@@jii-ro7083And as long as your opponent doesn’t have Poison, Lab Maniac, Jace Wielder of Mysteries, Approach of the second sun, and other such alt win cons
My favorite memory of the card is someone misremembering it. Opponent said "I'll Swords to Plowshares your creature." They said "In response, I'll target it with my own Swords to Plowshares. Now I gain the life!"
I learned the game way back in Beta when the rulebook hadn't quite been perfected. Since Swords to Plowshares says removed from the game entirely, we thought that meant you didn't get the card back into your deck for games two and three if it was cast in game one. With ante being a thing, losing cards from your deck wasn't unknown. Lead to some interesting subgames of whether or not to play your bomb in a game that you think you might win just in case the opponent had Swords.
@@jojodelacroix with Ante it actually was intuitive. You literally took a card off your deck and removed it from the game as a prize. So the idea that the first card with "remove from the game" actually removed it from the match with the opponent was a very small mistake. All you have to do is consider the whole best of 3 to be the "game", and each time you shuffle and start again is actually a "round" in that game. It's a pretty straight forward logical connection.
@@BouncingTribbles -OK, bro, I remove the top card of my library. It's a swamp. What is yours? -Black Lotus Twenty years later: -God damn it, I could become a millionaire if I didn't lose that game
@@WookieRookie yep, I refused to play ante except for one pauper-mono-tower-map campaign/tournament that I played in back in 4th edition. We used pennies for life and you kept any life you took too. Fun tournament format, I would do it again.
Permanent removal of any creature that isn't literally immune to spells (or has Protection From White), no questions asked, for only a single mana. THE most cost-efficient removal card the game has ever seen. For that kind of power, the enemy life gain is an absolute triviality, especially when dealing with annoying utility creatures that don't even have a high Power. Plus, in a pinch, you CAN actually use it on your own creature to survive lethal damage.
I actually ran into a situation today where I was swinging in for lethal with a 45 power commander, the opponent cast a spell that redirected damage from that combat to me so I would die instead, and I said alright sure I'm gonna Swords to Plowshares my own commander for 45 life. And I still ended up losing to him via regular combat damage lmao
Its also great when something bad is on your own creature. You can cast it on your creature, remove it, gain life. Great when your opponent puts an enchantment that damages you or something.
Meh... Path to Exile is strictly better. Because then your opponent DOESN'T get the life gain (he just gets a basic land). And that only costs one white mana, at instant speed, also.
@@jacob4920in my oppinion lands are significantly better than life. The only real life point that matters is your last one. And since swords is often run in control decks they are planning to win later and slowly anyway, they may even be milling you out and not even care about the life gain (though nowadays control decks have quite a few options for big finishers to kill you fast.) Ramping your opponent if you have to remove something of there early game is usually kindof bad, its also thinning the deck of cards. But there are scemarios where it is better. For expample marit lage being removed and giving your opponent 20 life can be annoying. And the search trigger of path can be abused. Also path tends to be better in formsts where cards tend to be more expensive on average. Having to path a creature in legacy on turn 1 makes your opponent way faster because the majority of cards are 1 or two mana (or none) and 4 mana cards are considered high costs
@@jacob4920 respectfully, this is some of the worst card evaluation I have ever read in my entire life, Path is a substantially worse card than swords in virtually all formats since it was printed. Every deck uses mana, lands make mana, (almost) every deck would always prefer having more lands and mana to less. Most decks don't care about life total other than not dying, aggro decks and control decks would much rather be at 13 life and up a land than at 17 life and not up a land. Although lifegain decks do benefit from gaining life off of swords, when you look at a metagame spread, you would much rather your opponent be up a few life than up mana. To put it another way, would you rather your opponent cast a ramp spell or Healing Salve? Path and swords to plowshares effectively cast your opponent one of those spells, and healing salve is not considered good.
The idea of any deck in alpha having 40 points worth of creatures in play is the craziest part of this video. Although I get that swinging for 4 ten turns in a row wouldn't be as climactic.
As someone who played Magic from 1996 to 2002, I was really feeling like I missed something about the sequence of events and felt like a real dumbass when I realized that it wasn't zooming in on a Mountain (land) at 0:48 but it was the playing field showing he had no creatures to defend
i myself was wondering if the reputation of this card fell off after I stopped playing, because it was rare, but it was considered good and highly effective at low cost for white decks, specially if you could get your hands on more than one. it was never considered a bad card in my time in mostly the 90's playing the game. it had a lot of uses that made the life gain from it mostly trivial over all the other advantages, like moving important creatures from the game that could not be brought back. Which could potentially cripple attacks and defenses or even dismantle entire deck strategies.
Swords to plowshares lore literally retiring a creature to the countryside to "gain life" much like a wandering ronin turning to farming for "enlightenment" is pretty cool, u gotta admit
It's also a biblical reference! And the phrase is so on the nose that I'm surprised anyone ever thought it was some kind of move against the opponent instead of retiring a creature into a peaceful life.
Yeah as a teen playing it took me a while to both A) realize the power and utility of StPc and B) understand the metaphorical meaning and its biblical context
Elan Sel'Sabagno: "You want to buy some deathsticks?" Obi-Wan, the Azorius Player: "You don't want to sell me deathsticks." Elan Sel'Sabagno: "I don't want to sell you deathsticks." Obi-Wan, casting Swords to Plowshares: "You want to go home and rethink your life." Elan Sel'Sabagno: "I want to go home and rethink my life."
Tonya Harding also removed other players from the game! OOOHHH! ... lol What an obscure callback. Maybe when he realized Swords to Plowshares was good the Harding v. Kerrigan scandal was happening? Good stuff.
Remy doesn't get enough credit for intentionally including bad math, impossible board states, wrong mana taps, etc. all to encourage video interaction like this. Gotta feed that algorithm.
I can remember running a playset of Swords in my Preacher deck after The Dark came out and just rolling kids at the card shop. Man those were good times.
I, too, had a mono white deck in middle/high school that my friends absolutely hated playing against. When most kids are just stuffing their decks with whatever big 8/8 creatures they have in their collection while running virtually no removal or protection from enchantments, cards like Swords, Pacifism, Peacekeeper, Preacher, and of course Wrath of God were so efficient it was like playing on easy mode.
@@JacoisPreacher was a god card to have when playing in Beastmaster tournaments For anyone who hadn’t encountered that format, Beastmaster is a format where the players can only construct decks from: creatures land
You didn't even have to think that deeply. If my opponent's creature attacks me for five damage, that has caused a five-point gap in our life total. If I use Swords to Plowshare on my opponent's creature, that also causes a five-point gap in our life total through the life gain. The mathematical difference in our life is identical, but in one case their creature is gone.
And, while I don't know every card, I don't THINK there's a way to win by gaining life directly, so giving your opponent more life will not make you lose the game. So while there might be a life gap...it only matters if you're at 0!
Ya. That one reservoir shocks for 50 damage for 50 HP. I think there is one card that you win if you have more life... Or if you hit 100... I forget, but it's usually not viable strat.
Swords to plowshares is a very efficient removal spell, that only costs 1 mana and can be played at any moment to remove a creature from the game. Magic is about managing your resources: Without lands, you don't get mana, without mana you can't cast anything (creatures, sorceries, instants etc.). Swords costing so little means it can trade up in value with very big and expensive creatures, allowing you to remove their board and still play your own creatures in the same turn. The "drawback" is, that the player, who controls the creature getting removed by plows to swordshares gains life points equal to it's toughness. This drawback is very negligible compared to how good and efficient the removal is. This video portrays people realising this in a joking way.
@@csalakrisztian6153 The first player declares an attack with their creatures for 40 damage, and the other player has no creatures left to block the attacks with because they were all removed with Swords to Ploughshares, so they lost despite all the life they gained from Swords to Ploughshares.
@@dragonslair951167 Oh I see, so when he looks down, he only has a Land card left, I guess. Okay, thank you! You know, that's not intuitive :)) (for me ofc)
@@dragonslair951167 .............................oh, that makes way more sense than what I was thinking of. Which was "did they do a combo or something...?" That thought though sent me on a quest to see if there's combos and yeah, there's some disgusting looking ones out there when you put a "damage opponent for X when you gain X life" effect and a creature whose toughness scales off of your health on the board together
@@ElricWilliam Declare blockers step and attack damage step are separate, and you can cast spells during the declare blockers step. Otherwise, you also couldn't use Giant Growth to pump up a blocker, for example.
Wait, wait, wait. WAIT. I have been listening to Remy's songs for several years now and YT just NOW made me realize, out of nowhere, he has an MTG channel?!
All memories of my Life Singer deck. Library of Leng, Brain Geyser, Millstone, and Ivory tower. Before the bans I remember have a 200 card deck with 800 life then slapping down a quad of Lhurgoyf. Fun times.
I remember when I first started playing Magic, and I almost immediately realized the power of Swords to Plowshares. I was quick to realize that the game was all about numbers -- whomever did more powerful things for less mana than they opponent or who drew more cards than they opponent or who could trade off life points to either do powerful things or draw more cards would almost always win. I didn't come to this realization on my own. I had a group of very smart friends, and we quickly learned that the only life point that mattered was the last one, likely because we played a lot of D&D, which is another game where you character operates at 100% effectiveness regardless of whether they have 100 hit points or 1 hit point -- all that mattered was not falling to zero. My favorite deck, even in those early days, was White/Blue. It was mostly White because of the sheer efficiency of the creatures (Savannah Lions, White Knight, Serra Angel) and the power of cards like Swords to Plowshares and Balance and Wrath of God and Wall of Swords (it's a 3/5 Defender / Flying for 4 mana!), but backing it up with Counterspell and Power Sink and Psionic Blast was just insane -- to speak nothing of the Power Blue cards. Magic was just WILD at that time. I STILL have the pieces of a Time Walk that my friend won from me in an ante (which was in the rules!) and ripped up because he HATED that card. He just tore it into pieces and gave it back to me. Not like I cared, as I just got another one in a pack a few days later! I spent all my money from cutting lawns on Magic cards. Imagine just taking the rubber band off of a deck of cards that would be worth tens of thousands of dollars today, shuffling it up with no sleeves (they didn't even exist!), and slapping it down to play on the dirty tables in the Chemistry lab at lunch!
Power Sink was a highly underrated card, at least in my area’s tournament scene. When I took my decks up against other players using Blue or Blue/White control decks and I had Power Sinks played, so many of them were like “Wait, what is that? Let me see that card. Is that a Common?” It was great to get them all tapped out so that they then couldn’t counterspell anything you then did on your turn. And with only 1 Blue required, it was fairly easily worked into a 2 or 3 color deck just with eight dual lands. One of the smartest things I ever did back then was seek out - and complete - trading cards to get a complete set of all 40 dual lands. In my area they were called “multis” for quite a while though.
and if you had those cards and had designed sleeves for them or placed them in specially designed plastic boxes you could afford like 4-5 houses today maybe.
@@thecookies6109 I was actually a collector for a while, and I had a full set of Alpha, Beta, Arabian Nights, Legends, and The Dark (one copy of each card). Due to the need for money, I sold that entire collection for around $85,000 in 2006. It was a very good price at the time, and I was able to meet my financial emergency, pay off my house and cars, and invest heavily in the stock market when it crashed in 2008. While the value of the cards would be MUCH more now, I've made way more money through investing with that start-up capital, so I have no regrets.
@@thecookies6109 And you kept them. I sold mine in 2003, *just* before Legacy caught on and certainly before Commander went big. Was so thrilled to get like $25 per dual land.
Yea I kinda went through something like this. My first experience with MTG was a black deck, and one of the cards I had was Sign in Blood. I used that card...as damage...for longer then I care to admit. Card advantage didn't dawn on me until much later.
I only played in the mid/late 90s, so never saw that card and had to go look it up. Yeah that’s a decent one. Probably one of those cards I’d have put 4 in lots of my decks that used black.
At least you remember you CAN do it at that situation where such a play wins you the game. A lot of players tend to forget that mode exists as well. For the same reason, Swording your own creature (as in the skit) was sometimes the right play - especially against Burn, where those several lives more can easily mean the difference between getting your face burnt off or the red player losing due to the "shortness of breath".
My favourite memory of playing, I started with revised, friend who had been playing longer, turn one: mox pearl, black lotus, land "I cast serra angel your go" Plains swords to plow shares. I won that game.
Remembering how when we played Magic in Middle School, there was a period where we thought Dark Ritual stayed in play and could tapped every turn for BBB. And yet people ran colors other than Black...
It's always fun when you are playing with a newish player and you get to be part of the moment where they realize that not all gameplans are created equal.
Since I'm not a Magic player and I'm here just because Remy is funny, I'll throw in a Yu-Gi-Oh anecdote: The Yu-Gi-Oh card Solemn Judgement reads "When a monster(s) would be Summoned, OR a Spell/Trap Card is activated: Pay half your LP; negate the Summon or activation, and if you do, destroy that card.". Basically, pay half your life points to say no. The card so no play for a very long time because people were putting value on their life points.
Upstart Goblin: draw 1, opponent gains 1000 life. It's not used anymore because unless you have less than 40 cards in your deck you don't have the room for it, but it's so busted
It works best if you have a combination of cards that buffs your creatures when creatures are added, adds creatures when life is increased, or buffs your creatures when life is increased. Aka: a standard white Life gain deck, which can become madness that is almost invincible because every creature added to the field gives you life and you get more creatures by gaining life and adding creatures to the field. And then you can sacrifice a creature to gain life and gain more bonuses because you have so many creatures. It also works very well in a white green deck.
I remember back in the day trading a City of Traitors for a Cursed Scroll 1-for-1. I thought: Why would I want a land that gets destroyed whenever I play another land?
The mountain card is what is referred to as a Land. Land cards can be played one per turn and they can be tapped for one mana each to cast spells summon creatures or to use other cards. The fact that the second player had only a land on the field meant he had nothing to defend himself with and the life gain was meaningless.
I loved running this card...In a mono white soldier deck its about one if the only options for card removal this is just so damn cheap. Mind you i use to run Concerted effort and mobilization. Throw in some ghostly prisons for stall and "The great white snow ball of justice" was always a hoot to run lol
I remember discovering alongside my group of friends that Mana Barbs meant EVERYBODY takes the damage each turn, including the one that played it. That card terrorized us for weeks until a good Samaritan set us straight.
Maybe I started to late but swords swords was always good (though it did go from good to amazing). I prefer the cards that go from good, to bad, to great (in a specific deck).
It all depends on the cards you'll be drawing with it. There are quite a few cards from the early 2000's that were legitimately garbage but now are key parts of combos because there are so many (comparatively) power crept cards they now play off of.
I’ve only ever seen it used in combo decks that win immediately. Not at all similar to swords, which goes in literally any deck that can produce white mana
That was just shorthand to get the point across that for very very few mana, the opponent had all their powerful creatures removed and left defenseless.
If i'm not wrong at the time you could have even done it after damage because it used the stack, allowing players to respond to it before creatures would go to the graveyard
There was a period of time where you could put damage on the stack then do it before damage. You can block with a creature then swords it before damage now though, obviously if we have first strike involved here then that changes things.@@MisterManuva
I definitely didn't think much of Swords back in the 90s, but I was absolutely a "Head empty, play all the cards I own of a color in a deck" player at the time.
I loved that card way back in my blue and white counterspell/mill deck. I didn't care how much life you had because my win condition was to run you out of deck.
I played a timetwister+regrowth deck where literal only way to win was my opponent conceding. Removing every single creature in their deck from the game was just step 1.
@@DanceofmasksWould the opponent win if they put you in the hospital? Lololol I only played a blue/white control deck in one tournament, a season-ending championship one, and in the semifinals, I was against the season points leader who was also playing a blue/white control deck. I won, but it took well over four hours. The store hosting the tournament had closed hours ago, and then the final match I lost in about twelve minutes, lololol. That final opponent had a very different deck. But he got to use Time Walk against me in two of the three games, and those were the ones I lost.
In the beginning if it took the card we thought we never got em back, ante was a thing. People who never played before 5th edition would understand this for the most part it seems
I used to run them in WW back in the day. I got called so many bad names lol. I would make all my knights 6/6 and when i got low on life just STPS my own minions and walk away with the W most times.
When I first started playing commander I "had a plan" to deal with my opp all out attack and hitting my own guy with swords to gain 8 life and barely survive was just that. The room erupted with laughter and I didnt understand why.
The worst part is that the guy that removed his own creatures was me. Except this was with the card “sign of blood”, as I didn’t know about a. Card advantage and b. Life not being that important
Reminds me of solemn judgement . Everyone lost their mind at losing half your LP, until you realize it doesnt matter when you only need 1 LP to win a game and your opponent now cant play the game
The dude hitting his own dude with swords and getting excited at the life gain probably went on to be a Heliod infinite combo main.
i agree
i only know what that is because my friend did it to prove he can win by having infinite life
@anniebot_45-73 you don't win with infinite life. You win with some other interaction put together the infinite life provided
@@fitnesshunter6302 Not really. You can win with infinite life aslong as you have 1 more card in your deck than your opp
@@jii-ro7083And as long as your opponent doesn’t have Poison, Lab Maniac, Jace Wielder of Mysteries, Approach of the second sun, and other such alt win cons
My favorite memory of the card is someone misremembering it. Opponent said "I'll Swords to Plowshares your creature." They said "In response, I'll target it with my own Swords to Plowshares. Now I gain the life!"
he was thinking he was playing the power crept swords to plowshares
@fantaguyrealStop it yourself, coward.
@fantaguyreal I won't. fuck off bot.
Seriously guys dont translate, its some really weird Shrek fanfic erotica
@@ericashmead4049 I feel lied to, I WANT MY SHREK EROTICA
I learned the game way back in Beta when the rulebook hadn't quite been perfected. Since Swords to Plowshares says removed from the game entirely, we thought that meant you didn't get the card back into your deck for games two and three if it was cast in game one. With ante being a thing, losing cards from your deck wasn't unknown. Lead to some interesting subgames of whether or not to play your bomb in a game that you think you might win just in case the opponent had Swords.
Now THATS unintuitive.
@@jojodelacroix with Ante it actually was intuitive. You literally took a card off your deck and removed it from the game as a prize. So the idea that the first card with "remove from the game" actually removed it from the match with the opponent was a very small mistake. All you have to do is consider the whole best of 3 to be the "game", and each time you shuffle and start again is actually a "round" in that game. It's a pretty straight forward logical connection.
@@BouncingTribbles
-OK, bro, I remove the top card of my library. It's a swamp. What is yours?
-Black Lotus
Twenty years later:
-God damn it, I could become a millionaire if I didn't lose that game
@@WookieRookie yep, I refused to play ante except for one pauper-mono-tower-map campaign/tournament that I played in back in 4th edition. We used pennies for life and you kept any life you took too. Fun tournament format, I would do it again.
@@BouncingTribblesJust out of curiosity, what if someone gains life? Would they get additional pennies? Where from?
Permanent removal of any creature that isn't literally immune to spells (or has Protection From White), no questions asked, for only a single mana. THE most cost-efficient removal card the game has ever seen. For that kind of power, the enemy life gain is an absolute triviality, especially when dealing with annoying utility creatures that don't even have a high Power. Plus, in a pinch, you CAN actually use it on your own creature to survive lethal damage.
I actually ran into a situation today where I was swinging in for lethal with a 45 power commander, the opponent cast a spell that redirected damage from that combat to me so I would die instead, and I said alright sure I'm gonna Swords to Plowshares my own commander for 45 life. And I still ended up losing to him via regular combat damage lmao
Its also great when something bad is on your own creature. You can cast it on your creature, remove it, gain life. Great when your opponent puts an enchantment that damages you or something.
Meh... Path to Exile is strictly better. Because then your opponent DOESN'T get the life gain (he just gets a basic land). And that only costs one white mana, at instant speed, also.
@@jacob4920in my oppinion lands are significantly better than life. The only real life point that matters is your last one. And since swords is often run in control decks they are planning to win later and slowly anyway, they may even be milling you out and not even care about the life gain (though nowadays control decks have quite a few options for big finishers to kill you fast.) Ramping your opponent if you have to remove something of there early game is usually kindof bad, its also thinning the deck of cards. But there are scemarios where it is better. For expample marit lage being removed and giving your opponent 20 life can be annoying. And the search trigger of path can be abused. Also path tends to be better in formsts where cards tend to be more expensive on average. Having to path a creature in legacy on turn 1 makes your opponent way faster because the majority of cards are 1 or two mana (or none) and 4 mana cards are considered high costs
@@jacob4920 respectfully, this is some of the worst card evaluation I have ever read in my entire life, Path is a substantially worse card than swords in virtually all formats since it was printed. Every deck uses mana, lands make mana, (almost) every deck would always prefer having more lands and mana to less. Most decks don't care about life total other than not dying, aggro decks and control decks would much rather be at 13 life and up a land than at 17 life and not up a land. Although lifegain decks do benefit from gaining life off of swords, when you look at a metagame spread, you would much rather your opponent be up a few life than up mana.
To put it another way, would you rather your opponent cast a ramp spell or Healing Salve? Path and swords to plowshares effectively cast your opponent one of those spells, and healing salve is not considered good.
The idea of any deck in alpha having 40 points worth of creatures in play is the craziest part of this video. Although I get that swinging for 4 ten turns in a row wouldn't be as climactic.
White bordered Swords to Plow shares in video. It is a reprint edition, cannot be alpha/beta.
For that reason, I was expecting "I activate Millstone again, since I only spent one mana so far."
huh? that's only five 8/8s
@@icLllliIIIIlILLilLlIjigelwhat do you think it's a reprint of 😂
playing white,blue,green and having at least 2 white mana 2 blue mana an freakin 4 green on the table ! :P ....
As someone who played Magic from 1996 to 2002, I was really feeling like I missed something about the sequence of events and felt like a real dumbass when I realized that it wasn't zooming in on a Mountain (land) at 0:48 but it was the playing field showing he had no creatures to defend
Happened to me, for about a second there: "Why are they showing his empty playma-- OHHHHHH!!!" lol
That's about how it went for me, mentally.
@@jacob4920 It's a good joke but I'm glad I wasn't the only one confused (albeit for a different reason)
i myself was wondering if the reputation of this card fell off after I stopped playing, because it was rare, but it was considered good and highly effective at low cost for white decks, specially if you could get your hands on more than one. it was never considered a bad card in my time in mostly the 90's playing the game. it had a lot of uses that made the life gain from it mostly trivial over all the other advantages, like moving important creatures from the game that could not be brought back. Which could potentially cripple attacks and defenses or even dismantle entire deck strategies.
I've never played Magic but I know they have Land cards, so I assumed it was supposed to be something Land related
You are not alone
(Tonya Harding was a figure skater in the '80s who had a scandal in the early '90s, he's making a joke about how early in MTG this was)
Explaining the joke ruins the joke 🤦
@@crimson90 explains what happened to you
@@crimson90no, it was great explaining it, shut up
@@crimson90 Agreed!
@@crimson90 because everyone was following american figure skating in the 90s
P1: Swamp, Dark ritual, Dark ritual, Sengir vampire.
P2: Tundra, Swords to plowshare
edit: words are hard.
Black Ritual? Did you mean Dark Ritual?
@@11epicnoob It's clearly the one racist card that Wizard removed from all existence.
@@11epicnoob lmao I do mean Dark ritual, I was thinking of how it produces black mana.
@@riordanbooth6293You know when a dude doesn't remember these names that he's been in the game for a while...
@@riordanbooth6293 understandable
Swords to plowshares lore literally retiring a creature to the countryside to "gain life" much like a wandering ronin turning to farming for "enlightenment" is pretty cool, u gotta admit
It's also a biblical reference!
And the phrase is so on the nose that I'm surprised anyone ever thought it was some kind of move against the opponent instead of retiring a creature into a peaceful life.
Musashi let’s go
Yeah as a teen playing it took me a while to both
A) realize the power and utility of StPc and
B) understand the metaphorical meaning and its biblical context
i always took it as the creature is now farming so you have more food to supply your troops with, thus more life.
Elan Sel'Sabagno: "You want to buy some deathsticks?"
Obi-Wan, the Azorius Player: "You don't want to sell me deathsticks."
Elan Sel'Sabagno: "I don't want to sell you deathsticks."
Obi-Wan, casting Swords to Plowshares: "You want to go home and rethink your life."
Elan Sel'Sabagno: "I want to go home and rethink my life."
Tonya Harding also removed other players from the game! OOOHHH! ... lol What an obscure callback. Maybe when he realized Swords to Plowshares was good the Harding v. Kerrigan scandal was happening? Good stuff.
But where was Nancy's lifegain?!
@@CLove511Please, her downfall was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before ivory poachers found her....
Ah yes, Tonya Harding, from back when if an athlete took a knee, the athlete really took a knee.
@@CLove511 Based on the size of her teeth, I always thought that Nancy was lucky that Tonya got to her before ivory poachers did.
That was a real knee slapper
Nice
And the ending was a knee smasher.
*pushes up glasses* ACTUALLY mahamoti djinn is a 5/6 so you're at 29.
😂
I believe the correct response is to say your height and weight and not to push up your glasses in this instance.
Remy doesn't get enough credit for intentionally including bad math, impossible board states, wrong mana taps, etc. all to encourage video interaction like this. Gotta feed that algorithm.
Dude is playing a three-color deck with Force of Nature in it, do you think this man can be stopped with mere LOGIC?
You just activated Remy's trap card!
I can remember running a playset of Swords in my Preacher deck after The Dark came out and just rolling kids at the card shop. Man those were good times.
My older brother owned Preachers. I didn't. I f'ing hated that card.
I, too, had a mono white deck in middle/high school that my friends absolutely hated playing against. When most kids are just stuffing their decks with whatever big 8/8 creatures they have in their collection while running virtually no removal or protection from enchantments, cards like Swords, Pacifism, Peacekeeper, Preacher, and of course Wrath of God were so efficient it was like playing on easy mode.
@@JacoisPreacher was a god card to have when playing in Beastmaster tournaments
For anyone who hadn’t encountered that format, Beastmaster is a format where the players can only construct decks from:
creatures
land
You didn't even have to think that deeply.
If my opponent's creature attacks me for five damage, that has caused a five-point gap in our life total. If I use Swords to Plowshare on my opponent's creature, that also causes a five-point gap in our life total through the life gain. The mathematical difference in our life is identical, but in one case their creature is gone.
And, while I don't know every card, I don't THINK there's a way to win by gaining life directly, so giving your opponent more life will not make you lose the game.
So while there might be a life gap...it only matters if you're at 0!
@@Juniper_Rose Lots of lifegain combos, but rest assured, none of them involve swords on your own creature
@@Juniper_Rose theres cards that have everyone take 40 damage (what we call a "pipe bomb") so it can be dangerous
Its even better removal in commander, where you have to worry about commander damage and it also increases the commander cost.
Ya. That one reservoir shocks for 50 damage for 50 HP.
I think there is one card that you win if you have more life... Or if you hit 100... I forget, but it's usually not viable strat.
The Tonya Harding comment put me in a time machine back to 1994 😂😂
Which probably is around the time when you last played this game 😂 I know it was for me!
Not gonna lie I was half expecting "he's a witch!"
As a non-Magic player, I have no idea what just happened
Swords to plowshares is a very efficient removal spell, that only costs 1 mana and can be played at any moment to remove a creature from the game. Magic is about managing your resources: Without lands, you don't get mana, without mana you can't cast anything (creatures, sorceries, instants etc.). Swords costing so little means it can trade up in value with very big and expensive creatures, allowing you to remove their board and still play your own creatures in the same turn. The "drawback" is, that the player, who controls the creature getting removed by plows to swordshares gains life points equal to it's toughness. This drawback is very negligible compared to how good and efficient the removal is. This video portrays people realising this in a joking way.
@@wernerbeinhart2320 Thank you but, how do they realize it exactly? And who is this Tanya Harding everyone keeps mentioning?
@@csalakrisztian6153 The first player declares an attack with their creatures for 40 damage, and the other player has no creatures left to block the attacks with because they were all removed with Swords to Ploughshares, so they lost despite all the life they gained from Swords to Ploughshares.
@@dragonslair951167 Oh I see, so when he looks down, he only has a Land card left, I guess. Okay, thank you! You know, that's not intuitive :)) (for me ofc)
@@dragonslair951167 .............................oh, that makes way more sense than what I was thinking of. Which was "did they do a combo or something...?"
That thought though sent me on a quest to see if there's combos and yeah, there's some disgusting looking ones out there when you put a "damage opponent for X when you gain X life" effect and a creature whose toughness scales off of your health on the board together
The Tonya Harding bit…I almost fell out of my chair, I laughed so hard.
Loved this card almost as much as the flavor text from Pacifism. "For the first time in his life, Grakk felt a little warm and fuzzy inside."
"I'll block with my 1/1 soldier token, then cast Swords to Plowshares on it. Your creature is blocked, I gain 1 life"
Attacking creature has trample
What a waste of a perfectly good Swords to Plowshares.
Path to Exile is the much better card for this use case.
Doesnt attacking creature damage resesolve first on the stack before card effects?
You block creature, creature dies
Swords to plowshares on what?
@@ElricWilliam Declare blockers step and attack damage step are separate, and you can cast spells during the declare blockers step. Otherwise, you also couldn't use Giant Growth to pump up a blocker, for example.
Wait, wait, wait. WAIT.
I have been listening to Remy's songs for several years now and YT just NOW made me realize, out of nowhere, he has an MTG channel?!
You have content for weeks to go through now 😂
Man, and now I'm having the opposite realization, where remy's main career is making right wing political content 😢
@@UrsulaMajor Is libertarian right wing?
thank you! I thought I was the only one!!!
I'm also discovering this on the same day. What changed with the algorithm?
The perfect card when you need to StoP creature shenanigans
That Tanya Harding joke... **Chefs kneecap**
All memories of my Life Singer deck. Library of Leng, Brain Geyser, Millstone, and Ivory tower. Before the bans I remember have a 200 card deck with 800 life then slapping down a quad of Lhurgoyf. Fun times.
Braingeyser one of my absolute favorites
Right there with Balance and Mind Twist
Subbed for the Tonya Harding remark at the end, that had me rolling. and I still enjoy MTG even though I haven't played in 20 years.
The whole "Hey, did you hear about Tonya Harding?" quote just DATES THE LIVING HELL out of this flashback! lol
The most unbelievable part of this videos is the fact that they are using sleeves back then
I used sleeve in 1995, maybe 1994
I had a Fallen Angel that my cat had bitten, lmao
He brought up Tonya Harding, and I immediately knew what that was about.
I'm old.
Love the Tonya Harding reference at the end
I remember when I first started playing Magic, and I almost immediately realized the power of Swords to Plowshares. I was quick to realize that the game was all about numbers -- whomever did more powerful things for less mana than they opponent or who drew more cards than they opponent or who could trade off life points to either do powerful things or draw more cards would almost always win.
I didn't come to this realization on my own. I had a group of very smart friends, and we quickly learned that the only life point that mattered was the last one, likely because we played a lot of D&D, which is another game where you character operates at 100% effectiveness regardless of whether they have 100 hit points or 1 hit point -- all that mattered was not falling to zero.
My favorite deck, even in those early days, was White/Blue. It was mostly White because of the sheer efficiency of the creatures (Savannah Lions, White Knight, Serra Angel) and the power of cards like Swords to Plowshares and Balance and Wrath of God and Wall of Swords (it's a 3/5 Defender / Flying for 4 mana!), but backing it up with Counterspell and Power Sink and Psionic Blast was just insane -- to speak nothing of the Power Blue cards.
Magic was just WILD at that time. I STILL have the pieces of a Time Walk that my friend won from me in an ante (which was in the rules!) and ripped up because he HATED that card. He just tore it into pieces and gave it back to me. Not like I cared, as I just got another one in a pack a few days later! I spent all my money from cutting lawns on Magic cards.
Imagine just taking the rubber band off of a deck of cards that would be worth tens of thousands of dollars today, shuffling it up with no sleeves (they didn't even exist!), and slapping it down to play on the dirty tables in the Chemistry lab at lunch!
Power Sink was a highly underrated card, at least in my area’s tournament scene.
When I took my decks up against other players using Blue or Blue/White control decks and I had Power Sinks played, so many of them were like “Wait, what is that? Let me see that card. Is that a Common?”
It was great to get them all tapped out so that they then couldn’t counterspell anything you then did on your turn.
And with only 1 Blue required, it was fairly easily worked into a 2 or 3 color deck just with eight dual lands.
One of the smartest things I ever did back then was seek out - and complete - trading cards to get a complete set of all 40 dual lands. In my area they were called “multis” for quite a while though.
and if you had those cards and had designed sleeves for them or placed them in specially designed plastic boxes you could afford like 4-5 houses today maybe.
@@thecookies6109 I was actually a collector for a while, and I had a full set of Alpha, Beta, Arabian Nights, Legends, and The Dark (one copy of each card).
Due to the need for money, I sold that entire collection for around $85,000 in 2006. It was a very good price at the time, and I was able to meet my financial emergency, pay off my house and cars, and invest heavily in the stock market when it crashed in 2008.
While the value of the cards would be MUCH more now, I've made way more money through investing with that start-up capital, so I have no regrets.
@@thecookies6109 And you kept them. I sold mine in 2003, *just* before Legacy caught on and certainly before Commander went big. Was so thrilled to get like $25 per dual land.
@@notme222 I sold mine at 20 dollars I left some on the table so people could secondary sell.
That Tanya Harding line at the end, too soon bro
Remy. The gift that keeps on giving.
And after that day, a LOT of creatures suddenly developed a taste for plantation farming until now.
A 1 CMC instant able to exile any creature in itself already is super powerful.
If you're gonna update "remove from the game" to "exile," you might as well update "CMC" to "MV," too. $;^ ]
Yea I kinda went through something like this. My first experience with MTG was a black deck, and one of the cards I had was Sign in Blood. I used that card...as damage...for longer then I care to admit. Card advantage didn't dawn on me until much later.
I only played in the mid/late 90s, so never saw that card and had to go look it up. Yeah that’s a decent one. Probably one of those cards I’d have put 4 in lots of my decks that used black.
At least you remember you CAN do it at that situation where such a play wins you the game. A lot of players tend to forget that mode exists as well.
For the same reason, Swording your own creature (as in the skit) was sometimes the right play - especially against Burn, where those several lives more can easily mean the difference between getting your face burnt off or the red player losing due to the "shortness of breath".
No way, I found you! I used to listen to your music, I thought you were gone from CZcams.
No song: I'm kinda mad
No song: love it
Still the best removal spell ever printed.
It’s funny how this card was such a level up moment for so many people back then. Almost everyone has a memory very similar to this. 😂
oh my god that reference checks out while playing Revised cards... holy crap.
My favourite memory of playing, I started with revised, friend who had been playing longer, turn one: mox pearl, black lotus, land "I cast serra angel your go" Plains swords to plow shares. I won that game.
That card was part of my White/Black creature killer deck
I remember that feeling exactly when I first cast plowshares
Remembering how when we played Magic in Middle School, there was a period where we thought Dark Ritual stayed in play and could tapped every turn for BBB. And yet people ran colors other than Black...
My Feather deck uses Path to Exile on my own creatures (tokens) as reusable ramp
It's always fun when you are playing with a newish player and you get to be part of the moment where they realize that not all gameplans are created equal.
Since I'm not a Magic player and I'm here just because Remy is funny, I'll throw in a Yu-Gi-Oh anecdote: The Yu-Gi-Oh card Solemn Judgement reads "When a monster(s) would be Summoned, OR a Spell/Trap Card is activated: Pay half your LP; negate the Summon or activation, and if you do, destroy that card.". Basically, pay half your life points to say no. The card so no play for a very long time because people were putting value on their life points.
Upstart Goblin: draw 1, opponent gains 1000 life.
It's not used anymore because unless you have less than 40 cards in your deck you don't have the room for it, but it's so busted
It works best if you have a combination of cards that buffs your creatures when creatures are added, adds creatures when life is increased, or buffs your creatures when life is increased.
Aka: a standard white Life gain deck, which can become madness that is almost invincible because every creature added to the field gives you life and you get more creatures by gaining life and adding creatures to the field.
And then you can sacrifice a creature to gain life and gain more bonuses because you have so many creatures.
It also works very well in a white green deck.
I remember back in the day trading a City of Traitors for a Cursed Scroll 1-for-1. I thought: Why would I want a land that gets destroyed whenever I play another land?
Thanks for this.
Wall of Shards dominance.
Lols. I remember being 13 and everyone thought those pain lands were trash. Then in bout 2 years everyone came around and was playing them.
I traded hard for pain lands and everyone called me stupid.... 2 years later I got fists of cash.
As a non-MTG player, can someone explain what the mountain card was?
Was a playmat
@@LiefWolfsbane Yep, art by John Avon. Will never forget as it was one of my first lands during Mirage in 1997 (I began playing back then).
Oops... I stand corrected. Art is by Douglas Shuler and it's a core set card.
The mountain card is what is referred to as a Land.
Land cards can be played one per turn and they can be tapped for one mana each to cast spells summon creatures or to use other cards.
The fact that the second player had only a land on the field meant he had nothing to defend himself with and the life gain was meaningless.
@@hariman7727 That makes sense.
That supreme verdict is awesome and i want one
I loved running this card...In a mono white soldier deck its about one if the only options for card removal this is just so damn cheap.
Mind you i use to run Concerted effort and mobilization. Throw in some ghostly prisons for stall and "The great white snow ball of justice" was always a hoot to run lol
I remember this moment for me circa 1994. Not that far off.
Darksteel Colossus, Pelakka Wurm, Genesis Hydra, Kozilek and Swords To Plowshares (or green / black / white deck) can be very funny to play.
I need an explanation of what the heck just happened.
I remember discovering alongside my group of friends that Mana Barbs meant EVERYBODY takes the damage each turn, including the one that played it.
That card terrorized us for weeks until a good Samaritan set us straight.
Good ol kitchen table magic while the Tanya Harding news broke
That + to life is a friendly way of saying better clench up
This is actually the name of a veteran building in San Francisco. Cool!
Maybe I started to late but swords swords was always good (though it did go from good to amazing). I prefer the cards that go from good, to bad, to great (in a specific deck).
Oh yeah... the Tonya Harding thing....... I'm soooooooooooo old...
If you think you're old, I remember days when cell phones were the size of bricks, and we didn't have the internet.
Multiple times my playgroup has swords'd their own creature to live through a lethal attack or combo in Commander.
STP - Stone Temple Plowshares
More commander games Remy, I'm still laughing about several Goats 🐐 with coat of arms kkkk
Back when Serra was one of the most feared creatures in the game .. damn what a time to be alive
That is such a genx thing to say at the end
4th ed/Ice Age was my time in the game. Swords was kinda OP back then.
Tonya Harding. Now there's a reference
You whippersnappers! We were doing this 30 years ago!
Who could blame them, with awful cards like Healing Salve it must have been confusing.
Necropotence was a similar vibe -- I was a wee lad in those days, and just like everyone else, I thought it was one of the worst cards I'd ever seen.
It all depends on the cards you'll be drawing with it. There are quite a few cards from the early 2000's that were legitimately garbage but now are key parts of combos because there are so many (comparatively) power crept cards they now play off of.
I’ve only ever seen it used in combo decks that win immediately. Not at all similar to swords, which goes in literally any deck that can produce white mana
@@Colton-wz5sh That would be a great point if that was even remotely what I was talking about.
@@keithmpirewhat makes you think he cares about what you're talking about?
What deck had 40 total power back then?
That was just shorthand to get the point across that for very very few mana, the opponent had all their powerful creatures removed and left defenseless.
@@Trephining you really don't get the point, do you
Both those dudes look like they're from the 90s, well done
One of my very first times playing mtg I did cast swords on my creature to survive an attack. At least I learned my lesson.
Block with it first and cast sword before damage.
Removing the opposing creature? Why?
If i'm not wrong at the time you could have even done it after damage because it used the stack, allowing players to respond to it before creatures would go to the graveyard
There was a period of time where you could put damage on the stack then do it before damage. You can block with a creature then swords it before damage now though, obviously if we have first strike involved here then that changes things.@@MisterManuva
They removed damage on the stack because it was unintuitive to newer players and it was always the best thing to do making a decision irrelevant.
Is this the Arlington Rap guy?
I use this card in my Azorius Infect deck. The opponents life gain does nothing to hurt me there. 💧🌞
StP is used completely differently in Commander lmao
I can 100% imagine myself as the player on the right when I started learning magic. XD
I dont' play MTG and I don't have any idea what's going on but it seems hilarious
it reminds me of a yugioh deck that heals your opponent a lot
lol I totally knew a guy who pronounced it "duh-jin" like that back in the day, too.
Having opponents mispronounce names of cards was standard in my area tournament scene. Wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Heard lots of “See-air-uh Angel”
I definitely didn't think much of Swords back in the 90s, but I was absolutely a "Head empty, play all the cards I own of a color in a deck" player at the time.
Me a life gain deck, sword to plowshare my soul of enternity with nykthos paragon on my board
I loved that card way back in my blue and white counterspell/mill deck. I didn't care how much life you had because my win condition was to run you out of deck.
I played a timetwister+regrowth deck where literal only way to win was my opponent conceding. Removing every single creature in their deck from the game was just step 1.
@@DanceofmasksWould the opponent win if they put you in the hospital? Lololol
I only played a blue/white control deck in one tournament, a season-ending championship one, and in the semifinals, I was against the season points leader who was also playing a blue/white control deck. I won, but it took well over four hours.
The store hosting the tournament had closed hours ago, and then the final match I lost in about twelve minutes, lololol. That final opponent had a very different deck. But he got to use Time Walk against me in two of the three games, and those were the ones I lost.
In the beginning if it took the card we thought we never got em back, ante was a thing. People who never played before 5th edition would understand this for the most part it seems
What does Tanya Harding have to do with this?
It's the carrot vs the stick lmao
It's cool to see Alpha cards still being powerful 😎
I used to run them in WW back in the day. I got called so many bad names lol. I would make all my knights 6/6 and when i got low on life just STPS my own minions and walk away with the W most times.
It ony a movie.
Tonya Harding 😆🤣😅
What use are life points when you can't protect them?
Ohhhhhhhh
I'll swords to plowshares your 4 power angel.
Nice, I'm at 24!
I'll sword your 5 power djinn.
Nice, I'm at ***30*** life.
uh huh :P
The old "make a mistake in your video so that people will comment so your engagement looks higher to the algorithm" trick, aka the CinemaSins special.
@@JeremyHoffman Yea, Remy uses that one pretty often!
When I first started playing commander I "had a plan" to deal with my opp all out attack and hitting my own guy with swords to gain 8 life and barely survive was just that. The room erupted with laughter and I didnt understand why.
"I floop the pig" is all I understood from this
The worst part is that the guy that removed his own creatures was me. Except this was with the card “sign of blood”, as I didn’t know about a. Card advantage and b. Life not being that important
Reminds me of solemn judgement . Everyone lost their mind at losing half your LP, until you realize it doesnt matter when you only need 1 LP to win a game and your opponent now cant play the game
This is Emergency Provisions and Soul Taker in one card.
Here I was, thinking we'd be talking about Settlers of Catan Swords to Plowshears, which is indeed not good. XD