ChannelFireball's Top 100 Magic Cards of All Time

[saprolingtoken]

Link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL04lbfeNAaS96Tj8wZ8LHy_VRHZbQ5Ugl

This is an older video series, pre-F.I.R.E. design philosophy, that ranked all the cards in Magic. No sideboard cards (Leyline of the Void, elemental blasts, Null Rod, Pithing Needle, etc. don't count apparently). There is some importance placed on how good cards were historically e.g. Cursed Scroll, Mind Twist. However, power level is the most important factor even thought that is a bit ambiguous in some cases. Not so with the outliers, like P9, that is crystal clear. Things can change depending on what you are measuring though. I just thought this would be neat to look at if anyone hasn't seen it, check it out. It's pretty fun.

A few criticisms. The list is actually very good and not much I would change, at least at the time it was made.

Add (obvious omissions):

Cavern of Souls: Cavern is nuts. Really good with Vial or with other 5 color lands in tribal decks. An extremely important card in many different decks, good even if you want just one uncounterable Primeval Titan or Thassa's Oracle. If you're casting dorks there is a good chance you want this. It even color fixes!

Demonic Consultation: At worst about as good as Vampiric Tutor. At best? Better than Demonic Tutor and combos with Thassa's Oracle. A big oversight. Consult is real good.

Chalice of the Void: Whilst 3Ball was restricted faster than Chalice it's no less brutal. Even though neither did anything in Standard at the time, Chalice of the Void has been very good in a lot of other formats and when it is good it is backbreaking. Another oversight. Trinisphere only sees play in dedicated Prison decks where Chalice has been adopted by various archetypes.

Stuff to Change:

City of Traitors: Should be included with Tomb probably because they are often a package deal... but not always. Also, just much worse. So I can see why they didn't include it.

Wheel of Fortune: WAY too low for how fucking busted it is. This is ridiculous.

Ponder: Probably too low, honestly.

Preordain: Probably shouldn't be on the list since it's much worse than Ponder.

Hymn to Tourach: In my estimation, there is no other card in the game that so easily creates non-games with very, very little effort. Should be higher.

Bloodbraid Elf: Hasn't aged particularly well. Maybe it shouldn't be on the list?

Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Is way too high. Also didn't age very well.

Gifts Ungiven: Not high enough?

Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond: slashed with Mox Opal? (i.e. moxen that boost particular strategies)

Basic Lands: Special games pieces don't count.

Cryptic Command? Counterbalance? Dismember? Ancestral Vision? Probably shouldn't be on the list.

Historical Consideration:

Fact or Fiction: Restricted in Vintage once upon a time. Really good in all formats, still sees a little play in Modern today.

Intuition: Good in older formats with AK. Still played a bit today in Legacy.

Psychatog: No other creature has dominated every format for singularly before or since. Scales really well with quality of card draw and spells. Deserving of a spot.

New stuff post 2018 to add: Uro, Oko, Lurrus, Field of the Dead, Wrenn and Six, Hogaak, etc.

 

[Oversoul]

Haven't watched the videos yet, but I think I get the gist of them from your post. Yeah, with 100 slots, people could quibble over placements all day and not get anywhere. So there might be cards I'd personally rank higher or lower, but that would be true for any list like this. Even if I ranked the cards myself, I'd probably disagree with my own exact ordering yesterday or tomorrow. So I don't want to make too big of a deal about the exact placements. I think your criticisms are all correct, though. Also, it looks like we have vague criteria that probably overhype some cards and undersell others. For instance, the extremely high placement of Yawgmoth's Will would suggest a Vintage emphasis. But if it's Vintage we're going by, then fetchlands should be ahead of dual lands and shocklands shouldn't be on the list at all. The presence of shocklands would seem to imply that Modern is being taken into account, and that gets backed up by inclusions like Birthing Pod, Tarmogoyf, and Bloodbraid Elf. But then most of the top of the list is totally illegal in Modern and always has been. We seem to have a kind of hybrid approach here, where the general performance of cards across multiple formats is meant to factor in here, but the rankings are heavily biased toward Vintage. Despite that, some of the most important Vintage powerhouses are absent, such as Paradoxical Outcome, Steel Overseer, Doomsday, and Blightsteel Colossus.

Cavern of Souls: Cavern is nuts. Really good with Vial or with other 5 color lands in tribal decks. An extremely important card in many different decks, good even if you want just one uncounterable Primeval Titan or Thassa's Oracle. If you're casting dorks there is a good chance you want this. It even color fixes!

I fully agree. Cavern has been too strong across too many formats to ignore.

Demonic Consultation: At worst about as good as Vampiric Tutor. At best? Better than Demonic Tutor and combos with Thassa's Oracle. A big oversight. Consult is real good.

Here's the thing. I'm not surprised that these guys Missed Consult. Think about the history of the card. Its big breakout success was in Necro decks in the 90's, and it was always Necropotence that got first billing and credit for the success of the archetype. But those decks (the early ones anyway) would have been woefully inconsistent without Demonic Consultation. It was well-understood at the time just how powerful Consult was, but as Necro decks faded from the tournament spotlight and passed into legend, that aspect of them became dimished in the minds of most players. I don't know how many times I heard about how broken Necro is/was, but it's been a lot. And those people almost never bring up Demonic Consultation.

It had applications outside of Necro decks, and those were easily strong enough to get it banned and restricted alongside Necropotence in every format by 2001. Since then, as a restricted card in Vintage, it's generally been eschewed because of the risk of accidentally exiling your other restricted cards, a problem Vampiric Tutor doesn't have. Whenever a niche comes along that makes Demonic Consultation worth it, the card has been a total powerhouse. But most of those Vintage decks didn't tend to stick around as decks to beat for long enough to really impress everyone. That probably reflects a bit of bias among Vintage players. They like their "Power" cards. There was probably a window of time in which Ad Nauseam decks, powered by Demonic Consultation, were easily better than their more popular "The Perfect Storm" counterparts. It was the best combo deck in the format, but no one wanted to play it because TPS was the deck that got to resolve all the best juicy one-offs.

These videos were released in 2018. The restriction of Gush in 2017 hobbled the Doomsday decks that had been the most potent niche for Demonic Consultation at the time, and the card fell by the wayside for a while. If I remember the timing right, these videos were probably concurrent with speculation at The Mana Drain and other sites that Demonic Consultation might be the safest unrestriction in Vintage. The card's stock in Vintage had fallen to what was nearly an all-time low. Of course, now we have the benefit of hindsight to know that the rise of Thassa's Oracle Doomsday decks has propelled Demonic Consultation back into being one of the strongest restricted cards in Vintage. But I can see how the card would have been overlooked in 2018. I think they'd have been wrong, and events since then have really helped highlight that for me, but I'd like to think I'd have called it correctly myself even back then.

Chalice of the Void: Whilst 3Ball was restricted faster than Chalice it's no less brutal. Even though neither did anything in Standard at the time, Chalice of the Void has been very good in a lot of other formats and when it is good it is backbreaking. Another oversight. Trinisphere only sees play in dedicated Prison decks where Chalice has been adopted by various archetypes.

I think that if Legacy performance over many years is allowed to be a factor in consideration here, Chalice should be on the list. It's one of the most important cards in the format, and has been since before Modern existed.

City of Traitors: Should be included with Tomb probably because they are often a package deal... but not always. Also, just much worse. So I can see why they didn't include it.

Curiously, in the past couple years, I've seen more dismissal of City than I'd have expected. Even though it remains a Legacy powerhouse and it seems obvious to me that the card is still quite powerful, it seems like people just don't like it anymore. I don't get it.

Wheel of Fortune: WAY too low for how fucking busted it is. This is ridiculous.

Wheel is one of my favorite cards of all time. At least it made their list. I said that I wasn't going to focus on individual placements, but since you brought it up, ranking Bloodbraid Elf above Wheel of Fortune is silly.

Ponder: Probably too low, honestly.

Preordain: Probably shouldn't be on the list since it's much worse than Ponder.

I do concur that Ponder is stronger than Preordain. But this gets a bit weird because the roles of the cards are somewhat different in Vintage and in Legacy, in part because Ponder and Brainstorm are both restricted in Vintage. Still, having both of these cards on the list might be a bit much.

Hymn to Tourach: In my estimation, there is no other card in the game that so easily creates non-games with very, very little effort. Should be higher.

Maybe. It depends on what you want to emphasize. I think that if Mind Twist were unbanned in Legacy (which it absolutely should be), that Hymn would still see a lot more play than Mind Twist. But Mind Twist is far more important in Old School formats and Highlander formats. And it was was dominant in Type 1 for a while. My preference would be that Hymn to Tourach should easily be ranked higher than Mind Twist. I could see how someone who played The Deck in the old days of Type 1 or who is active in Canadian Highlander might disagree.

Bloodbraid Elf: Hasn't aged particularly well. Maybe it shouldn't be on the list?

This is another Modern conceit. Shardless Agent has always been the better Cascade creature. I wouldn't put either on my list.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Is way too high. Also didn't age very well.

Right?

Gifts Ungiven: Not high enough?

The Vintage restriction, which has been reverted for a while now, hurt this card's chances to be as big of a powerhouse as it could be.

Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond: slashed with Mox Opal? (i.e. moxen that boost particular strategies)

Not having watched the videos, I don't know whether these were mentioned in "The Moxes." Most people usually group the original 5 together and separate the others, as they have different functions. Chrome Mox has been somewhat inconsistent and possibly too niche over the years to really make top 100, although it is no slouch. Mox Diamond and Mox Opal are bonkers and should easily be on this list somewhere.

Basic Lands: Special games pieces don't count.

Again, I haven't watched the videos. This inclusion strikes me as bizarre. Basic lands?

Cryptic Command? Counterbalance? Dismember? Ancestral Vision? Probably shouldn't be on the list.

A few of these didn't age well. I could make an argument for Counterbalance being more impactful than some of the other cards on the list, but I don't really think that it would make my top 100. Dismember has been one of the most important removal spells across multiple formats for a long time, but I think that the nuances of tournament card pools have favored it more than its raw power warrants. Toxic Deluge is a way stronger card anyway.

Fact or Fiction: Restricted in Vintage once upon a time. Really good in all formats, still sees a little play in Modern today.

Maybe? I always kind of felt like that Vintage restriction went a bit overboard, although it might have eventually needed to happen anyway. Blue decks became pretty overbearing for a while there, and this would only have helped them. Still seems strange to think about. I mean, it costs 4 mana!

Intuition: Good in older formats with AK. Still played a bit today in Legacy.

Intuition should totally be on the list somewhere.

Psychatog: No other creature has dominated every format for singularly before or since. Scales really well with quality of card draw and spells. Deserving of a spot.

How the mighty have fallen. One common theme I'm noticing with the picks CFB chose for their top 100 is that it is weighted toward 90's stuff and 2010's stuff. I mean, yes, Birthing Pod was a big deal in its day and so was Cursed Scroll. We've got Birds of Paradise and we've also got Goblin Guide. Fair enough. These are cards that might not be especially prevalent in tournament decks in 2021, but they were once superstars in their heyday, so they are included on those merits. In that case, what about Pyschatog? What about Rite of Flame?

New stuff post 2018 to add: Uro, Oko, Lurrus, Field of the Dead, Wrenn and Six, Hogaak, etc.

There's been so much, it's tough to even consider what would have to be bumped off the list and which new stuff makes the cut. Arcum's Astrolabe? Underworld Breach? Urza? Karn 4.0? Dreadhorde Arcanist? Hullbreacher? Force of Vigor? Sedgemoor Witch? Ice-Fang Coatl? Force of Negation? Narset? Teferi? Veil of Summer?

 

[saprolingtoken]

How the mighty have fallen. One common theme I'm noticing with the picks CFB chose for their top 100 is that it is weighted toward 90's stuff and 2010's stuff. I mean, yes, Birthing Pod was a big deal in its day and so was Cursed Scroll. We've got Birds of Paradise and we've also got Goblin Guide. Fair enough. These are cards that might not be especially prevalent in tournament decks in 2021, but they were once superstars in their heyday, so they are included on those merits. In that case, what about Pyschatog? What about Rite of Flame?

I never noticed that. There is a lot of bias towards those eras and as you already mentioned Vintage as well. Obviously I think it's good to consider all eras as about as "equally" as you can but that's a pretty big ask since any metrics you use are going to be subjective, for the most part. My criteria would be a combination of "How good was this card in Standard? In the other formats of its day? How good is it now?" In some respects these lists bias towards older cards and in other ways towards newer cards. Land Tax was really really good in Type 2 but wasn't reprinted after 4th. Ditto for Mishra's Factory. However, Omnath was banned in Standard and then also saw/sees play in varying amounts in formats up to Legacy. How does that shake out? Also there is really weird stuff like Cursed Scroll is a really unique, powerful effect but it's RL so it can't be reprinted. Would it be really strong in Standard and older formats? I'd say yes. But I digress, yeah cards like Rite of Flame seem like they belong somewhere. Also, how do you reckon with particular fan made formats like Old School or Premodern? That adds another to wrinkle to everything.

Funny you mentioned Pod though, it definitely strikes me as a "omfg this card is BROKEN because its banned. we can never unban it bc its BROKEN! its like survival bro!" Pay a bunch of life, mana, do stuff at sorcery speed ... OK? I really don't think it should be on this list or the banned list for that matter.

Curiously, in the past couple years, I've seen more dismissal of City than I'd have expected. Even though it remains a Legacy powerhouse and it seems obvious to me that the card is still quite powerful, it seems like people just don't like it anymore. I don't get it.

I think it's just because not played as much as Tomb even though they are often a package deal. For example Shops always plays (afaik) 4 Tomb but no Cities. Show and Tell in Legacy plays 3 Tomb and 2 City, typically. I think it is a better card but City is not so much worse that it should be excluded. Hatred played 4 City of Traitors because the life loss was a no-go with Hatred.

Re: Consult: Yeah that's a good point, or lots of good points. I've heard a few players that know about Necro but I don't think anyone, even good players never really mention Consult. Also Consult is a weird card in Vintage where it seems not to do too much when restricted but is nuts when unrestricted. There is a whole class of cards like that it seems.

Wheel is one of my favorite cards of all time. At least it made their list. I said that I wasn't going to focus on individual placements, but since you brought it up, ranking Bloodbraid Elf above Wheel of Fortune is silly.

and

This is another Modern conceit. Shardless Agent has always been the better Cascade creature. I wouldn't put either on my list.

Yeah. They do make a lot of jokes about Wheel being so high (low?) on the list in the video lol. BBE is another one of those cards, like Pod, that seems biased towards Modern but how well has BBE aged? Poorly. I'd choose Goblin Ringleader instead since it's the same kind of card,there is less inherent randomness ,you can get more than one card, has withstood the test of time far better and I still wouldn't put Ringleader on the list. Slightly off-topic but cards like BBE typically don't age very well since "good stuff" Midrange decks have a really low ceiling: they can only be so good. Anyway.

Not having watched the videos, I don't know whether these were mentioned in "The Moxes." Most people usually group the original 5 together and separate the others, as they have different functions. Chrome Mox has been somewhat inconsistent and possibly too niche over the years to really make top 100, although it is no slouch. Mox Diamond and Mox Opal are bonkers and should easily be on this list somewhere.

Yeah the "The Moxes" were the original five. I think it mostly makes sense to put the conditional Moxen together since they're all very powerful but I agree that Diamond and Opal are better than Chrome, off the top of my head.

Again, I haven't watched the videos. This inclusion strikes me as bizarre. Basic lands?

Yeah, there was a bit of confusion about that but the point was that they are really important to deck building but there should have been an exception made because they're unique. It's a bad inclusion. Too clever by half.

Maybe? I always kind of felt like that Vintage restriction went a bit overboard, although it might have eventually needed to happen anyway. Blue decks became pretty overbearing for a while there, and this would only have helped them. Still seems strange to think about. I mean, it costs 4 mana!

I think it was because the BBS (Blue Bull Shit) decks played SoLoMox and then a bunch of Islands + B2B + infinity counters. That let them chain FoFs easily and just counter any problematic permanents and any random creature that snuck through the counterwall could be dealt with Morphling or Masticore. So... it was a good deck. Too good? I don't know. I just started playing MTG around that time and was still figuring stuff out (still am after 20+ years, lots to learn!). Also, I don't really like using this argument but Type 1 at the time had a pretty small player base, its not unlikely it was only really good at the time and would have eventually been supplanted by decks in the next few years at most. People really, really, really liked playing Keeper. So there could have been biases + underdeveloped meta. At least at the time Type 1 was still really, really creature light and most decks were struggling over spells and card advantage was the most important thing, the creatures were not that great obviously. Though you know all this stuff, just recounting it to be thorough!

There's been so much, it's tough to even consider what would have to be bumped off the list and which new stuff makes the cut. Arcum's Astrolabe? Underworld Breach? Urza? Karn 4.0? Dreadhorde Arcanist? Hullbreacher? Force of Vigor? Sedgemoor Witch? Ice-Fang Coatl? Force of Negation? Narset? Teferi? Veil of Summer?

Hard to say. I think it will take a few more years to see how the F.I.R.E cards shake out.

Re: Yawgs Will: I think that Yawg's Will placement was fine. I think the floor is so high on the card that, unlike something like Breach where you have to build around it or have specific cards to enable it, Will doesn't have any of those issues. Will gives you a ton of inevitability. It's not even just a combo card because of it's application in non-Combo decks, Napster is a good example. I think it's too good and too cheap and synergizes so well with so many cards, to say nothing of Dark Ritual; it's a good fit in the top ten.

Maybe. It depends on what you want to emphasize. I think that if Mind Twist were unbanned in Legacy (which it absolutely should be), that Hymn would still see a lot more play than Mind Twist. But Mind Twist is far more important in Old School formats and Highlander formats. And it was was dominant in Type 1 for a while. My preference would be that Hymn to Tourach should easily be ranked higher than Mind Twist. I could see how someone who played The Deck in the old days of Type 1 or who is active in Canadian Highlander might disagree.

Yeah, that's a good point. Mind Twist was rightfully banned from Type 1 at the time because there just wasn't much to do against getting your whole hand Twisted. It's scales so well with the Moxen and stuff it's absolutely a force to be reckoned with.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, turns out that while I was eating dinner last night and sorting/boxing my Strixhaven cards, I watched this entire series. I'll say that the commentary from the pros did temper some of my misgivings about the wonkiness here. They might have been even harder on the placement of basic lands at #20 than I was! Generally, I found myself agreeing with Reid Duke's remarks on almost everything.

I never noticed that. There is a lot of bias towards those eras and as you already mentioned Vintage as well. Obviously I think it's good to consider all eras as about as "equally" as you can but that's a pretty big ask since any metrics you use are going to be subjective, for the most part.

It's really only a handful cards out of the 100, but some that jump out are Cursed Scroll, Birds of Paradise, Bloodbraid Elf, and Goblin Guide. Maybe stuff like Tarmogoyf and Jace. Sure, they're infamous and powerful cards, but they also peaked at some point, becoming niche at best in Eternal formats. That's fine and it's to be expected. Most cards that were powerhouses in Standard or Extended don't persist as staples in Legacy or Vintage. But then, are they worthy of the top 100 cards of all time? If cards that were prominent in one era and became mostly obsolete later are eligible, then the same should apply to another era as well. And if you accept that, aren't Psychatog and Goblin Piledriver bigger icons than Bloodbraid Elf or Cursed Scroll.

My criteria would be a combination of "How good was this card in Standard? In the other formats of its day? How good is it now?" In some respects these lists bias towards older cards and in other ways towards newer cards. Land Tax was really really good in Type 2 but wasn't reprinted after 4th. Ditto for Mishra's Factory. However, Omnath was banned in Standard and then also saw/sees play in varying amounts in formats up to Legacy. How does that shake out? Also there is really weird stuff like Cursed Scroll is a really unique, powerful effect but it's RL so it can't be reprinted. Would it be really strong in Standard and older formats? I'd say yes. But I digress, yeah cards like Rite of Flame seem like they belong somewhere. Also, how do you reckon with particular fan made formats like Old School or Premodern? That adds another to wrinkle to everything.

I don't know Premodern that well but I do follow Old School formats to some extent. Other than Brian Weissman, they didn't talk much about Old School, and I don't think they really emphasized that it's very different from the way Magic was actually played back in the those eras. I think that in some ways, Old School is more informative on how we should think about cards than the decks from actual historical tournaments. For instance, my own Old School '94 deck is an Underworld Dreams combo deck. This sort of deck wouldn't really have been possible in Type 1 because Underworld Dreams was restricted. Now, I don't think that Underworld Dreams is a top 100 card anyway, but having this sort of combo deck as an option in a 1994 card pool highlights the power of Wheel of Fortune in particular. For this reason and some others, I think that Wheel of Fortune is a bit stronger and more meaningful as a restricted card in Old School '94 than it really was in tournament Magic in the actual 1994. Or perhaps an even better example is Time Vault, which WotC hobbled with bans and errata for a long time. Time Vault is a relevant card in Old School formats, but was essentially nerfed out of competitive Magic for over 14 years. We could choose to just ignore Old School, dismissing it as unofficial, but I think it provides a useful sort of lens into an alternate universe. If your top 100 cards list is meant to strictly reflect the history of the tournament scene, then fine. But if you care more about evaluating cards than about who did what when, then something like Old School is of interest.

Funny you mentioned Pod though, it definitely strikes me as a "omfg this card is BROKEN because its banned. we can never unban it bc its BROKEN! its like survival bro!" Pay a bunch of life, mana, do stuff at sorcery speed ... OK? I really don't think it should be on this list or the banned list for that matter.

I could dig up some of my posts from a few years ago where I repeatedly made fun of Modern's silly ban list. I kind of stopped doing this because I lost the heart for it, possibly because Legacy has started to go the same way with knee-jerk bans.

I think it's just because not played as much as Tomb even though they are often a package deal. For example Shops always plays (afaik) 4 Tomb but no Cities. Show and Tell in Legacy plays 3 Tomb and 2 City, typically. I think it is a better card but City is not so much worse that it should be excluded. Hatred played 4 City of Traitors because the life loss was a no-go with Hatred.

Yeah, I might have been thinking of Hatred. I probably was, and just didn't realize it. I knew in the back of my mind there was this objection: "But sometimes City is better than Tomb." In general, they go together anyway (and Ancient Tomb is the better card). It's better to have 6 or 8 "Sol Lands" in a Legacy deck than only 4x Ancient Tomb. By the way, part of the reason that Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are still so iconic all these years later is that you can slam a Chalice of the Void with 1 counter on your first turn. In fact that might be the main reason these lands are so prevalent in tournament Magic.

Re: Consult: Yeah that's a good point, or lots of good points. I've heard a few players that know about Necro but I don't think anyone, even good players never really mention Consult. Also Consult is a weird card in Vintage where it seems not to do too much when restricted but is nuts when unrestricted. There is a whole class of cards like that it seems.

There aren't quite as many of these in Vintage today as there used to be, but a notable omission from that top 100 list is Flash. And you probably hit on why that is.

Yeah. They do make a lot of jokes about Wheel being so high (low?) on the list in the video lol. BBE is another one of those cards, like Pod, that seems biased towards Modern but how well has BBE aged? Poorly. I'd choose Goblin Ringleader instead since it's the same kind of card,there is less inherent randomness ,you can get more than one card, has withstood the test of time far better and I still wouldn't put Ringleader on the list. Slightly off-topic but cards like BBE typically don't age very well since "good stuff" Midrange decks have a really low ceiling: they can only be so good. Anyway.

I didn't say so earlier, but I gave some thought to the idea of whether a goblin should be in the top 100 and, if so, which one. Er, not counting Goblin Welder because the goblin typing there tends to be irrelevant (and I do not think that Goblin Guide should make the cut). Recruiter is the one that gets banned everywhere and has seen less play than the others, but's that's because it was banned. Lackey was banned at one point too, and is pretty iconic. Ringleader is probably the one that redefined the archetype in the most enduring fashion (card advantage). Piledriver is probably the one that has claimed the most victims. If you squeeze all those little guys into a package and categorize them as the cards that made "the Goblins deck" relevant across multiple formats for so many years, that seems like the sort of thing that is fit for the top 100. But it also feels like no one card there is really top 100 material.

Yeah the "The Moxes" were the original five. I think it mostly makes sense to put the conditional Moxen together since they're all very powerful but I agree that Diamond and Opal are better than Chrome, off the top of my head.

I think I missed that Mox Opal was at #81 when I wrote my previous post. Mox Diamond not being on the list at all is frankly ridiculous. Possibly the biggest miss out of all the omissions in the list. I think the pros didn't really notice because they might have assumed early on that it would be higher up on the list somewhere, and then by the time it was obvious that it was missed, no one really had an impetus to note, "Hey, Mox Diamond isn't in this list?"

Yeah, there was a bit of confusion about that but the point was that they are really important to deck building but there should have been an exception made because they're unique. It's a bad inclusion. Too clever by half.

This was all before Arcum's Astrolabe existed. If they had made these videos now, maybe we'd get "snow-covered basics" instead.

I think it was because the BBS (Blue Bull Shit) decks played SoLoMox and then a bunch of Islands + B2B + infinity counters. That let them chain FoFs easily and just counter any problematic permanents and any random creature that snuck through the counterwall could be dealt with Morphling or Masticore. So... it was a good deck. Too good? I don't know. I just started playing MTG around that time and was still figuring stuff out (still am after 20+ years, lots to learn!). Also, I don't really like using this argument but Type 1 at the time had a pretty small player base, its not unlikely it was only really good at the time and would have eventually been supplanted by decks in the next few years at most. People really, really, really liked playing Keeper. So there could have been biases + underdeveloped meta. At least at the time Type 1 was still really, really creature light and most decks were struggling over spells and card advantage was the most important thing, the creatures were not that great obviously. Though you know all this stuff, just recounting it to be thorough!

BBS was strong in its day, but I kind of suspect that the inclusion of Factor Fiction is owed a bit more to Standard and Extended. The card became something of a meme, with players writing "EOTFOFYL" (end of turn Fact or Fiction, you lose) on things and various little weird jokes about ways to split FoF piles. The way the card involves both players in decision-making and does so in a kind of splashy way made it really memorable. So when it persisted in Tog decks and BBS decks and such, that just made it seem even more iconic. But as the hype faded into the background, it kind of became clear that FoF was always merely a decent spell. It didn't take new printings or rules changes or some revolution to unseat the card. It just isn't really that powerful for how much mana it costs. Maybe Gifts Ungiven being printed at the same cost drove the point home. I don't know. I mean, the card is fine. I still use it in EDH and stuff. Top 100, though? Nah.

Hard to say. I think it will take a few more years to see how the F.I.R.E cards shake out.

Re: Yawgs Will: I think that Yawg's Will placement was fine. I think the floor is so high on the card that, unlike something like Breach where you have to build around it or have specific cards to enable it, Will doesn't have any of those issues. Will gives you a ton of inevitability. It's not even just a combo card because of it's application in non-Combo decks, Napster is a good example. I think it's too good and too cheap and synergizes so well with so many cards, to say nothing of Dark Ritual; it's a good fit in the top ten.

Oh, I don't disagree with the placement. Yawgmoth's Will is amazing. I think my previous post might have been a bit misleading there. The point I was trying to make was that Yawgmoth's Will is an example of a card that has only been legal in Vintage as a sanctioned format for so long that putting it all the way in the top 10 made a statement that Vintage was a driving force behind the rankings here. I didn't want to cite the Power 9 cards for that because they're so infamous in general that it muddies the waters. But there are other high placements that betray a bias toward Vintage, like Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad.

Yeah, that's a good point. Mind Twist was rightfully banned from Type 1 at the time because there just wasn't much to do against getting your whole hand Twisted. It's scales so well with the Moxen and stuff it's absolutely a force to be reckoned with.

Mana Drain and Mind Twist kind of go hand-in-hand there. It's not a problem in the current Vintage card pool, but in the mid-90's it was amazing how oppressive that combo was. Even I can remember how big of a deal this was, particularly when Mind Twist was unbanned in 2000. I think the pros did a good job of addressing that.

 

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It's really only a handful cards out of the 100, but some that jump out are Cursed Scroll, Birds of Paradise, Bloodbraid Elf, and Goblin Guide. Maybe stuff like Tarmogoyf and Jace. Sure, they're infamous and powerful cards, but they also peaked at some point, becoming niche at best in Eternal formats. That's fine and it's to be expected. Most cards that were powerhouses in Standard or Extended don't persist as staples in Legacy or Vintage. But then, are they worthy of the top 100 cards of all time? If cards that were prominent in one era and became mostly obsolete later are eligible, then the same should apply to another era as well. And if you accept that, aren't Psychatog and Goblin Piledriver bigger icons than Bloodbraid Elf or Cursed Scroll.

That's a really good way to put it. That illustrates how difficult this endeavor is.

I don't know Premodern that well but I do follow Old School formats to some extent. Other than Brian Weissman, they didn't talk much about Old School, and I don't think they really emphasized that it's very different from the way Magic was actually played back in the those eras. I think that in some ways, Old School is more informative on how we should think about cards than the decks from actual historical tournaments. For instance, my own Old School '94 deck is an Underworld Dreams combo deck. This sort of deck wouldn't really have been possible in Type 1 because Underworld Dreams was restricted. Now, I don't think that Underworld Dreams is a top 100 card anyway, but having this sort of combo deck as an option in a 1994 card pool highlights the power of Wheel of Fortune in particular. For this reason and some others, I think that Wheel of Fortune is a bit stronger and more meaningful as a restricted card in Old School '94 than it really was in tournament Magic in the actual 1994. Or perhaps an even better example is Time Vault, which WotC hobbled with bans and errata for a long time. Time Vault is a relevant card in Old School formats, but was essentially nerfed out of competitive Magic for over 14 years. We could choose to just ignore Old School, dismissing it as unofficial, but I think it provides a useful sort of lens into an alternate universe. If your top 100 cards list is meant to strictly reflect the history of the tournament scene, then fine. But if you care more about evaluating cards than about who did what when, then something like Old School is of interest.

Time Vault is a good example of a card that went from broken to useless and then back again with errata so that certainly impacted it's playability. I think we can have a much better view now of what was actually good back if only because Magic theory has grown significantly. I think something like OS is useful and we should take it into account. It reminds me of the story of the guy who was playing in a tournament a million years ago and played Shatter over Disenchant and it cost him a match in the top 8, even though he was playing White: just because something "is", in this case Shatter over Disenchant, doesn't mean they "ought" to have done it.

I didn't say so earlier, but I gave some thought to the idea of whether a goblin should be in the top 100 and, if so, which one. Er, not counting Goblin Welder because the goblin typing there tends to be irrelevant (and I do not think that Goblin Guide should make the cut). Recruiter is the one that gets banned everywhere and has seen less play than the others, but's that's because it was banned. Lackey was banned at one point too, and is pretty iconic. Ringleader is probably the one that redefined the archetype in the most enduring fashion (card advantage). Piledriver is probably the one that has claimed the most victims. If you squeeze all those little guys into a package and categorize them as the cards that made "the Goblins deck" relevant across multiple formats for so many years, that seems like the sort of thing that is fit for the top 100. But it also feels like no one card there is really top 100 material.

Yeah it's sometimes difficult to pick out which cards from the synergy/linear decks are the best. If it's just which cards push(ed) the deck over the line then in the case of Goblins it would have to be Lackey/Recruiter. When combined with all the other good Goblins you can do a lot of broken stuff. We can probably add Muxus to that list too. But really none of the cards did much without each other, well the Onslaught Goblins were good with each other but they were introduced in big batches where the other ones were staggered. The Matron/Ringleader engine was really important. Outside of Necro, I can't think of any Aggro decks that had a card advantage engine during that era. I like the grouping idea though, that's an easy solution. I feel like that's better than nitpicking.

I think I missed that Mox Opal was at #81 when I wrote my previous post. Mox Diamond not being on the list at all is frankly ridiculous. Possibly the biggest miss out of all the omissions in the list. I think the pros didn't really notice because they might have assumed early on that it would be higher up on the list somewhere, and then by the time it was obvious that it was missed, no one really had an impetus to note, "Hey, Mox Diamond isn't in this list?"

I think I've spent a couple hours looking at this list over the years and I totally blanked on Mox Diamond's absence. I don't remember them mentioning it in the video either. I think it's pretty easily the best one of the three good ones. It's seen play in basically every archetype and sub-archetype in the game. Kind of the poster child of power + ubiquity metrics.

BBS was strong in its day, but I kind of suspect that the inclusion of Factor Fiction is owed a bit more to Standard and Extended. The card became something of a meme, with players writing "EOTFOFYL" (end of turn Fact or Fiction, you lose) on things and various little weird jokes about ways to split FoF piles. The way the card involves both players in decision-making and does so in a kind of splashy way made it really memorable. So when it persisted in Tog decks and BBS decks and such, that just made it seem even more iconic. But as the hype faded into the background, it kind of became clear that FoF was always merely a decent spell. It didn't take new printings or rules changes or some revolution to unseat the card. It just isn't really that powerful for how much mana it costs. Maybe Gifts Ungiven being printed at the same cost drove the point home. I don't know. I mean, the card is fine. I still use it in EDH and stuff. Top 100, though? Nah.

That's reasonable, good point.

Oh, I don't disagree with the placement. Yawgmoth's Will is amazing. I think my previous post might have been a bit misleading there. The point I was trying to make was that Yawgmoth's Will is an example of a card that has only been legal in Vintage as a sanctioned format for so long that putting it all the way in the top 10 made a statement that Vintage was a driving force behind the rankings here. I didn't want to cite the Power 9 cards for that because they're so infamous in general that it muddies the waters. But there are other high placements that betray a bias toward Vintage, like Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad.

I assume it's just purely about power level in the top ten though it's a little bit unclear. Is Brainstorm more powerful than Yawg's Will? How many games do you cast Yawg's Will and lose? How about Brainstorm? What about Force of Will? It's "strong" in a different way. It's a little bit hard to compare the two but obviously both are really good. Typically this list seems to be constructed with primarily power level in mind so the top twenty or so cards are going to be Vintage/Legacy staples due to that.