MTG Color Pie

Yes, this card is somewhere on this list.

http://wp.me/p5VSx-1iw

Best laid plans…

This series was originally going to be a part of Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). What was going to take place was that I was going to reveal 5 cards a day for 20 days, or slow roll the top 10 (I hadn’t completely decided), where each card had its own little write-up.  Along with the write-up it was going to look pretty fancy with graphics and stylized nicely, like you would see in a publication. It was going to be a fun thing to talk about during the longest break between new set releases where it’s traditionally the slowest Magic news time of the year; it only had the World Championships to compete with at the end of the run.

Alas, like everything else lately, I just ran out of time. So I’m presenting the whole list today, only without commentary.

What follows is a list of what I consider to be the 100 best designed* cards in all of Magic. And there’s an asterisk with designed because I know that not all cards are designed but developed as well. This is a design blog, and I understand the Development has an equal hand in how the cards you play with shape out. But we’re doing it this way and that’s that. It doesn’t mean that any of these cards are going to be reprinted (in fact, I know that some of them won’t be), but I wouldn’t disagree ripping any of these out of a booster pack in the future.

I went through all the Magic cards ever printed. To be on this list they have to be the best designed cards according to modern design standards. There’s no Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Maze of Ith, or any of that ilk on this list. Any of these cards could be printed today, and many of them have. They have appropriate mana costs, fit in the right color with the correct philosophy, and are balanced. There are some cards that are/were tournament staples, and some that little to no play outside of casual and Commander. The cards were not given weight to any particular format of limited to constructive (outside of #100 for obvious reasons). Cycles of cards were considered, and if each card in the cycle was designed very well, it was included as one entry (4 such cycles made the list). I decided that the cutoff to be on this list was M12 so nothing from Innistrad on will be on this list.

Of course, this is a highly subjective list. There are some on here that people will disagree with (I’ll talk about #2 in a moment), but this is my feeling of the best designed cards. They were not chosen on this list because they were good for tournament play or that they inspired other cards years later. They were included on this list because the card was well designed; it broke new ground in a well done way, or did a concept the most eloquently. The card, on a whole, makes sense mechanically and flavorfully.

Now I believe that #2 will be one of the most controversial cards on this list. I strongly believe that it’s a well designed and balanced card, only the environment it was played in broke it in half. Taken outside of that, there hasn’t been too much issue with the card. There will be a future post (whenever that will be) that I’ll use to try and defend my opinion on that card.

Before I get to the list, here’s a bunch of stats:

• Color Breakdown:
  White – 14
  Blue – 15
  Black – 16
  Red – 13
  Green – 12
  Artifact – 10
  Land – 4
  Colorless – 1
  All (Cycle) – 2
  Multicolored – 13
• Type Breakdown:
  Noncreature Artifacts – 7
  Creature – 45
  Enchantment – 9
  Instnat – 19
  Land – 4
  Planeswalker – 2
  Sorcery – 14
• Magic Ages Breakdown of First Printing:
  Alpha-Alliances – 10
  Mirage-Prophecy – 12
  Invasion-Saviors – 31
  Ravnica-Rise of the Eldrazi – 40
  Scars of Mirrodin-M12 – 6
  (One cycle of cards goes between those two ages)
• Other Breakdowns:
  Invitational Cards –  3
  On Reserved List –  2
  Number of Jaces – 1

And now, without commentary, is the full 100: