In this experiment, we forgo a new deck and look back at some favorites instead.

Toward the end of April, many Magic players decided to discuss their Top 8 Magic cards. Brian Kibler covers his here, Marshall Sutcliffe lists his favorites here, and Brian David-Marshall and Mike Flores discuss their top cards in this episode of Top 8 Magic.

Picking a favorite has been challenging for me in the past—I like different cards for different reasons. But when given the opportunity to expand my list to eight cards, I found a lot more room for cards of various categories. If you read many of my columns, you may already know some of my favorite cards, but nonetheless, I’m going to go over the eight that made it to the top and include some links to articles—and decklists from those articles—that feature them.

Honorable Mentions

The first draft of my list included a few more cards than eight. There’s only one white mana symbol among all the cards I picked out, and it’s not in a mana cost. And there are zero red mana symbols among my top choices. I guess that makes me Sultai.

But that doesn’t mean I want to skip red altogether. When I play competitive constructed, it’s usually because there’s a relatively strong combo deck I can pick up. For Modern, that’s occasionally meant Storm. The enabler that really lets that deck function the way I like it to is Pyromancer Ascension. For only 2 mana, it can enable so much in such a powerful way. I haven’t written much about the Ascension because I’d have thousands of competitive Storm players to compete with in trying to optimize the card’s use, but if you want my take on how to make the Ascension work in Commander, check out my article The Impossible Quest.

My other red runner-up is a card that I really appreciate for its top-down flavor. Form of the Dragon is an extremely satisfying card to cast from a Vorthos perspective. I turn into a dragon, breathing fire and flying away from grounded foes. Unfortunately, playing the card brings huge risk: Your life total becomes 5. Without this downside, I don’t think the card would be too powerful, but it would cut into some of the flavor. It would, however, probably make the card a few places higher on my list. Incidentally, what is probably my favorite article I’ve written is called Four Forms of the Dragon and features four decks—one for each of the R/x color combos—and a short story for each.

8 — Skinshifter

In my article Sunsinger Succession, I wrote this:

About eight months later, I found an excuse to play with it after all in my Doran, the Siege Tower Tiny Leaders deck, which I discuss in my article Rolling with Doran. I’d love to see more green shapeshifters in Magic in the form of Druids or Shamans—or even just plain Shapeshifters. I want to see all kinds of animal forms, and I’d love to see green cards in the vein of Form of the Dragon that let me turn into animals the way Skinshifter can.

Tiny Siege Tower ? Tiny Leaders | Andrew Wilson

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Angelic Wall
• 1 Archers' Parapet
• 1 Courser of Kruphix
• 1 Jeskai Barricade
• 1 Necravolver
• 1 Overgrown Battlement
• 1 Skinshifter
• 1 Vine Trellis
• 1 Wall of Blood
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Wall of Ice
• 1 Wall of Mulch
• 1 Wall of Omens
• 1 Wall of Roots
• 1 Shield Sphere
• 1 Steel Wall
• 1 Wall of Junk
• 1 Wall of Tanglecord

• Spells (12)
• 1 Abrupt Decay
• 1 Chord of Calling
• 1 Dismember
• 1 Glyph of Doom
• 1 Shred Memory
• 1 Smother
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Rolling Stones
• 1 Shield of the Oversoul
• 1 Sterling Grove
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice

• Lands (19)
• 2 Forest
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Forbidding Watchtower
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Murmuring Bosk
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Sandsteppe Citadel
• 1 Stirring Wildwood
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Woodland Cemetery

• Sideboard (10)
• 1 Wall of Glare
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Reviving Melody
• 1 Cover of Darkness
• 1 Pharika, God of Affliction
• 1 Athreos, God of Passage
• 1 Testament of Faith
• 1 Abzan Charm
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Sheltering Word

• More Options (7)
• 1 Deathrite Shaman
• 1 Idyllic Tutor
• 1 Stoneforge Mystic
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 1 Diamond Valley
• 1 Gaea's Cradle
• 1 Grove of the Guardian

Buy This Deck

7 — Aeon Chronicler

I love the artwork, and I love suspend. I love drawing cards, and I love scaling spells. On the battlefield, though, it’s just a glorified Maro, and suspending it for a good number of turns is much more expensive than just casting a Honden of Seeing Winds.

I haven’t found a ton of synergy with the Chronicler either, so apart from appearing in a couple Commander decks I’ve featured, he hasn’t appeared in any of my articles. Still, I have a special love for the card, and maybe I’ll one day figure out something exciting to do with it.

6 — Kiora, the Crashing Wave

I knew I wanted a Planeswalker on my list, and three appeared as good candidates. Kiora won out over the other two for being in my favorite color combination of Simic and for having a top-down ultimate that summons giant, awesome Krakens. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage was a good choice because I think she’s awesome, and that ultimate is super-sweet. And Vraska the Unseen is great as a top-down gorgon with a super-visceral ultimate that creates interesting gameplay. Apparently, I have an appreciation for the monstrous-humanoid ladies. But the color combination and utility of Kiora’s first couple loyalty abilities gave Kiora the spot.

Unfortunately, she hasn’t featured primarily in any of my lists, though she did show up for flavor in Bring the Deeps. The problem is that, because of the restrictiveness of loyalty activations, Planeswalkers don’t make great combo cards. Outside of Doubling Season (see Tamiyo and Jace in Pocket Combo in Magical Christmas Land) and Time Walks, they tend not to offer a lot in that category. That’s not to say there’s no potential, though, so maybe I’ll have to give Kiora and other Planeswalkers more attention in the future.

5 — Army of the Damned

As a kind of follow-up to Four Forms of the Dragon, I wrote Four Armies of the Damned. There were no short stories this time, but I again made a different deck for each of the card’s color pairs.

What I love about Army of the Damned is that it’s basically an entire zombie scene in one card. It’s not just a Walking Corpse—this is the entire graveyard rising up at once. Like Form of the Dragon and Skinshifter, this is a super-top-down card that really speaks to me. It’s a powerful win condition (though, in my experience, the Zombies tend not to last to my next untap step), and it’s exciting to cast, and it tells a story. That works for me.

"Carnival of Soul Sisters ? Casual | Andrew Wilson"

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Crusader of Odric
• 2 Geist-Honored Monk
• 3 Vizkopa Guildmage
• 4 Blood Artist
• 4 Soul Warden
• 4 Soul's Attendant

• Spells (18)
• 2 Seize the Soul
• 2 Corpsehatch
• 3 Army of the Damned
• 3 Conqueror's Pledge
• 4 Lingering Souls
• 2 Carnival of Souls
• 2 Ashnod's Altar

• Lands (24)
• 6 Plains
• 7 Swamp
• 1 Vault of the Archangel
• 2 Fetid Heath
• 4 Orzhov Guildgate
• 4 Tainted Field

Buy This Deck

4 — Necrotic Ooze

This one has probably the most combo potential of my Top 8—and it has the articles to show for it: Ooze: Activate, Monstrous Forms, Phyrexian Frog, and Ooze of the First Tree. Necrotic Ooze has a bit of top-down elements to it—it can reach into the magic of corpses it crawls across, using that magic as its own. But what I love about the card is the endless potential it offers. Static abilities are hard to share between cards, as that could create all kinds of rules interactions that might just not work, but activated abilities tend to be self-contained, and so most of them work just fine when shared among creatures. And Necrotic Ooze takes advantage of that by claiming all of the activated abilities we can put into our ’yard.

All kinds of interactions become possible with the right set of abilities, and that means the Ooze offers us a virtually endless playground while letting us toy with our graveyard—which is already something I love to do.

"Phyrexian Frog ? Casual | Andrew Wilson"

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Anger
• 1 Hydra Omnivore
• 4 Civilized Scholar
• 4 Necrotic Ooze
• 1 Mindless Automaton
• 4 Phyrexian Devourer

• Spells (21)
• 1 Turn to Frog
• 2 Bioshift
• 2 Circular Logic
• 4 Snakeform
• 4 Turn // Burn
• 4 Buried Alive
• 4 Zombify

• Lands (24)
• 4 Island
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Swamp
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Drowned Catacomb
• 4 Steam Vents

Buy This Deck

3 — Vesuvan Shapeshifter

Skinshifter was the first shapeshifter I listed, but Vesuvan Shapeshifter offers more options for forms—though it is restricted by the battlefield, while Skinshifter comes with several choices built in. Here’s what I had to say about this card in my recent article Mega Shapeshifter:

For me, this is pretty much the archetypical Shapeshifter alongside its ancestor Vesuvan Doppelganger. While Vesuvan Shapeshifter doesn’t offer as much combo potential as Necrotic Ooze, it is above Vesuvan Doppelganger on that scale, which earns the Shapeshifter its spot here.

Mega Shapeshifter ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Deathmist Raptor
• 1 Icefeather Aven
• 1 Sagu Mauler
• 1 Temur War Shaman
• 1 Thelonite Hermit
• 1 Thousand Winds
• 2 Mischievous Quanar
• 3 Den Protector
• 3 Hooded Hydra
• 4 Guardian Shield-Bearer
• 4 Salt Road Ambushers
• 4 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
• 1 Ixidor, Reality Sculptor
• 1 Vorel of the Hull Clade

• Spells (8)
• 4 Tezzeret's Gambit
• 4 Secret Plans

• Lands (24)
• 5 Forest
• 6 Island
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Thornwood Falls

Buy This Deck

2 — Necravolver

If you followed the link from Skinshifter (Rolling with Doran) and read the paragraph above it, you’ll already know my opinion of Necravolver:

Necravolver used to be my favorite card, though it’s now fallen into second place after [redacted]. That said, I can rarely find an excuse to play it. Tiny Leaders may still not be a habitable enough environment for the Abzan Volver, but I have to give it a try. Some players try to bend the 3-cost rule with X spells, but I think kicker works well, too, and few opponents will be expecting a 5/5 creature with trample and lifelink for .

Necravolver just doesn’t have the power level of modern creature design, but this is the kind of multicolored card I like. (I like regular multicolored cards, too, of course!) Invasion block had some sweet ideas I wish we could see more of (Sunscape Apprentice, Stormscape Master, the Volver cycle), and Necravolver is my favorite of the bunch. I rarely cast it for less than full cost, but the modularity of the card is part of what makes it so attractive to me nonetheless.

1 — Future Sight

Sure, a card will occasionally serve as a road block—notably a land after you’ve already played one for the turn—but in my experience, I’ll run out of mana before I run out of good options. That said, the card doesn’t combo with Omniscience, the perfect complement to which is an unlimited supply of cards.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t combo with anything—you just have to be a little creative. It would work great, for example, with Beck // Call. Also, it turns out, it works well with Jar of Eyeballs. Check out this sequence from my article Tornadoes and Eyeballs:

And that’s part of what makes Future Sight number one in my Top 8 Magic cards.

I hope you enjoyed this deviation from the norm in the form of a look back at some of my previous articles—and at some of my all-time favorite cards from Magic.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com