Classic Edition: Back on Target Part 2: The Winner's Loser's Index

Classic Edition: Back on Target

Part 2: The Winner's Loser's Index

May 5, 1999

A lot of really bad cards got cut out of Sixth Edition, as was seen in part one. But really: How could they have missed? Fifth Edition had a lot of really bad cards in it. And while they hit a lot of cards that deserved it, they also missed a lot of others. So, these are the cards they put in Sixth Edition (added in or kept from fifth) that will never impact Type II, and why. And note that I'm being very generous, not including cards like Flash and Polymorph that at least could do something in the right deck in the future. Another note is that I will often speak of a creature being useless in part because of the one-turn delay due to summoning sickness. When a creature is expensive with little power, this is a huge liability in terms of time and in terms of giving your opponent a chance to kill it (as well as you) before you can use it.

Blue

**Dream Cache **. This is a good effect, but for three mana you need to get some kind of card advantage, especially if you can't play it as an Instant. Compare this to Impulse, for example, which should have taken its place.

**Flight **. If only as an ability that adds less than one mana to hardwire in, it's obviously not worth a card.

Forget. Used on yourself, it's a really really bad Frantic Search. Used on your opponent, it's worse than useless.

**Gaseous Form **. For three mana, you give your opponent a prefect blocker or spend two cards to get yourself one. Needs a special ability, like being a cantrip or recurring, and a reduction in casting cost.

**Glacial Wall **. There's a big difference between a one-power wall and a zero-power wall, because a zero-power wall can't punish your opponent for attacking, just shut down an attacker. Three mana is too much considering it can't block flyers and isn't really unkillable.

**Harmattan Efreet **. I had no clue what this one was until I looked it up. It turns out it's a 2/2 flyer for four mana, with the ability to give other creatures flying for the horribly expensive price of 1UU. This is a throwaway ability, not something that adds a full colored mana to the cost on top of the already marginal Wind Drake.

**Insight **. If you saw this card trying to be in action in the final 8 of the last PT:NY, you understand why it's bad. You can't afford to tap out and use a turn to cast it if they've already cast a few green spells, which they normally already have. Blue's problem against green isn't really long-term card economy anyway, it's stabilizing, which this card doesn't help you do.

**Juxtapose **. This depends on your opponent having something worth taking away, and today's decks are so fast that many of them don't have anything worth taking. And you basically have to build your deck around it for it to work, while the best artifact for the concept (you look like you could use a tapped Mana Vault) isn't in 6th.

**Phantasmal Terrain **. You almost never want to create anything but an island, unless you're trying to shut down an opponent's blue, which is normally futile. Lingering Mirage fits that bill much better, and wanting more than four of this type of card is insane.

**Prodigal Sorcerer **. This ability is too expensive and weak to do anything but be the finisher in a deck based on Intruder Alarm, and there are better cards that do that, as history shows us. Plus they keep reprinting it.

**Psychic Transfer **. At its exact best, this is a five point Drain Life on your opponent, who it couldn't even kill under fifth edition rules. And there's a huge chance, especially with a deck designed to use this, that it won't do anything.

**Remove Soul **. The loss of flexibility over pure counterspells requires a much more substantial discount than this spell offers.

**Sage Owl **. While it's not a horrible card, there are many better effects available in most cycles. In an environment as big as Type II you don't need this card.

**Segovian Leviathan **. For five mana, a 3/3 had better be totally unblockable. Not that it would be any good then. But at least they'd have tried. Compare this to, for example, Morphling.

**Soldevi Sage **. It was an interesting idea, allowing you to get rid of lands (which you end up with too much of) to draw cards while gaining card economy. But in practice this is too vulnerable a card to be useful only after you have two lands you can afford to lose, because of the lost land plays. In general, 1/1 creatures aren't good mana engines, as seen by the failure of Archivist.

**Spell Blast **. With so many good counters available, there's no reason to choose one you normally have one or two less mana than you need to use.

**Storm Crow **. We're all screaming for new 1 /2 flyers for two mana.

**Tidal Surge **. Even in draft, where this is most useful, it was a fifteenth pick. Getting through for one turn isn't worth a card.

Voldalian Soldiers. At least the Storm Crow has flying. And Merfolk Traders has a nice ability.

**Wind Drake **. If you try to race with these you'll lose. If you try to block with them you'll fall behind. Creatures that have no special abilities beyond flying need to fill a need, like Azure Drake did.

**Wind Spirit **. For five mana you get a 3/2 that flies and basically can't be blocked. Really bad defender, overpriced attacker.

Red

**Anaba Bodyguard **. Costs one mana more than it should. If Minotaurs we must have, why can't we at least keep the classic one?

**Anaba Shaman **. I've looked at too many cards at this point with the same problem I'm going to give it a name: Discountable. A Discountable card could cost one less mana and you still wouldn't think it was anything impressive, although it might be interesting.

**Balduvian Barbarians **. This is way too bland, and you can do better for three mana, for example with Suq'Ata Lancer.

**Blaze **. Doesn't this violate the rule that they print a card in an expansion before it goes in the basic set? Not that it matters, since the card is useless.

**Burrowing **. Oh boy, mountainwalk. It's not even worth a card against red.

**Crimson Hellkite **. Do you know that they had the nerve to compare this to the far better, more affordable and classier (and more classic) Shivan Dragon on the Sixth Edition homepage?

**Fire Elemental **. Isn't powerful enough or tough enough to justify such a huge investment of mana, since for this kind of mana you could have cards like Phyrexian Plaugelord, even if a better five-cost red option isn't immediately obvious without Orgg.

**Firebreathing **. For one more mana this gets the badly needed ability of recurring in Fiery Mantle. This card has for a long time been a sure sign of scrubhood.

**Fit of Rage **. There's just nothing to stop them from chumpblocking, even if this would otherwise be worth anything.

Flame Spirit. Is Discountable.

**Goblin Hero **. Absolute Gray Ogre. And being a Goblin is almost more a liability right now ( Engineered Plague) than an asset.

**Hulking Cyclops **. Even worse than Fire Elemental.

**Illicit Auction **. For five mana an outright Control Magic would be of questionable value, especially out of blue. But you have to pay at least half the value of the creature in life to get it. At least this one is fun to have around, and I wouldn't object that strongly to its inclusion if space wasn't at such a premium.

**Mountain Goat **. It's theoretically possible that red will become really, really starved for one-drops after Rath Cycle leaves, but with Lackey and Raider still out there I doubt it.

Orcish Oriflame. DOUBLE discountable; they simultaneously made Bad Moon and Crusade.

**Pyrotechnics **. It's a little more flexible than Fireball when you want to spend five to seven mana and hit multiple targets, but otherwise it's much, much worse.

**Reckless Embermage **. Even though this ability could be used for large card economy gains, this card requires too much mana to use effectively, and requires a creature enchantment to really work well in constructed, as opposed (for example) to Molten Hydra.

**Relentless Assault **. This costs only one less mana than an actual Time Warp, and costs too much mana to be used well with temporary pumping effects. This may have just been too good an ability to price affordably. Sabertooth Tiger. While not strictly discountable (A 2/1 first strike for 1R would be pretty good) clearly three mana is way too much to pay for this.

**Shatter **. We've had some very good attempts to improve on this card, and if I had to chose its replacement I would probably use Shattering Pulse. But Shatter is clearly too expensive given the alternatives.

**Spitting Drake **. This is so inferior to Dragon Whelp it's pathetic. Mark Rosewater remarked that red doesn't get decent flyers unless they're big in which case they're OK because they're dragons. We want our Dragons back!

Vertigo (aka Vhere'd he go?) This isn't good enough to start because not enough decks have flyers, and doesn't do enough to be a sideboard card. To compare, a card that dealt two damage to any creature and cost it flying would probably still not be as good as Shock.

**Viashino Warrior **. A slight boost in power at the expensive of toughness doesn't make up for the lack of a special ability, like Talruum Minotaur has. And by the way, yes, I do know it's getting somewhat repetitive trashing creatures for being overcosted.

**Wall of Fire **. It's not a bad wall, as walls go, but it can't stand up to the Stronghold walls. A defensive wall doesn't make much sense for red, but even if it did it would need to cost two mana.

Black

**Abyssal Hunter **. This is yet another creature that has an interesting ability but costs way too much mana for a creature so vulnerable that has an ability that isn't that good without outside assistance. These abilities are too slow to work against the decks it would have an effect against.

**Ashen Powder **. Getting a creature from your opponent's graveyard isn't as good as getting one from yours, and black should have cheaper reanimation than White (resurrection). At any rate, it's way too expensive compared to Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead, which are at least guaranteed to have a target. I'm sure they really meant Ashen Ghoul, though, right?

**Blight **. It may be a little cheaper than outright land destruction, but letting your opponent have the mana again and giving him a chance to remove Blight are critical weaknesses, giving your opponent too many ways out of your land destruction.

**Blighted Shaman **. The one turn delay and the requirement to sacrifice a creature to get a good effect doom this card.

**Bog Imp **. Maybe it couldn't cost just one, but at two it's vastly overpriced.

**Bog Rats **. What are walls? Even if you knew, having some of your creatures unblockable by walls doesn't help that much, since the walls will block the others and Bog Rats can't kill on its own.

**Bog Wraith **. There are better options for a four-cost creature, maybe even the Paladins, for the maindeck. And this isn't good enough against black, especially without Necropotence, to be worth a sideboard slot.

**Drudge Skeletons **. The best part about this card is that they printed it on a Swamp once. It's not an efficient choice as attacker or defender.

**Enfeeblement **. Doesn't kill many creatures with a casting cost higher than three, making this card a break-even proposition at best. And with Terror and even Death Stroke having the same cost, that wrecks it.

**Fatal Blow **. You have to damage the creature first, which will normally cost a card. Even if you're using something silly like Rod of Ruin, the idea is just too unwieldy.

Fear. Unblockability isn't worth a card anymore, and this isn't even true unblockability. If you want this ability Sleeper's Guile is much better although still really bad.

**Feast of the Unicorn **. For four mana you can get an Embrace. Feral Shadow. This costs too much for a 2/1 flyer.

**Gravebane Zombie **. Any deck that can't deal with you getting a four mana 3/2 creature as their draw every turn deserves to lose. While you spend your draw getting this back and spend your mana recasting it, your opponent is developing his deck.

**Hecatomb **. Any card you can't use without four expendable creatures is useless in constructed.

**Howl from Beyond **. This does X damage to a creature or to a player. Either way, it's a really bad X spell.

**Kjeldoran Dead **. A 3/1 regenerator is decent, but having to sacrifice another creature to get it is too high a price for it.

Leshrac's Rite. Swampwalk isn't worth a card.

**Lost Soul **. For three mana a 2/1 could be unblockable without being a problem.

**Mischievous Poltergeist **. You can't block with it forever, and it's horribly slow as beatdown and doesn't kill many attackers. It may be hard to kill, but that doesn't make up for its not doing much.

Python. Black has many better creatures.

**Raise Dead **. Disturbed Burial gives you the potential to straight win the game. This doesn't make you win, doesn't work early and still costs you a little time.

Rag Man. This actually costs more mana to use than Disrupting Scepter, only works on creatures (admittedly randomly), and is weak enough to make its being a creature a liability instead of an asset.

**Razortooth Rats **. Once again, a 2/1 for three mana that's just hard to block.

Scathe Zombies. Absolute Gray Ogre.

Green

**Cat Warriors **. Even if this wasn't just a Gray Ogre, green creatures need to be held to a higher standard.

**Elder Druid **. The activation cost of four mana makes it too expensive to use as a lockdown and prevents it from fueling engines.

**Elven Riders **. Five mana for an unblockable 3/3 is unacceptable.

**Familiar Ground **. Now we need to have multiple blockers of the same creature. This won't affect the vast majority of games.

**Femeref Archers **. Even though that ability is virtually destroy, the one turn delay is a problem, and the lack of good flying creatures in general is another, with both Tradewind Rider and Morphling basically immune.

**Fog **. Respite and Constant Mists and Lull illustrate how inadequate this base ability is as a card.

**Fyndhorn Brownie **. Seeker of Skybreak, anyone?

**Gorilla Chieftain **. Oh no, not this again. Albino Troll lets you pay for it on layaway. But this is both too slow and too hard to save mana for when it comes out.

**Lure **. For this to do anything you need to combine it with bad creatures, and even when you draw the combo half the decks out there can still totally ignore it.

**Panther Warriors **. This costs basically the same as Weatherseed Treefolk and other good green creatures. It does have less green in the casting cost, but a 6/3 really isn't that desirable in a deck with other colors in it at this high a price.

**Pradesh Gypsies **. This is one of the abilities that didn't get any better with the Sixth Edition rules, and never did much of anything in the first place.

**Radjan Spirit **. This creature pays a full mana for its ability, and a 3/2 is too big a creature to tap to make a creature loose flying for a turn.

**Redwood Treefolk **. One of the less bold attempts to improve on Iornroot Treefolk.

**Regeneration **. They're still offering abilities that add one to the casting cost and this time they don't even have the common decency to charge only one mana. How long will it take to get rid of this card?

**Rowen **. When it first came out it was interesting, but Abundance basically does everything it does and a lot more.

**Scaled Wurm **. If you're reanimating there are better targets, and seven mana is too much to cast regularly with so little justification. For this big a creature to be effective it needs to have trample.

**Shanodin Dryads **. They're not even nymphs anymore. Only in an environment dominated by green does this card make any sense. And even then, Weatherseed Elf is better because you can give forestwalk to a creature with actual power.

**Stalking Tiger **. The ability requires your opponent to want to block it with multiple creatures. While that might happen, this ability probably isn't as good as Trample or Regeneration, and even if it was this would need to take the form of a 2-cost creature with echo.

**Stream of Life **. One mark of an advancing Magic player used to be knowing not to use Stream of Life. And there have been many attempts to improve on it, some of them successful. Natural Spring was an option. Basically, Stream doesn't give you significant life unless you should be winning the game outright with a spell costing as much mana as you spend.

**Thicket Basilisk **. Similarly to Cockatrice, a creature this big should be killing creatures in combat outright.

**Uktabi Wildcats **. Discountable, since you need four forests to make this even worth thinking about, and a monogreen deck has better options like Weatherseed Treefolk.

**Unseen Walker **. The activation cost on this creature is too high for it to be practical unless green decks become totally dominant, and even then I don't like it much. In case you didn't realize, I don't care for cards that stop blocking.

**Untamed Wilds **. Yavimaya Granger shows that this effect is of the same magnitude as Shock, which costs one mana, if the land comes in tapped. If you want to play a card of this type, Harrow and Rampant Growth are far superior.

**Vitalize **. For this to result in a significant net gain your deck has to already be doing its job, and engines revolving around untapping creatures don't care about untapping them once. If you want to untap your creatures, Emerald Charm is your only good choice in green, since its other abilities are excellent too.

**Waiting in the Weeds **. You need to have one mana available for every cat you manage to create, in addition to the three mana you need to cast it. That means for this to be worthwhile you need at least six mana available, in which case you could have cast Deranged Hermit or something.

White

**Animate Wall **. If you want your walls to attack, play Rolling Stones. None of the good walls are really worth animating even if this didn't cost you a card.

**Ardent Militia **. This costs basically the same as Radiant, Archangel or the famous old Serra, and Standing Troops gives you one less power for two less mana.

**Armored Pegasus **. It must be overpowered, because it's just as good as a blue flyer! But here it is.

**Castle **. Creatures that can only be burned out some of the time aren't that much better, so for four mana the only way you'd want Castle is if your creatures didn't tap, and even then it's too pricey. Which means you either have to play with few creatures, with bad creatures, or combo this with Serra's Blessing. None of those are decent options.

**Daraja Griffin **. Four mana is too much to pay for a sideboard anti-black card, or for a 2/2 flyer with this option for the main deck. One problem is that a lot of black's problem creatures have protection from white, or at least they used to. Very few players will use black creatures expensive enough for this to be a decent trade.

**D'Avenant Archer **. For one more mana you can get it with +1/+1 and double its ability. But for one less toughness you can get that ability useable on all creatures and even players in another color and it's still pretty bad.

**Divine Transformation **. The Embraces have rendered it obsolete.

**Ekundu Griffin **. Flying and First Strike are not that much better than a range of WW abilities you can get on a 2/1 creature for WW, and worse than you get on a Paladin En-Vec for 1WW.

**Ethereal Champion **. The colored mana cost makes it too hard to bring out fast, and the requirement to pay life to use the ability rather than gaining life with Staunch Defenders makes it a bad late defensive card. As a late attacker, it's too easy to block and doesn't do enough damage.

**Heavy Ballista **. Even though this card can seize total control of a game, the one-turn delay for its use, its inability to stop damage and still deal damage and its consequent inability to stop a really big hoard of small creatures as well as a hoard of decent sized ones make it unusable. For four mana you need defense you can use immediately, or offense that can win the game on its own.

**Icatian Town **. Given Kjeldoran Outpost and Deranged Hermit, Icatian Town just costs too much mana for four 1/1s. Reasonably priced this would have been interesting.

**Infantry Veteran **. Restricting this to attacking creatures makes this ability much less useful than those of other 1/1s for W like Mother of Runes.

**Kjeldoran Royal Guard **. It's five mana and has a one-turn delay, and when the situation is bad enough to need that kind of defense using the ability will probably kill the Guard. If you want this kind of ability use Worship or Pariah combined with the right creatures.

**Mesa Falcon **. The you need to regularly pump in at least four mana for this to be superior even to Armored Pegasus.

**Pacifism **. This would be useful if white didn't get other much better removal in the set, like Exile.

**Pearl Dragon **. Discountable. While it's good that white has decent fat without a drawback, the ability is something you probably won't need that often, and costs too much mana to protect Pearl Dragon from removal the turn it comes out.

**Regal Unicorn **. The quote may or may not be something to think about, but the wealth of good two-cost two-power creatures prevents this from being any good. In addition, for one toughness less you can get a valuable ability like that of Monk Idealist.

**Samite Healer **. This will normally only stop one damage to you a turn, requires you to overcommit your small creatures to the table, and most of the time it does matter it will be killed. At any rate, Mother of Runes is cheaper and has a better ability.

**Serra's Blessing **. This is better than removing a creature or casting another creature very rarely, especially with Stasis gone. You need multiple attacking creatures that want to block to make this even a consideration.

**Sunweb **. This is too expensive to be a really good hoser for decks with real beef, while being useless against a lot of other creature decks. Warrior's Honor. Pay an extra colored mana and get the effect on a permanent basis.

Artifacts

**Aladdin's Ring **. If you think about it, you wouldn't even consider this unless you plan to spend 8 mana at least four times. And this still won't win the game outright. At that kind of cost, you have a right to.

**Bottle of Suleiman **. Four mana for a 5/5 flyer is exciting, but if you consider a pair of these you pay eight mana, two activation mana, two cards and five life for a 5/5 flyer. Can't beat the real thing.

**Crystal Rod, Iron Star, Ivory Cup, Wooden Sphere, Throne of Bone, Soul Net **. No longer using these cards was another sign of a player's development back in Revised. The small life gain, even though it has potential to become huge, makes your spells into bad ones when you use it. They're a waste of a card, not giving you more than a few life in games that weren't already over, and even that life is normally at great inconvenience. The best way to understand why they're no good is to have played with them back in the old days.

**Flying Carpet **. They've altered this card's effect to make it better, but that doesn't change that it's four mana to cast and then two mana for each creature it gives flying to. That's way too expensive for such a cheap ability.

**Glasses of Urza **. This effect isn't worth a card, and if for some reason you think it is Telepathy is much better. Any mage who actually wants this is going to be blue anyway.

Hive, The. A noble first effort, but a good example of a better card that still isn't ever used would be Volrath's Laboratory. This takes about 20 mana to start to be a reasonable play.

**Jade Monolith **. You have to pay four mana, and then you can start saving your creatures from damage by taking it yourself. This isn't as good as a finisher for an offensive deck and is a very long term proposition for a defensive one. Cards this expensive had better do something amazing, especially if you have to pay life for them; note the failure of Phyrexian Processor in Type II.

**Lead Golem **. Five mana for a 3/5 isn't that good without this really annoying restriction.

**Mana Prism **. It's a vast improvement on the original, but trying it out demonstrated that it's too expensive to be good. A mana source that costs three mana is really bad for your mana distribution.

**Mystic Compass **. It's a combination of Celestial Prism and the ability to partly shutdown one land and/or enable landwalk. None of that is worth spending a card on.

**Obsianus Golem **. Only one mana less than real artifacts like Phyrexian Colossus.

**Patagia Golem **. Artifacts with flying cost one mana too many (including Ornithopter, by the way). This is no exception. If that has to be the case, just stop printing so many of them.

**Pentagram of the Ages **. You can't use this as your defense because the mana requirement is too high to then deal with other threats with other cards later, let alone casting spells on your own turn.

**Primal Clay **. None of these creatures is worthwhile, even given a choice among them.

**Rod of Ruin **. For a lot of mana you get almost nothing. If you want this effect a creature is your best bet.

That's 130 cards, a big number but less than half the set. And I can understand why some of them are still in, either because they give unique abilities, or as Little Kid Cards, or to retain the 'Classic' flavor of the game. Roughly one third of the set is useless, including a disproportionate number of the commons. At this point, I'm just happy things weren't any worse. And yes, I will try to give useful information for Type II players in the next article of the series.