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Mar 14, 2010 -- 9:48PM, jeff-heikkinen wrote:

I didn't like being stuck with MaRo's choices rather than my own for the round of 8 and on. (In particular, I voted... not so much for Stuffy Doll as against Shaharazad.)

Agreed.  In fact, I'll go to a somewhat ridiculous amount of work to correct for his error in terms of my own choices.

Shaharazad vs. Stuffy Doll
Stuffy Doll wins!
This is a no-brainer as mentioned above; Shaharazad is a nuisance card which wastes tons of time accomplishing almost nothing.  Stuffy Doll is a guy who likes to stab himself and can not only survive a Shivan Meteor to the face but win the game in the process.  MaRo talked about Stuffy as if it was nothing but a Wall with nostalgic flavor; it's so much more.

Doubling Season vs. Elvish Promenade
Doubling Season wins!
Pretty inevitable.  They do basically the same thing except that one is powerful and straightforward, while the other is vastly open-ended.  Elvish Promenade isn't that different from Firecat Blitz or Martial Coup or Spontaneous Generation or any other token-maker, but Doubling Season is unique in the game's history and has endless potential hilarity.

Cheatyface vs. Mindslaver
Cheatyface...wins.  I guess.
Seriously, I wanted to abstain from this vote; I hate both cards with a passion.  But if I want to complete the ladder, I have to pick.  MaRo cheerleading for Cheatyface burns me up, but Mindslaver is a card that still fills me with unutterable loathing.  This is one of those bridges I feel Magic should never have crossed.  So I guess I pick the one I hate a little less to advance; both do something that Magic shouldn't have done, but at least Cheatyface is silver-bordered, so we knew it was wacky and didn't count as a "real" card.

Fact or Fiction vs. Radiate
Radiate wins!
Admittedly, Radiate's five-mana cost makes it hard to use; six mana to turn Shock or Lightning Bolt into a small Earthquake is hardly impressive.  I've not yet found an awesome use for Radiate, though as a tertiary Johnny I'm happy to keep looking; also, Fact or Fiction is enjoyable to play, creating many interesting decisions regardless of the sophistication of the players.  I don't blame MaRo for voting for fun play over fun possibility, but I've sort of made a career of preferring potential awesomeness to actual neatness (because, you see, "awesome" is a greater quantity of cool than "neat"); a million imaginary dollars are comparable in value to one actual dollar in terms of how much fun you can have with them, and doing something impressive with Radiate is about as likely as winning the lottery.  So the question is whether Fact or Fiction's actual fun amounts to enough "real dollars" in this example.  And honestly, it probably does, but I still voted for Radiate.  FoF is so classically a Spike power card that I'm forced to deduct points from it just for the potential unfun of someone using it to beat me.  Nevertheless, this was a very interesting and close matchup.

Ovinomancer vs. Endless Whispers
Endless Whispers wins!
Endless Whispers is right up there with Doubling Season in terms of being one of the classic table-shake-uppers; if you refrain from the temptation to do dumb obvious things like Sneak Attack + Phage that just win the game, you can have many turns of delicious chaos from a card like this.  Ovinomancer, meanwhile, is a hilarious idea for a card, but an incredibly bad actual card, almost impossible to use effectively, and especially punishing to the very same casual players who would enjoy it most (Spikes can combine it with Fastbond or the like to some good effect, or simply refrain from using it except on must-kill targets; Timmy, however, wants to be able to play this in any old deck just for the joy of turning every creature he sees into a sheep, and the card punishes him horribly if he makes the attempt).

Cytoshape vs. Phantom Nishoba
Cytoshape wins!
MaRo got this one perfectly right.  The Nishoba (and wtf is a Nishoba anyway?  stupid made-up fantasy pabulum, gimme a Phantom Hydra or something that's actually cool to someone besides the dork who thought up the idea while coming down from a bad citric acid trip) is just a big dumb beatstick who ends games; Cytoshape is often just a removal spell, but it sometimes performs hilarious tricks, and that puts it leagues ahead of the Nishoba.  As an aside, Cytoshape comes from the best block in Magic's history, while the Nishoba comes from the second or third worst; this outcome was pretty much inevitable.

Warp World vs. Day of the Dragons
Warp World wins!
MaRo had this one on the nose too - Day of the Dragons might be cool, except that with an Anger or Fervor or Pandemonium in the mix, it just instantly wins and the fun is over before it began.  Actually, with things like Siege-Gang Commander and Ob Nixilis around, Warp World often has the same problem, but it produces a lot more enjoyable havoc when it isn't insta-winning; at best, Day of the Dragons + lots of dorks just gives you lots of large flying dorks, just like Sigil of the New Dawn + Flickering Ward or Meloku + Coat of Arms could do.  The fun potential of dorks is limited, IMO, and I disapprove of most of the tricks that can be done around ETB/LTB effects to try and make them more interesting, so Day of the Dragons really doesn't do it for me.

Booster Tutor vs. Pools of Becoming
Pools of Becoming wins!
I'm irritated with how hard MaRo pimps Booster Tutor in this article; the fact that Wizards gets $4 every time someone plays this card obviously has nothing to do with the way he gushes enthusiastically about the awesomeness of playing what is essentially a Limited Wish (hm, I think I've found the card's name if they ever do break down and print it in a real set).  While Pools of Becoming is even less a "real card" than the Unhinged staple, I'm nonetheless more inclined to take it seriously; Booster Tutor is just an autolose to me because of my prejudice against crass commercialism, although even if I ranked it fairly, the fact that it doesn't do anything in and of itself, just sets you up to play some other card, means it would lose to the wild-and-craziest of Planechase's wild and crazy planes.