Duress can hit Planeswalkers, enchantments, and artifacts as well as instants and sorceries. If Collective Brutality truly had a duress mode it would be an absolutely bonkers card.

Thanks for taking the time to write me back :). That was a really useful, insightful comment.

Realistically, running it as a “gotcha” surprise card just for Game 1 is a little weird, since opponents will just put you on it in G1 anyway (staple as a 1- or 2-of). You are less likely to have it post-board in a lot of matchups, so if you want to “get” opponents, you should just leave it in 🙂

Best way to understand this kind of thing is to just jam a lot of games. Not only will you get a sense of which matchups TBR is best in, but you’ll start to understand which players to leave it in against based on how they navigate the red zone against you.

Lol! Tbr has given me more headaches than any other card in that deck, so I’m more likely to be doing it wrong. I’ve typically boarded out tbr (I run 1 tbr and 1 ghor clan rampager ) consistently as part of my flex slots, and even against tokens would rather have a sweeper in most instances.

That

I would rate Cryptic 2/3/1. At 6 points, it’s significantly worse than Ghost Quarter.

None of its modal combinations are particularly cheap—the best bargain is draw + counter, for which 1UUU is still quite steep IMO (Leak is the benchmark counterspell in the format, and paying UU for a cantrip is hardly appealing). As for flexibility, Cryptic is rarely truly “dead,” but spending an entire turn’s worth of mana tapping and drawing isn’t anything to write home about. “Surviving” a turn generally costs your whole turn anyway because of CC’s mana cost. That’s when Cryptic is at its worst—when opponents are beating you down. That it can’t really address boards of creatures permanently, or even help dig into real answers with any kind of selection, hurts its flexibility for me. And as you mentioned, the card is very tricky to splash.

Keep in mind that a low score based on these parameters doesn’t make the card bad or unplayable. Indeed, CC does see play; similarly, I swear by 4 Dismembers in Eldrazi Stompy, and wouldn’t leave home without Simic Charm in Temur Delver or Bauble in DSJ. One thing all these cards have in common is that they’re pretty narrow in terms of splashability; very few decks want the effect, but of course those that do, do.

Kolaghan’s is much better than Cryptic for our purposes. It’s more splashable than Cryptic, is relevant in more gamestates (helps stop a beatdown by killing a dude and returning a fatty; “locks” topdecking opponents out like CC does with the discard mode), and has better effects (2 damage and return a guy are insane modes in this format). I would give it 3/5/2. So why didn’t it make the list? Cause I forgot about it! I think with any best of list, cards are always going to slip through the cracks.

It’s impossible to completely divorce subjectivity from a Top 5 list. The point of the ratings system in this article is to facilitate constructive discussion about why choices are right or wrong, and of course the numbers themselves will change depending on other options and metagame shifts. I’m sorry you feel that way about my content and am open to suggestions; I actually worked quite hard on this article!

It’s Ghost Quarter’s original Dissension art.

Well, I stated in the introduction that splashability was one of my three parameters. “Best” is subjective, and to me, a card can’t be the “best” if it isn’t playable across multiple archetypes. If you disagree with my definitions, I would be interested in hearing others and in reading your own Top 5 list!

Dismember doesn’t hit larger creatures and does nothing on a creatureless board, making it significantly less flexible than cards like Bolt. It’s also a liability at low life points. Modern decks are usually built with Burn and other aggressive strategies in mind, and already budget their life points closely with fetches, shocks, fastlands, etc. according to the amount of aggression they think they can weather. Dismember throws those ratios off and limits it to decks that don’t take enough damage, which are relatively rare. Colorless Eldrazi and Merfolk are examples of decks with life points to throw around AND that don’t have black/red/white, making them good fits for Dismember.

I would rate Dismember 3/2/3 today, which is less than it would’ve gotten pre-Push; recently, most decks in the market for a one-mana removal spell are already in red, white, or black anyway.

Isn’t it? I disagree with some of your ratings, but as will always be the case with card evaluation, a degree of subjectivity is inevitable. The idea with this article was to break down the subjective aspect into smaller sections to make it easier to discuss and argue about a card’s merit with others.

For instance, I would give Relic a 3 on flexibility (one more than you) since its floor is a new card, but only a 3 on splashability (one less than you) since so many decks use their graveyards enough that nuking both isn’t feasible.

Not as the examplar of flexibility; indeed, I only gave Charm a 3 on flexibility. It’s a card I like a lot and have played with a great deal, and one I have frequently described to pundits as a utility tool. It made sense to me to use Simic Charm as an example utility spell so that I could easily outline the parameters used to analyze the other cards in this article. As for Surgical, the card only has one mode, but it’s far from a card that only does one thing. I’d argue it has much wider applications than Simic Charm and is therefore more flexible. Your comment leads me to believe you have not played with Surgical a lot (don’t mean to sound presumptuous, but yours is just a viewpoint I’ve heard plenty of times from those new to the card and never from experienced Modern players).

In my experience playing Shadow decks (Jund and otherwise), TBR stays in for any matchup where opponents are liable to generate chump blockers or I need to race a linear deck. It also stays in in some fair matchups when I predict my opponent won’t expect it. A good deal of those scenarios call for Surgical as well. I have played games with both in the same configuration, but maybe I was just doin it wrong :O

Not quite, but it frequently is. Perhaps this analogy’s a stretch 😉

You held up Simic Charm as the exemplar of flexibility as part of your definition of utility. I think you got away from that in the your surgical extraction choice like previous commenter says…the card does one thing. Like it’s name suggests, this is not an example of a tool that can be used to wide effect. It is designed for a narrow, specific purpose; as per its flavor.

Kolaghan’s command
Power : 3
Flexibility: 5
Splashability: 2

Traverse the Ulvinwald
Power: 2
Flexibility: 3
Splashability: 4

Snapcaster mage
Power: 3
Flexibility: 4
Splashability:2

Abrupt decay
Power: 4
Flexibility: 3
Splashability: 2

This is fun.