I remember back before hex proof got its name, it was called Troll shroud by fans as the more powerful form of shoud was often seen on troll creatures.
Indestructible doesn't actually make the creature immune to combat damage. Combat damage just doesn't destroy it. Only reason it matters is a creature with infect or wither can still destroy a Indestructible creature using combat damage through the application of -1 -1 counters.
I think the existence of Hexproof and Ward is really just indicitave of Magic's Removal problem. Removal is good game design, but ceiling-less removal is not. The ability to remove a creature for significantly less resources forces players to run creatures with less investment or that generate value immediately, as well as forcing auras to be way more powerful to account for getting 2-for-1ed. The only real way to answer them is with something like hexproof or ward, but that worsens cards that interact fairly with a ceiling, like shock, too, making stuff like Bogles as uninteractive as ceilingless "point and click" removal. There really isn't a good way to concisely solve this other than stop printing ceilingless removal in standard products so we can draft and have standard season that have fair mana removal, or at least real restrictions like deathtouchers needing to be attacked into, edicts allowing for choice, or more temporary removal like tapping and flickering, as well as also limiting freecasting so you wouldnt need to kill an 8 mana 8/8 on turn 3 or 4 anyways.
They are doing this already. There are only four removal spells with no restrictions on WOE and all cost at least 4 mana. This makes it have a downside to run because you are investing more resources into it than many creatures you might want to remove. The big issue is the 1 and 2 mana removal spells as they can almost always trade even or up in resources. Swords to plowshares is an insane legacy/vintage/commander only card because it is 1 mana with laughable downside. Al the creature removal currently in standard is quite restricted for 1 mana, and the 2 mana ones have meaningful downsides. I think 3 mana is a pretty good place to be for generic “destroy target creature” where you are investing quite a bit.
In a way, this is "addressed" by rotation in a minor and larger scale. Standard rotation needs no explanation, but on a different scale, Legacy and Modern have better removal than Pioneer, and eventually whatever comes after Pioneer will also allow for soft resetting removal, and power level overall. While og Eldraine was a serious bump up in power, removal lately has been more tame, and this is a balance they should try to keep not nullifying power creep, but making it lower curved through the years. I hope 3 year rotation doesn't make this more difficult than what it already is
You forgeting the fact that cheating out creatures in play exist. Until there's no way to cheat out creatures and until all colors are somewhat equal in terms of mana production, we need a cheap way to remove huge bombs that hit the board WAY earlier than intended.
While I agree in general, they *are* making the effort to shift removal even just slightly. Yes, you can have your two mana Go for the Throat, but in an environment where the dangerous thing you want to remove is very possibly an artifact. The other thing is that there *can* be a middle of the road protection. For example, creatures that deal damage when targeted let your opponent deal with them with their cheap removal, but it costs them something else. Creatures that raise the cost of removal like Thalia make the cost-benefit more fair even if only when they are there. Ward accomplishes both of those things perfectly imo.
Another thing worth noting about Sauron is not just the interesting way they handle his ward, but also how this factors into the set he came out in. Within the context of the LoTR sets, Sauron's protection, while costly to the opponent, was one that was readily available thanks to the Ringbearer mechanic, which could grant you on-the-spot legendary creatures. This was a one-two punch of both making a bomb that interacted with it's limited environment well and a flavour-win, as the one thing to foil Sauron's world dominion ended up being the most unlikely of people. To cap it all off, outside of this limited environment, his ward ends up being very powerful, but not insurmountable.
@@cutecommie Well regen is a fairly rare mechanic these days anyways, but it's been little more then a year since SNC came out so it's still likely to be reprinted.
An ability I've been kicking around for my house set that falls into this line and seems to play well is called hardy. Creatures with hardy don't remember their damage. The reminder text for it is "Prevent all damage less than this creature's toughness from any single source."
Sounds like how Ogre Enforcer works. "Ogre Enforcer can’t be destroyed by lethal damage unless lethal damage dealt by a single source is marked on it."
I think we need more shroud, because it does make sense. Imagine Argothian Enchantress without shroud, or at least with " [* any *] spells targeting ~this cost X more to cast", which is why neither other enchantress has hexproof, and if I'm not wrong - no ward either.
@@williamdrum9899it could be named ward, since written colours and reminder text don't count towards colour identity. Ex. Blue Ward/Island ward 3 (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays 3. At least U must be paid). Obviously that's not perfect or practical wording, but you get the idea.
I will always maintain that Shroud was far better balance than hexproof or ward. Shroud made a creature harder to remove, but it also made it much harder for you to make the creature even stronger. Back when Uril the Miststalker came out, it was a terror in EDH because removal back then was a lot more scarce and almost always targetted. Shroud was the typical use, but Uril had hexproof before it was keyworded, and was regarded as _very_ strong because of the fact that the player could still target their own Uril with auras and pump spells while opponents practically couldn't remove it.
I think Shroud was fine because it meant you couldn't buff your creature or trying to protect or whatever else. Hexproof could be fine, but it needed to be a bit more rare and expensive, not sometimes cheaper than similar cards that had shroud. They just over used it.
The critical factor is that balance isn't the most important thing. The biggest thing is always how enjoyable the game is to play. If Shroud is frustrating to players, it is bad regardless of its balance. I didn't play back then, but I can easily see why casual players would be annoyed not being able to buff their creatures and the game just being annoying for everyone if people keep forgetting the rules (both the person being told they can't do their plan and the person having to explain why they can't).
Shroud was actually amazingly designed from a gameplay and balsnce perspective, it was canned purely because players *would not* stop playing it as if it were hexproof, because intuitively they felt that's what it should have been. This occured in playtesting, casual, competitive, and internally among designers.
You can't say it was "amazingly designed" and if 1. People played it wrongly 2. Once explained, people decided not to play it. I've played with shroud and no one in their right mind would want to play it. When you can't interact with your own creature, the design is flawed.
If old creatures with Shroud had Hexproof and modern day overstated Hexproof bs had Shroud, I think both mechanics would be inherently healthier. Also no, people were just cheating. No one with a working brain would read "can't be a target of spells and abilities" as "can't be a target of spells and abilities your opponent controls", unless they wanted to cheat.
@InquisitorSinCross no people weren't simply "just cheating". The problem wouldn't have happened literally all the time in the internal playtesting team if it was just a matter of sweats cheating.
@@InquisitorSinCrossyou're out here assuming people actually read the cards they play with. All. The. Time. People are constantly missing keywords, glossing over blocks of text, and just failing to understand how cards work.
I am building a pauper cube right now, focusing on high levels of interaction and play-counter play dynamics. Forcing players to play well and consider every move because the entire cube is highly interactive. All that is to say that unfun keywords that say "you do not get to interact" were out. Shroud, hexproof, protection, indestructible an "cannot be countered" are all auto skips when scanning Scryfall. I appreciate the Ward mechanic, as it slots in with what I think Magic should be - careful considerations of board/game states and resource management. I see fruitful design space for Ward in the future. Black needs a "sacrifice a creature" or at least "non-land permanent". Small red aggro creatures need "sac a land" ward to really help them keep up the tempo. Skip your draw step, skip your untap step, skip your next combat, discard a specific TYPE of card. I could even see ward being pushed to include things that help build the player's board. Ward - Creature's controller puts two 2/2 creature tokens of [insert type] onto the battlefield. Obviously these ideas need more nuance and balance than a YT comment has space for, but these are just ideas to get the ball rolling. It would be nice to see mana based Ward being a baseline which every color uses, and then each color getting at least one, hopefully two, other ward payment methods unique to their slice of the pie. Shroud always was a sub-par mechanic. It rendered "pump" combat tricks, creature enchantments (what you kids call "auras"), equipment and fight effect based removal ineffectual. I would argue that Shroud made creatures worse - not individually but in a deck, and dramatically dampened the deck building space, particularly in limited settings like draft, sealed and cube.
Wizards did went overboard with Hexproof, honestly Shroud is quite a fair protection, slap it into a medium thing and your opponent can't answer it but it isn't too much of a big threat, and you can't buff it either to make it threat, it stays a medium threat Though I do advocate for Ward, because as fair as Shroud "feels" its still limiting the interactability of the object, and less interactability is always less fun
Hexproof is important to keep decks humble. Otherwise you get people who want to just spam universal answers, and can't ever be bothers to commit to the board. Then you just get games of whoever got the better fistful of answers, as it's never worthwhile to commit to the boar dever.
@@superbaas8822 Shroud already addressed that, Hexproof just was an abusive way of protecting your stuff Shroud granted a lot of protection with the drawback that you cannot target it either, while Hexproof has no drawbacks while providing a very strong protection still, both of those abilities reduce interaction, which is bad Ward is doing a good job at protecting boards without going overboard by making stuff unable to be interacted with at all
@@DragoSmash Which was all addressed in the video, that hexproof should only be showing up on more expensive creatures. Most people who don't like hexproof use the Carnage Tyrant debate, as they just want to play solitaire magic.
@@superbaas8822 it means that Hexproof shouldn't have existed in the first place or used SUPER sparingly, it has no place where it can't be abused Slap it into a small creature, now its a Voltron target! Slap it into a big one, just swing with your 7/7 Trample! and you can easily protect them with stuff like Undying Evil or Persist if you are about to get board wiped! anywhere where its slapped, it becomes problematic
@@DragoSmash You really do want to just abandon all the data done to write your own narrative. The mechanic was created to answer "Fistful of Answers dot dek." Clutch your counterspells, your spot removals, maybe a sweeper or two (which style answers hexproof remember), good to go right? Hexproof is designed to make it that you actually have to interact with the opponent yourself. You can't just play a bunch of universal "Oh, he cast a creature? I'm too lazy to read the box." This was a way to keep from every creature in the game needing haste or an ETB. The point of the mechanic is that you need to not end up so far behind because you want to play so passively that a single unresolved creature answers you.
The best part about ward is the puns they can make. Forward - give an attacking creature ward four Warden - vigilance creature that gives your jail cell enchantments like oubliette ward Sward - a sword equipment that gives ward
Small nitpick: You don't ever explain what ward does, and the first card you show with ward doesn't explain it either. The second has A LOT of text, and doesn't have ward itself. I didn't know what ward did. It can be derived from context, but you may want to change the first cards shown regarding ward?
Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays [cost]. here's the reminder text, if you need it
I nearly had a punch up with a friend playing a slippery bogle deck the first time i used an edict on him. "no its hexproof.".. "yes mate im targeting YOU to sac a creature."
Most early shroud creatures were green (Autumn Willow, Deadly Insect, Joralel Centaur), and that was because green was supposed to be the "best creature color," but creatures back then were TERRIBLE... and any big creature that green played would get exiled or destroyed cheaply. Shroud was supposed to negate that problem, but the creatures that had shroud weren't any good. As someone who loved to play green in the 90s, I was sadly very aware of this fact!
Come on now, that's a bit hyperbolic. Green had SOME solid creatures back in the day. Ernham Djinn for one. A 4/5 body for 3G back then was crazy good. And we really can't overlook the fact that Green also had mana dorks live Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. You could put down enough threats fast enough to simply outrun the best removal.
@@Xoulrath_ Meaning you could not, in fact, pump out enough threats to outrun the best removal. You either got your creature ramp bolted, your spell ramp countered, or your payoff creatures removed.
@@ODDnanref you said, "but creatures back then were TERRIBLE..." and I responded with no, they weren't all that bad. Then you proceeded to have an entirely different conversation about play patterns.
Interesting kink to Sauron both gameplay and flavour wise is that it will mainly be played as a commander, and so the opponent will almost always have a way to remove it
The issue I have with Ward is anything with Ward 2 or higher is basically just Hexproof. Yes, I can pay the 2, but most of the time I won't be able to do anything else until I get my mana back. Unless they're tapping out to play a Ward creature, they're still going to be ahead because they'll just counter your removal or just cast something else that now cannot be answered before it swings the game.
Thinking about Shroud and Hexproof just reminds me of my Mirrodin prerelease games. Plated Slagwurm was an 8/8 for 7 with the hexproof ability (before it became a keyword), and I had pulled both that and Slagwurm Armor. I remember winning a few games by putting the armor on the wurm and just swinging with an 8/14 beast; it would usually get chump blocked by something, but I could keep the rest of my creatures back for defense and my opponent would run out of blockers eventually.
The funny thing about a keyword like Regenerate is that Wizards can't erase it from the cards it's already been printed on, so regardless of whether it's retired or not, it's something they have to keep in mind forever when designing new cards and effects. Unless they come up with some way of not needing to reference it, spells like boardwipes will always need to say the creatures can't be regenerated just in case someone still uses a card with it.
I think they got it right with shroud the first time, gives the effect they are looking for and prevents boggles. Its the perfect keyword, ward should not even be compared to what shroud or hexproof does because all it really is, is another stax piece.
Regenerate has actually had a more straight replacement in New Capenna in the form of shield counters. There are also some interesting aspects in the way ward works, the first being that it isn't a static ability, unlike the others, but a triggered ability. Which means both it can be itself countered, but also that there are possible shenanigans in more casual formats where you can double it. It also can be ignored if you have spells that can't be countered (which are rightfully rare), since it doesn't increase the cost of the spell itself.
13:25 also, ward gets even more balanced a bit because it doesn't says a strict "your opponent can't...", but it rather counters the ability or spell: some spells can't be countered, therefore they circumvent the ward completely I also think that "protection" needs a deep dive video: Progenitus was a bomb and Voice of All is just barely good in my Angel tribal deck (Pristine Angel needs vigilance, otherwise she's almost useless
The only problem with Ward is that WotC sometimes prints stuff with super high Ward costs to the point it might as well be Hexproof. I had a heck of a time at the Dungeons and Dragons set prerelease with an opponent who had the Storm Giant Man land; being a land on my turn, I couldn't hit it with sorcery speed removal to begin with, and then when it was a creature, it had Ward SEVEN, which was just ridiculous, lol.
The idea is that if your opponent shouldn't be able to remove, say, your 7 Mana creature for 2 Mana if this means your creature can't do anything. So if you give it Ward 5 then that's a "fair" trade.
@@byeguyssryexcept this idea won't work. Trying to advocate for removal costing the same as the creature it removes, when we have Green in the game (you know, THE color of Ramp who will have more mana avaliable than it's opponent, unless they also play Green degeneracy) is extremly onesided. If you want "fair" trades, Green has to lose all of it's ramp effects and also we need to get rid of treasures. People who are against current removal/counterspells usually forget that decks that run lots of removal usually (!) have far less avaliable mana than decks whos gameplan is to vomit big creatures every turn
@@InquisitorSinCross I think putting a higher ward cost on hall specifically would be pretty painful because you're already forced to interact with it at instant speed, so a higher ward cost means more mana you have to hold up.
The person playing Hall is paying SIX mana to turn that land into a 7/7 with Ward 3, for a SINGLE TURN. It's in Blue, which effectively makes it a closer for a control deck. It SHOULD cost a bit to do something to it. The reality is that once the control player can afford to spend that mana to use the land as a creature, they've probably already won, unless they're a bad control player.
Soooo nice to see the devs evolve and adjust the mechanics accordingly over time.... instead of doubling down on what makes the creatures/monsters All the same, un-interesting and uninteractive
Like all costing 0 mana to be cast AND on instant speed, or having both ONLY upsides AND a body larger than the mana cost (like Sheoldred the Apocalypse: a 4/5 with deathtouch (and the draw triggers) for just 4 mana
Hexproof makes sweepers better which is generally expensive, which moves control.into a weird space where White/Blue is the best control colors but green may be worth including to accelerate your ability to respond through ramp. Flickering/phasing is also my favorite protection as it is flexible in removing threats and protecting your own
I think in summary, what Ward makes superior to hexproof/shroud is, that your enemy CAN decide to do sth, while the other ones just stop him without any interaction. Its never fun to play magic, often called a very interactive game, to just say no (thats why i hate mass counter decks). Even if he begs you and has 1000 mana he will never murder your hexproof tyrant, but with ward he has to think, how many it cost, wether its worth. Its more fun especially if you succeeded. Of course you lose ressources, but thats the game and u decided how to lose them.
I think Spectral Cloak predates Autumn Willow, as Legends came out before Homelands. Still, I would've also figured Autumn Willow to at least get a mention in this video. Also, Autumn Willow's activated ability isn't exactly hexproof, but is similar to it. This might matter if the opponent has something like Shadowspear to turn off hexproof on all your creatures, but it doesn't affect shroud.
@@audeliciousness Yep! It says "Enchant Creature" on its type line, but that's because it's an older card, well before "Aura" was keyworeded. The official oracle text classifies it as an aura now. (Same goes for how that card provides shroud, even though that wasn't a keyword back then either.)
I think they all have their place and will return in some way or shape , but also see protection evolving and adapting like how new capenna did shield counters.
Indestructible is becoming redundant due to there being more removal in the form of Exile coming out. If exile becomes the main form of answering threats, there is a probable issue in the future that needs answering. Yu-Gi-Oh solved this issue by focusing cards and strategies that involved cards being removed from the game (Banished for Yu-Gi-Oh). Magic really doesn't have much to interact with exiled cards, excluding ones exiled from their own effect, then be allowed to play those cards. There's also Impulse Draw, but beyond those, once Exiled, the card is pretty much lost.
I really like Ward as a mechanic. That being said, we should have just stuck with Shroud over Hexproof. Shroud is such a cool mechanic and way more balanced than Hexproof.
I'm skeptical at the claim that people didn't know how shroud worked. I can understand forgetting for a moment a creature has it, but were people really just playing it like they could target their own stuff?
i dislike Ward only because of how it counters whatever spell the opponent wanted to cast should they not pay the ward cost, which often they'll cast a one mana spell with their last mana and upon being reminded the creature they're targeting has Ward they want to do the "take back" as if they didn't cast the spell because naturally if they had known the creature had ward they wouldn't had cast the spell. i've seen this a few times but with the creature having Hexproof but in this instance they can legally return the spell to their hand as the target was illegal. It's sad that Shroud was "confused" on how it worked because realistically it's very balanced. Unlike protection, it just prevents being targeted. And there are cards that remove opponents Hexproof and Shroud including on one or two lands. What's funny is there is still a way to put aura's on a creature with Shroud.
The ancient brontodon example is kinda how I got disinterested in mtg. I like playing ramp and in mtg it feels so bad with basically almost every colors other than green have very cheap removals
See, the way that the game was originally designed, it was SUPPOSED to feel DIFFERENT between the colors. Green was supposed to play hard and fast, and grow, uncontrollably, like nature. It wasn't supposed to be focused on killing creatures because that isn't what nature does. But nature DOES take over if left unchecked. That's why Green has great Artifact and Enchantment removal. I still enjoy this game a lot, but it's barely recognizable to the game that I learned 26 years ago.
I don't know what formats you try to play but especially if you're ramping, you have an enormous selection of absolutely impossible-to-deal-with and value creatures, from the current Atraxa or Titan of Industry to oldies like Simic Sky Swallower. Or you can use big spells that produce many creatures instead of single creatures. Ramp is one of the few archetypes that actually says "I don't care if you have targeted removal"
@@Xoulrath_ Again, I don't know what formats we're playing but if the spot removal is going to your Noble Hierarch and you didn't 100% bet on it, that's pretty great. But if you're playing Standard where there aren't any good mana dorks, or just casually, you don't need them really. Or you can go old Theros Standard and play 4 Sylvan Caryatid. I really don't understand how removal of all things is the problem when playing ramp.
@@fernandobanda5734 ramp is typically used in Modern for Humans, or at least it was. Elves used ramp. Titan used ramp, though not creature based so that doesn't count. The issue with those dorks is that they are board wiped by a single Fury. Caryatid is too slow to play in Modern, though it is probably certainly useful in Pioneer given the right incentive to ramp into. Standard hasn't ever really done much ramping with mana dorks because they made them suck, Sylvan Caryatid excluded. Even the Gilded Goose ended up being too slow to play in Standard once it's comob piece of Oko was banned. Anyway I've gott run for a family dinner. Later.
I have been thinking of a protection ability that would be cool to implement, Sancified:This card can not be sacrificed or exiled. It can do a lot of fun things more than just protect creatures, such as block flicker effects and stop sac outlets if you gave the effect to an opponents card
Tempo is how far ahead you are in the game compared to your opponent, as if the mana your spent and the damage you deal were a single axis. Of course "far ahead" means different things sometimes, but I think this definition fits pretty much every discussion about tempo.
You are wrong on why they got ride of registration. They got rid of it due to play testing with newer players stating it was too confusing. During that time mtg was trying to make the game simpler to get more people playing. I wanted to say this was between 2012 and 2015 era of magic. This done on Duels of the Planeswalkers game.
Gonna hard disagree. Hitting your opponent with a huge hexproof creature feels fucking amazing. Somehow finding a way to cheat or sneak out a carnage tyrant or a nullhide ferox is one of the best feelings in the game when you smack them down for lethal before turn 5
Hexproof is perfectly balanced and the counterplay is obvious: play creatures of your own. It's only broken against decks that are trying to do an end-run around the entire idea of creature combat, and there SHOULD be some downsides to such an unbalanced strategy.
Uh, 4/5 Tramlle for 4 when Siege Rhino came out was absolutely worth it. It was already a pushed creature design. Adding the Life Drain for 3 as the ETB was just the icing that ensured that Rhino would be played competitively. I'm not sure what universe or timeline that you live in where they were making 3 mana 5/5 Trample Lifelink Flying Siege Rhinos that made the actual Siege Rhino look like shit.
Video got it flipped Shroud >> hexproof>>>>>>> ward Ward was solely created to nerf these kind of abilities by giving your opponent an easy way around. If hexproof/shroud is fun neither is counter spells, extra turns, or infinite combos
Also, Regenerate needs to be brought back. It is so flavorful - both in terms of a creature's ability to regen itself (trolls, skeletons, zombies), and creatures being able to regen others (necromancers, clerics, shamans, etc). If I remember, taking damage off the stack massively screwed with Regenerate, forcing them to errata how it works, thus essentially killing the ability. Not the only thing taking damage off the stack did - RIP Mogg Fanatic. Anyway, MtG needs some ability to pay mana or some other resource (sac a creature, discard, sac a land, pay life, skip a phase, etc.) and have a creature that was dealt lethal damage (combat or direct) OR was hit with a "destroy" effect - either targeted or board-wide, and have that creature either 1)not ever leave the battlefield or 2)come back stripped of all auras, equipment, counters, etc.
Indestructible (until end of turn) does the vast majority of what Regenerate does, though the flavor is slightly different. There's still the option of going the Nor Dead After All (or shield counter) route and just writing what Regenerate does. The cleric/zombie route is to just give the creature hexproof and/or indestructible until end of turn.
Aaaaaaahhh the ol' "Baneslayers and Mulldrifters" point. The problem the game has come to at this point is "Atraxa's" or "Creatures that are both Baneslayers AND Mulldrifters." There's so many Atraxa's that spot removal is nearly pointless. And they're only making better and better Atraxas with better and better enablers.
Ward is such an obnoxious unfun mechanic it's made me look back on Shroud as properly fixed Hexproof that ironically was before hexproof. The symmetry makes Shroud very fair and reasonable.
Given all the issues creatures with some sort of protection apparently cause, I take it that Magic doesn't have the equivalent of Yugioh's Kaijus. If I'm interpreting that Akroma and Animate Dead scenario right, if a Magic card says it can't be targeted by a certain thing it can not be targeted even if it's not on the field?
it can be targeted in the graveyard but the way protection works is that it includes a clause that it can't be continuously enchanted by anything of that quality meaning that as soon as Akroma is brought back, the Animate Dead enchantment falls off because of the protection from Black and you have to sac Akroma because of the Animate Dead's effect it has when it leaves the battlefield
I honestly think ward (and hexproof) was a mistake. I understand that players didn't understand shroud, but such a powerful protection needs to have drawbacks, so they should have just stuck with it. Ward is a problem because ward costs can stack, and it still has no drawbacks.
I find it funny that Shroud, Hexproof, and Ward are essentially the "unaffected" effects of Yu-Gi-Oh! done much better. At least I know what abilities can or can't work on the creature. Also, Hexproof is essentially MtG's equivalent to hand traps. So obnoxiously unstoppable.
I like how some videos are called FAILED MTG MECHANICS ... while instead the mechanic has seen evolutions to more fun and successful iterations the vast majority of the times... Unlilke Other games in which failures ARE FAILUREs
Shroud should have remained the way it was from the start, players not understanding rules interactions was not an excuse for making hexproof. People would learn eventually anyway and the internet exists now to stop this kind of problem in its tracks if a player doesn't know better. Kill Hexproof, bring back shroud. Ignorance of the game should not be an acceptable methodology in an era of smart phones, its not even accretion just stupidity.
I like how ward increases the value of removal that can't be countered
I think a lot of people dont know this interaction
It depends, if counterable removal is 2 mana cheaper and ward is 2 then it literally makes no difference.
@@Igor369 void rend
@@tehKivitrue it's certainly a more obscure ruling
@@Igor369 only if you disregard the other more obvious benefit of a spell that can't be countered
I remember back before hex proof got its name, it was called Troll shroud by fans as the more powerful form of shoud was often seen on troll creatures.
Indestructible doesn't actually make the creature immune to combat damage. Combat damage just doesn't destroy it. Only reason it matters is a creature with infect or wither can still destroy a Indestructible creature using combat damage through the application of -1 -1 counters.
I think the existence of Hexproof and Ward is really just indicitave of Magic's Removal problem. Removal is good game design, but ceiling-less removal is not. The ability to remove a creature for significantly less resources forces players to run creatures with less investment or that generate value immediately, as well as forcing auras to be way more powerful to account for getting 2-for-1ed. The only real way to answer them is with something like hexproof or ward, but that worsens cards that interact fairly with a ceiling, like shock, too, making stuff like Bogles as uninteractive as ceilingless "point and click" removal. There really isn't a good way to concisely solve this other than stop printing ceilingless removal in standard products so we can draft and have standard season that have fair mana removal, or at least real restrictions like deathtouchers needing to be attacked into, edicts allowing for choice, or more temporary removal like tapping and flickering, as well as also limiting freecasting so you wouldnt need to kill an 8 mana 8/8 on turn 3 or 4 anyways.
They are doing this already. There are only four removal spells with no restrictions on WOE and all cost at least 4 mana. This makes it have a downside to run because you are investing more resources into it than many creatures you might want to remove.
The big issue is the 1 and 2 mana removal spells as they can almost always trade even or up in resources. Swords to plowshares is an insane legacy/vintage/commander only card because it is 1 mana with laughable downside.
Al the creature removal currently in standard is quite restricted for 1 mana, and the 2 mana ones have meaningful downsides. I think 3 mana is a pretty good place to be for generic “destroy target creature” where you are investing quite a bit.
In a way, this is "addressed" by rotation in a minor and larger scale. Standard rotation needs no explanation, but on a different scale, Legacy and Modern have better removal than Pioneer, and eventually whatever comes after Pioneer will also allow for soft resetting removal, and power level overall. While og Eldraine was a serious bump up in power, removal lately has been more tame, and this is a balance they should try to keep not nullifying power creep, but making it lower curved through the years. I hope 3 year rotation doesn't make this more difficult than what it already is
You forgeting the fact that cheating out creatures in play exist. Until there's no way to cheat out creatures and until all colors are somewhat equal in terms of mana production, we need a cheap way to remove huge bombs that hit the board WAY earlier than intended.
While I agree in general, they *are* making the effort to shift removal even just slightly. Yes, you can have your two mana Go for the Throat, but in an environment where the dangerous thing you want to remove is very possibly an artifact.
The other thing is that there *can* be a middle of the road protection. For example, creatures that deal damage when targeted let your opponent deal with them with their cheap removal, but it costs them something else. Creatures that raise the cost of removal like Thalia make the cost-benefit more fair even if only when they are there. Ward accomplishes both of those things perfectly imo.
Perfectly put!
Another thing worth noting about Sauron is not just the interesting way they handle his ward, but also how this factors into the set he came out in. Within the context of the LoTR sets, Sauron's protection, while costly to the opponent, was one that was readily available thanks to the Ringbearer mechanic, which could grant you on-the-spot legendary creatures. This was a one-two punch of both making a bomb that interacted with it's limited environment well and a flavour-win, as the one thing to foil Sauron's world dominion ended up being the most unlikely of people. To cap it all off, outside of this limited environment, his ward ends up being very powerful, but not insurmountable.
You did miss one kind of protection that kinda also replaced regenerate, which is the shield counters from Streets of New Capenna.
It's not a replacement if they never showed up again since SNC
@@cutecommie Well regen is a fairly rare mechanic these days anyways, but it's been little more then a year since SNC came out so it's still likely to be reprinted.
thank you general obvious
An ability I've been kicking around for my house set that falls into this line and seems to play well is called hardy. Creatures with hardy don't remember their damage. The reminder text for it is "Prevent all damage less than this creature's toughness from any single source."
Sounds like how Ogre Enforcer works.
"Ogre Enforcer can’t be destroyed by lethal damage unless lethal damage dealt by a single source is marked on it."
Another cool name: "Yu-Gi-Oh!'s defense"
I think we need more shroud, because it does make sense. Imagine Argothian Enchantress without shroud, or at least with " [* any *] spells targeting ~this cost X more to cast", which is why neither other enchantress has hexproof, and if I'm not wrong - no ward either.
I want to see Ward used to represent weaknesses, like a fire elemental with Ward {2/U}.
I think that's a great idea. Unfortunately it would require "This ability doesn't affect this card's color identity" for Commander players
@@williamdrum9899it could be named ward, since written colours and reminder text don't count towards colour identity. Ex. Blue Ward/Island ward 3 (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays 3. At least U must be paid). Obviously that's not perfect or practical wording, but you get the idea.
I will always maintain that Shroud was far better balance than hexproof or ward.
Shroud made a creature harder to remove, but it also made it much harder for you to make the creature even stronger.
Back when Uril the Miststalker came out, it was a terror in EDH because removal back then was a lot more scarce and almost always targetted. Shroud was the typical use, but Uril had hexproof before it was keyworded, and was regarded as _very_ strong because of the fact that the player could still target their own Uril with auras and pump spells while opponents practically couldn't remove it.
I think Shroud was fine because it meant you couldn't buff your creature or trying to protect or whatever else. Hexproof could be fine, but it needed to be a bit more rare and expensive, not sometimes cheaper than similar cards that had shroud. They just over used it.
The critical factor is that balance isn't the most important thing. The biggest thing is always how enjoyable the game is to play.
If Shroud is frustrating to players, it is bad regardless of its balance.
I didn't play back then, but I can easily see why casual players would be annoyed not being able to buff their creatures and the game just being annoying for everyone if people keep forgetting the rules (both the person being told they can't do their plan and the person having to explain why they can't).
You are correct. Shroud is great.
Shroud was actually amazingly designed from a gameplay and balsnce perspective, it was canned purely because players *would not* stop playing it as if it were hexproof, because intuitively they felt that's what it should have been. This occured in playtesting, casual, competitive, and internally among designers.
You can't say it was "amazingly designed" and if
1. People played it wrongly
2. Once explained, people decided not to play it.
I've played with shroud and no one in their right mind would want to play it.
When you can't interact with your own creature, the design is flawed.
If old creatures with Shroud had Hexproof and modern day overstated Hexproof bs had Shroud, I think both mechanics would be inherently healthier. Also no, people were just cheating. No one with a working brain would read "can't be a target of spells and abilities" as "can't be a target of spells and abilities your opponent controls", unless they wanted to cheat.
@InquisitorSinCross no people weren't simply "just cheating". The problem wouldn't have happened literally all the time in the internal playtesting team if it was just a matter of sweats cheating.
@@InquisitorSinCrossyou're out here assuming people actually read the cards they play with. All. The. Time. People are constantly missing keywords, glossing over blocks of text, and just failing to understand how cards work.
Right? You know that man has seriously failed to read cards in his life if he can’t understand what’s being said here lmao.
I am building a pauper cube right now, focusing on high levels of interaction and play-counter play dynamics. Forcing players to play well and consider every move because the entire cube is highly interactive.
All that is to say that unfun keywords that say "you do not get to interact" were out. Shroud, hexproof, protection, indestructible an "cannot be countered" are all auto skips when scanning Scryfall. I appreciate the Ward mechanic, as it slots in with what I think Magic should be - careful considerations of board/game states and resource management.
I see fruitful design space for Ward in the future. Black needs a "sacrifice a creature" or at least "non-land permanent". Small red aggro creatures need "sac a land" ward to really help them keep up the tempo. Skip your draw step, skip your untap step, skip your next combat, discard a specific TYPE of card. I could even see ward being pushed to include things that help build the player's board. Ward - Creature's controller puts two 2/2 creature tokens of [insert type] onto the battlefield. Obviously these ideas need more nuance and balance than a YT comment has space for, but these are just ideas to get the ball rolling. It would be nice to see mana based Ward being a baseline which every color uses, and then each color getting at least one, hopefully two, other ward payment methods unique to their slice of the pie.
Shroud always was a sub-par mechanic. It rendered "pump" combat tricks, creature enchantments (what you kids call "auras"), equipment and fight effect based removal ineffectual. I would argue that Shroud made creatures worse - not individually but in a deck, and dramatically dampened the deck building space, particularly in limited settings like draft, sealed and cube.
Wizards did went overboard with Hexproof, honestly Shroud is quite a fair protection, slap it into a medium thing and your opponent can't answer it but it isn't too much of a big threat, and you can't buff it either to make it threat, it stays a medium threat
Though I do advocate for Ward, because as fair as Shroud "feels" its still limiting the interactability of the object, and less interactability is always less fun
Hexproof is important to keep decks humble. Otherwise you get people who want to just spam universal answers, and can't ever be bothers to commit to the board. Then you just get games of whoever got the better fistful of answers, as it's never worthwhile to commit to the boar dever.
@@superbaas8822 Shroud already addressed that, Hexproof just was an abusive way of protecting your stuff
Shroud granted a lot of protection with the drawback that you cannot target it either, while Hexproof has no drawbacks while providing a very strong protection
still, both of those abilities reduce interaction, which is bad
Ward is doing a good job at protecting boards without going overboard by making stuff unable to be interacted with at all
@@DragoSmash Which was all addressed in the video, that hexproof should only be showing up on more expensive creatures.
Most people who don't like hexproof use the Carnage Tyrant debate, as they just want to play solitaire magic.
@@superbaas8822 it means that Hexproof shouldn't have existed in the first place or used SUPER sparingly, it has no place where it can't be abused
Slap it into a small creature, now its a Voltron target!
Slap it into a big one, just swing with your 7/7 Trample!
and you can easily protect them with stuff like Undying Evil or Persist if you are about to get board wiped!
anywhere where its slapped, it becomes problematic
@@DragoSmash You really do want to just abandon all the data done to write your own narrative. The mechanic was created to answer "Fistful of Answers dot dek." Clutch your counterspells, your spot removals, maybe a sweeper or two (which style answers hexproof remember), good to go right?
Hexproof is designed to make it that you actually have to interact with the opponent yourself. You can't just play a bunch of universal "Oh, he cast a creature? I'm too lazy to read the box." This was a way to keep from every creature in the game needing haste or an ETB.
The point of the mechanic is that you need to not end up so far behind because you want to play so passively that a single unresolved creature answers you.
The best part about ward is the puns they can make.
Forward - give an attacking creature ward four
Warden - vigilance creature that gives your jail cell enchantments like oubliette ward
Sward - a sword equipment that gives ward
Small nitpick: You don't ever explain what ward does, and the first card you show with ward doesn't explain it either. The second has A LOT of text, and doesn't have ward itself. I didn't know what ward did. It can be derived from context, but you may want to change the first cards shown regarding ward?
Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays [cost].
here's the reminder text, if you need it
regenerate could be brought back as users intended it to be, proking "leave the battlefiled/enter the graveyard/enter the battlefield" abilities
I nearly had a punch up with a friend playing a slippery bogle deck the first time i used an edict on him. "no its hexproof.".. "yes mate im targeting YOU to sac a creature."
Ward is pretty freakin smart. took em forever to come up with that lol
[Tolarian Terror] can pretty comfortably be played for 4 or 5 mana...
Yeah, who's gonna tell him
Otherwise, cool video
Most early shroud creatures were green (Autumn Willow, Deadly Insect, Joralel Centaur), and that was because green was supposed to be the "best creature color," but creatures back then were TERRIBLE... and any big creature that green played would get exiled or destroyed cheaply. Shroud was supposed to negate that problem, but the creatures that had shroud weren't any good. As someone who loved to play green in the 90s, I was sadly very aware of this fact!
Come on now, that's a bit hyperbolic. Green had SOME solid creatures back in the day. Ernham Djinn for one. A 4/5 body for 3G back then was crazy good. And we really can't overlook the fact that Green also had mana dorks live Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise. You could put down enough threats fast enough to simply outrun the best removal.
@@Xoulrath_
But did not have the card draw to fuel the ramp. Green did not have card draw. Now, it has almost everything.
@@ODDnanref what does what you jaut said have to do with your original comment that I responded to?
@@Xoulrath_
Meaning you could not, in fact, pump out enough threats to outrun the best removal. You either got your creature ramp bolted, your spell ramp countered, or your payoff creatures removed.
@@ODDnanref you said, "but creatures back then were TERRIBLE..." and I responded with no, they weren't all that bad. Then you proceeded to have an entirely different conversation about play patterns.
Interesting kink to Sauron both gameplay and flavour wise is that it will mainly be played as a commander, and so the opponent will almost always have a way to remove it
Is "... aaand that's the list" just the official outro now? Cuz this wasn't a list lol
Jokes aside, great video!
Top 10 Best/Worst Ravnica Guilds signature keyword abilities
RIP shield counters, not even popular enough to earn a mention. Personally I think they were a cool design idea but a bit flawed.
The issue I have with Ward is anything with Ward 2 or higher is basically just Hexproof. Yes, I can pay the 2, but most of the time I won't be able to do anything else until I get my mana back. Unless they're tapping out to play a Ward creature, they're still going to be ahead because they'll just counter your removal or just cast something else that now cannot be answered before it swings the game.
Yeah. Creative Ward costs like life or discarding cards are more fun. More interesting + not killing your Mana.
... That's the entire point of ward. It protects the creature but not forever. Sort of like a hexproof for one or two turns that can be played around.
Thinking about Shroud and Hexproof just reminds me of my Mirrodin prerelease games. Plated Slagwurm was an 8/8 for 7 with the hexproof ability (before it became a keyword), and I had pulled both that and Slagwurm Armor. I remember winning a few games by putting the armor on the wurm and just swinging with an 8/14 beast; it would usually get chump blocked by something, but I could keep the rest of my creatures back for defense and my opponent would run out of blockers eventually.
I like regenerate. I think it fits really well for creatures known for regeneration, like trolls or liches. It felt very flavorful.
The funny thing about a keyword like Regenerate is that Wizards can't erase it from the cards it's already been printed on, so regardless of whether it's retired or not, it's something they have to keep in mind forever when designing new cards and effects. Unless they come up with some way of not needing to reference it, spells like boardwipes will always need to say the creatures can't be regenerated just in case someone still uses a card with it.
I think they got it right with shroud the first time, gives the effect they are looking for and prevents boggles. Its the perfect keyword, ward should not even be compared to what shroud or hexproof does because all it really is, is another stax piece.
Regenerate has actually had a more straight replacement in New Capenna in the form of shield counters.
There are also some interesting aspects in the way ward works, the first being that it isn't a static ability, unlike the others, but a triggered ability. Which means both it can be itself countered, but also that there are possible shenanigans in more casual formats where you can double it.
It also can be ignored if you have spells that can't be countered (which are rightfully rare), since it doesn't increase the cost of the spell itself.
I love having hexproof on my creatures. For some reason people always want to kill mu Jetmir on commander nights
13:25 also, ward gets even more balanced a bit because it doesn't says a strict "your opponent can't...", but it rather counters the ability or spell: some spells can't be countered, therefore they circumvent the ward completely
I also think that "protection" needs a deep dive video: Progenitus was a bomb and Voice of All is just barely good in my Angel tribal deck (Pristine Angel needs vigilance, otherwise she's almost useless
The only problem with Ward is that WotC sometimes prints stuff with super high Ward costs to the point it might as well be Hexproof. I had a heck of a time at the Dungeons and Dragons set prerelease with an opponent who had the Storm Giant Man land; being a land on my turn, I couldn't hit it with sorcery speed removal to begin with, and then when it was a creature, it had Ward SEVEN, which was just ridiculous, lol.
Hall of Storm Giants has ward 3, not ward 7.
The idea is that if your opponent shouldn't be able to remove, say, your 7 Mana creature for 2 Mana if this means your creature can't do anything. So if you give it Ward 5 then that's a "fair" trade.
@@byeguyssryexcept this idea won't work. Trying to advocate for removal costing the same as the creature it removes, when we have Green in the game (you know, THE color of Ramp who will have more mana avaliable than it's opponent, unless they also play Green degeneracy) is extremly onesided. If you want "fair" trades, Green has to lose all of it's ramp effects and also we need to get rid of treasures.
People who are against current removal/counterspells usually forget that decks that run lots of removal usually (!) have far less avaliable mana than decks whos gameplan is to vomit big creatures every turn
@@InquisitorSinCross I think putting a higher ward cost on hall specifically would be pretty painful because you're already forced to interact with it at instant speed, so a higher ward cost means more mana you have to hold up.
The person playing Hall is paying SIX mana to turn that land into a 7/7 with Ward 3, for a SINGLE TURN. It's in Blue, which effectively makes it a closer for a control deck. It SHOULD cost a bit to do something to it. The reality is that once the control player can afford to spend that mana to use the land as a creature, they've probably already won, unless they're a bad control player.
Soooo nice to see the devs evolve and adjust the mechanics accordingly over time.... instead of doubling down on what makes the creatures/monsters All the same, un-interesting and uninteractive
Like all costing 0 mana to be cast AND on instant speed, or having both ONLY upsides AND a body larger than the mana cost (like Sheoldred the Apocalypse: a 4/5 with deathtouch (and the draw triggers) for just 4 mana
Hexproof makes sweepers better which is generally expensive, which moves control.into a weird space where White/Blue is the best control colors but green may be worth including to accelerate your ability to respond through ramp.
Flickering/phasing is also my favorite protection as it is flexible in removing threats and protecting your own
I think in summary, what Ward makes superior to hexproof/shroud is, that your enemy CAN decide to do sth, while the other ones just stop him without any interaction. Its never fun to play magic, often called a very interactive game, to just say no (thats why i hate mass counter decks). Even if he begs you and has 1000 mana he will never murder your hexproof tyrant, but with ward he has to think, how many it cost, wether its worth. Its more fun especially if you succeeded. Of course you lose ressources, but thats the game and u decided how to lose them.
Was Autumn Willow mentioned? Isn't she the first creature to have shroud and has the ability to have hexproof?
I think Spectral Cloak predates Autumn Willow, as Legends came out before Homelands. Still, I would've also figured Autumn Willow to at least get a mention in this video.
Also, Autumn Willow's activated ability isn't exactly hexproof, but is similar to it. This might matter if the opponent has something like Shadowspear to turn off hexproof on all your creatures, but it doesn't affect shroud.
Spectral Cloak is an aura?
@@audeliciousness
Yep! It says "Enchant Creature" on its type line, but that's because it's an older card, well before "Aura" was keyworeded. The official oracle text classifies it as an aura now. (Same goes for how that card provides shroud, even though that wasn't a keyword back then either.)
More recently we also got shield counters that are another way of protecting stuff without being absolute and always available
I like Shroud best, because it is a mechanic that teaches you how the game works. Being symmetrical is inherently more fair feeling.
I think they all have their place and will return in some way or shape , but also see protection evolving and adapting like how new capenna did shield counters.
Now where's my ward against counter spell.
Indestructible is becoming redundant due to there being more removal in the form of Exile coming out. If exile becomes the main form of answering threats, there is a probable issue in the future that needs answering. Yu-Gi-Oh solved this issue by focusing cards and strategies that involved cards being removed from the game (Banished for Yu-Gi-Oh). Magic really doesn't have much to interact with exiled cards, excluding ones exiled from their own effect, then be allowed to play those cards. There's also Impulse Draw, but beyond those, once Exiled, the card is pretty much lost.
And shadow spear to kill them all! Well, except the shroud creature.
I’d argue that Persist n Undying should’ve been mentioned here as they r kinda wut Regenerate was trying to do
I really like Ward as a mechanic. That being said, we should have just stuck with Shroud over Hexproof. Shroud is such a cool mechanic and way more balanced than Hexproof.
I'd still like to see shroud on small creatures on special occasions.
I'm skeptical at the claim that people didn't know how shroud worked. I can understand forgetting for a moment a creature has it, but were people really just playing it like they could target their own stuff?
That's what we've been told
Unpopular opinion, but I like shroud. As opposed to hexproof, there's actually a downside involved, which makes it more interesting.
This is actually a very popular opinion among enfranchised players who played shroud back in the day and/or who hate hexproof.
Shroud is not a failed magic design though.
Great video! As usual
i dislike Ward only because of how it counters whatever spell the opponent wanted to cast should they not pay the ward cost, which often they'll cast a one mana spell with their last mana and upon being reminded the creature they're targeting has Ward they want to do the "take back" as if they didn't cast the spell because naturally if they had known the creature had ward they wouldn't had cast the spell. i've seen this a few times but with the creature having Hexproof but in this instance they can legally return the spell to their hand as the target was illegal. It's sad that Shroud was "confused" on how it worked because realistically it's very balanced. Unlike protection, it just prevents being targeted. And there are cards that remove opponents Hexproof and Shroud including on one or two lands. What's funny is there is still a way to put aura's on a creature with Shroud.
"Is there anything you think we missed?"
Yeah. Spellcheck. Again.
Yeah. These abilities fill a specific "roll"
Arkoma...
The ancient brontodon example is kinda how I got disinterested in mtg. I like playing ramp and in mtg it feels so bad with basically almost every colors other than green have very cheap removals
See, the way that the game was originally designed, it was SUPPOSED to feel DIFFERENT between the colors. Green was supposed to play hard and fast, and grow, uncontrollably, like nature. It wasn't supposed to be focused on killing creatures because that isn't what nature does. But nature DOES take over if left unchecked. That's why Green has great Artifact and Enchantment removal. I still enjoy this game a lot, but it's barely recognizable to the game that I learned 26 years ago.
I don't know what formats you try to play but especially if you're ramping, you have an enormous selection of absolutely impossible-to-deal-with and value creatures, from the current Atraxa or Titan of Industry to oldies like Simic Sky Swallower. Or you can use big spells that produce many creatures instead of single creatures. Ramp is one of the few archetypes that actually says "I don't care if you have targeted removal"
@@fernandobanda5734 says someone who's never actually played ramp using CREATURES to ramp.
@@Xoulrath_ Again, I don't know what formats we're playing but if the spot removal is going to your Noble Hierarch and you didn't 100% bet on it, that's pretty great. But if you're playing Standard where there aren't any good mana dorks, or just casually, you don't need them really. Or you can go old Theros Standard and play 4 Sylvan Caryatid. I really don't understand how removal of all things is the problem when playing ramp.
@@fernandobanda5734 ramp is typically used in Modern for Humans, or at least it was. Elves used ramp. Titan used ramp, though not creature based so that doesn't count. The issue with those dorks is that they are board wiped by a single Fury. Caryatid is too slow to play in Modern, though it is probably certainly useful in Pioneer given the right incentive to ramp into.
Standard hasn't ever really done much ramping with mana dorks because they made them suck, Sylvan Caryatid excluded. Even the Gilded Goose ended up being too slow to play in Standard once it's comob piece of Oko was banned. Anyway I've gott run for a family dinner. Later.
I have been thinking of a protection ability that would be cool to implement, Sancified:This card can not be sacrificed or exiled. It can do a lot of fun things more than just protect creatures, such as block flicker effects and stop sac outlets if you gave the effect to an opponents card
4:08 lets be real, no one REALLY knows what tempo means, we all just kinda have an idea of what it is and use it whenever it fits.
Tempo is how far ahead you are in the game compared to your opponent, as if the mana your spent and the damage you deal were a single axis.
Of course "far ahead" means different things sometimes, but I think this definition fits pretty much every discussion about tempo.
You are wrong on why they got ride of registration. They got rid of it due to play testing with newer players stating it was too confusing. During that time mtg was trying to make the game simpler to get more people playing. I wanted to say this was between 2012 and 2015 era of magic. This done on Duels of the Planeswalkers game.
I'm surprised shield counters didn't get a mention
Gonna hard disagree. Hitting your opponent with a huge hexproof creature feels fucking amazing. Somehow finding a way to cheat or sneak out a carnage tyrant or a nullhide ferox is one of the best feelings in the game when you smack them down for lethal before turn 5
I don"t mind Hexproof and Shroud, because they where limited..... ward just seems to be on absolutely everything
Love Shroud in my Shrines deck.
Hey! I put that Carnage Tyrant in my Menfolk deck BECAUSE it was not fun. Play weenie against Blue enough times, you start thinking up solutions.
Surprised there was no mention of Autumn Willow.
Shroud is so much more balanced than Hexproof.
Hexproof is a disaster of a Mechanic.
Shroud was unjustly killed.
Hexproof is perfectly balanced and the counterplay is obvious: play creatures of your own. It's only broken against decks that are trying to do an end-run around the entire idea of creature combat, and there SHOULD be some downsides to such an unbalanced strategy.
@@Orinn000 You obviously haven't played that long. Because Hexproof is not balanced AT ALL.
Feel like the Apocalypse flag bearer creatures were also an early experiment with this concept.
I feel like echo was a similar attempt at solving the problems with unlimited counterspell effects.
Uh, 4/5 Tramlle for 4 when Siege Rhino came out was absolutely worth it. It was already a pushed creature design. Adding the Life Drain for 3 as the ETB was just the icing that ensured that Rhino would be played competitively. I'm not sure what universe or timeline that you live in where they were making 3 mana 5/5 Trample Lifelink Flying Siege Rhinos that made the actual Siege Rhino look like shit.
Video got it flipped
Shroud >> hexproof>>>>>>> ward
Ward was solely created to nerf these kind of abilities by giving your opponent an easy way around. If hexproof/shroud is fun neither is counter spells, extra turns, or infinite combos
Also, Regenerate needs to be brought back. It is so flavorful - both in terms of a creature's ability to regen itself (trolls, skeletons, zombies), and creatures being able to regen others (necromancers, clerics, shamans, etc). If I remember, taking damage off the stack massively screwed with Regenerate, forcing them to errata how it works, thus essentially killing the ability. Not the only thing taking damage off the stack did - RIP Mogg Fanatic.
Anyway, MtG needs some ability to pay mana or some other resource (sac a creature, discard, sac a land, pay life, skip a phase, etc.) and have a creature that was dealt lethal damage (combat or direct) OR was hit with a "destroy" effect - either targeted or board-wide, and have that creature either 1)not ever leave the battlefield or 2)come back stripped of all auras, equipment, counters, etc.
Indestructible (until end of turn) does the vast majority of what Regenerate does, though the flavor is slightly different. There's still the option of going the Nor Dead After All (or shield counter) route and just writing what Regenerate does.
The cleric/zombie route is to just give the creature hexproof and/or indestructible until end of turn.
I quite miss Regeneration, then again I play Elder Dragon Highlander.
I dont think my permanents will last a turn with the amount of board wipes my group runs
Aaaaaaahhh the ol' "Baneslayers and Mulldrifters" point. The problem the game has come to at this point is "Atraxa's" or "Creatures that are both Baneslayers AND Mulldrifters." There's so many Atraxa's that spot removal is nearly pointless. And they're only making better and better Atraxas with better and better enablers.
AMAZING!!!!!
I was today years old when I actually cared to find out what shroud means and how it differs from hexproof.
Ward is such an obnoxious unfun mechanic it's made me look back on Shroud as properly fixed Hexproof that ironically was before hexproof. The symmetry makes Shroud very fair and reasonable.
Solid video but the animated flashing backgrounds are doing me in
Ive always thought that Shroud was way more interesting and balanced than Hexproof. Hexproof should be more rare and Shroud should be the norm.
*Ward was introduced in Kaldheim, not Strixhaven.
Given all the issues creatures with some sort of protection apparently cause, I take it that Magic doesn't have the equivalent of Yugioh's Kaijus. If I'm interpreting that Akroma and Animate Dead scenario right, if a Magic card says it can't be targeted by a certain thing it can not be targeted even if it's not on the field?
it can be targeted in the graveyard
but the way protection works is that it includes a clause that it can't be continuously enchanted by anything of that quality
meaning that as soon as Akroma is brought back, the Animate Dead enchantment falls off because of the protection from Black and you have to sac Akroma because of the Animate Dead's effect it has when it leaves the battlefield
I honestly think ward (and hexproof) was a mistake. I understand that players didn't understand shroud, but such a powerful protection needs to have drawbacks, so they should have just stuck with it. Ward is a problem because ward costs can stack, and it still has no drawbacks.
should have sorceries with "saga type" mechanic
9:55 well there’s your problem right there, design a keyword to make big creatures playable and immediately put it on a one mana creature lol
Honestly, shroud is more balanced than hexproof. Ward I think is perfect.
Shroud is far away from being a failed mechanic, all these are good, you just have to be creative to deal with them.
Board wipes, -A/-B, pyroclasm, board bounce, Polymorphist's Jest,
What? There’s literally nothing creative about Shroud. That’s the most giga copium take so far lmfao.
Creatures that got better (or worse) with the grand creature type update
You forgot about shield counters ;)
Let’s go new video out
Hey regenerate is still relevant in modern! Sometimes they play that 0 mana artifact that regenerates another
Shroud had kinda of a drawback so it was kinda fine. Hexproof is bonkers.
I don't understand how the shroud mechanics was played wrong. It's simple and spelled out clearly. I guess people have poor reading comprehension...
I don't think Shroud is "failed". It just has a downside, unlike hexproof that has no downside.
I still prefer shroud over hexproof mainly for balancing and interaction
There is no way hexproof came from people being dumb, its from Troll Ascetic
Technically Autumn Willow came first, who had kind of sort of hexproof.
Shroud is good, Hexproof was a mistake.
Came to see Autumn Willow, now sad :/
no shield counter?
I find it funny that Shroud, Hexproof, and Ward are essentially the "unaffected" effects of Yu-Gi-Oh! done much better.
At least I know what abilities can or can't work on the creature.
Also, Hexproof is essentially MtG's equivalent to hand traps. So obnoxiously unstoppable.
Split Second is spell hexproof
I like how some videos are called FAILED MTG MECHANICS ... while instead the mechanic has seen evolutions to more fun and successful iterations the vast majority of the times...
Unlilke Other games in which failures ARE FAILUREs
Dies to Removal...
Shroud should have remained the way it was from the start, players not understanding rules interactions was not an excuse for making hexproof. People would learn eventually anyway and the internet exists now to stop this kind of problem in its tracks if a player doesn't know better.
Kill Hexproof, bring back shroud. Ignorance of the game should not be an acceptable methodology in an era of smart phones, its not even accretion just stupidity.