure , and this is a MP best-of list. [...]
I understand what you're saying Indalecio, I've played with top (or as everyone calls it, sensei's "diving" top) and I hate playing with it, but sometimes it's a necessary evil. I don't think it's a top 10 MP card personally (so it's not on my list) but I do think it's very good.
Top is good b/c card advantage/selection is very impt in MP, just as impt as duels, and top has seen play in a lot of tournament-winning decks, including vintage/legacy. You can compare top to sylvan library, they do almost the same thing, and library was considered one of the best, if not the best green card ever for a long time. But top can be played in any colour that needs it.
The important thing with top and library is making sure you're shuffling your deck a lot, then like brainstorm, it is acting similar to ancestral, though obviously brainstorm is another magnitude better. Seeing more of your deck and getting the right cards when you need them is I think just as impt in MP as legacy. The players that do so usually end up winning the game in both formats.
Top can also be useful for other things - in the famous combo with counterbalance (which is even feasible in MP), setting up your deck for a clash, hitting metalcraft, as a sacrifice target, even using kaboom!. I've even used top to build up storm count (if you have two you can cycle them off the top of your deck for one mana per cast until you have a huge storm count.) It's an extremely versatile card, and when you're talking about a card in the same sentence as sylvan library and brainstorm, you know it's a good one. Mike Flores is one of the best deck designers of all time and top is one of his favourite cards.
That said, I usually avoid playing with top if I don't have to. The drawback is, as others have complained, it is like casting a sphere of resistance on yourself. You also have to build your deck to an extent around top by including lots of shuffle effects to make it effective. In legacy, fetchlands are the main way to do so, but in MP the pain from fetches makes them less desirable, not to mention they're quite expensive to obtain. It also just eats a ton of time, contemplating how to stack your deck and shuffling all the time, which is a little bit annoying to everyone. Also I prefer to just draw cards if possible, and cards like mind's eye are usually better.
I´ll go ahead and say that Expedition Map > SDT in that department, since the card at least does something with 100% success as for fetching a key land which can drastically improve your bets for winning the game.
I'm not sure that expedition map is very good, or better than top. No one thinks sylvan scrying is very good and it costs a whole mana less. I don't like paying 3 mana for a land when I could just include another copy in my deck and play it for free. There are exceptions of course where land tutors become useful but it's more like something you have to do rather than something that is powerful.
Now that knight of the reliquary is out there expedition map looks even more mediocre...how many million times better is knight for the same total mana investment!
Why no Black Lotus? It's clearly the most broken card of all time...in duels. But in MP, ritual effects are bad, b/c now you've set yourself up to get 2-for-1'd. And if your play was too good (and w/ lotus it is way too easy to have that happen) then you'll bring the table down on yourself. Basically lotus goes against the golden rule of multiplayer: "do nothing"
Sol Ring is ahead of the moxen b/c I agree w/ Zvi: 2 extra mana is better than 1. And it is even better in MP.
Everything from 4-down (ie unrestricted) is crap, but sometimes you do need a diamond.
will note that I don't find Blightsteel Colossus very impressive in MP...slow, brings down a ton of heat on you, doesn't protect you or benefit you, doesn't disrupt opponents, usually requires at least 2 hits to kill, dies to swords, doesn't synergize well with most decks, can't be reanimated, so on and so forth...
not that he's bad by any stretch but there are often better choices (eg emrakul)...
1. Defense of the Heart
2. Natural Order
3. Pattern of Rebirth - the top 3 speak for themselves, 3 of the best cards in multiplayer.
4. Green Sun's Zenith - makes almost any green deck better
5. Burgeoning - unbanned fastbond in MP, good on its own, degenerate in a deck built to abuse it
6. Garruk, Primal Hunter - beats down and draws fistfuls of cards, goes in almost any green deck
7. Lurking Predators - repeating natural order + card advantage. main downside is it tends to draw a lot of heat.
8. Biorhythm - a very green finisher, plays well with red
9. Sylvan Library - a very classy card
10. Hurricane - underestimated, but how many times has a green deck pulled a win out of nowhere with hurricane? reach in a colour lacking it, an answer to green's flying issues, and a green sweeper, all in one card.
1. Dryad Arbor - mana elves are the foundation all green decks are built on - there are lots of stars but GSZ makes this almost strictly better than llanowar elves.
2. Genesis - hard to imagine a green deck that isn't better with this
3. Verdant Force - the king of fatties. even with all the newfangled creatures about, hasn't aged one bit.
4. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary - more broken than black lotus in the mono-green deck
5. Forgotten Ancient - one of the best 4-drops in MP, annoying with 6
6. Spike Weaver - rock-solid defense
7. Silklash Spider - this and 6 are green's best answer to its weakness to flying.
8. Multani, Maro Sorcerer - green has endless fat but this one doesn't fold to W
9. Spearbreaker Behemoth - making all your big guys indestructible isn't bad
10. Essence Warden - don't like it but, basically a spell that says G: gain >10-20 life
Will-o was in the guide at some point but I've since removed it. At the end of the day it's a do-nothing spell that doesn't dissuade attacking you. Sure, it can regenerate, but people should still attack you and force you to use your mana and tap him. If you rely on it for early defense and people just swing in on you then you're going to get crushed. I dislike walls in general, so the only ones that I have listed are ones that will truly dissuade attackers.
Some of those suggestions are borderline I admit but thought I'd put them out there. That said I truly feel wisp is worthy of consideration. Black has a distinct lack of quality flyers in the early-midgame and for me that's what gives wisp value. Yes players "should" attack into you but a lot of the time they will look at wisp and then just attack into someone else. Unless of course they know you are the gravepact/exsanguinate/damnation packing player they can't afford to leave alone Then wisp loses value.
I'm not a big fan of defenders either but wisp is a standout among black "walls" and at a lot of tables, it WILL save you many life points. Wisp is undercosted at what it does and it doesn't fit into the modern color wheel. If I was a new player, I'd want to know about it.
Tombstalker just isn't good enough. At best it's a cheap dragon, but dragons aren't even that good in MP. Even if you're paying ~5 for it on average, I'd rather play a Bloodgift Demon any day of the week. It brings no utility or resilience to your decks; just a random beater. I also don't think that it's a top 5 creature in Legacy, nor do I believe that that's relevant. It saw some play in Team Italia and Pox decks (maybe in some others but they wouldn't be established archetypes) but neither of those decks have put out a decent finish in a long time. While they may do fine at small event scattered across the world, they're not what the majority of Legacy players would consider to be top tier decks. Still, all of that is beside the point. There are plenty of very powerful creatures that are good in some formats but not in MP. Delver, Goyf and Dark Confidant come to mind as good examples. While these creatures may be Legacy staples, neither of them are very useful in a multiplayer setting. Bob is obviously debatable, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have a playset that I used regularly, but no one here can argue the fact that you couldn't just toss Bob into every casual MP deck and expect him to do well. A lot of people play with mostly 4+ CMC spells, and that could get you in to a lot of trouble with Bob. This is why I write these guides. While Goblin Guide and Duress may be good in MOST formats, they're not good in ALL formats. Tombstalker is no different. He's better in duels than he is in MP.
Tombstalker is borderline I admit but I think at least worthy of mentioning. I said he's a top 5 black creature in legacy and I stand by that. I dont think there are 5 other black creatures in legacy seeing more play right now. He was part of a deck that was tier 1 through much of last year, BUG. He also frequently makes the team on variants of suicide black, a perennial tier 2 deck. Like you say, not always relevant but often we can look at legacy for ideas of what will work in MP, some translate better than others. Like for example The Great One which you mentioned who's surely a top10 creature in legacy when your mana curve tops out at 3 but is pretty poor in MP when you are playing with lots of expensive spells and you can't afford to have him turn over, say, decree of pain.
You don't want tombstalker in every deck but in a deck where you expect to fill up your yard, it'd be good at least to know about him. If you can't get him down by turn 4 you probably shouldn't bother, but a 5/5 flyer on 4 or even 3 is nothing to scoff at, even though we are spoiled these days. Once upon a time juzam was one of the best creatures in magic and tombstalker is effectively a juzam that flies with no drawback. Like I said, we're spoiled if that's unplayable. Personally I like to be aggressive and again, flying quality is lacking in black, so I feel that tombstalker is something worth knowing about.
Anyway just my two cents to ponder. You have an awesome resource going here and I dare say much more useful than some of the more well read multiplayer authors out there.
Wow! Thanks for this incredibly in-depth resource. I've been playing since Ice Age and I still got a ton of ideas from this article (mainly newer cards with which I have less familiarity.)
I just have a few more suggestions for the "creature curve" section:
1cc
Will-o-the-Wisp - black has few good inexpensive flyers, wisp can keep you alive for a long time and dodges a lot of the most popular removal: bolt, earthquake, terror and all its clones, deed, disk, day of judgment... For my money, one of black's best 1-drops for MP.
2cc
Gatekeeper of Malakir - edict and a body, solid value
3cc
Royal Assassin - a classic. yes it can be a lightning rod but as long as it's alive it shouts "don't attack me"
Khabal Ghoul - it's mentioned elsewhere, but should be here too I think
Rotlung Reanimator - obviously good in the cleric deck, but arguably playable even in a non-cleric deck. there are a lot of clerics in magic (253 according to gatherer) and some are very popular in MP: soul warden, mother of runes, withered wretch, etc. This can gain you a lot of bears in some metagames, and it's good even if you're just playing with one or two other clerics (eg withered wretch.) If someone (or you) wraths, everyone's board is wiped but you'll have an army of bears. I'm not 100% on this, but my understanding is if you have 2 in play and someone wraths, you get 4 bears when the dust clears.
Undead Gladiator - another solid "undying" creature that also can filter your deck and fill your graveyard. it was good enough for the pro tour.
4cc
Mirri the Cursed - 3/2 flying, first strike, haste, drinks blood: what more do you want?
Marauding Knight - white is a very popular MP colour and this has the potential to be huge in a lot of metas
8cc
Tombstalker - worth a mention seeing as it's a top5 black creature in legacy and some decks can bring it down on t3 or 4.
11. Thawing Glaciers : honourable mention to this powerful land-drawing engine and colour fixer in one.
10. Cabal Coffers : extremely powerful mana ramp for mono-black made even better with the printing of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
9. Dryad Arbor : paired with Green Sun’s Zenith, this is almost strictly better than Llanowar Elves, which is saying something considering it has long been one of the best green creatures in the game.
8. Emeria, the Sky Ruin : very powerful though it can be a challenge to get it going.
7. Kor Haven : a near auto-include for any white decks which gets the nod over Maze of Ith b/c losing a land drop is too costly for most decks to include it.
6. Karakas : Just gets better over time as WotC prints more Griselbrands, not to mention a slick tagteam with Mangara.
5. Leechridden Swamp : Shivan Gorge has long been considered a good MP card, and Leechridden Swamp is a far better card in a much more potent colour.
4. Gaea's Cradle : Green has a lot of ways to generate stupid amounts of mana, but with Cradle it becomes almost effortless.
3. Volrath's Stronghold : Pretty well an auto-include in any deck with black mana.
2. Dual Lands
1. Fetchlands : Fetches and duals together are the undisputed king of multicoloured manabases. Each one is significantly worse without the other. However, arguably the fetchlands are the more important because if you took away the duals, there are a million similar alternatives, but there is no replacement for what fetches do. Being one-half of the best colour-fixing team in magic is just the start of what they do: they also fill up your graveyard for things like threshold and goyfs, they shuffle your library making cards like jace and sylvan library a lot better, they can be abused by cards like crucible of worlds and life from the loam...their usefulness is endless. If fetches were removed from the game, the impact on the eternal cardpool would be massive.
RESILIENT
rainbow efreet - it hasn't aged well, especially w/ the M10 changes to dmg, but it is still one of the hardest creatures to kill in magic. as long as you've UU, it's coming back. maybe OP equip can make this playable again.
palinchron - also hasn't aged well, also annoyingly hard to kill
PERSISTENT // THEFT
gilded drake - i'd note the gilded drake / waterfront bouncer combo (or any other bounce) is still incredibly annoying reuseable theft
DESTRUCTIVE
volcanic eruption - go ahead look it up. bet no one else will see the blue earthquake coming either (provided there are mountains at your table...far from guaranteed)
SEMI-SCALERS
TRAP
- redirect
- misdirection
- you mentioned willbender and these fall in the same categoryovinize
psionic blast - OK this spell isn't very good but it is quite the shock when the blue mage burns you out from nowhere
sleep - this may be a sorcery but it is a classic trap card. one moment you're king of the table and the next moment you're scooping your cards up.
OTHER
cunning wish - the way this is worded for casual is IMO ridiculous, for 2U you can have basically any instant in the game at your fingertips whenever you need it
- temporal mastery
- time stretch
- good cards you stand a much better chance of casting in MP than legacyGOLD CARDS
U/B
shadowmage infiltrator - finkel is a seriously underrated card IMO, in MP basically a personal howling mine for 3 mana
- havengul lich
- wrexial the risen deep
- silent-blade oni
/mindleech massU/W
absorb - one of the better MP counter options
sovereigns of lost alara - one of the most powerful creature finishers in the game (w/ eldrazi conscription of course)
U/G
coiling oracle - rampant growth is good and so is drawing cards
trygon predator
lorescale coatl - not taurean mauler big but it still can get pretty big with little effort on your part
U/R
illuminate - it's not gold-bordered but there aren't many options in this rather sorry guild (in MP.) good if you have a lot of mana and looking for something to do with it.
CREATURE CURVES
2cc
snapcaster mage - no doubt you are aware of this card, surprised not to see it here
4cc
wonder - good rattlesnake that you want to die
chameleon spirit - you mentioned elsewhere but this is prob one of the better 4cc options IMO
argent sphinx - 4 flying power for 4 is already notable in any colour, a powerful metalcraft evasive ability makes this even better
5cc
river kelpie - saw mentioned elsewhere, but the card drawing potential on this card is insane. someone wraths, draw 7. or better yet, play the wraths yourself. not to mention piggybacking off the graveyard abuser. the main danger here is decking yourself.
Anyway thought I'd just toss my two cents in the ring despite better judgment...
I have a lot of respect for you Cz having read all your voluminous MP guides and enjoyed them, but I think this position is a little extreme. I don't think top needs to prove its pedigree having been played in so many top tournament decks over the years I can't even recall all of them anymore. I'm no Pro Tour Historian but even I remember how central it was back in Mirrodin-legal standard, when it seemed to find its way into every standard deck outside affinity, including both affinity foils Big Red and Tooth and Nail.
Since then it's continued on its winning streak -- I mean is Gabriel Nassif some newb? OK you might say it's only great in combo w/ counterbalance but then you look at the diversity of decks it's still being played in in legacy. Here's a quick search of all T8 decks from legacy in roughly the last year. Stoneblade and U/W miracles is playing it and that is already a tier 1 deck. That would be good enough for me there but look farther down the list and you get RUG, MUD, Junk, BUG, Nic Fit, Painter, Tezzeret Control, Stiflenought, Deadguy Ale, etc. I actually had no idea that top is seeing this much play.
And then you say you play RUG and Top is bad in it. I agree, I don't think delver has time to fiddle with toys. But then I look at the GP Indy results earlier this year and BOTH copies of RUG in the T8 have tops in their 75. I mean, did I miss the memo? OK it's for a little classic counter-top transformational sideboard action but that's pretty unexpected.
Again, not a personal fan of it...but I do respect it and know that it's good, and sometimes I will put it into a deck when I think it fits. Anyway, I know you can get carried away with staking out a position and then defending it...which is why I think you might've gone a little overboard with the hate on top.
9. Sculpting Steel : copy artifact in every colour
8. Gauntlet of Might : undercosted ramp + crusade in a colour seriously short on good MP cards. Gauntlet of power and caged sun are more attainable and five-colour, but too fairly costed.
7. Vedalken Shackles : reuseable control magic. mainly held back by need to play with lots of islands, and often impotent against the thing that actually kills you
6. Akroma's Memorial : competitive w/ the best equipment in MP
5. Mimic Vat : the first time i saw this i was like, damn
4. Sun Droplet : this looks weak but that is actually its greatest strength. because it works on everyone's turn, now you have regenerating shields like halo. no one wants to waste a card on it, but it also acts like a life-total sized blocker, sending attackers elsewhere. get 2 out and go nuts.
3. Oblivion Stone : blue and black have been happily abusing the colour wheel since alpha. this gets the nod over nevinyrral's disk b/c it more reliably saves your butt
2. All Is Dust : one-sided wraths aren't bad, plus you can wish for it
1. Mind's Eye : gives every colour access to blue-level card draw
I understand what you're saying Indalecio, I've played with top (or as everyone calls it, sensei's "diving" top) and I hate playing with it, but sometimes it's a necessary evil. I don't think it's a top 10 MP card personally (so it's not on my list) but I do think it's very good.
Top is good b/c card advantage/selection is very impt in MP, just as impt as duels, and top has seen play in a lot of tournament-winning decks, including vintage/legacy. You can compare top to sylvan library, they do almost the same thing, and library was considered one of the best, if not the best green card ever for a long time. But top can be played in any colour that needs it.
The important thing with top and library is making sure you're shuffling your deck a lot, then like brainstorm, it is acting similar to ancestral, though obviously brainstorm is another magnitude better. Seeing more of your deck and getting the right cards when you need them is I think just as impt in MP as legacy. The players that do so usually end up winning the game in both formats.
Top can also be useful for other things - in the famous combo with counterbalance (which is even feasible in MP), setting up your deck for a clash, hitting metalcraft, as a sacrifice target, even using kaboom!. I've even used top to build up storm count (if you have two you can cycle them off the top of your deck for one mana per cast until you have a huge storm count.) It's an extremely versatile card, and when you're talking about a card in the same sentence as sylvan library and brainstorm, you know it's a good one. Mike Flores is one of the best deck designers of all time and top is one of his favourite cards.
That said, I usually avoid playing with top if I don't have to. The drawback is, as others have complained, it is like casting a sphere of resistance on yourself. You also have to build your deck to an extent around top by including lots of shuffle effects to make it effective. In legacy, fetchlands are the main way to do so, but in MP the pain from fetches makes them less desirable, not to mention they're quite expensive to obtain. It also just eats a ton of time, contemplating how to stack your deck and shuffling all the time, which is a little bit annoying to everyone. Also I prefer to just draw cards if possible, and cards like mind's eye are usually better.
I'm not sure that expedition map is very good, or better than top. No one thinks sylvan scrying is very good and it costs a whole mana less. I don't like paying 3 mana for a land when I could just include another copy in my deck and play it for free. There are exceptions of course where land tutors become useful but it's more like something you have to do rather than something that is powerful.
Now that knight of the reliquary is out there expedition map looks even more mediocre...how many million times better is knight for the same total mana investment!
Answer is this vote series started a loooong time ago...so long ago that AVR and M13 weren't out yet.
9. Fellwar Stone
8. Darksteel Ingot
7. Mind Stone
6. Pristine Talisman
5. Worn Powerstone
4. Coldsteel Heart
3. Mana Crypt
2. Moxen
1. Sol Ring
Why no Black Lotus? It's clearly the most broken card of all time...in duels. But in MP, ritual effects are bad, b/c now you've set yourself up to get 2-for-1'd. And if your play was too good (and w/ lotus it is way too easy to have that happen) then you'll bring the table down on yourself. Basically lotus goes against the golden rule of multiplayer: "do nothing"
Sol Ring is ahead of the moxen b/c I agree w/ Zvi: 2 extra mana is better than 1. And it is even better in MP.
Everything from 4-down (ie unrestricted) is crap, but sometimes you do need a diamond.
1. Emrakul
2. Metalworker
3. Sundering Titan
4. Jens (Solemn Simulacrum)
5. Stuffy Doll
...as for the rest, ehhh can't be bothered.
will note that I don't find Blightsteel Colossus very impressive in MP...slow, brings down a ton of heat on you, doesn't protect you or benefit you, doesn't disrupt opponents, usually requires at least 2 hits to kill, dies to swords, doesn't synergize well with most decks, can't be reanimated, so on and so forth...
not that he's bad by any stretch but there are often better choices (eg emrakul)...
1. Defense of the Heart
2. Natural Order
3. Pattern of Rebirth - the top 3 speak for themselves, 3 of the best cards in multiplayer.
4. Green Sun's Zenith - makes almost any green deck better
5. Burgeoning - unbanned fastbond in MP, good on its own, degenerate in a deck built to abuse it
6. Garruk, Primal Hunter - beats down and draws fistfuls of cards, goes in almost any green deck
7. Lurking Predators - repeating natural order + card advantage. main downside is it tends to draw a lot of heat.
8. Biorhythm - a very green finisher, plays well with red
9. Sylvan Library - a very classy card
10. Hurricane - underestimated, but how many times has a green deck pulled a win out of nowhere with hurricane? reach in a colour lacking it, an answer to green's flying issues, and a green sweeper, all in one card.
2. Genesis - hard to imagine a green deck that isn't better with this
3. Verdant Force - the king of fatties. even with all the newfangled creatures about, hasn't aged one bit.
4. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary - more broken than black lotus in the mono-green deck
5. Forgotten Ancient - one of the best 4-drops in MP, annoying with 6
6. Spike Weaver - rock-solid defense
7. Silklash Spider - this and 6 are green's best answer to its weakness to flying.
8. Multani, Maro Sorcerer - green has endless fat but this one doesn't fold to W
9. Spearbreaker Behemoth - making all your big guys indestructible isn't bad
10. Essence Warden - don't like it but, basically a spell that says G: gain >10-20 life
2. Blood moon
3. Wheel of fortune
4. Blasphemous act
5. Rolling earthquake
6. Disaster radius
7. Comet storm
8. Pulse of the forge
9. Burning wish
10. Insurrection
Some of those suggestions are borderline I admit but thought I'd put them out there. That said I truly feel wisp is worthy of consideration. Black has a distinct lack of quality flyers in the early-midgame and for me that's what gives wisp value. Yes players "should" attack into you but a lot of the time they will look at wisp and then just attack into someone else. Unless of course they know you are the gravepact/exsanguinate/damnation packing player they can't afford to leave alone Then wisp loses value.
I'm not a big fan of defenders either but wisp is a standout among black "walls" and at a lot of tables, it WILL save you many life points. Wisp is undercosted at what it does and it doesn't fit into the modern color wheel. If I was a new player, I'd want to know about it.
Tombstalker is borderline I admit but I think at least worthy of mentioning. I said he's a top 5 black creature in legacy and I stand by that. I dont think there are 5 other black creatures in legacy seeing more play right now. He was part of a deck that was tier 1 through much of last year, BUG. He also frequently makes the team on variants of suicide black, a perennial tier 2 deck. Like you say, not always relevant but often we can look at legacy for ideas of what will work in MP, some translate better than others. Like for example The Great One which you mentioned who's surely a top10 creature in legacy when your mana curve tops out at 3 but is pretty poor in MP when you are playing with lots of expensive spells and you can't afford to have him turn over, say, decree of pain.
You don't want tombstalker in every deck but in a deck where you expect to fill up your yard, it'd be good at least to know about him. If you can't get him down by turn 4 you probably shouldn't bother, but a 5/5 flyer on 4 or even 3 is nothing to scoff at, even though we are spoiled these days. Once upon a time juzam was one of the best creatures in magic and tombstalker is effectively a juzam that flies with no drawback. Like I said, we're spoiled if that's unplayable. Personally I like to be aggressive and again, flying quality is lacking in black, so I feel that tombstalker is something worth knowing about.
Anyway just my two cents to ponder. You have an awesome resource going here and I dare say much more useful than some of the more well read multiplayer authors out there.
I just have a few more suggestions for the "creature curve" section:
1cc
Will-o-the-Wisp - black has few good inexpensive flyers, wisp can keep you alive for a long time and dodges a lot of the most popular removal: bolt, earthquake, terror and all its clones, deed, disk, day of judgment... For my money, one of black's best 1-drops for MP.
2cc
Gatekeeper of Malakir - edict and a body, solid value
3cc
Royal Assassin - a classic. yes it can be a lightning rod but as long as it's alive it shouts "don't attack me"
Khabal Ghoul - it's mentioned elsewhere, but should be here too I think
Rotlung Reanimator - obviously good in the cleric deck, but arguably playable even in a non-cleric deck. there are a lot of clerics in magic (253 according to gatherer) and some are very popular in MP: soul warden, mother of runes, withered wretch, etc. This can gain you a lot of bears in some metagames, and it's good even if you're just playing with one or two other clerics (eg withered wretch.) If someone (or you) wraths, everyone's board is wiped but you'll have an army of bears. I'm not 100% on this, but my understanding is if you have 2 in play and someone wraths, you get 4 bears when the dust clears.
Undead Gladiator - another solid "undying" creature that also can filter your deck and fill your graveyard. it was good enough for the pro tour.
4cc
Mirri the Cursed - 3/2 flying, first strike, haste, drinks blood: what more do you want?
Marauding Knight - white is a very popular MP colour and this has the potential to be huge in a lot of metas
8cc
Tombstalker - worth a mention seeing as it's a top5 black creature in legacy and some decks can bring it down on t3 or 4.