HS player evaluates the worst MTG metas of all time
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CGB shows Rarran busted cards from the Urza's Block and Mirridon block and rarran tries to guess if they got banned or not.
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if rarran thinks lands you can play immediately and tap for blue are strong, wait until he sees an island.
Wait until he sees a Volcanic Island
"Misty Rainforest isn't even good it doesn't tap for mana!"
@@nekrataali And it costs you a life? Gross
@@RumpledNutskin Tbh that's how I felt about sac lands when I started the game. Why would I pay a life when I could just draw and play a basic? Gross
@miracletortoise6224 you're not the only one 😅
1:14:05 "There's no way you would name your whole legacy on (a bad card)" - Rarran, speaking to Mesa Falcon Guy
a banned* card
he says "you would name your legacy on a banned card...? absolutely fuckin yeah you would" lmao
Classic saying from Saga Block Standard:
“There’s the early game, where you decide who goes first. Then there’s the midgame, where you decide mulligans. Then there’s the late game, which is turn 1.”
At 1:34:09 and CGB still hasn't corrected Rarran that you can't sacrifice opponents' creatures; that's definitely going to affect his evaluation.
Yeah, not really a sacrifice if you can do it to your opponent. It would be removal at that point. I could see the mistake the first time when Rarran asked any creature on the board and CGB thinking yes anything I own on the board knowing how the card works. But when Rarran explicitly says Sacrificing your opponent's creature to get your own on the board at 1:31:30 It should have been corrected.
I see why he could make the mistake from the Yugioh videos. In yugioh there exists quite a few cards that are activated by sacrificing creatures, your opponent's included.
@@johannesmanninen6416 any cards that can do that in ygo specify they can, and its like, less than a dozen cards
Tributing in ygo works the same as sacrificing in mtg otherwise
@@Skarlon True, but we still have People reminding that minions are not spells. The little details get muddy sometimes.
Rarran looking at Arcbound and correctly guessing it's busted, while I'm like, "Yeah, but you're also missing that it can sac itself to it's ability to trigger modular, it's not just busted, it's turbo busted.'
Arcbound Ravager was one of the times I quit the game, because as busted as Psychatog decks were, Arcbound Ravager was just ten times more unfun to play against.
If I remember correctly, ravager was so busted he's one of the reasons they changed combat damage to not use the stack anymore, because you could put the damage on the stack, then sac stuff to make trades even more favourable to you
It's a card that forced a change in the base rules of the game
@@Harakanis From the moment they changed combat damage to use the stack, it's never gone back. You might have two different memories twisted together.
@@Harakanis They might have cited that as a reason but I doubt it's a true. Otherwise they wouldn't have waited 6 years to implement the change. The reason damage on the stack was removed was just that they wanted to simplify MtG for newer players. Same reason they removed mana-burn. It just reduces the amount of stuff you need to track. It also reduces the amount of feel-bad experiences due to getting got by an on-board trick.
@@Pinfeldorf Combat damage hasn't used the stack in 15 years. The current rule is:"510.1. First, the active player announces how each attacking creature assigns its combat damage, then the defending player announces how each blocking creature assigns its combat damage. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack. A player assigns a creature’s combat damage according to the following rules:"
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you can't assign damage with Mogg Fanatic and sack it to ping afterwards anymore.
My favourite story i've heard about combo winter was from i think Mark Rosewater (game designer at wizards) were he said that players during that time referred to the game as early game = shuffling your decks, mid game = deciding who goes first and late game being turn 1
It was "early game = coin flip to see who goes first, mid game = mulligans, end game = first turn"
Fun fact: Forsythe wasn't just being cute when he called Skullclamp "a mistake": There was actually a literal mistake involved with its creation. In design, rather than +1/-1, it gave equipped creature +1/+1. The balancing team, towards the end of their pass at the set, decided that it was a bit too strong, so they changed it to +1/-1, and didn't really have a lot of time to test it. Roughly 6 months later, for a playtest for one of the Kamigawa sets, one of the playtesters noticed it was blatantly overpowered, but it was too late - Darksteel had already passed the editing lock and was getting sent to the printing facilities.
Not quite. It originally costed more and was pretty bad, then they made it cheaper but added the -1 "downside" without paying attention. The previous version was bad enough that they didn't even think the upgraded version was good enough to warrant much attention and they were tired reviewing cards, and it ended up going untested. If they thought the previous version was too strong, they would have paid more attention.
I was about to say that I was sad that CGB did not mention this story to Rarran, b/c it gives so much needed context to a Magic designer calling the final version of the card a literal mistake, that in the act of making the card worse/giving it a downside the accidentally buffed it/gave it an upside.
Basically the designers failed at first grade maths. They simply overlooked the fact that 1-1 = 0
Are you mixing up this and Rancor? Rancor had something very close to what you describe as the error (a wrong cost that was too late to catch before the set was locked, anyway). The other commentor above has it right.
@@andrewsparkes6275 Skullclamp was supposed to cost 3 to play and 2 to equip.
Tolarian academy was even more heinous thanks to the legend rule at the time. The fact that non-artifact decks would play Tolarian Academy in their decks just so the opponent couldn't then play theirs due to the legend rule was insane.
Yea that was major indicator of how absolutely busted it was. It didn't matter that your deck had no way of ever creating a single artifact ever. You still considered Academy in the deck.
I don't think Rarran realized for the entirety of the Urza's Saga section that Time Spiral says "draw seven cards" on it.
Yeah, I was reading it and thinking "This is zero mana draw 7 even before mana cheating."
And then we introduce Academy
Even with CGB saying multiple times that you draw 7 with it
Love Rarran, but sometimes if things don't stick in his mind, they just don't stick lol
Yup, he was thinking basically of plot twist in HS, where if you shuffle 2 cards, you draw 2
Both players draw 7. Without Tolerian Academy I don't see it being that good, but maybe getting to 6 mana was easier in 1999 than today
One of the first FNMs i went to a guy was trying to sell his now banned affinity deck but no one would bite so he literally just gave it to 13 year old me stating "this game sucks im done" I think a lot of people probably quit at that time.
and they were probably happy to not have to deal with that combo winter :)
I quit at that time, sold my whole collection and have never gone back. I just watch MTG content now and then. I drove 3 hours to a Pro Tour qualifier only to 0-3 to Ravager decks.
@@rickmel09combo winter was before arcbound ravager and affinity. But og mirrodin had plenty of busted stuff so yeah
@@therealkamicome play pauper! the best format imo
IIRC the (competitive) player base dropped by about 30% and didn't recover to the pre-mirrodin levels for something like 5+ years. As bad as combo winter was it was nothing compared to the damage Affinity did to Magic.
Rarran was evaluating the Recurring Nightmare's "Sacrifice a creature" cost thinking he could sacrifice an opponent's creature, which is not the case
He was also evaluating Skullclamp on the assumption that you put it on aggro creatures, rather than putting it on disposable X/1's to draw 24 extra cards a game.
@@MainTopmastStaysaili mean it’s broken even when used “fairly” rather than just as a sac outlet
I feel like Rarran needs to explain how he think the card works so Blue could help elaborate on it/MTG more.
@@rileyoveson9641 He literally did Blue just didn't pick up on what Rarran said. Multiple times actually.
@@DreamGamingS2 I meant more in general like have a section where he is asked what he thinks it does so none slip by.
I like how he'd saw a card that said "Draw 7 cards" he'd say "IDK if it's good enough to be banned." "It's banned." Then see another one and make the same mistake again.
Rarran is used to Hearthstone, a game where it is not uncommon for games to reach turn 10+ and end by fatigue damage. In a game like that, it's generally _assumed_ that any 'both players' effect _will_ benefit both players, and the 'power' of the card is measured by 'how does my deck benefit from this effect more than my opponent's deck will'.
Whereas in Magic, most players take one look at that card and say 'ah, it's OTK time'.
@@falleithani5411 I'm not criticizing him. It was just funny to see.
@@bblivid Aye, you're good. My commentary just stems from the fact that all mistakes are understandable, and I enjoy trying to understand them.
And then he gets angry.
1:20:40 when seeing sneak attack: "this is the most broken thing I've seen in my life" after just seeing Tolarian academy and yagmoths will... XD
To be fair, Sneak Attack would be a lot more broken with Hearthstone's combat, where you can send everything to the opponent's face and they can't block. He probably didn't really take that into account.
Sneak Attack actually is more overtly broken - It's one card of a two card combo, but you can easily imagine what the other card is. Academy and Yawg Will enable other broken cards, but you have to know what those cards are.
Apart from like Time Walk and Ancestral Knowledge, Sneak attack is likely the Magic Card that would be the most broken in Hearthstone.
Remember: You don't draw lands. Every card in your hand is going to be useful.
As attacker you decide where all attacks go. You pick every trade or just go face.
There's multiple metas built around "when it leaves the battlefield" effects.
He is correct, you WOULD uninstall if they ever made that card.
Well to be fair heathstone doesn't have any concept of recursion mechanics and how badly you can abuse it (without even including Delve). There aren't a lot of oppressive aura styled creatures in hearthstone either or ones that have unlimited on board activations. Simply the idea of cheat out massive creature for one turn, draw a ton of cards, repeat, comes off as immediately as busted.
Sneak attack in hearthstone would be an OTK like in magic, the biggest issue there though is combo decks don't have to win fast unless your opponent is winning fast. Draw sneak attack with 10 mana crystals would just win the game depending on your hand or even 6, 7, or 8 mana depending on how many cards are needed for the combo.
In magic though academy and will are just in an entirely different league. If you see decks that include those cards in constructed, which is just vintage, you will see why they're so borked with 5 moxen, dark ritual, black lotus, and all this stuff to recur or just manacheat like crazy.
i hear "Eldraine" and my body has a visceral reaction to the sound😂
Come on like how many cards could really have been banned across different formats from that set?? Surely not more than 2 or 3... right? WOTC would never release a set with more than that right?? At least not more than 4 right?? They are far to careful for that right??
That was basically my intro to MTG, fun times
Zoomers think Eldraine was the strongest set of MtG, while this video show things that are 10X more busted than Eldraine. Eldraine was strong but it is because it was followed by Theros Beyond death then Ikoria who broke as much the standard, while some cards from war of the spark also busted were still legal in the format, so yes the standard 2019/2020 was kinda broken but because of all differents sets. And speaking about power creep and busted sets, let's not speak about the Modern Horizons sets.
@@alexandreleveque8394 its less the fact that it was uniquely overpowered and more the fact that you would think that they would learn not to release over 6 utterly broken cards in a modern set. Like you can excuse some of the mistakes from these pre 2000 decks as “They did not know better” but something like Oko or that free green spell is just bad game design.
Same for me when he showed all the Ravager Affinity cards. Made me uncomfortable just remembering those dark times at my LGS. Everyone played it.
Emrakul, a moon-sized Eldritch Abomination, attacks you. Sneakily. For one mana.
And annihilates your entire board. When I came back into magic that was my go to kitchen table deck😁
Fifteen squirrels.
@@egoalter127615 *flying* squirrels
I'm going to write all at Wizards to make a "Mesa Falconer" 😅
YES PLEASE! Lets's make it a thing.
CGB's card when he's world champion. Called it.
This will be the Pondering Mage or Witch Enchanter equivalent for MH4.
It would be good to also put on the screen any HS cards that get mentioned
Oh yes please, that would be so helpful
I love Raran losing his shit over what I often take for granted as rather common effects. Equipment - "Oh that is a super interesting effect." Yes. Yes it is an interesting concept.
I may be wrong as it was a long time ago, but mirrodin was the introduction of the equip mechanic and I did kinda lose my shit when it was released.
@@9871ish I was a fairly fresh player at the time and I remember buying the white equipment pre-con because I thought it was super cool to build your own duel-wielding cat warrior. People nowadays take it for granted but equipment is a simple but very evocative mechanic.
@@ankhi3585 I remember buying that deck, everything was "Auriok" and it came with a loxodon warhammer.
@@ankhi3585 Yeah that precon was called "little bashers" it was one of the best precon decks they ever released. I bought it as a 12 year old at the time too and it was definitely pretty strong at the casual table, naturally it wouldn't compete in tournaments well because affinity existed and was basically tier zero as soon as mirrodin hit the shelves.
@@9871ish They had the effect on a couple of artifacts before, but Mirrodin was when they made it into a subtype of artifact and keyworded it.
TBH even for someone who saw and played against some of those cards, it was exciting for them to do that, and to release a bunch of equipment across all rarities.
These collabs have converted me into an mtg enjoyer
"If a card is broken, but no one plays it, does it get banned?" is the modern "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
not really. The card wouldn''t get banned, but the tree would make a sound.
@@Faude18the point is, is the card really broken if nobody is playing it and it's not making waves?
i got the point, but it's still not the same. The tree makes a sound, but the fucking card wouldn't get banned. One question gets answered with yes, one with no. The 2 statements don't use the same logic.
@@Faude18 there are plenty of cards that are absolutely broken but just haven't found the deck yet
I think rarran misinterpreted recurring nightmare as saying u can sac opponent creatures but u can always only sac ur own creatures
I can't wait for the day Rarran has to read the text on Questing Beast
Oh, gods, Urza's. First tournament I ever attended. First game I ever played against? A Stroke of Genius deck. Well, I say played, but I meant "Stood there openmouthed as they went off t1 and I realized I hated tournaments."
EDIT - Oh, CGB, the reason Dark Ritual was never banned was because they kept balancing Black spells around Dark Ritual. It's why everything cost more if it was in Black.
Regarding Dark Ritual, my initial reaction was like "Wow, Yawgmoth's Will was *over*costed? Was it only supposed to be 2 mana or something? That'd be crazy". And then I remembered WotC printed Underworld Breach two decades later (and yes, it was crazy).
@@Metallicity Yeah underworld breach was basically them going and making a new will, only this time it was way dumber since it didn't exile cards put into the graveyard so you just went lotus/LED brainfreeze and killed people by recurring those over and over until the opponent had no deck left. If they had some eldrazi or something no biggie mill yourself for another alternate wincon and play that with dozens of mana.
What is funny is that there are many more cards you could show and people would be like yeah that's broken from urza's block. Metalworker, Grim Monolith, yagmoths bargain, goblin welder, voltaic key, any card with the untap lands ability, tinker.
And then how the legend rule worked.
It's no wonder even to this day people think of it as an artifact block when most of the broken cards either worked with artifacts or were artifacts themselves, while in actuality it was an enchantment block lol
And they only really added all the artifact stuff because... the block was themed after Urza. Like, I bet in the alternate reality of the block they originally envisioned to be after Weatherlight, woth the OG storyline etc., if there would exist an alternate Metalworker, it would have made mana based on instants or enchantments lol
@@sallomon2357 |Metalworker but for instants
JFC don't even joke about that lmao
@@nekrataali metalworker for instants would obviously still be busted, but not nearly as good as actual metalworker since its pretty clunky to use colorless mana for instants as most of them have one or two colored pips, whereas almost every artifact is purely colorless
I can’t believe we didn’t talk about the -1 toughness on skullclamp.
It's crazy to think someone at wizards of the coast added that part thinking it would be a nerf.
Can you apply it to an enemy 1/1 to kill it and draw 2?
@@AmazingMrMe123 no, the equip ability only works on your own creatures unless specified
@@AmazingMrMe123 You could use Arden, Intrepid Archaeologist to attach it to your opponent's creature, but that's pretty niche.
What you can do instead is fill your deck with 0 or 1 mana x/1's and turn them all into 2 cards.
@@johndoe-rq1pu yeah I can see how essentially being able to sac those little creatures for 1 mana draw 2 is busted. Especially when it's all about combos and you don't really need to build a giant board state. Even with bigger creatures, can you equip at anytime? For example you attack with a 2/2, it gets blocked by a 3/3 you equip to make you 2/2 a 3/1 trade evenly and draw 2? There are just sooo many use cases for something like this.
I was in my early teens at my local magic shop bringing my casual deck I had just built. I played against a guy in his 20s who apparently decided to show this young kid what magic was all about and brought his time spiral combo deck.
I had no idea what was happening, but he just kept shuffling his deck and drawing a new hand and then the game was over. I don't even remember the win condition or what I was playing, maybe I got decked out, all I remember is him shuffling and redrawing over and over.
I had the same experience during combo winter. I had only just learned how to play magic and I had no idea what the fuck was going on but it ended with "and now you draw 200 cards and you lose".
I just played with my friends after that.
the sound Rarran makes at 48:30 is so accurate to the universal feeling of seeing that card played against you.
Rarran's analysis of Time Spiral was so strange. It's essentially 0 mana draw 7, and he comes from a game where Secret Passage is highly valued as essentially 1 mana draw 4.
I think he just didn't understand that it drew _any_ cards
@@voland6846 I think he just fell into an extremely common trap for players who evaluate cards in general, in that he only thought in terms of card _advantage._ So because it says _both_ players draw seven cards, he just read that as "zero card advantage." He wasn't taking into account the fact that strong enough draw _will_ hit a tipping point where your opponent _does not get another turn._
Which is fair, considering he's a Hearthstone player. He's very much used to a game which is aggressively curated to keep turns short and relatively simple.
@@falleithani5411 I'm not going to rewatch it, but I'm 99% sure he doesn't mention the card draw once. I know Hearthstone is simpler than MtG, but he's a smart enough guy to know that dumping your hand then drawing 7 while your opponent swaps their carefully sculpted 5 for a new random 7 would be busted in almost every situation.
So yeah, I stand by my opinion that he just didn't notice the draw at all.
@@voland6846 He describes it as 'resetting the game', and notes that multiple times, even drawing a parallel to Shahrazad. He is also never surprised when CGB mentions the draw benefits.
The part that _surprised_ him was the mana cheating.
I still think he noticed the draw, and just didn't value it because it affects both players.
@@falleithani5411 Unless you're playing against apm mage
Fun fact: The first MTG booster pack I ever purchased had Arcbound Ravager in it.
Lucky. My first one was a Lifelace.
Damn, mine was Phantom Nishoba
I don’t remeber what my first magic pack had in it.😢
Mine had a foil mythic demon and the orzhov legendary creature from RtR
I can't say I bought standalone boosters, I began with playing drafts on the weekends, so yeah but that was in Innistrad Block, and I was so bad at the game, I went from Yu-Gi-Oh!'s straight up already busted scene playing the absolute most busted decks for years. But man then I got into constructed in 2012 and man did I spend hours on gatherer, looking up cards... And then I saw the og double lands, and then I saw the Eldrazi from a few sets prior, and then I stumbled upon cards from Mirrodin block... and I love artifacts and colorless since then. But yeah, I ain't no combo player, I belong in the worst category of players, I'm a Mono Green Elves player. Archdruid isn't the worst, Priest of Titania, Joraga Warcaller, Glistener Elf, Overrun etc. All the BS Mono Green Elves can do.
And then my best friend played Cawblade. F that deck in particular.
The funniest part about ravager affinity is almost everybody missed it during the previews, and it was dirt cheap even for a while after darksteel released. Someone submitted a guide on starcity and the editors removed the winrates because they thought they were BS and the author was overhyping it.
Do you remember the name of the guide or who made it?
I was just starting to play Magic at my local game store during this set, I was 10ish. Best translation I can have to Hearthstone is "what if after the Grand tournament launched 19/20 decks was Secret Paladin mirrors except somehow more coinflippy"
I started playing Magic in high school during Darksteel (immediately after the bannings), when players were quitting the game left and right due to Mirrodin block, and some of them gave me their old collections. I was actually given a playset of Arcbound Ravager, Frogmite, Disciple, and all 6 artifact lands FOR FREE in my very first collection.
My friends and I immediately fell in love with the next two blocks: Kamigawa and Ravnica, and it's been an addiction for me since.
CGB I know you’ve talked about the channel’s direction a few times, and I am probably in your viewership’s minority, but this is the kind of unique content I keep coming back to!
Just a quick note on the timing of the Memory Jar ban. The regular B&R annoucement happened on March 1st 1999, the emergency ban of Memory Jar happens on March 11th, to come into effect on April 1st, along with the other bans announced on March 1st. Erik Lauer and Randy Buehler figure out the Megrin Combo in Extended and book flights to play the only big torunament it will be legal in: GP Vienna, which happens on March 13th-14th, so just after the ban has been announced. Though, I think they had to register the deck prior to the emergency ban. Erik comes in 4th and Randy 5th. In 2015 Randy created a series called Gauntlet of Geratness, where he'd pit some of the best standard decks of all time against each other, giving him an opportunity to play the standard version the MCU has come up with, but never got to put into use in a sanctioned tournament. Not going to spoil how that turned out in case anybody wants to check that series out (certainly entertaining).
Thanks! I've just started watching that series and it looks great!!!!
Spoiler:
In Gauntlet of Greatness, Academy and Jar are tier zero. Like nothing else in Standard comes close. They don't bother adding either in newer gauntlets since it's just assumed both just shit all over everything else.
While playing along, I literally said "Arcbound Ravager looks like the most fair card Mesa Falcon Guy has ever shown me." Boy was I wrong.
Ok, let me tell you something, back then, there was a thing called "damage on the stack "
Meaning that on the damage step while on battle phase, you can put the damage the 10/10 ravager was going to do on the stack, sac it to itself, put all the counters to another creature and make damage on the same battle phase.
So when the stack resolves you have the new creature making damage and the ravager you sacrificed making the damage too.
Damage on the stack is no longer a thing btw.
30:00 I still remember my friend who hard mained Shudderwock shaman back in the Witchwood and how furious he was when the deck got killed by a nerf of a common, which meant he wouldn't even get any reasonable dust refund for death of an expensive deck.
Magic's design philosophy:
"Hey, it looks like this card could be busted."
"Eh, blue can counter it. It's fine."
*Chaos ensues*
Remember back when they printed good counter spells?
Academy Combo.
The early game was the dice roll.
The mid game was resolving mulligans.
The end game was turn 1.
My favorite part of these videos is mesa falcon guy giving context of a stupid busted combo using a card and rarran saying "oh" in a high pitched voice. Lmao
Urza's was released when I was in my Timmy phase. So many dreams.
Oh yeah. My first ever booster was Urza's Destiny with an Urza's Incubator. I thought it was the coolest card ever and didn't even realize what bat shit crazy stuff actually was going on.
Always love the rarean colabs. For your next one you should get him to guess if a card is from the modern banlist, legacy banlist, commander banlist or isn't banned in either. There are tons of interesting differences.
Very good idea
Rarran: about Rule of Law, another thing that makes it different in Magic is that you can play one spell on your turn and one spell on your opponent's turn.
Had a blast at the dripshop stream! Hey Messa Falcon guy... You're cool!
Rule of Law effects are starting to see play in standard. It turns bounce effects/counter spells into extra turn spells o.O Aven Interrupter, High Noon, Three Steps Ahead. Tempo is fire right now.
These are my favorite videos on youtube. Keep going guys thanks Rarran for being a good sport
You guys need to do this more often!!! This is literally my favorite series on CZcams at the moment
The story goes that the Tempest+Urza's standard environment was the only time the entire Magic R&D team got called in front of the CEO and yelled at.
So odd because playtest could just play all the blue/artifact cards together and the thing played itself right? They pretty much printed an entire yugioh archetype but didn’t put together the pieces ?
During this period they did practically no play testing. Their play testing league was established in response to this disaster.
@@FalseHerald
Even without that, how does one look at academy and not realize all the untap VS would make it broken the instant there are any three artifacts in play?
I can almost understand not catching bargain and spiral because the way they generate overwhelming advantage is rather more abstract, but the academy is so broken every person I have shown it to realizes just how insane it is with two to three questions.
1:00:25 "you're not drawing any cards"
What do you mean? You're drawing SEVEN cards
You draw 7 cards, but you have to PLAY them!
What else do you think I was going to do with them, take them out for dinner?
Rarran also thought you could sacrifice your opponents creatures to reoccuring nightmare, which would indeed make the card a million times more gross
Gaea`s Candle is now it`s canon name.
{T}, Set the tip of Gaea's Candle on fire: Add {G} for each creature you control. Activate as long as Gaea's Candle isn't burnt up. :)
One important thing to consider with both Time Warp and Sneak Attack (and to a lesser extent show and tell) at this period magic was still working to raise the power of creatures. They had gotten better about supporting faster aggressive decks (although still much much weaker than today) but mid sized and larger creatures were still often not a great rate. Time Warp got really good when a) it was much easier for two attacks in a row to kill someone and b) it let all of your Planeswalkers use their abilities an extra time. At the time mostly Sneak Attack would just hit someone for 7 or 8, which is nice for 1 mana but doesn't end the game so you might need 2 or 3 expensive creatures to finish the job. Now, however, you can hit people for 15 or more, destroy or steal a bunch of your opponents permanents, and/or draw a bunch of cards, which makes it much more impactful.
It's also worth noting two things. 1: Extra turns are even better in HS since the opponent can't block, so it's much easier to push damage. 2: Getting to 5 mana (and beyond) in MTG is not trivial, while its easier in HS, due to the difference in mana systems. Rarran said that worst case an extra turn is a free card cycle, but the real worst case is it getting stuck in your hand because you don't have the mana.
Time warp was too expensive for the metagame. Mono-blue Fish aggro needed to win much sooner. Blue control decks needed spells to deal with Sligh, White Weenie or Suicide Black and Time Warp was usually the equivalent of a Fog. Most of the time a Counterspell was just as good for a "time walk".
Yeah I think the biggest creatures at this time for Sneak Attacking were like Spirit of the Night and Leviathan lol. A lot of the fattest fatties wouldn't start showing up until Onslaught and Eldrazi weren't around until....well...Rise of Eldrazi.
@@nekrataali yeah I looked and I think the best sneak attack creatures that were legal at the time were Phyrexian Colossus (8/8 with super menace) and Thorn Elemental (7/7, damages opponent even if blocked). Other expensive creatures that were decent all gained value over time (like Verdant force that spits out 1/1's) so really bad to just attack with then sac.
I have drifted away from MtG a couple of times in my life. But I walked away from it because of Mirrodin block.
"The year is 1999... how old are you?"
"I'm 27"
"How old were you in 1999, nerd"
absolutely killed me
I was 19
I was 21. What a time in M:tG lore.
He would be 2 or 3. 27 now is 1997 unless his birthday is later in the year than it could be 1996
I have been binge watching these the last week and ran out like yesterday, excellent timing for more.
CGB: all artifact lands were banned.
Rarran: darksteel citadel wasnt banned
Also CGB: this blue enchantment that let you discard cards to make mana was banned
Also Rarran: this blue card that reduces spell costs to zero by discarding cards wasn't banned
(Admittedly not quite as direct, but Dream Halls and Mind Over Matter ended up accomplishing the same objective. Also, it lets you cast Time Spiral for free)
*these 5 artifact lands were banned. That said, CGB did mention that the artifact pseudobasics were played even when their colors were worthless in a given deck, and Citadel is upside over that, so the point stands.
Interestingly enough, in Modern, the 5 colored artifact lands are banned but Darksteel Citadel isn't. So this kind of split isn't totally unheard of.
skullclamp is a really mistake as the story goes the team changed it from 1+/+1 to +1/-1 last minute trying to weaken the card
Imo it wouldn't be that broken if it was +1/+1 instead
The /-1 is the mistake
@@Hanmacx never said they succeed in making the card weaker
No, they did not.
@@Hanmacx It would still be pretty powerful if it was +1/+1 since it makes blocking worse for the opponent since you're trading 1 card for 2, it's just that combo'ing off with it is way better because combo is by definition the strongest thing you can do in a game if it doesn't take longer than other strategies to pull off.
Apparently it was actually a pretty bad card at 3 to cast 2 to equip with +1/+1. Late in design they lowered the mana cost but addeded the -1 as a drawback. Too late did they realize what they had done.
At 30:30 honestly I had that with HS as well. If you craft a deck only for it to be completely destroyed you still often lose a lot of dust. Especially as a poorer player.
The problem with recurring nightmare is that if you play it well, your opp cannot use disenchant to remove it, making it a very difficult card to interact with.
This has become my favorite collab duo on CZcams. Fire
Great series! Always love to see rarran trying to evaluate magic cards because as both a magic player and a hearthstone player I somehow still learn something new every time because you both explain really good
Here is why Rule of Law isnt great.
1. You take a turn off, so you're behind.
2. Your opponent still gets to cast a spell each turn.
So your three mana and a card effectively answers your opponents second best play each turn. They still get their best play each turn.
Yeah it is just such a big tempo loss. Especially because most decks are still single spelling at three and four mana. And then you just spend 3 mana to do nothing. Its just far too easy to work around in a 1v1 format. Add instants to that and it pretty much does nothing except stop combo decks, sometimes.
I think the reason Rarran thought it was way better is that the enchantment equivalent in hearthstone tend to be in a way thats either hard to or not able to be interacted with
Unless, you're playing a counter spell deck. You can play one spell per turn, so you can still play one spell during their turn.
1:36:30 the most hilarious thing about Dream Halls is that InQuest magazine - at the time the biggest CCG-oriented magazine - rated Dream Halls as THE WORST card of Stronghold. Their example was something like "Oh so I can throw away my birds of paradise to get a bushwagg but my opponent ditches a flying men for a polar kraken!" which is just... Mwah, chef kiss, possibly the most "Timmy" line of text ever written about this game.
That "FIRE design and Eldraine" signoff felt like a threat directed at me personally
I absolutely love these videos! I just picked up MTG during the Kamigawa Neon Dynasty set so it’s fun to go back and see all these older sets and the history and lore behind them
Looking forward to when you guys look at shadows over innistrad - kaladesh - amonkhet standard for all the unlikely bans
Fun story about Gaea's Cradle. My buddy Ben had been playing Magic for years, I don't know quite how long but longer than me or anyone else I know. He recently moved in with his fiance and they had been going through his Magic collection trying to downsize since their space was limited and Ben wanted to offload some of his cards anyway. Emily, thinking Ben's Gaea's Cradle was a basic forest, had put said Gaea's Cradle on their couch where it then got sat on, folded, creased, and ruined. I saw pictures the day after it happened and I was, to put it lightly, gobsmacked.
Dude skullclamp was so rough. I remember just paying 1 to kill your own 1/1 guy to draw 2 cards, and how awful that was.
Affinity math was crazy with a big board but I'd honestly love to see the reaction to Hardened Scales math where the board goes from a couple 1/1s in play to killing you in a single turn.
I always love these series, makes me actually want to pick up magic and learn all of these niche and nuanced interactions. Good stuff, keep it up!
these colabs are so fun, get to learn a lot about history and deck crafting while listening to great banter
Memory jar has notoriety as one of the fastest bans in the history of magic. Only a handful of cards have been banned faster. It was pouring gasoline on the fire that was standard because it got emergency banned after being legal for just a single weekend and basically everyone competing at the highest level was using it in their deck that weekend.
Yawgmoth's will as a card is obscene. The nickname for it for a long, long time was yawgmoth's win because resolving it meant you just won on the spot. In the mid 2000's it had a case for being the best card in magic outside of just a couple members of the power 9 in black lotus and ancestral recall and even those it could be better than because it was just drawing your entire graveyard and often acted as a mana accelerant so you would get more mana than it cost to play thanks to cards like dark ritual. R&D had no idea what it was capable of when they sent it to print, they thought it would be a block constructed type of card that wasn't too good and the great big combo with it that they dreamed up? Whetstone. Whetstone is like a reworked millstone that is a 3 mana artifact that has the activated ability of 3: Each player mills 2 cards. They didn't even think of dark ritual + it or the other card in tempest block that went well with it was lotus petal, which was tap, sack to add one mana of any color that fueled a ton of combo decks then.
Chalice of the void is bonkers in some formats. It is best in vintage, where when it was unrestricted you would dump all your zero mana cards like moxen and then set chalice for zero so your opponent could not play their moxen. It took a long time to be restricted there, but it was dumb when it was a 4 of in workshop decks that aimed to lock the opponent out and those decks are the best at locking you out of the game bar none because a lot of artifacts over 30 years restrict what your opponent can do. Then in legacy it's still insanely good because you have lands that tap for 2 colorless so you can just turn 1 chalice for 1 and the opponent can't play 1 drops after that or if they do they're countered.
Recurring nightmare in particular was nasty because you couldn't even use enchantment removal on it unless they had no creatures when it resolved because you'd use it immediately and it returns as a cost and one other big piece of context was survival of the fittest was in exodus and that card let you get any creature in your deck into the graveyard for GG + the initial cost of 1G. It's an enchantment too so it just stuck around and got anything for recurring nightmare to bring back to answer what the opponent was doing. The deck was called recsur and it was the first deck to successfully utilize creatures as a win condition outside of some aggressive decks like sligh that dates back to 1994, but that deck idea was basically the original mono red deck where you just curved out and tried to kill people as quick as possible while survival was a midrange deck that liked games going long until it shifted into trying to win as fast as possible with verdant force as a big beatstick.
Watching Rarran grapple with cards that draw 7 is a wild experience.
"There's not a lot of molten giant effects in magic" CGB forgot about death's shadow. Nothing at the time, sure, but oh boy do I remember GDS modern.
really love these videos, the banter between cgb and rarran is always so entertaining + getting to learn about magic's history as someone who started playing more recently. keep em coming!
Haven't played a game since legion. But you are explaining everything sooo well, that even I can understand it 😊
Dark Ritual was considered a core part of black's color identity back then; it's super flavorful and giving up card advantage for tempo was a nice representation of black's "power at any cost" mentality. For years, R&D steadfastly kept reprinting it, preferring to ban the payoffs that made it broken, until they finally came to their senses and stopped.
1:03:11 There were no cycling payoffs in Urza block. They were introduced in Onslaught/Scourge (not Legions. Yay for blocks not supporting their mechanics!)
One thing about time warp effects is that if you have no pressure they aren’t very good.
The reason time walk and timewarp in hs are so broken is because the relate cost of the cards to the amount mana available. Playing time warp on turn 5 or 6 is basically a explore. U untap draw a card and play an extra land. With time walk if you cast it on turn 5 or 6 you have 3-4 additional mana to play around with.
In hs time warp is usually unlocked at 10 mana so you have 5 additional mana to use before u take ur extra turn.
Alrunds epiphany was good specifically because it also gave you some additional pressure.
Raran's heartfelt "WHAT!?" to hearing why Ravager was disgusting is very mood.
Adjusted for inflation, Affinity that was the 7 out of 8 of the top 8 cost around $450 in 2024 dollars. 4-Color Legends right now is around $750, Rock is $700, and Esper Raffine is $450, but none of these dominate the meta the way Affinity did. The cost of Standard has gotten completely out of control. Magic was split between Type 1 and Type 2 when Black Lotus hit $100 on the secondary market specifically because of the cost of the game.
WotC still can't figure out why nobody plays the format on paper anymore.
The art on Recurring Nightmare depicts and older versions of the kid and monster depicted in the art of Show and Tell.
"See, that's a cool card" words that have never ever been uttered by anyone that's ever seen Yawg's will in action.
I cannot believe how much Rarran misjudged Time Spiral. Like even as a one of copy refilling your hand completely for free is still insane. And it does not matter if your opponent also gets seven cards if you just kill them that turn.
Yeah I don't know if he was tired or what, but he seemed to struggle a lot to understand the cards this time around.
He seemed to forget that it drew 7 cards at some point when evaluating
@@bioi123 Yeah for sure it looked like it. Meanwhile that is the most important effect.
I think part of it is that he doesn't have a good concept of the fundamentals of magic, things like spell types or defender choosing blockers. The other part is that hearthstone doesn't really have combo engines or infinite combos like magic, so its tough to look at a card and assess if its for a combo when in hearthstone you really only see aggro, midrange or control
@@davidb4935 There are combo decks in Hearthstone, and there have been some combo metas. The difference is that it's harder to setup in Hearthstone (fewer permanent types so removal is more universal), so combos in Hearthstone are almost always OTKs.
This series is so... much... fun. Always brightens my day when I see the next part in my feed.
I love these videos, thanks for teaching me the history of Magic!
I used to play Magic very casually back in like 2000. Ive always had a passing interest, but other hobbies took priority. Somehow I started watching Rarran more as a content creator about a year ago dispite little interest in hearthstone. Now, somehow im here and these have been my favorite youtube content of late.
Shout out to the Mesa Falconer and Sku-E God!
always love your card choices mesa falconer! some other mtg channels i watch that do something similar with guests but they always pick cards that look bad, give no context to their guest and then go on to proceed how its busted (only when its paired with a million other cards -.-)
These are great videos. Love watching you discuss options and thoughts. Informative, entertaining and interesting. Thank you.
I was a young scooter during mirrodin block, i didnt understand the power of the modular cards much, but i did understand Door to Nothingness and how to make it go boom early. The older dudes at the card shop did not approve of my gameplay style.
That story about bullying people during Urza's block reminds me of when I was young and Mirrodin had just released that week. I brought a mono-red Affinity deck to a tournament and was completely shitty and made an adult cry. I didn't win the tournament overall because it was a REALLY competitive store and my deck wasn't as good as it could have been, but it still isn't something I'm proud of and I feel really bad about it.
The thing about Time Warp is that sometimes you spend 5 mana to Draw a Card and play an additional land. It's still really strong, but sometimes it just doesn't do that much.
It's always funny to think that Urza block was supposed to be enchantment themed. Also a special mention to Krark-Clan Ironworks which came out a little late to receive a ban but was still hella busted.
"Yeah you go try that" sounds like a great flavor text for a Magic card lol
Oh Rarran, not only do people actually play Thoracle in commander, it's honestly one of the most common win conditions in cEDH lmao
Aaron Forsythe lied there. The deck was played everywhere. I remmember following a bunch of Nationals across the world (USA, Germany, France, Japan...), there where basically two decks on top8s, affinity and anti-affinity. And affinity used to win the whole thing. And we are talking about a deck that could destroy lands from turn 1 onward. Antiaffinity had like 32 spells that killed an artifact, and sometimes, it just wasn't enough. You didn't drew enough 1-2 mana spells and they rolled over you faster than you could stabalise. It was insane.
Also, on Skullclamp, I remmember playing limited in some LGS and if you opened one, they will just give you another booster. The only instance of "banned in limited" that I have ever seen.
Love the teaser at the end there. Are you going to talk about the stretch of 4 straight years of cards being banned in standard? From Kaladesh to Midnight Hunt.
One of my favourite ever Modern FNMs back when I still played involved Ravager. I was playing some kind of janky but fun Gifts Reanimator deck with Utopia Sprawl, Arbor Elf, Garruk and Nythos. The plan was to reanimate an Elesh Norn or another impactful big creature on turn three, but sometimes you drew the wrong half of the deck and ended up having to hard cast things. One game against Affinity, I had an explosive amount of ramp in my opener and hard cast Emrakul, the Promised End against them. I got to sac their entire board to their own Ravager and then sac the Ravager to itself.
I love your collabs with Rarran, as a hearthstone and mtg enjoyer its great seeing both perspectives.
Watched all of it for the nostalgie :) Thanks. Great memories. I love the "legal in commader" part. That fomat is wild in 2024.
Magic Online Trivia:
The card Fatespinner was bugged for about two weeks upon release. It's trigger wouldn't let your opponent make a choice, so you won by timeout if it went on the stack. Fatespiner cost 1U, so it was a faster clock than Affinity.
That's right, there was a two-week period on MTGO where Affinity was too slow to compete in Standard.
26:11 Rarran must have forgotten that people ran lands from colours they didn't play.
To be fair the fact the artifact lands COULD be used immediately was the issue. We have tapped ones that are just good now