More than two years ago, in early 2016, I noticed that the number of different Magic cards that existed was pretty close to 16,000. And by adding in the silver-bordered cards and the rest of the new cards printed in 2016, we would have almost perfectly 2^14 cards - enough that a single-elimination contest could find the community’s favourite card.

The Magic Bracket grew out of that realisation. When it first began, I had no idea if anyone else cared. But more than thirteen thousand of you showed up for the finals - so I guess it wasn’t just me!

The Bracket took two years to go from 16,343 cards to just one. 590 surveys along the way steadily eliminated all remaining candidates until we had just two. The total number of votes cast was 16,291,069. And now, without further ado, allow me to crown the winner of the Magic Bracket:

Yes, Lightning Bolt is our winner, zapping Birds of Paradise with 69.41% of the 13,196 votes cast in the finals. An early frontrunner with strong results across all fourteen rounds, Bolt is a perfectly balanced, flexible, iconic, flavourful, and beautifully-illustrated card. I could not be happier with our winner.

I’ll be doing some follow ups over the next few days - analysing the wealth of statistics available (try this results site or this bracket explorer or just the spreadsheet of results), telling the story of how I caught some cheaters, and talking about what’s next for this project. But for now, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of the heart for coming on this journey with me and for supporting my charity fundraiser so generously.

-David Lyford-Smith