Top twenty lists are always fun, and I would love to present to you a top twenty list for Avatar Week, but I can’t. Unfortunately, there are only 25 avatars in Magic: the Gathering including two token avatars– 26 if you count Scion of the Ur-Dragon from Time Spiral. Thus, I will be presenting to you the top ten Avatars of Magic! I’ll start off with some honorable mentions, and move straight into the list starting at number ten. Who will be number one? Read on!

Talking about the background of Avatars, what avatars represent and what goes into creating an avatar have all been discussed. It’s good to know my fellow Magic Deck Vortex writers have taken care of the ground bases for me. Thanks.

With all of the that out of the way, let's take a quick look at how I score the cards.  Then, we can go straight into the meat of this feature.

How do I score (the cards)?

Believe it or not, scoring the cards is a rigorous process. I provide a preliminary scoring of each card based on three different categories. The categories are Power, Coolness and Flavor. These are a little different than the criterion that I used for Druid Week. However, the point system is the same – 10 points in each category. Below is a brief breakdown of the three categories:

Power – How powerful is the card? Is it cost efficient? If there are drawbacks, how detrimental are they in a game environment? Does it have a high power/toughness and/or a strong ability (i.e. tap to counter a spell)? These are all questions that help me determine the ‘power’ rating out of ten. This is subjective.

Coolness – For the record, these are all subjective in nature. It’s all my opinion. Coolness is literally what you think. How ‘cool’ is the card? Herald of Leshrac got a very high ‘coolness’ factor. So did Scion of the Ur-Dragon from Time Spiral. Did the card cover new design ground? Do the card abilities have ‘cool’ synergy? Did the card WOW me the first time I saw it and does it still WOW me? When I say WOW, I am in no way referring to World of Warcraft. (I predict there will be a WOWA organization in the next few years. WOW Anonymous…)

Flavor - Mmmm. Avatar of Hope tastes like chicken! In the flavor category I was looking for how consistent the card is with what I think an avatar is. Is the ability on the card true to the idea the avatar is suppose to be centered around? Did the card make sense overall? For instance, while Herald of Leshrac was high on the ‘coolness’ factor, it scored low on Flavor. That’s just my opinion, but what exactly did the Herald represent? Perhaps he tasted like bad Meatloaf… I digress.

Once I gave each avatar its score out of ten, I looked at the list another time and adjusted the scores in comparison to other cards on the list. After reviewing the list about ten times, I formulated the final top ten. It wasn’t easy. I spent quite a bit of time looking at each one in detail to make sure my list was accurate… accurate from my point of view, anyway.  Some of the spots on the list will shock you... so be prepared.

Honorable Avatars.

Let me mention again that I revised the list for the top ten Avatars about six hundred times. Things shifted multiple times and your Avatars at position 11-14 were probably all in the top ten at some point throughout my revisions. Without further adieux, I bring you the honorable mentions!

#25 - Avatar of Me

I wasn’t nice to this guy. Why? I don’t like [UN] cards. I don’t buy them. I don’t play them. The only reason I acknowledge them is because the lands are cool and a select few have some interesting combo potential.

I will say this: Avatar of Me was one of two cards on the list to get a score of 10 on the flavor scale. The card is terribly flavorful, but the rest of the card doesn’t appeal to me at all. Perhaps I'm annoyed because I have to pay six mana for a 6/12 blue creature. Oh well, at least this wasn't the last card in the rankings. (Ethereal Champion was last place).

#23 - Avatar of Will

As Casual Violence pointed out in his Monday article, this card wasn’t flavorful at all for an Avatar. A flying creature that costs less if your opponent has no cards in hand? Isn't that a black ability?  However, I had to get at least one blue Avatar on this page and Avatar of Will was it. Avatar of Me didn’t count because its color is that of your eyes.

At least Avatar of Will has some combo potential, as I’ve mentioned on the Avatar Combo page. That and the art is super-cool.

#18 - Personal Incarnation

Ah… the first Avatar in Magic. It is unfortunate he didn’t make the top ten. He is, however, completely worthy of an honorable mention. This was the other Avatar to get a flavor rating of 10. The idea of your own ‘personal incarnation’ as a card is flavorful indeed.

Unfortunately, over the course of time and the evolution of the game we all love, this card has been deemed a junk rare. Despite being a 6/6 for six mana, its abilities just don’t stack up to a good card. The fact that this white card hits you for half of your life when it goes to the graveyard is just bad – and not very white. In my opinion, if the card was reversed and was able to redirect damage from you to itself, it would be MUCH better.

Anyhow, this card is still cool. Back when it wasn’t as much of a ‘junk rare’ and you didn’t have a gazillion awesome white cards to choose from, I would build a deck with it and other good white cards like Veteran Bodyguard, Crusade and Serra Angel. I wish I still had the deck list for you all to view, but I don’t. I don’t even think I want to recreate it. However, I did post a combo using Personal Incarnation on the Avatar Combo Page. I won’t re-post it here – it’s more laughable and amusing than good.

#16 - Scion of the Wild

This descendant of the wild is what green should have had a long time ago: a green Keldon Warlord. It’s good they made it better than Keldon Warlord costing one less colorless mana. I’m very surprised it took them ten years to finally make this kind of card as it wasn’t until Ravnica that we first saw it. I would bet that we will be seeing this card in a Core set sometime in the near future.

What would have made Scion of the Wild better is Trample. What good is a huge creature without some primal rage? You would think they could have costed it one more mana and given it trample. It would have only made sense. However, luckily, in the same block they gave us Fists of Ironwood. Fists will not only give your Scion trample, but give him a boost by generating two creature tokens. Here’s a deck I found using these two cards in action:

There isn't too much to this deck.  Lots of token generators, Doubling Season, Fists of Ironwood and Scion of the Wild.  It plays like any other Beatdown deck except with a little more pizazz.

#15 - Doubtless One

I’ll never forget seeing the art for this card before ever seeing the rules text. I was amazed and astonished. It certainly looks like an Avatar with the energy spewing out it’s eyes and hands. Justin Sweet did a sweet job on the art, and that’s for sure.

But the art on the card isn’t what brought this to #15 on the list. It was the life gain. With that, Doubtless One rose higher than most of the other Onslaught Avatars. That and I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Clerics. Other than the power and toughness equal to the number of Clerics in play, and the life gain, there isn’t much to this card. I would love to see Doubtless one trained in the arts of Archery. I think that would make it so much fun. Too bad Archery Training from Urza’s Destiny wasn’t a great card. There’s always Sinstriker’s Will…

#12 - Avatar of Hope

Originally, I had this card much lower on this list. It wasn’t until one of my fellow writers mentioned that I was underscoring the card that I took a closer look at it. You see, I forgot about the ‘can block any number of creatures’ ability. After that, I realized that this card truly embodied the idea of Hope. When all seems lost and your opponent has amassed a large army of creatures ready to kill you, Avatar of Hope will come in for the save. With flying and its blocking ability, it will be able to fend off all of your opponent’s creatures for at least a turn. And it can fend off many creatures for many turns if you slap a Regeneration card or the like on it.

#11 - Herald of Leshrac

I really, really wanted this guy in the top ten list, and he was for a while. However, as mentioned previously, after many revisions to the top ten list he was bumped out. Making number eleven is still pretty good. One of my problems with the card is the Avatar concept of it. What exactly does he embody? Stealing lands? Leshrac? Power? The concept of a dark lord? If its power, then that’s cool – I can see that. But it’s still a bit foggy in the Avatar-sense.

Despite all of this, this guy is super cool. This was one of those cards I saw and went “WOW!” Stealing lands on a black card with cumulative upkeep… that’s just crazy! I read somewhere that the Herald’s ability was a last minute decision, as R&D wanted something splashy and new. However, I can’t find the quote. It was most likely in Scrye or Inquest. The art is crazy awesome, the ability is unique, new and splashy, and he’s undercosted. What’s not to like about that?

There are many ways to abuse his ability. You could use new Frontiers to generate more lands for your Herald to steal. You could use Zuran Orb to sacrifice the lands you stole with the Herald right before he would be sacrificed. You could throw Brand on an Isochron Scepter for some amusing tricks. Whatever you do, have fun with this Avatar. In terms of a mechanic on a card, this one is one of the coolest.

From Honorable to Amazing:

Here’s where I get to the fun part – the actual top ten list of Avatars. Don’t be surprised to see a few token Avatars in the list. And don’t be surprised to see a few cards you don’t agree with. This entire list is the opinion of me and me alone. While you might not agree with all of my choices, I think you will agree with most of them. Remember, with 26 avatars to work with, making a top ten list wasn’t exactly easy to do. And finally, number ten on the list:

#10 - Stalking Vengeance

Oooh…. the avatar of vengeance! Red is all about emotion. Vengeance is definitely an emotional response. Vengeance can be defined as an infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person. Stalking Vengeance’s ability certainly isn’t far from that definition. Let’s take a look at the flavor text:

Something roams the killing places, sniffing the guilt of the slayers, stalking them on iron paws.

The visual image you get from that is amazing. Something, like Stalking Vengeance, roaming the battlefield and stalking the killers is so right for this card.

Stalking Vengeance wasn’t very high on my list originally. Once I realized he was extremely flavorful and likewise powerful, he was bumped pretty high on the list in comparison to where he was before. One of things I didn’t like was the high casting cost. However, when you consider it’s a 5/5 with haste, the seven mana isn’t that bad. But then it’s ability – vengeance for each of your creatures that are killed. That was perfect for the concept of an embodiment of vengeance. And the damage goes straight to the head of one of your opponents. I would recommend trying Hell’s Caretaker with Stalking Vengeance, and then some big high-powered creatures to make the game end quickly. Otherwise, just check out Death_By_Beeble's Raiding the $10 and Up Bins article from earlier this week for a deck using Stalking Vengeance.

#9 - Heedless One

Channel your vitality through the Heedless One, a trampling elf-loving maniac. Heedless One rising above the ranks of all other Onslaught Avatars because of its keyworded ability: trample. This kind of card is only going to go into a tribal Elf deck and thus when you cast it, it should be at least a 4/4 trampler. Consider first turn Llanowar Elves, second turn Wellwisher and another Llanowar Elves, etc, etc. Heedless One is a great card for all Elf tribal deck lovers… and I’m no exception. One of my favorite decks of all time was an Elf Tribal deck also known as Elf Ball. Except in my deck, called Armageddon Elves, I splashed some white for… you guessed it… Armageddon. Had Heedless One been around when I originally made the deck, I would have included it.

Wait, I can include it now. Here’s goes nothing:

#8 – Kaldra

Yes, yes… I know. This is just a token. But, it’s still an Avatar! With the help of Sword of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra and Helm of Kaldra, this Avatar can be yours to control. Kaldra is also unique as it’s the first time WotC has split a cycle of cards over each set in a block and then made the three cards together generate this Avatar of great power. Note that the Helm of Kaldra, the card that is capable of making the token Kaldra, references two other card names that weren’t in the same set. Thus is the uniqueness of these cards and the Avatar.

Plus, it technically only costs one colorless mana to generate the token. AND! When that token comes into play, you get to attach all of the Kaldra equipments to it. This makes for an indestructible 9/9 Avatar with first strike, trample, and haste. The only things I would have liked to see on this guy are flying and fear. But that doesn’t make any less of a cool Avatar.

Kaldra is incredibly flavorful as well, but I won’t go into great detail about this. I’ll just quote www.wizards.com from their Fifth Dawn page. I left the last paragraph in just to begin and end the story of the Kaldra Avatar (story wise).

Glissa, Bosh, and Slobad journey deep within Mirrodin's core to confront the insidious Memnarch. With them is the Kaldra avatar--an immensely powerful being of energy summoned when Kaldra's sword, shield, and helm were brought together. But what was supposed to be the world's salvation turns out to be a vile trick. With a single spell, Memnarch seizes the avatar and turns it on Glissa and her companions.

Kaldra's avatar relentlessly pursues Glissa into the Tangle, destroying everything in its way. Finally, at the Radix, Glissa's destiny becomes clear. As rage and despair overcome her, Glissa's body calls forth a great column of green mana from Mirrodin's core, annihilating the avatar in the process. Now that mana hangs overhead in a glowing sphere--the green sun at last, Mirrodin's fifth dawn.

True, getting the avatar into play can be difficult as it is dependant on getting three cards in play at the same time under your control. Fortunately, there are cards that can help this such as Steelshaper’s Gift and Godo, Bandit Warlord. You could even use Tinker or one of its many variations to power out a faster Kaldra Avatar.

Despite this Avatar being difficult to actually get into play, I felt this Avatar, the flavor behind it, and the 9/9 heavily keyworded Avatar-ness of it deserved eighth place in this top ten list. With that said, let’s move along to number seven.

#7 - Avatar of Discard

Oops. I meant Discord. Let me try this again.

#7 - Avatar of Discord!

There we go. Much better. Of course, Avatar of Discard would still work considering it costs you the discard of two cards to bring it into play. And discarding two cards is fine with me since you are getting a 5/3 flying, creepy looking Avatar to control. The Rakdos guild would be proud except that this Avatar wasn’t very good in Rakdos hellbent decks.

That’s okay, the Rakdos are still proud since it was the prerelease card for Dissension.

In any other deck, this card packs a punch. If you can get a 5/3 flyer by turn two and your opponent doesn’t have efficient removal, you’ve just set a four turn clock to end your opponent’s game. Let’s take a look at a deck by DarkRitual over at MTGSalvation using Avatar of Discord as it was meant to be used: in a recursion deck.

Need I say more? With Oversold Cemetery and Genesis, you can make Avatar of Discord useful all game long. You have to love the inclusion of Sword of Fire and Ice. Scion of Darkness would be proud! Speaking of Darkness…

#6 - Scion of Darkness

“Take three clerics and call me in the morning,” says Dark Supplicant to the Scion of Darkness.

It’s amusing that the flavor text on Dark Supplicant refers to the Scion of Darkness as a God. I don’t know that Avatars are considered godly, but it’s still indicative of this guy’s placing on the top ten. Sixth place isn’t too shabby.  NOTE: The quote above isn't the flavor text from Dark Supplicant.

Scion of Darkness is iconic. He’s powerful. He’s dark. He’s a lot of everything a black player would expect out of a black Avatar… Trample… Graveyard recursion from your opponent’s graveyard… Cycling.

Wait, cycling? Where’d that come from? That’s not overly black.

Anyway, Scion of Darkness is a beautiful card for only eight mana. And if you don’t want to pay eight mana, just use Dark Supplicant to sacrifice three clerics and voila! Put Scion of Darkness into play. That’s very Spirit-of-the-Night-esque. During the Onslaught block, where he first made an appearance, one of the tribal themes that received some focus was the Cleric. Thus, Scion of Darkness fit very well within the block and still fits nicely in many deck boxes of casual players around the world. On that note, I present to you an Onslaugh Block tribal Cleric deck featuring the Dark One:

#5 - Marit Lage

Surprised? Shocked? Disgusted?

Marit Lage is treasured by the casual community and this top ten listing of Avatars isn’t far from Casual. In fact, it is casual. Or at least I would like to think it is. Marit Lage is the product of the card Dark Depths. Dark Depths is a legendary snow land that comes into play with lots of ice counters on it. You may pay three mana to remove an ice counter from it. When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it and put the amazing legend Marit Lage into play.

With that in mind, most if not all tournament goers have deemed Dark Depths worthless. It doesn’t even produce mana!

However, the casual player would see Dark Depths as a card with combo potential. I won’t be presenting a deck this time around as Death_By_Beebles already made one in his article from earlier this week. Cards like Chisei, Heart of Oceans, Power Conduit and Æther Snap all combo well with Dark Depths which make it a lot easier than paying 30 mana total to bring out Marit Lage. Even Yet Another Æther Vortex from Unhinged combos beautifully with Dark Depths.

Enough talking about Dark Depths; let’s talk about Marit Lage… the avatar that’s placing fifth in this list. Once you eventually get Marit Lage into play, it’s nothing to scoff at. It is an indestructible legendary 20/20 black Avatar with flying. Haste would have made this better… but one swing of this unblocked and your opponent will lose the match 60% of the time. True that it is susceptible to blue bounce and cards like Chainer’s Edict, but it’s still a 20/20 indestructible flying mammoth! Not literally a Mammoth, but I think you get what I’m saying. How could a 20/20 creature of any kind not make the top five in any list?

Next up we have the newest member of the Avatar tribe:

#4 - Scion of the Ur-Dragon

"I am the blood of the Ur-Dragon, coursing through all dragonkind."
--flavortext from Scion of the Ur-Dragon

A-MA-ZING! I’ve always been a huge fan of Dragons. At least until my casual Dragon tribal deck with Pyromancy was stolen and pawned. Back in the day, the deck was well worth $300+. Since then, I think I’ve come to terms with the loss and view it more as having less Dragon cards to love.

Anyway, Scion of the Ur-Dragon has the ability to be any Dragon in your deck and all for the cost of two colorless mana. While this is Avatar Week and not Dragon Week, this kind of ability deserved position four on the top ten Avatar list. It’s an ability that has never been done before and with 64 dragon cards (including Scion) there are endless possibilities! Speaking of which, the following is a quick decklist I put together to try and showcase the Scion’s nifty ability:

To summarize the deck quickly, you have elves, birds and druids in the beginning to help your mana base out. Two of these mana accelerators have the ability to sacrifice themselves for the greater good… or more specifically for a Pattern of Rebirth. That will set up putting your Scion of Ur-Dragon into play quickly. From there with the ability of the Ur-Dragon, keep picking one of the seven singular Dragons in the deck including powerful Nicol Bolas, chaotic Crimson Hellkite, tricky Zodiac Dragon and the clever Quicksilver Dragon. Use these to your advantage and beat down your opponent. You have some tricks in the dragon choices here so choose wisely. Then, use Reito Lantern and/or Reinforcements to put those cards back into your library to use again for the Scion.

This deck can use some work as I put it together without really playtesting it. However, when fixing it be sure to include ways to discard cards from your hand that you can’t cast yet. I included Rix Maadi for that, but that’s one card. I think this deck needs more. Also, try and find a way to be more aggressive in the beginning and/or to power out a faster Pattern of Rebirth. Otherwise, I think this deck does a good job showcasing what the Ur-Dragon Avatar guy can do. Perhaps I should do a top ten Dragon list next…

Now, back to the top ten Avatar List!

#3 - Avatar of Woe

Oooh... finally to the top three. At this position we have the amazing Avatar of Woe, also known as Visara the Dreadful’s evil sister and/or grandmother…

And/Or???

Anyway, Avatar of Woe has had an impact on Magic players since the day she set foot out of a booster pack. It’s not too often you get a creature with the ability to tap to “destroy target creature. It can't be regenerated.” And it’s even less often that you get that wrapped up with a side of fear and flying with a garnish of alternate casting cost. Overall, Avatar of Woe was destined to be in the top three. She could have even made number two had it not been for more bias towards black cards.

Nevertheless, Avatar of Woe is here. She tapped to kill many an Avatar to make it here and many other creatures too. Despite her excellent tapping skills, I would like to think there are more fun ways of showing her abilities. Perhaps pairing her up in dance class with Goblin Sharpshooter will do well – as this Goblin is a fine tapper-untapper in his own right. Of course, there is always Freed from the Real. I was always fond of “U: Destroy target creature. It can’t be regenerated.” Lastly, the hypnotic Mesmeric Orb likes to do the introduction to a quickly cast Avatar of Woe. Filling the graveyards with creatures has never been more fun.

#2 - Hand of Justice

Perhaps nostalgia won me over here, as Avatar of Woe is strictly a better card. But I really, really like Hand of Justice. Being that I was one of the (poor) souls to open up and play with Fallen Empires, this card was an excellent rare slot. White destroying creatures?

Every turn!

The closest thing to it at the time was a Swords of Plowshares and that only had a one-shot effect. Hand of Justice could do it every turn so long as you had three other creatures to tap. This was the first powerful Avatar in Magic. Mind you, not the first Avatar, but the first Avatar to have an excellent and influential ability.

The art may not be fantastic and the flavor text may be terrible, but the card was awesome back when it first came out. And the card might still be awesome in the right deck. Not that the following deck is perfect, but it uses tokens, Intruder Alarm and Isochron Scepter to make for a fun Hand of Justice Deck:

I won’t go into great detail about this deck but know it revolves around Intruder Alarm and Isochron Scepter imprinted with Raise the Alarm. And Hand of Justice, of course.

[drum roll please...]

Now onto the number one Avatar:

#1 - Serra Avatar

Who would have guessed? I’ll be honest in saying I had Serra Avatar at the top of the list since the beginning. Serra Avatar, from Urza’s Saga, was and is an amazing card – more amazing than any card below it on the list (or above it in terms of the layout in this article). Serra Avatar has a power and toughness equal to your life total so if you have 10 life, it’s a 10/10. If you have infinite life, it has infinite power and toughness. Enchant it with Soul Link and watch your life total double every time it deals damage!

I could go on and on about Serra Avatar, but Greyfell already did that for me on day one of Avatar Week with this article: Big Fat Serra.  That’s right – an entire article all about Serra Avatar. You guys should have guessed it would be number one.  I would highly encourage you to read Big Fat Serra as it's a good read and include three deck lists using Serra Avatar.

Well, that concludes the top ten Avatar listing. Thank you for taking the time to read through this article.  What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree or disagree with my choices? Do you like the decks? Is there something you would have changed? Let me know in the forum.

In the meantime, enjoy the last days of Avatar Week as everything will be wrapped up on Sunday.

~John Streetz~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

Articles Spotlights from 2006
The Games People Play - Tactical Magic.
If I worked at R&D
The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!
Lands-More than Mana: Part One