My 8 favourite Magic: the Gathering cards of all time

I've been playing Magic on and off since Revised (3rd Edition) and though I haven't played too much recently, I thought this list would be fun to compile. This list has nothing to do with how good the card is. They're all just based on my appreciation of their design and mostly how good it feels to play that particular card. I think it's noteworthy that I don't have any white cards on this list. I don't know what this says about me.


#8 Budoka Gardener/Dokai, Weaver of Life

This card sadly never really made it into competitive, but the idea of it was so cool. It was in the first cycle of transformation cards, which was a neat idea to begin with. Add to it the idea of a humble monk leveling up to become this badass that summons elementals, and the 10 year old within me that was first learning about AD&D and 18th level monks leaped with joy. I tried very hard to make a good deck around this card, but it just wasn't good enough. Eventually I ended up with a Budoka Gardener deck with no Budokas. Cards like this did pave the way for cards that would be good in the future (see: Huntmaster of the Fells), though.

#7 Fires of Yavimaya

The Fires deck that rocked the scene during the IPA block, arguably the best block ever, was incredibly fun. It had all the aggro power of weenie decks except you were still playing giant, cost efficient beasts. If memory serves, control decks like Eternal Slide dominated Standard before this came along. While I appreciate what this card does in terms of speeding up a game and making things more intense, what I really like is that the card successfully designs around the enchantment card disadvantage so that it can be used successfully in aggro decks. The Haste effect means you could take advantage of the enchantment immediately, and the secondary effect was versatile enough that opponents often couldn't destroy it for free or you could get that little bit of extra reach out of it. It was one of the most well designed enchantments pre-Bestow and the enchantments with CIP effects.

#6 Eternal Witness

Fantastic art and card advantage for green! Back in the day, before we had Masked Admirers, green wizards took whatever card advantage they could get their hands on, and one of the best was Eternal Witness. I just love the feeling that as long as you had one Eternal Witness left in hand, it didn't matter how many others were killed. You could do a Witness chain party! Between Jehovah's Witness and Eternal Witness, I know which one I would choose.

#5 Fact or Fiction

I love this card. Not only is it a powerful card, but the design of this card capitalizes on what makes games great. Games are about making choices, and Fact or Fiction forces choices on both players. And not only that, it creates a direct player vs. player interaction, while most other cards only forces card interactions. It's as if the two players set the real game aside and play a subtle mini-game, the impact of which may not be realized immediately. The variety provided by the randomness of Fact or Fiction and the fact that it came first puts it above the (probably) more powerful Gifts Ungiven for me.


#4 Grab the Reins

Talk about a card that feels fun to play, Grab the Reins pretty much takes the cake. It's an active card, it's an instant, and it uniquely solved problems in its Standard format, such as Kokusho. It was flexible for a lower cost if you were in a pinch, but if you hit the heavy 7 mana Entwine cost, then it was an Act of Treason and Fling in one card. And Fling was a really fun card. Go ahead and imagine throwing a dragon at someone's face. Now imagine if it was their dragon. Delicious.


#3 Braids, Cabal Minion

Talk about an interesting card. Braids was a card that instantly kicked my imagination into high gear with all the possible ways you could have it lock a game down. Your opponent would be the first to sacrifice something, so even if they killed her with burn, it would be a 2 for 1. That's good, right? Well, turns out, she may not be the best, but it is still fun. A first turn Dark Ritual into Braids is sometimes just a scoop. And she's crazy! I don't know why I find that flavour appealing.

#2 Goblin Charbelcher

Speaking of crazy, this card is so crazy and fun that it has spawned completely insane decks that have as few as 2 lands. Even in more normal decks though, the card is a fun cannon on every activation. No game is out of reach when you can activate it since the one shot dream is always possible. Paying the mana feels like putting a coin in a slot machine, and every card you turn up feels like rolling a die. I love this card. It is designed for maximum fun.

#1 Serendib Efreet

Don't ask me to justify my love for the Revised Serendib Efreet. It's a cost effective flyer with a self-hurting mechanic, but more than that, it had an erroneous green border back in the days when I first started playing. This is just one of those "heart" picks since I won a Magic tournament at my high school with some turn 2 Serendib Efreet + Unstable Mutation wackiness (my prize was Underworld Dreams!). It is also out of range of Lightning Bolt which was very relevant at that time. I just thought that a 6/7 flyer beating your face on turn 3 was just so awesome. Hypnotic Specters get out of the way!

The eSports trash talk dilemma

Recently there has been some drama regarding disrespect of players, and maybe even players of a certain country or region in the professional Dota 2 scene. The teams involved were EG and paiN. The reddit posts can be found here:

EG vs PaiN - Disrespectful behavior from PPD toward BR players (context on comments)

Will jD MLG League take any action against EG.PPD?

Just to provide some extra context, MLG has put EG into North American qualifiers despite EG's reputation and track record as the uncontested champion of the North American Dota 2. PPD has personally posted his feelings that this takes away from the lesser skilled teams that might need the chance to qualify, as well as implying that it was a waste of EG's time (source).

It is hard to argue that the content of PPD's messages were disrespectful. But in the context of eSports as a competitive sport, is this really different than what's being said on the ice, court, or field? Commentators in hockey tell anecdotes of superstars saying "Who are you again?" to lesser bench players as they are competing, and it is seen as playful or amusing. We expect our pro players to have a competitive spirit, and sometimes that means they will say things to each other. The fact that it can be recorded and displayed in PPD's arena versus Michael Jordan's is the only difference here.

As another example, at the weigh ins for professional fights in sports such as boxing or MMA, people trash talk all the time. The press love it, the fans love it or love to hate it, and everyone wins.

In addition, the implication that PPD was disrespectful to Brazilians because they are Brazilians or toward all Brazilians from the title of the first reddit post is unfounded from the image. There is absolutely no evidence of that at all, and I believe PPD would say what he said to any low tier team.

However, my initial reaction was that he was a jerk and he should not have said those things when I first read them. Why? It's partly because that we all love an underdog story, and PPD played the role of the big bully that was trying to keep the small guys down. It's a position Hollywood has trained us to identify and has trained us to hate the aggressor. If PPD said this to C9's EternalEnvy, no one would care. It would be seen as competitive banter between two nearly equally matched teams. But because paiN is still a second tier team, it was like berating a puppy who's just trying its best.

So here is the corner we've run into: Is it more disrespectful for PPD to say these things, or to treat them specially, as if they weren't equals? In paiN's manager PAADA's response in the reddit thread, he mentions that he wants his team to be "treated with respect and professionalism." To me, that means EG should be trying to leverage every advantage possible to win the game they are paid to play (and win). Whether that's pressuring admins to play on their preferred server, or trash talking to get opponents off their game, that is the kind of professionalism shown in other sports. And as for respect, as I've mentioned, I believe it is more disrespectful for them to not try to get every advantage and to not treat paiN as he would have treated other top tier teams.

So what is the problem? One problem redditors are bringing up is that there is a rule against disrespect toward other players are admins. Though there is a similar rule in pretty much all tournaments and leagues, it is rarely enforced. It is there just in case someone gets really out of hand, but it is not something anyone wants to enforce. If it does get enforced strongly, you get something like the Korean StarCraft scene, where the players are seen as faceless and lacking in personality. Personally, as much as I like StarCraft, I prefer the variety in the Dota 2 scene any day. If you want mild mannered and nice, you have Aui and Universe. If you have salty, you have PPD.

Another worry is that rude pros will inspire the community to be rude. But let's face it - the community will always be rude because it is on the Internet. Role models are not going to help that. Only the community can fix that, so let's not put that mission on our young talent. Let our players show us how to compete and how to win at a game we love, and work on being decent human beings on our own.

Finally, there was some discontent shown by some redditors that EG was using their high profile or status to get special treatment or to pressure the admins into making a decision in their favour. And I think that's totally fine. Fair? Maybe not. But again, it is done in sports. How many times do you see a player or coach yelling at a referee so that they will get a more favourable call next time? So again I would argue that it is in fact their duty as players who should want to win so badly that they do everything within the rules to win, even if it makes them look like villains. That is why I admire EternalEnvy. He will bother whoever he has to bother, and complain about any negative conditions, no matter how slight, if it even remotely increases his chance of winning. To me, that is the definition of a professional. Do lawyers worry about sportsmanship? They will do whatever it takes to get the job done.

In the end, it seems to me EG and PPD have done nothing wrong. They are not responsible for the history of disrespect, real or perceived on the part of paiN. I am sure bad things have happened to them and I don't think that should be happening, but this incident is not one of them. paiN should try their best to get favourable conditions for themselves. Other team should do so as well, and admins should have to make hard decisions. Otherwise, no one is taking their profession seriously enough.