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CGB at 35:13: "God I should have shown you some banned cards for your commander purchasing video, that would have been funny". It sure was CGB, it sure was.
@@OctopiWalgreens honestly man this was supposed to be a comment that went and got lost in the sauce and now for some god forsaken reason it’s got 818 likes and I want to die
Rarran : Yeah I don't really want to make any enemies at the table, I'm already stressed enough about trying out commander for real. Also Rarran : If it's below 2.0 on the salt scale I don't want it
Pretty sure one of the videos of that CGB posted of the two of them, from a couple of weeks ago, even mentions that this video would date. I think he said they had recorded it just before the ban.
@@PinetatoRaptor and if he doesn't, he'll find out soon enough. The pod is Voxy, Crim, and CGB for goodness sake. There's like a 200% chance of Rhystic Study dropping that afternoon
Friendly tip for Rarran/Editors! You can set Scryfall (in the Search Preferences settings) to Caster Mode to display all cards as transparent PNGs, or download individual images as PNGs by clicking a button below the card image in the Images and Data list. This will get rid of the little white corners around card images!
The main reason all those "destroy target permanent" spells were such prevalent staples is because unconditional spot removal that hits ANY permanent at 3 or less mana is really rare in the game. Also color identity is a huge factor in commander. A card being colorless means it can be played in any deck, and good cards that fill a niche that are colorless will be a staple in any color that doesn't normally have access to that effect.
I think the biggest adjustment for Rarran is realizing what exactly a 'permanent' is, since Hearthstone doesn't really have that. Imagine if removal in Hearthstone allowed the removing of mana crystals.
Yeah I cannot overstate how good Beast Within/ Generous Gift are because they can deal with problematic lands, enchantments, and artifacts. The higher mana cost is worth having more cards that can deal with Cabal Coffers and Maze of Ith
Fun Fact about Mana Crypt: It was never actually intended to be a legal, playable card. It was a promo you got for buying a book back in the 90s that wasn't allowed to be played. BUT when Vintage became a thing, they allowed ANY Magic card ever printed, including promos like this. And Commander was created off that same card pool of allowing every card, so it wound up being legal there.
Teferis Protection is an incredible card, but I really like the lore behind. Teferi, an incredible powerful chronomancer, used a spell to remove his homeland of zalphir from the plane of domination to protect it from an invasion, he literally phased it out of existence. However the spell went a bit too well you could say and Zalphir spent the next couple of thousand years in complete isolation, removed from the timestream, with Teferi being unable to locate it and phase it back in.
15:20 also, talismans have a significant advantage over signets (excluding Arcane Signet) in that they can tap for mana immediately, without the need of extra mana. This matters if you want to cast another 1 mana spell right after, which you couldn't with a signet. 1:00:47 a fellow appreciator of Slip Out the Back! I too absolutely love this card.
I felt my brain twisting into a pretzel when Rarran said you would only see hoof/cavalry played when it would win you the game during the section of the video talking specifically about how you win the game. Like, my brother in Christ, that is THE POINT.
I understood his thought process after he said he was trying to look at it from the HS lens of drawn WR. Craterhoof is not a card you would ever cast and just get a 6/6 in the scenario Rarrarn mentioned, unless you're really desperate and need a blocker to stay alive. I don't think he quite understands that in commander you would just hold a card like that until you can actually close it out. It's really not that hard with it, either, because all you need is like 5-6 creatures and that usually does it from all the accumulated chip damage everyone has had over the game.
@@totakekeslider3835I think he was severely underestimating how aggressively hoof scales. At 3 creatures, hoof adds 21 power. At 4, 30 power. At 5, 41 power. At 10, hoof adds 126 power to the board. Also missing I think is the context that green is really good at making tons of creatures.
He is still right, if everyone runs boardwipes AND spot removal you'll never get a good hoof board. In his vision everyone has all the boardwipes and swords that were shown to him. He just doesn't understand that there rarely is a pod with 2 control players
@@irou95 I mean, at least to me, it makes sense to spare like a slot or two for a boardwipe in any deck that can have them, just so you arent completely out of options. But yes, people wont always have the wrath, or the removal, or w/e and you just get ran the fuck over by craterhoof. It's probably a matter of not being able to properly conceive it until he gets his ass whipped by it.
The biggest reason a lot of these spot removal cards are played is because they're *instant-speed* removal. Getting rid of an opponent's thing on your turn is fine, but getting rid of it on *their* turn really messes with people's plans
1:06:40 "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go into a Commander game with a 1v1 mindset!" Never upset to hear these references.
Part of the reason Craterhoof Behemoth is good -- and something CGB barely covered -- is that green has a handful of effects that tutor creature cards to the battlefield. The play pattern is that you build up a board of let's say 7 creatures, then you cast a Green Sun's Zenith to grab Craterhoof and give all of your creatures +8/+8 and trample. Craterhoof itself will be a 13/13 with trample and haste.
There are three main reasons Moonshaker Cavalry is worse than Craterhoof Behemoth, outside of not being as easily tutored: - It doesn't have haste, so it can't attack the turn it enters. - Flying is often worse than trample, since opponents can chump block with a handful of small, cheap fliers, while trample runs over everything that doesn't have high toughness. Some value creatures have flying. Most don't have a big butt. - Giving your team flying in white is often worse than giving your team trample in green, just because more strong white creatures have flying already than good green creatures having trample.
@@SmashPortal The long and short of it is: Craterhoof just ends the game no questions asked. For every other finisher out there you usually need to do the math. For hoof the math is "yes"
It's hard to understate how difficult it is to cast Ruinous Ultimatum, even in Mardu in order to cast it you need highly specific mana and that severely holds the card back. It's undeniably powerful and can be game winning, but if you spend all those resources and it gets counterspelled or people successfully protect their permanents (which frankly isn't very hard) you've been put massively behind. The difference between RRWWWBB and 6U is massive especially combined with instant speed effectively allowing you to Cyclonic Rift when no one can play their cards until you've had a turn with all your permanents and mana. Another aspect of this means that Cyclonic Rift being in your deck, not even in your hand, acts as pseudo removal as very few people are going to take aggressive actions against a blue deck with 7 mana up because they might just Rift everything away. Simply by standing there with 7 mana open you are going to change how people play their turns and force them to avoid investing into the board. In my play group we banned Cyclonic Rift because unless someone responds with exactly Teferi's Protection there is a very, very good chance that you just win the game.
Yeah, I was so confused when CGB said they had the same cost. I get that Rarran only said that it looked like it cost more, but not even considering the sol ring and mana crypt they’d already covered, it’s just so much easier to get unspecified mana.
You have alternate options to Teferi's Protection, such as Clever Concealment & March of Swirling Mist, mass blink effects like Ghostway, generic counterspells, or blue hate like Red Elemental Blast. Rift is good, but it has more counter play these days than most people think.
@drt4527 The issue with the flicker effects is that while they protect your board, they don't protect you, which usually just results in you dying before your permanents phase back in. Counterspells obviously help, but outside an extremely small number of them in red and white, they exist almost exclusively in blue. This only ended up exacerbating the problem, which is part of the reason why I voted to ban it.
Beast within hits ANY permanent. That includes artifacts and LANDS. Beast within is one of the best removal spells in commander. Also see Generous Gift.
Was looking for this. If you're in white and/or green you don't care about the extra cost and you prefer the 3/3 over ramping them. Always run them if I can even with black. Creatures don't tend to be the biggest threat in the first place so spot removal needs flexibility above all.
@@TodesnussYes and if you just wanted creature removal, there is the 2 mana Kenrith’s Transformation. Just a narrower card (with its own niche of keeping the creature out of the graveyard).
Unless your deck operates at instant speed, holding up 3 mana is asking a lot from most decks & can make cards like Beast Within feel more like a sorcery. That's why more efficient, but narrower removal is typically better. It does depend on the speed of your meta, though, as the more expensive cards get better in slower games.
@@drt4527 I feel i don't need to play removal in the first 4 or 5 turns most games. And after turn 6, in a green deck with beast within, I should have 2 or 3 more mana available and keeping up removal and playing on curve becomes the gameplan for myself.
Rarran: "I don't know about Grey Merchant for standard" RtR-Theros standard: *smiles awkwardly* (Gary was part of arguably the best deck of that standard format)
Chaos Warp has a ton of play at my LGS! A fair few people play theft decks. Chaos Warp makes the OWNER, not the controller shuffle it back in. So not only do you get your thing back into your deck, you are also the one who reveals! Feels good.
I think Chaos Warp is one of those cards where people get caught up on only using on your opponents cards. I think it's easy for a newer player to not understand you can use it on your own stuff, such as on your own 1/1 goblin to try and get lucky and hit something to save you on the spot. Reliable? Hell no. Was hoping CGB would bring that angle up, but maybe best to leave out as Rarran learns more about the game.
Rarran: 2 mana Wild growth is a really good card Also Rarran: Arcane Signet is trash (Literally same effect) Edit: looks like he realized it later in the video!
When I first got back into magic, ramp and artifacts like signets, talismans, sol ring, etc. were one of the hardest things for me to understand the value of. Why would I take a turn off to develop an artifact when I could play a cool two drop creature and hit people in the face? But you quickly realize how vital it is to have a large mana base so you can cast all your really big, really cool stuff that actually gets you closer to winning the game while leaving mana open for interaction and whatnot. Excited to see Rarran getting into Commander!
One thing CGB missed I think, is that Beast within hits any permanent, not just creatures. It brings the same flexibility as Assassin's Trophy, but it only gives your opponent a 3/3, something that is entirely forgettable in commander and something that you, as a green deck, really don't have to worry about.
Slip Out The Back is an uncommon that just rotated out of standard, if it was more than 2 bucks the mtg economy would be even more screwed than it already is.
1:10:10 You should also consider that Craterhoof and Moonshaker's total damage output scale quadratically with your amount of bodies on the field, since every additional creature you have during the ETB gives each other creature +1/+1, and gains +X/+X itself from the others
With regards to arcane signet, it's important to remember that while a land is once per turn you can cast artifacts in addition to that. You aren't just fixing your colors, if you play a land on turn one, then a second land on turn to and cast an arcane signet, you go to turn three and play your land and then you are at 4 mana instead of the three that you would be at normally. Of course the ability to tap for any color that you need is important, but what's much more important is putting you essentially a turn ahead of what you would have been otherwise.
Fun fact, Rarran - Commander was originally called EDH or Elder Dragon *Highlander*. Originally, the format of only running one-ofs was called Highlander or Singleton. There wasn't really any support for it originally - it was just a format that people ran for fun. Much like Commander used to be (in that, it wasn't directly supported by WOTC and was a very casual format).
Rarran arguing that arcane signet is bad is so funny because wild growth is an auto include in a majority of HS druid decks and that gives you an *empty* mana crystal
@@PowerfulSkeleton yeah sorry next time I'll sit through an hour and twenty minutes of a video before I comment on a slightly funny interaction I saw ten minutes in to save you the indignity of having to be an annoying pedant
Normal people: Printer prices are a scam. They make the printers cheap but then get you with the price of the printer ink. TCG players: Printer ink is cheap
This video went deeper into the nuances of the color pie than most of these videos fo, and it's always a discussion I find fun to have with newer players. Made this one an especially fun watch!
this idea is widely disputed, as although there is no proof besides anecdotal evidence of tons of players in the 90s saying they called moxen/elves ramp, there's equally no proof that it's called ramp because of rampant growth. i lean towards the side that it doesn't come from rampant growth because ramp to describe increasing your mana ahead of curve already makes sense and using "ramp" as an abbreviation for rampant is strange and doesn't really match with other examples where slang arises from card names. like if a word from rampant growth would end up being used as slang for accelerating mana i would assume it would be growth
@@lesternomo6578 There's probably a fair bit of documented evidence that Rampant Growth wasn't popular until way too late for it to be the origin of such a fundamental feature of the game. Rampant growth wasn't even printed till the game was three years old so our group can't have been the only one that had a name for mana acceleration before then. While it's a year later the old name for Red Deck Wins was verifiably Sligh so if Ramp had been named after Rampant Growth there'd be recorded information about the name it used to have.
17:10 Sol Ring has also been reprinted about 100x more than Mana Crypt. Sol Ring would absolutely carry this same price tag if it wasn't reprinted into every single precon for every single set.
Looking at that Shudderwock poster in the background, one of the best commanders to start out with (I'm speaking from experience) is Yarok, the Desecrated. It's black, blue, green and doubles "enter the battlefield" effects (like Gray Merchant of Asphodel from the video).
Love your videos with cgb and ciiiiimo 😊 You 3 are great ambassadors for your respective games and the banter just keeps on getting better. I like trying to follow your train of thoughts from the perspective of the game you mainly play 👍
@10:40 "Fetch Lands" refers to Lands which sacrifice themselves to pull other lands from your deck, typically Basic Lands, sometimes lands with a Basic Land type including OG Dual Lands (the giga expensive ones) and the Ravnica "Shock" Lands" cycle. The common card Evolving Wilds would be an example of a Fetch Land for just Basic Lands.
I'm honestly surprised to see Diabolic Tutor at such a high price, it's generally considered unplayable. The reason why it's so bad isn't just Demonic Tutor, it's the fact that there are a lot of universal tutors in black all of which are better. Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Diabolic Intent, Grim Tutor, Beseech the Queen, Beseech the Mirror and the new Demonic Counsel are all tutors that do a very similar thing while allowing you to get more value on mana, making them much better.
I agree. Four dollars seems way overpriced. The only explanation I can think of is that people might buy them when they feel like they have to play some kind of tutor, but don't want to spend a lot for one of the better ones.
It's actually all about the consistency of a critical mass, especially in Commander. Players who want to run tutors want to run as many as they can, so that they _always_ have whatever they need whenever they need it. This kinda run counter to the entire spirit of a 100-card singleton format, but tryhards gotta tryhard.
I always love seeing videos like this because it puts my own commander gameplay into context of just how my circle is. The idea of "but the table will hate you" never occurs to us because we all play CEDH so you should ALWAYS be doing whats best to let you win. Also hearing people say "I played crypt (RIP my child) and the table killed me for it" is so funny because if im playing in a casual pod with people, if I play crypt it usually mean im killing you next turn if you cant stop me.
One of my favorite Commander plays was with Blasphemous Act in my Wayta deck. I had several of my creatures fight my Hungering Hydra before hitting a Blasphemous Act on the board. Some opposing creatures still survived, and my Hydra hit 1 toughness three times before gaining +1/+1 counters equal to the damage it lived through. Then I got to drop Chandra's Ignition targeting Hydra for 45 damage to all other creatures and other players instantly.
CGB did a great job introducing and explaining great staples for EDH! If you want a good „generic“ Dimir (Black/Blue) Commander i would suggest Talion, the Kindly Lord. But tbh Dimir has a great variety of Playstyles, reaching from Tribals like Ninjas, Zombies and Faeries to controlish Decks. Otherwise there are great Commanders fitting the Battlecry theme from Hearthstone (#Shudderwock). Examples are Yarok the Desecrated and Muldrotha the Gravetide (Both Blue/Black/Green)
Craterhoof is THE green wincon, you don't need an insane board of a million creatures to win with it, it takes a modest board and turns it into an instant win. But you don't play it early, you hold onto it until it gives you the kill.
39:00 To give more context a few things CGB didn't add in for it. Within those three colors there are tons of other massive removal that is cheaper and easier to cast overall. Sorcery speed is a pretty big downside compared to rift where rift you can cast on your opponent's end step before your turn to basically have an open field at the start of your turn with all your mana open for a massive follow up. (Also can react to the stack interaction which can be massive depending on context) The commanders within that colors normally have a theme of the deck that doesn't always allow that card to perfectly slot in without losing out other cards that are more important to your deck.
Note with Beast Within: You can target something you own with a leave the battlefield trigger or similar, and then create a 3/3 while also triggering that effect. Green tends to REALLY play with things entering/being created as well
I’m getting into commander myself. I actually got invited to go to my friends house tonight to go over cards and play. We started crafting me a Helga deck, with a bunch of flash creature spells to have say. All 3 decks have borrowed has been some version of green ramp. But I as these 7 minute turns play out. I’ve blew my load trying to scale. I get wiped for 31 damage on token flyers. Either way, perfectly timed video and was perfect for my hour car ride. Got to finish it on the drive back. This guy was way more enjoyable to watch here in his own element. And I love that he emphasizes playing for fun and table politics cause that’s what my friend advised to me.
If someone ever Island -> Mana Crypt -> Rhystic Studies me on turn 1 I'm scooping and going home lmao Also yeah I'm totally with you Rarran. Part of the fun of Commander is the singleton format so every game is different, if everyone has 5+ tutors in every deck then every deck is too consistent and every game feels the same and it kinda ruins the point.
For the kind of play style Rarran seems to be into, I’d recommend Araumi of the Dead Tide for a self mill graveyard-focused creature strategy, or Sygg, River Cutthroat for a more open ended card draw engine. I’ve seen Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator used as a black/blue spellslinger deck using black’s cheap “when target creature dies this turn, bring it back” effects to recur him and keep getting back instants and sorceries. It might be clunky for a first deck. All the popular zombie and faerie typal commanders are pretty cool if they’re appealing, too.
Fun fact: Gray Merchant of Asphodel saw quite a lot of play during its standard run because Mono Black Devotion was a really good deck with enchantments that cost 1BB along with creatures that cost BBB or 2BB. It went crazy.
Chaos warp is also very versatile for self targeting. If I build a deck that has heavy hitting creatures and i send a 1/1 goblin that i created using an instant to the library, I have decent odds of hitting a powerhouse or something more beneficial than the 1/1
Here’s a cool thing to think about Craterhoof: if I have only 3 creatures and I play Craterhoof. My entire team gets +4/+4 and the Craterhoof has haste and boost itself. That’s 25 burst damage out of no where and that’s not including the stats of the other minions or if you have more. It’s in green which is THE creature color. It has a low floor but HIGH ceiling
33:25 There is actually one Highlander deck in non-Commander: Lutri, the Spellchaser companion decks. But this has to be a check on your starting deck (like the most recent batch of Hearthstone highlander cards) and not your current deck because in a competitive format a judge might verify your starting deck is legal but you don't want to have to call them over to check if they've drawn all their duplicates.
Just an extra point in order to justify to Rarran, commander is NOT the only factor to a card price. Sure some cards are only really expensive because of commander but it's not the only factor. 53:27 Esper Sentinel was played a LOT in modern in Hammer decks and that has helped up it's price. Hammer is not that relevant anymore in the format because Modern Horizons 3 rotated the format again. 1:06:34 Craterhoof Behemoth is played in Legacy as well. I believe elves legacy was what played it more not so sure now. But having a couple of elves and Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle and Behemoth will end games really quickly - specially since 1 versus 1 you only need to get to 20 not 120 damage. 4~5 dorks on the table and you cast Behemoth the damage can go to 31 to 40+ easy. It's crazy when you can generate a lot of mana or cheat it out fast with Natural Order definitely not just a dumb Timmy card.
Something you really should have mentioned. Counterspell, not comparing to mana drain is still incredible. Mana drain is just THE best counterspell, but 2 mana for a counter target spell with no effects is a very good rate
If you’re playing Blue/Black I recommend The Scarab God, durable commander that lets you reanimate your guys (and theirs), is open to any sort of deck even though the card likes zombies in particular, and it’s really hard to kill. Playing a lot of removal then taking the stuff you kill is a ton of fun.
To be fair, some of these cards are expensive because they're also played in other formats. Esper Sentinel is/was played in a lot of other formats like Modern. Same with Mana Crypt (which is now banned).
@@calebmills6051 you’re right. Forgot it was banned in legacy. Still it’s played in almost every vintage deck. But Esper sentinel is definitely due to modern, even if it’s seeing less play there now since MH3
The thing about Vanquish the House is that a few months after they first printed it, Farewell was printed, which was so good that it drove Vanquish out of everybody's minds. I've even seen MTG Goldfish make a tier list of board wipes, forget to put Vanquish on the list, then mention that to make a better wipe in white that wasn't Farewell, it would have to be like Blasphemous Act!
Played my first game of commander yesterday. Just took a deck from a friend and went absolutely bananas. First turn Command Tower into Sol Ring into Arcane Signet. I don't need to know anything about the game to knew that those cards were absolutely insane.
I am so glad that CGB is teaching you that the "best" card in commander is not always the best card. The more powerful your deck, the more likely you will become the archenemy and just lose. There is a threshold where if your deck is powerful enough, you can confidently take on a 3v1, but that's not the norm.
if your deck has red you run Chaos Warp. It never makes the enemy mad and often gets rid of the most insane threats at a huge discount over damage effects
This is the best video I've seen yet. Please do more Commander staples or Commander focused cards. Maybe Planeswalkers as commanders or broke color wheel spells.
1:18:25 Black and blue control commander Nymris is great! Yout gonna be deciding what resolves and what dosen't while slowly developing your own board. ( you can also tilt voxie by just countering everything she would play since you will be playing a lot of control pieces with Nymris)
1:11:29 Oh my sweet summer child. Grey Merchant was a monster in standard. Though to be fair that standard was all about devotion, and black had a bunch of ridiculous enablers.
22:49 it's probably the best spot removal in the format, it's not just green but multicolor decks like blue black and red all struggle to deal with certain types of cards the coverage is important when you have as much variance as a 100 card deck.
Remember, the two main things you want in commander to get ahead. Card draw and ramp. Everything else is the game plan. With ramp and card draw you get to do it faster.
I think CGB missed to explain some things to Rarran at some points to make him evaluate things. Like that permanent means: Creature, Enchantment, Artifact, Land, Planeswalker and Battle. Or that even like just 6 1/1 tokens and craterhoof gives you 6 8/8 tramplers and a 12/12 trampler to attack with.
CGB kinda undersold Counterspell tbh. That card is from Alpha and was deemed too strong. They replaced it with Cancel going forward, which costs 1UU. OG Counterspell is still really good, it’s just not insanely busted like Mana Drain or the handful of free counterspells are. The fact that it’s outshined by so many other counterspells is WILD.
I cannot wait until Rarran is on the receiving end of "Do you pay the 1 | 2 ?" for Rhystic or Smothering for the first time. Imo there's a difference between a "true combo" and a "game-ending combo". It also depends on when in the game it happens. If it's been 2 turns and the game's over: lame, but okay time for game 2. If it's turns 5-10, fair enough. If it's turn 20+, then it depends way more on what type of combo it is. It can be a "nice play, a good end to a fun game" or "oh, it's over? Well that sucks". A "true combo" *feels* different in a multiplayer format b/c they don't interact with the opponent very much beyond protecting their combo pieces; in the most powerful combos, you barely allow your opponents the opportunity to interact by keeping the pieces in-hand, or generate infinite resources to suddenly overwhelm their ability to interact. "I play a creature that untaps lands and bounces itself; I now have infinite mana and kill all of you with infinite damage with Walking Balista". A "game-ending combo" is usually the culmination of a plan, or the result of coming out ahead in lots of interaction with opponents. E.g., "I spend all my mana/treasure tokens to cast a 'Draw X' spell while I have this 'Deal 1 damage to opponents for each card drawn' artifact on board; it's just enough to kill everyone".
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But they will never get my commander decks. I'm saving them forever.
Love that you can tell this video was filmed before the mana crypt ban lmao
It's $100.99 now, to save anyone else a google search
Yep. Clearly filmed pre ban
CGB at 35:13: "God I should have shown you some banned cards for your commander purchasing video, that would have been funny". It sure was CGB, it sure was.
we got a detective here
@@OctopiWalgreens honestly man this was supposed to be a comment that went and got lost in the sauce and now for some god forsaken reason it’s got 818 likes and I want to die
At some point Rarran just forgot that CGB is only showing good/staple cards and started to guess it they're actually bad
And CGB plays along, i think is the brainrot of rating cards xD
I guess they are all good vs. the whole card pool but good/bad relative to each other. Eg. Nature's Lore is way stronger than Rampant Growth.
I mean the demonic / diabolic tutor curveball was hella funny. "Why's this great card so cheap ?" "oh there's the same for half the price..."
Yeah, definitely gotta be the muscle memory of doing so many evaluations of cards.
he has no idea what’s being recorded lol
Rarran : Yeah I don't really want to make any enemies at the table, I'm already stressed enough about trying out commander for real.
Also Rarran : If it's below 2.0 on the salt scale I don't want it
THE FACE CGB MADE WHEN YOU CALLED CULTIVATE A FETCHLAND IS SO PRICELESS LMAOOOOO
"It fetches land, it's a fetch land!"
Wow Mana Crypt really dated the creation of this video
Exactly my thought xD 16:45 when was this recorded?!
They record pretty far in advance. The commander bans came out of nowhere so that video got fast tracked.
They must have produced this last month.
Pretty sure one of the videos of that CGB posted of the two of them, from a couple of weeks ago, even mentions that this video would date. I think he said they had recorded it just before the ban.
26:22 32% of all decks that include red and legally could, thats a huge thing in the stats you skipped there.
You can't show this man Rhystic Study and not explain the social ramifications of asking "do you want to pay the 1?" every 30 seconds
I mean, he figured it out as soon as he saw it.
@@PinetatoRaptor and if he doesn't, he'll find out soon enough. The pod is Voxy, Crim, and CGB for goodness sake. There's like a 200% chance of Rhystic Study dropping that afternoon
@@jamesaditya5254 Probably more than one.
@@jdgarrison9913 …yes, hence the "200%". =|
Friendly tip for Rarran/Editors! You can set Scryfall (in the Search Preferences settings) to Caster Mode to display all cards as transparent PNGs, or download individual images as PNGs by clicking a button below the card image in the Images and Data list. This will get rid of the little white corners around card images!
The main reason all those "destroy target permanent" spells were such prevalent staples is because unconditional spot removal that hits ANY permanent at 3 or less mana is really rare in the game.
Also color identity is a huge factor in commander. A card being colorless means it can be played in any deck, and good cards that fill a niche that are colorless will be a staple in any color that doesn't normally have access to that effect.
I think the biggest adjustment for Rarran is realizing what exactly a 'permanent' is, since Hearthstone doesn't really have that.
Imagine if removal in Hearthstone allowed the removing of mana crystals.
Yeah I cannot overstate how good Beast Within/ Generous Gift are because they can deal with problematic lands, enchantments, and artifacts. The higher mana cost is worth having more cards that can deal with Cabal Coffers and Maze of Ith
It's basically instant speed vindicate
wanted to comment this, something that I don't think was explained really at all.
0:31 MY BOY GOT SPONSORED BY A CARD MARKET, GET THAT BAG BRO
Finally! Decktracker us coming up?!
@Dreadnote-pf7of no way, he's gotta pay for magic cards now
Fun Fact about Mana Crypt: It was never actually intended to be a legal, playable card.
It was a promo you got for buying a book back in the 90s that wasn't allowed to be played.
BUT when Vintage became a thing, they allowed ANY Magic card ever printed, including promos like this. And Commander was created off that same card pool of allowing every card, so it wound up being legal there.
Teferis Protection is an incredible card, but I really like the lore behind. Teferi, an incredible powerful chronomancer, used a spell to remove his homeland of zalphir from the plane of domination to protect it from an invasion, he literally phased it out of existence. However the spell went a bit too well you could say and Zalphir spent the next couple of thousand years in complete isolation, removed from the timestream, with Teferi being unable to locate it and phase it back in.
Do you ever forget where you put a thing? Well, Teferi outdid whatever you misplaced that way.
It's Zhalfir and Dominaria, but you're right.
At least it made for a prety epic comeback moment in the story.
@@FluffySpikeM Domination was Auto corrected and I didn‘t catch it and I didn‘t know how Zhalfir was written.
35:19 "I really should've shown you some banned cards from for your commander purchasing video" 20 minutes after showing mana crypt x3
15:20 also, talismans have a significant advantage over signets (excluding Arcane Signet) in that they can tap for mana immediately, without the need of extra mana. This matters if you want to cast another 1 mana spell right after, which you couldn't with a signet.
1:00:47 a fellow appreciator of Slip Out the Back! I too absolutely love this card.
This ^
also if you need double of a single color for the spell potentially bc signets make one of each instead of letting you "pick"
Tapping for colorless can also be an upside - eg Eldrazi Displacer
You mean Slip OOT the back?
I felt my brain twisting into a pretzel when Rarran said you would only see hoof/cavalry played when it would win you the game during the section of the video talking specifically about how you win the game. Like, my brother in Christ, that is THE POINT.
I understood his thought process after he said he was trying to look at it from the HS lens of drawn WR. Craterhoof is not a card you would ever cast and just get a 6/6 in the scenario Rarrarn mentioned, unless you're really desperate and need a blocker to stay alive. I don't think he quite understands that in commander you would just hold a card like that until you can actually close it out. It's really not that hard with it, either, because all you need is like 5-6 creatures and that usually does it from all the accumulated chip damage everyone has had over the game.
@@totakekeslider3835I think he was severely underestimating how aggressively hoof scales.
At 3 creatures, hoof adds 21 power.
At 4, 30 power.
At 5, 41 power.
At 10, hoof adds 126 power to the board.
Also missing I think is the context that green is really good at making tons of creatures.
And it can cast the craterhoof far sooner than any of the other wincons.@@fatpad00
He is still right, if everyone runs boardwipes AND spot removal you'll never get a good hoof board. In his vision everyone has all the boardwipes and swords that were shown to him.
He just doesn't understand that there rarely is a pod with 2 control players
@@irou95 I mean, at least to me, it makes sense to spare like a slot or two for a boardwipe in any deck that can have them, just so you arent completely out of options. But yes, people wont always have the wrath, or the removal, or w/e and you just get ran the fuck over by craterhoof. It's probably a matter of not being able to properly conceive it until he gets his ass whipped by it.
The biggest reason a lot of these spot removal cards are played is because they're *instant-speed* removal. Getting rid of an opponent's thing on your turn is fine, but getting rid of it on *their* turn really messes with people's plans
love that Rarran explains what highlander means to a commander player, but tbf I didnt know what EDH meant for a while as well
1:06:40 "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go into a Commander game with a 1v1 mindset!"
Never upset to hear these references.
CGB is always so brutal just letting Rarran struggle with the card names every time 😭
Part of the reason Craterhoof Behemoth is good -- and something CGB barely covered -- is that green has a handful of effects that tutor creature cards to the battlefield. The play pattern is that you build up a board of let's say 7 creatures, then you cast a Green Sun's Zenith to grab Craterhoof and give all of your creatures +8/+8 and trample. Craterhoof itself will be a 13/13 with trample and haste.
There are three main reasons Moonshaker Cavalry is worse than Craterhoof Behemoth, outside of not being as easily tutored:
- It doesn't have haste, so it can't attack the turn it enters.
- Flying is often worse than trample, since opponents can chump block with a handful of small, cheap fliers, while trample runs over everything that doesn't have high toughness. Some value creatures have flying. Most don't have a big butt.
- Giving your team flying in white is often worse than giving your team trample in green, just because more strong white creatures have flying already than good green creatures having trample.
@@SmashPortal The long and short of it is: Craterhoof just ends the game no questions asked. For every other finisher out there you usually need to do the math. For hoof the math is "yes"
@@skuamato7886 The answer to "How many elves/squirrels/saprolings/insects do you have?" is always "Enough."
@@SmashPortal Green also has an easier time getting to 8 mana, which is a big part of the equation
It's hard to understate how difficult it is to cast Ruinous Ultimatum, even in Mardu in order to cast it you need highly specific mana and that severely holds the card back. It's undeniably powerful and can be game winning, but if you spend all those resources and it gets counterspelled or people successfully protect their permanents (which frankly isn't very hard) you've been put massively behind. The difference between RRWWWBB and 6U is massive especially combined with instant speed effectively allowing you to Cyclonic Rift when no one can play their cards until you've had a turn with all your permanents and mana. Another aspect of this means that Cyclonic Rift being in your deck, not even in your hand, acts as pseudo removal as very few people are going to take aggressive actions against a blue deck with 7 mana up because they might just Rift everything away. Simply by standing there with 7 mana open you are going to change how people play their turns and force them to avoid investing into the board.
In my play group we banned Cyclonic Rift because unless someone responds with exactly Teferi's Protection there is a very, very good chance that you just win the game.
Yeah, I was so confused when CGB said they had the same cost. I get that Rarran only said that it looked like it cost more, but not even considering the sol ring and mana crypt they’d already covered, it’s just so much easier to get unspecified mana.
3 white on Ruinous is the strongest sticking point. Imagine if it was just split red/black with all the rituals you could hit with it.
I feel like it wouldn't be too hard with all the fun lands we have nowadays
You have alternate options to Teferi's Protection, such as Clever Concealment & March of Swirling Mist, mass blink effects like Ghostway, generic counterspells, or blue hate like Red Elemental Blast. Rift is good, but it has more counter play these days than most people think.
@drt4527 The issue with the flicker effects is that while they protect your board, they don't protect you, which usually just results in you dying before your permanents phase back in.
Counterspells obviously help, but outside an extremely small number of them in red and white, they exist almost exclusively in blue. This only ended up exacerbating the problem, which is part of the reason why I voted to ban it.
Esper Sentinel is like a 1 mana Panner that draws you 3 cards rather than 1 at the end of your turn
Yeah i feel like he hasn't got the fact yet that these effects are 3 times better than in 1 on 1 just due to the number of players.
@@Yammenkow And even then Esper Sentinel is a modern playable card. Maybe a bit less so nowadays, but it's far from unplayable.
I love all of you two's collabs, you just have a chemistry that really sings
Beast within hits ANY permanent. That includes artifacts and LANDS. Beast within is one of the best removal spells in commander. Also see Generous Gift.
Was looking for this. If you're in white and/or green you don't care about the extra cost and you prefer the 3/3 over ramping them. Always run them if I can even with black. Creatures don't tend to be the biggest threat in the first place so spot removal needs flexibility above all.
I've gifted myself when all I draw is a dork and need something to kill a weak but annoying card
@@TodesnussYes and if you just wanted creature removal, there is the 2 mana Kenrith’s Transformation. Just a narrower card (with its own niche of keeping the creature out of the graveyard).
Unless your deck operates at instant speed, holding up 3 mana is asking a lot from most decks & can make cards like Beast Within feel more like a sorcery. That's why more efficient, but narrower removal is typically better. It does depend on the speed of your meta, though, as the more expensive cards get better in slower games.
@@drt4527 I feel i don't need to play removal in the first 4 or 5 turns most games. And after turn 6, in a green deck with beast within, I should have 2 or 3 more mana available and keeping up removal and playing on curve becomes the gameplan for myself.
Rarran: "I don't know about Grey Merchant for standard"
RtR-Theros standard: *smiles awkwardly*
(Gary was part of arguably the best deck of that standard format)
Black devotion got banned in the two headed giant games at my local store.
We miss RtR Theros standard 💔
The argument for etb-removal on creatures is: you can blink/reanimate creatures and reuse the etb.
This^ phelia + ravenous chupacabra is so good
The irony of "god, i should've shown you some banned cards for your commander purchasing video" and then
Chaos Warp has a ton of play at my LGS! A fair few people play theft decks. Chaos Warp makes the OWNER, not the controller shuffle it back in.
So not only do you get your thing back into your deck, you are also the one who reveals! Feels good.
I think Chaos Warp is one of those cards where people get caught up on only using on your opponents cards. I think it's easy for a newer player to not understand you can use it on your own stuff, such as on your own 1/1 goblin to try and get lucky and hit something to save you on the spot. Reliable? Hell no. Was hoping CGB would bring that angle up, but maybe best to leave out as Rarran learns more about the game.
I love to chaos warp my own Goblin Token just for the hope I get something better out of it in an emergency :D
Rarran will learn about the hoof we all learned the hard way.
Rarran: 2 mana Wild growth is a really good card
Also Rarran: Arcane Signet is trash (Literally same effect)
Edit: looks like he realized it later in the video!
💀
And arcane signet gets a full mana crystal instead of an empty one
I think he still had Sol Ring on the brain and was comparing the two without thinking too much about the fact that Sol Ring is an aberration.
@@Verse28 And it can tap for Any color instead of just One.
When I first got back into magic, ramp and artifacts like signets, talismans, sol ring, etc. were one of the hardest things for me to understand the value of. Why would I take a turn off to develop an artifact when I could play a cool two drop creature and hit people in the face? But you quickly realize how vital it is to have a large mana base so you can cast all your really big, really cool stuff that actually gets you closer to winning the game while leaving mana open for interaction and whatnot. Excited to see Rarran getting into Commander!
Why ramp when you can cast thassa's oracle into demonic consultation /s
Opposite problem for me, when I got into magic I lost my mind at ramp spells. I came from a card game where 3 mana ramp 1 would’ve been meta BREAKING.
@Dragostorm21 so that you can keep up the 15 free counter spells in hand obviously /s
One thing CGB missed I think, is that Beast within hits any permanent, not just creatures. It brings the same flexibility as Assassin's Trophy, but it only gives your opponent a 3/3, something that is entirely forgettable in commander and something that you, as a green deck, really don't have to worry about.
Also, Blue has many 1 mana ways to deal with creatures
Slip Out The Back is an uncommon that just rotated out of standard, if it was more than 2 bucks the mtg economy would be even more screwed than it already is.
1:10:10 You should also consider that Craterhoof and Moonshaker's total damage output scale quadratically with your amount of bodies on the field, since every additional creature you have during the ETB gives each other creature +1/+1, and gains +X/+X itself from the others
With regards to arcane signet, it's important to remember that while a land is once per turn you can cast artifacts in addition to that. You aren't just fixing your colors, if you play a land on turn one, then a second land on turn to and cast an arcane signet, you go to turn three and play your land and then you are at 4 mana instead of the three that you would be at normally. Of course the ability to tap for any color that you need is important, but what's much more important is putting you essentially a turn ahead of what you would have been otherwise.
Fun fact, Rarran - Commander was originally called EDH or Elder Dragon *Highlander*. Originally, the format of only running one-ofs was called Highlander or Singleton. There wasn't really any support for it originally - it was just a format that people ran for fun. Much like Commander used to be (in that, it wasn't directly supported by WOTC and was a very casual format).
Rarran arguing that arcane signet is bad is so funny because wild growth is an auto include in a majority of HS druid decks and that gives you an *empty* mana crystal
Yeah, I don't get it. Seems easy to make the comparison
I have to assume he was simply comparing it to Sol Ring, and didn't realize that card is an outlier
@@alicetheaxolotl Or any of the handful of better ramp out there that is better.
If you watch the video before you comment, you'll find out CGB points this out and makes him admit it's good!
@@PowerfulSkeleton yeah sorry next time I'll sit through an hour and twenty minutes of a video before I comment on a slightly funny interaction I saw ten minutes in to save you the indignity of having to be an annoying pedant
16:27 well not anymore 😂
That didn't age well 😅
Just remember, printer ink is cheaper
Normal people: Printer prices are a scam. They make the printers cheap but then get you with the price of the printer ink.
TCG players: Printer ink is cheap
the wildest thing to remember about rhystic study is that it was a common
And so is Mystic Remora. They're the only 2 cards banned in Pauper Commander.
It only saw play in commander. Nobody gave a damn about it in standard and commander wasn't really a thing at the time.
This video went deeper into the nuances of the color pie than most of these videos fo, and it's always a discussion I find fun to have with newer players. Made this one an especially fun watch!
I'm surprised you didn't bring up that "Rampant Growth" *is where the term 'Ramp' comes from.*
this idea is widely disputed, as although there is no proof besides anecdotal evidence of tons of players in the 90s saying they called moxen/elves ramp, there's equally no proof that it's called ramp because of rampant growth. i lean towards the side that it doesn't come from rampant growth because ramp to describe increasing your mana ahead of curve already makes sense and using "ramp" as an abbreviation for rampant is strange and doesn't really match with other examples where slang arises from card names. like if a word from rampant growth would end up being used as slang for accelerating mana i would assume it would be growth
We were saying ramp much before rampant growth even existed@@lesternomo6578
@@lesternomo6578 There's probably a fair bit of documented evidence that Rampant Growth wasn't popular until way too late for it to be the origin of such a fundamental feature of the game. Rampant growth wasn't even printed till the game was three years old so our group can't have been the only one that had a name for mana acceleration before then. While it's a year later the old name for Red Deck Wins was verifiably Sligh so if Ramp had been named after Rampant Growth there'd be recorded information about the name it used to have.
Fun Fact: Stasis will prevent things from phasing in as things phase at the beginning of the untap step and stasis has players skipping the step.
17:10 Sol Ring has also been reprinted about 100x more than Mana Crypt. Sol Ring would absolutely carry this same price tag if it wasn't reprinted into every single precon for every single set.
Itd arguably be more expensive
Looking at that Shudderwock poster in the background, one of the best commanders to start out with (I'm speaking from experience) is Yarok, the Desecrated.
It's black, blue, green and doubles "enter the battlefield" effects (like Gray Merchant of Asphodel from the video).
Rarran seems interested in black and blue, perhaps it is the time for Crim to take a disciple.
Love your videos with cgb and ciiiiimo 😊
You 3 are great ambassadors for your respective games and the banter just keeps on getting better. I like trying to follow your train of thoughts from the perspective of the game you mainly play 👍
@10:40 "Fetch Lands" refers to Lands which sacrifice themselves to pull other lands from your deck, typically Basic Lands, sometimes lands with a Basic Land type including OG Dual Lands (the giga expensive ones) and the Ravnica "Shock" Lands" cycle.
The common card Evolving Wilds would be an example of a Fetch Land for just Basic Lands.
I'm honestly surprised to see Diabolic Tutor at such a high price, it's generally considered unplayable. The reason why it's so bad isn't just Demonic Tutor, it's the fact that there are a lot of universal tutors in black all of which are better. Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Diabolic Intent, Grim Tutor, Beseech the Queen, Beseech the Mirror and the new Demonic Counsel are all tutors that do a very similar thing while allowing you to get more value on mana, making them much better.
I agree. Four dollars seems way overpriced. The only explanation I can think of is that people might buy them when they feel like they have to play some kind of tutor, but don't want to spend a lot for one of the better ones.
It's actually all about the consistency of a critical mass, especially in Commander. Players who want to run tutors want to run as many as they can, so that they _always_ have whatever they need whenever they need it. This kinda run counter to the entire spirit of a 100-card singleton format, but tryhards gotta tryhard.
I love rarran thinking arcane signet is trash but considers wild growth insane
He didn't when that comparison come up
@@Elidan1012 I know but the sudden realization made it even better
Gary merchant of Asphodel crushed Standard in its time in the spotlight.
I always love seeing videos like this because it puts my own commander gameplay into context of just how my circle is. The idea of "but the table will hate you" never occurs to us because we all play CEDH so you should ALWAYS be doing whats best to let you win. Also hearing people say "I played crypt (RIP my child) and the table killed me for it" is so funny because if im playing in a casual pod with people, if I play crypt it usually mean im killing you next turn if you cant stop me.
One of my favorite Commander plays was with Blasphemous Act in my Wayta deck. I had several of my creatures fight my Hungering Hydra before hitting a Blasphemous Act on the board. Some opposing creatures still survived, and my Hydra hit 1 toughness three times before gaining +1/+1 counters equal to the damage it lived through. Then I got to drop Chandra's Ignition targeting Hydra for 45 damage to all other creatures and other players instantly.
This is an awesome video idea! Rarran, tbh you have really been stepping it up lately and im so hear for it.
oh man getting hyped and more hyped for rarran to play a commander game
wait this is the wrong channel
CGB did a great job introducing and explaining great staples for EDH!
If you want a good „generic“ Dimir (Black/Blue) Commander i would suggest Talion, the Kindly Lord.
But tbh Dimir has a great variety of Playstyles, reaching from Tribals like Ninjas, Zombies and Faeries to controlish Decks.
Otherwise there are great Commanders fitting the Battlecry theme from Hearthstone (#Shudderwock). Examples are Yarok the Desecrated and Muldrotha the Gravetide (Both Blue/Black/Green)
34:42 _When you cyclonic rift_
_overload it like like that_
_I just have to admit_
_that it's all coming back to me now_
Ram Ranch and the Falcon woooo!
Always love these two and their dynamic.
Craterhoof is THE green wincon, you don't need an insane board of a million creatures to win with it, it takes a modest board and turns it into an instant win. But you don't play it early, you hold onto it until it gives you the kill.
39:00 To give more context a few things CGB didn't add in for it. Within those three colors there are tons of other massive removal that is cheaper and easier to cast overall. Sorcery speed is a pretty big downside compared to rift where rift you can cast on your opponent's end step before your turn to basically have an open field at the start of your turn with all your mana open for a massive follow up. (Also can react to the stack interaction which can be massive depending on context) The commanders within that colors normally have a theme of the deck that doesn't always allow that card to perfectly slot in without losing out other cards that are more important to your deck.
Note with Beast Within: You can target something you own with a leave the battlefield trigger or similar, and then create a 3/3 while also triggering that effect. Green tends to REALLY play with things entering/being created as well
I’m getting into commander myself. I actually got invited to go to my friends house tonight to go over cards and play.
We started crafting me a Helga deck, with a bunch of flash creature spells to have say.
All 3 decks have borrowed has been some version of green ramp. But I as these 7 minute turns play out. I’ve blew my load trying to scale. I get wiped for 31 damage on token flyers.
Either way, perfectly timed video and was perfect for my hour car ride. Got to finish it on the drive back.
This guy was way more enjoyable to watch here in his own element.
And I love that he emphasizes playing for fun and table politics cause that’s what my friend advised to me.
Did Rarran think of this content idea? Love seeing different card game communities coming together to make content.
If someone ever Island -> Mana Crypt -> Rhystic Studies me on turn 1 I'm scooping and going home lmao
Also yeah I'm totally with you Rarran. Part of the fun of Commander is the singleton format so every game is different, if everyone has 5+ tutors in every deck then every deck is too consistent and every game feels the same and it kinda ruins the point.
Black + Blue + Expropriate = Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. (If the table's gonna hate you anyway, might as well go all the way 😂)
For the kind of play style Rarran seems to be into, I’d recommend Araumi of the Dead Tide for a self mill graveyard-focused creature strategy, or Sygg, River Cutthroat for a more open ended card draw engine. I’ve seen Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator used as a black/blue spellslinger deck using black’s cheap “when target creature dies this turn, bring it back” effects to recur him and keep getting back instants and sorceries. It might be clunky for a first deck. All the popular zombie and faerie typal commanders are pretty cool if they’re appealing, too.
Fun fact: Gray Merchant of Asphodel saw quite a lot of play during its standard run because Mono Black Devotion was a really good deck with enchantments that cost 1BB along with creatures that cost BBB or 2BB. It went crazy.
❤ ty for this collaboration to happen back then. Love cgb + rirri
CGB did a REALLY great job of explaining edh psychology and gameplay to explain the reason why these cards are played. Kudos
Chaos warp is also very versatile for self targeting. If I build a deck that has heavy hitting creatures and i send a 1/1 goblin that i created using an instant to the library, I have decent odds of hitting a powerhouse or something more beneficial than the 1/1
Here’s a cool thing to think about Craterhoof: if I have only 3 creatures and I play Craterhoof. My entire team gets +4/+4 and the Craterhoof has haste and boost itself. That’s 25 burst damage out of no where and that’s not including the stats of the other minions or if you have more. It’s in green which is THE creature color. It has a low floor but HIGH ceiling
33:25 There is actually one Highlander deck in non-Commander: Lutri, the Spellchaser companion decks. But this has to be a check on your starting deck (like the most recent batch of Hearthstone highlander cards) and not your current deck because in a competitive format a judge might verify your starting deck is legal but you don't want to have to call them over to check if they've drawn all their duplicates.
CGB is truly turning Rarran into the villain of the table, converting him to Dimir. I can't wait to hear Rarran say 'do you pay the one'
Just an extra point in order to justify to Rarran, commander is NOT the only factor to a card price. Sure some cards are only really expensive because of commander but it's not the only factor.
53:27 Esper Sentinel was played a LOT in modern in Hammer decks and that has helped up it's price. Hammer is not that relevant anymore in the format because Modern Horizons 3 rotated the format again.
1:06:34 Craterhoof Behemoth is played in Legacy as well. I believe elves legacy was what played it more not so sure now. But having a couple of elves and Natural Order or Gaea's Cradle and Behemoth will end games really quickly - specially since 1 versus 1 you only need to get to 20 not 120 damage. 4~5 dorks on the table and you cast Behemoth the damage can go to 31 to 40+ easy. It's crazy when you can generate a lot of mana or cheat it out fast with Natural Order definitely not just a dumb Timmy card.
I can get behind you on Esper Sentinel in modern, but there’s no way that legacy is pushing the Craterhoof price in any measurable way.
1:11:37 and oh my, this card brings me back so many 2014 standard memories, sweet feeling of being a newbie on the game
Something you really should have mentioned.
Counterspell, not comparing to mana drain is still incredible.
Mana drain is just THE best counterspell, but 2 mana for a counter target spell with no effects is a very good rate
If you’re playing Blue/Black I recommend The Scarab God, durable commander that lets you reanimate your guys (and theirs), is open to any sort of deck even though the card likes zombies in particular, and it’s really hard to kill. Playing a lot of removal then taking the stuff you kill is a ton of fun.
To be fair, some of these cards are expensive because they're also played in other formats. Esper Sentinel is/was played in a lot of other formats like Modern. Same with Mana Crypt (which is now banned).
Crypt is only played in cube and previously commander
@@calebmills6051 you’re right. Forgot it was banned in legacy. Still it’s played in almost every vintage deck. But Esper sentinel is definitely due to modern, even if it’s seeing less play there now since MH3
@@calebmills6051 Commonly played in Vintage.
@@christopherlundgren1700 oh yeah true
Rarran correctly identifies Craterhoof as a timmy win more card before realizing what format he's talking about
It's also a wincon in legacy elf decks, so not really true.
32:40 You have seen it one more time now, with Crim's Charix living through Rarran's own Blasphemous Act!
I am so ready for this commander game. This feels like I'm watching the Marvel movies and the commander game is an Avengers movie.
Rarran: “Wild Growth is broken at 2 mana”
Also Rarran: “Arcane signet seems like garbage”
The thing about Vanquish the House is that a few months after they first printed it, Farewell was printed, which was so good that it drove Vanquish out of everybody's minds. I've even seen MTG Goldfish make a tier list of board wipes, forget to put Vanquish on the list, then mention that to make a better wipe in white that wasn't Farewell, it would have to be like Blasphemous Act!
Played my first game of commander yesterday. Just took a deck from a friend and went absolutely bananas.
First turn Command Tower into Sol Ring into Arcane Signet. I don't need to know anything about the game to knew that those cards were absolutely insane.
Arcane denial is another really good counterspell in the format! A bit easier to cast and replaces itself
This because it doesn't you disavantage when dealing with the other two players.
Giving a free card to a player you just countered is a terrible idea. Youre already pissing them off by countering their thing.
I am so glad that CGB is teaching you that the "best" card in commander is not always the best card. The more powerful your deck, the more likely you will become the archenemy and just lose. There is a threshold where if your deck is powerful enough, you can confidently take on a 3v1, but that's not the norm.
if your deck has red you run Chaos Warp. It never makes the enemy mad and often gets rid of the most insane threats at a huge discount over damage effects
This is the best video I've seen yet. Please do more Commander staples or Commander focused cards. Maybe Planeswalkers as commanders or broke color wheel spells.
1:18:25
Black and blue control commander Nymris is great! Yout gonna be deciding what resolves and what dosen't while slowly developing your own board. ( you can also tilt voxie by just countering everything she would play since you will be playing a lot of control pieces with Nymris)
1:11:29 Oh my sweet summer child. Grey Merchant was a monster in standard. Though to be fair that standard was all about devotion, and black had a bunch of ridiculous enablers.
22:49 it's probably the best spot removal in the format, it's not just green but multicolor decks like blue black and red all struggle to deal with certain types of cards the coverage is important when you have as much variance as a 100 card deck.
Remember, the two main things you want in commander to get ahead. Card draw and ramp. Everything else is the game plan. With ramp and card draw you get to do it faster.
It is kinda funny seeing a cardtrader ad on this channel🤣
I think CGB missed to explain some things to Rarran at some points to make him evaluate things.
Like that permanent means: Creature, Enchantment, Artifact, Land, Planeswalker and Battle.
Or that even like just 6 1/1 tokens and craterhoof gives you 6 8/8 tramplers and a 12/12 trampler to attack with.
CGB kinda undersold Counterspell tbh. That card is from Alpha and was deemed too strong. They replaced it with Cancel going forward, which costs 1UU. OG Counterspell is still really good, it’s just not insanely busted like Mana Drain or the handful of free counterspells are. The fact that it’s outshined by so many other counterspells is WILD.
I cannot wait until Rarran is on the receiving end of "Do you pay the 1 | 2 ?" for Rhystic or Smothering for the first time.
Imo there's a difference between a "true combo" and a "game-ending combo". It also depends on when in the game it happens.
If it's been 2 turns and the game's over: lame, but okay time for game 2. If it's turns 5-10, fair enough. If it's turn 20+, then it depends way more on what type of combo it is. It can be a "nice play, a good end to a fun game" or "oh, it's over? Well that sucks".
A "true combo" *feels* different in a multiplayer format b/c they don't interact with the opponent very much beyond protecting their combo pieces; in the most powerful combos, you barely allow your opponents the opportunity to interact by keeping the pieces in-hand, or generate infinite resources to suddenly overwhelm their ability to interact. "I play a creature that untaps lands and bounces itself; I now have infinite mana and kill all of you with infinite damage with Walking Balista".
A "game-ending combo" is usually the culmination of a plan, or the result of coming out ahead in lots of interaction with opponents. E.g., "I spend all my mana/treasure tokens to cast a 'Draw X' spell while I have this 'Deal 1 damage to opponents for each card drawn' artifact on board; it's just enough to kill everyone".
Rarran was actually doing pretty well with guessing the price or how good it is until he got to the win conditions 😂
"Imagine if i show you banned cards for your commander deck"
Mana cryp: excuse me.