One of the best ways to fix epic would be to say "Exile this card from the game as it resolves. For the rest of the game, you may cast a copy of the exiled spell during your upkeep without paying it's mana cost , but if you do, you can't cast spells until the beginning of your next upkeep other than the copied spell." This allows you to play the game in a sense, but still makes the spell feel incredible and game altering.
Or here is another way: Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands) An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
I agree, or giving it uncounterable would be nice. I like the design space ones like the enchantment tutor every turn give, but it's such a narrow design space. A cool concept though
Bit wordy though, could be hard to fit that on the card along with the actual spell effect. It's got technical problems too. It doesn't stop you from casting instants during the upkeep in addition to the epic spell. And the wording "other than the copied spell" sounds like you could cast multiple copies of the epic spell in one upkeep. Exiling it isn't needed either to make it work. I get what it's supposed to do, though. Also enables the option to play multiple epic spells, and decide during each upkeep which you want. How about this: "Epic (You can't play spells for the rest of the game. During each of your following upkeep, choose one: Be able to play spells as normal until your next upkeep. Or put a copy of this spell on the stack without its epic ability.)" I think that does what you meant. Still wordy though.
To my memory Kamigawa was a ton of parasitic mechanics, a broken tree, and Umazawa`s Jitte (its a miracle if I spelled that right). But it was also ninjas and I was a teenage boy so I was hype AF for it.
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat Jitte I was more confident on because I pronounced it wrong for so long the correct way sticks out. That 'a' was a 1 in 3 for me; 'i' being the other contender.
Epic has an interesting interaction with Splice. Epic copies the spell that was cast, and Splice adds additional effects as you cast a spell. Most Splice spells are "Splice onto arcane", meaning they can only add their effects to arcane spells, which the Epics are not, but in the first Modern Horizons set we got two "Splice onto instant or sorcery" spells. Everdream lets you draw a card (not so helpful since you will draw after the other effects), and more importantly Splicer's Skill creates a 3/3 colorless Golem artifact creature token. If you Splice a Splicer's Skill onto one of the Epics when you cast them, then all the copies you make in later turns will also make a 3/3 token. If you Splice two onto it, them you will get two tokens, but along with the ridiculous amount of mana, you will need two Splicer's Skill in your hand to do so, as each spell can only be spliced onto a spell once (part of using Splice is revealing the card in hand, and all splices you intend to do get revealed at the same time).
id never heard of epic cards until someone at my local game store went infinite with their krark/sakashima commander deck and cast eternal dominion on turn five, copied it twice, and won from there
Yeah if you can copy the epic cards and get mutiple casts per upkeep with some of these cards they would be really, really powerful like dominion. The black one could deck people out faster, but would still be eh. The red one could be really good at least at burning out people maybe. Green one just sucks though, 1/1's are easy to deal with.
@@dark_rit Once ran this ridiculous combo that involved Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, some copy spells, Leyline of Anticipation, and Neverending Torment, felt fantastic dumping all of my opponents deck in the most unexpected way that they did not see coming. You can do some thousand year storm combo with Undying Flame as well and basically ask whether your opponent wants to play guess the mana cost the game for like 5min. The Green one is only good pretty much when you can get it on top of another epic spell that is already winning you the game and you would like some things to shield you a little. However the most "fun" way is definitely playing hivemind on top of it, now they are locked in here with you. Which, you can build a specific deck meant to pull this off so your opponent benefits very little from the epic spell, or one where you will definitely benefit more. ...playing these too often will probably have your friend count decrease.
my immediate idea for epic is that you get to choose to cast it for free during your upkeep after casting it once, but you can't cast any other spells that turn if you do. This means you can forgo doing them to cast cards in your hand, and it doesn't stop you from casting instants during your opponents turn. ED: I am terrible at balance. Please read the replies to this comment for better ideas.
Wouldn't that make it hardly a downside for control decks, as they spend most of their mana and cards on their opponents turn? Though limiting you to no spells until your next upkeep would be perhaps too severe, as well.
@@Soumein Definitely too strong if it allows you to cast instants on your opponents turns. But I like the idea of it being a recurring choice to not cast other spells that can be stopped at any time. Something like this: Epic - Until your next upkeep, you can’t play spells. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may copy this spell. That allows for them to be copied 2-3 times until you’ve drawn some other spell worth casting.
Or just make it so that you can only cast once spell per turn after you casted your Epic spell. It’s still a massive down side, but it fixes most of the problems that come with Epic spells. You don’t just sit there any do nothing while your opponent feels like playing vs AI.
You also can’t cast instants. 702.50a. Epic represents two spell abilities, one of which creates a delayed triggered ability. "Epic" means "For the rest of the game, you can't cast spells," and "At the beginning of each of your upkeeps for the rest of the game, copy this spell except for its epic ability. If the spell has any targets, you may choose new targets for the copy." See rule 707.10.
The white one can be used to assemble combos in late-game EDH. Once upon a time it was pretty common to finish with it in Jeskai enchantment pillowfort decks where you could copy it.
Saviors of Kamigawa had ANOTHER set mechanic (which was unnamed) that gave the card a bonus if you had seven or more cards in hand, like an inverted "Hellbent". That ability, along with Epic... This set tried hard to disincentivize players from ever playing cards, lol.
I think epics would be a lot cooler to me if their copies maintained epic, so they actually continued to scale as the game progressed and function as maybe halfway decent cards
Just an FYI 7:52 the cycle of cards came out in Saviors of Kamigawa, not Champions of Kamigawa, both are in the first Kamigawa Block, but different sets. Kind of important, denoted by the shrine set symbol icon on each card.
I think it's important to note that the channel mechanic also came out in the same set. It allowed you to pay a cost and discard the card for an effect. This essentially allows you to 'cast' spells without actually casting them, so you could continue to use them after casting an epic spell. Obviously wasn't enough to matter, but I think the designers at least had some consideration about how limiting it was to be unable to cast other spells. Looking at the channel cards in Saviors of Kamigawa, they're mostly combat tricks, and a lot of them are expensive. And I don't think there's really enough of them to really matter in a 1-2 color deck that you'd probably want as a shell for an epic card.
Maybe you could make a video explaining the Storm Scale? Its a pretty common term and you could reference it in future videos. Although maybe its best to wait until you've covered at least one example of each level of the Storm scale.
I actually use Eternal Dominion in my Rashmi as a late game option. But usually by that time my board is sufficiently strong that it's more a safe way to get an interesting board and prevent opponents getting powerhouses. It also triggers rashmi and so is fairly safe.
I managed to center a deck around eternal dominion and it worked out amazingly. Uyo, Silent Prophet copies spells by bouncing lands to your hand, letting you copy ANY spell. When a spell with an epic ability gets copied, that ability is tied directly to that copy which means that spell copy gets copied every upkeep along side the spell itself (i.e. Eternal Dominion copied 6 times will give you 6 upkeep interactions with this spell.) I have also discovered many ways to copy spells like this. Don't take these cards in particular for granted, using them well and you will devastate more than just your opponent.
I used to play a commander deck designed to turbo out the Hive Mind + Eternal Dominion combo. If you're unfamiliar, Hive Mind forces each other player to copy each instant / sorcery, so this combo forces everyone to cast Eternal Dominion. It's hilarious because when this happens the game changes. It's impossible for the game not to become about Eternal Dominion once everyone has cast it. It was a lot of fun to build, since I deliberately don't include any permanents that are useful once the combo goes off.
My favorite commander deck I've made is my Epic deck, where its goal is to play all of the epic spells in response to each other at instant speed. Its silly and great. Probably my most powerful deck, I have to say.
Whoa holy CRAP that IS an interesting idea lol. How does that end up working out though? Do you actually get to use all 5 every Upkeep? That part is confusing for me lol. Either way, I love that kind of rule-bending insanity in my Magic games.
Yeah making them instant speed so you can cast more in response to each other is one way to make them worthwhile. Other way is to use fork/twincast/other such cards on one really good epic spell to win that way.
I think epic could be great with a cumulative effect. On the turn you cast it, you get the effect. Next upkeep, you get it twice. Next turn, 3 times. This way it actually allows you to continue to be a threat to your opponent.
Or here is another way: Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands) An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
The idea of epic spells is fascinating. A single spell so strong it using it means you have to give up casting other spells for a time. But the way it was made was just too restrictive.
Funnily enough, my first deck I ever made as a teenager was a Neverending Torment deck. The deck was a monoblack control deck with things like Royal Assassin that could control the board while on the field itself and cards like Howling Mine to draw more cards. I actually beat my friends with the deck several times before we all decided it was just too boring. Every time it was my turn, I'd have to grab their deck and search it for all the pieces of their deck I wanted to remove. So it made the game drag on and on while nobody really did anything. Even in a shell that can take advantage of it, the card was just boring as hell.
Enduring ideal made the finals of Pro Tour Valencia in 2007; that GP top 8 wasn't its only appearance. (Also, as others have said, it's extended, not expanded.)
I feel like with hand abilities like Chanel and having a certain board set up with activated abilities like Planeswalkers, Polukronos, In the Trenches, etc you can play a few Epic cards and be set up with a ton of options by the time you cast one, plus In the Trenches is a great new enchantment for Enduring Ideal. Also, you totally can cast more than one, you just need to cast them at instant speed before the first one resolves, with the one Leyline or Teferi and enough mana to cast them (mana not being a problem for certain enchantment decks to set up). I could actually see a good bant deck in Historic using probably just one of each Epic card if they ever go to Arena.
Enduring Ideal was also the best because you could find paradox haze with it on your first cast, which is an enchantment that gives you 2 upkeeps so you would get to enduring ideal twice each turn, that and the fact that the deck was mainly a pillow fort of enchantments that made it hard for you to lose meant you werent really losing too much becuase sit there as an AI was basically already baked into the gameplan
Interesting. Could be a huge feelbad if you made someone's counterspell Epic though. That being said, I'd much rather have infinite mana payoffs do this than just burn everybody with Walking Ballista.
I think that Epic Sorceries *could* kinda work if they all had multiple decently powerful effects. So the green could spawn a bunch of tokens or buff up a monster/monsters a decently big amount, up to like 4 (maybe) and you could choose 1 a turn. Also if you want to look at a mechanic that probably won't be reprinted, I'd look at the storm scale. Also, Storm itself. I feel like the implication of this series is mechanics that are underpowered where I feel like that's fair, but super overpowered mechanics that won't ever be reprinted can work (shoutout to storm, love you and miss you) Edit: on the day of me posting this comment there was another failed mechanics video I watched released but instead of posting that comment here, I decided this 2 month old video was the right place to post :)
A small, dried up neural pathway fired painfully for the first time in years upon seeing the words ‘epic’ and ‘fail’ in such close proximity to each other.
I think Epic could work if the spells were setup with multiple modes and were therefore able to be more flexible, especially if one of the modes were to allow a bypassing of the typical Epic restriction. Make it 3 options per card with each card having two moderately-powered options and the third option being, "you may play spells until the end of this turn." Then again, this is almost in the realm of something that would just fit better as an artifact or enchantment and the Epic spell version would just be making it an impossible to remove effect.
There's a lot of potential design space around epic. If it was printed on a permanent for example, you could continue to gather resources linearly as other players do without sacrificing too much. Imagine if you will, an epic Dictate of the twin gods or similar effect as a punishing finisher. Alternatively, you could build around abilities of cards such as cycling, forecast and channel to avoid the downside for the most part. The potential is there though unlikely to be seen with the stigma against the mechanic still so prevalent
Enduring ideal was actually a pro tour topping deck, back during the Extended 2007 Pro tour Valicia stop, Andre Mueller got second place with the deck losing in the finals to counter Goyf.
I personally run Epic Spells, and like, you need to be really creative and usually do a set up that would win you easily with other cards. But it's fantastic and fun to play with when you bring out the 5 Epic flash with Thousand year storm and while they laugh at your deck building choices, you just stole all their important permanents, summoned a ton of snakes, made oneself untouchable with enchantments, and exiled like 40 of their cards. It's definitely not ideal to use however. Though cards such as Thran's Temporal Gateway and other similar cards that allows you put permanents on the battlefield directly are also great ways of playing the game while being locked out. Otherwise you can, for example, run Hivemind into One With Nothing chained with a flashed Enduring Ideal, and lock your opponent away from playing the game entirely. I find the restricting mechanics very interesting to find ways of abusing and bypassing, but it certainly is just meme material.
Could you cover the Gravestorm mechanic? It was only printed on a single card, and it has the oppritunity to be a VERY POWERFUL yet interesting mechanic... awesome mechanic btw
I've played it with Yahenni's Expertise which gives all creatures -3/-3 until end of turn and lets you cast bitter ordeal for free. It's not as good as it seems. It CAN be bonkers but it's not consistent.
@@williamdrum9899 Bitter Ordeal is a nice payoff for going infinite with Sharuum in Commander but the mechanic is pretty silly in practice. Interesting sure, I'll give you that but cards like Brought Back or effects like Blood Artist do a pretty great job at covering what Gravestorm would hope to do without needing all the ridiculous tracking.
It would be interesting if you did a Failed Cards/Mechanics video, but of the “failing from success” variety, like ones that were TOO good that WotC have shelved indefinitely. First one that comes to mind esp with the current story arc is “Infect”, since they haven’t done anything with it since it’s release block.
My favorite archetype of epic decks are ones that copy them al p t which make them alot more viable When you go from like 1 copy of eternal dominion to 3 or 4 you can often win immediately if there's any meshing combo permanents
The White one was onto something since it allowed some agency. If the Green one could summon a creature spell from deck or hand/graveyard it would be more interesting. Same for Blue and artifacts or recycling instant/sorceries from graveyard. Black and Red could go wild and do more deck shenanigans. Actually, dual colors have even more potential: Golgari epic summons X monsters from grave each turn with haste, then sacrifice them and gives life to the player; Izzet epic mills X from deck and lets cast instant&sorceries milled that way with no cost; Selesnya one copies creatures everywhere as tokens, etc.
Question about Epic. If I have leyline of anticipation out & I cast each epic spell on the stack/(or I do something to copy the spell) would each resolve or would they stop themselves?
Yup, you can absolutely copy that Epic spell, or play Epic spells in response to each other if you have flash speed, and all of them will resolve and each will be able to trigger on your subsequent upkeep. Until the first Epic spell resolves, you can put as much as you want on the stack and it all works.
This is a great analysis and makes a good case for why this mechanic should not return. Yet, I would still love for the designers to take another stab at it. Maybe in a horizons set. My ideas for how to mitigate some of the downsides of this mechanic would be: modal epic spells, not relying on cards in hand, putting the mechanic in a cycling themed set.
I built a casual Blue/Black Neverending Torment deck. 5 Neverending Torments in one turn thanks to cards like Echo Mage let me rip every Non-Land from someone's deck in a couple of turns. But it was Very inconsistent.
I think there is more design space for epic spells than Wizards thinks. Just off the top of my head: 1. Being able to choose from multiple effects 2. Locking you into one card type as opposed to locking you out of all of them 3. Letting you discard for various effects 4. Applying a permanent state change to the board kind of like an enchantment, though the lack of interactability would likely need to be solved 5. Casting a spell ending the effect as opposed to locking you the rest of the game I’m sure there are others. I think the real issue is that it almost steps on the toes of Enchantment cards as a sorcery while having fewer counters than a sorcery. These too can be resolved, but you could also just print Enchantments.
I actually have an EDH deck based around Enduring Ideal, putting enchantment combo's into play. It tries to get more than 1 enchantment per round by playing the Ideal with Twincast or searching for Paradox Haze.
Seeing these cards makes me want to play all of them in commander (except the green one lol) I think a mostly lands deck would be awesome. Land creatures and cycling+ cards would be an interesting work around for the mechanic
Neat analysis video! Personally, seeing this, I dislike the way Legendary Sorceries seem to have been implemented - The typing sounded appealing, but I dislike the Creature/Planeswalker centricism Wizards settled on. Isn't the Player a Planeswalker? What of the other permanent types? Anyway, thanks for uploading!
When I first read the Epic mechanic, I read it wrong, like, you can't cast any more spells this turn, which I said "ok steep cost but fair balance to get it rolling", then got around the explanation and yeah, pretty underwhelming. I think that would be the balance solution tho. Make it so Epic can only be cast during your upkeep (spell rules be damned), only as the first spell you cast that turn, and you cannot cast any other spells that turn, but the spell becomes recurring after each of your turns as usual. You still have to basically draw a card and skip your turn for it, which is a steep cost, but now you have a recurring threat your opponent has to deal with. Oh, of course, Epic spells should get a once per duel clause, even in the stack. Even if it's countered.
Isn't casting spells, like, 90% of what you do in Magic? I only know anything about MTG from TheManaLogs and even I have a hard time seeing how anybody thought that cards that locked the person who used them out of almost the entire rest of the game was a good idea. If you had a similar idea in Yugioh, like an extra deck monster that was immune to everything, had 5000 attack, and a once per turn omni-negate, but locked you out of summoning or setting monsters, activating other monster effects, Spell cards, Continuous and Counter traps, no one would play that.
The same set also introduced channel, which lets you pay a cost and discard the card to do a stated effect. In this original iteration of the mechanic, it was all creatures that had some tap ability, or you could channel them for a more powerful version of the tap ability. One had 3u and tap to counter a spell unless its controller paid 2, or channel for 3u to counter a spell unless its controller paid 4. Notably, since the channel ability isn't casting a spell, epic doesn't prevent you from activating it. However, like a lot of the parasitic mechanics in Kamigawa block, there just wasn't enough support to make it work, and even if there was it was still just too clunky to be worth it.
Yes, every card that isn't a land is a spell. So you're putting yourself at a huge risk by using these. Even if you have the mana to cast them, they're not always good depending on the situation. They're kind of like mass land destruction, they don't really affect the game state apart from "locking it in" for the forseeable future.
These cards would need a completely game-warping, anime-like effect to them to justify them. Like, more effect text than what would probably fit on the card. Actually, if mtg had an anime based on the card game, that would be exactly how I would imagine a themed villain character to turn out :D
All they needed to add to this is say "non-epic spells" then they would have created a viable archetype. I'm sure you can still channel and cycle as well as activate abilities and play land right?
Yes, you can. None of those you mentioned count as a spell. If you have a Quicksilver Amulet on your field you can also cheese creatures out with it too
I feel like the "Epic" effect could have been better if they were attached to spells that were both more expensive and more powerful. Like a spell that costs 10 and basically puts your opponents on a tight clock to either kill you or inevitably lose. Blue could gain control of X permanents at your upkeep where X is the cards in your hand (playing on blues card draw), black could drain your opponents life and give you the life lost that way based on the cards in your graveyard (playing on blacks graveyard preference), Green could make a bunch of X/X tokens where x is the number of permanents you control (playing on greens token generation), Red could deal a ton of direct damage to a bunch of targets based on *something* to represent reds tendency for burn spells, and I'm not sure about white... the only thing that comes to mind would be to exile mass permanents and when opponents are out of permanents they automatically lose.
The problem is, they have to be win conditions, but not win too fast. (If I win on the turn I play an epic spell, it doesn't matter.) Making X X/X tokens where X is the number of cards in your hand might be something. Epic spells in general want to be abused the way you already abuse their non-epic counterparts (e.g., Endless Swarm would be like, I don't know, Spontaneous Generation, so like all other token makers, you're looking at sac outlets, entry triggers, death triggers, attack triggers, things that count how many creatures you have, and something like Kyren Negotiations, and of course anthems), but the difference is, you can't play them normally. You can't even play Collective Unconscious or March of Souls to exploit your superior numbers after playing Endless Swarm. Oh, did I mention that even with this downside, Endless Swarm costs twice as much as Spontaneous Generation? And that's probably the second-easiest (after Enduring Ideal) to exploit; after all, you can still use your mana to make more tokens, provided you have something like, well, at the time, it would be Nemata, Grove Guardian (which wasn't Standard-legal, but he's seriously all we had; today I would say Jade Mage or Ant Queen, possibly Mobilization...Heliod, God of the Sun if you want to exploit enchantments, or if you're just desperate).
I made a Daxos (orhzov experience counter commander) with the sole purpose of getting enduring ideal out with my commander out and flood the board with daxos's mana sink. It was fun but was awful. A lot of laughs and blowouts. I like the epic concept but unsure if it could be brought back with a new design space. I personally would like one that let you lightning bolt per card in your hand. Sounds fun and awful.
I actually played Enduring Ideal in my Codie donate jank EDH deck. Giving someone else the Epic effect via Sudden Substitution or Hive Mind is quite heinous. In no way busted as it's really hard to pull off, but fun if you manage to get it once in a while. 😅
Well, i think something like "this spell can't be countered" was needed in the first place. Also, some cards could be better whitout being broken, like green "put a creature card from your hand into battlefied" or red "remove a card from your graveyard/hand" instead of library
Gimmicky Rogue decks are just fun to try and make work. Enduring Swarm sounds fun to play in a deck that relies on ETB triggers once you get the right pieces on the board. I think what is so fun about 'bad' cards is that while the larger community as a whole writes them off, there is always someone, somewhere, trying to make those bad work. . .even if its only in the jankiest way possible.
Back in like 2008 you could buy simplified chinese Kamigawa boxes on ebay for like $35-$40 dollars, it was so insanely cheap. Mostly because almost all the cards in the block were unplayable at the time or worth very little except for umezawa's jitte. It was pretty poor just because almost all the mechanics in the block were only good with cards from that block. Stuff like splice onto arcane when arcane didn't exist anywhere else.
Enduring Ideal I would argue remains oppressive in casual edh and terrible in competitive. Floating mana, casting Armageddon, and then enduring ideal is usually assured victory in a deck already half way building an impenetrable prison. The jankiest successful Enduring Ideal I’ve seen go off was where they had Vedalken Orrery out, cast Thassa’s Oracle, then with the trigger on stack they cast Enduring Ideal to grab Thought Lash and activate thought lash a number of times equal to the number of cards in their deck. Going up against an Azorius deck, while certainly Oracle could randomly come out, I was honestly speechless to see such an obtuse affront to optimal play work, of which everyone had to read each card as it changed zones (not the exiled cards, no).
The problem with Kamigawa is it came after a block (mirrodin) that nearly broke the game because of its high power... and kamigawa got the shaft, then Ravnica basically saved magic after. The return to Kamigawa was one of the most cathartic and well deserved returns to a plane.
Here is a way to fix Epic: Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands) An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
I feel like it probably would have been the simplest thing to make the epic spells into arcane spells so you could always splice onto arcane and make the spells better. Because the splice mechanic is still the same spell, it's just adding the effect to the spell. It probably would have made it so these cards could be more versatile and actually used for different effects
Maybe if epic cards didn’t omit the epic from the copies they would be more powerful. That way you get 1 copy, then 2 copies, then 3 copies, and so on. Instead of 7 1/1 snakes 7 1/1 snakes 7 1/1 snakes You get 7 1/1 snakes 14 1/1 snakes 21 1/1 snakes Which seems like a much bigger threat
Yea, the format was Extended. Or, as it later went on to be known as, "Old" Extended (as the Extended format itself would see a massive overhaul before eventually just becoming Modern). Imo, the closest thing we have to Old Extended today is actually Pioneer. Other than the fact that Extended was a rotating format, and I don't believe Pioneer is. And it was Pro Tour Valencia, in 2007 I believe, where Remi Fortier (then only 16 years old) would defeat Andre Mueller's Enduring Ideal deck in the Finals to become the youngest PT winner in history (up til that point, Idk if that still rings true or not).
I think a lot of the issues came from WotC over-correcting itself after a 'strong' set. Kamigawa followed Mirridon which was a very strong set. So it would make sense if they threw in some clunkers or altered some effects to bring down the game some. Epic would be a very strong mechanic if it didn't have the 'cannot cast other spells' clause, it would be Rebound but each turn which honestly isn't bad. Honestly most of the mechanics in the original Kamigawa weren't terrible. I actually would like to see the Arcane sub-type come back with some of the other mechanics that interact with it. Something like Strixhaven would be good for that type of stuff because its a magic school and altering spells seems like something that would happen in a magic school. Most mechanics can be good if it has support for it. Some can't be saved because of inherently bad design, not being able to play the game is such a case.
Arcane is probably never coming back. Some of the people at WotC have spoken on splice, and mentioned that despite their worries, the mechanic is actually kind of fine if it isn't parasitic. Which is why we saw a splice onto instant card in one of the Modern Horizons sets. So we may see splice return at some point, but unless they find some other interesting use for arcane, I doubt they'll bring it back.
@@fwg1994 Its a shame because they could literally put Arcane in most sets without much of an issue. There is actually really little support for Arcane so there is a lot things you can do. Example: a creature with whenever you cast an instant or sorcery Scry 1, if it was an Arcane draw a card. They could easily slot Arcane into an set with a heavy spell theme like Strixhaven. Arcane is something that has a lot of potential but they actually have to do something with it.
Here's how I'd fix them: White - fine as is. Blue- takes one card from each opponent's library. Black - gives you no max hand size for the rest of the game. Red - instead of damage, creates a token copy of that card that lasts until end of turn. Green - The tokens have haste and vigilance, also no max hand size for the rest of the game.
Nobody will probably read this but when Modern first dropped, StarCityGames was hosting Modern tournaments during their tour event. Since these tournaments were side events, they never posted my deck list. Long story short, by far the most played deck was Jund. Probably 80% of the field. Well, my Enduring Ideal deck basically had a 100% win rate against that deck. Needless to say, Enduring Ideal made me a lot of money a few weekends.
The only way I can think of making the cycle of Epics possibly playable is to somehow get enough mana to Flash a different Epic in while it's still on the stack and Epic hasn't resolved, but even then I doubt the rules let it work that way and if you have literally 12+ mana burning a hole in your pocket then your deck is probably best used for something else.
You absolutely can play all of the Epic spells in response to each other if you can cast Sorceries at flash speed and have waaaay too much mana. (Or an Omniscience, I guess). Then, you get all 5 every upkeep. Very funny.
The best way to handle this, very simply, would be to FIX THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLAY AND CAST. How it used to be, when the cards were printed, was that playing a spell was a special action that was the way you gave yourself the ability to cast a card from your hand (Basically, you can play land and spells, spells must be cast once you play them, if you cannot cast a spell you have played you must return it to your hand was the gist). They removed this to "cut out" what was seen as an unnecessary rules space that confuses new players. Hence why morph, suspend, and foretell all were shelved very quickly into MTG becoming semi-mainstream or even immediately after their sets were printed. Hazbro is not a fan of special actions, I imagine they would have WOTC make land work some terrible and stupid way instead of as a special action if they could.
No, creating 7 1/1 tokens every turn, or searching your deck for any enchantment or creature and putting it into play, are all VERY powerful effects. The problem is that the high cost and not being able to cast anything else for the rest of the game, are extremely detrimental costs. If these Epic spells were to lose one of these costs or had the cost reduced (either being cheaper to cast or only allow once spell per turn, etc), they could have been very powerful or broken. Needless to say, if they were extremely cheap or have no casting restrictions, they would definitely be broken.
As someone who like to mess around and see if there's a way to make really terrible cards work, I kind of wonder if there's a possibility of making these sorceries work, if terribly (I usually run casual commander, so my brain thinks more of long term games rather than fast paced competitive ones). Like, could you maybe run creature lands, rely HEAVILY on Aether vial, or use some oddball creatures, artifacts, and enchantments that let you put permanents straight to the battlefield. It would be extremely weird and wonky and definitely not optimized, but interesting at least.
maximum output for snakes would be 8. max handsize is 7 you discard end of turn so on a normal turn you would have the 8, make 8 snakes, discard 1 card end of turn
One of the best ways to fix epic would be to say "Exile this card from the game as it resolves. For the rest of the game, you may cast a copy of the exiled spell during your upkeep without paying it's mana cost , but if you do, you can't cast spells until the beginning of your next upkeep other than the copied spell."
This allows you to play the game in a sense, but still makes the spell feel incredible and game altering.
Or have it ramp, so it copies itself an additional time for each turn since you originally cast it.
Or here is another way:
Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands)
An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
I agree, or giving it uncounterable would be nice. I like the design space ones like the enchantment tutor every turn give, but it's such a narrow design space. A cool concept though
Bit wordy though, could be hard to fit that on the card along with the actual spell effect. It's got technical problems too. It doesn't stop you from casting instants during the upkeep in addition to the epic spell. And the wording "other than the copied spell" sounds like you could cast multiple copies of the epic spell in one upkeep. Exiling it isn't needed either to make it work.
I get what it's supposed to do, though. Also enables the option to play multiple epic spells, and decide during each upkeep which you want.
How about this: "Epic (You can't play spells for the rest of the game. During each of your following upkeep, choose one: Be able to play spells as normal until your next upkeep. Or put a copy of this spell on the stack without its epic ability.)" I think that does what you meant. Still wordy though.
To my memory Kamigawa was a ton of parasitic mechanics, a broken tree, and Umazawa`s Jitte (its a miracle if I spelled that right). But it was also ninjas and I was a teenage boy so I was hype AF for it.
Wasn't his name "Umezawa" and not "Umazawa"... yeah i can see the miracle part. I probably would mess up of the "Jitte"
lol.. as soon as I read "it's a miracle", I was immediately confused thinking you were referring to the mechanic from Avacyn Restored.
I loved the idea of the Arcane / Splice mechanic, but we all know that never took off.
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat Jitte I was more confident on because I pronounced it wrong for so long the correct way sticks out. That 'a' was a 1 in 3 for me; 'i' being the other contender.
@@jessesutton7985 i see
I believe the format u are referring to as "expanded" was actually called extended
God I miss extended...
Expanded is Extended in Pokemon. The many channels are starting to get fused :p
@@Folfire dude also mispronounces words like he’s getting paid to, so there’s that.
@@OberynTheRedViper coming from MtGGoldfish SaffronOlive channel, mispronunciations seem to sell a lot tbh :)
It wouldn't be a hirumared video without three or four easily avoidable mistakes
Epic has an interesting interaction with Splice. Epic copies the spell that was cast, and Splice adds additional effects as you cast a spell. Most Splice spells are "Splice onto arcane", meaning they can only add their effects to arcane spells, which the Epics are not, but in the first Modern Horizons set we got two "Splice onto instant or sorcery" spells. Everdream lets you draw a card (not so helpful since you will draw after the other effects), and more importantly Splicer's Skill creates a 3/3 colorless Golem artifact creature token. If you Splice a Splicer's Skill onto one of the Epics when you cast them, then all the copies you make in later turns will also make a 3/3 token. If you Splice two onto it, them you will get two tokens, but along with the ridiculous amount of mana, you will need two Splicer's Skill in your hand to do so, as each spell can only be spliced onto a spell once (part of using Splice is revealing the card in hand, and all splices you intend to do get revealed at the same time).
id never heard of epic cards until someone at my local game store went infinite with their krark/sakashima commander deck and cast eternal dominion on turn five, copied it twice, and won from there
Yeah if you can copy the epic cards and get mutiple casts per upkeep with some of these cards they would be really, really powerful like dominion. The black one could deck people out faster, but would still be eh. The red one could be really good at least at burning out people maybe. Green one just sucks though, 1/1's are easy to deal with.
@@dark_rit
Once ran this ridiculous combo that involved Omniscience, Enter the Infinite, some copy spells, Leyline of Anticipation, and Neverending Torment, felt fantastic dumping all of my opponents deck in the most unexpected way that they did not see coming.
You can do some thousand year storm combo with Undying Flame as well and basically ask whether your opponent wants to play guess the mana cost the game for like 5min.
The Green one is only good pretty much when you can get it on top of another epic spell that is already winning you the game and you would like some things to shield you a little.
However the most "fun" way is definitely playing hivemind on top of it, now they are locked in here with you. Which, you can build a specific deck meant to pull this off so your opponent benefits very little from the epic spell, or one where you will definitely benefit more.
...playing these too often will probably have your friend count decrease.
my immediate idea for epic is that you get to choose to cast it for free during your upkeep after casting it once, but you can't cast any other spells that turn if you do. This means you can forgo doing them to cast cards in your hand, and it doesn't stop you from casting instants during your opponents turn.
ED: I am terrible at balance. Please read the replies to this comment for better ideas.
Wouldn't that make it hardly a downside for control decks, as they spend most of their mana and cards on their opponents turn? Though limiting you to no spells until your next upkeep would be perhaps too severe, as well.
@@Soumein Definitely too strong if it allows you to cast instants on your opponents turns. But I like the idea of it being a recurring choice to not cast other spells that can be stopped at any time. Something like this: Epic - Until your next upkeep, you can’t play spells. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may copy this spell.
That allows for them to be copied 2-3 times until you’ve drawn some other spell worth casting.
Or just make it so that you can only cast once spell per turn after you casted your Epic spell.
It’s still a massive down side, but it fixes most of the problems that come with Epic spells. You don’t just sit there any do nothing while your opponent feels like playing vs AI.
You also can’t cast instants.
702.50a. Epic represents two spell abilities, one of which creates a delayed triggered ability. "Epic" means "For the rest of the game, you can't cast spells," and "At the beginning of each of your upkeeps for the rest of the game, copy this spell except for its epic ability. If the spell has any targets, you may choose new targets for the copy." See rule 707.10.
@@theemathas we're talking about changing that, not working within it. So it isn't a valid rule for this discussion.
The white one can be used to assemble combos in late-game EDH. Once upon a time it was pretty common to finish with it in Jeskai enchantment pillowfort decks where you could copy it.
Saviors of Kamigawa had ANOTHER set mechanic (which was unnamed) that gave the card a bonus if you had seven or more cards in hand, like an inverted "Hellbent".
That ability, along with Epic... This set tried hard to disincentivize players from ever playing cards, lol.
Yeah, Kamigawa had a Maro theme. That's what sweep and epic were supposed to be played with.
The creation of Enchantment Creatures has made Enduring Ideal very interesting to tinker with in recent years.
I think epics would be a lot cooler to me if their copies maintained epic, so they actually continued to scale as the game progressed and function as maybe halfway decent cards
Just an FYI 7:52 the cycle of cards came out in Saviors of Kamigawa, not Champions of Kamigawa, both are in the first Kamigawa Block, but different sets. Kind of important, denoted by the shrine set symbol icon on each card.
I think it's important to note that the channel mechanic also came out in the same set. It allowed you to pay a cost and discard the card for an effect. This essentially allows you to 'cast' spells without actually casting them, so you could continue to use them after casting an epic spell. Obviously wasn't enough to matter, but I think the designers at least had some consideration about how limiting it was to be unable to cast other spells.
Looking at the channel cards in Saviors of Kamigawa, they're mostly combat tricks, and a lot of them are expensive. And I don't think there's really enough of them to really matter in a 1-2 color deck that you'd probably want as a shell for an epic card.
Maybe you could make a video explaining the Storm Scale? Its a pretty common term and you could reference it in future videos.
Although maybe its best to wait until you've covered at least one example of each level of the Storm scale.
11:20 ironically, people also don't want to be told to play a subgame on top of their current card game...looking at you, Shahrazad
I actually use Eternal Dominion in my Rashmi as a late game option. But usually by that time my board is sufficiently strong that it's more a safe way to get an interesting board and prevent opponents getting powerhouses. It also triggers rashmi and so is fairly safe.
I managed to center a deck around eternal dominion and it worked out amazingly. Uyo, Silent Prophet copies spells by bouncing lands to your hand, letting you copy ANY spell. When a spell with an epic ability gets copied, that ability is tied directly to that copy which means that spell copy gets copied every upkeep along side the spell itself (i.e. Eternal Dominion copied 6 times will give you 6 upkeep interactions with this spell.)
I have also discovered many ways to copy spells like this. Don't take these cards in particular for granted, using them well and you will devastate more than just your opponent.
Then again it's 2 mana per copy so good luck with that.
I used to play a commander deck designed to turbo out the Hive Mind + Eternal Dominion combo. If you're unfamiliar, Hive Mind forces each other player to copy each instant / sorcery, so this combo forces everyone to cast Eternal Dominion. It's hilarious because when this happens the game changes. It's impossible for the game not to become about Eternal Dominion once everyone has cast it. It was a lot of fun to build, since I deliberately don't include any permanents that are useful once the combo goes off.
My favorite commander deck I've made is my Epic deck, where its goal is to play all of the epic spells in response to each other at instant speed. Its silly and great. Probably my most powerful deck, I have to say.
Whoa holy CRAP that IS an interesting idea lol.
How does that end up working out though? Do you actually get to use all 5 every Upkeep? That part is confusing for me lol. Either way, I love that kind of rule-bending insanity in my Magic games.
Yeah making them instant speed so you can cast more in response to each other is one way to make them worthwhile. Other way is to use fork/twincast/other such cards on one really good epic spell to win that way.
I think epic could be great with a cumulative effect. On the turn you cast it, you get the effect. Next upkeep, you get it twice. Next turn, 3 times. This way it actually allows you to continue to be a threat to your opponent.
I agree, even Eternal Dominion can be too weak at times. If it let you get two cards it might be good enough
Or here is another way:
Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands)
An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
The idea of epic spells is fascinating. A single spell so strong it using it means you have to give up casting other spells for a time. But the way it was made was just too restrictive.
Funnily enough, my first deck I ever made as a teenager was a Neverending Torment deck. The deck was a monoblack control deck with things like Royal Assassin that could control the board while on the field itself and cards like Howling Mine to draw more cards. I actually beat my friends with the deck several times before we all decided it was just too boring. Every time it was my turn, I'd have to grab their deck and search it for all the pieces of their deck I wanted to remove. So it made the game drag on and on while nobody really did anything. Even in a shell that can take advantage of it, the card was just boring as hell.
Enduring ideal made the finals of Pro Tour Valencia in 2007; that GP top 8 wasn't its only appearance.
(Also, as others have said, it's extended, not expanded.)
No matter how mush you say the epic spells are bad I will always love my EHD epic deck XD
These spells with Hive Mind is pretty funny tho.
Eternal Dominion is my favorite with a Hive Mind out.
I feel like with hand abilities like Chanel and having a certain board set up with activated abilities like Planeswalkers, Polukronos, In the Trenches, etc you can play a few Epic cards and be set up with a ton of options by the time you cast one, plus In the Trenches is a great new enchantment for Enduring Ideal.
Also, you totally can cast more than one, you just need to cast them at instant speed before the first one resolves, with the one Leyline or Teferi and enough mana to cast them (mana not being a problem for certain enchantment decks to set up). I could actually see a good bant deck in Historic using probably just one of each Epic card if they ever go to Arena.
Enduring Ideal was also the best because you could find paradox haze with it on your first cast, which is an enchantment that gives you 2 upkeeps so you would get to enduring ideal twice each turn, that and the fact that the deck was mainly a pillow fort of enchantments that made it hard for you to lose meant you werent really losing too much becuase sit there as an AI was basically already baked into the gameplan
card idea: Instant, cost: a large amount of mana, text: Target spell is now Epic
Interesting. Could be a huge feelbad if you made someone's counterspell Epic though. That being said, I'd much rather have infinite mana payoffs do this than just burn everybody with Walking Ballista.
the white epic card had a nice deck with it back in the day :) never really saw much play for the other 4
I think it's pretty flavorful that Chanel, a Kammigawa keyword, makes Epic, a Kamigawa keyword, much more playable.
I think that Epic Sorceries *could* kinda work if they all had multiple decently powerful effects. So the green could spawn a bunch of tokens or buff up a monster/monsters a decently big amount, up to like 4 (maybe) and you could choose 1 a turn. Also if you want to look at a mechanic that probably won't be reprinted, I'd look at the storm scale. Also, Storm itself. I feel like the implication of this series is mechanics that are underpowered where I feel like that's fair, but super overpowered mechanics that won't ever be reprinted can work (shoutout to storm, love you and miss you) Edit: on the day of me posting this comment there was another failed mechanics video I watched released but instead of posting that comment here, I decided this 2 month old video was the right place to post :)
A small, dried up neural pathway fired painfully for the first time in years upon seeing the words ‘epic’ and ‘fail’ in such close proximity to each other.
I think Epic could work if the spells were setup with multiple modes and were therefore able to be more flexible, especially if one of the modes were to allow a bypassing of the typical Epic restriction. Make it 3 options per card with each card having two moderately-powered options and the third option being, "you may play spells until the end of this turn."
Then again, this is almost in the realm of something that would just fit better as an artifact or enchantment and the Epic spell version would just be making it an impossible to remove effect.
There's a lot of potential design space around epic. If it was printed on a permanent for example, you could continue to gather resources linearly as other players do without sacrificing too much. Imagine if you will, an epic Dictate of the twin gods or similar effect as a punishing finisher. Alternatively, you could build around abilities of cards such as cycling, forecast and channel to avoid the downside for the most part. The potential is there though unlikely to be seen with the stigma against the mechanic still so prevalent
Enduring ideal was actually a pro tour topping deck, back during the Extended 2007 Pro tour Valicia stop, Andre Mueller got second place with the deck losing in the finals to counter Goyf.
It's a really cool idea in theory, definitely something that would be fun to play if it could be done right
I personally run Epic Spells, and like, you need to be really creative and usually do a set up that would win you easily with other cards.
But it's fantastic and fun to play with when you bring out the 5 Epic flash with Thousand year storm and while they laugh at your deck building choices, you just stole all their important permanents, summoned a ton of snakes, made oneself untouchable with enchantments, and exiled like 40 of their cards.
It's definitely not ideal to use however.
Though cards such as Thran's Temporal Gateway and other similar cards that allows you put permanents on the battlefield directly are also great ways of playing the game while being locked out.
Otherwise you can, for example, run Hivemind into One With Nothing chained with a flashed Enduring Ideal, and lock your opponent away from playing the game entirely.
I find the restricting mechanics very interesting to find ways of abusing and bypassing, but it certainly is just meme material.
I think a sorcery with “the next spell you cast this turn has epic” would be interesting. Probably horribly broken, but fun to theorize about, lol.
Could you cover the Gravestorm mechanic? It was only printed on a single card, and it has the oppritunity to be a VERY POWERFUL yet interesting mechanic... awesome mechanic btw
I've played it with Yahenni's Expertise which gives all creatures -3/-3 until end of turn and lets you cast bitter ordeal for free. It's not as good as it seems. It CAN be bonkers but it's not consistent.
@@williamdrum9899 Bitter Ordeal is a nice payoff for going infinite with Sharuum in Commander but the mechanic is pretty silly in practice. Interesting sure, I'll give you that but cards like Brought Back or effects like Blood Artist do a pretty great job at covering what Gravestorm would hope to do without needing all the ridiculous tracking.
It would be interesting if you did a Failed Cards/Mechanics video, but of the “failing from success” variety, like ones that were TOO good that WotC have shelved indefinitely.
First one that comes to mind esp with the current story arc is “Infect”, since they haven’t done anything with it since it’s release block.
My favorite archetype of epic decks are ones that copy them al p t which make them alot more viable
When you go from like 1 copy of eternal dominion to 3 or 4 you can often win immediately if there's any meshing combo permanents
The White one was onto something since it allowed some agency. If the Green one could summon a creature spell from deck or hand/graveyard it would be more interesting. Same for Blue and artifacts or recycling instant/sorceries from graveyard. Black and Red could go wild and do more deck shenanigans.
Actually, dual colors have even more potential: Golgari epic summons X monsters from grave each turn with haste, then sacrifice them and gives life to the player; Izzet epic mills X from deck and lets cast instant&sorceries milled that way with no cost; Selesnya one copies creatures everywhere as tokens, etc.
Question about Epic. If I have leyline of anticipation out & I cast each epic spell on the stack/(or I do something to copy the spell) would each resolve or would they stop themselves?
Yup, you can absolutely copy that Epic spell, or play Epic spells in response to each other if you have flash speed, and all of them will resolve and each will be able to trigger on your subsequent upkeep. Until the first Epic spell resolves, you can put as much as you want on the stack and it all works.
This is a great analysis and makes a good case for why this mechanic should not return. Yet, I would still love for the designers to take another stab at it. Maybe in a horizons set. My ideas for how to mitigate some of the downsides of this mechanic would be: modal epic spells, not relying on cards in hand, putting the mechanic in a cycling themed set.
I have an EDH deck centered around copying Endless Swarm and Eternal Dominion as often as possible. It's fun!
I always find spell copying effects to just cost too much mana to be of any real use, it just seems like there's never a good time to use them at all.
I built a casual Blue/Black Neverending Torment deck.
5 Neverending Torments in one turn thanks to cards like Echo Mage let me rip every Non-Land from someone's deck in a couple of turns.
But it was Very inconsistent.
I think there is more design space for epic spells than Wizards thinks. Just off the top of my head:
1. Being able to choose from multiple effects
2. Locking you into one card type as opposed to locking you out of all of them
3. Letting you discard for various effects
4. Applying a permanent state change to the board kind of like an enchantment, though the lack of interactability would likely need to be solved
5. Casting a spell ending the effect as opposed to locking you the rest of the game
I’m sure there are others. I think the real issue is that it almost steps on the toes of Enchantment cards as a sorcery while having fewer counters than a sorcery. These too can be resolved, but you could also just print Enchantments.
I actually have an EDH deck based around Enduring Ideal, putting enchantment combo's into play. It tries to get more than 1 enchantment per round by playing the Ideal with Twincast or searching for Paradox Haze.
Can you use eye of the storm with an epic card?
Seeing these cards makes me want to play all of them in commander (except the green one lol) I think a mostly lands deck would be awesome. Land creatures and cycling+ cards would be an interesting work around for the mechanic
one word- Horsemanship
Neat analysis video!
Personally, seeing this, I dislike the way Legendary Sorceries seem to have been implemented - The typing sounded appealing, but I dislike the Creature/Planeswalker centricism Wizards settled on. Isn't the Player a Planeswalker? What of the other permanent types?
Anyway, thanks for uploading!
When I first read the Epic mechanic, I read it wrong, like, you can't cast any more spells this turn, which I said "ok steep cost but fair balance to get it rolling", then got around the explanation and yeah, pretty underwhelming.
I think that would be the balance solution tho. Make it so Epic can only be cast during your upkeep (spell rules be damned), only as the first spell you cast that turn, and you cannot cast any other spells that turn, but the spell becomes recurring after each of your turns as usual. You still have to basically draw a card and skip your turn for it, which is a steep cost, but now you have a recurring threat your opponent has to deal with.
Oh, of course, Epic spells should get a once per duel clause, even in the stack. Even if it's countered.
I never thought I would hear anyone mispronouncing "Dominaria" :D - I still like your videos btw
"Enduring Ideal" is the only enduring ideal of Epic.
While not really a failed game mechanic, I would love a video on the storm chart
Hey, wanna ask
Why not do a series on the history of each mechanic in turn?
Isn't casting spells, like, 90% of what you do in Magic? I only know anything about MTG from TheManaLogs and even I have a hard time seeing how anybody thought that cards that locked the person who used them out of almost the entire rest of the game was a good idea. If you had a similar idea in Yugioh, like an extra deck monster that was immune to everything, had 5000 attack, and a once per turn omni-negate, but locked you out of summoning or setting monsters, activating other monster effects, Spell cards, Continuous and Counter traps, no one would play that.
The same set also introduced channel, which lets you pay a cost and discard the card to do a stated effect. In this original iteration of the mechanic, it was all creatures that had some tap ability, or you could channel them for a more powerful version of the tap ability. One had 3u and tap to counter a spell unless its controller paid 2, or channel for 3u to counter a spell unless its controller paid 4. Notably, since the channel ability isn't casting a spell, epic doesn't prevent you from activating it. However, like a lot of the parasitic mechanics in Kamigawa block, there just wasn't enough support to make it work, and even if there was it was still just too clunky to be worth it.
Yes, every card that isn't a land is a spell. So you're putting yourself at a huge risk by using these. Even if you have the mana to cast them, they're not always good depending on the situation. They're kind of like mass land destruction, they don't really affect the game state apart from "locking it in" for the forseeable future.
These cards would need a completely game-warping, anime-like effect to them to justify them. Like, more effect text than what would probably fit on the card.
Actually, if mtg had an anime based on the card game, that would be exactly how I would imagine a themed villain character to turn out :D
All they needed to add to this is say "non-epic spells" then they would have created a viable archetype. I'm sure you can still channel and cycle as well as activate abilities and play land right?
Yes, you can. None of those you mentioned count as a spell. If you have a Quicksilver Amulet on your field you can also cheese creatures out with it too
I feel like the "Epic" effect could have been better if they were attached to spells that were both more expensive and more powerful. Like a spell that costs 10 and basically puts your opponents on a tight clock to either kill you or inevitably lose. Blue could gain control of X permanents at your upkeep where X is the cards in your hand (playing on blues card draw), black could drain your opponents life and give you the life lost that way based on the cards in your graveyard (playing on blacks graveyard preference), Green could make a bunch of X/X tokens where x is the number of permanents you control (playing on greens token generation), Red could deal a ton of direct damage to a bunch of targets based on *something* to represent reds tendency for burn spells, and I'm not sure about white... the only thing that comes to mind would be to exile mass permanents and when opponents are out of permanents they automatically lose.
The problem is, they have to be win conditions, but not win too fast. (If I win on the turn I play an epic spell, it doesn't matter.) Making X X/X tokens where X is the number of cards in your hand might be something.
Epic spells in general want to be abused the way you already abuse their non-epic counterparts (e.g., Endless Swarm would be like, I don't know, Spontaneous Generation, so like all other token makers, you're looking at sac outlets, entry triggers, death triggers, attack triggers, things that count how many creatures you have, and something like Kyren Negotiations, and of course anthems), but the difference is, you can't play them normally. You can't even play Collective Unconscious or March of Souls to exploit your superior numbers after playing Endless Swarm.
Oh, did I mention that even with this downside, Endless Swarm costs twice as much as Spontaneous Generation?
And that's probably the second-easiest (after Enduring Ideal) to exploit; after all, you can still use your mana to make more tokens, provided you have something like, well, at the time, it would be Nemata, Grove Guardian (which wasn't Standard-legal, but he's seriously all we had; today I would say Jade Mage or Ant Queen, possibly Mobilization...Heliod, God of the Sun if you want to exploit enchantments, or if you're just desperate).
I made a Daxos (orhzov experience counter commander) with the sole purpose of getting enduring ideal out with my commander out and flood the board with daxos's mana sink. It was fun but was awful. A lot of laughs and blowouts.
I like the epic concept but unsure if it could be brought back with a new design space. I personally would like one that let you lightning bolt per card in your hand. Sounds fun and awful.
I actually played Enduring Ideal in my Codie donate jank EDH deck. Giving someone else the Epic effect via Sudden Substitution or Hive Mind is quite heinous. In no way busted as it's really hard to pull off, but fun if you manage to get it once in a while. 😅
Well, i think something like "this spell can't be countered" was needed in the first place.
Also, some cards could be better whitout being broken, like green "put a creature card from your hand into battlefied" or red "remove a card from your graveyard/hand" instead of library
Extended, not expanded. Nice video :)
Gimmicky Rogue decks are just fun to try and make work. Enduring Swarm sounds fun to play in a deck that relies on ETB triggers once you get the right pieces on the board. I think what is so fun about 'bad' cards is that while the larger community as a whole writes them off, there is always someone, somewhere, trying to make those bad work. . .even if its only in the jankiest way possible.
Oh yeah I'm thinking impact tremors and fiery emancipation as a combo with it. That's 42 damage if you have 7 cards
I remember Kamigawa was the only discounted booster packs that my comic book store ever sold.
All other boosters were $3-$4 but Kamigawa were $2.
Back in like 2008 you could buy simplified chinese Kamigawa boxes on ebay for like $35-$40 dollars, it was so insanely cheap. Mostly because almost all the cards in the block were unplayable at the time or worth very little except for umezawa's jitte. It was pretty poor just because almost all the mechanics in the block were only good with cards from that block. Stuff like splice onto arcane when arcane didn't exist anywhere else.
6:23 You mixed up with Pokemon. It's Extended. Not Expanded.
Enduring Ideal I would argue remains oppressive in casual edh and terrible in competitive. Floating mana, casting Armageddon, and then enduring ideal is usually assured victory in a deck already half way building an impenetrable prison.
The jankiest successful Enduring Ideal I’ve seen go off was where they had Vedalken Orrery out, cast Thassa’s Oracle, then with the trigger on stack they cast Enduring Ideal to grab Thought Lash and activate thought lash a number of times equal to the number of cards in their deck.
Going up against an Azorius deck, while certainly Oracle could randomly come out, I was honestly speechless to see such an obtuse affront to optimal play work, of which everyone had to read each card as it changed zones (not the exiled cards, no).
Not necessarily about failed mechanics, but I think a video covering retired keyword abilities and why they were retired would be nice.
The problem with Kamigawa is it came after a block (mirrodin) that nearly broke the game because of its high power... and kamigawa got the shaft, then Ravnica basically saved magic after. The return to Kamigawa was one of the most cathartic and well deserved returns to a plane.
Here is a way to fix Epic:
Make so that instead of not allowing to play any spells, it restrcts the player to playing a single card type (plus lands)
An example of this can be a card like Endless Swarm with the restriction of only playing enchantments, where the goal would be to have a continous supply of little tokens and then the player uses enchantments to buff them
I feel like it probably would have been the simplest thing to make the epic spells into arcane spells so you could always splice onto arcane and make the spells better. Because the splice mechanic is still the same spell, it's just adding the effect to the spell. It probably would have made it so these cards could be more versatile and actually used for different effects
If you've never casted eternal dominion in EDH you're missing out. It's hilarious
Maybe if epic cards didn’t omit the epic from the copies they would be more powerful. That way you get 1 copy, then 2 copies, then 3 copies, and so on.
Instead of
7 1/1 snakes
7 1/1 snakes
7 1/1 snakes
You get
7 1/1 snakes
14 1/1 snakes
21 1/1 snakes
Which seems like a much bigger threat
The lantern symbol is Betrayers. Not Champions. Champions had a gate.
Domaneeria
Concept for a new Epic card: {W}, Sorcery, "End the turn." [Epic effect].
There you go! Now you don't have to play white for the rest of the game!
They're kinda like the "recurring suspend" cards, but those operate at a lower power level and were balanced enough to be revisited.
Yea, the format was Extended. Or, as it later went on to be known as, "Old" Extended (as the Extended format itself would see a massive overhaul before eventually just becoming Modern). Imo, the closest thing we have to Old Extended today is actually Pioneer. Other than the fact that Extended was a rotating format, and I don't believe Pioneer is.
And it was Pro Tour Valencia, in 2007 I believe, where Remi Fortier (then only 16 years old) would defeat Andre Mueller's Enduring Ideal deck in the Finals to become the youngest PT winner in history (up til that point, Idk if that still rings true or not).
I think a lot of the issues came from WotC over-correcting itself after a 'strong' set. Kamigawa followed Mirridon which was a very strong set. So it would make sense if they threw in some clunkers or altered some effects to bring down the game some. Epic would be a very strong mechanic if it didn't have the 'cannot cast other spells' clause, it would be Rebound but each turn which honestly isn't bad. Honestly most of the mechanics in the original Kamigawa weren't terrible. I actually would like to see the Arcane sub-type come back with some of the other mechanics that interact with it. Something like Strixhaven would be good for that type of stuff because its a magic school and altering spells seems like something that would happen in a magic school. Most mechanics can be good if it has support for it. Some can't be saved because of inherently bad design, not being able to play the game is such a case.
Arcane is probably never coming back. Some of the people at WotC have spoken on splice, and mentioned that despite their worries, the mechanic is actually kind of fine if it isn't parasitic. Which is why we saw a splice onto instant card in one of the Modern Horizons sets. So we may see splice return at some point, but unless they find some other interesting use for arcane, I doubt they'll bring it back.
@@fwg1994 Its a shame because they could literally put Arcane in most sets without much of an issue. There is actually really little support for Arcane so there is a lot things you can do. Example: a creature with whenever you cast an instant or sorcery Scry 1, if it was an Arcane draw a card. They could easily slot Arcane into an set with a heavy spell theme like Strixhaven. Arcane is something that has a lot of potential but they actually have to do something with it.
I actually use Eternal Dominion and Endless Swarm in my lands deck. It works really, really well, especially the blue one.
Epic is one of my favorite things, I have a deck built around it. Yeah one epic spell isn't great, but if you copy it a bunch of times it can be good.
I wonder if something like an epic version of lightning bolt with relatively low mana cost like 4 would be good
Amazing!
I think those spell are from Saviors of Kamigawa not Champions of Kamigawa
There is a modern deck that uses the white epic and draw phrexian unlife & Solemnity and form of the dragon for the kill.
Black has access to various mill options already, the constant mill is not terrible, it just pales in comparison to the other options.
Here's how I'd fix them:
White - fine as is.
Blue- takes one card from each opponent's library.
Black - gives you no max hand size for the rest of the game.
Red - instead of damage, creates a token copy of that card that lasts until end of turn.
Green - The tokens have haste and vigilance, also no max hand size for the rest of the game.
Expanded or Extended. Did I miss a whole format?
Nobody will probably read this but when Modern first dropped, StarCityGames was hosting Modern tournaments during their tour event. Since these tournaments were side events, they never posted my deck list. Long story short, by far the most played deck was Jund. Probably 80% of the field. Well, my Enduring Ideal deck basically had a 100% win rate against that deck. Needless to say, Enduring Ideal made me a lot of money a few weekends.
The only way I can think of making the cycle of Epics possibly playable is to somehow get enough mana to Flash a different Epic in while it's still on the stack and Epic hasn't resolved, but even then I doubt the rules let it work that way and if you have literally 12+ mana burning a hole in your pocket then your deck is probably best used for something else.
You absolutely can play all of the Epic spells in response to each other if you can cast Sorceries at flash speed and have waaaay too much mana. (Or an Omniscience, I guess). Then, you get all 5 every upkeep. Very funny.
6:13 Even colorless. Let's get Eldrazi Conscription
The only way an EPIC card could work is if it had 3 different effects to choose from that it could do from being cast like a charm card.
I made a penny dreadful undying flames deck and while it was really fun to build with the unique restraints, I don’t think I’ve ever won a full BO3
i think you meant Extended, not expanded
I wouldn't call it "failed" but definitely "Banding", good luck explaining that
The best way to handle this, very simply, would be to FIX THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLAY AND CAST. How it used to be, when the cards were printed, was that playing a spell was a special action that was the way you gave yourself the ability to cast a card from your hand (Basically, you can play land and spells, spells must be cast once you play them, if you cannot cast a spell you have played you must return it to your hand was the gist). They removed this to "cut out" what was seen as an unnecessary rules space that confuses new players. Hence why morph, suspend, and foretell all were shelved very quickly into MTG becoming semi-mainstream or even immediately after their sets were printed. Hazbro is not a fan of special actions, I imagine they would have WOTC make land work some terrible and stupid way instead of as a special action if they could.
No, creating 7 1/1 tokens every turn, or searching your deck for any enchantment or creature and putting it into play, are all VERY powerful effects. The problem is that the high cost and not being able to cast anything else for the rest of the game, are extremely detrimental costs.
If these Epic spells were to lose one of these costs or had the cost reduced (either being cheaper to cast or only allow once spell per turn, etc), they could have been very powerful or broken. Needless to say, if they were extremely cheap or have no casting restrictions, they would definitely be broken.
I love Enduring Ideal;
As someone who like to mess around and see if there's a way to make really terrible cards work, I kind of wonder if there's a possibility of making these sorceries work, if terribly (I usually run casual commander, so my brain thinks more of long term games rather than fast paced competitive ones). Like, could you maybe run creature lands, rely HEAVILY on Aether vial, or use some oddball creatures, artifacts, and enchantments that let you put permanents straight to the battlefield. It would be extremely weird and wonky and definitely not optimized, but interesting at least.
maximum output for snakes would be 8. max handsize is 7 you discard end of turn so on a normal turn you would have the 8, make 8 snakes, discard 1 card end of turn
Really should have given you no max hand size.
@@williamdrum9899 agreed really weird that it doesnt