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!