Editor here. There were some technical difficulties during recording, so I had to use the backup audio. Hope that doesn't take away from the cool episode with the cool guest!
Thanks for having me on, I’ve been listening for years and it was really cool to be on a BANS episode. Thanks for all the nice comments so far as well 💙🙏
Dude youve been all over the place recently especially it feels like and its been great. Latest commander episode from your crew was great as well btw!
CGB: I put 4 Mesa Falcon in the deck because I needed cards from Homeland, and I didn't manage to obtain anything better The entire internet: Mesa Falcon is CGB's favorite card
Crims pain tolerance finally giving out with skullclamp makes perfect sense. Blow up all lands? Great. Counter all spells? all good. Kill all creatures, discard all hands, noone can untap or play anything, Perfect. Opponent gets resources? Miserable. Jail Jail for ten thousand years.
Mirrodin standard is the standard (pun intended) by which he measures how miserable a format is, and if you lived through it at the time you’d have agreed too 😂
@@WhammeWhamme That's pure nostalgia tbh. Current standard isn't perfect, but boy is it better than losing to Arcbound ravager, Thoughtcast, and Skullclamp
CGB on a goldfish podcast? This is HYPE. Also just the fact that the B&R announcement hit so many important cards plus announced changes to the cadence to be more in line with the competitive scene is HUGE. Today was a VERY good day.
My issues is that WotC states that they do bans on a set schedule because they want players to have “faith” in the cards they purchase. Yet! Behind the scenes they didn’t test Nadu at all and pushed it to the presses?! So if this was a known issue, didn’t test the card, and let it stomp modern tournaments AND still they didn’t pull an emergency ban makes me loose faith in any competitive constructed format! And when you cut corners in QA it undermines all the good work and will that went into products that were throughly tested.
Man. It just absolutely blows my mind that The One Ring has not been banned or even restricted. Remember when Reckoner Bankbuster got banned in Standard? Let's take a look at the reasoning: Reckoner Bankbuster has been the go-to card-advantage engine for many decks in Standard since its release. As a colorless card, it has been effortless to slot into a wide variety of colors and strategies. Its general ubiquity and strength have pushed out other card-advantage options too much as a colorless card. Can someone PLEASE explain to me how a card played in over 50% of decks for this exact reason is not touched in any way?
Bankbuster was a 2 mana card in a much weaker format. The One Ring is certainly a lot stronger, but it is a 4 mana card in stronger format, competing with decks that might as well kill you before you get to 4 mana. If they print one or two more decent hate pieces effective against the ring it may already be enough to reduce its prevalence without a ban. They tried to handle the evoke elementals that way by printing Vexing Bauble, but if the Grief deck is on the play it is very hard to find a proper answer. So it had to go.
One thing I wonder is, if they’re not oppressive, are autoincludes in decks necessarily a bad thing? Like for instance, in the game Counterstrike, everyone just accepts that you use the AK and M4 as the main guns, and no one has ever suggested that those guns needed to be nerfed. Maybe Magic decks can just have this thing where you have autoincludes like The One Ring, since having a draw engine just overall improves decks and makes fringe decks more playable than they otherwise would be, like was mentioned here.
I can: they’re still printing it for the 2 years they contracted with LOTR people and it would be a horrendous look to other companies to ban their hallmark card. TLDR: greed
@@thomasvcontiYou are correct that RB is cheaper and Standard is a weaker format, however I still have the understanding that in general WotC hates cards that can be slotted into practically any deck for free. The fact they don't even acknowledge the severity of the issue is concerning to me. "While present in several decks..." Seriously? Is that appropriate language for the #1 most played card in a format by a margin of 9 percent?
The wotc notes over Nadu’s design and just their policies around EDH are just… so stupid to me. They are so obsessed with fulfilling this non-existent demand for legendaries that just says “draw card. Ramp” and just this insistence on treating commander players like absolute troglodytes that would refuse to buy anything that does not cards that play themselves and/or is green and blue.
As a simic mage, I am begging wotc to stop printing these cards. This color combo has some of the weirdest, most unique mechanics. Instead, half the commanders we get do the same thing…
There was a article (it was either Forbes or WSJ top of head can't remember which) In the article it was all about the business side of the p game wtc... In it they did say that WotC/Hasbro show that most of the profits from Magic the Gathering from casual players aka Commander and from high-end collectors who look to sell product at a profit on the secondary market aka the Alpha Investment. Like a massive amount of the profit like over 80% if I recall
Seth made a good point. People like CGB plays hundreds of hours of Magic a week. So seeing another red deck is boring. He'd rather play some combo that you can't interact with because it's new and different. But as a casual player or occasional player, sitting and waiting for your opponent play 15 minutes when you just want to get it over with, you'd just prefer a red deck.
I'm one of the casuals who quit because I got sick of seeing the same things day after day, mostly mono red. Especially when you go to casual mode and mono red try hards are somehow even more prevalent than in ranked. It is nice that games vs red are over fast but if there are a lot of them that doesn't help. I like Magic for the silly things that can happen more than winning, playing vs red is a waste of time because either they run my ass over and I don't get to do anything fun or I draw well enough to make them concede and still don't get to do anything fun.
One other thing that pisses me off about that article is the fact that it’s basically reveals that the Rules Committee is fucking useless and refuses to do its fuckin job. They banned Hull Breacher and suddenly they’re done for this century.
As someone who comes from Yugioh, I am more than happy that the Rules Committee isnt ban happy, I dont have to worry that half my deck is gonna get hit and all the time I put into making said deck isnt wasted
Just rule 0 it dude, if you aren't having a 2 hour rule 0 discussion before playing a game with randoms, then you aren't really playing commander. Why even have a rules committee when they always have the same answer for every card that ever causes a problem.
For real the rules committee should’ve been trashed when commander officially became a format, they’re so slow and useless they might as well not be there
Imagine the design team, who were aware that Nadu didn’t get playtested, during spoiler season reading every comment saying it’s busted. Imagine the flop sweat when they clicked on the scaryfall link to Shuko. Imagine the panic when they recalled springheart nantuko’s landfall trigger.
Of all the things that didn't happen this didn't happen the most...I bet the design team sleeping like babies while people still buy pack after pack. State of the game matters very little to hasbros bottom line
@@JT-91 That's where you misread. They didn't say "imagine the CEO of Hasbro", they said "imagine the design team", and they absolutely care about the state of the game.
@@RasmusVJS The design team play and experience magic more than any of use watching, and care about the game a lot. It's honestly not a great job if you don't care about the game or game desing. But they are constrained by resources and requirements set by decisions that keep going up a chain of people who have less and less interaction with magic, until you get people only experience MtG as lines on a spreadsheet and then the people they report to who don't even look at the spreadsheet. It's not just the CEO of Hasbro, it's stacks of people who are all answering to other people.
@@markmittelbach7975 Sure, I was using "the CEO of Hasbro" as analogous for all the people in WotC who's job relates to MtG as a product rather than a game. I'm aware that they aren't the only person who's a problem here.
@@RasmusVJS That's fair, but it's important to remember that it goes way broader and further. This is what CGB is talking about why the design team wasn't using the playtesters and involving legal and contracts. And there is a reason he doesn't blame legal, legal would be doing responsible thing as an employee. Everyone who works at WotC with jobs related to MtG as a product is still fairly close to MtG, compared to people who only care about the ROI in their ownership of the Hasbro stock and liabilities amongst the capital assets they are holding. The Hasbro CEO is a mix of those two, because he almost certainly has a significant stock holding but is also approved by shareholder vote.
A card that was designed for commander didn't get tested in 60 card formats and then proceeded to destroy an eternal format? Where have I heard that story before?
As a casual player, the only reason I'm playing Standard again is because of the 3 year rotation. Casters and creators want a shorter rotation because you play too damn much.
As for "failing to test the revised card" - that's one of the worst things you can do as a designer of ANYTHING! If you need to make a last minute change, and you don't have enough time to test it before release, that's a MASSIVE management failure.
The issue with restricting is you make a lot of games come down to did i draw my X one ofs and that's not a good thing. Turns a lot of games into "who can tutor their busted card first". Also for the "flavor win" aspect, this is a ban list for competitive play, flavor doesn't matter in the slightest.
The difference is the ring is only so busted because you can chain them, it just kills you if you can't just casually drop a new one after drawing 6-10 cards with the first one
the problem with restricting a bunch of things is that it raises the variance of games too much imo. It is okay in vintage cause that is the format to play ALL the cards and that's the tradeoff to make it playable, but in Modern or Legacy it would probably too much game to game variance to restrict a bunch of cards. That's not to say I don't think the One Ring shouldn't be restricted, it should, just that restriction shouldn't be a willy nilly thing done in place of bans.
Restriction introduces too much variance. If its too strong for the format, I don't want to deal with it less, I want to not see it at all. Matches should not come down to who drew their overpowered restricted cards and who didnt. Also, auto includes suck. Any card that is in half of all decks needs to go unless its a basic/dual. And even then, something else needs to be looked at if half of your opponents are running the same color(s).
Agreed, I think restriction is a much worse solution then people think it is. For archetype specific cards like Twin/Pod I could see it working (but then is that not basically the same thing as banning it..?) but for generically strong options every deck will continue to play their one copy
@@samogburn2662I think TOR is maybe a restriction appropriate card because it actually loses values when you can't play multiple, which isn't true for a lot of other great cards. Sure the variance argument largely holds, however I think fewer decks will play TOR if it's restricted to one copy because that makes the card weaker due to the interaction of playing a second TOR when you have one out already.
The only thing I can see being bigger than Lord of the Rings is a Harry Potter set. And after the hype about the 1/1 The One Ring, I can only imagine the hype for 3x 1/1 Deathly Hallows cards. I think Harry Potter actually really fits Magic too because there are actual spell names (Expelliarmus, etc) which can be used for instants and sorceries plus all the characters and creatures in the universe.
I'm actually with Crim here. I've honestly been loving 3 year rotation right now. Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase of post-rotation, but I've built two different jank combo decks decks that are actually taking matches at Diamond and Mythic and it's feeling really good! I've been playing with and against a huge variety of decks (in Bo3 at least). I can see Seth's point about good-stuff piles rising to the top, but I think that's a problem with single sets compared to two or three set blocks. Think about the poison deck in Standard right now. It's stuck in time cause there was only one set with that mechanic and synergies. Same thing with any of the themes or synergies in past sets like outlaws, Bloomburrow creatures, Detectives, Powerstones, etc. I think three year rotation will be awesome if Wizard's goes back to 2-3 set blocks. And it would make the narrative much better as well. As far as Domain Ramp goes, it's honestly totally fine. Actually needing to get your Domain with Basics and Surveil lands is much more reasonable and fair compared to getting full Domain on turn two with two triomes.
bro its such a mid card, its very powerful in the right deck but if you play any creature removal at all then combat tricks become dead cards in hand. Banning monstrous rage is wholly unnecessary, red aggro isn't even particularly great in bo3
I think Nadu being made for commander kind of distracts from all broken cards that need to be banned that were designed explicitly for Modern. Nadu, Gaak and Initiative are bad, but the other cards deserve just as much scrutiny for their sins.
@@swiftdragonrider The Evoke Elementals, W&6, Uro, Oko etc. All the Energy cards that will probably dominate, Phlage, which is just better Uro, Psychic Frog. So many of the cards that get banned or people hate and warp the format have nothing to do with commander design
@@DylanHunter64 better uro seems like a bad take 3 of the evoke elementals are fine wren and six is a sweet modern card now. Yes most cards banned weren’t related to commander but people complain about them non stop to.
@@swiftdragonrider I'm factoring in Legacy too, where W&6 is definitely not fine. And multiple pros have said Phlage is just better Uro. Think about it, it does the same thing of stabilizing the game but instead of an Explore, a card nobody plays, you get a bolt, a card every red deck plays. I think it's play percentage might actually be higher than Uro's, and if it isn't, it will likely climb to it soon now that the bird is gone. Either Uro is fine to unban, or Phlage is too good for Modern. There really isn't a middle ground honestly
The ban write ups were an embarrassing view into the totally bonkers process behind Modern Horizons products. It is outrageous that "we hired contractors to work crunch on a bunch of designs, broke a a format by trying to make a card for commander in a modern set, changed it last minute, didn't test it, and no one caught the obvious problem with 0 cost targetting that even the dumbest player immediately clocked" is being viewed as a sober mea culpa rather than a total indictment of the people running the shop. There is something sublimely incompetent and overreaching about not only breaking modern, but producing a card which also immediately put up absurd numbers in cEDH and that has a fair amount of scrutiny on it by thinking "vedalken orrery for permanents" would create a bad play experience in commander as opposed to "simic value manual storm". Talk about having totally fucked priorities but also having no bead on the dumb priorities you do have.
The how Nadu came to be reminds me of Skullclamp. They made a last minute change to the card and decided to just not test the new version. Gets printed and players show it's broken from day 0.
I'm more grossed out that they even bothered to consider Commander in what is supposed to be a Modern-only set. Commander shouldn't have even been a consideration when they were designing the cards. The conversation around Nadu should have gone: "This design for Nadu looks fine for Modern, but we're concerned that Flash for all permanents might be busted in Commander." "Okay, so what's the problem?" "We're worried about Commander." "But it's fine for Modern?" "Yes, but we're worried about Commander." "So, there's no problem?" "Like I said, we're worried about Commander." "So, there's no problem." They can design cool and pushed Commander cards in the next Commander Legends.
@@Modest_PhD Commander, as a card pool, gets everything already. The format was created out of cards that were not designed with eternal formats in mind. Making commander products is already ass-backwards, but this is the world we are in now. Cool. Modern Horizons is a product many people find galling for imposing set rotation on Modern and pushing iconic, classic cards out of the pool in favor of new designs. Whatever, its the reality we live in. MH3 came with MH3 commander products already. Why ALSO push design into the for-modern boosters? Like every step of this is so fucking confusing and stupid. There is zero self-control among management at WotC.
Crim was speaking the truth about 3 year standard, and it's hard to agree with Seth or CGB on rotation when they spent a significant portion of the cast talking about how standard is in a great place and a ton of fun in BO3.
As of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Modern now has 20 years worth of standard sets + 4 direct-to-modern sets in it. The ridiculously expansive list of cards definitely warrants the nuance of a restricted list at this point, and I think should be commonplace as Pioneer also hits 20 years. The amount of re-discovery with SELECT (some cards should stay perma-banned) banned-cards-turned-restricted would make the format super interesting and breathe more life into the format than any suit at WOTC could dream with Modern Horizons 4.
I remember Seth from the jump said that Nadu was going to be a problem, but of course Richard shot down that notion. Who is laughing now? It’s Seth! Bro called it
Not every card in a Modern Horizons can be meant for regular modern play, too many cards, designed to be drafted, its fine to toss in goodies for other formats so long as a significant portion are modern focused. Nadu being a commander card isnt a problem, its solely down to lack of testing due to a last minute change, as usual.
I am with Crim. Like it or not, Commander is the most popular format and the biggest money maker for WOTC. They are going to design cards, mostly legendaries, around that. I get why non-EDH players are upset but facts are facts.
From a developer's perspective, "we rewrote the entire thing, last minute, to something that we knew we didn't quite understand and then pushed to production without testing" evokes a horror that is difficult to convey to anyone else. It's the equivalent of a horror protagonist kicking the black cat, taking a dump on the ancient burial site and then deciding to have drunk sex at midnight in the decrepit cabin, blindfolded, with headphones on. It's somewhere on the other side of genre blind and right into parody territory.
The Sorin/Birthing pod argument can be applied to Nadu-like cards as well. Unless you remove all of these cards with free activation/repeated targeting, you will not be able to explore that design space in a meaningful way. I'm sure R&D were looking at cute synergies with the Strive mechanic from Journey into Nyx when you were making Nadu. They were completely blindsided when a common equipment from Kamigawa would make a monster out of their bulk-rare bird.
Honestly I think the One Ring is holding modern together. I don't think a single control deck would survive the banning except maybe Tron. Even before MH3, TOR was the way to turn the corner against the current era of super efficient threats.
The reason Vintage has a restricted list is simply because if they banned cards in Vintage, there would be no competitive formats where certain cards are legal. That's the only reason, that banning cards there would banish them from the game entirely. As Lurrus showed us, they can entirely ban cards there. But they don't because they have the restricted list. It's not preferable because restriction doesn't eliminate problems and leads to games that have very high variance, but it's better than 20-30 cards not being legal anywhere at all.
I'm fine with what they banned for Modern and Pioneer, but wished they would have also included The One Ring in Modern due to it's ubiquity and the same for Fable in Pioneer. Edit: I'm liking how Bloomburrow has been revitalizing Standard. Also, absolutely agree with Crim and Seth about Pioneer needing some aggressive bannings. Maybe not those specific cards, but it does feel like every time there's a problem in Pioneer. Wotc ignores it till it's way too late. A couple of stores near me no longer do Pioneer tournaments any more because so many players lost interest in the format.
I like CGB's perspective on B01 formats not having their own banlist if at all possible. If WotC is concerned about it (and they should be, given the B01 queues must be a large chunk if not the majority of the Arena player-base) then they don't have the 'out' of banning cards, and need to be more considerate in design and spend more resources on development and testing - which is a win for the game as a whole (though to be clear, I am entirely in favor of ban-lists as a necessary evil for the sake of competitive formats).
BO1 standard should 100% have its own ban list on arena, all the way back to trickery decks WotC has kicked the BO1 problem down the road "because X's not a problem in BO3". Everyone knows BO1's playrate is way higher than BO3, just suck it up and ban stuff like it's a real format.
@@FearOgrenah, it does, people play it more than best of 3. it doesn't matter that you don't like it. I don't like it either, to be honest. but best of 1 matters, because it's the most popular way to play standard.
@@proxyaskew Don't make a false assumption. Also it doesn't really matter if its played more and is the most popular. Its not how things are designed for mtg nor would does making a special ban list for it have almost any net positive for wotc.
@40:47 what a mature and correct take on card design. Kudos to CGB for having the self awareness to understand that we are just the community. We have no idea what it actually tales to get a set out.
They will never do anything but the bare minimum with Pioneer. It has low engagement relative to other formats and, more importantly, no direct valve for WotC to monetize it. As such, there is absolutely zero incentive for them to do anything drastic until one of those factors changes.
I think it's Funny CGB brought up not being able to see the tournament at MagicCon. I only got to see the championship game in Vegas because I was waiting in line to see CGB😂
As far as the "restrict stuff in formats outside of vintage" discussion goes, as a former Yugioh player I'm kinda shocked Magic doesn't do it already, it's such a fundamental part of Yugioh bans and clearly makes the game better. I would advocate a complete adoption of the Yugioh ban system, with cards being limited on a per-copy basis (ie some cards you can only play 1 of, some you can only play 2 of, and some you can only play 3 of). It allows you both more options and more granularity with how much WOTC wants to hit a deck, it's a no brainer to me frankly
The real problem with Nadu is that they pushed it through without testing it. This is a problem with management, trying to push too much too fast; the more designs made the more things break, and the faster you go the more you miss.
I find the reasoning that Wizards gave for not banning the One Ring from Modern honestly quite infuriating. 'It's not a part of only 1 archetype with a ridiculously high win-rate, so it's fine.' The card is in pretty much EVERY deck, like the fetches it's almost a mandatory card, how is that something we want for any format, especially with a card that's going to be borderline impossible to reprint because of Universes Beyond (unless they make a Universes Within version)?
My take on Nadu's lack of playtesting: I do balance work as a contractor for another game (a strategy video game, so a small degree of parallel with Magic) and we have had times in which we build something and it works great, but in the last 24 hours before certfication, a game breaking bug with that thing is discovered, or it's broken in some architectural way, so we're forced to change it to something else, with just a few hours notice, and no opportunity to test. We have released things in horribly over/under powered states, or just straight up broken interactions that we couldn't find, for the exact reason that we didn't get to test it. These things happen in game development, and sometimes a dev is at the mercy of the timeline within which they're working, and have little to no control over the state in which a thing releases in. I really feel for the design lead on MH3 for this reason - I've been in that exact situation before, so I understand exactly how Nadu could have happened or in more generalist terms, where they're coming from. It sucks for us, the players, that it happened, but what we got here is probably one of the better outcomes out of all the possible outcomes that could have happened within the circumstances under which Nadu was developed. I think it's important to focus on Nadu, and the events that created it being in the past and to instead look forward.
Love seeing @covertgoblue on the podcast. Seems like I've followed him across a few guest appearances lately with cEDH folks and howling salt mine (great episode, give it a listen). +1 for keeping the one ring to prop up edgy meme decks!
I'm surprised most people are comparing Nadu to Skullclamp, when Oko is a much more apt comparison. Late in design, too late for playtesting, a change is made to a card that costs 1GU that makes an ability that previously only interacted with the opponent also interact with the controller (for Nadu it was your spells and abilities triggering it, for Oko it was the ability to make your own creatures and artifacts into 3/3s), and that happens to be way stronger than the way it was intended to be used.
The One ring damage effect should've been an emblem. It would've been even more thematic since Bilbo was still suffering from the side effects after years of being without the ring.
Grief feels like Wizards response to the fact that they hyped up Cabal Therapist in MH1 to be one of the strongest cards in the set only for it to see basically no play.
31:55 The twice per turn clause on Nadu is a big red flag over the honesty of their story about what happened in the ban announcement. A real designer wouldn’t decide on such a clunky non-limitation for a last minute change. An experienced designer would immediately know how awkward it would be to keep track of that and how inefficient and abusable the wording is. This kind of twice per turn limitation had only been used about three times in the past in really old sets before WotC mastered efficient wording. An experienced designer would put once per turn per creature and make it trigger only from instants/sorceries targeting. The fact that twice per turn is on there tells me that someone in management made that change without consulting the design team for proper wording. Maybe a manager who received the testers feedback but didn’t want to send it back to design because of a deadline so they somehow made the change themselves to save time. The in-house Modern expert is covering for someone so we don’t find out that cards are changed by people outside of design with no oversight for the purposes of Commander
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Please make @covertgoblue a recurring guest on MTGGoldfish projects! 🙏 Loved the interaction between Seth, Crim and CGB.
I wish they talked about the (lack thereof) commander bannings. Like if nadu isn’t getting the axe is it safe to assume a card will pretty much never be banned again in commander?
The Nadu article sounded like Skullclamp. “We weren’t liking the way this card was looking/playing. So we made a last minute change without testing it. Sorry it broke formats.”
Editor here. There were some technical difficulties during recording, so I had to use the backup audio. Hope that doesn't take away from the cool episode with the cool guest!
Maybe point seths mic towards his mouth? XD Great episode tho!
Shit happens! We appreciate you
You did good bro!
I had no idea you edited these! I love your channel too!
go back to the basement. Nobody cares
Thanks for having me on, I’ve been listening for years and it was really cool to be on a BANS episode. Thanks for all the nice comments so far as well 💙🙏
So you are swapping the Mesa Falcon branding for (Gold)Fish tokens now? 🙃
"How did commander players who hate blue ruined modern" is now part of the history of magic. Thanks!
Dude youve been all over the place recently especially it feels like and its been great. Latest commander episode from your crew was great as well btw!
Here for the CGB, truth be told 😆
Happy to see you on the podcast! Love your content and seeing you here was a pleasant surprise.
I’m amazed you guys found a guest with a more embarrassing notorious favorite bird card than cartographers hawk
It was the perfect fit for Richard's seat.
I put cartographer's hawk in my oketra deck because Richard is so high on it
Kinda popped off
@@thatonedudejake IT IS PERFECT IN AN OKETRA DECK! ILL DIE ON THIS HILL
CGB: I put 4 Mesa Falcon in the deck because I needed cards from Homeland, and I didn't manage to obtain anything better
The entire internet: Mesa Falcon is CGB's favorite card
@@thatonedudejakeThat's definitely the exception lol
Check out CGB's channel here th-cam.com/channels/-UZjHl2kZ-6XKBLgbFgGAQ.html
I
You should have him on more he had great interplay with you guys.
Wow, you managed to bring on Magic the Gathering's premier Hearthstone card reviewer, CGB.
Finding out that Nadu was another Skullclamp is zero surprise.
Everyone I know who talked about it pretty much guessed that that's exactly what happened.
Just add trample, the card isn't that strong what's the worse that could happen?
Crims pain tolerance finally giving out with skullclamp makes perfect sense.
Blow up all lands? Great. Counter all spells? all good. Kill all creatures, discard all hands, noone can untap or play anything, Perfect.
Opponent gets resources?
Miserable. Jail
Jail for ten thousand years.
Mirrodin standard is the standard (pun intended) by which he measures how miserable a format is, and if you lived through it at the time you’d have agreed too 😂
Skullclamp is one of the most broken cards of all time. especially compared to the format.
@@Lazydino59 ...I liked Mirrodin era. I think more fondly of it than the past few years.
@@WhammeWhamme That's pure nostalgia tbh. Current standard isn't perfect, but boy is it better than losing to Arcbound ravager, Thoughtcast, and Skullclamp
CGB on a goldfish podcast? This is HYPE. Also just the fact that the B&R announcement hit so many important cards plus announced changes to the cadence to be more in line with the competitive scene is HUGE. Today was a VERY good day.
You're like the only happy person with this banlist. Get lost you fanboy
@@jjjj8644 unhinged
@@jjjj8644 I think you should take a break from mtg for a while
MTGGoldfish blatantly copying Wizards of the Coast by incorporating Special Guests into their new releases haha
Yes because before WOTC,
no one ever had special guests on their show before
Does that mean cgb is mythic?
@@Newclearwaste_MTG yup, you get it. 👍
I can't believe they got Mesa Falcon Guy!
My issues is that WotC states that they do bans on a set schedule because they want players to have “faith” in the cards they purchase. Yet! Behind the scenes they didn’t test Nadu at all and pushed it to the presses?! So if this was a known issue, didn’t test the card, and let it stomp modern tournaments AND still they didn’t pull an emergency ban makes me loose faith in any competitive constructed format! And when you cut corners in QA it undermines all the good work and will that went into products that were throughly tested.
Man. It just absolutely blows my mind that The One Ring has not been banned or even restricted. Remember when Reckoner Bankbuster got banned in Standard? Let's take a look at the reasoning:
Reckoner Bankbuster has been the go-to card-advantage engine for many decks in Standard since its release. As a colorless card, it has been effortless to slot into a wide variety of colors and strategies. Its general ubiquity and strength have pushed out other card-advantage options too much as a colorless card.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me how a card played in over 50% of decks for this exact reason is not touched in any way?
Bankbuster was a 2 mana card in a much weaker format. The One Ring is certainly a lot stronger, but it is a 4 mana card in stronger format, competing with decks that might as well kill you before you get to 4 mana. If they print one or two more decent hate pieces effective against the ring it may already be enough to reduce its prevalence without a ban. They tried to handle the evoke elementals that way by printing Vexing Bauble, but if the Grief deck is on the play it is very hard to find a proper answer. So it had to go.
One thing I wonder is, if they’re not oppressive, are autoincludes in decks necessarily a bad thing? Like for instance, in the game Counterstrike, everyone just accepts that you use the AK and M4 as the main guns, and no one has ever suggested that those guns needed to be nerfed. Maybe Magic decks can just have this thing where you have autoincludes like The One Ring, since having a draw engine just overall improves decks and makes fringe decks more playable than they otherwise would be, like was mentioned here.
I can: they’re still printing it for the 2 years they contracted with LOTR people and it would be a horrendous look to other companies to ban their hallmark card. TLDR: greed
Bank buster wasnt carrying card sales. Without one ring or bowmaster no one's buying lotr
@@thomasvcontiYou are correct that RB is cheaper and Standard is a weaker format, however I still have the understanding that in general WotC hates cards that can be slotted into practically any deck for free. The fact they don't even acknowledge the severity of the issue is concerning to me. "While present in several decks..." Seriously? Is that appropriate language for the #1 most played card in a format by a margin of 9 percent?
CGB for permanent addition to the pod😅. This would be the god cast. Also plz guys i need an episode with cgb and richard plzzzz
CGB for permanent and only member in the pod please. Get rid of the rest
As a German, I feel sorry that Phil has the charisma and humor of a potato
The wotc notes over Nadu’s design and just their policies around EDH are just… so stupid to me.
They are so obsessed with fulfilling this non-existent demand for legendaries that just says “draw card. Ramp” and just this insistence on treating commander players like absolute troglodytes that would refuse to buy anything that does not cards that play themselves and/or is green and blue.
As a simic mage, I am begging wotc to stop printing these cards. This color combo has some of the weirdest, most unique mechanics. Instead, half the commanders we get do the same thing…
There was a article (it was either Forbes or WSJ top of head can't remember which)
In the article it was all about the business side of the p game wtc...
In it they did say that WotC/Hasbro show that most of the profits from Magic the Gathering from casual players aka Commander and from high-end collectors who look to sell product at a profit on the secondary market aka the Alpha Investment. Like a massive amount of the profit like over 80% if I recall
Seth made a good point. People like CGB plays hundreds of hours of Magic a week. So seeing another red deck is boring. He'd rather play some combo that you can't interact with because it's new and different. But as a casual player or occasional player, sitting and waiting for your opponent play 15 minutes when you just want to get it over with, you'd just prefer a red deck.
I'm one of the casuals who quit because I got sick of seeing the same things day after day, mostly mono red. Especially when you go to casual mode and mono red try hards are somehow even more prevalent than in ranked.
It is nice that games vs red are over fast but if there are a lot of them that doesn't help. I like Magic for the silly things that can happen more than winning, playing vs red is a waste of time because either they run my ass over and I don't get to do anything fun or I draw well enough to make them concede and still don't get to do anything fun.
That beard oil. Seth looks so F’ing majestic. Like a stallion galloping across the horizon at dusk. 😂
One other thing that pisses me off about that article is the fact that it’s basically reveals that the Rules Committee is fucking useless and refuses to do its fuckin job. They banned Hull Breacher and suddenly they’re done for this century.
Hullbreacher was printed for commander, Nabu was printed for Modern. They should've done harder work on cards that'd go into tournaments.
As someone who comes from Yugioh, I am more than happy that the Rules Committee isnt ban happy, I dont have to worry that half my deck is gonna get hit and all the time I put into making said deck isnt wasted
@@Zakharonsmartest yugioh player
Just rule 0 it dude, if you aren't having a 2 hour rule 0 discussion before playing a game with randoms, then you aren't really playing commander. Why even have a rules committee when they always have the same answer for every card that ever causes a problem.
For real the rules committee should’ve been trashed when commander officially became a format, they’re so slow and useless they might as well not be there
Imagine the design team, who were aware that Nadu didn’t get playtested, during spoiler season reading every comment saying it’s busted. Imagine the flop sweat when they clicked on the scaryfall link to Shuko. Imagine the panic when they recalled springheart nantuko’s landfall trigger.
Of all the things that didn't happen this didn't happen the most...I bet the design team sleeping like babies while people still buy pack after pack. State of the game matters very little to hasbros bottom line
@@JT-91 That's where you misread. They didn't say "imagine the CEO of Hasbro", they said "imagine the design team", and they absolutely care about the state of the game.
@@RasmusVJS The design team play and experience magic more than any of use watching, and care about the game a lot. It's honestly not a great job if you don't care about the game or game desing. But they are constrained by resources and requirements set by decisions that keep going up a chain of people who have less and less interaction with magic, until you get people only experience MtG as lines on a spreadsheet and then the people they report to who don't even look at the spreadsheet.
It's not just the CEO of Hasbro, it's stacks of people who are all answering to other people.
@@markmittelbach7975 Sure, I was using "the CEO of Hasbro" as analogous for all the people in WotC who's job relates to MtG as a product rather than a game. I'm aware that they aren't the only person who's a problem here.
@@RasmusVJS That's fair, but it's important to remember that it goes way broader and further. This is what CGB is talking about why the design team wasn't using the playtesters and involving legal and contracts. And there is a reason he doesn't blame legal, legal would be doing responsible thing as an employee.
Everyone who works at WotC with jobs related to MtG as a product is still fairly close to MtG, compared to people who only care about the ROI in their ownership of the Hasbro stock and liabilities amongst the capital assets they are holding. The Hasbro CEO is a mix of those two, because he almost certainly has a significant stock holding but is also approved by shareholder vote.
A card that was designed for commander didn't get tested in 60 card formats and then proceeded to destroy an eternal format? Where have I heard that story before?
what card?
@@FearOgrehogaak
@@tylervillegas2608 also ragavan was made to fit into being a low cmc commander
Skullclamp
Uro
Urza
Oko
Hogaak
As a casual player, the only reason I'm playing Standard again is because of the 3 year rotation. Casters and creators want a shorter rotation because you play too damn much.
as a big pioneer fan, sorin ripper is powerful and definitely top tier. FABLE is the card that makes rakdos oppressive because of its consistency
As for "failing to test the revised card" - that's one of the worst things you can do as a designer of ANYTHING! If you need to make a last minute change, and you don't have enough time to test it before release, that's a MASSIVE management failure.
I have been advocating for bo3 content for years. If Crim makes bo3 content I'll be even happier
Special guests! Let’s go!
Bro CGB has been everywhere and its awesome. You guys need him on clash for 1 episode
Do more episodes with CGB, you guys all have fantastic banter with each other!!
The issue with restricting is you make a lot of games come down to did i draw my X one ofs and that's not a good thing. Turns a lot of games into "who can tutor their busted card first".
Also for the "flavor win" aspect, this is a ban list for competitive play, flavor doesn't matter in the slightest.
The difference is the ring is only so busted because you can chain them, it just kills you if you can't just casually drop a new one after drawing 6-10 cards with the first one
the problem with restricting a bunch of things is that it raises the variance of games too much imo. It is okay in vintage cause that is the format to play ALL the cards and that's the tradeoff to make it playable, but in Modern or Legacy it would probably too much game to game variance to restrict a bunch of cards. That's not to say I don't think the One Ring shouldn't be restricted, it should, just that restriction shouldn't be a willy nilly thing done in place of bans.
Restriction introduces too much variance. If its too strong for the format, I don't want to deal with it less, I want to not see it at all.
Matches should not come down to who drew their overpowered restricted cards and who didnt.
Also, auto includes suck. Any card that is in half of all decks needs to go unless its a basic/dual. And even then, something else needs to be looked at if half of your opponents are running the same color(s).
Agreed, I think restriction is a much worse solution then people think it is. For archetype specific cards like Twin/Pod I could see it working (but then is that not basically the same thing as banning it..?) but for generically strong options every deck will continue to play their one copy
@@samogburn2662I think TOR is maybe a restriction appropriate card because it actually loses values when you can't play multiple, which isn't true for a lot of other great cards. Sure the variance argument largely holds, however I think fewer decks will play TOR if it's restricted to one copy because that makes the card weaker due to the interaction of playing a second TOR when you have one out already.
Wow a very special crossover episode. Loved to see CGB’s takes this week. More special guests in the future would be awesome!
For some reason, I can’t separate Crim and CGB in my head. I feel like they enjoy the same things
The only thing I can see being bigger than Lord of the Rings is a Harry Potter set. And after the hype about the 1/1 The One Ring, I can only imagine the hype for 3x 1/1 Deathly Hallows cards. I think Harry Potter actually really fits Magic too because there are actual spell names (Expelliarmus, etc) which can be used for instants and sorceries plus all the characters and creatures in the universe.
Cgb should always be towards to top of the subs bench! Love having this trio for Bans and format convos 😊
I'm actually with Crim here. I've honestly been loving 3 year rotation right now. Maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase of post-rotation, but I've built two different jank combo decks decks that are actually taking matches at Diamond and Mythic and it's feeling really good! I've been playing with and against a huge variety of decks (in Bo3 at least).
I can see Seth's point about good-stuff piles rising to the top, but I think that's a problem with single sets compared to two or three set blocks. Think about the poison deck in Standard right now. It's stuck in time cause there was only one set with that mechanic and synergies. Same thing with any of the themes or synergies in past sets like outlaws, Bloomburrow creatures, Detectives, Powerstones, etc. I think three year rotation will be awesome if Wizard's goes back to 2-3 set blocks. And it would make the narrative much better as well.
As far as Domain Ramp goes, it's honestly totally fine. Actually needing to get your Domain with Basics and Surveil lands is much more reasonable and fair compared to getting full Domain on turn two with two triomes.
*Looks left......looks right* Ban monstrous rage. THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT SHOW ME YOUR HATRED!
bro its such a mid card, its very powerful in the right deck but if you play any creature removal at all then combat tricks become dead cards in hand. Banning monstrous rage is wholly unnecessary, red aggro isn't even particularly great in bo3
I think Nadu being made for commander kind of distracts from all broken cards that need to be banned that were designed explicitly for Modern. Nadu, Gaak and Initiative are bad, but the other cards deserve just as much scrutiny for their sins.
Which ones?
@@swiftdragonrider The Evoke Elementals, W&6, Uro, Oko etc. All the Energy cards that will probably dominate, Phlage, which is just better Uro, Psychic Frog. So many of the cards that get banned or people hate and warp the format have nothing to do with commander design
@@DylanHunter64 better uro seems like a bad take 3 of the evoke elementals are fine wren and six is a sweet modern card now. Yes most cards banned weren’t related to commander but people complain about them non stop to.
@@swiftdragonrider I'm factoring in Legacy too, where W&6 is definitely not fine. And multiple pros have said Phlage is just better Uro. Think about it, it does the same thing of stabilizing the game but instead of an Explore, a card nobody plays, you get a bolt, a card every red deck plays. I think it's play percentage might actually be higher than Uro's, and if it isn't, it will likely climb to it soon now that the bird is gone. Either Uro is fine to unban, or Phlage is too good for Modern. There really isn't a middle ground honestly
@@DylanHunter64 in legacy it is w&6 vs all the commander products.
Make CGB a permanent member of the cast. He is great.
Well that cgb appearance was unexpected but awesome!!! Soo cool to have him around!
The crossover from my dream, Goldfish crew and CGB! CGB needs to play commander with them for a season.
Seth with the most glistening beard I've ever seen
Ha, thanks i think.
The ban write ups were an embarrassing view into the totally bonkers process behind Modern Horizons products. It is outrageous that "we hired contractors to work crunch on a bunch of designs, broke a a format by trying to make a card for commander in a modern set, changed it last minute, didn't test it, and no one caught the obvious problem with 0 cost targetting that even the dumbest player immediately clocked" is being viewed as a sober mea culpa rather than a total indictment of the people running the shop.
There is something sublimely incompetent and overreaching about not only breaking modern, but producing a card which also immediately put up absurd numbers in cEDH and that has a fair amount of scrutiny on it by thinking "vedalken orrery for permanents" would create a bad play experience in commander as opposed to "simic value manual storm". Talk about having totally fucked priorities but also having no bead on the dumb priorities you do have.
The how Nadu came to be reminds me of Skullclamp. They made a last minute change to the card and decided to just not test the new version. Gets printed and players show it's broken from day 0.
I'm more grossed out that they even bothered to consider Commander in what is supposed to be a Modern-only set. Commander shouldn't have even been a consideration when they were designing the cards.
The conversation around Nadu should have gone:
"This design for Nadu looks fine for Modern, but we're concerned that Flash for all permanents might be busted in Commander."
"Okay, so what's the problem?"
"We're worried about Commander."
"But it's fine for Modern?"
"Yes, but we're worried about Commander."
"So, there's no problem?"
"Like I said, we're worried about Commander."
"So, there's no problem."
They can design cool and pushed Commander cards in the next Commander Legends.
@@Modest_PhD Commander, as a card pool, gets everything already. The format was created out of cards that were not designed with eternal formats in mind. Making commander products is already ass-backwards, but this is the world we are in now. Cool.
Modern Horizons is a product many people find galling for imposing set rotation on Modern and pushing iconic, classic cards out of the pool in favor of new designs. Whatever, its the reality we live in.
MH3 came with MH3 commander products already. Why ALSO push design into the for-modern boosters?
Like every step of this is so fucking confusing and stupid. There is zero self-control among management at WotC.
@@al8188 I agree with every point you've made, and your third paragraph perfectly summarizes my thoughts.
The bird being banned needed to happen and that's not a surprise. Grief being banned is so good, I'm going to start playing Modern again
Well the format just rotated with mh3 so you’re set until mh4
Crim is a Drain fan? 😮
A new level of enjoyment for this group is unlocked 👌🏼
Yes! CGB is such a good fit for the podcast!
Crim was speaking the truth about 3 year standard, and it's hard to agree with Seth or CGB on rotation when they spent a significant portion of the cast talking about how standard is in a great place and a ton of fun in BO3.
great episode. CGB and Crim had great chemisty. Love the comment about pain tolerance
Somewhere in the multiverse Nadu was the MH3 Simic EDH face card for the deck
As of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Modern now has 20 years worth of standard sets + 4 direct-to-modern sets in it. The ridiculously expansive list of cards definitely warrants the nuance of a restricted list at this point, and I think should be commonplace as Pioneer also hits 20 years. The amount of re-discovery with SELECT (some cards should stay perma-banned) banned-cards-turned-restricted would make the format super interesting and breathe more life into the format than any suit at WOTC could dream with Modern Horizons 4.
CGB being the outsider of the crew calling Crim out has been hilarious
CGB was so good! Let's keep him on retainer please
I remember Seth from the jump said that Nadu was going to be a problem, but of course Richard shot down that notion. Who is laughing now? It’s Seth! Bro called it
Not every card in a Modern Horizons can be meant for regular modern play, too many cards, designed to be drafted, its fine to toss in goodies for other formats so long as a significant portion are modern focused. Nadu being a commander card isnt a problem, its solely down to lack of testing due to a last minute change, as usual.
I am with Crim. Like it or not, Commander is the most popular format and the biggest money maker for WOTC. They are going to design cards, mostly legendaries, around that. I get why non-EDH players are upset but facts are facts.
From a developer's perspective, "we rewrote the entire thing, last minute, to something that we knew we didn't quite understand and then pushed to production without testing" evokes a horror that is difficult to convey to anyone else. It's the equivalent of a horror protagonist kicking the black cat, taking a dump on the ancient burial site and then deciding to have drunk sex at midnight in the decrepit cabin, blindfolded, with headphones on. It's somewhere on the other side of genre blind and right into parody territory.
The Sorin/Birthing pod argument can be applied to Nadu-like cards as well. Unless you remove all of these cards with free activation/repeated targeting, you will not be able to explore that design space in a meaningful way.
I'm sure R&D were looking at cute synergies with the Strive mechanic from Journey into Nyx when you were making Nadu. They were completely blindsided when a common equipment from Kamigawa would make a monster out of their bulk-rare bird.
Honestly I think the One Ring is holding modern together. I don't think a single control deck would survive the banning except maybe Tron. Even before MH3, TOR was the way to turn the corner against the current era of super efficient threats.
The reason Vintage has a restricted list is simply because if they banned cards in Vintage, there would be no competitive formats where certain cards are legal. That's the only reason, that banning cards there would banish them from the game entirely. As Lurrus showed us, they can entirely ban cards there. But they don't because they have the restricted list. It's not preferable because restriction doesn't eliminate problems and leads to games that have very high variance, but it's better than 20-30 cards not being legal anywhere at all.
I'm fine with what they banned for Modern and Pioneer, but wished they would have also included The One Ring in Modern due to it's ubiquity and the same for Fable in Pioneer.
Edit: I'm liking how Bloomburrow has been revitalizing Standard.
Also, absolutely agree with Crim and Seth about Pioneer needing some aggressive bannings. Maybe not those specific cards, but it does feel like every time there's a problem in Pioneer. Wotc ignores it till it's way too late. A couple of stores near me no longer do Pioneer tournaments any more because so many players lost interest in the format.
I found Rarran a year ago and now I'm seeing CGB on goldfish. The collaborations across games channels has grown so much this past year!
As a mill deck in modern, endurance is a massive pain but with how few cards interact cleanly with mill, it's genuinely fine.
You guys doing something special for episode 500?
I like CGB's perspective on B01 formats not having their own banlist if at all possible. If WotC is concerned about it (and they should be, given the B01 queues must be a large chunk if not the majority of the Arena player-base) then they don't have the 'out' of banning cards, and need to be more considerate in design and spend more resources on development and testing - which is a win for the game as a whole (though to be clear, I am entirely in favor of ban-lists as a necessary evil for the sake of competitive formats).
BO1 standard should 100% have its own ban list on arena, all the way back to trickery decks WotC has kicked the BO1 problem down the road "because X's not a problem in BO3". Everyone knows BO1's playrate is way higher than BO3, just suck it up and ban stuff like it's a real format.
BO1 doesnt matter.
Exactly it's baffling they aren't actively caring about their most popular format on arena and the one where newer players might experience first.
@@FearOgrenah, it does, people play it more than best of 3. it doesn't matter that you don't like it. I don't like it either, to be honest. but best of 1 matters, because it's the most popular way to play standard.
@@proxyaskew Don't make a false assumption. Also it doesn't really matter if its played more and is the most popular. Its not how things are designed for mtg nor would does making a special ban list for it have almost any net positive for wotc.
@40:47 what a mature and correct take on card design. Kudos to CGB for having the self awareness to understand that we are just the community. We have no idea what it actually tales to get a set out.
It feels like brawl is completely unmanaged and its health ignored.
Oh man this is great! CGB fits so well. Maybe 4 people would be too much but I would love to see the full crew+CGB for a cast.
Modern and Pioneer may start seeing play again in my area.
They will never do anything but the bare minimum with Pioneer. It has low engagement relative to other formats and, more importantly, no direct valve for WotC to monetize it. As such, there is absolutely zero incentive for them to do anything drastic until one of those factors changes.
I think it's Funny CGB brought up not being able to see the tournament at MagicCon. I only got to see the championship game in Vegas because I was waiting in line to see CGB😂
Great to see Mesa Falcon joining you guys!
The original design of Nadu actually looked really cool!
Omg as a long time cgb fan this is the marvel crossover we needed
Rarran just did a climb to mythic on mtg arena so would be a fun guest to have for a semi-outsider take on how magic feels for a new wizard!
Some stores have not held the tournament and keep the promos, what can we do as a players? Excellent videos
As far as the "restrict stuff in formats outside of vintage" discussion goes, as a former Yugioh player I'm kinda shocked Magic doesn't do it already, it's such a fundamental part of Yugioh bans and clearly makes the game better. I would advocate a complete adoption of the Yugioh ban system, with cards being limited on a per-copy basis (ie some cards you can only play 1 of, some you can only play 2 of, and some you can only play 3 of). It allows you both more options and more granularity with how much WOTC wants to hit a deck, it's a no brainer to me frankly
Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are the Legacy brainstorm equivalent. Obviously they are overpowered, but they are iconic to the format.
Crim has a very high pain tolerance because he used to play modern using standard decks. 😂
This podcast was so fun! The vibed are great with cgb, consider bringing him back sometimes!
So excited to see CGB- one of my fav players
100% with CGB, give us Pioneer in full. Make Timeless expand and delete Alchemy. He says it right
The real problem with Nadu is that they pushed it through without testing it. This is a problem with management, trying to push too much too fast; the more designs made the more things break, and the faster you go the more you miss.
CGB Great guest. Really fun to see him mix so well with you guys and his knowledge he presents in this video is great content!
I find the reasoning that Wizards gave for not banning the One Ring from Modern honestly quite infuriating. 'It's not a part of only 1 archetype with a ridiculously high win-rate, so it's fine.' The card is in pretty much EVERY deck, like the fetches it's almost a mandatory card, how is that something we want for any format, especially with a card that's going to be borderline impossible to reprint because of Universes Beyond (unless they make a Universes Within version)?
My take on Nadu's lack of playtesting:
I do balance work as a contractor for another game (a strategy video game, so a small degree of parallel with Magic) and we have had times in which we build something and it works great, but in the last 24 hours before certfication, a game breaking bug with that thing is discovered, or it's broken in some architectural way, so we're forced to change it to something else, with just a few hours notice, and no opportunity to test. We have released things in horribly over/under powered states, or just straight up broken interactions that we couldn't find, for the exact reason that we didn't get to test it.
These things happen in game development, and sometimes a dev is at the mercy of the timeline within which they're working, and have little to no control over the state in which a thing releases in. I really feel for the design lead on MH3 for this reason - I've been in that exact situation before, so I understand exactly how Nadu could have happened or in more generalist terms, where they're coming from.
It sucks for us, the players, that it happened, but what we got here is probably one of the better outcomes out of all the possible outcomes that could have happened within the circumstances under which Nadu was developed. I think it's important to focus on Nadu, and the events that created it being in the past and to instead look forward.
Love seeing @covertgoblue on the podcast. Seems like I've followed him across a few guest appearances lately with cEDH folks and howling salt mine (great episode, give it a listen).
+1 for keeping the one ring to prop up edgy meme decks!
always love a B&R podcast, and CGB is a great guest to have for one! excited to listen!!
I'm surprised most people are comparing Nadu to Skullclamp, when Oko is a much more apt comparison. Late in design, too late for playtesting, a change is made to a card that costs 1GU that makes an ability that previously only interacted with the opponent also interact with the controller (for Nadu it was your spells and abilities triggering it, for Oko it was the ability to make your own creatures and artifacts into 3/3s), and that happens to be way stronger than the way it was intended to be used.
Woah, CGB on an MTGGoldfish Podcast? I'd never imagine it but love to see it!
The One ring damage effect should've been an emblem. It would've been even more thematic since Bilbo was still suffering from the side effects after years of being without the ring.
Great collaboration! Y’all work really well together it seems 😊
MESA FALCON! Love that guy.
The One Ring feels a little like Snorlax in GSC OU. Everyone uses it, but removing it night reduce diversity.
Grief feels like Wizards response to the fact that they hyped up Cabal Therapist in MH1 to be one of the strongest cards in the set only for it to see basically no play.
31:55 The twice per turn clause on Nadu is a big red flag over the honesty of their story about what happened in the ban announcement. A real designer wouldn’t decide on such a clunky non-limitation for a last minute change. An experienced designer would immediately know how awkward it would be to keep track of that and how inefficient and abusable the wording is. This kind of twice per turn limitation had only been used about three times in the past in really old sets before WotC mastered efficient wording. An experienced designer would put once per turn per creature and make it trigger only from instants/sorceries targeting. The fact that twice per turn is on there tells me that someone in management made that change without consulting the design team for proper wording. Maybe a manager who received the testers feedback but didn’t want to send it back to design because of a deadline so they somehow made the change themselves to save time. The in-house Modern expert is covering for someone so we don’t find out that cards are changed by people outside of design with no oversight for the purposes of Commander
Please make @covertgoblue a recurring guest on MTGGoldfish projects! 🙏
Loved the interaction between Seth, Crim and CGB.
I’m with crim on standard rotation. I think 1 extra year will grow on everybody.
I wish they talked about the (lack thereof) commander bannings. Like if nadu isn’t getting the axe is it safe to assume a card will pretty much never be banned again in commander?
I'm not sure if you're talking about something specific the RC said, but in case you're not, wotc aren't the ones in charge of commander bans.
I was listening while making my way to the car and definitely was not expecting such an amazing guest the one and only Mesa Falcon guy!?
Absolutley loved seeing CGB on the show!!
The Nadu article sounded like Skullclamp. “We weren’t liking the way this card was looking/playing. So we made a last minute change without testing it. Sorry it broke formats.”