I was actually thinking about this. I wonder if Dingus egg got restricted similar to how Ring of destruction and Yu-Gi-Oh was banned. If Dingus egg plus Armageddon happened, it probably led to a ton of draw games
@xroark1963 If you're the player with Dingus Egg you decide the order of the triggers. You stack them so your opponent dies first and the game ends before you die.
@@trysephiroth007you say that, but in old Magic, I don’t think that’s how it worked? Didn’t old Magic wait until phase change to kill a player dying due to state based actions, thus looping back around to the Ring of Destruction issue?
@@RMGamer31O Anyway, the player who plays the armaggedon probably had less lands and more artifacts that generate mana, so it's harder to die by your dingus egg
The lane that CGB has found on these videos is pretty great television. "Oh, my guest can actually evaluate how good the cards are? I guess I'll just make the judging metric the unknowable minds of early MTG players and collectors"
It's wild to me that I've played enough YuGiOh to remember these cards by name and even the acronyms. L LAB being "Level Limit Area B" like I didn't even question it when he said that acronym. Same thing if he ever says "BLS" LOL
@@TheQuicksilver115 at 42:50 in Yu-gi-oh player rates iconic mtg cards Cimo describes searchers "or as you would call them tutors" so I think he intuited that or the explanation of that term might have been edited out. It probably should've been belabored more but I remembered catching that like "oh okay cimo just gets it"
@@vitalepitts ah see that gives me the opposite impression, like the term is now so ubiquitous that he saw it and just thought it was any old tutor. I think if you didn't already know the origin of the term you're not likely to just assume out of the blue that this one is the original - there could even be multiple tutors in the first set, Cimo can't know.
The Dingus Egg explanation is in one of George Baxters books, I believe. One of the coasts was playing some 3 color monstrosity land destruction deck. I think i was red/green/white with tutors. It would balance / geddon / stone rain / ice storm / kudzu everything away and tutor up dingus egg or vise. There was a black white early day control version that ran abyss, nether void, sinkhole, geddon and balance and won with black vise too. Dingus Egg was the first case of wizards looking at a deck and going "we should hit something in it" and picking the thing that wasnt even close to being a problem.
The thing is, dingus egg might have been the worst card in that deck. The deck might be better off without it, since it could just win with black vise. Vise was extremely powerful back then anyway and only cost {1}. Also, restricting dingus egg does fuckall to "fix" that deck, since as you said, it ran tutors and multiple wincons. At best, it makes it a little less likely they will immediately win with geddon, but if they're playing geddon with 8 mana of do-nothing artifacts in play, I'm pretty sure they're gonna win no matter what. Truly Wizards had no clue what they were doing.
Poor Cimo, man will need therapy after this video. I thought the Yugioh ban/limited list was nonsensical but early Magic had no idea what they were doing.
@@codyhanson1344Pokemon was also an example, but it was a much worse example (Weirdly enough, Magic TCG was 3 years before Pokemon TCG which was 3 years before Yugioh TCG)
Just a small correction on Berserk: It´s Oracle text says "Cast this spell only before the combat damage step." So you can´t use it as removal, without pumping the creature before damage.
Yes but Oracle text wasn't a thing back then. The Oracle text is the correction to the janky text, as it was never intended to be able to function as a removal card (for some reason).
Yeah and they added the bit about it only killing a creature if it attacked so you couldn't say berserk a creature with summoning sickness to kill it otherwise it would honestly be one of the best removal spells in the game and in a color that is supposed to not have removal outside of killing flying creatures typically.
@@dark_rit I figured if you didn't have a creature it could basically be a sorcery speed removal on your own turn with little risk (no clue if something like fling was in the game at that point).
One thing also worth mentioning with Balance that I don't know if Cimo picked up on is that there are things other than cards in hand/creatures/lands, such as the most powerful card type in the game at that time, artifacts, which would not count towards Balance so the scenario he described where you'd get their creatures and lands but have to discard a bunch of cards wasn't always actually the case. If you got down early Sol Ring/Moxes/Lotus/etc you could also use Balance as a quick Mind Twist to make them discard their hand while you still kept a bunch of permanents. One of the most powerful and versatile cards of all time.
Another comment said the land destruction decks used Dingus Egg, because they played Balance they couldn't use a creature as the win con@@isaoblack987
Yeah balance at surface level: looks fine. Then you remember artifacts and enchantments exist though mostly just artifacts to make it so one sided that it's restricted to this day in vintage. Everyone thinks life is swell until someone mulligans a lot and then drops some moxen into balance to mind twist an opponent for 2 mana.
Dingus Egg got the hit because Land Destruction was so prevalent in early magic that basically every deck had access to it. And since this was pre-moving away from printing land destruction because the player base was like 'this sucks', Egg got the hit. Also on a fun note for Plague Rats. When that card was printed. There wasn't a 4 copy limit. The 4 copy limit was actually introduced at the same time as the initial banned and restricted list.
@@jamesaditya5254 They then printed Relentless Rats. Which is a 2/2 for 3 that gets +1/+1 for every other copy. It also explicitly doesn't have the 4 card limit.
I don't think this is all there would have been to it--otherwise why not just hit the land destruction cards themselves? I think it's more likely that armageddon + dingus egg were leading to too many draw-states, which are universally hated by game designers and players.
I'm pretty sure there's no mention of "only up to 4 copies of a card" being in the original rulebook. It was entirely legal to play 40 plague rats in a deck, until it wasn't. That's why we got Relentless Rats, as a functional reprint to make it so you had basically the same card, but this one works with the modern rules.
Yeah, I'm surprised he doesn't know that. The whole point of Relentless Rats was to reprint Plague Rats in the original form. And yes, this did mean that in theory, you could have a deck consisting of nothing but black lotuses and braingeysers.
Correct. The original combo kill was filling a deck with Channel and Fireball. Like 20 copies of each. Wizards settled on the four copies rule right after that.
Page 38 of my Ice Age starter deck rule book has a list of example "House Rules". In addition to "You don't have to play for ante if you don't want to." is one that implies there is normally no limit to copies per deck. "Eveeryone must follow certain rules of deck construction. These are too varied to mention any specific rules, but the general idea is to give the newbies a chance against 'cared lords' with five of every card." I think the only deck building caveat listed in the getting started area is that players need a deck of at least 40 cards.
The "no effects are generated as a result of tapping" isn't about turning off abilities. It's to clarify that tapping your opponent's lands with Icy isn't the same thing as producing a mana and paying the cost of tapping the land. Some people thought that you could tap an opponent's land, force them to generate mana, and cause them mana burn.
@@sammydray5919 Back in the day, any excess mana you produced but didn't use by the end of the phase would cause you to lose that much life when it was emptied from your mana pool
@@sammydray5919 some sources produce more than 1 mana at a time, so you could end up with more than you need but take the small hit and it might be worth it. But your instincts are correct in that there were absolutely some self-burn strategies that did it on purpose. Eventually the rule was scrapped though for being unintuitive and irrelevant most of the time.
@@sammydray5919 Mana Drain was "balanced" around the fact that if you make like 8 colorless mana with it, you're probably gonna burn some of it and take damage.
'If we had quick play megamorph that destroyed the monster at the end of the turn' So... Like Limiter Removal ? It's funny because YGO has an almost 1 to 1 equivalent to Berserk, that got limited for the exact same reason.
In fairness Limiter Removal effects ALL monsters and is contextually part of an archetype that is known for extremely large attack stats, as in "im gonna win the game with this RIGHT NOW if you dont stop me" type of attack stats when doubled Idk if Green magic monsters are known for large attack or not but limiter removal has a bit more context
@@fiachnaodonnell7895 Green is THE color for big creatures, usually with good effects as well. There is a 5 Green creature that is a 10/10, and that isn't even considered a very "good" card. This is because a 1/1 could block all the damage from that 10/10. However, if say.. you suddenly doubled it to a 20/20 and gave it piercing damage for a measly 1G? that's suddenly quite strong, especially because this combo could come out on turn 3 or 4 (since green is ALSO known for mana acceleration) Just figured I'd give some context, since while limiter removal hits all monsters, green is kind of the king of "big dumb creature that just smashes your stuff"
16:25 The problem with Armageddon and Dingus Egg wasn't winning on the spot. It was that having even two Dingus Eggs on the field made Armageddon an instant Draw button if a player realised they couldn't secure a win and were going to lose next turn. By the time a player can get out two Dingus Eggs, both players are probably going to have 4 lands each, and have probably either lost a couple life points or gotten to 5 or more Lands. So putting down an Armageddon with two Dingus Eggs is going to kill both players simultaneously. And if there's one thing MtG hates more than a decklist that wins too consistently, it's a decklist that can consistently end the game in a draw when it's not going to win.
With Balance it doesn’t “see” artifacts. So with the artifact mana ramp you can dump your hand and balance to mind twist+ stone rain them early and still have mana to work with.
Request: do one of these videos where you show cards to players from other card games, but showing either cards from funny sets like Unglued or fan made custom cards, and ask to distinguish which are officially printed by Wizards of the Coast
Land destruction decks were all over the place. Dingus egg, strip mine, stone rain, sinkhole, Armageddon, nope because people would play circle of protection artifacts. So you would run artifacts mana land destruction and protection tap it all blow everything up protect yourself and leave the opponent with no mana and no way to fix it.
Wait thats why. You said it CGB that's why. The dingus egg trick the 'combo' likely caused a lot of draws. Think about it, you have two of them out right? Every land does 4 damage hitting the graveyard to its controller. What does Armageddon cost? Assuming both of you have chipped damage at any point, or even lets say its turn 5. If you are going second and neither of you has missed a land drop...or hell if its turn 5 unless your life is OVER 20. Its a draw. No one wins, its a tie game. Rinse and repeat. The issue isn't power. Its a lack of game resolution.
That’s not how it would work, all the triggers would be put on the stack in the order the controller of the dingus egg chose. So you could choose to have your opponent take all their damage and die before you do
@joaquintristan4373 now. Is this post rule switch? Cause ill remind you it used to be you could have negative life totals so long as before i believe it was the end of the phase, you get it back above 0. Which means that player wouldnt lose cause your triggers are part of the same phase. And losing the game wasnt immediate. It could only happen at phase ends.
Alpha (and I presume Beta/Unlimited) just had "If you are the first to reduce your opponent's life points from 20 to 0, you win!" and "If you both are reduced to zero simultaneously, then the duel is a draw" Checking life total at the end of the phase and before or after an attack was then brought in with Revised Edition (April 1994).
@@joaquintristan4373 Stack also didn't exist in Alpha/Beta. Everything was done in "batches." Once an effect at a faster level was cast, activated, or triggered, you couldn't add anything to the batch. Hence all the "play this ability as an interrupt/mana source/whatever" on older cards. If you played a sorcery and someone responded with an instant, you could only respond to the instant with an interrupt. If you had the interrupt, they could only respond with a mana source. Then everything resolved and you could start a new batch.
Dingus Egg + Armageddon hurts both players but since they all enter the stack at once, you can layer it so that the damage resolves first for the opponent. But wait! The rules back then were so that you wouldn't die until the end of the phase when you hit zero life. So even then, both players would die simultaneously. Note that Zoran Orb didn't exist yet... So the problem was that games were often ending in a draw and it was more of a "feels bad" situation than being too powerful.
I would like to introduce you to another card that was around during this time. Ali from Cairo. Ali is 2 and 2 red for a 0/1. And reads: damage that would reduce your life total to less than 1, reduces it to 1 instead.
The Alpha misprinted version of Orcish Oriflamme was eventually turned into a real card in Modern Horizons called Goblin Oriflamme. No one has ever played it in Modern because it sucks. But will Standard players try it when it gets reprinted in Foundations later this month? No, probably not.
38:20 There is a card out there that's basically Plague rats, but you can run as many as you want. It's Relentless Rats. 1{b}b} 2/2 gets +1/+1 for each Relentless Rats on the battlefield
Would be interesting to see one where "in among the cards I'm showing you today are all the ingredients for two famously broken combos. Bonus points for how quickly you can figure them out"
I think the thing with Icy Manipulator (that Google AI wasn't doing the best job of explaining) was that it was versatile enough that you could use it in a control deck to slow down attackers, tap down mana in upkeep to limit your opponent's ability to cast spells, OR use it to tap your Howling Mine/Winter Orb to hose your opponent. Since it could do all that stuff, it was pretty much useful at any point in the game. Obviously, as the game developed, having an effect like that for 4 mana wasn't nearly powerful enough to be restriction worthy, but at the time, it was pretty potent.
"Iced" was a colloquialism thanks to the card. The most prevalent of this was during the urza/masque era when 2 of the most annoying thing control have access to are Ring of Gix and Rishadan Port. It was soon replaced by 'port' because people realize Rishadan Port is just broken and can be slotted into any decks even aggro and it did.
I hated Icy Manipulator. It's not just that you lost if you didn't have a counter for Icy Manipulator+Winter Orb, you were likely losing in slow motion unless you simply conceded.
So here is what I think was on their minds in regards to Dingus Egg. If you have 2 Dingus Eggs on the field and play Armageddon basically every game becomes a draw as 5 lands already would lead to death and I think they just wanted to avoid that. I never played the game at that time but I think that makes a lot of sense.
It's also a weird form of pseudo-protection, in a way. If you play a couple Dingus Eggs, suddenly your opponent has to think very carefully about how they use any generic removal they've got. Your creatures represent an immediate threat, but those eggs make already-disastrous land destruction cards significantly stronger. It does nothing on its own, but still poses a threat. Honestly, if it wasn't so absurdly expensive I could see it being pretty useful.
That's not how it got played. Before restriction (and after Egg came off) Dingus Egg decks ran artifact mana. Back then you had Black Lotus (it was even only 20 bucks), the Moxen, Sol Ring, Basalt Monolith, and Mana Vault. The deck would run basically on the artifacts to get the two dingus eggs out, and then once the opponent had five lands in play, drop a mass land destruction spell like Armageddon to deal 20 damage to them, while taking very little themselves because they might have one, maybe two lands in play.
Magic was so dumb when we were kids, CGB! I’d forgotten just how random that list was. All these looks back at early Magic really make one wonder how the game ever succeeded.
Chances are it was thanks to Yugioh. Kids got into yugioh thanks to effective marketing from the anime and those kids eventually picked up magic maybe?
Yeah. to be fair with CGB, I'm assuming he didn't look up the current oracle text of all cards in the video (Berserk reads: Cast this spell only before the combat damage step.) But yeah, that was a really good opportunity to explain about before and after combat damage steps.
The Alpha printing had that too, just much less clearly and as the final sentence. "This spell cannot be cast after current turn's attack is completed."
Demonic Tutor wasn't restricted because lotus. It was later restricted because Time Twister and the fact there was no stack so you instantly reshuffle it back into your library.
As they said, restricting *any card* whatsoever while not restricting Demonic Tutor completely invalidates *any* other restrictions. Especially because this was back when there was no 4 card limit. You could potentially have 20 or so Tutors and 1 or more of any other card, and you might as well have 20 of those other cards. This is just a case of the original MTG creators not thinking hard enough of how their game worked.
Early Magic was *terrified* of aggro. A 2/1 vanilla for 1 was meant to showcase white's power in small creatures. The idea of pumping your red creatures for only two mana was scary for them. What's funny is that even if they'd been fair to aggro, they also underestimated the power of control spells.
27:59 My guess Orcish Oriflamme was restricted in order to prevent players from mixing different versions of the same card in their deck, accidentally or not.
I don't know if it already was a rule at the time but it was (and still is) illegal to play Alpha cards alongside other sets in an unsleeved deck (the corners are visibly different so your cards are marked). So that would mean that to play the "good" version of the card you'd need to be a "rich kid" that plays only Alpha.
@@PeterZaitcev I know that sleeves were forbidden at the time which is why I thought that it might have weighted in the decision. I could not find decisions pertaining to the legality of Alpha in 1994. I could only find the 2000 tournament rules and there it states: " If sleeves are not used, Alpha cards may only be used in decks that consist of Alpha cards exclusively." Which is why Alpha used to be cheaper than Beta. I also have compared my Alpha cards with regular ones and you can definitely tell that they are different even when face-down.
Restricting plague rats would be insane. Regardless of any power consideration, it is a card that is LITERALLY made to interact with multiple copies of itself.
If I remember a chat with an older magic player from my old lgs correctly (this is like 7 years ago I had this convo), the reason Dingus Egg got the restrict was specifically b/c it could draw the game in conjunction with Armageddon. Basically using Armageddon to win the game was considered fine, but using Armageddon+DE in a losing position to draw the game and force a rematch was considered toxic.
Dingus egg was restricted precisely because the wording was confusing, and thought the same thing cimoo did, that it counted lands from the library and hand as well :)
Not on was Icy Manipulator used to Tap/Untap Howling Mine but it was also being used to tap down your own Winter Orb so all your lands could untap. Stax players rise up our boy Winter Orb had this mechanic "removed" from its printings from Revised up until Eternal Masters reprint. Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Edit: Just wanted to clarify that with the mechanics update in Revised where Cont/Mono Artifacts stopped getting printed, a lot of the Continuous Artifacts stopped functioning how they were originally intended. Winter Orb and Howling Mine lost the off feature and it would take Wizards until 7th Edition to restore Howling Mine but it also fixed some oversights with cards like Ankh of Mishra/Black Vise ect. Early artifacts was sort of a mess Mono Artifact - Tap to activate Cont Artifact - Always on when untapped Poly Artifact - Doesn't require tapping itself to activate Edit Edit: OFC Time Vault tax fraud too
I 100% endorse the idea of having guests on to play decks from the history of magic, it works well not only with guests with limited experience of early magic but also old heads who have a genuine love for those days. An idea I had a few months ago that I briefly thought about shopping around to content creators (at least the ones who played back then or love the history of magic) was to play decks from the early days as they were built back then but then to play with the same decks upgraded to modern deckbuilding standards, because it did take a few years before players really figured out how to build decks.
8:20 The two mana you pay for Tutor at sorcery speed makes many of the power 9 so much less good. Black Lotus becomes Lotus Petal, Time Walk becomes Time Warp, Ancestral Recall becomes Divination, Time Twister becomes Time Reversal, and the moxen become Rampant Growth. What made the power 9 so good is because they were such low cost, that they could impact the game very heavily in the first 2 or 3 turns, adding another 2 mana to their cost takes that speed away or forces you to wait another turn cycle to get the effective cost back down for that turn, which is even slower. If we were talking Vamp tutor, or maybe Imperial Seal, then yeah, doing it for one mana turn 1 and using whatever you got turn two is a different story, but as good as demonic tutor is, it's not THAT good.
Except Time Warp is 5 mana, Divination draws 2 cards, and you can DT and then cast the other spell the next turn (or crack the lotus on your next turn).
@Sheer_Falacy yes, it wasn't exact, there IS no 4 mana draw 3, there there is no hard 4 mana extra turn (temporal extortion and plea for power are 4 mana but don't guarantee extra turns) these are just the closest matches in actual cards. Also the moxen off tutor aren't exactly rampant growth because unlike Rampant the mana comes in untapped. And waiting another turn after finding it is arguably worse... which I covered about half way down if you read more than the first sentence or two.
To be fair, with the gauntlet and the Dingus Egg, they stack. Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to set up some defenses, wait for your opponent to play a 5th land, put down your second egg and then crack a Black Lotus to help pay for Armageddon and deal 20 to your opponent while you only take 12 or 16. Healing Salve is a bad card, but it would potentially be useful for a white deck running Armageddon and Dingus Egg. Edit: Also with 4 on the battlefield, you’d only need 3 to oneshot. Balance could do that without hurting you.
Island Sanctuary. If you cant destroy it and dont have flying or island walk creatures or a way to deal 20 damage to me directly, I just start turn, decline to draw a card, pass turn. I don't need to draw if you can't get rid of it.
8:50 PLEASE give us a video with CGB vs Cimo during these old formats. I think Cimo would really enjoy messing around with such high power level cards, and it's also a format that was so old and niche, I doubt many players have seen gameplay from it. Could be fun
29:00 Orcish Oriflamme isn't the only card to have a misprinted cost between two versions. The original Starter 1999 version of of the card Squall has a cost of 1G, while the Mercadian Masques version of the card, printed about 3 months later, and all other versions of it have the cost at 2G.
It wasnt even the only card in Alpha, the original Cyclopean Tomb just straight up didn't have a mana cost (printed), it had to be Errata'd to cost 4 I remember there was a copy that got traded back and forth around my friend group for some time that one of us had penned in the cost- it still makes me wince to this day...
So, after seeing the bit with Gauntlet of Might, here's what I think might have been going through their minds. With that, and Dingus egg, they weren't worried about one player having 4 copies - they were worried about both players having four copies and playing them at the same time. With 8 Dingus Eggs on the field, destroying 1 land would already do 16 damage. If they figured Armageddon was okay, then (in that extreme, but possible, edge case) someone could completely blow their opponent's life out of the water, even if they only had 2 land. Their reasoning was likely, 'well if we make it so both players can only have 1 of these in their decks, the amount of damage will be much more reasonable, in comparison.' Similar, with Gauntlet of Might, it takes it from a potential 'tap 1 mountain for 9 mana' to a maximum of 'tap 1 mountain for 3 mana'. Of course, none of that makes sense with their current design philosophy - but I can see them in the early days of the restricted list thinking "okay, let's focus on restricting cards that could make the numbers get out of control" and not "What combos are people likely to gravitate towards?"
Next time you do one of these, you should include some cards from the 2020 banned list that were banned because the card title or the artwork was problematic.
Great Episode CGB! Fun seeing Cimo seething in his chair! :D Though I hope you'll go easier on him next time or else his hair might fall out due to excess frustration. xD
The thing about dingus egg is, if you have 4 of them on the field, destroying one land will deal 8 dmg and is a that point probably enough to win the game, since I don't play Magic i don't know how likely this is but if it cost 4 of any mana you could start placing them on your 4th turn and you would have all of them on your 7th turn, at this point you probably have enough stuff on your borad that if you destroy 1 or 2 lands you could end the game. Also, I played game i think it was called duel masters which was very similar to magic, the main differents was that you would put any creature as your lands instead of having extra land cards, the red color has effects that allow them play strong creature for less mana but they have to destroy their "Lands", dingus would hard counter pure red decks in that game. I remember ther was a 3/2 creature which is summoned with 1 Mana but then you have to destroy one of your "lands", so you summon it on turn 1 and you arleady had a creature that is as strong as a 3 mana creature but you would have 1 "land" less than your opponent, which was very good because it was a creature oriented game, also you only had to attack your opponen 6 times face to win since they had a shield mechanic instead of life.
The best usage case for balance was ply a bunch of moxen or lotus out, a land. And then turn 1 balance. Keep 3 mana sources and 2 cards in hand and bring your opponent down to 2 cards in hand and you’re always winning that game
Shandalar is an old video game in which you play a character that walks across a map and plays Magic to save the world. It only has cards from around the era you're talking about here, and you play with ante which is actually a pretty good mechanic for a video game. It also adds the idea of limited availability of cards which early Magic was designed for and the Yugioh TV show also had and is in stark contrast to the reality where money just buys you pretty much any card. It can get quite broken later on, but it's a blast to play and gives a sense of what early Magic was meant to be like. It's well worth a play, in my opinion.
Why I think he did "not so well" here is that he insisted on looking at it like a semi-banned-list except what it was, a restricted list. What the restricted list seemed to be about (including some of the power 9, even) was cards that became a problem as soon as you got multiples *at the same time*. Demonic Tutor at 4-of is not 5 black lotuses, because you can never have more lotuses than the one you own. Tutor directly into Lotus was 2 mana -> get 3 mana, which is good, but usable only once and honestly a worse Sol Ring.
That was a great one - giving that in all previous videos there was some kind of logic in terms of card power / bannings, here it all goes out of the window :D
When Cimo suggested that there are cards that your can play any number of on your deck you missed the chance to explain that they've made multiple versions of this rat that you CAN play any number of including Relentless Rats!!
Technically, prior to this list, the 4 copy limit didn't exist. That was actually introduced as part of the initial restricted list. So Plague Rats didn't need that line of text, you already could run as many as you wanted. Deck construction rules before the first list was "your library must contain at least 40 cards". There wasn't even a bit about being able to shuffle unassisted at the time.
A little input concerning balance: game state honestly barely matters as the player who plays it you usually has all the tools to make sure that it isn't balanced at all. Got too many cards in hand? play some, too many creatures? sac them for profit, too many lands? play non-land mana sources to begin with. The fact that balance actually doesn't hit all permanent types allows for similar oppressive board states as Armageddon but for 2 less mana while also emptying hands. And yes play this in multiplayer "casual" formats and most people will hate you(still feels great to resolve xD).
Orcish inflamme did not say "Until end of turn" originally, which caused a lot of fights about weather the effect ended at the end of the turn or stacked each time a creature attacked. Obviously, a much better effect if the +1,+0 persists and stacks. And would be insane compared to bad moon or other similar enchantments.
Gauntlet of Might + any red X damage spell is a seriously deadly combo. You would run a lot of fast to cast small creatures and a ton of land and things like Disintegrate.
Based on what I've heard, Icy Manipulator was actually restricted because the combat damage mechanics worked differently back then. I believe that at the time combat damage used the stack, and tapped blockers didn't deal combat damage. So you could tap down a blocker in response to it blocking, while its damage was still on the stack, and then your attacker would be able to kill it without risk.
My favorite part about the Plague Rats conversation is that the "you can have any number of these in your deck" version (called Relentless Rats) is actually just better. It's a 2/2 for 1BB, so still 3 mana, and gets +1/+1 for every other Relentless Rats in play.
I wonder how good "reverse balance" would be as a commander card. Everyone gets free lands, cards, and some kinda token until they match whoever has the most.
Yooo, Demonic Tutor right off the bat. 😂 Talk about starting woth a banger. P.S.: Posted this like half a minute before you said starting with a banger yourself. 😂😂😂😂😂
The reason mentioned was exactly why Dingus Egg got restricted! There was a control land destruction deck that what it did was destroy the opponent's lands (usually more individual land destruction than Armageddon), while also possibly killing / countering whatever else they might try to do, which led to them not being able to play the game while slowly getting killed by the Dingus Eggs. It wasn't some top tier strategy, but it was pretty miserable to play against!
about the island sanctuary thing to consider is that back then you could draw yourself to death if you couldnt draw at the start of the turn it counted as a loss its not a massive difference, but it could draw out games past the intended timeframe
Looks like I'm the Dingus Egg 🥚
As someone who was playing along at home, we all are Cimo
@@alphanick4694 Always have been. In Old magic if it makes a monster "too stong" then its banned/Restricted. If its a spell...let it fly.
Nah, the Dingus Eggs are the Magic people behind this restricted list XD
As far as I'm concerned, your honor is intact.
@@alphanick4694 Agreed. I feel really validated though, I got 2/10. Twice Cimo's score 🤣
Mystery unsolved. Documentary needed.
The power 9 was only restricted to slow down the Dingus Egg combo.
I was actually thinking about this. I wonder if Dingus egg got restricted similar to how Ring of destruction and Yu-Gi-Oh was banned. If Dingus egg plus Armageddon happened, it probably led to a ton of draw games
@xroark1963 If you're the player with Dingus Egg you decide the order of the triggers. You stack them so your opponent dies first and the game ends before you die.
@@trysephiroth007 thanks for the clarification. Not a mtg player but I love CGB and Cimo's content
@@trysephiroth007you say that, but in old Magic, I don’t think that’s how it worked? Didn’t old Magic wait until phase change to kill a player dying due to state based actions, thus looping back around to the Ring of Destruction issue?
@@RMGamer31O Anyway, the player who plays the armaggedon probably had less lands and more artifacts that generate mana, so it's harder to die by your dingus egg
The lane that CGB has found on these videos is pretty great television. "Oh, my guest can actually evaluate how good the cards are? I guess I'll just make the judging metric the unknowable minds of early MTG players and collectors"
As well as tell a banger of a sub-story with the card choices and their order.
Props to the editor for including the yugioh cards Cimo is talking about on screen, great added polish.
I concur, much appreciated! A nice touch for sure
As someone who doesn't play either games, I greatly appreciated it
@@dominequemccool2359 same
It's wild to me that I've played enough YuGiOh to remember these cards by name and even the acronyms. L LAB being "Level Limit Area B" like I didn't even question it when he said that acronym. Same thing if he ever says "BLS" LOL
More appreciation for the editors! At least half of the content are great editors.
Demonic Tutor into Dingus egg was quite a head spinner for Cimo.
It was swamp, dark ritual, tutor, lotus egg turn 1. by turn 2 and turn 3 you were doing sinkhole and stone rain.
@@DebateColloseum At that point, you still win with literally any creature instead :P Why pay 4 mana for the egg?
Yeah, at that point Cimo knew he was cooked. No recovering from that level of mental warfare.
@bluerendar2194 because the deck played Balance and having a creature in play would let the opponent keep a creature
Missed opportunity to explain to him why we call it "tutoring a card out"
It's because of demonic tutor!
I think that was touched on when they initially reviewed it together
@@vitalepittsDid they? I thought I remembered being exasperated that he didn't though haha, am I crazy or are you crazy? Lol
@@TheQuicksilver115 at 42:50 in Yu-gi-oh player rates iconic mtg cards Cimo describes searchers "or as you would call them tutors" so I think he intuited that or the explanation of that term might have been edited out. It probably should've been belabored more but I remembered catching that like "oh okay cimo just gets it"
and a lot of other cards were given the tutor title in the name but demonic was the first.
@@vitalepitts ah see that gives me the opposite impression, like the term is now so ubiquitous that he saw it and just thought it was any old tutor. I think if you didn't already know the origin of the term you're not likely to just assume out of the blue that this one is the original - there could even be multiple tutors in the first set, Cimo can't know.
I've never seen anyone step on so many rakes lol
Sideshow Cimo
why does this comment say its a day old, when the vids been available to watch for an hour
@@willjackson6575Videos are out early for channel members
@@willjackson6575 channel members get to see videos a day early
@@willjackson6575 early release for members
This video is like a roadrunner sketch. Just pitfall after pitfall and thinking he had the upper hand only for it to blow up in his face. Poor Cimo
The Dingus Egg explanation is in one of George Baxters books, I believe.
One of the coasts was playing some 3 color monstrosity land destruction deck. I think i was red/green/white with tutors. It would balance / geddon / stone rain / ice storm / kudzu everything away and tutor up dingus egg or vise.
There was a black white early day control version that ran abyss, nether void, sinkhole, geddon and balance and won with black vise too.
Dingus Egg was the first case of wizards looking at a deck and going "we should hit something in it" and picking the thing that wasnt even close to being a problem.
Ah, yes, the good old 'hit everything but the problem' strategy. It's a good thing they've learned not to do that since then... right?
@@lo4tr "Alright, I've figured out how to fix the game. First, we restrict Dingus Egg."
@@Dominator150395 Is that a Rank10YGO reference? Please tell me it's a Rank10YGO reference.
@@lo4tr It absolutely is!
The thing is, dingus egg might have been the worst card in that deck. The deck might be better off without it, since it could just win with black vise. Vise was extremely powerful back then anyway and only cost {1}. Also, restricting dingus egg does fuckall to "fix" that deck, since as you said, it ran tutors and multiple wincons. At best, it makes it a little less likely they will immediately win with geddon, but if they're playing geddon with 8 mana of do-nothing artifacts in play, I'm pretty sure they're gonna win no matter what.
Truly Wizards had no clue what they were doing.
Cimo's next video with CGB "Please evaluate these Pendulum XYZ, Pendulum Synchro, Pendulum Fusion monsters".
Part of me wants cimo bait cgb with the anime card frame of Z-arc. Like "please evaluate this Fusion,synchro,XYZ,pendulum"
@@aether6293he absolutely should've had that frame in the tcg
the answer is they're pretty much all bad
@@Medbread Bingo, Pendulum Hybrids are not really good, they just look scary but are pretty shitty
Poor Cimo, man will need therapy after this video. I thought the Yugioh ban/limited list was nonsensical but early Magic had no idea what they were doing.
Well, there was nothing to learn from. At least Yugioh could look at what magic had already done.
@@rav3style hard to do since their mechanics are fundamentally different and they were the only real example
@@codyhanson1344Pokemon was also an example, but it was a much worse example (Weirdly enough, Magic TCG was 3 years before Pokemon TCG which was 3 years before Yugioh TCG)
Just a small correction on Berserk: It´s Oracle text says "Cast this spell only before the combat damage step." So you can´t use it as removal, without pumping the creature before damage.
I knew there was somethin funky about Berserk, but couldnt remember fully what it was.
Yes but Oracle text wasn't a thing back then. The Oracle text is the correction to the janky text, as it was never intended to be able to function as a removal card (for some reason).
Yeah and they added the bit about it only killing a creature if it attacked so you couldn't say berserk a creature with summoning sickness to kill it otherwise it would honestly be one of the best removal spells in the game and in a color that is supposed to not have removal outside of killing flying creatures typically.
@@dark_rit I figured if you didn't have a creature it could basically be a sorcery speed removal on your own turn with little risk (no clue if something like fling was in the game at that point).
@@Pistolsatsean yes but he said that's what you can do now
One thing also worth mentioning with Balance that I don't know if Cimo picked up on is that there are things other than cards in hand/creatures/lands, such as the most powerful card type in the game at that time, artifacts, which would not count towards Balance so the scenario he described where you'd get their creatures and lands but have to discard a bunch of cards wasn't always actually the case. If you got down early Sol Ring/Moxes/Lotus/etc you could also use Balance as a quick Mind Twist to make them discard their hand while you still kept a bunch of permanents. One of the most powerful and versatile cards of all time.
another thing we did was discard our arabian nights version of Rukh Egg to the balance and be up some 4/4 fliers.
Another comment said the land destruction decks used Dingus Egg, because they played Balance they couldn't use a creature as the win con@@isaoblack987
Yeah balance at surface level: looks fine. Then you remember artifacts and enchantments exist though mostly just artifacts to make it so one sided that it's restricted to this day in vintage. Everyone thinks life is swell until someone mulligans a lot and then drops some moxen into balance to mind twist an opponent for 2 mana.
And you still get to keep your Dingus Egg.
Dingus Egg got the hit because Land Destruction was so prevalent in early magic that basically every deck had access to it. And since this was pre-moving away from printing land destruction because the player base was like 'this sucks', Egg got the hit.
Also on a fun note for Plague Rats. When that card was printed. There wasn't a 4 copy limit. The 4 copy limit was actually introduced at the same time as the initial banned and restricted list.
damn, so that kid on CGB's hood really did know what they were doing
@@jamesaditya5254 They then printed Relentless Rats. Which is a 2/2 for 3 that gets +1/+1 for every other copy. It also explicitly doesn't have the 4 card limit.
You could say plague rats got pseudo restricted for the introduction of the 4 card limit.
20 Black Lotus and 20 Plague Rats. That's REAL Magic!
I don't think this is all there would have been to it--otherwise why not just hit the land destruction cards themselves? I think it's more likely that armageddon + dingus egg were leading to too many draw-states, which are universally hated by game designers and players.
I'm pretty sure there's no mention of "only up to 4 copies of a card" being in the original rulebook. It was entirely legal to play 40 plague rats in a deck, until it wasn't. That's why we got Relentless Rats, as a functional reprint to make it so you had basically the same card, but this one works with the modern rules.
Yeah, I'm surprised he doesn't know that. The whole point of Relentless Rats was to reprint Plague Rats in the original form. And yes, this did mean that in theory, you could have a deck consisting of nothing but black lotuses and braingeysers.
Correct. The original combo kill was filling a deck with Channel and Fireball. Like 20 copies of each. Wizards settled on the four copies rule right after that.
Page 38 of my Ice Age starter deck rule book has a list of example "House Rules". In addition to "You don't have to play for ante if you don't want to." is one that implies there is normally no limit to copies per deck.
"Eveeryone must follow certain rules of deck construction. These are too varied to mention any specific rules, but the general idea is to give the newbies a chance against 'cared lords' with five of every card."
I think the only deck building caveat listed in the getting started area is that players need a deck of at least 40 cards.
The "no effects are generated as a result of tapping" isn't about turning off abilities. It's to clarify that tapping your opponent's lands with Icy isn't the same thing as producing a mana and paying the cost of tapping the land. Some people thought that you could tap an opponent's land, force them to generate mana, and cause them mana burn.
Whats mana burn?
@@sammydray5919 Back in the day, any excess mana you produced but didn't use by the end of the phase would cause you to lose that much life when it was emptied from your mana pool
@@Yammenkow thats wild. Why would anyone even waste mana like that though? Unless it led to some goofy self burn shenanigans.
@@sammydray5919 some sources produce more than 1 mana at a time, so you could end up with more than you need but take the small hit and it might be worth it. But your instincts are correct in that there were absolutely some self-burn strategies that did it on purpose. Eventually the rule was scrapped though for being unintuitive and irrelevant most of the time.
@@sammydray5919 Mana Drain was "balanced" around the fact that if you make like 8 colorless mana with it, you're probably gonna burn some of it and take damage.
'If we had quick play megamorph that destroyed the monster at the end of the turn' So... Like Limiter Removal ? It's funny because YGO has an almost 1 to 1 equivalent to Berserk, that got limited for the exact same reason.
In fairness Limiter Removal effects ALL monsters and is contextually part of an archetype that is known for extremely large attack stats, as in "im gonna win the game with this RIGHT NOW if you dont stop me" type of attack stats when doubled
Idk if Green magic monsters are known for large attack or not but limiter removal has a bit more context
@@fiachnaodonnell7895 Green is THE color for big creatures, usually with good effects as well. There is a 5 Green creature that is a 10/10, and that isn't even considered a very "good" card. This is because a 1/1 could block all the damage from that 10/10.
However, if say.. you suddenly doubled it to a 20/20 and gave it piercing damage for a measly 1G? that's suddenly quite strong, especially because this combo could come out on turn 3 or 4 (since green is ALSO known for mana acceleration)
Just figured I'd give some context, since while limiter removal hits all monsters, green is kind of the king of "big dumb creature that just smashes your stuff"
16:25 The problem with Armageddon and Dingus Egg wasn't winning on the spot. It was that having even two Dingus Eggs on the field made Armageddon an instant Draw button if a player realised they couldn't secure a win and were going to lose next turn. By the time a player can get out two Dingus Eggs, both players are probably going to have 4 lands each, and have probably either lost a couple life points or gotten to 5 or more Lands. So putting down an Armageddon with two Dingus Eggs is going to kill both players simultaneously. And if there's one thing MtG hates more than a decklist that wins too consistently, it's a decklist that can consistently end the game in a draw when it's not going to win.
The pure psychic damage of DT into format allstar dingus egg was too much for cimooooooooooooooooooooooo to recover from
how did cimo not think of limiter removal when he saw berserk? A quickplay that doubles attack but destroys at the end phase, (and it was limited)
My thoughts exactly. It was even limited in Yu-Gi-Oh!
With Balance it doesn’t “see” artifacts. So with the artifact mana ramp you can dump your hand and balance to mind twist+ stone rain them early and still have mana to work with.
But honestly even if it was symmetrical and couldnt be abused like that, 2 mana for that effect is ridiculous.
For sure, The card is nuts, it's just even more nuts than how CGB described it lol. @@the_blahhh
Request: do one of these videos where you show cards to players from other card games, but showing either cards from funny sets like Unglued or fan made custom cards, and ask to distinguish which are officially printed by Wizards of the Coast
Land destruction decks were all over the place. Dingus egg, strip mine, stone rain, sinkhole, Armageddon, nope because people would play circle of protection artifacts. So you would run artifacts mana land destruction and protection tap it all blow everything up protect yourself and leave the opponent with no mana and no way to fix it.
My favorite deck in 1995 destroyed your lands and made you discard you hand. The Rack was the wincon. It was so much fun.
Wait thats why. You said it CGB that's why. The dingus egg trick the 'combo' likely caused a lot of draws. Think about it, you have two of them out right? Every land does 4 damage hitting the graveyard to its controller. What does Armageddon cost? Assuming both of you have chipped damage at any point, or even lets say its turn 5. If you are going second and neither of you has missed a land drop...or hell if its turn 5 unless your life is OVER 20. Its a draw. No one wins, its a tie game.
Rinse and repeat. The issue isn't power. Its a lack of game resolution.
That’s not how it would work, all the triggers would be put on the stack in the order the controller of the dingus egg chose. So you could choose to have your opponent take all their damage and die before you do
@joaquintristan4373 now. Is this post rule switch? Cause ill remind you it used to be you could have negative life totals so long as before i believe it was the end of the phase, you get it back above 0.
Which means that player wouldnt lose cause your triggers are part of the same phase. And losing the game wasnt immediate. It could only happen at phase ends.
Alpha (and I presume Beta/Unlimited) just had "If you are the first to reduce your opponent's life points from 20 to 0, you win!" and "If you both are reduced to zero simultaneously, then the duel is a draw"
Checking life total at the end of the phase and before or after an attack was then brought in with Revised Edition (April 1994).
@@nexviper wow, I never knew this. Cool to learn something new about this game!
@@joaquintristan4373 Stack also didn't exist in Alpha/Beta. Everything was done in "batches." Once an effect at a faster level was cast, activated, or triggered, you couldn't add anything to the batch. Hence all the "play this ability as an interrupt/mana source/whatever" on older cards. If you played a sorcery and someone responded with an instant, you could only respond to the instant with an interrupt. If you had the interrupt, they could only respond with a mana source. Then everything resolved and you could start a new batch.
You can't actually cast berserk during end of combat. That's how they translated the "before combat is completed" line to the current rules/errata.
Dingus Egg + Armageddon hurts both players but since they all enter the stack at once, you can layer it so that the damage resolves first for the opponent. But wait! The rules back then were so that you wouldn't die until the end of the phase when you hit zero life. So even then, both players would die simultaneously. Note that Zoran Orb didn't exist yet... So the problem was that games were often ending in a draw and it was more of a "feels bad" situation than being too powerful.
The stack didn't even exist back then so it may end up as a draw?
I would like to introduce you to another card that was around during this time. Ali from Cairo. Ali is 2 and 2 red for a 0/1. And reads: damage that would reduce your life total to less than 1, reduces it to 1 instead.
A video playing pre-Revised 1994 Magic with Cimo and any of the other accomplices sounds like a laugh.
The rules weren't even well defined back then. No stack, you just have to wing it
The Alpha misprinted version of Orcish Oriflamme was eventually turned into a real card in Modern Horizons called Goblin Oriflamme. No one has ever played it in Modern because it sucks. But will Standard players try it when it gets reprinted in Foundations later this month? No, probably not.
38:20 There is a card out there that's basically Plague rats, but you can run as many as you want. It's Relentless Rats. 1{b}b} 2/2 gets +1/+1 for each Relentless Rats on the battlefield
Note that prior to Arabian Nights there was no limit to how many of a card you could put in your deck. Plague Rat Swarm was a basic meta aggro deck
@@mjp121 Excerpt of flavor text on silver-bordered card "Old Fogey":
"20 Black Lotus and 20 Plague Rats; Now that's REAL Magic!"
@@Seydaschu 40 card decks FTW
Would be interesting to see one where "in among the cards I'm showing you today are all the ingredients for two famously broken combos. Bonus points for how quickly you can figure them out"
If opponent has 5 lands, 2 dingus eggs deals 20, and you can stay at 4 for both and armo
What they also missed is if your losing it becomes incredibly easy to force a draw because the stack worked different back then.
I think the thing with Icy Manipulator (that Google AI wasn't doing the best job of explaining) was that it was versatile enough that you could use it in a control deck to slow down attackers, tap down mana in upkeep to limit your opponent's ability to cast spells, OR use it to tap your Howling Mine/Winter Orb to hose your opponent. Since it could do all that stuff, it was pretty much useful at any point in the game. Obviously, as the game developed, having an effect like that for 4 mana wasn't nearly powerful enough to be restriction worthy, but at the time, it was pretty potent.
"Iced" was a colloquialism thanks to the card. The most prevalent of this was during the urza/masque era when 2 of the most annoying thing control have access to are Ring of Gix and Rishadan Port. It was soon replaced by 'port' because people realize Rishadan Port is just broken and can be slotted into any decks even aggro and it did.
I hated Icy Manipulator. It's not just that you lost if you didn't have a counter for Icy Manipulator+Winter Orb, you were likely losing in slow motion unless you simply conceded.
So here is what I think was on their minds in regards to Dingus Egg. If you have 2 Dingus Eggs on the field and play Armageddon basically every game becomes a draw as 5 lands already would lead to death and I think they just wanted to avoid that. I never played the game at that time but I think that makes a lot of sense.
It's also a weird form of pseudo-protection, in a way. If you play a couple Dingus Eggs, suddenly your opponent has to think very carefully about how they use any generic removal they've got. Your creatures represent an immediate threat, but those eggs make already-disastrous land destruction cards significantly stronger. It does nothing on its own, but still poses a threat. Honestly, if it wasn't so absurdly expensive I could see it being pretty useful.
And then a year later they printed Divine Intervention XD
There was Copy Artifact and Reverse damage as well.
That's not how it got played. Before restriction (and after Egg came off) Dingus Egg decks ran artifact mana. Back then you had Black Lotus (it was even only 20 bucks), the Moxen, Sol Ring, Basalt Monolith, and Mana Vault. The deck would run basically on the artifacts to get the two dingus eggs out, and then once the opponent had five lands in play, drop a mass land destruction spell like Armageddon to deal 20 damage to them, while taking very little themselves because they might have one, maybe two lands in play.
The only thing we learn from this Video is that WotC has NEVER had any idea on what Balancing is.
*Stares at Nadu.*
I had no idea MTG had Battle City rules at some point
you know, i know nothing of MTG but with this type of viedos im begining to learn and understand the game alittle.
Magic was so dumb when we were kids, CGB! I’d forgotten just how random that list was. All these looks back at early Magic really make one wonder how the game ever succeeded.
Chances are it was thanks to Yugioh. Kids got into yugioh thanks to effective marketing from the anime and those kids eventually picked up magic maybe?
@naqib_2365 those dang time traveling YGO kids
@@naqib_2365 this videos list takes place 8 years before Yu-Gi-Oh was released worldwide
@@naqib_2365 The card game part of Yu-Gi-Oh literally exists bc the Creator was a fan of Magic lmao
@@baixiaolang real ones remember when it was called Magics & Wizards before it got changed to Duel Monsters
to be fair, we do have Rat Colony and Relentless Rats which is basically just the pitch they made for a buffed Plague Rat
When Plague Rats was printed there was no limit to copies of cards in a deck, so the extra line would have been superfluous
This episode has a Vizzini vs Westley battle of wit vibes to me and I absolutely love it.
Much unlike The Grass Is Greener, Battle of Wits was never restricted!
1:02:05 Berserk got more clearly worded with the conspiracy printing that says "Cast only BEFORE the combat damage step."
Yeah. to be fair with CGB, I'm assuming he didn't look up the current oracle text of all cards in the video (Berserk reads: Cast this spell only before the combat damage step.) But yeah, that was a really good opportunity to explain about before and after combat damage steps.
The Alpha printing had that too, just much less clearly and as the final sentence.
"This spell cannot be cast after current turn's attack is completed."
Demonic Tutor wasn't restricted because lotus. It was later restricted because Time Twister and the fact there was no stack so you instantly reshuffle it back into your library.
Right. Demonic Tutor is more than powerful enough to get restricted if Black Lotus didn't exist.
As they said, restricting *any card* whatsoever while not restricting Demonic Tutor completely invalidates *any* other restrictions. Especially because this was back when there was no 4 card limit. You could potentially have 20 or so Tutors and 1 or more of any other card, and you might as well have 20 of those other cards.
This is just a case of the original MTG creators not thinking hard enough of how their game worked.
As much as Cimo will want to take revenge for this, I'm not sure how, lmfao. Maybe some super obscure stuff from Duel Links.
Dingus Egg and Mesa Falcon at it again i see
Early Magic was *terrified* of aggro. A 2/1 vanilla for 1 was meant to showcase white's power in small creatures. The idea of pumping your red creatures for only two mana was scary for them.
What's funny is that even if they'd been fair to aggro, they also underestimated the power of control spells.
27:59 My guess Orcish Oriflamme was restricted in order to prevent players from mixing different versions of the same card in their deck, accidentally or not.
I don't know if it already was a rule at the time but it was (and still is) illegal to play Alpha cards alongside other sets in an unsleeved deck (the corners are visibly different so your cards are marked). So that would mean that to play the "good" version of the card you'd need to be a "rich kid" that plays only Alpha.
@ankhi3585 idk if that was a thing, but sleeves were not allowed back in the days
@@PeterZaitcev I know that sleeves were forbidden at the time which is why I thought that it might have weighted in the decision. I could not find decisions pertaining to the legality of Alpha in 1994. I could only find the 2000 tournament rules and there it states: " If sleeves are not used, Alpha cards may only be used in decks that consist of Alpha cards exclusively." Which is why Alpha used to be cheaper than Beta.
I also have compared my Alpha cards with regular ones and you can definitely tell that they are different even when face-down.
Restricting plague rats would be insane.
Regardless of any power consideration, it is a card that is LITERALLY made to interact with multiple copies of itself.
If I remember a chat with an older magic player from my old lgs correctly (this is like 7 years ago I had this convo), the reason Dingus Egg got the restrict was specifically b/c it could draw the game in conjunction with Armageddon. Basically using Armageddon to win the game was considered fine, but using Armageddon+DE in a losing position to draw the game and force a rematch was considered toxic.
Cimooooo slowly losing his mind is absolutely sending me
Dingus egg was restricted precisely because the wording was confusing, and thought the same thing cimoo did, that it counted lands from the library and hand as well :)
This was amazing, I got every one wrong with Cimo 😅😂😂😂 I was laughing so damn hard the whole time. This was the most fun of these in a while 😁
Not on was Icy Manipulator used to Tap/Untap Howling Mine but it was also being used to tap down your own Winter Orb so all your lands could untap. Stax players rise up our boy Winter Orb had this mechanic "removed" from its printings from Revised up until Eternal Masters reprint. Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax! Stax!
Edit: Just wanted to clarify that with the mechanics update in Revised where Cont/Mono Artifacts stopped getting printed, a lot of the Continuous Artifacts stopped functioning how they were originally intended. Winter Orb and Howling Mine lost the off feature and it would take Wizards until 7th Edition to restore Howling Mine but it also fixed some oversights with cards like Ankh of Mishra/Black Vise ect. Early artifacts was sort of a mess
Mono Artifact - Tap to activate
Cont Artifact - Always on when untapped
Poly Artifact - Doesn't require tapping itself to activate
Edit Edit: OFC Time Vault tax fraud too
40:00 I think that extra line of text was referring to the fact that a tapped artifact would no longer have a static effect on the field.
I think it's about if you tap a land, it doesn't produce mana since mana burn was a thing back then.
I 100% endorse the idea of having guests on to play decks from the history of magic, it works well not only with guests with limited experience of early magic but also old heads who have a genuine love for those days.
An idea I had a few months ago that I briefly thought about shopping around to content creators (at least the ones who played back then or love the history of magic) was to play decks from the early days as they were built back then but then to play with the same decks upgraded to modern deckbuilding standards, because it did take a few years before players really figured out how to build decks.
8:20 The two mana you pay for Tutor at sorcery speed makes many of the power 9 so much less good. Black Lotus becomes Lotus Petal, Time Walk becomes Time Warp, Ancestral Recall becomes Divination, Time Twister becomes Time Reversal, and the moxen become Rampant Growth. What made the power 9 so good is because they were such low cost, that they could impact the game very heavily in the first 2 or 3 turns, adding another 2 mana to their cost takes that speed away or forces you to wait another turn cycle to get the effective cost back down for that turn, which is even slower. If we were talking Vamp tutor, or maybe Imperial Seal, then yeah, doing it for one mana turn 1 and using whatever you got turn two is a different story, but as good as demonic tutor is, it's not THAT good.
Except Time Warp is 5 mana, Divination draws 2 cards, and you can DT and then cast the other spell the next turn (or crack the lotus on your next turn).
@Sheer_Falacy yes, it wasn't exact, there IS no 4 mana draw 3, there there is no hard 4 mana extra turn (temporal extortion and plea for power are 4 mana but don't guarantee extra turns) these are just the closest matches in actual cards. Also the moxen off tutor aren't exactly rampant growth because unlike Rampant the mana comes in untapped. And waiting another turn after finding it is arguably worse... which I covered about half way down if you read more than the first sentence or two.
@Sheer_Falacy You're thinking about this with a modern perspective. Magic was not at all the same game when Arabian nights was released.
I think dingus egg would be limited because 2 of them on the field would mean that 5 lands would be an insta loss.
"But google AI disagrees"
Google AI was also the one that tried to get people to make pizza with glue, so
To be fair, with the gauntlet and the Dingus Egg, they stack. Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to set up some defenses, wait for your opponent to play a 5th land, put down your second egg and then crack a Black Lotus to help pay for Armageddon and deal 20 to your opponent while you only take 12 or 16. Healing Salve is a bad card, but it would potentially be useful for a white deck running Armageddon and Dingus Egg.
Edit: Also with 4 on the battlefield, you’d only need 3 to oneshot. Balance could do that without hurting you.
Island Sanctuary. If you cant destroy it and dont have flying or island walk creatures or a way to deal 20 damage to me directly, I just start turn, decline to draw a card, pass turn. I don't need to draw if you can't get rid of it.
Island Sanctuary is a way to mill your opponent to death 😀
What if they both play Island Sanctuary?
"I don't draw, go."
"I don't draw, go."
Won't even end in deck out, because they aren't drawing.
Lantern control basically.
Look up Mystic Decree and see how well it combos with Island Sanctuary.
8:50 PLEASE give us a video with CGB vs Cimo during these old formats. I think Cimo would really enjoy messing around with such high power level cards, and it's also a format that was so old and niche, I doubt many players have seen gameplay from it. Could be fun
29:00 Orcish Oriflamme isn't the only card to have a misprinted cost between two versions.
The original Starter 1999 version of of the card Squall has a cost of 1G, while the Mercadian Masques version of the card, printed about 3 months later, and all other versions of it have the cost at 2G.
It wasnt even the only card in Alpha, the original Cyclopean Tomb just straight up didn't have a mana cost (printed), it had to be Errata'd to cost 4
I remember there was a copy that got traded back and forth around my friend group for some time that one of us had penned in the cost- it still makes me wince to this day...
So, after seeing the bit with Gauntlet of Might, here's what I think might have been going through their minds. With that, and Dingus egg, they weren't worried about one player having 4 copies - they were worried about both players having four copies and playing them at the same time. With 8 Dingus Eggs on the field, destroying 1 land would already do 16 damage. If they figured Armageddon was okay, then (in that extreme, but possible, edge case) someone could completely blow their opponent's life out of the water, even if they only had 2 land. Their reasoning was likely, 'well if we make it so both players can only have 1 of these in their decks, the amount of damage will be much more reasonable, in comparison.' Similar, with Gauntlet of Might, it takes it from a potential 'tap 1 mountain for 9 mana' to a maximum of 'tap 1 mountain for 3 mana'.
Of course, none of that makes sense with their current design philosophy - but I can see them in the early days of the restricted list thinking "okay, let's focus on restricting cards that could make the numbers get out of control" and not "What combos are people likely to gravitate towards?"
CGB and Cimo playing old magic would be awesome content
Next time you do one of these, you should include some cards from the 2020 banned list that were banned because the card title or the artwork was problematic.
I'd love to see how well our favorite no-cost caster can evaluate free cards: like Memnite, Archive Trap, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mental Misstep.
Great Episode CGB! Fun seeing Cimo seething in his chair! :D
Though I hope you'll go easier on him next time or else his hair might fall out due to excess frustration. xD
The thing about dingus egg is, if you have 4 of them on the field, destroying one land will deal 8 dmg and is a that point probably enough to win the game, since I don't play Magic i don't know how likely this is but if it cost 4 of any mana you could start placing them on your 4th turn and you would have all of them on your 7th turn, at this point you probably have enough stuff on your borad that if you destroy 1 or 2 lands you could end the game. Also, I played game i think it was called duel masters which was very similar to magic, the main differents was that you would put any creature as your lands instead of having extra land cards, the red color has effects that allow them play strong creature for less mana but they have to destroy their "Lands", dingus would hard counter pure red decks in that game. I remember ther was a 3/2 creature which is summoned with 1 Mana but then you have to destroy one of your "lands", so you summon it on turn 1 and you arleady had a creature that is as strong as a 3 mana creature but you would have 1 "land" less than your opponent, which was very good because it was a creature oriented game, also you only had to attack your opponen 6 times face to win since they had a shield mechanic instead of life.
Probably one of the best videos in the card game avengers series so far, great job CGB!
"At least you have 4 demonic tutors to get your dingus egg combo"
I have never heard so much salt in Cimoo's voice, I choked on my drink lmao
The best usage case for balance was ply a bunch of moxen or lotus out, a land. And then turn 1 balance. Keep 3 mana sources and 2 cards in hand and bring your opponent down to 2 cards in hand and you’re always winning that game
Shandalar is an old video game in which you play a character that walks across a map and plays Magic to save the world. It only has cards from around the era you're talking about here, and you play with ante which is actually a pretty good mechanic for a video game. It also adds the idea of limited availability of cards which early Magic was designed for and the Yugioh TV show also had and is in stark contrast to the reality where money just buys you pretty much any card. It can get quite broken later on, but it's a blast to play and gives a sense of what early Magic was meant to be like. It's well worth a play, in my opinion.
Cimo running straight for that tunnel every time
Why I think he did "not so well" here is that he insisted on looking at it like a semi-banned-list except what it was, a restricted list.
What the restricted list seemed to be about (including some of the power 9, even) was cards that became a problem as soon as you got multiples *at the same time*. Demonic Tutor at 4-of is not 5 black lotuses, because you can never have more lotuses than the one you own. Tutor directly into Lotus was 2 mana -> get 3 mana, which is good, but usable only once and honestly a worse Sol Ring.
I really enjoy this series where players of different card games discuss with each other. Please create more related videos.
This vid had me laughing hysterically. The ridiculousness of that first restricted list is unfathomable
I can't wait for Cimo's revenge when he shows CGB pendulums.
You guys worked out a format i really enjoy, i dont care about which game it is, its very entertaining 👍
That was a great one - giving that in all previous videos there was some kind of logic in terms of card power / bannings, here it all goes out of the window :D
Cimo around 12 minutes talking about my land is sacred and I'm just over here running strip mine in commander, like a lot. XD
glad we "Insert a descriptive sentence about the video" :)
When Cimo suggested that there are cards that your can play any number of on your deck you missed the chance to explain that they've made multiple versions of this rat that you CAN play any number of including Relentless Rats!!
Technically, prior to this list, the 4 copy limit didn't exist. That was actually introduced as part of the initial restricted list. So Plague Rats didn't need that line of text, you already could run as many as you wanted. Deck construction rules before the first list was "your library must contain at least 40 cards". There wasn't even a bit about being able to shuffle unassisted at the time.
I believe gauntlet of might was even more asymmetrical as back then artifacts would switch off when tapped, and could pair with Icy Manipulator.
42:40 That smirk and smile. It's not PTSD. It's nostalgia.
I would pay to watch the Dingus Egg documentary.
43:20 I think what the AI was going for was, "It's very effective for stopping a small amount of creatures." Not at stopping small creatures.
Gotta remember that the first types of these lists are probably more vibes based than based on any actual data.
A little input concerning balance: game state honestly barely matters as the player who plays it you usually has all the tools to make sure that it isn't balanced at all. Got too many cards in hand? play some, too many creatures? sac them for profit, too many lands? play non-land mana sources to begin with. The fact that balance actually doesn't hit all permanent types allows for similar oppressive board states as Armageddon but for 2 less mana while also emptying hands. And yes play this in multiplayer "casual" formats and most people will hate you(still feels great to resolve xD).
Balance is Armageddon and Wrath of God, combined, at 2 mana…
A note on Gauntlet of Might; mana burn was still a thing at that time, so if you get 8 mana to cast a 7 cost spell, you also lose 1 life for it.
Orcish inflamme did not say "Until end of turn" originally, which caused a lot of fights about weather the effect ended at the end of the turn or stacked each time a creature attacked. Obviously, a much better effect if the +1,+0 persists and stacks. And would be insane compared to bad moon or other similar enchantments.
Gauntlet of Might + any red X damage spell is a seriously deadly combo. You would run a lot of fast to cast small creatures and a ton of land and things like Disintegrate.
I love that the moment they're done, Cimo is already plotting his revenge. XD
Based on what I've heard, Icy Manipulator was actually restricted because the combat damage mechanics worked differently back then. I believe that at the time combat damage used the stack, and tapped blockers didn't deal combat damage. So you could tap down a blocker in response to it blocking, while its damage was still on the stack, and then your attacker would be able to kill it without risk.
This is THE most monoblue way you could possible do this type of video.
50:22 cgb counterspells happiness
My favorite part about the Plague Rats conversation is that the "you can have any number of these in your deck" version (called Relentless Rats) is actually just better. It's a 2/2 for 1BB, so still 3 mana, and gets +1/+1 for every other Relentless Rats in play.
I wonder how good "reverse balance" would be as a commander card. Everyone gets free lands, cards, and some kinda token until they match whoever has the most.
Would have to do only Hand and basics which would make it worse
Whoever was in charge of this restricted list was the true Dingus Egg.
Yooo, Demonic Tutor right off the bat. 😂 Talk about starting woth a banger.
P.S.: Posted this like half a minute before you said starting with a banger yourself. 😂😂😂😂😂
Lands are in the NO-NO square
The reason mentioned was exactly why Dingus Egg got restricted! There was a control land destruction deck that what it did was destroy the opponent's lands (usually more individual land destruction than Armageddon), while also possibly killing / countering whatever else they might try to do, which led to them not being able to play the game while slowly getting killed by the Dingus Eggs. It wasn't some top tier strategy, but it was pretty miserable to play against!
about the island sanctuary
thing to consider is that back then you could draw yourself to death
if you couldnt draw at the start of the turn it counted as a loss
its not a massive difference, but it could draw out games past the intended timeframe