2014 Update: The Ten Most Desirable Magic Cards, According to Gatherer – Part One

Gatherer is not a constant.  Card ratings swing wildly based on tournament performance, new interactions and petty grievances.  Nowhere is this more noticeable than the top of the heap, where mild community rating downvotes topple cards from lofty perches, flinging them hundreds of spots below with a few clicks of a button.

When I wrote The Ten Most Desirable Magic Cards, According to Gatherer, I knew updates would be necessary.  Much like the reverse of my 2013 Update: The Ten Most Reviled Magic Cards, seven new cards rose from their previous spots to claim membership in the top ten club.  But for every star that rises, another must fall.  Before we look at the new ten, we need to say goodbye to the seven cards that now hang south of perfection.

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Swords to Plowshares Was Number Seven – Now Number 268

Well, that makes sense.  Swords may be the best creature removal in the game, but it’s only unfair.  Or maybe it’s even fair?  Here’s a way to start an argument: Join a casual Magic group and ask if it’s okay to play Swords to Plowshares.  Watch in fascination as players who whine about power creep invert their opinion when it comes to a classic piece of removal.  “At least if you point this at a Darksteel Colossus, its controller gains 11 life as a concession.”  Sure.  They probably also lost the game.  But, sure, they gain 11 life first.

So, no, I’m not surprised that this card fell out of the top ten.  What surprises me, though, is how far this card fell.  In the comment section for Swords to Plowshares, you can still see people talking about how Swords needs “a couple more votes [to] be the highest rated card in Gatherer.”  What happened?

If I was to guess?  I’d say From the Vault: Twenty happened.  For Magic’s twentieth anniversary, Wizards created a limited issue reprint of some of the best cards in the game of Magic.  Bombs, to be sure.  But bombs that people love to see and play with.  Swords was compared directly to cards like Fact or Fiction, Chainer’s Edict and Green Sun’s Zenith.  And you know what?  It still looks damn fine.  But something about comparing it directly to other damn fine cards cut into its star power.  Alpha’s Swords to Plowshares rates at 4.924.  From the Vault: Twenty?  A humbler 4.557.

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Demonic Tutor Was Number One – Now Number 171

Oh no!  What happened?  Back in July of 2012, Demonic Tutor was crowned king of Magic cards.  It was a well deserved choice, too.  The card is both inconceivably cheap and imminently flexible.  Yet, Demonic Tutor doesn’t do anything on its own.  It’s only as powerful as the deck you put it in.  It makes every deck, even the goofy fun decks, better, faster, stronger.  The flavor is a homerun knock out of the park.  Douglas Schuler’s artwork is excellent.  Even the original Alpha text box makes sense!

Setting the demonic theme aside, I have nothing but admiration for what this card represents to the game of Magic.  But voters are fickle, and the dark lord fell from grace.  I admit, it’s times like this that I wonder if my own articles are influencing the star rating of Magic cards.  To date, my Ten Most Desirable Magic Cards article has been viewed over 140,000 times.  How many of those downvotes were from readers who saw Demonic Tutor take top spot, disagreed, followed the link back to Gatherer and voted it down?  I’ll never know.  I do know, though, that this principle works in reverse, too.  It should be interesting to see if the Tutor bounces back up when I make my next update, neh?

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Hymn to Tourach Was Number Two – Now Number 108

Tinker Was Number Five – Now Number 104

Also suffering From the Vault blues, Hymn to Tourach and Tinker are both down about one hundred spots from their original high scores.  I know going from card number two to card 108 is a big jump, but its best to remember the sort of company these cards keep.  Lightning Bolt is currently card 101.  Enlightened Tutor is 103, and Show and Tell is 115.  Every card at this level is a game breaker.

Tinker, as broken as that card is, is still only one part of a busted combo.  And while Hymn to Tourach may be one of the best answer cards I know, it’s still an answer card, and will always be judged by the decks it answers.  That’s not to say these two cards don’t deserve top spots… I’m just saying I can understand why they backslid.

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Isochron Scepter Was Number Ten – Now Number 52.

Compared to some of the others, this is a minor setback.  Isochron is still hot, and will be as long as there’s a solid stable of two cost instants to pull from.  For what it’s worth, Isochron is still the highest rated card in Modern (or, in other words, it’s the highest rated card printed in the last eleven years.)  I’m happy Wizards never banned the card.  But I got to admit, I’ve also never stared down the barrel of an Isochron loaded with a Boomerang.  It turns out that the cards that are the most fun to play with can often be the least fun play against.

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Gaea’s Cradle Was Number Eight – Now Number Seventeen

Mishra’s Workshop Was Number Six – Now Number Thirteen

Mere trifles of bookkeeping, neither the Cradle nor the Workshop fell much, and, with a few positive ratings, could jump back in the top ten next week.  At spot thirteen, Mishra’s Factory is still the highest rated land in the game, and was barely edged out of the top ten.  So what knocked the Factory out?

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Cards Twelve, Eleven, Ten, Nine and Eight – All Five Freakin’ Moxes

No, seriously.  In an odd shake of the numbers, all five moxes lined up to get their picture taken at slots twelve through eight.  They even lined up in order of most likely to appear in a Vintage tournament, with slot number eight going to Mox Sapphire, then slot nine to Mox Jet, followed by Mox Emerald, Mox Pearl and Mox Ruby.

I can’t stress how weird this is.  When I first made the list, Mox Sapphire hovered somewhere around seventeen, with its brethren filtered throughout the next fifty cards.  Some time around the Summer of 2013, when I first thought to make this update, I took a second look at the top ten.  Sapphire was in the nine spot.  I’m not sure where the rest of the jewelry were, but they weren’t in the top twenty-five.  Now that I’m officially making an update, though, the Moxen lined up like ducks in a row.

I suppose there’s still a few new players who don’t get why Mox are tops.  After all, lands do the same thing, right?  They sure do.  But allow me to point you to the first part of rule 305.2 in the comprehensive rulebook:

“305.2. A player can normally play one land during his or her turn[.]”

Artifacts don’t come with that restriction.  Magic is a game of tempo.  Or, it would be, if you weren’t allowed to drop all your mana sources on round one.  If two players play decks featuring a full set of twenty Mox, they wouldn’t be playing a game of Magic as we know it.  The end result would be closer to a game of War, with each player flipping over the top card of their deck, trying to trump the other.  Playing across from a table full of Mox is like playing a game of checkers against someone playing chess.  You can’t win.  Because, even if you did win a match up like that, the only thing you proved was that your opponent wasn’t trying.

Best Comment by Ibn_Shisa: “Now worth more than actual sapphire.”

Close, but not quite.  One carat of standard heated blue sapphire costs about $300.  If the Mox Saphire card was a gem, it would weigh about 8 carats, and cost approximately $2,400.  An Alpha Mox Sapphire currently costs about $1,900.  Another five years or so, and that might be a wise trade.

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Number Seven – Black Lotus

Oh boy.

In the original article, I dragged Black Lotus front and center to explain what this list was, and what it was not.  According to Gatherer isn’t about raw power, but ranks cards based on their community rating, which, in turn, is based on peoples’ personal perceptions.  Sure, the top ten is filled with the most powerful of the power cards; but the cards need to be flavorful and fun, too, or it wouldn’t make the cut.  If a fraction of the community couldn’t agree that Black Lotus deserved five stars, then it doesn’t belong in this top ten list.

Since then, though, something happened.  The community pushed Black Lotus back on the list, and made a mockery of my original introduction.  It’s still not number one.  It certainly could be.  If I was writing a subjective list about the most powerful cards in the game of Magic, I would tell you that Lotus tops the list.  And if you asked me why, I’d say it’s because this card, like the Moxes, destroys all sense of tempo in the game, but, unlike the Moxes, does it all in one shot.  The end result is a lethal, flexible card with too few ways to answer it.  Outside of decks that don’t use mana, there isn’t a single deck in the game that can’t be improved by removing one of the cards, and replacing it with a Black Lotus.

But the real proof that Black Lotus is the most powerful card in the game?  That would be its price tag.  Money doesn’t lie.  Sure, Black Lotus could maintain value for sentimental reasons, because it was once the most powerful card, and the status quo insists that its price remains steady.  That argument doesn’t hold up, though, when the card continues to break record numbers.  Recently, a mint condition Alpha Black Lotus was auctioned on eBay for $27,302 (I love that uneven amount.  It means that someone bid $27, 301, but wouldn’t fork over another two bucks.)  For comparison sake, a mint Alpha Blaze of Glory sells for $79.99 at Star City Games.  Black Lotus and Blaze of Glory share the same rarity and were printed in the same number of sets.  Where you could buy a Wii U for a playset of four Blazes of Glorys, though, you could buy a 2014 Premium V6 Ford Mustang for a single Black Lotus, and still have enough left over to turn an Alpha Blaze of Glory into an air freshener.

Technically, that only proves that Black Lotus is more powerful than all the Alpha rares that were pulled for power level reasons.  But, let’s be honest.  Outside of a blip on the radar during the Urza Block, no other set in Magic gave us a cavalcade of broken cards like Alpha.  If a normal street judge can shut down an entire district, then what chance does the scum of Mega-City One have against Judge Dredd?

Best Comment, made by Owls_and_More_Owls:  “When I was first learning how to play the game, I asked my friends, who were already hardcore players, “what is the best card ever?” They looked at each other “Black Lotus,” they said. They told me what it did, and I was like, “Okay whatever.” Then I thought about it. I thought about it hard. I blacked out, and awoke in a forest with my face covered in blood, and ever since then, wolves seemed to bow at my feet.  Suffice to say, This is a pretty good card.”

Alternative Best Comment, made by kiseki: “Somewhere, sometime, someone once used this to cast Celestial Prism and forever shattered their opponent’s faith in the game.”

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Two down, eight cards to go.  Click here to continue on to Part Two!