Can You Rate the Magic Card, According to Gatherer – Game Six

D’Avenent Archer – 2.483

Before I trash the card, I should point out that D’Avenent Archer is well-designed.  The Legends team must have thought it odd that Magic didn’t include creatures capable of ranged strikes.  Granted, cards like Rod of Ruin and Prodigal Sorcerer existed, but those cards felt as thought were launching attacks from far away, behind enemy lines.  D’Avenent Archer fires arrows in the thick of combat.  The team even got the color right; dealing damage in combat would become a staple white ability (The same team also made two non-white cards with this ability: Tor Wauki and Crimson Manticore.  But the ability is secondarily in Red.  Considering D’Avenent Archer is the common of the ‘cycle’, I’m giving the other two cards the pass.)

Where the Legends team got into trouble, is how they costed their archer.  I presume they came up with the ability, only had a vague understanding of power level, then looked at Prodigal Sorcerer.  Tim was well-costed, and well-loved (loved enough to make it to 7th Edition, even though Wizards knew better by then.)  So they priced the Archer like the Sorcerer, and gave her an additional toughness to make up for the targeting restriction.

Here’s the problem: That targeting restriction is huge.  Prodigal Sorcerer picks off Birds of Paradise and awkwardly timed Frozen Shades all day long.  But nothing will fall to the Archer’s arrows unless your opponent puts it out there.  And if there are no fragile targets?  The Sorcerer fires spells at the opponent, chipping away at their life total, while the Archer kicks back and fletches arrows I guess.   All in all, the Archer isn’t worth a rouge point of toughness in the unusual event where she jumps into fray, swinging her bow.  It’s kind of funny that the Sorcerer can’t kill the Archer.  But two Sorcerers can kill an Archer.  A thousand Archers can’t kill a single Sorcerer.

Talara’s Bane reminds me of the Simpson’s ‘House of Evil/Frogurt’ sketch.  It’s a Coercion!  That’s good!  But it only effects Green and White decks.  That’s bad.  But it costs less!  That’s good!  But you can only discard creatures.  That’s bad.  But you gain life equal to that creature’s toughness!  That’s good!  But Distress can do so much more and was in print at the same time… (that’s bad.)

At least the card was well-placed.  With a high concentration of hybrid creatures crawling around, there was a fair chance Talara’s Bane would catch something from an opponent’s hand even if they were running Red-Blue.  Outside of Eventide, however, the card is too clunky to wield.  It does a better job keeping an uneven table from wobbling.

Here was my goof on the bottom three.  My thought process was “D’Avenent Archer is bad.  So is Talara’s Bane.  Spineless Thug is borderline playable, but players hate a drawback.  It’s going to lose a few tenths on that alone.”

That didn’t quite happen, and Spineless Thug rose above the other two cards.  Barely.  It’s only .006 stars greater than Talara’s Bane.  The order of those two cards would swap if one person voted differently by half a star.  In the previous five games, I removed cards that were too close to another card by less than a tenth of a star (which also would have kicked D’Avenent Archers, which is less than a tenth away as well.)  But I wanted to play along in this game.  And the only way I could make my score meaningful was to keep all ten cards, no matter how close they stood together.  Feel free to tell me in the comments which version of the game you prefer; the version where I play the game as well, or the version where the cards are more spaced apart.  I see advantageous to both, but I’d rather hear what you prefer.

Getting back to Spineless Thug—I wasn’t wrong about how players evaluate the card.  I was wrong about how players evaluate the card in Nemesis.  In Tenth Edition, Spineless Thug comes in at a paltry 1.964.  In Nemesis, Thug took an active role in the Mercenary deck, as well as supplying beef to Black.  Compare the Thug to the four common creatures from the Urza Block: Phyrexian Denouncer, Ravenous Rats, Squirming Mass, and Unworthy dead.  A reasonable enough selection of utility creatures.  But there isn’t a two power creature among them.  Instead of fielding control, Spineless Thug swung and traded.  There was something refreshing about that and many players responded.  By the time Tenth Edition rolled out though, decent black attacking creatures on two wasn’t special, and the drawback weighed the thug down.

This is where I go right off the rails.  Magma Spray seems like a perfectly serviceable card to me.  It’s hurt by its inability to deal damage to the opponent, but I always thought that its ability to deny graveyard tricks to be worth the trade (It doesn’t even need to be the spell that kills the creature.  If you absolutely must stop a Wurmcoil Engine from spawning, Magma Spray plus Doom Blade will get the job done.)

But the player base disagrees with me.    Shock from Magic 2014 nets 3.552 stars.  And the more I think about it, the more I think they’re right.  The utility of Magma Spray is nice, but nothing closes out a game like damage to the head.

Auras.  Am I right fellas?  I come home after a long night of work, and all I want to do is put on my slippers and kick my feet up.  What actually happens, though, is that my creature gets enchanted, I turn it sideways to attack, and my opponent taps some lands, negating two cards with one spell!  Ah, but you can’t live without ’em.  Because Wizards keeps printing them, I guess.

For what it’s worth, Volcanic Strength isn’t terrible.  At least it’s effecient, cabable of beefing up a one-drop creature with bonus maybevasion.  If Volcanic Strength forces an opponent to eat six damage before they blow a Murder on a Goblin Arsonist, then it’s well worth it.  But you don’t always draw your cards at the perfect stage of the game.  And your opponent’s doesn’t always have the wrong answer.

I guess I overvalue Boros Signet.  Though, to be honest, I’m still not sure why it doesn’t rate higher.  As far as I’m concerned, the Signets are gasoline, fixing mana and powering out four drops on round three.  When I saw that Boros Signet only rated 3.50-ish stars, I figured the reason might be the color combination.  White and red tends to drop a pile of early small creatures, rushing to close out the opponent before their game turns on.  But after looking at the rest of the signets, it seems Boros falls square in the middle, and that the highest rated one, Izzet Signet, is less than two-tenths of a star higher.

I can only think of one mana rock that’s potentially better within Modern, and that’s Coldsteel Heart.  But if you’re splashing for a third color, or if your mana stone coming into play tapped is a hindrance, then it isn’t the better choice.  Mind Stone is fine in mono-color. Fellwar Stone is best if you’re expecting to fight similar deck designs, or you’re playing five colors.  In theory, the Talisman cycle from Mirrodin (for example, Talisman of Unity) could be better than the Signet cycle since it gives you the mana right away at the low cost of a few points of life.  But those rated worse than the Signets anyway.

My best guess is that there’s still a segment of the community that can’t get over the insane mana rocks printed in the 20th Century.  Boros Signet might be an excellent tool, and an important part to many decks, but it looks impotentent when compared to Sol Ring, Grim Monolith, and Mana Vault.  Both Ring and Vault are banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.  But Wizards reprinted Sol Ring in every Commander product, which sends strange mixed messages about one of the most broken cards in the history of Magic.  Sol Rings are so prolific, anyone can buy four with a ten dollar bill.  How are the Signets supposed to measure up to that?

Being off by two ranks isn’t unreasonable, but I’m sure I misstepped here.  The problem is that whenever I play Planeshift, someone pools together whatever random planes they own, and we flip through them.  I play Planeshift as an afterthought, to make random pickup games more interesting.  I think a lot of players play it that way.  But that’s not the official way to play.  The official way to play is that I make a deck and choose which planes I want, and you make a deck and choose which planes you want, then we shuffle only those planes together.

When the planes are just a random pile, Glimmervoid Basin is an explosive card with a fun ability.  Did you draw a Last Gasp?  What if you could give every creature -3/-3?  Crazy, right?  A single Mind Rot means all my opponents discard two cards?  Spicy!

Where Glimmervoid Basin goes from gravy to grits is when you build a deck with full knowledge that Basin will pop up in some of your games.  Exploiting free Radiates when your oppoenent cannot is backbreaking.  Even a simple card like Twitch can demolish otherwise balanced games, tapping all your oppoents permanents, untapping all your permanents, and drawing a card for every permanenent on the battlefield.  Ever since I first read Radiate, I’ve seated a long-standing desire to use it on Frenzied Tilling, destroying every land on the battlefield, then searching through my library, putting all the land left in my library on the battlefield, and drawing nothing but spells for the rest of the game.  With Glimmervoid Basin, I don’t have to wait until I get to ten mana before I do it.

Prophet of Kruphix – 3.942

Anyone who played Commander across from the Prophet knows that this card is a nightmare.  She lets you swing your team with impunity.  She untaps your lands during each player’s upkeep.  And with all that extra mana, she can toss surprise bodies into every fray.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Prophet straddles the colors of mana acceleration and card advantage.  Green-Blue players spend much of their time pulling cards out of their library, yet struggle to apply that advantage fast enough to effect the game.  The Prophet gives you the opportunity to dumpd excess creatures on the table each round equal to the number of players.  The power of the Prophet is so palpable that the player who cast her becomes an immediate target for the rest of the players.  That would be problematic if the Prophet didn’t protect the Green-Blue player with a host of surprise blockers.  Or, failing that, the threat of a perfect block.  If your opponents refuse to attack you, it doesn’t matter if you have the proper defenses or not.

But Commander isn’t Standard.  Sometimes, when you play the game for a long time and spend a lot of time in niche formats, you forget how the average player approaches the game.  Most peeps play Standard.  Or they play “Whatever 60 cards I can get my hands on.”  That’s still legit.

Then there’s the multiplayer problem.  Believe it or not, most people don’t regularly engage in twelve person grand melees.  To be honest, I’m not sure whether multiplayer or duel is more popular.  The tournament environment encourages players to think in terms of duels more often.  But every five-player game involves five players, and five is more than two.  I tried digging around to get to the bottom of this, but could only find speculation on the matter.  I’m sure Wizards knows, but there’s no value in them telling players that their favorite format isn’t as popular as they think it is.

In the end, I suppose exact percentages don’t matter.  Much of the game is played by duelists.  And the Prophet is only great in duels.  She’s practically free the round you play her, but that’s not the same as dumping a seven card hand in a single round.  And while blocking may be queen of the multiplayer format, instants and sorceries that target are more valuable in duels.  That’s not to say the Prophet can’t help you in a duel.  Counterspells love it when you untap your lands.  It’s just not the same back-breaking synergy a Prophet would have in a deck stuffed with seven-cost haymakers.

Ajani Vengeant – 4.042

I got one right!  Ajani Vengeant was a much needed update of the card Ajani Goldmane, which I’m sure many players felt was underwhelming after they got over the excitement of playing with Planeswalkers.  Don’t get me wrong.  Ajani Goldmane is a perfectly fine card if you can protect him (especially when you realize his second ability only costs one loyalty.  It’s like an ultimate spread out over four turns.)  But any planeswalker that can either choose to protect themselves, or slow down their opponent’s progression deserves an extra look.  Ajani Goldmane is a more passive threat.  Ajani Vengeant is a problem for your opponent the round he appears, and a disaster if left alone.

Yup.  I goofed.  To be honest, I remembered this dragon for its first ability, but forgot it has morph.  That’s huge.  Dropping this creature early, then flipping it face up later at the end of an opponent’s turn is the stuff control is made of.  I never saw that happen in 2002, but that’s because Quicksilver Dragon was outclassed by the best morph creature in the game at the time, Exalted Angel.  I’m sure there were Blue control archetypes that didn’t include White in Onslaught.  But with cards like the Angel, Akroma’s Vengeance, Eternal Dragon, and Decree of Justice kicking around, one has to wonder why Blue would bother with any other color.

Divorced from that environment, though, and marched forward in time with Time Spiral, and Quicksilver Dragon begins to look real good.  Paired with a dedicated morph deck featuring Fathom Seer, Brine Elemental, and Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Quicksilver Dragon not only finds your opponent in a shell game when the cards are face down, but the morph deck aslo provides a number of creatures that are worth redirecting spells to when the creatures are face up.  Moving forward through time, and we get to add solid choices from Khans to the mix (maybe a couple Icefeather Avens or Kheru Spellsnatchers.)  I made a mistake by underestimating this card.  I suggest you don’t.