Top 10 Cards from the First Set That Are Still Staples
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- As Magic’s earliest set, many of Alpha’s cards are unplayable by current standards while other cards like the infamous Power Nine are so broken that they don’t see play in anything but vintage. Today we’ll be looking at cards from Alpha that were not only powerful, but remain staples in the game to this day.
Script by Uncrowned Jules
Editing by Vince
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
10. Wrath of God: (0:16)
9. Sol Ring: (2:23)
8. Animate Dead: (4:11)
7. Demonic Tutor: (5:51)
6. Swords to Plowshares: (7:34)
5. Birds of Paradise/Llanowar Elves: (9:27)
4. Original Dual Lands: (11:18)
3. Dark Ritual: (13:18)
2. Counterspell: (15:02)
1. Lightning Bolt: (16:50)
#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering
(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.) - เกม
Ah yes the best plains BADLANDS.
Or a plains like badlands, lmao I had to rewind. I was certain they said scrubland 😂😂
Making this list and not showing the original art for any of these cards is wild
"Or a plains like Badlands"
*Shows Badlands, which is a Swamp/Mountain*
Would have been better with Scrubland.
Just as a point of clarification, Lightning Bolt was always part of Modern. Bolt was printed into standard in the 2010 Core set and modern wasn’t officially sanctioned until August 2011
Your pronunciation of "diabolic" was... diabolic
He also just started replacing demonic with his terrible almost certainly intentional mispronounced diabolic. It's just comment bait and it's low effort garbage imo.
4:11 “Anime Dead” God, I wish
Cool video, would've been neat to have included new vs original artwork comparisons
Curiosity: Birds of Paradise was a last minute inclusion to the game.
When making the art for "Volcanic Island", the artist (Mark Poole) made the famous art for "Birds of paradise". When Richard Garfield saw the art, he rejected it to be "Volcanic Island" since the bird was more prominent than the island itself.
Since the printing process was going to begin, they decided to make an effect worthy of a rare slot that would ocupy "Volcanic Island" slot in the set, so they decided to make a mana dork that was better than one they were already printing (Llanowar Elf), hence Birds of Paradise was born.
This is the same reason why Volcanic Island was first printed in Beta
Edit: read comments
That wasn't Mark Rosewater but Richard Garfield. Rosewater wasn't hired at Wizards until 1995, two years after Alpha was released.
@@shuboy05 ah, my mistake. Thank you for pointing it out, I'll edit it
Bolt is definitely the most staple (does it make sense?) card on the list, being a format definer. Not just for redefining the pressure to life points, but it marks a huge shift in how creatures are evaluated. The most iconic threats in modern right now are on 1/2 toughness, so it's not as directly noticeable, but raising the safety threshold for creatures from 3 to 4 is a huge shift.
The issue with calling bolt the most defining staple due to modern is 1. The existence of Fury, and 2. The existence of unholy heat. Fury is just better than Bolt, and Heat in most decks is better than Bolt unless you have really specific reasons not to play bolt, like playing BB Elf and wanting to be able to hit life if you cascade an elf on a dead board, but generally, outside of Burn UH is better. There is a reason bolt is seeing large downticks in play recently, while UH hasn't.
@@casuallydone468 It's not about being better cards, though, it's about shaping the format by existing and having to be taken into account.
Unholy Heat doesn't have a difficult set-up, but it HAS a set-up, while Lightning Bolt requires only the mana to cast it, so on the first (and sometimes second) turn Bolt is the threat to expect for creatures, and you have to evaluate the toughness of the earliest drops around that. Fury has taken the place of Bolt in that regard, since it is a card usually live on turn one, so it has become the standard to evaluate the creatures and planeswalkers' survivability, but this is where Bolt's versatility and ability to hit life points comes into play, since it becomes three free damage out of nowhere, meaning that if a deck has red mana you must always be ready for a bolt to the face.
That's what sets Bolt apart from the other cards in the list, even stronger ones: even if it's not played as much or the most powerful option for either red removal or burn damage, it existing as a cheap option for both still defines the format and how you play it.
@@themantyf1116 I dont disagree i cut heat for bolt in jund because i like being able to hit face off bb elf. But I will say Lightning Bolt isnt even the most staple red card in Alpha that belongs Red Elemental Blast. While bolt is arguably better in modern (A format where blast isnt legal), red elemental blast sees more play in every format its legal in than bolt, specifically when talking cEDH and Legacy, Red Elemental Blast is the most played red card by a almost a 1.5x margin in Legacy (34% vs 25%) and cEDH it if im remembering correctly is right next to Underworld Breach in deck counts with 3x the amount of play bolt sees (33% vs 14%) Abrade sees almost as much play as Bolt (12%) in cEDH. Bolt doesnt define EDH when played at an optimal level like Blast does and Legacy/Vintage dont really care about bolt much in general. Saying bolt is more of a staple than Red Elemental Blast because Red doesnt have the option of Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast in modern isnt fair, considering i guarantee if they were decks would on a higher percent of them than Bolt, itd become an instant sideboard defining staple and probably the best counter in modern, strong enough to kill Blue center control decks due to how hard they neg to it.
Bolt just isnt defining in formats that arent modern its still a very good card but compared to Red Elemental Blast, I feel like if we put sol ring at 8 based on its viablity basically in commander alone as a staple, having bolt above blast when the only format bolt is more relevant in at a competitive level is modern is inaccurate at best
Why he keeps saying Diabolic Tutor insted of Demonic Tutor?
A good subject for a video that came to me watching this list, is explaining perhaps most important unofficial rule in magic and any tcg game to be honest, "Bolt the bird", that is so relevant that is really good to teach the starting point for a new player to understand the concept of tempo and also card value.
What does "Bolt the bird" mean?
@@shumanbeans I'll really try my best not to write an essay here, hope I won't fail, but, the underlying message of the expression "bolt the bird" means, "if your opponent starts by casting a value-generating card, your first immediate move, if you can, should be to respond by removing that card";
You see tcg games are essentially games where the player who can setup their board first win, simple like that, so, resource generating cards, in the case of magic, cards that give mana, and drawing cards, are perhaps the strongest abilities a card can have, and in the early game, if you have more mana than your oponent, you will develop your board first and you will win.
In magic there are cards called mana dorks, that are creatures that generate mana, and there is creature removal.
In the case of MTG, If your opponent starts by casting, for instance, a mana dork, and most of the time, that will be his only play for that turn, if in your next turn, you have a way to remove that creature, and you choose not to do it, maybe because that mana dorks are cards that looks unimpressive and are not a direct threat, and you think its better to save to a more imposing creature, maybe because your removal can be used in other ways, because, most of the time, using a removal in the mana dork always looks like a waste.
This very decision, might just literally have handed the match to your opponent and you will lose, so it is important to remove it right away.
Birds of paradise - is a classic magic card that represent the idea behind a value generating card, and a strong one at that.
Lightning bolt - is a classic magic card that represent the idea of a removal, which can also be used for other things, since it is a burn spell, and perhaps the best burn spell in the game.
"bolt the bird" came from these two cards. If your opponents starts the game by casting a Birds of Paradise, you should start by casting Lightning bolt in that bird even if this looks like a waste. Bolt the fucking bird.
I failed, sorry...
@@shumanbeansIts common MtG lingo for the interaction of player one playing a birds of paradise (often turn 1) and the opponent using their turn 1 to remove the BoP by casting Lightning bolt targeting it.
The jump from having 3 instead of 2 mana on turn 2 can often shift the game in your favour and be the reason you win over your opponent.
Notably any mana generating 1 drop creature can help you with this boost, but due to the ubiquity of BoP and bolt lead to the term being what it is today
With Swords of Plowshare getting a short life in Historic it definitely showed that it'd be too strong in Modern. As far as I'm aware, Modern and Historic are pretty similar in power level now.
They're not.
Modern is still much stronger due to the existance of many stronger cards. Historic is closer to a stronger pioneer than Modern
at the end of the day, Swords was deemed by RnD to be too weak to print into modern and Modern Horizons 2 instead brought about the arguably stronger Solitude, one of the elementals with Evoke costs of exiling a card of the same color from your hand. These elementals are the second cycle of cards that attempt to capture the power of Force of Will in legacy, but on level that is more in line with modern's weaker power level. It's a 0 mana Swords at the cost of losing another white card or a 5 mana 3/2 Lifelink that comes with a Swords on ETB for the late game. Solitude quickly completely eclipsed Path to Exile, which was previously modern's best creature exiling card. Solitude is also ran in legacy as additional copies of Swords that can actually answer Emrakul. Also, the red elemental in the cycle, Fury, just got banned in modern for being too powerful in modern when paired with black spells that let a creature cheat death, like Undying Evil
a Plains like Badlands... gotto remember that!
Number 1 it is alwais BOLT! 😅 AMAZING!
Give credit whenever a card older than some people (date of making) is useful even until today.
die-uh-ball-ick
4 syllables
love all ur vids by ty for making them
Small correction: there is a commander precon without Sol Ring, Painbow from Dominaria United
Huh, why?
@@Snivy_1245I think the idea was that since it was a 5 color deck and had less generic costs than most decks it wouldn't need it as much as other decks, some 5c decks really only care about color fixing and not colorless mana, though I don't remember how core that is to that precon since I didn't buy it
12:10 "or a plains like badlands" what????
winter orb deserves a place here. It's not a "staple" per se, but where it is legal, it is a powerful card to this day.
Whoever wrote the script is hilarious, because Badlands isn't a Plains. And Demonic Tutor being called 'Diabolic' Tutor is hilarios.
It's DEE-OB-LIC tutor lol
Generic mana does not exist as a mana type. Sol Ring has ALWAYS produced 2 colorless mana.
Ahh yes deeoblic tutor
Can't remember if I've asked this before, but does Magic ever re-print older cards so they can be used in formats that use "current" cards, or do they just end up making new cards that do essentially the same exact thing as the old cards? From the look of it, seems like they do.
Random idea, but how about a Top 10 Cards That Cost 3 or More Mana Colors list?
Yes they do reprint older cards into newer formats but not very often. This is because usually the only cards that would actually be played in things like modern or pioneer would be too strong for the lower powered formats.
Both things happen. Shock got reprinted a ton, but there are also a wide variety of shock-alikes printed in various sets
They do both.
Sometimes they'll do significant reprints into standard or modern sets. For example, Lightning Bolt was reprinted around 2010, which is why it is even legal in modern at all. However, there is something called the Reserved List, which is a collection of old cards that WOTC promised to never reprint. These cards can't even be printed in secondary product like commander precons or secret lairs. The list includes things like the power 9 and other expensive old cards, but also random junk that happened to meet the list's qualifications.
But they also often print similar cards that are tweaked for various reasons, usually to make them weaker but not always.
@@JohnDoe-df7bl I was actually surprised Giant Growth got a reprint in The Brothers' War. That makes it one of the oldest cards in the game to still get reprinted into Standard (in fact Giant Growth is legal in every single format). I think it helps that Giant Growth is one of the few cards from Alpha that isn't weak or overpowered. It is a perfectly balanced card.
@@shuboy05
Correction: Giant Growth was actually reprinted in The Brothers' War, not Dominaria United.
You've got the Serra Angels and Shivan Dragons of the world. Then you've got the Power 9. This list is everything in-between.
Overall, incredibly solid list, especially with Lightning Bolt at #1, there's really no contest there. REB/BEB were the other only cards I'd consider adding, but it's definitely a subjective call, given the nebulous definition of "staple".
That said, the point about Animate Dead being more generic than Reanimate completely misses the mark. Dedicated reanimator decks run it as more copies of Reanimate, and occasionally decks will specifically care that it's an Aura (e.g., Worldgorger Dragon combo). But in general, doubling the mana cost here is a much bigger drawback than losing some life, even in 20 life formats. Plus, -1 power is can definitely come up too, especially in strategies just using reanimation as a value tool, rather than a game ending combo.
Also, no, Counterspell is not a good card in Legacy/Vintage. Even Mana Drain isn't really played in Vintage, while Legacy still has its 8 Forces that are definitely making the cut first, plus plenty of other more narrow/efficient counterspells to choose.
Red elemental blast has higher play percents at a competitive level in every format it is legal in than bolt, and doesnt have the argument of being powercrept arguably by unholy heat in a lot of decks, and fury in every other deck pretty much
This list is really biased to modern and casual commander
@@casuallydone468 That's why I mentioned there being a "nebulous definition" for how you'd rate staples. How many formats play it? How many decks *within* a format play it? How popular are each of those decks? Is it usually the best card in the deck or the worst card in the deck? Is it more of a sideboard card or a maindeck card? How well does it survive the ebb and flow of the meta, stepping back from just this moment in time?
Being one of the strongest card in Vintage/cEDH by itself is only one of many factors for why a staple might be called a staple. And by valuing number of formats (which proves it more clearly as a staple, if not as a more powerful card), the list is naturally going to bias a bit towards cards that are legal in more formats. Despite that, 8 cards on the list see play in Vintage/Legacy, so it's a fairly weak bias at that. Which makes sense, since cards that are bad in eternal formats will also necessarily see play in fewer formats.
Reasons for why I'd place Bolt above REB (and definitely above Unholy Heat), given all the example questions above, are left as an exercise for the reader.
What „set“ is the shown black lotus from ?
Ayo i love how i know some of those just by playing a bit w my brothers lotr commander decks sol ring is so broken haha
Mana vault should be on this list...
Deeoblic Two Door lol for the longest I thought it was an AI voice
Don't you mean Tundra, Savannah, Scrubland, or Plateau?
Am I the only one who feels weird at the lack of music?
Wrath definitely should have been something else. Also, did he have a stroke during the Demonic Tutor section? Kept repeating the same couple phrases like 3 times each, then called it Diablic Tutor the whole time after 1 mention of Diabolic Tutor
I would like to request a Top 10 Sliver Cards and a Top 10 Myr Cards, please.
I have video suggestions for u , play some magic either in paper with a friend or co host , or mtgo , or mtga
Make a about video about fire design the London mulligan , mdfc and the perceptions opinions and reactions u see in magic
Make a video thats a land tier list (tapping for colored mana ) and a different ine for colorless lands
Make a video sharing more detailed comparison of ygo to magic ignoring the obvious of magic cards cost mana i think mtg has better removal when its not coming from creatures/monsters .
This one is more of question should ygo embrace the idea of formats besides digitally i know ygo has ocg and tcg but thats hardly in the same scope as modern , pioneer , standard etc.
You should've used the original alfa prints
if this video is just the 10 duallands I am gonna be mad lol
Almost every Commander precon has had Sol Ring in it. The Jared Carthalion WUBRG Precon didn't come with Sol Ring in it.
12:00 - I thought you may be about to show info on the huge amount of versatility that fetch lands and dual lands bring together. Instead you show only two lands - and the 'Plains like Badlands' is not a Plains. It's a Swamp and it's a Mountain but it's not a Plains or a Forest.
Say it with me - Di -A-boll-ic.
Llanowar elves being one of the most reprinted cards of all time sounds like a staple but only gets second mention behind birds of paradise?
Llanowar Elves has been reprinted so much because it's significantly weaker than Birds of Paradise. Elves just accelerates your mana. Birds both accelerates and fixes your mana at the same time. It also has flying, making it a better chump blocker in desperate situations or situations where you don't necessarily need the mana anymore. On top of this, flying makes it a good target for pump spells, acting like a slightly smaller Ornithopter and mana dork at the same time. This is why Elves has always been a common while Birds has always been a rare
"diablic tutor"
Deeahblick
There’s no way this guy isn’t pronouncing cards like that on purpose
it's definitely to boost engagement
With a perfect hand (for example Forest, Dark Ritual, Birds of Paradise, three Sol Rings, Griselbrand) you can get out Griselbrand on turn 2. Without reanimating it.
Turn 1: Forest, Birds of Paradise.
Turn 2: Tap Forest. Play Sol Ring. Play the other two Sol Rings with the Sol Ring's mana. Tap Birds of Paradise for black. Dark Ritual. You have BBB and four colorless now.
And then the opponent plays Swords to Plowshares if they didn't Force of Will anything before.
Joke's on them, though, as you have a Pact of Negation. I leave it up as an exercise for you on what card you can use in your deck to get the second blue mana with Griselbrand before the beginning of your next upkeep.
cant you just swamp 4 dark rits for griselbrand?
seems easier and is faster
@@lassehoffmann625 Ok, that also works.
You wouldn't be able to pay for Pact of Negation and would lose the game....no?
@@captaindb4998 That's the exercise I left to you. How to get the mana.
volc wasnt in alpha. but either way this list is good
Top 10 Elves
12:00 badlands is not a planes and cant be fetched
the H in homage is silent
I miss the music
counterspell feels like a questionable include honestly it takes a very specific set of circumstances to raise it to 'playable' much less 'staple'
dioblic tutor
Many eternal format players will tell you Sol Ring s way more busted than a lot of the power 9. Going ahead that far is really insanity to a degree people have a hard time understanding.
You mean "commander players"? The only Vintage decks that are skipping out on their on-color Moxen and Lotus are the ones that don't use mana in the first place (so they couldn't even cast Sol Ring) or maybe are going really hard into Null Rod effects (so Sol Ring is basically just Dark Ritual). Meanwhile, tons of decks will cut Sol Ring because colored mana costs are much more of a limiting factor for them than generic mana costs. From that perspective, Sol Ring can lose 1 colored mana on turn 1, and makes 0 colored mana after that.
That said, in lower power formats like Commander and Cube, Sol Ring is probably the single best card you'd want to add to a deck (without knowing specifically what's in it).
@@Metallicity cEDH is effectively a vintage power level format, its far beyond legacy thats for sure. Particularly because of how prevalent stax and control is in the format, you want colorless mana because you start your game with 2 extra cards in hand + a free mulligan, naturally to cast my Tymna and Kraum i want to accelerate a turn 1 tymna, a mox isnt making it easier than sol ring is in the majority of cases, not every hand is a dream mox opal + mox + land + and artifact hand.
I do think the moxen are better but sol ring absolutely belongs in that conversation, especially when things like Tymna Kraum, Najeela, and Kinnan are so relevant in the format.
Moxen arent as good as sol ring in kinnan for his ability, tymna kraum want more sustained mana since they accrue so much card advantage than other decks, najeela is in a similar boat but for her casting cost being 2R, sol ring will pay it better for equal initial mana generation if you dont cast her immediately.
Sol ring is better than a moxen in a deck where the colors arent super relevant if you untap with it 1 turn later. It has made 3 mana at that point a mox has made 2. If grixis led breach brainfreeze piles were still top decks moxen would be better though but theyve been worse for going on years now.
@@casuallydone468 Sol Ring is absolutely crazy in basically every format other than Vintage. Maybe even crazier than the original Moxen (especially in weaker formats like limited/Standard/Pioneer). But that just goes to show that (c)EDH doesn't stand alongside Vintage, which alone is the one format where all the most powerful decks are playing with all the most powerful cards (and only the most powerful cards), to see which ones are the powerful-est.
Many aspects of Commander as a format serve to slow down the game and artificially inflate Sol Ring's value, from 99 card singleton decks to an actual ban list to multiplayer to even just starting with 40 life. Sol Ring thrives in games that have more turns where you cast worse cards, because that's more free generic mana you're able to take advantage of over the course of a game. Vintage on the other hand is the format which features the fewest turns of playing the least bad cards, so Sol Ring suffers the most there.
@@Metallicity cEDH is a turn 2-3 win format usually because forces arent so prevalent to stop combos a lot of the game is kinda waiting for a good opportunity to go for it then it being weaker than vintage, you just have more removal to play through and less ways to stop removal/counters, vintages card pool of course is WAY stronger but cEDH is closer to Vintage than to Legacy, game just stall more in cEDH
@@casuallydone468 The only claim I made about cEDH's power level is that it's weaker than Vintage (undeniably true), not that it was closer to any other format than Vintage in power. My main point was, rather than the power level difference, it was all the unique rules shared between cEDH and its more casual counterpart which make Sol Ring so much better than it is in a more typical 1v1 format with a nearly identical card pool (i.e., Vintage).
the boat in the card demonic tutor is all wrong
'Dee ob lick' ????
dai
·
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·
baa
·
luhk
ok counterspell is strong and you can't print catch all 2 cmc counterspells, but could they just print some good ones at 2 mana for control decks? cause we used manaleak in modern way too long and here the best we goth is a manaleak that most of the time ask to pay 2 and sometimes you can sac a creature to copy it, ok copying is cool but why is there no good low mana counterspell? why do archmage charm is in historic and not logic knot or some good ones, no go reprieve guys, that's what you wanna be doing delaying the game not answering threats
Stubborn denial worms its way into a surprising number of decks. Izzet drakes, jeskai/izzet prowess. Simic/sultai counters. Dimir reanimator strats. Any time a creature under you control has 4 or more power it's a superior counterspell.
@@craigstege6376 yeah, so i must shift to a control deck that can put a 4pwr on turn 2 so I can have the same speed as cancel
Joke aside, I know that control is the one that can not have early versatile counterspells, mystical dispute worked on blue tho, and veto exist to attack control, the best we have right now is drown in the loch, and it can be awkward with many things
just to nitpick, sol ring wasn't sold in the Painbow deck, but I do understand if you want to ignore that thing existed
"bolt not legal in standard" What do you mean? None of these cards is legal in Standard so why is Bolt special?
I'm hindsight, Sol Ring could've arguably replaced most of the members of the Power Nine including Black Lotus.
Sol ring was not in every commander precon. The older ones did not have it, and it only became common in them in the last couple years.
The older one totally had it.
The first ever commander set is commander 2011 and every one of the five precons had sol ring.
The same is true for subsequent sets.
Wrath all the way.
aRMAGEDDON
In my opinion, you should have used the artwork cards from the Alpha Set instead of the reprinted online game cards, especially since you're talking (badly) about Alpha cards, not MTGO, or other reprints. You also forgot the top five cards from Alpha that are still THE main staples in the game today: basic lands! How could you have forgotten those?
Anime Dead
number 1 should be back lotus
So MANY mistakes 😢
the list should just be the power nine and lightning bolt
That would be incredibly boring since the power 9 are banned everywhere except vintage and 5 of them are nearly identical. I’m glad they covered cards that see play in a broader variety of formats like legacy, modern, and commander.
It can't be a staple if it can't even be played. This isn't just strictly a power level video but cards that are both strong and have wide reach.
@@HeneLv “can’t be played” give me 1 meta vintage deck with out the moxen and black lotus
@@a_speeder1728 I’m joking… of course the list shouldn’t be just the power nine
@@ari_cool Name me 1 deck outside of vintage that allows any of the power 9 barring timetwister in commander. This isn't a vintange list. The only reason they're even allowed is because vintage is at 1, if it allowed banned cards for non degenerate reasons (ante, controversy) they'd be gone as well.
Deliberately mispronouncing words is a diabolic joke.
He has to be pronouncing cards wrong on purpose. He HAS to be.
Ever since I found out you intentionally mispronounce names on purpose to manipulate us and the algorithm this series has been ruined for me.
@themanalogs. Do better!