1. The reason why we seperated the lists in two distinctive areas is that Steve’s amazing work managed to “overload” our table capacity for one article! Talk about comprehensive data collection….
    Good job Steve and we hope that we can use your “stress test” to further improve our tables and lists.

  2. Nice list of cards although I do disagree with some of the picks and the amounts it gives players interested in the format a sense of direction for collecting. One major card I noticed that was missing was Vampiric Tutor. I am sure its easy to miss cards along the way I myself didn’t have enough time to go through all of them. I think it would be nice if there was a place we could sticky this and add cards to the list as things come along. Well done!

  3. We are planning on moving all of the lists to our “Resources” page when things are set up. I am sure there are a few glitches and oversights which is not surprising taking into account the amount of work that went in here.
    If we get enough input and discussion we can improve the list “Wiki style” and keep it updated.

  4. I believe he prefaced this labyrinthine compendium with a disclaimer. But do point out any oversights, as this is such a useful and thorough tool for members, as well as would-be members, of the format!

    Great job, Mr. G!!!

  5. KillerOwen – Thanks for the feedback and keep scouring the list for missed choices! Vampiric Tutor is under the black functional section, but it didn’t make it into the section sorted by importance.

    If an editor can fix this, I’d appreciate it!

  7. I have to say that you guys did an amazing job getting this article into something readable. I just sent a gigantic list of cards and the editors turned it into something awesome!

  8. Hello Steve,

    your article was a good test for some of the features of our decklist generator. You actually reached the limits for some of the parameters and we had to find a way to work around them :-)
    We are going to makes sure to further improve the layout and move all the lists to our “Resources” page where it will be available for updates and easy to find. Most of the hard work with the lists was done by ChrisKool who spend a lot of time to make it easy to read. Thanks Chris!

  9. I assume this was just a function of the transition from the original spreadsheet to your the online presentation, but: Is there any way to get the “by importance” lists to actually be organized by importance instead of alphabetically. Perhaps load the spreadsheet as a googledoc and link to it? Or just allow us to download it?

  10. We actually got the list as text and not in a spreadsheet. I think there is no intended ranking within the “Must Have” category. It would be very hard to assign a strict ranking to cards as they obviously change in value depending on your build and metagame.

  11. Yeah the lists were not ranked in any way within the * or ** importance levels. That type of ranking is pretty much impossible since it depends so much on metagame/deck context/etc. The simple * or ** breakdown seemed like the most useful categorization.

  12. Ah OK, perfectly understandable that they wouldn’t be ranked – though ranking are always interesting to look at.

    However, the label “lands by importance” implies that the cards within the list are actually organized “by importance” (i.e. ranked) so you might want to change that for clarity’s sake. Maybe just “X worth owning”.

  13. A couple of other comments:

    1) It would be awesome to have a similar list organized by type (artifact, creatures, enchantment), but irrespective of color and have similar breakdown with regards to their function.

    2) Some of your numbers are interesting – and indicate that I have a lot to learn about the format. For example: 2 disenchant, but 4 seal of cleansing?

    3) Eternal Witness is a threat, not a combo enabler? I guess it depends on the deck.

    4) It is Samurai (not Samarai) – I’m not a stickler for this kind of thing, but the broken link made me go off site to double check the wording on Samurai of the Pale Curtain.

    5) I would love to see some of your notes on why certain things were classified “everything else”. Isn’t rancor a threat? Isn’t LftL a combo enabler? I know parsing these things ad nauseum becomes an exercise in futility… but black is parsed substantially further than green is. It would be interesting (for me) to hear about some of the process and decisions that went into compiling this great resource.

  14. Hi Ronin. To be honest, a lot of the points you made are solid and there are lots of different ways to classify this list. I wanted to get this out there and collect feedback, I’m definitely up for the update and reorganization of this list in the future. Thanks for the feedback, I’ll definitely take your ideas into account for the future. To address your specific ideas.

    1. You’re definitely right about this one, and originally I had a third organization by card type. I ended up removing it since even just the list organized two ways was pretty overbearing.

    2. Disenchant should definitely be a four-of along with Seal of Cleansing. The Seal isn’t even played much these days.

    3. Eternal Witness is a card that straddles functionality. It’s a threat and also provides recursion, that can be used for a million different purposes (including certain combos). Tough call.

    4. Good catch!

    5. As stated above, the functionality classification was particularly difficult. Rancor might be a threat, but it’s not by itself. Life From the Loam can be a combo enabler, but it can also be a card advantage engine in Aggro Loam (which you may consider a combo?) – this one is really hard to classify.

    Thanks for the feedback man, love to hear it!

  15. More corrections: “Slivergil Adept” isn’t one of the evincar’s experiments. “Propoganda” should be Propaganda, although Wizards may have spelled the card itself wrong. “Vendillion Clique” only has one ‘l’. You have a “Cheiftan” that should be a “Cheiftain” in the goblin section. And “Keldon Maurader” should be plural.

    I had a sneak peek at this list so all of my comments about inclusions/exclusions are already accounted for. Pretty much everything anyone could think of is in here. Something cool about this list is that it inspires me. I can’t just type “graveyard hate” into the Gatherer or MWS, and I can’t search for “tier 1 finishers in WU”, either. But with this list, problem solved! You might come to this list looking for graveyard hate, see Yixid Jailer, and say “*gasp* I forgot he existed! He’s perfect for my deck!” And then you click over a tab to the “reanimation” category and you realize that you’ve never had a chance to play a reanimation strategy with Bazaar before. You think it might be good, so you start looking for black cards tagged with “disruption” or “affects the board state” and then you’ve spent an hour browsing cards. Kind of like tvtropes. Thanks Steve!

  16. Hey everyone! In between eating bowls of conch chowder and fist-fulls of fried plantains, I think that all of the aforementioned errors have been corrected (mostly thanks to Plejades). Let us know if any other typos rear their ugly heads. Enjoy the holidays. :)

  17. Incidentally, has the Ox brought anyone a Season’s treasure for maintaining a celibate, virtuous misanthropic lifestyle? I was rewarded with a single pudding cup for my basement hermitry! (Alas, I am lactose intolerant.)

  18. I would not have written this article so close to MED4

    If Workshop in there, I really don’t see a place for Merfolk, who simply doesn’t win that matchup. And it’s even worse if it was Vintage, since Merfolk take little advanatge of power. A lot of your must have are based on Merfolk remaining viable, and Vintage stats will tell you that’s just not the case.

  22. It still provides a good checklist of a lot of the card you will need to play the older formats. Thanks for reposting this and I do look forward to a post-MED4 update (hopefully because we will need a list of Vintage must haves instead!)