With March of the Machines: the Aftermath, Wizards was so confident in their experimental of mini-sets that they greenlit several more to follow. This includes a follow-up epilogue set to cap off the arc ending with Outlaws of Thunder Junction. When The Aftermath bombed, Wizards ended up taking a hard left and turned it into a subset acting as The List slot for the main release. This ended up becoming what we know now as The Big Score.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first release I'm covering made up entirely of mythic rares. This isn't the first time we've seen a release like this. Every From the Vault release was composed entirely of mythics. Since then, we've also seen the various Universes Beyond Source Material bonus sheets come up as entirely mythics.

Each of the From the Vault releases were skipped in the Mythic Ranking series because they're entirely reprints and by and large they're all pretty good. It feels weird to do it with a preconstructed list and so I opted to focus specifically on booster releases, though I may also skip the Source Material releases in the future as well.

With The Big Score, though, comes a set made almost entirely of brand new mythic rare cards. Three cards are reprinted but everything else is brand new, originally conceived as an Aftermath-style release for Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

When March of the Machine: The Aftermath bombed, this was repurposed into the set itself as a secondary bonus sheet of sorts. So, we have thirty sweet mythics to talk about, though I will only be discussing what I feel are the top ten of those cards.

There's a lot to cover, so let's get to ranking!

The Top Mythics from

• 30. Territory Forge
• 29. Lotus Ring
• 28. Tarnation Vista
• 27. Sandstorm Salvager
• 26. Memory Vessel
• 25. Omenpath Journey
• 24. Lost Jitte
• 23. Worldwalker Helm
• 22. Esoteric Duplicator
• 21. Nexus of Becoming
• 20. Loot, the Key to Everything
• 19. Greed's Gambit
• 18. Oltec Matterweaver
• 17. Bristlebud Farmer
• 16. Transmutation Font
• 15. Generous Plunderer
• 14. Rest in Peace
• 13. Hostile Investigator
• 12. Fomori Vault
• 11. Sword of Wealth and Power

10. Torpor Orb

Prior to being reprinted in this set, Torpor Orb was gaining quite a bit of value, reaching around $20 a copy thank to its usefulness in older formats. This reprint here brought the price down to earth quite a bit, and turned out to be a blessing for Standard.

While it saw very little play initially, the release of Avatar: the Last Airbender coupled with numerous Standard bannings made it a must-play to deal with decks relying heavily on enters abilities such as Bant Airbending.

9. Ancient Cornucopia

Typically, three mana value mana rocks aren't really where you want to be in competitive formats. Ancient Cornucopia benefitted from being in the exact meta it appeared in, however, as it made Five-Color Domain decks of the time even more potent. With this deck, it wasn't hard to gain multiple life a furn off of a single spell, something that rose exponentially as you cast more copies.

Even though it no longer sees any real play since Domain rotated, it does continue to see play in some Pioneer Niv to Light decks, cementing it as a rock solid role player.

8. Grand Abolisher

Grand Abolisher rarely did very much in competitive 1v1 formats. However, it became an excellent tool for formats like Commander to ensure that you could do your thing without interference from your opponents. This led to the card becoming extremely expensive, which made it surprisingly solid reprint here. Not only did this bring the price down a fair amount, but it even saw some minor Standard play while simultaneously breaking out into Pioneer a little bit as well.

7. Molten Duplication

Heat Shimmer effects are wildly popular in Commander as a way to make a copy of a huge creature and do something massive. Costing only two-mana makes it one of the best versions of this effect alone, but the ability to copy an artifact or creature - not just a creature - makes it all the better.

Making a creature copy enter as an artifact as well has other potential benefits too, making this a fantastic inclusion for many casual lists and making it easily a top contender on this list.

6. Legion Extruder

Legion Extruder seemed like a neat card at first, albeit one that didn't seem like it would do much. In most cases, it would do little more than act as a sorcery-speed artifact version of Reality Hemorrhage.

As time went on, more decks would find ways to provide sacrifice fodder that would allow you to get more value out of it. The best of these is undoubtedly Weapons Manufacturing, allowing you to sacrifice the tokens it makes for damage as well as making a 3/3 beater.

5. Harvester of Misery

Massacre Wurm was a pretty popular card back in the day and even now remains a fan favorite Commander card thanks to multiple reprints over the years. Harvester of Misery fills a similar role, though it doesn't cause your opponents to lose a bunch of life in the process. To make up for this, you can instead cycle it away for a one-shot kill spell.

That was good enough at first, but it's surprisingly gotten even better with time as players found it to be a perfect card for the Sultai Reanimator lists combining Superior Spider-Man with Bringer of the Last Gift, as the cloned Bringer will return the Harvester to the battlefield, wiping out any opposition you may face.

4. Pest Control

You might think a card like Pest Control to be a bit too narrow, but what it does, it does exceptionally well. At the time of its release, this became a powerful inclusion in a number of Standard decks to combat the likes of Boros Convoke and Bant Toxic's small creatures. It even made a showing in Modern for a little while as a way to fight back against the likes of Boros Energy and Breach Combo.

Best of all, when it stops being useful, you can simply cycle it away. The versatility of the card made it a huge and shockingly important toolbox piece for very specific periods.

3. Collector's Cage

It didn't take players very long to realize you could do some silly things with Collector's Cage. Getting to cast something off of hideaway is awesome, enabling you to stick a huge threat while being able buff the rest of your board. This made Selesnya Cage a popular deck for a period of time to combat the metagame - particularly with the release of Brightglass Gearhulk in Aetherdrift.

Best of all, Collector's Cage remains an excellent Cube and Commander card, meaning it continues to have lasting appeal even after its time in Standard is done.

2. Vaultborn Tyrant

Players love a huge dinosaur, but what about one that gives you more value for playing more big dinosaurs? This has made Vaultborn Tyrant super popular among dinosaur fanatics everywhere, but it's become a popular casual favorite overall since it triggers off of any large creature - not just dinos!

This has made Vaultborn Tyrant not only a popular Commander staple, but has even caused it to see some competitive play as well. Decks like Smuggler's Surprise and the Rakdos Joins Up Pioneer combo list have made great use of this powerful card, ensuring its high placement on this list.

1. Simulacrum Synthesizer

Simulacrum Synthesizer is easily the best card of this subset and it's not really even close. Even though they never became a major part of any given competitive meta, Simulacrum Synthesizer decks have become a mainstay of Standard, Pioneer, and beyond.

It's never the best thing to do, and so these decks often rest on the fringes of these formats, but they have become a fan favorite thing you can do, which can lead to astoundingly strong bursts of threats out of nowhere.

Naturally, this has also made it a tremendous card in games of Commander, Cube, and even the likes of Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. In those formats, you can really get up to some shenanigans thanks to the deeper card pools and heavier artifact synergies. As a result, it's not only become one of the hottest cards from the set, but quite expensive as well, having peaked around $70-80 at one point.

Paige Smith

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