THE POWER 9 - Explaining Every BANNED Card in the Legacy Format in MTG
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- čas přidán 29. 07. 2024
- Legacy is a format in magic in which you can use pretty much every card that's ever been printed, except some cards that are banned. So in this series, we’ll go over all the cards on the Legacy ban list and explain why they’re banned and if they could come off the banlist. To start off, we’re going to go over a group of cards called the “power 9”, a set of the 9 strongest cards printed in the first set of Magic, and still some of the best cards in the entire game, as well as a few cards that are very similar to the power 9.
Script and Editing by Pumkinswift
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
Mox Pearl: (0:22)
Mox Jet
Mox Ruby
Mox Emerald
Mox Sapphire
Black Lotus: (3:21)
Sol Ring: (4:56)
Mana Crypt: (5:03)
Ancestral Recall: (6:51)
Time Walk: (8:46)
Timetwister: (11:21)
Wheel of Fortune: (11:32)
#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering
(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.)
Will never forget when I started playing in 94 and I saw a Mox Emerald in the display case for 10 dollars, and said "why would anyone pay 10 dollars for that, you can just use a forest?" Spent my money on packs of fallen empires instead.
I'd argue that Black Lotus is one of the most famous cards in ALL TCG's not just MTG.
Its also a test for unexperienced players, most people would think that generating 3 resources of one type its not that broken, unless you actually know how Magic and other card games work and how that card can win you the game in turn 1
Yeah, probably only blue eyes white dragon and pot of greed are even close, they may not even be more known
@@fordsquared537 probably more well-known just because of the anime lmao
I'm going to argue that Pikachu is the most famous card in all tcg's because trolling is fun when done right
I would gave the title to the millstone, that has essentially created the term "mill" in the tcg player's speech
There's a red card called Final Fortune that also allows you to take an extra turn for only two red mana with the downside that you lose the game at the end of the extra turn. That was their attempt to 'nerf' it and it's still insanely strong. Just goes to show you how busted the real Time Walk is.
The design of final fortune is rather clever. It's recognizes the power ceiling of time walk, winning the game, and says "alright, let's make this more risky" and balances it by -forcing- you to win the game.
And the result is a remarkably balanced, though still insanely powerful, card. It's not banned in any of the formats it's legal in after all!
@@jamalsachleben3026 idk man imo its a dumb design. You either win anyways ( making the downside mute ) or you dont play it at all. Its not actually a downside
@@ich3730 But you can't use it for the turns that wouldn't win you the game and instead just generate value for the future. It's heavily restricted in use, especially if your opponent has an answer to your play for lethal.
Final Fortune is very broken I play that and have Nercopotance in play you can basically win the game if you get the right combo.😁
In Duel Masters, MTGs way of introducing MtG to Japan, there’s a card called “Bombazar, dragon of destiny” introduced 8 years after FF was printed.
This creature also has the same effect and nearly caused the game to die because you either had to include this card and play fire/nature turbo or lose the game entirely. It’s also the cause of the creation of their forbidden list.
Even after 17 years and the copious amounts of powercreep introduced into the game it’s still banned to this day. They really didn’t learn their lesson at all.
To clarify, the power 9 are:
The 5 moxen
Black Lotus
Time Walk
Timetwister
Ancestral Recall
None of those cards have ever received a reprint past Unlimited, the 3rd set of Magic.
This is why Wheel of Fortune, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt aren't pieces of power, despite being just as and or stronger than the power 9.
Idk what you mean man they just reprinted the whole first set and you can buy a booster pack for like $250 to pull none of the power 9. Sounds like a steal to me ngl
@@SpindlyTree86 they are basically proxies as they aren’t actually legal anywhere
@@SpindlyTree86 actually its just 999 bucks
@@wEakling1918 r/whoosh buddy
6 artifacts and 3 blue cards... Yea, the other colours are totally viable...
Even though Black Lotus would shine in combo decks, they would still be an automatic include in any deck if it were unbanned. Going up +3 mana at any point in the game is absurd.
It would make basically every deck in legacy a combo deck if unbanned because it would mean you have 8 lotus effects if you could ever afford 4 black lotus though that's way easier online than in paper. It would be like survival when that was still legal and it had the best aggro plan, combo plan, and control plan. The combo version was the green/black/white with stuff like necrotic ooze and phyrexian devourer, pure blue green was control, and then aggro was basically all versions because dumping 16 power worth of angry salad on the board as soon as turn 3 or 4 was enough.
There's also Ancestral Vision as a "fix" to Ancestral Recall. Not ban/restricted-worthy but it's definitely still powerful.
There's a bunch of Suspend versions of iconic cards. Ancestral Vision for Ancestral Recall, Lotus Bloom for Black Lotus , Mox Tantalite for all the Moxen, even some not-banned cards like Sol Talisman for Sol Ring and Rift Bolt for Lightning Bolt
I think in Legacy the biggest "fix" is Brainstorm which basically draws you 3 cards if you shuffle away cards you don't need
@@Zosh_ It’s sort of a failed “fix” though - the card is still obscenely powerful and is only unbanned because it’s considered part of Legacy’s identity.
@@rinp9666 Sol ring is super banned in everything but Commander
@@ethanhopper2467 I was talking about not-banned in Commander when I said Sol Ring and Bolt. Thanks for adding info
If people are wondering why all the broken cards are legal in commander, it's because the format bans for casual fun, rather than competitive balance.
This means that if a card doesn't break casual games, then it's really unlikely to be banned. (Flash being the only exception, because it saw almost no play in casual games, and cEDH was almost unplayable with it legal.)
You should do a series on broken decks in history. The Memory Jar deck that caused an emergency ban is a great starting point, you can see it in action in the original gauntlet of greatness series. Also the Tolarian Academy deck
Nizzahon did a video on that!
I dunno why I’m watching this, I play Commander.
But it’s always cool to hear people talk about the Power 9
I mean, timetwister is legal there, and the Sol ring/mana crypt are ubiquitous for those who can afford crypt at least, so it could be interesting
@@MehrGills ring is such a commander staple that it comes in precons now.
you could also call artifact lands fixed moxen since they're just moxen that take up your land drop instead
I love that everyone instantly recognizes his voice, but exclusively refers to him as 1 of his 6 channels
Like, I love his YuGiOh stuff, but i can ONLY refer to him as Hiru xD
Timetwister is also really brutally strong now the Sheoldred, The Apocalypse exists too. Adding a Drain 14 on top of everything just wins the game on the spot.
Really fun that you can play these cards in Alchemy through Oracle of the Alpha.
Ironically, one fixed version of Ancestral Recall, namely Treasure Cruise is also banned in Legacy along with Dig through time lol
Even mindtwist is banned because of some fast mana tools like dark ritual, grim monolith , city of traitors and ancient tomb. I wonder if more old cards will be unbanned for Legacy some day.
MInd Twist was on the possible unban list a long time ago and its propably ok powerlevel wise but it wont lead to good gameplay basically ever so better stay safe. bc making a mistake here is pretty bad. (cardprices up and down again, only for more misery)
I feel like the mistake they made with Treasure Cruise was not having it say "target player" like Recall does. If you could get your Cruise Misdirected, it changes the landscape. Potentially still ban-able, but considerably weaker.
Mind twist should have been unbanned like 13 years ago, the card is daze bait, spell pierce bait, and just flatout not good or efficient. The whole dark rit dark rit mind twist is a +1 in card advantage IF it resolves. When you could just be using that mana for something like ad nauseam instead. It has to have 4 or more mana put into it for it to be better than hymn to tourach since at 3 mana it's a slightly better stupor/unplayable. It's almost as bad as land tax, which took years to be unbanned and then did nothing.
Great analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Recursion also plays a big part of why the Instants and sorceries on this is list are banned. Especially Time Walk.
3:10 Let's not forget Mox Opal, Amber, and Tantalite.
Also, the fixed version of Ancestral Recall is Brainstorm, and it's still insane with fetch lands to shuffle away the cards you don't want
And even then... Isn't Brainstorm definitely on the broken side? Being one of the most strong staples in every format its legal in?
@@KariThomasMiller it's only fully legal in legacy and commander. Restricted in vintage. It probably should be banned in legacy but wizards lets it ride because it's been legal for so long everyone just kind of accepts it at this point.
@@KariThomasMiller It's broken, best card in legacy still. By all metrics should be banned too since an overwhelming % of decks play the card.
In some cases Brainstorm can be more powerful than Recall, let's you hide your cards, get rid of dead cards with fetchlands
Probably not relevant but crypt and ring aren’t power nine. Still incredibly powerful, so it’s fine, plus explaining them is useful for all the people who play against them for the first time. I just find it odd that they were included
"power 9" does not have a definition in the game of magic. Sol ring and mana crypt are essentially nr 10 and 11 on that list, only difference is that they are not on the reserved list
@@ich3730 in alchemy there's a card that says "conjur the power 9 into your deck" and it doesn't include sol ring and mana crypt
@@nmr7203 fair enough
@@ich3730 Library of Alexandria is nr 10
to be fair sol ring, mana crypt, and mana vault (not mentioned) are power artifacts. So not officially power 9 but they're just as strong
Start to another amazing series
To be fair, if Time Warp was a 5 mana card that said “Draw a card, then untap each permanent you control. You may play an additional land this turn.” It would still be very good
also additional combat and stuff that can be important but mostly in commander
The damage of unbanning Lotus would only be restricted to one archetype of deck? That statement broke my brain.
There is no deck in magic that wouldn't immediately mainboard 4 Lotuses if it could. Games would come down to a matter of who drew more of them.
3 days ago i searched for a power 9 video from you and now you post one lol
So as someone that plays a lot of Canadian highlander, hearing it in a video made me so happy
For context. Ancestral recall is the magic equivalent of pot of greed
I came from the duel llgs videos where you tried to evaluate magic cards in the blind, glad to see you coming to the dark side!
I remember once going to something thinking it was like, a casual game and learning it was more an official tournament rules thing with formats when I played Sol Ring and was told that.
Borrowed a deck that game while someone sorted out the legal cards. Luckily it didn't mess with my strat and after losing that game, win the rest as generally the cards that were lost were just me going "um... This card is nice ig?" And weren't key to the strat.
You know Timewalk is basicly an attempt at making the mtg equivilant of the Uno skip card.
Nice to see you doing mtg videos been a big watcher of your wow vids for a long time. Love the research and narrative in your vids. Keep em coming.
In commander, Timewalk allows you to skip everyone's turn, so no, it's even more powerful.
@@RGC_animation In 1991 when timewalk was designed the idea of playing multiplayer formats like commander wasn't in close to being conceived
You gotta love the legends of these nine. Sooooo powerful!
Sol Ring is that good! I have tons of Sol Rings, since it's only uncommon, man, I could use it more often.
3:51 Lotus Bloom was played in cascade decks, afaik. And iirc, it's pretty good, since players would just cheese with it by not having cheaper cards than it due to it being virtually 1 mana.
Most common cascade targets was stuff like hypergenesis, lotus bloom was most notable in extended storm decks and in standard it was used in dragonstorm decks to put out 4 bogardan hellkite with rite of flame in the same environment.
3:58 What is poultry mana? You can only spend it on birds?
anyone who is reading this post-December 18th 2022, theres a card in magic the gathering arenas called oracle of the alpha in the brothers war alchemy packs. it summons the power 9 into ur library, reccomend pairing with da kamigawa mythic jin gitaxias progress tyrant so u can duplicate da artifacts and instants. Also u can use it 4 times and summon the power nine four times into ur library 😎 very good card
The Power 9 sounds badass
Early MTG cards make me think the concept for mana was totally different. I think all colours probs had to play land gor turn but also it looks to me like Wizards originally intended for people to generate a lot of temporary mana on every turn and start flinging spells. I think they couldn't do it just cos the base game is very slow. So you just wouldn't have had enough cards every turn to draw into a bunch of mana-surging cards + payoffs for the mana.
I think this could be tackled even today by separating land and nonland cards into separate decks and allowing players to draw 2 for turn. You can choose either the land or nonland decks to draw from, and you can draw both cards from the same deck or one from each deck. Cards that currently say "draw" allow you to choose which deck to draw from.
This would speed up the base game, allow for greater deck diversity as land counts are less important for you to be mana screwed/flooded, which happens often and does ruin games. From there we might be able to start adding cards that make the game faster and more fluid while retaining a new srt of balances. Suddenly the total card count matters for a different reason, and the way you steucture your lands will be totally different as well. You may take more risks wotj your landbase when you're sure the next card you draw will be a land
I quit WoW for good
I move on
I eventually get into Magic again
Decide to watch a power nine video
WHO DO I HEAR BUT HIRUMAREX, HELLO OLD CHAP
Good to see you're still making content
Although situational the cheapest take an extra turn is temporal mastery, one may even consider temporal trespass as cheaper
Maybe you could do a video on the best enchant land cards in mtg?
The music in background came from zelda right?
8:38 it was definitely worth mentioning that Brainstorm, Ancestrall Vision, Ponder, and Preordain all have been put on one or more banned and restricted lists and it seems almost inevitable that one day Opt will be banned in Pioneer due to the combined facts that
*Scrying offers too much control with any kind of land tutors, even the most basic and weak kinds like Rampant Growth, and most non-rotating formats settle into allowing some kind of fetch lands. Pioneer might ban the rare cycles, but it won't ban the common cycles, at least not yet. Cards like the Alara panoramas that can also be found in New Capenna.
*Besides the interaction between scry or fateseal and tutors or drawing, there is also mechanics like Storm and Cascade that are especially well fuelled by drawing quickly into game ending combos and finishers, which leads almost any 1 mana version of this to be overpowered, as well as almost any cheap centrip card at any cost: any card that replaces itself for close to 1 mana per card is used in the same way Brainstorm and Ponder are.
This isn't unfair in aggro and midrange, but it's absolutely too good in both control and combo.
There have been a decent size list of cards at 2 mana that are close to too good, and its not really until a card costs 3 mana that it's close to being slow enough to be fair if it smells of card draw. 2 mana cards that seem fair....are still so very good that it's very clear the entire ability to draw cards is dangerous and needs to cost extra mana.
You could get into why we see the more cards you draw the more likely you are to see a mana ratio of 2 mana per card drawn and that sometimes just isn't enough in cases like Cryptic Command and Jace the Mind Sculptor.
If there was a tier below the power 9 i think it would include the black equivalents to those op blue cards which would include dark ritual, demonic tutor and necropotence
Timetwister could literally be unbanned tomorrow. Echo of Eons is unironically a better card than Time Twister and it's just fine in Legacy
Surprised you didn't mention the other fixed power nine cards
Mox Amber
Mox Opal
Mox Tantalite
Temporal Mastery
Gilded Lotus
Lotus Lands
Time Spiral (though that one's absurd as well)
Reforge the Soul
Wheel of Fate
Ancestral Visions
I get why, the video would have taken forever, but you could have went "there are other fixed versions of these cards, lemme put them on screen" and briefly mention them at the end.
for some definition of "Fixed"
there are too many of them. I can say treasure cruise is basically ancestral recall if you fill your graveyard fast enough. Not to mention any worse "fix"
All of the Moxens are the same, so he just needed to mention 1.
Black Lotus is scary only for one thing... knowing it's the most expensive piece of cardboard you could ever hold.
Charizard would like to disagree heavily.
Incorrect, even a quick Google search shows Black Lotuses sell higher than Charizards, even first edition PS10 ones, but now we have the One Ring that sold for $2 million@@RGC_animation
@@RGC_animationCharizard isn’t even the most expensive Pokémon card. And unless it can somehow beat $615,000 it’s not beating Black Lotus any time soon
Amazing
Correction manacrypt has been recently put up all the way to 5 points in canadian highlander
How to make "Take An Extra Turn" gooder?
Copy that shit. Chaining one extra turn into another can be brutal.
I love how time walk and timetwister are basically two sides of a coin... Time walk is busted even in the weakest formats, but in a hypothetical format with no restrictions or bans, would not be that strong since you could probably win on turn 1 anyways. On the other hand, if you're in a format where you can't combo off of it, timetwister would (almost) be fair, whereas in a format with no restrictions or bans, it could just allow infinite loops
If there are no bans literally the best deck is just moxen, lotus, time walk, time twister, one or two free counters, then pray you go first. The deck just takes infinite turns recurring walk with twister.
If you're going to mention led you have to mention dredge or echo of eons
Fixed Power 9 Cards That Actually Worked:
1. Ancestral Recall - Ancestral Vision
2. Black Lotus - Gilded Lotus (or Lotus Bloom ig)
3. Time Walk - Capture of Jiangzhou ig?
Any ones I missed? (I know about Last Chance/Final Fortune but they aren’t really balanced)
Does magic have a way to cheat out mana where your opponent controls the outcome? Like a card that lets you cast a spell for free but any targets it chooses are chosen by your opponent. Or generate mana but your opponent chooses colour.
I always found those kinds of effects interesting in other games for their mindgame value
There are choice cards in mtg like browbeat and gifts ungiven where a choice is given to an opponent, but unless one has been printed recently I can't remember any card being played for free where your opponent gets to choose targets for it if you played it for free.
I'm pretty sure there is a fixed version of Sol Ring, though I can't remember what it's called. It costs (4).
Thran Dynamo is a 4 mana card that makes 3 mana.
Worn Powerstone is a 3 mana card that enters tapped and makes 2 mana.
@@theemathas There are a lot of similar cards (Firemind Vessel, Hedron Archive, Khalni Gem, etc.), but the one I was thinking of is older: Sisay's Ring from Visions. It's a common 4 mana artifact with text "Tap: Add (2)." It's exactly the same as Sol Ring except for being four times as expensive.
This looks like cards a CCG video game final boss would use against you. :P
I love these cards with the effect of letting you play the rest of your deck. Exteremly balanced
From which set are the cards ?
Most of these cards are from alpha. That OG set.
I saw in Arena a creature who summons the power 9 cards into your deck and shuffle it.
Do you think that card will stay around, or do you think it will be banned?
alchemy is a fucked up format trying to become hearthstone so it doesnt count
It's debatable.
The cards get shuffled in, but the fact they are around is problematic.
I didn't know why they even made the oracle in the first place.
Top 10 Power 9
4:34 Black Lotus is MtG's Pot of Greed. It provides more resources than the pace can handle.
Tendrils is a very common storm finisher but if the twister and wheel effects were unrestricted, Molten Psyche might be even better as it gets around turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity and can theoretically kill with a smaller storm count. If there were no restrictions in vintage, this style of Storm would easily be the most consistent goldfishing FTK on the play in the game.
Funny enough, in an unrestricted format dominated by artifact mana, Mind Funeral and Mind Grind become one card combo kills. Mash those two with all the cheapest interaction and that crushes the aforementioned Storm enough to open that theoretical format diversity to archetypes like Stax and even planeswalker control.
To expand on the twister and wheel effects strength in going first, giving your opponents a full seven sounds like a drawback but effectively forcing them to mulligan can be quite devastating.
yeah thats the other strenght of the card he did not mention - you decide when you play wheel so you have a chance to play out the rest of your hand while at the same time destroying any sculpted hands from opponents leaving them subject to luck or even worse putting maybe key win cons of their deck into their grave without a way to get them back in case of WOF. On the other hand WOF can be also used to fuel your own graveyard to extent your turn - like wheel , respond with LED, draw 7, then cast stuff like Underworld Breach or yagmoths will. I think with todays cards WOF is even stronger than time twister most of the time. And oh i just thought about reanimator stuff - wheel is also isane in that deck
The day they unrestrict wheel is the day mono red prison becomes mono red SUPERMAX
The funny thing about Lion's Eye Diamond is that it's actually BETTER than Black Lotus in grave decks. Possibly the biggest failure of trying to balance an effect in the game's history.
I played this one guy who had a Vintage deck. I didn't even have a turn. He did Island, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Isochron Scepter with Time Walk.
Well then this guy cheated, right? Because Isochron only allows instants to be imprinted...
That doesn't actually work. Isochron Scepter only imprints an instant with mana value 2 or less. Time Walk is a Sorcery.
I lost to a turn 1 isochron scepter but he put Abeyance on it, RIP
Even if you could Scepter Time Walk, infinite turns with a Crypt on your side is a risky proposition. Time Vault/Manifold Key is much more consistent thanks to efficient artifact tutors and has no risk of self inflicted burn.
library of alexandria (honorable power9)
Sol Rings fix, in EDH anyways, was just to print more LOL. It's fair if everyone has them,right?!
In retrospect it should have been banned long ago, but we’re too far gone now to do anything about it
Visions of Beyond is another fixed version of ancestral recall, it just need 20+ cards in a graveyard
Also with the fixing of Black Lotus you also have Gilded Lotus that cost 5 to cast and doesn't sacrifice itself.
So the power 9 are 6 mana generating artifacts and 3 blue spells. Since the beggining of mtg, blue is and will always be the strongest color in the game
Better MTG players than me, what would you think of these changes?
Moxen with effects that banish them if another card with "Mox" in the name is played
Mana Crypt with the cost of dealing 20 damage to oneself on a bad coin flip (high risk for a high reward - basically forcing you to push for game if you can)
Pointless, there's no need. The only format these are legal in is vintage, which no one plays and WotC doesn't care about for good reason.
4:50 there are also Lotus Bloom, Gilded Lotus, Lotus Field, Nyx Lotus, and Timeless Lotus.
timeless and gilded suck
bloom&nyx are kinda janky
and lotus field is really good if you build ur deck around it (like the titular lotus field combo in pioneer, or twiddle storm in modern)
@@God-ch8lq Timeless needed the legendary and tapped clause because the power of tapping for WUBRG is just that disgusting. And many WUBRG cards would abuse it.
Gilded saw plays whenever there's a way to cheat it out.
As for Bloom, it's played in cascade decks.
thats like saying "basic plains are a fixed mox pearl" xD Lotus field has nothing to do with black lotus
@@ich3730 it does. It adds three mana and serves as doing that mechanic as a land but not easily exploitable like with Lotus Vale.
@@God-ch8lq I've been advocating for lotus field to be banned in pioneer.
It's just a degenerate deck.
Lets be honest, the way day’s undoing is used makes it both a time walk and a timetwister so timetwister is better for the fornat than day’s undoing
Ahh, the Mega Rayquazas of MTG.
I disagree with your Black Lotus assessment. It's not just a combo card; every deck except like Manaless Dredge in Legacy would play it. It would be as bad or worse than the Moxen in terms of warping the format. In Vintage Lotus is played in basically every deck including Null Rod decks and Dredge. There's not really such a deck right now but historically it's been played in pure control decks too (pick your favorite Mana Drain or The Deck variant). Black Lotus is so much more generically powerful than Lotus Petal and LED that you can't use those as your reference point for where it would be played.
ETA: quick note on wheel effects, Windfall definitely fits with them and arguably Memory Jar as well. Personally I think Wheel might be safe. Not being blue makes a big difference and it might only end up making Gamble storm better but probably not problematically so. Twister is probably pretty close to being fine but the Hullbreacher decks are so miserable already.
Gud stuff
Any deck not using these banned cards killing you on turn 1 sounds completely impossible thats like winning hearth stone on turn 1. Quitting doesnt count.
Imagine if edh became mainstream when legends hit shelves
I believe the strongest possible 60 card deck remains a mix of approximately 25 black lotus and 35 ancestral recall
You would still need a Thassas Oracle. A few Leyline of Anticipation would be good so you could win on the first upkeep. Otherwise you would just lose to 60 Chancellor of the Dross.
@@UberIsland you would lose to the Chancellors, but you don’t need an oracle.
You draw your own deck until there are less than 3 cards in it and then you make your opponent draw their entire deck
@@barkerm9 That's true, I forgot you could do that
@@UberIsland I didn’t even known that chancellor of the dross existed.
woo letsgo
narset, partner of veils
The wheels are the only card not band in commander
sol ring and crypt arent power 9, but i get why you would include iton the list with the giant amount of manarocks.
Commander power 9
So Moxen are just the MTG version of Pot Of Greed
Shoutout to the typo strat making people algorithm comment.
The P9 seems llike YGO's pot of greed: the broken banned card(s) that keep getting fixed versions.
Yep, basically. There's a couple of other famous non-P9 cards that they keep making retrains of as well, but new Moxen/Lotuses always get people hyped.
by the time we get to ragavan, i sincerely hope there's a note about "ragavan was actually banned in legacy BEFORE it was banned in modern..."
i can only hope, anyway.
the reason ragavan is banned in legacy is that free countermagic is rampant
in modern, you play a T1 ragavan, and the opponent will bolt or prismating ending him before he can attack
in legacy... they bolt: you daze, then the treasure token from swinging wit le monke makes u break even mana-wise
Id argue that black lotus is the best magic card. It is simply just good in every deck.
In a vacuum, Sol Ring is better. Black Lotus is real easy to break though and turn a single burst of 3 mana into several. But in most decks where they wouldn't have any special synergy for the lotus, a repeatable +2 colorless mana is stronger than a single +3 colored mana. That's why if you ever seen experienced Vintage Cube players, they'll point to Sol Ring as the best possible pack 1 pick 1 over Black Lotus.
Also in Canadian Highlander, there's been a rise in "medium" decks, that really lean into maximizing the value of Sol Ring and similar cards that produce 2 colorless to jump the curve and essentially act as an aggro deck, but completely skip the creatures that'd typically make the backbone of aggro decks. Just being able to consistently start playing 4 drops on turn 2 and not letting up is pretty backbreaking and hard to compete against. The power of decks like Medium Red and Medium Green (and I think Medium Black and Medium White are starting to take off as well) really shows off the strength of Sol Ring in a "fair" deck.
Technically, Blacker lotus does it's job better... Once.
Also, Contract from Below is probably better than Ancestral.
@@fwg1994 actually, in a vacuum black lotus is better. As it adds colored mana of any color. Black lotus can help you cast anything, sol ring cant cast llanowar elves, boros reckoner, lightning bolt, ancestral recall, reanimate, entomb, etc etc etc. black lotus is always good
@@cooldes4593 Yeah, but the one shot nature of Black Lotus makes it weaker than the consistent effect of Sol Ring. If you had to pick between Black Lotus and Sol Ring without having any information on what deck they were going into, essentially a pack 1 pick 1 of a draft, Sol Ring is giving you the better win percentage.
@@fwg1994 this is just wrong. You could play a deck of all 1 mana spells where sol ring simply wont work. (Hypothetically) this means that, unlike black lotus, sol ring isnt just better. Black lotus just makes any deck better.
4:33
I certainly think Timetwister can be unbanned. I don't think anything going on in Legacy would be broken by it. Wheel I think might just break hollow one and reanimator but Timetwister not so much.
Suprised you didnt mention warriors oath when talking about fixed timewalks, its 2 red take an extra turn but at that turns endstep you lose the game
10:28
But is it better than 2 explores?
Ik, that s a terrible joke
I see what you did there
@@Zosh_ Much like the camera and several judges did.
how was the plural 'moxen' decided on, i'm pretty sure mox was just a word the designers at that time made up.
Ok I checked. And "mox" is an actual word, used to describe nuclear reactor fuel stuff.
"Moxen" on the other hand only seems to refer to the magic cards. No one is using it in any other context. So I guess we all agree that it sounds better?
I like 'moxes' better but yeah there is no right or wrong here I guess!
When I see that Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister are banned in Legacy but not Commander, it makes me go "huh?"
Having just one copy of any card makes it more fair, you cant pull degenerate combos as easy as in a non singleton format
Even worse, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt are STAPLES in Commander. Well Mana Crypt for whales who have the cash for it lol.
@@GabAssbreaker plus the larger deck size makes it alot harder to find the right pieces without tutors
As other people have said commander being 100 card singleton matters alot for these cards. It means that you have to spend alot more effort assembling you combos and can't resonably hope that you can just keep wheeling into more action.
Though I do think this is a good argument for why sol ring isn't a casual card.
I'd argue that the reason a lot of the broken cards are not banned in commander is because the banning philosophy is different for commander.
The commander rules committee has outright stated that they aren't going to try balancing commander with the banlist, because there are too many broken cards.
Instead, they only ban cards that are drastically reducing the amount of fun people are having in the format. So if a card is broken in commander, but either enough people aren't playing it at a casual level (Underworld Breach) or it's actually pretty fun for casual players (Wheel of Fortune), then it remains unbanned.
Why would they make those cards if they aren't supposed to be played?
Brainstorm is fixed ancestral recall imo. Everything else is just another draw card. Ancestral visions is a pseudo clone.
Are these scripts written by ai?
Additionally Windfall is banned in Legacy for pretty much the same reasons as Wheel and Timetwister. Not sure why it wasn't mentioned with it.
This series is split into groups of different cards. They're starting with the explicit power 9, before moving to other banned legacy cards.
@@somekinnn Yeah, but Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Wheel of Fortune are all NOT power 9, and were included. They could have lumped Windfall with Wheel, sinced they are banned for pretty much the same reason.
@@somekinnn and cards like it. Wheel of fortune is not power 9
I think the reason wheel and twister were mentioned, and windfall was not, was that windfalls number of cards drawn is a variable amount.
When you cast wheel or timetwister, you ALWAYS draw 7.
Talking about the moxen makes me mad that sol ring is legal in commander
The problem is that by now it’s too ubiquitous to be banned. It should have been hit with the banhammer in the beginning, but by now we’re too far gone
BANNED IN LEGACY HYPE
Wheel of fortune would also be busted with dredge,
The way you presented this seems to imply that Time Walk is more broken than Ancestral Recall. This is unlikely to be the case and if you asked most eternal players to rank the top 3 most broken cards I would wager that 95% of them put Ancestral in there while Time Walk would be less than 50%. Every deck that can generate U mana in Vintage plays Ancestral, which is not true of Time Walk (Oops all spells is a good example). The same can be seen when tutoring, Mystical for Ancestral is a very common line while Time Walk happens fairly rarely, generally when there's already a Mentor in play.
The floor of Time Walk being Explore is not good enough and it would arguably be worse in Legacy without moxen, that's arguably what's holding the card back. Resolving Time Walk is not as likely to put you ahead in the game as resolving Ancestral is.
Needless to say both are very broken but it bears repeating just how much Ancestral stands out even above most of the other Power 9.
Given how fast Magic is now I'm forced to wonder why anything is banned at this point. Turn 2 wins are common fare now.
Only in vintage and legacy. Other formats are not as fast. You have quite a few other formats to play if you want slower games.
@@tonysmith9905 oh no I disagree. My group plays modern. Turn two wins pop up on the regular.
@@beaushaver3779 There is also standard, historic, pioneer, and commander. Not all magic is fast.
I need Emrakul unbanned in EDH