Card/Deck Your top 5 cards of all time!

[Seeker]

some artifact deck and elves deck stuff from 2010's MTGO 100 card singleton

aww, I didn't even think about fake formats and now I have to add one

HONORARY MENTION NUMBER SIX OF MY LIST


When you have to build your entire deck around the payoff, it better be good. And sure, Boomerang wasn't an instant, but they only let you play four Eye of Nowhere, and really, that being a totally accurate sentence about that Standard and later the very brief "MTGO Core Set Only Constructed"* format is everything you need to know.

Magnivore was not the best deck, but it's the exact kind of high I want to chase with every cube build-around. Get this Umori, the Collector nonsense outta here. Hoop has to be jumpable (Lurrus of the Dream-Den) and the power level worth it (and uh... Lurrus of the Dream-Den)

*No, I didn't get to play Eye of Nowhere there. I also didn't know about Ant Queen + Opposition until I had my ass handed to me playing for t8, sb Pyroclasm was not even close to good enough. Stupid 7th edition.

 

[LadyMapi]

This card was the first thing I ever built a deck around! Target yourself, and you probably get instant threshold, enabling werebear, nimble mongoose, and a host of other Odyssey block beaters!

You see, this is way more rational than the first time I built a deck with it, which was a weird Pauper combo deck focused on one-shotting people with Harvest Pyre + Ragged Veins. In that specific context, Book Burning targeting yourself is just a Sorcery that deals 7 damage to villain, it's just villain's choice whether or not they take that damage now or later.

Man I love how stupidly jank this game is sometimes.

 

[Seeker]

I do love accidentally hitting "post" as I was still formatting my response......but of all people who would catch me with Mana Tithe placeholders everywhere, I'm glad it was you.

I know this post was weeks ago, but I just thought of the phrase "Being John ManaTithe" and I really wanted you to know about it

"Mana Tithe?" "Mana Tithe Mana Tithe Mana Tithe."

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

Spoiler: Number One

Sometime in the futuristic year 2000, I was on a trip to Florida with my dad, where we visited the Salvador Dali museum and my grandfather's condo. On the way home, we stopped at a family friend's house, and I found my first Magic cards, which belonged to the older boys (complete strangers to me) who lived there. Immediately, I fell under their spell. The cards were a mishmash of 5th and 6th edition, featuring beautiful classics like Sabretooth Tiger, Krovikan Sorcerer, and Greater Werewolf. But Fireball was the one for me. This was the card that essentially explained the entire game. Every card is a spellbook, and you're some kind of cross between a wizard in his library and a king lording over his lands. The other player is your rival, and must be destroyed. I struggled my way through the tiny paper rulebook (I believe the one included in the 5th-edition starter decks) and made all the essential mistakes of the brand-new Magic player: tapping creatures to block, leaving lands tapped after summoning a creature, etc. My younger brother, a literal child, learned it all alongside me, and together we puzzled our way through Magic, unaware of the concept of "the stack," which had only just been invented. When it was time to leave, I begged the older kids to let me keep their cards, and they let me take them. They must have seen something in my eyes.

Fireball is just perfect. You pour all your magical energy into this thing, and the more energy you pour in, the more things you can blow up. That mysterious X in the mana cost teaches a lot of lessons about the game, and you learn more as you decipher the bizarre, ever-changing rules text. Underpinning all this mechanical stuff is the pure distillation of the fantasy of Magic: casting a spell that does EXACTLY what you expect it to do.

Spoiler: Number Two

I was in college before I realized it was possible to buy individual cards. The first thing I did was jump online and snatch up 4 copies of Scion of the Ur-Dragon (at the time it was a 50c chaff rectangle) and one of each of the 3-color legendary dragons from Invasion block (my beloved). This card is on my Top 5 list for the same reason he was in that deck: he’s a backwards-and-forwards compatible all-purpose representative of Every Single Dragon in Magic. I learned a lot about the game playing with this card, like how to build a 5c mana base on a budget (thank god for Terramorphic Expanse), how to use the stack, and of course the pleasures of graveyard synergy.

But mostly, I just absolutely fucking LOVE dragons.

Spoiler: Number Three

Just a perfect Magic card. A beautiful piece of fantasy illustration, dead-simple mechanics that provide a ton of decision space and deckbuilding choices. This little guy got me to build my first flicker deck and REALLY went bonkers in my kitchen-table Yore-Tiller Nephilim deck (featuring Primoc Escapee). If this flappy fish isn’t in your cube, you’d better have a damn good excuse.

Spoiler: Number Four

My favorite Commander ever. Like Mulldrifter, he’s got a simple ability with about a million branching paths to follow, and I’ve been tinkering with my Feldon deck for over a decade without getting tired of it. This is the card I enjoy so much I built an entire 700+ card cube just so everybody can enjoy reanimating their artifacts, cloning their ETB creatures, and treating the word “discard” as if it’s the word “draw.” As a bonus, the character himself is a part of the Brothers’ War storyline, which is, in my opinion, the most “Magic the Gathering” story in the whole series. Still holding out for a printing of Cathartic Reunion that features Feldon reuniting with Loran’s spirit and finally accepting her death.

Spoiler: Number Five

I can’t honestly make this list without Skyknight Legionnaire. For several years in the middle of my peak time with the game (peak time in terms of actual games played and decks brewed), this dude was just absolutely my favorite card to play. There are about a hundred cards from this era that I think would make me look like a more erudite, interesting player, and I sincerely enjoyed them all, too. Cards like Warp World, Strionic Resonator, Kederekt Parasite, Corpse Connoisseur, or Bloodbraid Elf. But I loved Skyknight Legionnaire for the same reason I love all the other cards on this list: the fantasy is just right. What’s cooler than a knight on horseback? A skyknight riding a gryphon (or a roc, as the case may be). I built so many 5-color flying paladin decks for this dude to shine in, with other airborne knights like Sky Hussar, Kulrath Knight, and Paragon of the Amesha. These decks were not clever. They were just about fixing my colors and turning creatures sideways to deal damage. Bog-standard midrange Fair Magic, but all my creatures are beautiful skyknights, and they’re here to land unsleeved on a damp coffee table at 2AM in a slumlord apartment with no furniture. They’re here to save the day. These are the kind of Magic games you just play to make friends with people. What could be better?

 

[Seeker]

Spoiler: Number Three

Just a perfect Magic card. A beautiful piece of fantasy illustration, dead-simple mechanics that provide a ton of decision space and deckbuilding choices. This little guy got me to build my first flicker deck and REALLY went bonkers in my kitchen-table Yore-Tiller Nephilim deck (featuring Primoc Escapee). If this flappy fish isn’t in your cube, you’d better have a damn good excuse.

come for the Mulldrifter, but stay for the Yore-Tiller Nephilim + Primoc Escapee chaos draft tech