Hi everyone! This is David. I’m the guy that runs the Magic Bracket, the single-elimination contest for every Magic card, that’s run on this Tumblr. However, this post is definitely something from me, and not “Official” Bracket business as such.

When I came up with the idea for the Bracket, I spent a lot of time wondering what would eventually come out on top. Now, I actually think the pleasure of the journey is more important than the final destination, but there are a lot of suggestions of what might make it. But of course I also thought about what I would want to make it - my favourite card. I also decided that I generally would take a role of background work in the Bracket, keeping things ticking over and advertising the project, but not campaigning for one card or another. I did however decide to allow myself one exception - for what I believe to be the closest thing to a perfect Magic card that exists, which is Hex. It’s up in Round 1 voting today, in Batch 205.

Hex is excellent in almost every way. Let me break down why I think it’s perfect.

Firstly, the name. There are very few three-letter names in Magic, and this one manages to pull double duty. It combines the word ‘hex’ meaning a curse or magic spell, from an Old High German root word that also gave us hag, and the Ancient Greek ‘hexa’ prefix meaning six. The two meanings perfectly overlap with the function of the card.

The card also then echoes the six theme with the casting cost. Hex is also as black as they come, a powerful and deadly spell with a dark feel. Michael Sutfin’s art shows a hand casually starting off a chain of events that symbolically makes clear just what is happening. There’s even a nice colour gradient that ironically has the warm living reds and pinks on the right fade to orange on the toppling pieces, to the grey of the doomed figures just behind.

Hex’s text box is the finest mastery, however. It uses a wrinkle in Magic targeting rules - that you can’t cast spells without sufficient legal targets - to make an elegant puzzle: If you can find six creatures to kill, you have an awesomely powerful spell, but with less, you can’t cast it. In its home Limited format (Ravnica), Hex often had to be cast targeting one or two of your own creatures to get the required six, adding an interesting and elegant power level puzzle in just four words of rules text. It also gets a massive power-up in multiplayer formats, leading to its one reprint in the original Commander set.

The flavour text again reflects the six theming, at six words, and adds a cruel joke to the overall package.

And what’s more, it’s a fun card to play. Trying to manage the timing of it in a two-player game is a fun puzzle - do you give up some value by killing your own creatures now, or wait and hope to lure your opponent into overextending to devastating effect? Can you use Hex as a sort of sacrifice outlet or offset its costs with disposable creatures on your own side, or use it to clear out the downside from one of the Hunted creatures in the same set?

Hex is the ultimate in elegance. It packs layers of flavour, punning, strategic interest, powerful effect, fun, and potent imagery into just ten words of text over two lines (and a couple more outside the text box). It is the greatest achievement of Magic design so far and deserves to win - in my opinion not just against Frazzle this round, but the whole shebang.