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Top Ten U/G Cards

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Hello folks!

I hope you are having a great day today. When I first set out to make a Top Ten rg Card list, I knew that I had enough range to finish the allied colors, but I wasn't sure there were enough quality opposite enemy cards to count. It's hard to make a top ten list when you have 35 or 50 cards across the game with that factor. Could you imagine a "Top Ten Five Color Creatures" List? Here's . . .  um . . .  Transguild Courier? And over here is Fusion Elemental? Exactly.

And I thought that my options for having a quality list would be limited. I was wrong, and I am sorry to the enemy color combos out there. For example, there are around 114 cards in Blue and Green, and I have played all but 6.1 That's clearly enough quality to have a strong Top Ten!

My apologies are ongoing.

Of the enemy color combos, this is probably my least favorite, so I wanted to start with this countdown, and then move up, to my mind, to better colors.

To count for today's countdown, a card must be both colors and only those colors. We are not looking at color identity. Examples of cards that count as ug are

Shielding Plax
Illusion // Reality
Gaea's Skyfolk

Let's start by looking at a few cards that didn't make the cut, so you can see just how useful this color combo can be!

Voidslime
Urban Evolution
Thrasios, Triton Hero
Aether Mutation

Those are some strong cards, but they aren't Top Ten quality, amiright?

So what is?

10. Momir Vig, SImic Visionary

Momir Vig, Simic Visionary

Momir VIg is a great engine to break your dorks. Blue stuff can draw you cards and Green stuff can Worldly Tutor your library. Both? Free tutored creatures! Even without out the combo, you still get either a free Worldly Tutor or a free shot at a creature with this anytime you are casting something from your deck. Your deck wants creatures, right? It wants creatures with the same colors as other creatures in your deck, right. Then this is amazing. Oh, and in any deck where your Commander is at least Blue and Green, this is strong as you cast and recast your leader and net serious bang for your triggering buck. Momir On!

9. Trygon Predator

Trygon Predator

If you like swinging with a strong flying Beast while also destroying their artifact or enchantment, then you have come to the right place on this countdown! Because the Trygon Predator is amazing at being both an early drop that people respect and a force that will keep something from getting overly rambunctious. My favorite part, though, is that it's a "may effect" so you don't have to blow up anything if you don't want to. Don't be that person who swings and breaks someone's Coldsteel Heart or something that sets their mana and helps them cast things. Don't do that.

8. Simic Sky Swallower / Sagu Mauler

Simic Sky Swallower
Sagu Mauler

You can't win the game without dropping someone's life down to 0, unless you have a funky win-con or milling thing going on, but not generally. How do you do that? By playing creatures that have enough size to win while also being hard for your foe to stop. That's where these two beaters come to play. Both have a great board presence as solid trampling bodies that can swing and win, while also having shroud/hexproof to keep your foes from mucking about and slaying it. I prefer the flying of the Simic Sky Swallower to the morph of Sagu Mauler, but both are powerful game-ending forces. Want to win the game and not just frump around? Great! Then toss these into your deck!

7. Rashmi, Eternities Crafter

Rashmi, Eternities Crafter

Don't dismiss Rashmi. She isn't some spell-based leader of a Izzet guild that adores its instants/sorceries and thus builds them up. There, Rashmi might seem a little obvious and on-the-nose. But Rashmi isn't some Blue and Red spells matter dork. There's no Red here. She's Green instead, married with Blue, and she'll play very differently. You tend to be more ramp or creature based with these colors. Remember that Rashmi triggers any time you cast the first spell of a turn, no matter what you cast. Cast an Eternal Witness? Fine! Mulldrifter? Okay! Cultivate? Sure! Urban Evolution? All right! Good stuff! Now just flip that card over on top of your library and see if you win a new card! And the bigger the spell you cast, the more likely you are to get a free card! If not, you'll still draw the card. Was it too pricey? A land? An instant removal spell you didn't want to play that time? Okay, fine, just draw it instead! So, for the rest of the game, your first spell is a free effect or a free card, one or the other. There's no dial here to keep Rashmi from overwhelming a table. Plus, in a ramp deck (which Green often is, cough, cough) you'll be able to cast big fat stuff like Lifeblood Hydra that can potentially free-cast pretty much anything you reveal! Because of that, she plays better with Green and Blue than she ever would with Red and Blue! Rashmi indeed!

6. Nissa, Steward of Elements

Nissa, Steward of Elements

I don't know why many of you are still sleeping on this iteration Nissa. She's awesome. I love dropping her on the third turn with a cost of 1ug and then immediately giving her +2 scry, and then doing again on turn four. By turn five you will have gotten her to scry 2 twice, and five loyalty, before anyone else is bothering to swing, and then you can drop any land or creatures with a cost of five or less onto the battlefield for free starting on turn five, and every turn from then out. You can easily get power out of her early or late, and she's got strong value everywhere.

5. Bring to Light

Bring to Light

Bring to Light is a great card with an ability that scales well as you increase that converge count. Even as-is in a two-color deck, it's a powerful tool to fetch a two-drop critter, sorcery or instant from your deck and cast it. But three? Four? Dare I say . . .  five? This thing gets considerably more powerful the more colors you bring to the party. It may look like an arithmetically increased amount, but it's really a geometric amount of power in the full amount of Magic cards you can run and power you can unlock! It's a powerful card for a lot of different decks with different cards to unlock. Bring to Light the power of converge at your next game!

4. Mystic Snake // Mystic Genesis

Mystic Snake
Mystic Genesis

There's just something satisfying about having a Counterspell in your hand. You can counter anything that comes your way. And the best part about Mystic Snake is that it's creature with flash and can counter something on arrival. That means it sticks around and you can give it a Sword of Fire and Ice or block a powerful dork that swings without trample to prevent it from going to your dome. It contributes to your board position. But what makes Mystic Snake one of the best counters ever printed is the sheer synergy with cards like Momentary Blink or Crystal Shard.

3. Prime Speaker Zagana

Prime Speaker Zegana

Prime Speaker Zegana can be summed up very ably in a few simple concepts. Six mana. Big body. Lots of cards drawn. You are almost never casting Zegana to an empty board, and when you are, you can still draw a minimum of two cards on arrival. And then Zegana has massive synergy with +1/+1 counters and enters-the-battlefield tricks, both of which are pretty common in these colors. But I don't have to self-bounce it or have a Doubling Season in play for twice the counters for more cards in order to abuse the crap out to Zegana. Zegana works everywhere. In every shell. I just need to have some creatures and the desire to draw cards. Even with a just a simple Llanowar Elves in play, I draw three cards when Zegana arrives to the party. I don't have to have any extra party favors to make Zegana sing Karaoke.

2. Prophet of Kruphix

Prophet of Kruphix

Hey, if you get banned in one of the most permissive formats allowed in casual lands, then you are going to hit high on this list. In fact, the guy below who hits higher is even better for Commander, and yet still legal, which is odd to me. The Prophet is awesome. Giving your dorks flash is great, as it's not like you really care about flashing a Sol Ring or a planeswalker at a time you can't use it's loyalty ability anyway. Creatures are, by far, the most important thing to flash out for combat or timing enters-the-battlefield abilities for the most valuable situation, and so forth. Plus, you can untap land and dorks to make mana or do some fun stuff! It's a great card, and anyone who had played with or against Prophet of Kruphix knows exactly how dominate it can prove at the kitchen table.

By the way, Prophet was not a card that should have been banned in Commander for ubiquity. I knew of many decks in the colors, including one of my own, that didn't run it because it didn't work. It's a 2/3 creature for 5 mana that just untaps and allows your dorks to have flash. Anybody can burn, kill, control, exile, or counter it. It's board presence isn't so game-winning that you can't deal with it. There is no massive card advantage here. On the other hand, the next card . . . 

1. Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

 . . .  Edric is miles better than Prophet. An Edric Commander is nasty, as I know. I have an Edric deck, it's my Spike Commander deck for when someone just wants to duel or something. Even outside of a deck that wants to abuse the sheer massive card drawing of Edric as a leader, he's great everywhere. He encourages people to attack elsewhere to get cards. That leads to inter-fighting amongst your enemies that then leads to more inter-fighting and ultimately a great day will be had by all as they kill each other, and you profit. Edric Is Great, because even when I know a foe's Edric is manipulating me, I still want those cards! It doesn't matter! I need the cards. I need to refill my hand. I need the sweet caress of Edric's musings to keep myself playing this game. Edric on!

And there you go! So what did you think of my list? Where did I go wrong? Anything I missed? Just let me know!

Appendix:

Did you list this top ten list? Want to read more? Great! Here are my first five allied lists for you to check out:

  1. Top Ten R/G
  2. Top Ten U/W
  3. Top Ten U/B
  4. Top Ten R/B
  5. Top Ten W/G

P.S. -- Wow, you must really like my stuff enough to read this far! I just wanted to mention that I went to, and adored, the Blank Panther film. Up until now, my favorite film was Donnie Darko. No longer. Other than Lord of the Rings, no tentpole films were in my top ten films, but indie films like Saved! or Return of the Secaucus Seven, or older films such as M.A.S.H.. No longer. Black Panther is immediately not just my favorite Marvel film or superhero film of all time, but it's my favorite film of all time. Watching it was an emotional, visceral experience that left me humbled. There are no superlatives that I could lavish on the film that could do it justice. It was that impressive an experience for me, and I just sat in the theater for at least five minutes after it concluded crying, not at sadness or happiness but just the majesty of the film.


1 I don't recall ever playing Cytoshape, Ethereal Ambush, Groundling Pouncer, Invert the Skies, Weaver of Currents, and Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca. I have had all but Invert and Kumena played against me.


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