Can You Rate, According to Gatherer? Game #2

There are 484 lands to date, and most all of them are in direct competition, since  they roughly do the same thing (add mana to your pool) for the same cost (one land drop per turn.)  So if a land is to stand out among the pack, it needs to be special.  What’s special about Bog Wreckage?  It’s easy to get in your graveyard, I guess.  But even in 2001, that wasn’t special.  Both Sulfur Vent and Ebon Stronghold willingly toss themselves into the graveyard for more powerful effects.  Is access to all five colors really that important?  Fine.  Put four Vivid Marshes in your deck.  They aren’t that hard to find.

It hurts my brain thinking about it, but I know there’s bound to be some goofy deck where Bog Wreckage is the perfect card.  That and the word Terravore keeps Bog Wreckage above the two star line.  But, mostly, Bog Wreckage is an excellent advertisement for why you don’t need to put every non-basic land you find in your deck.  Sometimes, nothing beats a Swamp.

This card… this could be worse.  I don’t know if you witnessed the caliber of cards that came out of Homelands, but they are embarrassingly low powered.  The fact that Wizards thought Serra Paladin‘s cost was fair confuses me.  The fact that they thought the card was good enough to reprint in Fifth Edition baffles me.

In that world, Clockwork Swarm was a bomb.  4/3 common for ?  Sign me up!  It needs winding on occasion.  But Fourth Edition alone featured 12 walls, so the ‘Cannot be blocked by Walls’ rider was relevant.

Today, though, Nettle Swine and Ogre Resister exist.  4/3 for isn’t the standard yet, but we’re not too far away.  Walls are a rarity, too (Magic 2014 features three walls.  Theros features one.)  And while lines like “Use this ability only during your upkeep” were considered fair and flavorful in 1995, today it’s considered awkward and unnecessary.  That, and eye doctors keep a copy of Clockwork Swarm in their wallet to guilt you into buying more glasses.  I’m sure many voters saw a wall of text and the Homelands expansion symbol, and slapped a one star rating on the card without bothering to read it.

When drafting, I won’t get excited about playing a 2/3 for , but I’ll do it.  I will get excited about playing a 3/4 that can’t block for .  Dead Revelers lets you choose between those two creatures when it enters the battlefield.  That’s awesome.

But as good as he is, Dead Revelers is only useful in draft.  Experienced Magic players play rares and uncommons that outclass him.  New players see “Can’t block” and refuse to put him in their decks, because they don’t understand power and toughness to casting cost ratios yet.

I should point out that, for a random selection of ten cards, we’re already playing with “the cards your opponent might question, but that you don’t need to apologize for.”  Dead Reveler is acceptable for a player who’s building their deck from a limited selection of cards.  There’s no shame in running this zombie if you can’t afford Nightveil Specter and can’t find any Vampire Nighthawks.  No shame… but there’s far too many cards trumping the Revelers for it to pull any higher than number seven on this list.

The effect is nice, but how much life can you expend saving your creatures in a typical game?  8-12?  In the long run, Sanctum Custodian would be far more efficient.

But I don’t think people upvoted Jade Monolith based on what it does in a typical game, so much as what it could do in a deck built to exploit it.  In a serious life gain deck, Jade Monolith might as well say “: Target creature is indestructible until end of turn.”  It’s also a tempting choice for Commander, where players take longer to play their threats, and life totals are set to 40.  Preventing 30 damage is much better than preventing 10.

It’s also worth noting that, in a multiplayer game, the threat of activating the ability is as good as doing it.  Given two opponents with similar boards, where one controls a Monolith, and the other does not, I’m swinging at the non-monolith player.  Many players won on the back of Jade Monolith without ever activating it.

But, a typical game?  8-12 life.  Against aggro decks?  Maybe zero.  Cards with combo potential, or multiplayer potential need to be stunning or self-evident to break into the three and a half star category.  Jade Monolith isn’t either of those.

How big a Fireball can you make?  Sure, Mountain is more flexible, but how often do you need to tap every land, every turn?  What if you could store excess mana for one big turn?

It’s a fine idea, but Dwarven Hold isn’t very efficient.  And the fact that you must choose whether or not to add a storage counter before you draw a card is frustrating.  I got an inefficient six-drop in hand, four other lands in play plus a Dwarven Hold with two counters on it.  Should I untap the Hold?  Or should I take my chances with the top card of the library?  How about next turn?

Mercadian Bazaar solved that problem by including the line “: Put a storage counter on Mercadian Bazaar.”  Except for a rather unlikely corner case, that makes the Bazaar strictly better than the Hold.  Yet the Bazaar received 3.133 stars to the Hold’s 3.271.  I assume that’s because the Dwarven Hold’s artwork, flavor and old-school appeal are more kick-ass than the Bazaar.  It’s not a big difference, mind you—raw power will always be a greater determining factor for star power—but enough to nudge a sub-par choice over an optimal choice.

An all around solid card.  Players who compare Fyndhorn Elder to Llanowar Elves are doing it wrong.  They should be more interested in what happens when you cast Llanowar Elves on round one, then Fyndhorn Elder on round two.

Still, he’s vulnerable.  That’s a great ability, mind you, but the Elder is built for making more mana, and maybe for pushing a few more Elves in your deck.  It sure ain’t meant for swinging.

The first thing I did when making this article was to take my own test.  I got Mahamoti dead wrong.  It’s a good card; don’t get me wrong.  In fact, Mahamoti was once king of creatures for a very long time, filling out the top of the curve for big blue decks.  But 3.86 stars?  Maybe twelve years ago, but not today.

I guess there’s such a thing as good karma when it comes to rating Magic cards.  A lot of players won a lot of games with their pal, Mahamoti.  It’s the only real explanation for the way people are voting.  The artwork is awkward and doesn’t match the flavor text.  Mahamoti doesn’t look powerful in this picture; he looks like he’s disappointed in his master’s lack of imagination.  “Money and power, huh?  I don’t suppose you’d like to be more specific?  Because, just between you and me, I’ve known a lot of guys with vague wishes, and it didn’t exactly go down well for them.  No?  Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing.  Alakazam, I suppose.”

To put it another way, Sphinx of the Chimes has a rating of 3.582 on Gatherer, and, short of your opponent packing Mindslavers or Mind Controls, that card is strictly better.  But Sphinx of the Chimes isn’t exactly dominating the tournament scene.  Mahamoti, however, dominated for years on end, both in the tournament scene and the kitchen table.

Welcome to the four star category!  First at bat is Silent Specter, who bites whole chunks out of your opponents’ hand and life total.

Anyone facing down Silent Specter is in for a beating, especially when the opponent is playing Draw-Go.  The specter does a fine job sneaking on the table as a morph before your opponent is ready with the Counterspells, then smashing their well sculpted hand on round five.

But against aggro?  Not so much.  Still, the fact that you can toss this out as a chumper for three isn’t terrible.  It’s a frustrating play, but most six cost creatures don’t give you that option.

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if the early Wizards designers and developers understood the potential of the cards they printed.  In my 2014 Update of the Ten Most Desirable Magic Cards, According to Gatherer, we discussed how, when asked by the rules committee whether it was intended for Time Vault to be untapped with other cards, Richard Garfield said he didn’t know.  Magic design was new, and sometimes the cards were used in ways the designers didn’t intend for them.  And, sometimes, even the designers didn’t know what they originally intended for the card to do.

Did the Legends team know that Hell’s Caretaker would be used to ‘cheat’ creatures into play, by dumping them in the graveyard without casting them?  You’d think they would know that would happen, since Animate Dead existed, but there weren’t many simple ways to discard cards at the time, and Hell’s Caretaker was designed by a completely different team than the core game.  There was no time to see what Animate Dead did in the real world before the Caretaker hit.  Could they predict cards like Nekrataal would exist, that love popping in and out of graveyards?  Could they imagine the proliferation of token creatures/sacrifice bait that could pop out of a set like Fallen Empires?

I don’t know.  I do know that Hell’s Caretaker is a great card.  It’s also clunky and vulnerable.  But you’ll probably win any game where it sticks.

My belt!  It is so powerful!

Five mana for five cards, even at a cost of five life, is very good.  Five mana for a flying Maro that locks in power and toughness when you cast it is very good.  The option to do one or the other is very, very good.  And the possibility to get both is exceptional.  I know most players don’t think nine mana is worth considering when deck building, but it happens.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get a 10/10 flying Demon when it does?

Promise is powerful, flexible, adaptable and evocative.  It plays both an active and a passive role, drawing you into the rest of your deck, while threatening to win the game by its lonesome.  No wonder so many players gave this card 5 stars.