I was entertained by Brandon Moore's Top 101 Cards In Multiplayer, even though it was a little misguided (Magical Hack/Sleight of Mind? Fog? No Forbid or Capsize? C'mon...). John Liu's response was enjoyable as well, but I took issue with a couple of his points.

The first was his repeated dismissal of cards as niche cards. What he's forgetting is that the ranking of a card's power should be based on the style of deck that gets the most use out of it. Living Death was, if anything, rated too low, not too high; it is a tremendous card in multiplayer, because it has such a massive impact on the game. Yes, it can backfire a bit if opponents have a lot of creatures in their graveyards, but Living Death is one of those cards that you must build a deck around to really take full advantage of its power.

Really, that's true of most of the powerful multiplayer cards. The staples that go into any deck - spot removal like Terminate, Disenchant, or strong multiplayer counters like Dismiss - don't need decks built around them, but they also didn't show up on the list. Even the top cards on the list can't just go into any old deck; Balance doesn't work in a deck that comes out fast or a deck that needs a lot of land in play. Pernicious Deed sucks if you have lots of cheap creatures on the board. So I don't see how you can deny a spot to a card like Megrim, just because it only works in discard decks. It's flipping obvious that Megrim only works in discard decks.

The reason Megrim merits a spot on the list is because it's the only card that allows discard decks to have a hope of working in multiplayer.

He also wasn't consistent when he mentioned symmetric effects. He says in one place that symmetric effects are rarely symmetric because the caster can easily break the symmetry by either building a deck to account for it (hence the power of Balance) or choosing when to cast it (holding back creatures in anticipation of Wrath of God). Then he goes on to slam cards like Evacuation, which is a terrific card in multiplayer - it's not just a Fog, and it really punishes hasted creatures or players who haven't learned to attack and then play your creature spells - and, repeatedly, Howling Mine.

Howling Mine doesn't belong in every deck, to be sure, but it's great in a deck that needs to reload; I have an aggressive mono-red deck with a lot of flashback cards, and it really flies when the Mine's out; the extra draws help me more than they help other players. Plus, it's fun. The game goes faster when the Mines are out.

The other major point I take issue with is his repeated dismissal of lifegain in multiplayer.

Lifegain doesn't suck.

No, really - it doesn't.

Even in competitive tournament Magic, you see lifegain sometimes these days. Teroh's Faithful. Bottle Gnomes. Renewed Faith.

But I've seen numerous writers - and not just Liu - disparage lifegain in multiplayer, and I'm sorry to say that they're wrong. The main criticism of lifegain is that it doesn't help you win, it helps you not lose. That's certainly true, and explains why at high-level tournaments you only see lifegain as a metagame call, and even then it's attached to a creature most of the time (like Bottle Gnomes as sideboard against Donate decks or in the Sligh mirror match). But in a long chaos multiplayer game, say a five-player free-for-all, not losing can - get this - help you win!

What happens a lot in multiplayer games is the pile-on-the-weakling syndrome, because as a general rule if you have a clear shot at taking someone out of the game you should. So if you're down to four life, people won't leave you alone; they're going to blast you out of the game so you don't come back. This often happens when you start crawling back in the game; if you're at four life and aren't a threat, other players may just let you live, but if you start to become a threat, you'll get squashed like a bug.

Lifegain gets you two things: It keeps you out of the four-life danger zone where you're easy prey, and if you do get down to that point, it can be the only thing that gets you to safety.

That said, there are some kinds of lifegain that suck in all environments. Anything that just gets you one shot of life isn't that good; it gets you nothing else, and if you play Soothing Balm to buy you a turn against a Mahamoti Djinn, next turn you're exactly where you left off. (I can't think of a case where you'd rather have Soothing Balm than Remedy, to name a similar but better card, since Remedy can keep your creatures alive as well.) Sorcery-speed lifegain, like Sacred Nectar or Stream of Life, is really bad, because you have to tap out on your turn to use it. The only one-shot lifegain spells I would ever consider playing are Reviving Dose, because it replaces itself (and even then, it's still not very good), and Heroes' Reunion, which is cheap and quick. Even these are still generally mediocre. The only benefit to a card like Heroes' Reunion is it can keep you alive when someone thinks they've got just enough to kill you.

Of course, Congregate, the mother of all one-shot lifegains, is in a class by itself because it can net you such an obscene amount of life. But even it is overrated. The other reason for this is that if you gain a lot of life at once, you become a target. If everyone else is at ten to fifteen life, and you suddenly shoot upwards to sixty-five life off a forty-point Congregate, you will attract fire from everyone at the table. It takes one opponent a long time to slice off thirty-five or forty life, but four opponents all gunning for you will bring you back down in a hurry.

Incidentally, if you hate Congregate (and you should!) the way you discourage it in your metagame is that everyone piles on the guy who plays it.

So what does work?

One of two things. Creatures with lifegain attached are great, but only if the creature that comes with it is decent (Venerable Monk is right out). Bottle Gnomes. Angel of Mercy. Ravenous Baloth. Highway Robber (which is also loss-of-life for your opponent; like most black lifegain spells, you only get life by taking it from someone else). These can also be reused, via bounce or graveyard recursion, so you can cast them multiple times.

The other thing that works is reusable lifegain in modest amounts. By "modest," I mean "a few life a turn," not "slapping Armadillo Cloak on your Verdant Force and swinging." Ideally, this is something that helps keep you between ten and twenty-five life; any higher and you become a target; any lower, and you can get blasted out of the game with a sudden attack Soul Warden is marvelous at this - but for God's sake, don't play the Soul Warden on the first turn! I always see people do this, and the Warden invariably gets killed within a couple turns. If you wait until, say, turn 5, or until you've been bloodied a bit, it won't pop up on people's radar as a threat, it will live longer, and you'll ultimately gain more life from it.

The cards I'm going to speak up for are ones I don't think anyone's ever tried to defend before. They've been in print since the beginning, and even Wizards has said they exist mainly as skill-tester cards; newbies think they're great, and you know you're making progress as a player when you realize they suck.

These are the Lucky Charms: Iron Star, Crystal Rod, Wooden Sphere, Throne of Bone, and Ivory Cup. I'll also include Soul Net in this group, as it's quite similar.

Okay, break out your flamethrowers; I can hear you all screaming. These Cards Suck Dude What Are You Thinking??!!111! I'm not arguing that they're going to be the linchpin of the next cool deck - what I am saying is that they can serve the same function a card like the Soul Warden can. Like the Warden, they can help keep your life total up and keep you alive longer. In other words, they help you not lose, so that when other players fall by the wayside you'll be in a stronger position to win.

Not all the Charms are equal, of course; the Ivory Cup should never find its way into a white deck, as white has numerous ways to gain life. Likewise, Wooden Sphere for green. Throne of Bone is a little better, but black still has incidental ways to gain life. The colors that get a little bonus from the Lucky Charms are red and blue, with the Iron Star and Crystal Rod, because they have absolutely no lifegain, and red tends to run out steam in a long game. If there's more than one red mage at the table, you should be able to gain a couple life each time around the table. That doesn't sound like much, but over the course of a typical game you can net double-digit life gains pretty easily. Also, these cards will rarely draw removal because they're so innocuous, except for an odd situation like you having the only artifact on the board when someone brings out Keldon Vandals.

Even better than the Charms in multiplayer is Soul Net, which can rack up quite a bit of life. Remember that token creatures go to the graveyard before they dissolve; you can Net a token creature. And remember that if mass removal hits the table, Soul Net basically reads "X: Gain X life." Again, if you're white and you're into this sort of thing, Moonlit Wake does the same thing that Soul Net does without spending any mana at all.

The card that attempts to make the Charms obsolete, which also merits taking a look at, is Jeweled Torque. The advantage is obvious; you can custom-tune it to whatever color is most common, and you gain two life per activation rather than one. But, having to hold back two mana can hold you up a lot more than the single-mana activation cost of the Charms.

The last, and most interesting, use with lifegain is as fuel. This allows you to get away with playing cards like Yawgmoth's Bargain, which is a little dangerous in a five or six-player free-for-all; even if you're drawing five cards a turn, you're only keeping up with all the other players, and it's costing you five life a turn to do it. The two most amusing cards to burn a lot of life on are the Minion of the Wastes (20/20 tramplers are loads of fun, but Capsize will make you cry) and Phyrexian Processor (being able to kick out 12/12 minions is pretty cool - but again, Capsize will make you wail and gnash your teeth and rend your garments).