MTG Top 10: Mechanics that DOMINATED Multiple Formats | Magic: the Gathering | Episode 273
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- This video is sponsored by CardKingdom! Check out their awesome store here: www.cardkingdom.com/?...
Want to see me draft live? You can on Twitch! / nizzahon
Want to support the channel? You can on Patreon!: / nizzahon_magic
Follow me on Twitter for channel updates and other Magic musings: / nizzahonmagic
Animations by Mike from Mythic Tales. Find his channel filled with awesome MTG animation here: / radiocommand
I Can Feel it Coming Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com )
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b... - เกม
I love how many times he goes over a couple really powerful cards, says "but these aren't the cards that were the real problem", and proceeds to start talking about blue cards.
Islands should be banned tbh
Yes blue is a problem. Avid blue fan
@@tomaszurbanowicz1559 That would still leave room for Mental Misstep and Gitaxian Probe.
@@tomaszurbanowicz1559 Or your learn to adapt and overcome. But that would require work on your part, right? Better to ban a whole part of the colour pie. While we're at it, let's ban green, because it has gotten a really strong power creep recently. Let's also ban black, because it has removal and discard and I don't want to lose my precious creatures and hand cards. Let's ban white, because it has exile removal, mass removal and tax effects and these are annoying and also make me lose creatures and not be able to fully play the game how I want to. Let's ban red, because it has burn spells and often plays very fast games and I don't want to lose on turn 3 or 4.
@@ThorsShadow Or you could learn to take a joke.
Imagina having to ban a card in Vintage for Power Level reasons. In a format where turn 1 wins are possible.
Thanks, Lurrus!
It's kinda like that feeling of being able to play Wrenn and Six in Modern, which you can't even do in Legacy
@@TheMCGamer2012 Seems I also can't do correct spelling. :D It's "Imagine", not "Imagina". Maybe Wreen and Six can correct it. I don't want to edit when already someone replied.
Well to be fair it's because of the nature of the mechanic. Thought to be fair going black lotus lurrus black lotus is the fault of lotus more than lurrus
Shadow Gamer I mean, it’s still lurrus’s fault for starting in the opening hand
@@TheMCGamer2012 but that's only because Wasteland isn't available in Modern.
Phyrexian mana is a bit of a weird one, because normally when a mechanic is powerful, we start to see lots of decks created specifically to focus on it. Phyrexian mana didn't create its own decks, it just made everything you could already do way faster, easier, more consistent and more powerful.
which is oddly enough, very phyrexian
To this day, I dont understand why phrexian mana replace colored mana and not generic
@@laszlokaszas1003 Man, I laughed out loud. For real, that would fix a lot of its problems. Respect the Color Pie!
Also phyrexian mana doesn't mean it's free. It still cost you life though paying 2 life is much cheaper than using mana, but still isn't free.
"I misstep your misstep with my misstep."
"I misstep your misstep targeting my misstep with my misstep."
"I misstep your misstep targeting my misstep targeting your misstep with my misstep."
That was a..... Misstep from you
Still, restricting a card like Misstep is dumb beyond repair. It polices cards like Ancestral, Ponder, Brainstorm and other things that can enable wins immediately so whoever can randomly find their one of MM in the correct spot gains an immense upside. Just don't make the game Yugioh. Just... don't
Then I cast Grapeshot 😂🙊🤮
@@Finngrinder You're not wrong, but vintage is inherently unbalanced and can never really be balanced by design since as you rightfully point out the primary tool for reigning in overpowered cards is to just make it more random as to whether or not you draw them in any given game. I'm not going to say it's right or wrong to restrict misstep since I'm not even qualified to be considered a novice in the format so that could still be a conversation worth having, but the idea that vintage will ever be anything but MTG's equivalent of Yugioh is just silly.
Grapeshot
When the errata came down, I showed my brother the companions and asked him which one was banned in vintage. (He used to play vintage, but hadn't played any MTG since Alara block)
He immediately pointed to Lurris and said "this thing is a 0 mana 3/2 lifelinker that draws you a card, loops Black Lotus', and always starts in your opening hand, regardless of mulligan level. How the f@#& do you miss this thing?"
Yeah, Wizards. How *DID* you miss that?
Oh mark knew that companion was bad since 2015 even back during the late 90's he knew this was a bad idea. So he needs to be fired and Aaron Forsythe as well for letting this go through.
@@volk551 Mark isnt on play design
@@Argetbrisingr101 As he's wont to point out, he *is* in charge of throwing out ideas for Play Design to work with, and companion is his idea.
@@jproductions1739 But Companion isn't OP in itself, look at Umori or Lutri, or even kerruga , they cause no problem in any format as far as I know (well , maybe lutri in Vintage , but that's not really a fair argument imo)
Sees title: "I wonder what Storm cards will be shown. It's usually Tendrils of Agony."
precisely
Infect was really two mechanics together, poison counter and wither. That's why I always hated it.
Honestly I wonder if infect would still be as powerful without the wither part
@@tomaszurbanowicz1559 Exactly, it punishes you for blocking a mechanic that kills you twice faster than normal damage
In theory that totally didn't work, it's supposed to be worse than poison counters because it doesn't do regular damage as well.
@@tomaszurbanowicz1559 Without wither, many of the cards would have been awful in Limited, and would be about the same in formats that try to win in the very first few turns.
But unlike poison, no damage was done to the player. So if the Infect plan didn't work, you couldn't rely on damage. Your opponent would still be at 20 life. That's partly why Infect decks weren't that strong in Standard at the time (the other reason being just better decks like Valakut or a million Caw Blade variants, hell even Tempered Steel was much better).
I think that it's hilarious that during Ikoria spoiler season a lot of the kids said that meeting the deck building requirements for Companions would not be worth it
Nobody really said that.
If anyone really said that then they never experienced Witchwood Hearthstone meta
I was one of the kids. I thought in most cases it's not worth it and nobody would play it. Just shows there is still a lot to learn about the game for me
@@IvarTheBonerless lots of people did, fans just don't want to admit they're hot garbage at evaluating cards and just wanna feel superior to wizards
@@KirioGameNote I feel that so freaking hard. start-of-game was so busted in hearthstone, i don't understand how wotc thought they could get their version balanced. the companions, pre-mechanic nerf, were always going to be either unplayable garbage or busted nonsense, no in-between possible
Flying is a pretty dominant mechanic. I'd like to see a list of the GP&PTQ top 8s that didn't have at least one creature with flying in the 600 cards they had.
I mean, there isn't any other mechanic that was so powerful that another mechanic had to be created with the only purpouse of it being an answer.
@@MM-pu8hc Reach's purpose is not to keep flying in check, at least not in constructed.
Very few constructed decks run reach creatures.
共産ロリ what is the purpose of card text that reads "can block flying creatures" if not to block flying creatures? Cards with reach aren't typically good, but that's what they exist for.
@@cutecommie I mean...I know this is a 9 month old comment, but what the heck else is Reach's purpose if not to block flyers? lol
'Which formats?'
"All of them'
Even Pauper that isn't a regular format for DCI champs
Pauper was affected by delve but not companion (as far as I know).
@@cutecommie I don't think it couldbe affected to be honest
Alternate Title: Top 10 Storm Scale 😆
Nick Balmes I mean, if done correctly, delve, affinity, infect, and cascade are fine to come back and maybe even all of them they just have to be careful.
@@shatterspree4123 delve is just stupid, it is not really a hethy mechanic. Cascade would be cool for sure. Affinity (especially to interesting new things instead of artifacts) can be reasonable balanced too and infect should like hexproof not be on 1-drops
A problem with infect is also that it is entirely parasitic. You'll usually want either all or none of your creatures to have infect.
Alternate title: Companion & Storm
@@Ninjamanhammer OR just run Inkmoth and deal 10 in one swing, lol
Phyrexian Mana is an idea that I just can't see how that got past R&D at all. How can you make a mechanic that gives every single color free spells, creatures or abilities that are completely abuseable but also undermine the entire concept of color identity? It's like they just took the entire balance of the game and threw it out of the window. The others you can assume things just escaped them or they didn't see specific combos. But even just reading what it does Phyrexian Mana is stupid strong.
I don't know that much about history of the game but - did they, at the time, realize pretty much everything is worth more than your life total? I know that it took RND some time to realize card draw is worth more than life total, so perhaps that?
Honestly I think it would be a ton better if the colorless was colored mana and there wasn't anything that could cost 0. Would be a much cooler way to take the mechanic.
I wouldn't have thought about threshold as a dominant mechanic, that's why I like these lists so much.
Also, I think dredge should be number one. At least storm decks still cast spells, dredge just ties the game into a pretzel.
Storm is the only busted mechanic that I kinda like, I even feel like it has some design space left as stuff like weather the storm feels like a really awesome net positive for the game. Aggressive storm cards are really the only problem, reaping the graves is just cool
@@antoniobush4560 I agree, storm is honestly pretty cool and they could definitely print more if they were just careful enough with the costing and effects. There really isn't such a thing as an "inherently overpowered mechanic," only poorly designed and balanced cards. Anyone claiming the former is just making excuses for why they did the latter.
@@TheSquareOnes They could absolutely never print storm in standard again. Take Weather the Storm as an example. It only gains life, which is one of the weakest things you can do in the entire game. However, it has storm attached to it so it will see play because the mechanic is that powerful. Storm is a mechanic that will turn a normally unplayable card into a very good card regardless of the cost/downside. For this reason, Wizards can't print storm into a set, and if they did they couldn't print any storm cards that deal damage or cause loss of life because they will be too powerful. Being too careful with the costing and effects will just put a lot of really bad cards that seem really good because of storm (again see Weather the Storm).
I'm fairly new to magic and when I saw dredge for the first time I was like "so where's the downside?" Obviously if you're playing cards from the graveyard it has some impact but otherwise...
The Energy mechanic should have a place on that list
I'm still surprised that R&D missed the fact that Treasure Cruise is literally Ancestral Recall with Threshold- the mechanic they said would never be reprinted. 8cmc with 7 colorless for the Delve mechanic literally translates to "have 7 cards in the yard? Threshold for Recall is met" and Dig Through Time is even worse only having to put 6 in the yard for the Threshold that gives you a "free" London Mulligan to 2 but as a draw mechanic.
Note: I'm aware the London Mulligan didn't come into effect for another couple of years after these were printed, but it was the closest comparison I could come up with as to what the card accomplishes.
It’s not Threshold tho. Threshold cards benefit from having cards in the grace. Ancestral removed your entire graveyard.
Man companion should be number 1. No other type has needed a complete rules change. And companion is played more in the most powerful formats. Storm and dredge have decks but almost every deck was a lurrus deck
I agree, decks in vintage that had nothing to do with companions could run lurris and the fact that WotC had to change the way the mechanic itself worked indicates that companions would've probably gone on to outperform storm.
It might creep up higher whenever he revisits this list. I can't see them revisiting this mechanic after it heavily effected every format. Only reason it didn't effect commander was they banned the otter before it was released.
Formats impacted: All of them
Barry Swigart hey hey hey. Companion didn’t even touch Block Constructed or Extended
@@BarginsGalore lol
Impacted formats for companion, all of them? No pauper!
Commander was also mostly unaffected
I used to love dredge !! I played with the Troll for the short time he was legal and it was awesome having him come out as a 10-10 after loading up the graveyard quickly . Yes I agree it was a little too much power to be fair .
putting phyrexian mana and delve right next to each other made me realize they share the exact same problem of "the mechanic itself isn't busted, wotc is just really into thinking that people will _default_ to paying mana"
ultimately, phyrexian mana is a life cost and dredge is a graveyard cost, both of which have the _option_ to be paid with mana instead but, realistically? you're only gonna pay mana for dredge if your milling engine is lagging behind or the only cards you can exile are important to keep in the grave, and, like, the only time you'll _ever_ choose to pay mana instead of life is when you can't win this turn, you're on 8 life, and you know your opponent is sitting on 6 damage you can't prevent. these _are_ situations that are definitely going to happen and the opportunity to pay mana instead _does_ enable player skill in discerning those non-mana resources are necessary to stay in the game ... but those finer details basically just become white noise when you print a counterspell with a total cost of "pay 2 life"
yeah, uh. that's what phyrexian mana _should_ be substituting for. life costs. any time you see a black card that has a mana cost and "as an additional cost to cast this spell, pay 2 life"? _that's_ the opportunity to wipe off that life cost text and instead slap a phyrexian mana symbol in the corner. bam, you've now fixed the mechanic without actually touching its rules in the slightest, because it's entirely an issue of the cards themselves misusing it. it's not even like that ruins the mechanic in some form, because now you're splattering life costs across all colors when they're usually pretty rare in some of them, not to mention the aforementioned bit about how you _will_ genuinely run into situations where paying mana instead of life is vital to winning the game. dredge is the exact same story, although admittedly a _bit_ harder to properly cost because exiling stuff from your graveyard is a cost we see particularly often
honestly, it's the sort of thing that makes it a bit unfortunate that we'll probably never see phyrexian mana again. it really would not be difficult at all to avoid a repeat of the last time it showed up
"Which had to be banned almost in part, to the power of miracles"
ICP would be proud...
Whoop whoop
Ducking magic cards, how do they work
Solid list. Infect is underrated as a broken mechanic.
Especially with cards like invigorate, free buff spell if I let the opponent gain life, yes please
Seeing mystic enforcer brought tears to this old magic soul
Good seeing you on twitch before the 2021 announcements.
Hmm, I wonder if Storm won't be 1
This is some quality content right here
Nobody:
NIzzahon: "Loaded up"
Great Video! This was a fun one .
before watching
delve
dredge
storm
companion
phyrexian mana
infect
affinity
...that’s all i got
oh yeah, i forgot about bloodbraid elf, and i would have never gotten threshold
he didnt mention flashback and that surprised me.
Excellent work, as always :)
Honourable mentions that aren't mechanics:
Planeswalker statics: T3feri, Nissa WSTW, Narset POV, Karn TGC.
Urza's Block "untap up to X lands": Cloud of Faeries, Frantic Search, Palinchron, Peregrine Drake, Time Spiral, Treachery.
Storm, companion, flashback, dredge, the gang's all here
I'm surprised by not seeing flashback but I can see why it has fallen away
Let’s not forget how many companions had to be insta banned as soon they were potentially available to be played in various formats. The otter was banned in commander as soon as it was revealed.
On the other hand, commander, brawl and singleton were the only ones where the otter was playable at all. Otherwise nobody plays it, this one is definitely not worth it
Ah, my lovely dredge.
Dredge dredge dredge!!!!! Love that dredge.
I would have thought this was a Terese Nielsen list had I not been paying more attention.
i would say the # 1 mechanic that completely overran every format during its time was discard/grow for +1/+1 with cards like Psychatog. Psychatog completely shattered Vintage, Extended and Standard simultaneously. It was so consistent across the formats and surprsingly took Extended and Vintage Trix (Necro + Illusions of Grandeur + Donate) into the next era of Blue Black aggro. Trix was dominant in 99-2000 and then psychatog overran from 2001-2004. The amount of pro tour and worlds top 8 with psychatog is crazy for how many years it dominated.
Funny thing : I had no problems with companion cards, so far (except for yorion + gyruda combo, maybe).
The worst I can say about them, is that I had lost against cycling decks that have Lurrus, just so they don't use it. Like, at all...
Your video made me want to see a top 10. Idk if you've already done it or not, but I'm genuinely curious about which keywords have dominated the most formats. In terms of tournament play, what's the best keyword, historically?
I have sort of done this, but not based on multiformat success. I did best mechanics, which just looks at raw points.
You know what's great about this list? Plenty of these mechanics can be used as segues to Vintage.
So just to fuck with y'all, I'm gonna use *NONE OF THEM!* Do "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
The persistence is legendary drew. When nizz finally does this video he better refrence you
Top 1: Free casting.
EDIT: Ok, parts of it was split into Cascade and Phyrexian Mana. Also the list very much is like Mark Rosewater's list from 1 June.
Ah, yes. The one where he listed his favorite mechanics, most (if not all) of which happened to be some of the most broken mechanics MtG has seen. How has he not been fired yet?
-- My favorites are :
First strike
Haste
Protection from (X)
Exalted
My predictions are for delve dredge storm affinity flashback prowess devotion equipment snow and banding yes definitely has to contain banding
Should do Top 10 Chump blocks (creatures you throw up to simply block)
I will never forgive mirrodin block for ensuing that cool plane like Kamigawa would be made to be underpowered and thus hated on by players who blame it for the toxic format back in the day
The only reason people dislike Kamigawa is that it existed in the same standard as Mirrodin and nothing out of Kamigawa could stop affinity. Kamigawa is my #1 of planes that deserve a revisit, with Lorwyn being a #2
The fact that we got a power level errata in 2020 is crazy
I would love for Phyrexian mana to come back if it had some sort of limitation on it (Like you can only use Phyrexian mana if you control a creature with Infect or something like that).
Thematic, I like it. My proposed fix is to keep it exactly as it is but add "and you gain a poison counter." You're using the corrupting essence of a plane of pure evil, it taints your spirit and draws you closer to losing your will and becoming compleated.
"Storm will never be seen again"
Wizards: Drops five Storm Cards in Modern Horizons 2.
Werebear. Best flavor text ever.
Lurrus was hard banned in Vintage first card since 1995
I was expecting to see flashback.
The only other one I can think of is hexproof/shroud as boggles was a pretty busted deck in modern for a long time and put up some nice results and it’s been a round in pionner and legacy at some points
You completely forgot about cabal ritual, the strongest card with threshold printed, and the only one still seeing consistent play.
Is it silly that I feel like I missed out on almost all of these broken mechanics? I stopped playing between Zendikar and Ravnica Allegiance.
Pushed back to three because of the mana cost 😉
So you were okay with Shadow? LOL, those and the original Nightmares were really a pain to deal with.
It doesn't have anything to do with me being "okay" with any of these. Shadow did not dominate multiple formats at all, nor did nightmares, so they aren't on the list.
There's nothing wrong in subjective top 10s. Actually, I'd like to watch a top 10 cards or expansions that you liked and why.
Hello? Cabal ritual lol, it's not bad too
Number 0: Planeswalker
Number -1: Basic Island
I think for this list specifically companion should be Nr. 1. Dredge and Storm were super powerful and led to the creation of decks around it, and those decks were very powerful and from time to time the best of that format, that's for sure. But with companions it was a difference in scale, companions instantly took over those formats. Every deck archetype plays companions be it combo, aggro, midrange, control or whatever. Most of the decks in all formats were instantly companion decks, and the best decks of the formats were those abusing their companion the best. How is that not much more "dominating" than just being a mechanic that good decks were built around with?
I'm pretty confident that Companion should be number 1. If they hadn't outright nerfed all Companions through a rules change only 1-2 months after release now, it would have continued to dominate all formats in a manner way more oppressive than Storm or Dredge, as every single archetype ended up having to rely on them.
8:05...all of them. Lol
Can we have a top 10 Hounds/Dogs?
I was looking into this but sadly there aren't 10 cards with points to make the list. Perhaps that will change with core 2021
No mention to cabal ritual probably the most played threshold card of all time being a staple in non-PO storm lists? :(
"won't see again"
-looks at Strixhaven-
Dredge maybe ?
Actual affinity cards are fine. You leave my froggy boy alone.
Affinity plus artifact lands are quite dumb. Turn 1 land, random artifact into turn 2 land , frog, frog, frog is pretty strong even by today standards. That you can even add a fat boy or a draw spell on top is just cherry.
Now, whether the affinity cards or the artifact lands are to blame is a whole other matter that I have no opinion on.
>Storm is a mechanic we'll never see
Yeah, except for all the pseudo-Storm cards we've seen since Time Spiral.
Top 10 time!!
I’d put landfall in there somewhere but that’s just me being biased. Great video none the less
If they didn't change the companion mechanic it would be #1
Leaving every other mechanic in the dust
It really depends on how you're rating them. Companion would have been played in close to 100% of decks wherever it is legal... but the actual cards aren't broken enough to be more powerful than dredge or storm.
I mean, the mechanic itself was just too good. There was virtually no downside... it was like putting land in your deck. At some point, it would have ceased to be a mechanic and just have been how Magic was played.
You forgot Support! So busted, lol.
how is flashback not on the list?
Banding, flanking, bushido, bolster... Oops wrong video
Companion doesn't like companions
Wooooo
Is Oko a mechanic?
Loyalty? Cards that come into play with loyalty counters always have something problematic in multiple formats.
@@RetroHobo I can't tell if your reply is also a joke, but I just meant that Oko dominated nearly every format he was a part of.
Formats impacted:
A L L O F T H E M
They really screwed the pooch with companions.
I don't understand why Wizards would say the Threshold mechanic is too powerful.
A card can do anything upon threshold. It's only as powerful as what you print.
Maybe too tricky to balance? Not worth the effort (for RnD to balance)? But surely not too powerful.
But it's not, like, Phyrexian Mana which is just a mess of a mechanic, and truly too hard to balance.
A card can do anything on threshold, its true - but it would be very tricky to design threshold bonuses that aren't too good. Or too uninteresting. That is the tricky line they have to balance.
Cabal ritual doesn't make the Threshold list?
I mean, I didn't name every successful threshold card. Just a few selections
Oh yeah my fave degenerate mechanic is rated higher than the new degenerate mechanic. Noice!
evening
The flavor text in Werebear is beyond dumb.
It's got to be storm right, I mean, it's LITERALLY the mechanic that has a scale to measure mechanics' power.
Edit:
Easy.
Did u make this video just cause of companion?
Most likely I think hahaha
It probably gave him the idea.
Top 10 most unbalanced card cycles
1) Boons
@@tomaszurbanowicz1559 1 alliance pitch cycle
Madness, anyone?
Dredge and delve on the same guy should be fair right?
#0 Tapping: tapping land to produce mana, tapping creatures to attack your opponent, tapping permanents to use abilities, etc. Tapping has been the dominant mechanic of this game since day one and that’s not likely to change any time soon.
Tapping is an activated ability. Not a mechanic...
I thought energy could have made the list.
Only dominated Standard
@@NizzahonMagic thats fair.
Nah nah companion is easily number 1. Extra deck in magic.
Threshold will NEVER happen again.... dimir rogues 😞
14:25 "Storm is a mechanic we will never see in a standard release*"
*Printed verbatim, because they printed Thousand-Year Storm in Ravnica
But thousand year only counts your instant and sorceries cast this turn not all spells cast this turn
companion was a huge mistake. it shows how much wizards do NOT test the cards they make
Companion didn't impact pauper, penny, or commander at all
Well, Lutri had to be preemptively banned in EDH, so yeah.
Also I am clearly only talking premiere formats here.
@@NizzahonMagic fair enough
You forgot bushido
Simone Rocutto you forgot bolster !!
Half of the video is about mirrodin. I will never fogive Karn for making this stupid plane.
i think this list doesn’t adhere to your own rules? most of the mechanics in the top five have MOST of the cards printed with it being busted. Companion however only has a few cards that are any good
I think he was going for mechanics that warped formats the most. Companions might not be inherently broken, but they warped every format to where you were at a automatic disadvantage if your opponent had one and you didnt.
The list is inaccurate where’s Mill?
Lawl