Discussion Forum

one of the best changes to magic since the days of Beta is that there's no such thing as "the best cards".

there's hundreds of excellent cards but their value is always dependent on the deck you use them in, your play style and on the meta you play in.

for example, the cards that I would rate the highest aren't any of the big 'game winning' cards but rather the utility cards I include a full play set of in every single deck of the given colour.

cards like Vines of Vastwood, Oblivion Ring and Vampire Hexmage.

these will rarely win the game for you, but they are the cards I'm always happy to draw, I'll always find a use for them and more often than not they're the cards that keep me from losing.

Liiiiiiiiike crazy OP cards?

well it'd be easier if you'd give a color and we could start from there, or just google the top tier decks for this year.

[QUOTE=Seras]one of the best changes to magic since the days of Beta is that there's no such thing as "the best cards".[/QUOTE]

LOL, sure man :)


Best card in any format: Jace the Mind Sculptor (except maybe vintage where Power 9 cards still rule)

Best Cards in Legacy:

Jace the MindSculptor
Tarmogoyf
Survival of the Fittest
Lions Eye Diamond
Force of Will
Moat
All old duals that don't enter play tapped (bayou and the likes)
All fetchland (cards like Polluted Delta)
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

There are many other great cards but these are the most expensive and if you have these, building any of the top decks isn't much of an extra investment.


extended: who plays extended anyways?

Standard: Jace the MindSculptor, Primeval Titan (,Frost Titan)


PS: man, I've always wanted my own Time Walk, It's one of those few cards I still don't have and the only P9 card I really want. That said Ancestral Recall still is THE best card in magic by far. There's nothing even close to it.

What is the stradeg with 'Jace the MindSculptor'? What kind of deck is he usually in? THanks for all the advice!

[QUOTE=Seth]
extended: who plays extended anyways?
[/QUOTE]

it was a decent format till they chopped it in half. a good compromise between standard and legacy.


oh and while Jacerator is very efficient and worth playing for sure, it's highly overrated and overpriced outside of competitive standard.

[QUOTE=Seras]it was a decent format till they chopped it in half. a good compromise between standard and legacy.

oh and while Jacerator is very efficient and worth playing for sure, it's highly overrated and overpriced outside of competitive standard.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I liked the scope of extended a lot before it got the axe. Now it's just stupid.

Jace the Mindsculptor is not overrated but he is overpriced as every good card in standard is. Cards used to plummet from as high as 30$ (Cryptic Command) down to less then a 1$ overnight when they rotated a few years back. Now Planeswalkers start at 30$ and go up to 80$. It's just insane.

I don't know what Jace is doing for standard but I hear he is by far the best card in the format from the best players in the format. I do know what Jace does in legacy and I think that is far more interesting because a 4 mana card has to be pretty damn good to make it in a format as unforgiving as legacy.

I've seen Jace in action in the new Landstill decks playing 4xJace as their only win condition. Manlands don't even matter that much anymore. They play their part but Jace is the real win.
They play Jace brainstorm ability together with Life from the Loam which basically lets them Ancestral recall every turn for 2 mana. That's the impact Jace is having and it's huge. (Dredge Life from the loam, play it with jace out to get 3 lands from the yard, brainstorm with jace and replace the top 3 cards with land giving you 3 new business cards (hence ancestral recall), then use fetchland to shuffle the 3 lands on top back into the library and repeat the next turn)

Once a control deck like landstill has Jace out and has board control they start to fateseal (I guess it's the same in standard). Once the Jace player feels confident enough to start using the fateseal ability the game is over. They deny you every good draw and if they say yes you can keep the card you know you just lost another turn.
Jace ultimate in legacy is very real and it's the kill of the decks that play him. They don't need beatdown anymore Jace does it all. You have to have seen this in action to actually see how effective it is.

Luckely for me Jace decks don't really rule legacy as a format, and since I own exactly 0 Jace The Mindsculptor cards I'm perfectly fine with that :)