Locations
Hello folks! I hope you are having just the best day in your life right now! And if not yet, I hope so by the end of today!
Do you know where I am right now? I am vacationing down in Ecuador for Spring Break. That means I cannot spend time writing up these cool articles for you. Sorry! Instead, I am doing this a few weeks early as I have time available in my schedule - so how about another Random Top Ten? I love this series!
How does this thing work? Great question! I head over to Gatherer. I then smash that random button 10 times in a row and I write up those ten cards for my column, in that order. I won't take something if it's a basic land or something I've already done. I have played with most of the cards in the game and of the previous 130 cards in those 13 Top Tens I've played...129 of them, only a vanilla dork from a starter set has gone unplayed by me somewhere from limited to real life.
Let's do it to it!
#10. Blighted Fen
Non-Basic Lands are rare in this countdown, and I'm not sure why! I have run the entire uncommon Blighted Land cycle in my builds at various points in time and one is in my Commander Cube. They don't suck! This one is a Diabolic Edict, which is pretty good as backup removal. It gets around common answers to removal like indestructible, hexproof and Heroic Intervention. Don't forget sacrifice removal like Blighted Fen when you are building a deck for Commander, multiplayer, or other kitchen table needs!
#9. Rime Transfusion
Are you a fan of Kaldheim or Snow stuff? I have the Aura for you! You can add an Unholy Strength level of power and toughness to a dork and you can activate it for Snow mana and then make hard to block. It's a fun card and I have run it in a Snow Five-Color (the format) deck before. It's really hard to block the enchanted dork in most decks so it has real value at the modern kitchen table. Enjoy it!
#8. Cloudshift
Cloudshift was a big deal when it was printed as it was the first simple one-mana blink spell. Blink can do a lot for you as you can keep a chump blocker alive, remove something from targeted removal, exile and return with a cool enters-the-battlefield trigger, reload it's +1/+1 tokens like Spike Weaver, and loads more. This simple, cheap, and elegant spell is registered in 6,194 decks over at EDHREC.com which shows you how big of a deal it was! I've run it myself in a few places here and there.
#7. Raging Goblin
Did you know that this card was one of the big errors in the history of spoilers. This was originally printed in Portal. Then it was heavily spoiled that it was going to be in the middle Rath Cycle set: Stronghold. We went into that prerelease thinking it was going to show up in the set and... no Raging Goblin! It was actually made tournament-legal in the next set Exodus. That was a big issue that the card caught. I've played in in a few limited places. It's not bad as an on-curve haster for one mana and I enjoy it a lot a lot.
#6. Bludgeon Brawl
Ah...we ended my common streak. Bludgeon Brawl was the first card from New Phyrexia that I built a deck around and its ability is screaming to be reprinted on a legendary creature so you could build around it in Commander. Love it! Every artifact is a piece of equipment! Yours. Your foes. It's so fun in multiplayer and is one of the few group hug cards in Red and that also plays into a weird space. You can equip your leader with your Sol Ring - it's so cool! It also loves synergies in the equipment world like Puresteel Paladin and the guys that get bigger for each equipment on them like Loxodon Punisher. It's so much fun!
#5. Flowstone Channeler
How about instead of three commons in a row we have three Red cards, sound like fun? Don't forget Time Spiral Remastered, which features cards like this that are getting reprinted again. I've run this in Limited builds where you can target your foes' creatures and then kill them if they are X/1s. You can also pump up a dork of yours enough to trade with something and I've seen a potential defender of my attacking 2/2 get unblocked by a 3/3 that doesn't want to trade. It's not a bad 23rd card for your Limited brew. Don't forget about it.
#4. Personal Incarnation
The first Avatar! I ran this in my first decks back when it was still in print. This was a very flavorful and risky card and the last ability keeps it in check for formats that use older cards only like Commander 95 and Old School. You can send damage that would kill yourself to yourself and then when you die you are really hurt. Even in a 40-life format like Commander, half your life loss when it dies is not good for lasting a long time. I'm just curious, how many of these are getting played there? Less than 100? Less than 50? Single digits? Let's find out and... 13! Double digits, but barely...those are 13 brave souls. It gets played most in Gisela, Blade of Goldnight because the life loss is halved so you are only losing a quarter of your life. Makes sense, I guess. So, if you are looking for tech for your next Gisela deck, we've found it!
#3. Alarum
This card reminds me of the black-bordered card with the exclamation point - To Arms! Only one other black-bordered card is that excited (Kaboom!) the rest are in silver-bordered land. Anyway, To Arms! untaps the team and doesn't give a pump, and it replaces itself so it's the better class of card. But don't sleep on an effect like Alarum as a useful combat trick that both untaps a dork for the blocking out of nowhere and can pump it to trade and survive combat with said attacker. I've used it in Limited.
#2. Wood Elves
This is an iconic card first printed with sweet Rebecca Guay art in Portal, which remains my favorite art for the piece. It's awesome sauce. The card. The art. It's a big cachet over at the kitchen table and formats there like Commander. How many are registered at EDHREC.com? Let's find out, before I look, my guess is 5,000 and... wow did I under guess it. It's 33,339! That's high! 15% of decks run it! It's probably the most-played card that was first printed in a Starter set.
#1. Karn Liberated
Wow, hello! This is the first time that the #1 card randomly actually is the #1 card in the list (although some might argue the #2 card is #1). Karn Liberated warps metagames and wins games and Wood Elves just tutors for a dual land on arrival. There's only a 10% chance of that happening each article and it happened this one! Awesome! As you can see, we have an amazing and strong card that I use in Commander decks, my Commander Cube, Abe's Deck of Happiness and Joy, and other places. It's a key card and reward for Urzatron on turn three that makes 7 colorless mana for formats like Modern where I've run him as well. His +4 is pretty good at hurting opposing hands and I like to target someone with one card, or who had an empty hand before getting something bounced. But he's really here for that -3 that lets you exile anything in colorless, even lands. He's ideal control of opposing permanents and if they don't have anything good, you can just go after their hand instead and if not then you can always hit lands. The discard and removal are both exiling so it's good for the team.
And there you go! So, what did you think of my random cards? Anything in here inspire you or that you never knew existed? Just let me know your thoughts! And yes! I have used all of these cards somewhere.
Random Appendices
Did you like those random 1-set cards of craziness? Excellent! Here are the first eleven iterations of random fun for you to unpack!
- Random Top Ten #1. My first top randomly features both hits (such as Grim Lavamancer) and 'what the?' moments, such as Narwhal. Enjoy!
- Random Top Ten #2. If you like high profile spells like Gush and Fire // Ice, then you came to the right place! If you like old and obscure stuff like Silver Seraph and Infernal Darkness, then you also came to the right place.
- Random Top Ten #3. Sometimes in these random builds you have a lack of any sort of theme. But we did finish with a rare that I used to win my first ever Sealed tournament, so there you are!
- Random Top Ten #4. This was about when I realized this series had legs, so I began to codify the various articles. This Top Ten's random feature is high profile cards and a full three are commonly seen in multiplayer or kitchen table gaming.
- Random Top Ten #5. Including cards like the dreaded
and the game-winning Door to Nothingness, this is a fun random blast! - Random Top Ten #6. This Random Gatherer-Inspired slate of ten includes cards such as Thallid, Forbidden Orchard, and everybody's favorite infect creature. And cards you likely forgot about (or never knew about) with Savage Firecat and Wall of Light in there as well! Check out the randomness!
- Random Top Ten #7. In this Random Gatherer article, we see cards like Blessing, Coercion, the Zombie Dinosaur beasts of Putrid Raptor, and Dingus Egg. Check it out!!!!
- Random Top Ten #8. From Bad Moon to Ball Lightning, and from Armory Automaton to Power of Fire, we have a ten-set of randomly chosen cards for your enjoyment. This Random List is the list that keeps giving, as I decide to pause and create a Top Ten Ways to Abuse Power of Fire in the middle of my top ten list so you get TWO TOP TEN LISTS for the price of reading a single article. What's not to love?
- Random Top Ten #9. Who wants Black Sun's Zenith or Muldrotha, the Gravetide? Who wants Kjeldoran Knight or Staggershock that you may not have known about? My #1 card was a Commander legal leader and I turned and was inspired enough to create a budget Commander around him the next week!
- Random Top Ten #10. Top Ten Ten Time! and you can see cycling lands, Eldrazi, Defenders, and Beetles. And not necessarily in that order! Enjoy!
- Random Top Ten #11. Lets break out of the ten-set! You can see cards in here like Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Claws of Gix and a powerful #4. We even get my favorite card name of all time. What'll be? Check it out!
- Random Top Ten #12. For this fun article I get forgotten cards like Samite Alchemist and fun cards like Hot Soup. I know you wanna check it out, right? Right!!!!!
- Random Top Ten #13. It's awesome. Sauce. Sau-some. It has cards in it like Call the Skybreaker and Kor Hookmaster. I know that you want to click that link for the Sau-some!
