Problem is best life gain cards just have life gain on top of other broken effects like oro for example if that card didn’t have life gain it would still see play
@@Fliceguy Pretty much this. A card that has life gain and nothing else tends to be pretty bad, even when it restores a decent chunk of life. If it's a creatures with an ETB that heals you and does nothing else, it still tends to be pretty bad, either because the creature will be understatted compared to others you could have used in its stead or just because even if it's not, the heal often won't do too much to swing things in your favor. Healing is best when it's glued together with something else. Like, there may be some cards like them that are okay or see some niche play, but you'd basically be making a 'best of a bunch of pretty bad cards' list. Nothing wrong with that, but you most likely won't find anything actually good in the list
@@Fliceguy I mean, that's not a *problem*. It's like saying "Top 10 Best Flying Creatures" doesn't make sense because the best flying creatures do other things.
Does it, though? It looks unfinished to me. You could argue that the artist was going for some kind of tapestry thing, but it just looks like blank paper.
8:19 this ability could be printed on an uncommon monocolored land that enters tapped, I would still be not great, but that does look like a land's ability
"Bargain" has a very edge use case. You just need to wait 52 turns or so until your opponent has no cards left in the library, then you have found the one case that never will come up where the card actually is useful.
Glyph of Life is bad not just because its effect is bad on its own, but there's also already a wall that has that effect on it permanently: Wall of Essence, which is a 0/4 wall for 2 mana.
An enchantment Aura with flash, still costing one W, giving that effect, +0+2 and "you draw a card" alongside the life gain every time the enchanted creature receives damage, would be ok. At least, on pauper, or as an uncommon for "for fun" decks.
I really don't understand why people think banding is bad, the ability is great defensively. The actual issue with it is that its very complicated to explain concisely, which makes it a bad keyword from a design perspective.
Yeah, it's not even hard to explain. And the ability is amazing, especially for blocking. "The controller of the band (or blockers, one of which has banding) controls damage assignment to the band" and "if you could block any creature in a band, you can block the band." That's it. It's that simple. It's only as complicated as Deathtouch or Trample is, though mixing it with those means you have to understand how they interact. There's also defining how you create a band, and how bands-with-x works, but none of that matters for Fortified Area because walls can't attack.
@@LibertyMonk Yeah, I actually came up with a reminder text for banding that would fit on the card which keeps all of the current functionality: "You distribute any combat damage which could be dealt to this. When you declare attackers, you may pair this with another attacking creature. Anything that blocks either creature also blocks the other." You could create bands bigger than 2 by pair chains, i.e. A pairs with B, B pairs with C, so anything that blocks any of them blocks the rest.
Don't get me wrong, it's still bad but if I'm understanding this correctly, isn't the point of fortified area was to help with double blocking. You can put most of the damage onto the walls who all have high toughness making it safer to attack and block. It's turning you blockers into shields for your other cards. It's still probably not that good but I think it's better than the 3 mana 3/1 that can't do damage.
It's even stronger than you're thinking, because if you're the kind of deck that's running walls, being able to block a big idiot with multiple walls instead of chump blocking is a nice option. There's also the ability to take several dorks and sacrifice one of them to eliminate a big threatening creature instead of trading the stack of dorks. And the option to throw a dork under a huge trampler to soak up the damage for you You're better off playing removal or board wipes, but that doesn't make the card useless, that just makes it not "playable" in a competitive sense. Banding makes combat math beyond "wide enough to kill this turn" really annoying for the attacker.
There's something weird about this list, where a majority of these are 1-3 mana spells that do almost nothing. They're terrible, but at least I can get relevant cast triggers/etb effects. There's a lot more bad cards at 7-8 mana that's way more likely to get stuck in hand and then only mess with life totals instead of doing anything. I rather play Aven Trooper over Akron Legionaire, but that's just me.
Banding I am going to have disagree on being bad. There is only four real components to banding: 1) If I am the attacker, I choose how the defending creatures assign combat damage. 2) If I am the defending player, I get to choose how the attacking creatures assign combat damage. (this also means you blunt any form of alternate damage assignment like trample) 3) At least 1 member of a band of creatures must be blocked if they are attacking. 4) The band does not share its keywords unless stated otherwise. Wait you said "reorganizing damage doesn't matter most of the time" when it comes to banding and damage assignment. Your telling me that rearranging damage so your valuable attacking creature doesn't get deathtouched isn't valuable? Your telling me that letting a 0/1 plant token take all 12 infect damage from an attacking blightsteel colossus isn't valuable? Bruh.
I actually love number one because of how flavorful it is, it turns your whole game into a metaphor and it's just really funny. Yeah, it might be bad but I could still run it in some meme life gain deck or something along those lines.
I would have liked it if you also explained in the video why using Visions on an *opponents* deck is also bad. The reason may be obvious to some people, but you might as well mention it briefly.
Because the card does nothing if the opponent has good cards in hand, and as a 1 drop, it does little early game, given both players have 7 cards when the game starts
@@BTEdidnothingwrong Let's just say (hypothetically speaking) you're running a control deck with enough draw engines for the -1 card advantage to not matter. You don't expect to ever play visions on turn 1; it's not a 1 drop, rather a late game option to read your opponent's next 5 draws (since you put them back in the same order). Given that both players start with 7 cards and those cards are unknown, over the course of the game it does "technically" let you know 5/12 cards before they are even played. If you don't like the outcome because there is a threat coming up that you haven't drawn the necessary removal for, then you can shuffle the opposing player's deck, now giving them (let's say) a 1/37 chance of drawing that specific threat, thereby increasing your odds of being able to deal with the specific board state. Still does nothing if your opponent can blow you out already though. Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into this; the card is still trash. It would be nice to troll someone with it and a bunch of counter spells though. Run a deck that just looks at their hand and visions to look at the top of their deck; sounds like a fun homebrew to me.
You could use it against some tutors, as quite a few of them place the card they tutor on the top of the deck. That would be the one time it would be useful to shuffle an opponents library.
Security Detail is interesting because there are so many better cards: Jade Mage. Ant Queen. Mobilization. Token creators of this sort need to be mana sinks. Ah, Fasting. Remember how Phyrexian Arena was a good card? This is the opposite.
Alabaster Leech could've easily been "fixed" by making it 3/1 instead. Attacking in the very early turns of the game, the opponent will have to decide if he wants to lose a creature (most won't have more than 3 Toughness yet) or eat 3 damage to make you continue suffering under it's penalty. Granted, it would still be a bad card. Just not unplayable.
Glyph of Life also has the downside that if your opponent runs Deathtouch cards, the effect is kinda moot. Most Deathtouch cards I've seen have really low attack points mostly because Deathtouch is meant to do the heavy lifting for them. So, if you run a 0/7 Wall and someone punches it with a 1/1 Soldier with Deathtouch, your Wall is destroyed, and your only reward is 1 life point.
Because the card does nothing if the opponent has good cards in hand, and as a 1 drop, it does little early game, given both players have 7 cards when the game starts
Spending a card to fateseal would already be sketchy. But this isn't even that. If they have some good draws and some bad draws, is it better than shuffling? Like, the best case scenario is they have 5 excellent draws, in which case you still give them random draws (which aren't bad, they're just random) and went -1 in cards. Visions is just abysmal.
Banding is fucking cracked. A 1/1 with banding entirely chumps a 12/12 with trample, since it's a little known fact trample says you _may_ do excess damage to the opponent. I'm building a predh deck for shits and giggles and banding is becoming the backbone of it
Hating on trample once by giving up your blocker is still terrible. If that's your dream scenario you might as well just run Kami of False Hope which prevents all damage form all creatures, trample or not, and is not vulnerable to things like menace or flying.
Actually banding doesn't allow you to get around trample like that, because you assign the damage amongst the creatures, and then trample checks for excess, followed by the choice to assign the excess to the face. Its useful for protecting fragile but powerful creatures on block or attack, generally allowing you to trade up the measly creature who has it. Not terrible, and not generally useful, but it still has uses.
@@JindraAGIIRC Trample is a choice that is part of assigning damage and thus is also able to be controlled by Banding. The same is true of Deathtouch and Banding.
Yep, Banding let's you control damage assignment (to your creatures) and completely ignore the concept of "lethal damage" which Deathtouch & Trample both rely on. Yes, the default assumption is that an attacker will assign lethal damage, then the remainder to the face, but you can still assign more than that if you want, for example if you're expecting the creature to gain toughness before it dies. You can also assign all but 1 damage from an X/X attacker to a 0/X wall, then the last point to your own X/X blocker, to eat the attacker instead of trading or chumping. And many other scenarios.
@@fernandobanda5734menace just means you'd need to block it with a second creature. You'd still only need to lose one 1/1. But no, the dream scenario is blocking Emrakul, The Aeons Torn with 15 squirrel tokens, while I have an Archetype of Imagination, a Helm of Chatzuk, and 6 whatevers to be annihilated. It would be so amazing to drop a single squirrel token to bring down Emrakul. Alternatively, 11 thopter tokens, two Wall of Denials, and a Fortified Area can take down an Emrakul, the Promised End with zero losses.
You're way too hard on Banding & Fortified Area. A single instance of Banding on a blocking creature means the defending player assigns damage for any creature blocked by a creature with Banding. This means that all blocking creatures effectively share a single pool of Toughness, except for the last point per creature. Say you have an Ignoble Soldier a Fortified Area, any wall, and a 2/2. Your opponent attacks with a Colossal Dreadmaw. Normally, you'd take 6 or throw toughness in front of that. Thanks to Banding, you can block with your wall, 2/2 and 3/1, then assign all 6 trample damage to the 3/1, and keep your 2/2 and wall alive, while killing the Dreadmaw because 3+2+1 is 6. Say your wall has 6 toughness, then instead of picking what dork absorbs 6 trample, you can assign 5 to the wall and 1 to the 2/2, keeping everyone alive. Banding isn't useless, it's just about the most powerful zero stat effect for combat math, because you control the math now. It turns off evasion, but a single instance of Protection or Indestructible is effectively shared with the band (or everyone blocking with a bander).
I used fasting in a stax deck, where the only win condition is for your opponent to naturally draw their entire deck. I'd make it indestructible with "Indestructibility" so I could just choose if I wanted to draw or skip and gain life.
Visions could work if you're trying to make something like Clash be a little more consistent since you would know what is coming up. To bad Clash doesn't have anything going for it. There might be some other extremely niche effects that could work with it but there's few and far between with those.
Even if aven trooper was 1 white it’d be bad. It’s need to be like 1w for a 1/2 flyer W discard a card give +1/1 to be good still probably an okay standard card at uncommon
Bro I really like White. People say that it doesn't have its own identity but I think otherwise. Healing, flying, board whipes, tokens, exile and vigilante and White does these thing very well. I mean the best tokens and board whipes. I really like playing humans soldiers as White.
Walls are kinda asymmetrical with Magic's design. You don't have to attack through creature's in order to get to your opponent. So wall's rarely matter. If walls redirected all damage/attacks to them first before allowing any to be dealt to anything else (including other creatures) then they might have a niche. And that'd be such a 'White' effect too. But, Wizard's gave up on walls a long time ago. I really like the flavor of those glyphs. Marking a wall with a temporary enchantment for an extra effect seems cool to me. I assumed they'd be enchantments at first glance, and while that wouldn't make them good, making them instants is weird. Plus, those effects could just be printed on walls instead. Reverse death touch and life link sound interesting. "Ok, you can touch me. But if you do, you die." The red glyph's effect is weird- can't be killed, but is destroyed, gains absurd power to beat over what it's blocking... it's worse then the reserve death touch, because then you keep the wall! Should have at least given red glyph trample, so the wall could explode, kill a creature, and deal spill over damage to the opponent. Very red. The thing I like about Magic is that even the bad cards have so much flavor. Those glyphs sure suck, but I find them fasinacting.
Bargain is very bad, even against burn, since you burn 2 cards to gain 7 life. You throw away a card, and have your opponent draw one, and spend mana doing so. This means that even healing salve would be more effective, as it does not give your opponent more cards (and less turns, since the mana investment is smaller). Also, I do think that any creature (like ignoble soldier) is infinitely better than things like Visions, since creatures can be used to chup block, maybe even trade, and thus somewhat contribute to the situation. In addition, bargain would be substantially worse than visions, since casting it is both more expensive (and thus a bigger waste of mana, and harder to build storm with, while not so expensive as to be special for cards that care about high CMC), In addition to bargain being actively detrimental to your existence in most situations. Again, security detail is not a good card, however it is not actively trying to sabotage you like bargain is, worse than visions though since storm/instant sorcery support is probably better than slamming a worthless 4 cost in an enchantress deck. Fortify area is probably better than security detail, since I can see it being played legitimately, without meming, in a walls commander deck, it would be a backup for the commander being gone, allowing walls to still block things to death, in addition, it allows multiple smaller walls (like 2 differently named walls of blossom) to team up and protect one another. Banding is not the best, however it can be helpful to have around. In addition, slamming this in enchantress is probably better than security detail, even if you run 0 walls, since it is one mana cheaper Aven shrine is probably more worthless than the wall thing, however I would still think that bargain is substantially worse, the shrine contributing to enchantment count in a color that cares about it and not actively being detrimental most of the time really help it out. What makes glyph of light even more special is that it cannot even be cast if you are not running any walls, thus it would even be worthless to throw at a "cast your second spell a turn" kind of thing, it is indeed very bad. Honestly, If I needed to play fasting legitimately, and actually use the text box, yes, it is the very worst, a true joke. If I where forced to build a deck that was required to include 8 of one of these cards however, fasting would not be the worst, as with an enchantress shell, they are way easier to recycle than the shrine or security detail. Then again, when a cards power is measured in how easy it is to throw it away and replace it, it is truly bad. (maybe fasting can be used as an enchantment that can consistently sac itself, triggering "enchantment left the battlefield" things?)
Aven trooper printed during torment which introduced the madness mechanic (and discard costs were common on many of the cards), but I have no idea why WoTC printed this card with those terrible stats. If any of the casting mana cost, activation mana cost, the power, the toughness were well adjusted, then maybe it could've been playable (even just the activation mana cost). At any rate, check out the gatherer reviews - this card is rated at a 0.8 out of 5 by the community and there are some funny reviews.
The only instance I can imagine fasting being useful is as a way to stall against a mill deck. You can’t lose by deck out if you never enter the draw step.
Even then though, it eventually blows itself up. So you have to win in four turns. Also, you have to play this ahead of time in prep of getting milled to death.
Aven Trooper = another way to emphasize how bad this card is, is to talk about the environment it was in. The card was in the set of cards where Madness and Threshold was introduced. Therefore, self-discard effects with upsides SHOULD have been valuable... and yet this guy didn't even see any play outside Limited format... and begrudgingly too (that's what happened to me TwT). The specific point that made me realize this card was horrid was when I discarded "Fiery Temper" to it and then paid its Madness Cost. Fiery Temper was a RR1 instant that deals 3 damage to any target... and has a Madness cost of R. Pitching it to the Trooper made the mana cost RW2 for 3 damage and a 2/3 flier for 1 turn... yea... no... Alabaster Leech = isnt there a 1 mana 1/3 Dwarf Soldier out there now? That also emphasis how bad this card is now -_- Ignoble Soldier = I really wish they made this a Rebel ... if they did, you could "recruit" this card in as an ambush blocker... and at 3 power, it CAN take down some creatures with little help. It wouldnt get it out of this list, but it would be useful for SOMETHING Fortified Area = with banding... I only got used to it because of the old, old game called Shandalar... where the game operates the effect for you... but here's what i remember On attack: Any number of creatures with banding + 1 without can attack as 1 creature. Your opponent only needs to block all these creatures with 1 creature... and you get to distribute damage among those creatures in a band... including pumping all damage in 1 creature if necessary On Defense: any number of creatures WITHOUT banding + 1 creature with banding can block as 1 creature. You STILL call how the damage is distributed. I believe a creature with some sort of way to stop an evasion effect (i.e Giant Spider with Reach) can block a flying creature and then joined by a banding creature to all block that flier So yea... there's a bit more benefit when using banding as a defensive ability... but over all, its... not useful Fasting = I just find it funny how a functionally reversed version of this card is WAAAAAY better than this card. As I typed my comment, I was thinking: If fasting drew you extra cards at the cost of preventing life gain and gaining life = destroys this card would have been miles better...but t hit me that Necropotence kinda fills this role already... and while it didnt catch on immediately... we all know how broken Necro has become over the years
The "on attack" bit only matters (for Fortified Area) if you're running Changelings, and you're overcomplicating "on defense." Banding (on defending creatures) doesn't effect how you block. You block as normal, but during the damage step, any creature blocked by a creature with banding has it's damage assignment chosen by the defending player. This is deceptively powerful in defense, because you can block a huge idiot with an army of 1/1s, then assign all of that idiot's damage to a single 1/1, letting the others survive. Or you can block an 6/6 with two 0/4 walls, and have each wall take 3 damage and both survive. In the "sacrifice a 1/1" case, Trample & Deathtouch etc don't matter, because you can assign more than lethal damage to the 1/1. If you have an indestructible or Protection creature, you can assign all the damage to it. It's an immensely powerful on-board combat trick for defense. The only limitation is that the creatures all have to be able to block in the first place.
Bargain seems like it could have a niche today with a black and white Sheoldred the Apocalypse lifegain deck, you’d get a pretty solid bargain for both of your objectives there
Having a card need exactly another card to compensate its awfulness is not worth it. Having that specific synergy be a 2-point life loss isn't even good. If you want to abuse Sheoldred, use Faerie Mastermind or a Timetwister effect. Even with Sheoldred, Bargain is a -2 in cards.
This is a comment meant for a lot of other commenters, current and future: Let's be real, all of the colors (and non-colors i.e. artifacts) have so many "worst" cards that you could do a top 100 and still miss some of the worst of the worst. I was surprised Leeches, Convalescence, and Healing Salve weren't on the list, for instance. So it's never going to be perfect, and it's fine to say which cards you think should have made the list, but let's just keep that in mind.
I would put Healing Salve on this list over his #10. #10 can be treated as a very crappy creature - useful in some contexts where you have a very tiny card selection.
Not only do no players understand banding, the designers apparently didn't either! It's really clear that whoever designed Fortified Area thought that you could block as a band.
Evidently players don't, because you absolutely can block as a band. Banding works by ferrying damage between a declared band. So, if I have two Walls with 7 Toughness, I can divide the damage of a creature with 11 Strength. Let's say 5 goes to one, 6 goes to another. Neither fall. Banding is actually cracked on walls, I've never understood the dislike for Fortified Area. Fortified Area is actually good, at least in the settings I've played in, for example, Wall of Essence has an effect that states any damage dealt to it is gained as life. Now, that Wall's a 2-drop. Getting two out is easy, and with Fortified Area active you need a minimum of 8 strength to knock both walls at once, otherwise you can Band the damage between the two and your opponent can't do much to stop you It's easy to just have a bunch of walls and ferry damage between the lot of them, while tapping the opponent with Prodigal Sorcerer or something.
@@thecactussword4304yep, took way too long to find this comment. Banding is extremely easy to understand once you work out the design intention. Creatures can naturally block as a group, so wouldn't it be interesting if they could attack as a group as well? But that, on its own, would be a downside, so we should give it some upside too, like... Allowing the controller of the band to distribute damage? And if the controller of a band can distribute the damage on attack... why not when the "band" blocks as a group on defence as well? Once framed in those terms, it's actually very easy to remember and understand. The problem is that this understanding of Banding requires players to already understand blocking as a group, something that most players are quite bad at, even today. 😅
@@thecactussword4304 If your opponent dies due to Prodigal Sorcerer taps, their deck either sucks or is very specialized and you happen to have the counter making it ineffective.
Visions isnt awful. U can shuffle your opponets deck after they stack it. Not just yours. Its 1 white. Doesnt belong on this list at all. While niche, its good😊
@@jays.6843 Or maybe being able to look at the top five cards of an opponent's library gives you a bigger insight than just mindlessly shuffling an opponent's deck with no knowledge of the top.
Security Detail should be 2 mana. Then it would be okay in commander, as you could get a creature on all of your opponents turns if you had a good way to sac creatures. Still probably not good then though, but who knows.
Why doesn't Words of Worship work with Fasting? Couldn't you just choose to not skip your draw phase and then use the replacement effect of Words of Worship instead of drawing a card? Or does the replacement effect of Words still count as drawing? Edit: Guess the point is that it would be like not having Fasting at all in that case.
Aven Trooper came out in Torment. MADNESS was a main mechanic for that block! So white had the least amount of cards with madness. So being able to discard at ANY TIME was HUGE for this card IN THIS BLOCK! So before saying it is bad, it was great for that block. Get your references correct for the abilities.
I think you could retrain fasting to be a pretty fun card. Still skips draw for fasting counters, but it gives you a lot more life, think 5-7 then when you sacrifice it after now 7 turns, you win the game. Wholely impractical and difficult to pull off, but it sounds fun and has a payoff. Also still destroys itself if you draw, fun fact tutors are still fine with it
Fortified area is generally not great unless you know how to play with them. I have 2 cards that work with the ammount of walls you controle. This means making a deck with lots of walls and then those strong wall dependent cards + Fortified Area means that you can practically block anything and not have your walls die.
I have a walls EDH deck with Fortified Area, and *blocking* as a band is ANAZING. Consider putting all damage a deathtouch creature could do into one creature, for example. Since I decide how to spread attacking creatures’ damage, I can do that. ATTACKING with a band is trash, however.
at first I thought the library shuffle in visions was a must and that it was only your library (i kinda blanked out), imagine how much worse that'd be. at least it'd better than fasting, as i guess there'd be some upside in very extreme cases, where fasting has way too large of a downside.
The Leeches are very good in Zedruu Commander decks... You play them and then give them to the opponent, while getting Zedruu's bonuses While you did mention it only working on white decks, remember that in Commander you have multiple opponents so at least one of them will probably have white and meanwhile you are running multiple Leeches in your deck for other colors Edit: Bargain has a use in Ebony Owl Netsuke decks
Farmstead from alpha, beta, unlimited, and revised is also pretty bad. It requires three white mana just to cast, then one time during each of your upkeep steps you can pay two white to gain one life.
I mean, it's not that terrible. It's in no way good but it's a 5/5 trample (in white this is super odd) that loses defender after it blocks for the first time. Sure 7 mana isn't a good rate for this but it's definitely waaaaaaay better than any card on this list.
I love wall cards. I love the idea of them. A powerful mage erecting walls to protect themself while casting offensive magic to defeat the opponent. Too bad they suck :(
There are so many worse cards than some of these. Like convalescence, sheltering prayers, common cause, and divine intervention. At least the creatures in the worst-case scenario can block once or do one or two damage. Also yet another person who incorectly claims banding is bad when it is literally onr of the most powerful keywords ever printed.
Yeah, it's not the most powerful thing ever, but it has uses, especially defensively. For example, it completely turns off trample for your opponent when you block with a banding creature for one thing.
Great Wall from Legends allows creatures with plainswalk to be blocked as if they did not have this ability. As of February 2024, only four creatures in all of Magic have.plainswalk.
Yes there are cards out there better then Vision .. However, anyone thinking Vision is a useless card obviously LACKS vision... Knowing what u or any opponent can expect to get in the next FIVE cards and or turns isn't useless... Plenty of situations where that knowledge is useful. Opponent has little to no cards in hand, you can plot out what to expect, whether to use a good mill card or not... Milling an opponent into a win state because you were ignorant of what they were in line to aquire would suck... VISION! Low on lands, you can see if your getting any in the next FIVE cards could prove useful to decide whether or not to use a card or ability to shuffle etc .. VISION! Wonder if using your only remaining tutor is the right action at the right time or not? VISION! That's just a few off the top of my head...
I get that visions not really a great card. But that could mess up your opponent who uses scy and surveil alot. And or abilities that let the player stack the deck in their favour.
Shouldn't White Ward be on the list since, as originally printed, it was literally useless. It would cause itself to fall off immediately upon resolving. Granted, it got errata to say that it's ability did not cause it to nuke itself. But until that errata came out, I don't see how anything could be more useless in a deck.
Hey man I love your vids but I must disagree on banding. Anyone who has played Shandalar understands how banding works, and it's actually a pretty useful ability.
Visions can do the opponents deck; in any format with one offs it’s not terrible. Consider it vs brainstorm or vampiric tutor or goblin recruiter. There are much worse white cards, and admittedly better.
It's pretty hard to port a card from YGO into MTG, because YGO doesn't have a resource system in the same sense as MTG. In YGO, your 'resources' are basically the cards in your hand, so draw tends to be incredibly strong in that game. To a point that people are happy to accept ridiculous downsides tacked to them, simply to get access to a few more cards, because draw is just that good. In MTG, draw is much easier to come by and doesn't request such ridiculous downsides, but that's because you're already paying a resource cost in the form of mana. Translating Pot of Greed would be really difficult, because in YGO it's a free draw 2 (and thus considered incredibly OP in that game) and if you translated it to MTG and didn't give it a manacost or downside, it would very quickly find its way onto the ban list and stay there forever. MTG has a one mana draw three spell and that's one of the most powerful cards in the game. The Pot of Greed version you're suggesting would just not fit in MTG, so I can only assume this is a joke question
Visions doesn't belong on this list forcin your opponent to shuffle especially if they just put what they wanted on the top of their deck or just scried and kept it on top that's a 1 cost force your opponent to shuffle
There's a lot of talk about why life gain is bad, so a Top 10 Best Life Gain cards could be fun to show how it's done when it succeeds.
Problem is best life gain cards just have life gain on top of other broken effects like oro for example if that card didn’t have life gain it would still see play
@@FliceguySome just grant a lot of passive life gain or have an outlet, like aetherflux
@@Fliceguy Pretty much this. A card that has life gain and nothing else tends to be pretty bad, even when it restores a decent chunk of life. If it's a creatures with an ETB that heals you and does nothing else, it still tends to be pretty bad, either because the creature will be understatted compared to others you could have used in its stead or just because even if it's not, the heal often won't do too much to swing things in your favor. Healing is best when it's glued together with something else.
Like, there may be some cards like them that are okay or see some niche play, but you'd basically be making a 'best of a bunch of pretty bad cards' list. Nothing wrong with that, but you most likely won't find anything actually good in the list
I'm fairly certain the best life gain cards is when you switch life totals. Ironic
@@Fliceguy I mean, that's not a *problem*. It's like saying "Top 10 Best Flying Creatures" doesn't make sense because the best flying creatures do other things.
I've said this on another video but the tragedy of Aven Trooper is it has really good art for a terrible card.
I was thinking the same thing during that section
Does it, though? It looks unfinished to me. You could argue that the artist was going for some kind of tapestry thing, but it just looks like blank paper.
8:19 this ability could be printed on an uncommon monocolored land that enters tapped, I would still be not great, but that does look like a land's ability
It would be a pretty cool land
Castle Ardenvale is basically that card, and it saw a bit of competetive play
"Bargain" has a very edge use case. You just need to wait 52 turns or so until your opponent has no cards left in the library, then you have found the one case that never will come up where the card actually is useful.
If you're playing mill you don't need to wait 52 turns (plus your opponent may have card draw himself) but it's still absolutely terrible
Glyph of Life is bad not just because its effect is bad on its own, but there's also already a wall that has that effect on it permanently: Wall of Essence, which is a 0/4 wall for 2 mana.
An enchantment Aura with flash, still costing one W, giving that effect, +0+2 and "you draw a card" alongside the life gain every time the enchanted creature receives damage, would be ok. At least, on pauper, or as an uncommon for "for fun" decks.
I really don't understand why people think banding is bad, the ability is great defensively.
The actual issue with it is that its very complicated to explain concisely, which makes it a bad keyword from a design perspective.
It's not even that complicated. It's less complicated than Suspend, for example. It literally only does two things.
Yeah, it's not even hard to explain. And the ability is amazing, especially for blocking. "The controller of the band (or blockers, one of which has banding) controls damage assignment to the band" and "if you could block any creature in a band, you can block the band." That's it. It's that simple. It's only as complicated as Deathtouch or Trample is, though mixing it with those means you have to understand how they interact.
There's also defining how you create a band, and how bands-with-x works, but none of that matters for Fortified Area because walls can't attack.
@@LibertyMonk Yeah, I actually came up with a reminder text for banding that would fit on the card which keeps all of the current functionality: "You distribute any combat damage which could be dealt to this. When you declare attackers, you may pair this with another attacking creature. Anything that blocks either creature also blocks the other." You could create bands bigger than 2 by pair chains, i.e. A pairs with B, B pairs with C, so anything that blocks any of them blocks the rest.
Don't get me wrong, it's still bad but if I'm understanding this correctly, isn't the point of fortified area was to help with double blocking. You can put most of the damage onto the walls who all have high toughness making it safer to attack and block. It's turning you blockers into shields for your other cards. It's still probably not that good but I think it's better than the 3 mana 3/1 that can't do damage.
It's even stronger than you're thinking, because if you're the kind of deck that's running walls, being able to block a big idiot with multiple walls instead of chump blocking is a nice option. There's also the ability to take several dorks and sacrifice one of them to eliminate a big threatening creature instead of trading the stack of dorks. And the option to throw a dork under a huge trampler to soak up the damage for you
You're better off playing removal or board wipes, but that doesn't make the card useless, that just makes it not "playable" in a competitive sense. Banding makes combat math beyond "wide enough to kill this turn" really annoying for the attacker.
There's something weird about this list, where a majority of these are 1-3 mana spells that do almost nothing. They're terrible, but at least I can get relevant cast triggers/etb effects. There's a lot more bad cards at 7-8 mana that's way more likely to get stuck in hand and then only mess with life totals instead of doing anything.
I rather play Aven Trooper over Akron Legionaire, but that's just me.
Banding I am going to have disagree on being bad. There is only four real components to banding:
1) If I am the attacker, I choose how the defending creatures assign combat damage.
2) If I am the defending player, I get to choose how the attacking creatures assign combat damage. (this also means you blunt any form of alternate damage assignment like trample)
3) At least 1 member of a band of creatures must be blocked if they are attacking.
4) The band does not share its keywords unless stated otherwise.
Wait you said "reorganizing damage doesn't matter most of the time" when it comes to banding and damage assignment. Your telling me that rearranging damage so your valuable attacking creature doesn't get deathtouched isn't valuable? Your telling me that letting a 0/1 plant token take all 12 infect damage from an attacking blightsteel colossus isn't valuable? Bruh.
I actually love number one because of how flavorful it is, it turns your whole game into a metaphor and it's just really funny. Yeah, it might be bad but I could still run it in some meme life gain deck or something along those lines.
I would have liked it if you also explained in the video why using Visions on an *opponents* deck is also bad.
The reason may be obvious to some people, but you might as well mention it briefly.
Because the card does nothing if the opponent has good cards in hand, and as a 1 drop, it does little early game, given both players have 7 cards when the game starts
@@BTEdidnothingwrong Let's just say (hypothetically speaking) you're running a control deck with enough draw engines for the -1 card advantage to not matter. You don't expect to ever play visions on turn 1; it's not a 1 drop, rather a late game option to read your opponent's next 5 draws (since you put them back in the same order). Given that both players start with 7 cards and those cards are unknown, over the course of the game it does "technically" let you know 5/12 cards before they are even played. If you don't like the outcome because there is a threat coming up that you haven't drawn the necessary removal for, then you can shuffle the opposing player's deck, now giving them (let's say) a 1/37 chance of drawing that specific threat, thereby increasing your odds of being able to deal with the specific board state.
Still does nothing if your opponent can blow you out already though. Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into this; the card is still trash. It would be nice to troll someone with it and a bunch of counter spells though. Run a deck that just looks at their hand and visions to look at the top of their deck; sounds like a fun homebrew to me.
Even in the ideal context of being in a Lantern Control deck, it's not really helpful.
You could use it against some tutors, as quite a few of them place the card they tutor on the top of the deck. That would be the one time it would be useful to shuffle an opponents library.
Fasting can't even save you from milling out, because it kills itself in five turns.
Security Detail is interesting because there are so many better cards: Jade Mage. Ant Queen. Mobilization. Token creators of this sort need to be mana sinks.
Ah, Fasting. Remember how Phyrexian Arena was a good card? This is the opposite.
Alabaster Leech could've easily been "fixed" by making it 3/1 instead.
Attacking in the very early turns of the game, the opponent will have to decide if he wants to lose a creature (most won't have more than 3 Toughness yet) or eat 3 damage to make you continue suffering under it's penalty. Granted, it would still be a bad card. Just not unplayable.
Glyph of Life also has the downside that if your opponent runs Deathtouch cards, the effect is kinda moot. Most Deathtouch cards I've seen have really low attack points mostly because Deathtouch is meant to do the heavy lifting for them. So, if you run a 0/7 Wall and someone punches it with a 1/1 Soldier with Deathtouch, your Wall is destroyed, and your only reward is 1 life point.
I'd argue that visions isn't deserving to be on this list because you can target an opponents library and possibly shuffle away a good draw or three
I had that same thought, it's a pay 1 mana look at the next 5 draws for your opponent, or shuffle away a good card.
I wondered if they didn't notice that it was any deck as i had the same thought.
Because the card does nothing if the opponent has good cards in hand, and as a 1 drop, it does little early game, given both players have 7 cards when the game starts
Spending a card to fateseal would already be sketchy. But this isn't even that. If they have some good draws and some bad draws, is it better than shuffling?
Like, the best case scenario is they have 5 excellent draws, in which case you still give them random draws (which aren't bad, they're just random) and went -1 in cards. Visions is just abysmal.
Banding is fucking cracked.
A 1/1 with banding entirely chumps a 12/12 with trample, since it's a little known fact trample says you _may_ do excess damage to the opponent.
I'm building a predh deck for shits and giggles and banding is becoming the backbone of it
Hating on trample once by giving up your blocker is still terrible. If that's your dream scenario you might as well just run Kami of False Hope which prevents all damage form all creatures, trample or not, and is not vulnerable to things like menace or flying.
Actually banding doesn't allow you to get around trample like that, because you assign the damage amongst the creatures, and then trample checks for excess, followed by the choice to assign the excess to the face. Its useful for protecting fragile but powerful creatures on block or attack, generally allowing you to trade up the measly creature who has it. Not terrible, and not generally useful, but it still has uses.
@@JindraAGIIRC Trample is a choice that is part of assigning damage and thus is also able to be controlled by Banding. The same is true of Deathtouch and Banding.
Yep, Banding let's you control damage assignment (to your creatures) and completely ignore the concept of "lethal damage" which Deathtouch & Trample both rely on. Yes, the default assumption is that an attacker will assign lethal damage, then the remainder to the face, but you can still assign more than that if you want, for example if you're expecting the creature to gain toughness before it dies.
You can also assign all but 1 damage from an X/X attacker to a 0/X wall, then the last point to your own X/X blocker, to eat the attacker instead of trading or chumping. And many other scenarios.
@@fernandobanda5734menace just means you'd need to block it with a second creature. You'd still only need to lose one 1/1. But no, the dream scenario is blocking Emrakul, The Aeons Torn with 15 squirrel tokens, while I have an Archetype of Imagination, a Helm of Chatzuk, and 6 whatevers to be annihilated. It would be so amazing to drop a single squirrel token to bring down Emrakul. Alternatively, 11 thopter tokens, two Wall of Denials, and a Fortified Area can take down an Emrakul, the Promised End with zero losses.
Honorable mention is Blessed Wine, which replaces itself (but not immediately) to gain 1 single life... XD
You're way too hard on Banding & Fortified Area. A single instance of Banding on a blocking creature means the defending player assigns damage for any creature blocked by a creature with Banding. This means that all blocking creatures effectively share a single pool of Toughness, except for the last point per creature.
Say you have an Ignoble Soldier a Fortified Area, any wall, and a 2/2. Your opponent attacks with a Colossal Dreadmaw. Normally, you'd take 6 or throw toughness in front of that. Thanks to Banding, you can block with your wall, 2/2 and 3/1, then assign all 6 trample damage to the 3/1, and keep your 2/2 and wall alive, while killing the Dreadmaw because 3+2+1 is 6. Say your wall has 6 toughness, then instead of picking what dork absorbs 6 trample, you can assign 5 to the wall and 1 to the 2/2, keeping everyone alive.
Banding isn't useless, it's just about the most powerful zero stat effect for combat math, because you control the math now. It turns off evasion, but a single instance of Protection or Indestructible is effectively shared with the band (or everyone blocking with a bander).
I used fasting in a stax deck, where the only win condition is for your opponent to naturally draw their entire deck. I'd make it indestructible with "Indestructibility" so I could just choose if I wanted to draw or skip and gain life.
Visions could work if you're trying to make something like Clash be a little more consistent since you would know what is coming up. To bad Clash doesn't have anything going for it. There might be some other extremely niche effects that could work with it but there's few and far between with those.
Even if aven trooper was 1 white it’d be bad. It’s need to be like 1w for a 1/2 flyer W discard a card give +1/1 to be good still probably an okay standard card at uncommon
Bro I really like White. People say that it doesn't have its own identity but I think otherwise. Healing, flying, board whipes, tokens, exile and vigilante and White does these thing very well. I mean the best tokens and board whipes. I really like playing humans soldiers as White.
Walls are kinda asymmetrical with Magic's design. You don't have to attack through creature's in order to get to your opponent. So wall's rarely matter. If walls redirected all damage/attacks to them first before allowing any to be dealt to anything else (including other creatures) then they might have a niche. And that'd be such a 'White' effect too. But, Wizard's gave up on walls a long time ago.
I really like the flavor of those glyphs. Marking a wall with a temporary enchantment for an extra effect seems cool to me. I assumed they'd be enchantments at first glance, and while that wouldn't make them good, making them instants is weird. Plus, those effects could just be printed on walls instead. Reverse death touch and life link sound interesting. "Ok, you can touch me. But if you do, you die." The red glyph's effect is weird- can't be killed, but is destroyed, gains absurd power to beat over what it's blocking... it's worse then the reserve death touch, because then you keep the wall! Should have at least given red glyph trample, so the wall could explode, kill a creature, and deal spill over damage to the opponent. Very red.
The thing I like about Magic is that even the bad cards have so much flavor. Those glyphs sure suck, but I find them fasinacting.
Bargain is very bad, even against burn, since you burn 2 cards to gain 7 life. You throw away a card, and have your opponent draw one, and spend mana doing so. This means that even healing salve would be more effective, as it does not give your opponent more cards (and less turns, since the mana investment is smaller).
Also, I do think that any creature (like ignoble soldier) is infinitely better than things like Visions, since creatures can be used to chup block, maybe even trade, and thus somewhat contribute to the situation. In addition, bargain would be substantially worse than visions, since casting it is both more expensive (and thus a bigger waste of mana, and harder to build storm with, while not so expensive as to be special for cards that care about high CMC), In addition to bargain being actively detrimental to your existence in most situations.
Again, security detail is not a good card, however it is not actively trying to sabotage you like bargain is, worse than visions though since storm/instant sorcery support is probably better than slamming a worthless 4 cost in an enchantress deck.
Fortify area is probably better than security detail, since I can see it being played legitimately, without meming, in a walls commander deck, it would be a backup for the commander being gone, allowing walls to still block things to death, in addition, it allows multiple smaller walls (like 2 differently named walls of blossom) to team up and protect one another. Banding is not the best, however it can be helpful to have around.
In addition, slamming this in enchantress is probably better than security detail, even if you run 0 walls, since it is one mana cheaper
Aven shrine is probably more worthless than the wall thing, however I would still think that bargain is substantially worse, the shrine contributing to enchantment count in a color that cares about it and not actively being detrimental most of the time really help it out.
What makes glyph of light even more special is that it cannot even be cast if you are not running any walls, thus it would even be worthless to throw at a "cast your second spell a turn" kind of thing, it is indeed very bad.
Honestly, If I needed to play fasting legitimately, and actually use the text box, yes, it is the very worst, a true joke.
If I where forced to build a deck that was required to include 8 of one of these cards however, fasting would not be the worst, as with an enchantress shell, they are way easier to recycle than the shrine or security detail. Then again, when a cards power is measured in how easy it is to throw it away and replace it, it is truly bad. (maybe fasting can be used as an enchantment that can consistently sac itself, triggering "enchantment left the battlefield" things?)
Aven trooper printed during torment which introduced the madness mechanic (and discard costs were common on many of the cards), but I have no idea why WoTC printed this card with those terrible stats. If any of the casting mana cost, activation mana cost, the power, the toughness were well adjusted, then maybe it could've been playable (even just the activation mana cost).
At any rate, check out the gatherer reviews - this card is rated at a 0.8 out of 5 by the community and there are some funny reviews.
Surprised great wall didn’t make the list. Hoses an ability that appears on 5 cards
The only instance I can imagine fasting being useful is as a way to stall against a mill deck. You can’t lose by deck out if you never enter the draw step.
Even then though, it eventually blows itself up. So you have to win in four turns. Also, you have to play this ahead of time in prep of getting milled to death.
If the opponent makes you draw though, Fasting gets blown up
Aven Trooper = another way to emphasize how bad this card is, is to talk about the environment it was in. The card was in the set of cards where Madness and Threshold was introduced. Therefore, self-discard effects with upsides SHOULD have been valuable... and yet this guy didn't even see any play outside Limited format... and begrudgingly too (that's what happened to me TwT). The specific point that made me realize this card was horrid was when I discarded "Fiery Temper" to it and then paid its Madness Cost. Fiery Temper was a RR1 instant that deals 3 damage to any target... and has a Madness cost of R. Pitching it to the Trooper made the mana cost RW2 for 3 damage and a 2/3 flier for 1 turn... yea... no...
Alabaster Leech = isnt there a 1 mana 1/3 Dwarf Soldier out there now? That also emphasis how bad this card is now -_-
Ignoble Soldier = I really wish they made this a Rebel ... if they did, you could "recruit" this card in as an ambush blocker... and at 3 power, it CAN take down some creatures with little help. It wouldnt get it out of this list, but it would be useful for SOMETHING
Fortified Area = with banding... I only got used to it because of the old, old game called Shandalar... where the game operates the effect for you... but here's what i remember
On attack: Any number of creatures with banding + 1 without can attack as 1 creature. Your opponent only needs to block all these creatures with 1 creature... and you get to distribute damage among those creatures in a band... including pumping all damage in 1 creature if necessary
On Defense: any number of creatures WITHOUT banding + 1 creature with banding can block as 1 creature. You STILL call how the damage is distributed. I believe a creature with some sort of way to stop an evasion effect (i.e Giant Spider with Reach) can block a flying creature and then joined by a banding creature to all block that flier
So yea... there's a bit more benefit when using banding as a defensive ability... but over all, its... not useful
Fasting = I just find it funny how a functionally reversed version of this card is WAAAAAY better than this card. As I typed my comment, I was thinking: If fasting drew you extra cards at the cost of preventing life gain and gaining life = destroys this card would have been miles better...but t hit me that Necropotence kinda fills this role already... and while it didnt catch on immediately... we all know how broken Necro has become over the years
The "on attack" bit only matters (for Fortified Area) if you're running Changelings, and you're overcomplicating "on defense."
Banding (on defending creatures) doesn't effect how you block. You block as normal, but during the damage step, any creature blocked by a creature with banding has it's damage assignment chosen by the defending player.
This is deceptively powerful in defense, because you can block a huge idiot with an army of 1/1s, then assign all of that idiot's damage to a single 1/1, letting the others survive. Or you can block an 6/6 with two 0/4 walls, and have each wall take 3 damage and both survive. In the "sacrifice a 1/1" case, Trample & Deathtouch etc don't matter, because you can assign more than lethal damage to the 1/1. If you have an indestructible or Protection creature, you can assign all the damage to it.
It's an immensely powerful on-board combat trick for defense. The only limitation is that the creatures all have to be able to block in the first place.
Bargain seems like it could have a niche today with a black and white Sheoldred the Apocalypse lifegain deck, you’d get a pretty solid bargain for both of your objectives there
Having a card need exactly another card to compensate its awfulness is not worth it. Having that specific synergy be a 2-point life loss isn't even good.
If you want to abuse Sheoldred, use Faerie Mastermind or a Timetwister effect. Even with Sheoldred, Bargain is a -2 in cards.
This is a comment meant for a lot of other commenters, current and future: Let's be real, all of the colors (and non-colors i.e. artifacts) have so many "worst" cards that you could do a top 100 and still miss some of the worst of the worst. I was surprised Leeches, Convalescence, and Healing Salve weren't on the list, for instance. So it's never going to be perfect, and it's fine to say which cards you think should have made the list, but let's just keep that in mind.
I would put Healing Salve on this list over his #10. #10 can be treated as a very crappy creature - useful in some contexts where you have a very tiny card selection.
Not only do no players understand banding, the designers apparently didn't either!
It's really clear that whoever designed Fortified Area thought that you could block as a band.
Evidently players don't, because you absolutely can block as a band. Banding works by ferrying damage between a declared band. So, if I have two Walls with 7 Toughness, I can divide the damage of a creature with 11 Strength. Let's say 5 goes to one, 6 goes to another. Neither fall.
Banding is actually cracked on walls, I've never understood the dislike for Fortified Area.
Fortified Area is actually good, at least in the settings I've played in, for example, Wall of Essence has an effect that states any damage dealt to it is gained as life. Now, that Wall's a 2-drop. Getting two out is easy, and with Fortified Area active you need a minimum of 8 strength to knock both walls at once, otherwise you can Band the damage between the two and your opponent can't do much to stop you
It's easy to just have a bunch of walls and ferry damage between the lot of them, while tapping the opponent with Prodigal Sorcerer or something.
@@thecactussword4304 The video is wrong then.
@@thecactussword4304yep, took way too long to find this comment. Banding is extremely easy to understand once you work out the design intention. Creatures can naturally block as a group, so wouldn't it be interesting if they could attack as a group as well? But that, on its own, would be a downside, so we should give it some upside too, like... Allowing the controller of the band to distribute damage? And if the controller of a band can distribute the damage on attack... why not when the "band" blocks as a group on defence as well? Once framed in those terms, it's actually very easy to remember and understand.
The problem is that this understanding of Banding requires players to already understand blocking as a group, something that most players are quite bad at, even today. 😅
@@thecactussword4304 If your opponent dies due to Prodigal Sorcerer taps, their deck either sucks or is very specialized and you happen to have the counter making it ineffective.
I was sure Great Wall would make the list.
Visions isnt awful. U can shuffle your opponets deck after they stack it. Not just yours. Its 1 white. Doesnt belong on this list at all. While niche, its good😊
Or you can just play a good card that shuffles.
@@jays.6843 Or maybe being able to look at the top five cards of an opponent's library gives you a bigger insight than just mindlessly shuffling an opponent's deck with no knowledge of the top.
It's less that creatures were overestimated and more that spells were underestimated.
Both can be true. Even if we didn't have Terror or Tribal Flames, the leeches weren't worth it.
Bargain could honestly be semi-useful in commander, where you've made an alliance with another player against another opponent.
Is there a "worst cards of magic" cube list...I feel inspired.
Security Detail should be 2 mana. Then it would be okay in commander, as you could get a creature on all of your opponents turns if you had a good way to sac creatures.
Still probably not good then though, but who knows.
I didn't think there could be that many mono-White cards that suck worse than Healing Salve.
Why doesn't Words of Worship work with Fasting? Couldn't you just choose to not skip your draw phase and then use the replacement effect of Words of Worship instead of drawing a card? Or does the replacement effect of Words still count as drawing?
Edit: Guess the point is that it would be like not having Fasting at all in that case.
Aven Trooper came out in Torment. MADNESS was a main mechanic for that block! So white had the least amount of cards with madness. So being able to discard at ANY TIME was HUGE for this card IN THIS BLOCK! So before saying it is bad, it was great for that block. Get your references correct for the abilities.
I think you could retrain fasting to be a pretty fun card. Still skips draw for fasting counters, but it gives you a lot more life, think 5-7 then when you sacrifice it after now 7 turns, you win the game. Wholely impractical and difficult to pull off, but it sounds fun and has a payoff. Also still destroys itself if you draw, fun fact tutors are still fine with it
Fortified area is generally not great unless you know how to play with them. I have 2 cards that work with the ammount of walls you controle. This means making a deck with lots of walls and then those strong wall dependent cards + Fortified Area means that you can practically block anything and not have your walls die.
I have a walls EDH deck with Fortified Area, and *blocking* as a band is ANAZING. Consider putting all damage a deathtouch creature could do into one creature, for example. Since I decide how to spread attacking creatures’ damage, I can do that. ATTACKING with a band is trash, however.
Only way leeches COULD work would be to donate them to a player who doesn't have that type of mana, and then Painter's Servant that color
at first I thought the library shuffle in visions was a must and that it was only your library (i kinda blanked out), imagine how much worse that'd be. at least it'd better than fasting, as i guess there'd be some upside in very extreme cases, where fasting has way too large of a downside.
Fasting would probably be better if you drew a card for every counter on it when it's destroyed.
Does Bargain work in a mill deck, or does white not have any good synergy with milling?
You're better off playing a blue black deck for mill
Not only is it awful as a way to mill because your opponent gets the card, cheap milling cards already mill a lot of cards for cheap, not just 1.
The Leeches are very good in Zedruu Commander decks... You play them and then give them to the opponent, while getting Zedruu's bonuses
While you did mention it only working on white decks, remember that in Commander you have multiple opponents so at least one of them will probably have white and meanwhile you are running multiple Leeches in your deck for other colors
Edit: Bargain has a use in Ebony Owl Netsuke decks
Farmstead from alpha, beta, unlimited, and revised is also pretty bad. It requires three white mana just to cast, then one time during each of your upkeep steps you can pay two white to gain one life.
I was a little surprised to not see Elder Land Wurm on this list
I mean, it's not that terrible. It's in no way good but it's a 5/5 trample (in white this is super odd) that loses defender after it blocks for the first time. Sure 7 mana isn't a good rate for this but it's definitely waaaaaaay better than any card on this list.
How you are going to manage fitting every single card printed in white in only 10 slots piques my interest
Ignoble soldier could technically block?
I love wall cards. I love the idea of them. A powerful mage erecting walls to protect themself while casting offensive magic to defeat the opponent. Too bad they suck :(
There are so many worse cards than some of these. Like convalescence, sheltering prayers, common cause, and divine intervention.
At least the creatures in the worst-case scenario can block once or do one or two damage.
Also yet another person who incorectly claims banding is bad when it is literally onr of the most powerful keywords ever printed.
So "Bargain" is pretty much Upstart Goblin with the targets reversed
Your underestimating the power of banding. It's incredibly good but there just wasn't enough creatures with it and some were over costed.
Yeah, it's not the most powerful thing ever, but it has uses, especially defensively. For example, it completely turns off trample for your opponent when you block with a banding creature for one thing.
It is by far the worst keyword ability in Magic and there are over 200 cards with it.
@@GreyMage I would argue that landhome is significantly worse than banding
Great Wall from Legends allows creatures with plainswalk to be blocked as if they did not have this ability. As of February 2024, only four creatures in all of Magic have.plainswalk.
Can you make a video like this for the other colours bcos this one was great!
Bargain looks awesome for a Smothering Tithe deck!
Just play howling mine and the like. The effect still sucks at 2 mana
So you're going -2 to gain life and *maybe* get a Treasure? You know there are cards that create 1 Treasure, right?
Yes there are cards out there better then Vision .. However, anyone thinking Vision is a useless card obviously LACKS vision... Knowing what u or any opponent can expect to get in the next FIVE cards and or turns isn't useless... Plenty of situations where that knowledge is useful.
Opponent has little to no cards in hand, you can plot out what to expect, whether to use a good mill card or not... Milling an opponent into a win state because you were ignorant of what they were in line to aquire would suck... VISION!
Low on lands, you can see if your getting any in the next FIVE cards could prove useful to decide whether or not to use a card or ability to shuffle etc .. VISION!
Wonder if using your only remaining tutor is the right action at the right time or not? VISION!
That's just a few off the top of my head...
Top 10 effects in white that gentrify other slices of the color pie
I get that visions not really a great card. But that could mess up your opponent who uses scy and surveil alot. And or abilities that let the player stack the deck in their favour.
I'm surprised there is no farmstead here. So utterly useless outside of having some nice art.
Shouldn't White Ward be on the list since, as originally printed, it was literally useless. It would cause itself to fall off immediately upon resolving. Granted, it got errata to say that it's ability did not cause it to nuke itself. But until that errata came out, I don't see how anything could be more useless in a deck.
Hey man I love your vids but I must disagree on banding. Anyone who has played Shandalar understands how banding works, and it's actually a pretty useful ability.
Visions sees play in white Dandân variant decks.
dude, ignoble soldier can block. doesnt seem like one of the worst cards ever, even if it sucks
I’m not sure if this works and I know it would not be good but it would be funny to combo fasting and necropotence
Visions can do the opponents deck; in any format with one offs it’s not terrible. Consider it vs brainstorm or vampiric tutor or goblin recruiter. There are much worse white cards, and admittedly better.
Pitches to solitude cards are great. Imprints under chrome mox.
Lol batman music ending??
Bargain + cleric class will give you 14 life for the cost of the 4 mana of the mercy angel.
Fortified area doesn’t belong here, banding is pretty solid and it’s a nice card in changeling tribal decks
I’d argue Zedruu is a good enough reason to remove leech from the list
Fasting and necropotence, 2 cards without life loss!
Since they were mentioned: Top 10 Walls
Farmstead should probably be on any list like this.
Hmmm…
Would “Pot of Greed” work as a good White card if ported over as is from Yu-Gi-Oh?🤔
Okay so you are asking if a 0 mana draw 2 no downside is a good card? Just think about it for 2 seconds my guy.
It's pretty hard to port a card from YGO into MTG, because YGO doesn't have a resource system in the same sense as MTG. In YGO, your 'resources' are basically the cards in your hand, so draw tends to be incredibly strong in that game. To a point that people are happy to accept ridiculous downsides tacked to them, simply to get access to a few more cards, because draw is just that good.
In MTG, draw is much easier to come by and doesn't request such ridiculous downsides, but that's because you're already paying a resource cost in the form of mana. Translating Pot of Greed would be really difficult, because in YGO it's a free draw 2 (and thus considered incredibly OP in that game) and if you translated it to MTG and didn't give it a manacost or downside, it would very quickly find its way onto the ban list and stay there forever. MTG has a one mana draw three spell and that's one of the most powerful cards in the game. The Pot of Greed version you're suggesting would just not fit in MTG, so I can only assume this is a joke question
@@Xylarxcode isn't Pot Of Greed essentially similar to Ancestral Recall?
Aven Shrine in a persistent petitioners deck in commander
Cozld you make a video on the most fair and most unfair cards ever ?
Aven Trooper is atrocious, I actually cringed learning about the card 😂
Fasting is an extremely flavorful card.
Visions doesn't belong on this list forcin your opponent to shuffle especially if they just put what they wanted on the top of their deck or just scried and kept it on top that's a 1 cost force your opponent to shuffle
You kind of missed the piece of the text on visions. It says any library but yeah still bad.
you should warn about the flashing and all at 9.
How on earth is Squire never on any of these lists?
Did you see that card at the number 10 spot? Squire just being an unimpressive rate is nowhere near shoddy enough to make it to the big leagues.
There's a missing... guy...
Not to mention, alabaster leech was a rare lol
The Leeches are very good in Zedruu decks though
Fasting plus necropotence op combo needs to be banned immediately
12:11
#10 truly shocking, actually amazed at how bad it is 😂
It was from the introduction of threshold and madness, so from that perspective it makes a bit more sense
Did you just imply that Great Wall is too bad to be on the list?
Visions is actually amazing?
Trick question, its all of them when they are mono colored
... Are you saying that all mono-white cards are bad? lmao
@@eXJonSnow Well the banned ones are bad in those formats because they can't even be added to your deck.
@@eXJonSnow this is sarcasm cx im being a... Jovial ass leaning into the "white is the worst color" joke
😂amazing