It's kinda hilarious how every card basically ended up being "not as good as you though" but Asmo's motivation was "yeah it's as busted as you think but not busted enough for MH2"
The issue with Asmo food is NOT that it was not enough busted for MH2, but that it durdled a lot, creating lots and lots of gamepieces without doing much about them. After creating the 20th food token and got Asmo bolted you ran out of options and could get piled on by a lot of decks.
The point of the list is more for cards that were severely overhyped rather than just bad cards people thought were good. Temporal mastery was expected to be a an unbelievably broken blue staple card, but only really wound up seeing play in very specific decks, those decks being good, but having to be built around temporal mastery rather than the expectation it would just get slotted in every deck, which to me feels correct as overhyped.
@@romansrevengethethirdstrik8086Disagree. The card still proved itself to be an extremely powerful one and created its own archetypes. Just because it wasn’t as splashable as people were expecting doesn’t mean it under preformed when it became a defining card/archetype.
Browbeat taught people more than just that. The original Browbeat read "Unless a player has Browbeat deal 5 damage to him or her, target player draws 3 cards." People kept putting a comma after Browbeat so it would read "Unless a player has Browbeat, deal 5 damage to him or her, target player draws 3 cards." It had people asking their opponents if they had the card Browbeat at FNMs which is they the card's text was changed.
Yes, I remember this occurring during the pre-release tournaments. The poor judges had to explain again and again and again, sometimes to the same player. that it isn't how the card works! I do remember falling for that too.
That's a nifty bit of history, thank you, I love these moments, I used to want to be a judge but then... Yeah, anyway I find all the quirks of a developing game system interesting. Have a wonderful time! Thanks again!
Blazing Salvo, Browbeat, and Book Burning dealt a fk ton of damage along with making my cabal therapy's 100% accurate... 2 decades ago. Yikes the time has really flown!
Another funny thing about confounding conundrum in casual EDH is that it can accidentally make an opponent's lands deck gain infinite land drops with the right board state
High power landfall decks sometimes include conundrum on purpose because of the whole conundrum can feed infinites though the ravinca bounce lands can do the infinite however the additional land drops are still great
my roomate was so excited to show me how he was gonna stop my omnath deck with confounding conundrum and i just smiled and and told him it was gonna sure mess with my deck :)
They really needed to add a "that player can't play lands for the rest of their turn" clause to it. It feels like the card was made to punish landfall and fetch land heavy decks, and it ended up just helping landfall and only slowing down sorcery speed fetch land decks. Complete failure of design.
I've been gaining an interest in Magic since I've learned of Sagas, which look really cool. Because of that, I would like a top ten best and worst sagas in MTG, if that's possible.
The best one is 100% urza's saga. It makes a reasonably large token, and has a few really good cards to search. Lands have a low bar to clear for being playable, and this one passes that by a mile. There's also the phasing of zhafir. Pretty much every deck in edh wants a card that destroys every creature. And this is the ONLY card in blue to do that. I don't know if these next two are played a lot, but they got a lot of people interested. Kiki jiki is a really broken and well loved card. And it's contributed to the game's history. Fable of the Mirror Breaker is a fixed version of this. They put the same character on the final saga chapter so it's fair. Finally hidetsugu consumes all just has a unique effect, that atleast seems better than most other sagas (or cards in general).
I don't know which sagas are the best and worst, but my favorite ones are The Cruelty of Gix, The Eldest Reborn, Michiko's Reign of Truth, Boseiju Reaches Skyward, and The Restoration of Eiganjo
It might not be the most accurate by now as it is a year old and a lot of sagas were printed since then, but there's this: th-cam.com/video/eOlmQ1huPiY/w-d-xo.html
Here's a list of the top 10. (My personal opinion) 10) The Eldest Reborn -Saw niche standard play, and does things in commander, if a little slow. 9) Kumano faces Kakkezan - Staple in Mono-red in standard right now. Good turn 1 play that falls off quickly. 8) Showdown of the Skalds A 4-mana draw four is good, with the counters being an acceptable bonus. Saw play in multiple RW decks while in standard, and was a draw to the colour pair. 7) Restoration of Eiganjo One of the better saga's on power level, it's seen very niche play in legacy, as well as a significant amount of commander play. 6) The birth of Meletis - A staple in controlling white decks, allowing you to keep hitting land drops, while providing multiple speedbumps against aggro decks. 5) Hidesugu consumes all. A theoretically powerful saga without a good home. Devastating against the right decks in Modern/legacy, but BR midrange decks often want to use their graveyard to fuel Kroxa. 4) Elspeth conquers death Another control staple with commander applications, ECD removes a threat on their side, and requires an answer before it provides more value. 3) History of Benalia. The best Aggro saga ever printed, history fuelled white-based aggro for as long as it was legal in standard, with the second history being even more terrifying than the first. 2) Fable of the Mirror-Breaker Fable sees heavy play in every format (except vintage). The goblin token provides immediate impact, and threatens to ramp you. The looting provides an important consistency boost to balance out the inconsistency of fast mana, then the reflection threatens to take over the game with various ETB creatures (Bloodtithe harvester in standard and Fury in eternal formats) 1) Urza's Saga Because it's a land, Urza's Saga is uncounterable, has a low opportunity cost and is hard to interact with. The constructs threaten to win the game on their own, and fetching out any 0 or 1 cost artifact allows for a versatile toolbox to answer anything. Urza's Saga is one of the strongest cards in Legacy, and even sees play in vintage shops.
Browbeat works in mono red bolts. Put it in a deck where the mana curve tops at three and every card deals around 3 damage for 1 or 2 mana and you're good. Goes especially well with Fireblast.
@@qawamity no browbeat is just bad. It doesn’t do anything until turn 3. Burn wants to win on turn 3/4. On turn 3 it’s bad because 1. Burn might not have third land up 2. If you need the damage 2 bolts is cheaper and does 1 more point, while also proccing prowess twice 3. It can’t kill a creature or be used as a combat trick 4. You always get the option you don’t want (cards when you need damage or damage when you need cards) Drawing cards in this way doesn’t help burn win because yes potential 3 bolts is good but your opponents deck is going to have ways to either win in that span of time or shut you down. They aren’t just sitting there waiting for you to burn them out. What you’ll find is that this card only wins you games you would’ve won anyway.
@@kentmiller808 Prowess? Why the fuck are you using creatures? It does nothing until turn 3? Wow, no shit? So that's how casting costs work. Amazing... See, in a bolt deck, Browbeat ALWAYS does something that advances the deck to victory. It literally does. Not. Matter. What your opponent chooses. As for drawing cards not mattering, dude, why aren't you running any cards like Fireblast? Sac lands, damage to enemy dome. Easy peasy.
Hey, for episodes like this which have a historical perspective, might I recommend you use the relevant printing of the card? Its a nice bit of service for knowledgable players who can read the set symbols and understand the timeframe the card was introduced in! Just a suggestion, love the content dude!
14:00 Aurelia's Fury did end up finding a home in EDH, particularly in Feather, the Redeemed decks. Feather basically returns any instant or sorcery spell you cast that targets at least one of your creatures back to your hand at end of turn. Getting this good effect every turn made it much more useful, especially as you only needed to do 1 point of damage one of your creatures to recur it.
Every card has a place in EDH, though. Sorrows Path sees use in dinosaur enrage tribal, One With Nothing is in some Anje Falkenrath decks, even Wood Elemental sees a little play with Titania, Protector of Argoth decks.
@@calemr Wood Elemental sees play in Titania decks as a joke. I agree with everything else you said, but there is no use case where Wood Elemental is better than 99 other cards you could have slotted in instead of it.
I remember there was this guy I knew who pretty consistently played a Boros deck whenever we did a casual game. He kept trying to find a way to make Aurelia's Fury work, because he liked the artwork a lot, but most any game he played it he ended up losing. Side note, possible idea for a future video: Maybe for Christmas/the holidays, there could be like a 'Toybox Special' and you could take a look at some of the cards Wizards has printed based on preexisting franchises (Transformers, D&D, Street Fighter, etc.), be it just ones that might be interesting or which would be best if they could be used in a meta environment.
That Skaab Ruinator as the first image works perfectly. I got it in Dark Ascention pre release and it was a day one $15 USD, this guy wanted it and i was sure why not and i got from him 2 Wurmcoil Engines which were $10 USD at the time. The following week the Skaap crashed and burned to $4 USD while the Wurmcoil sky rocketed to its stop price of $35 USD. Now days, the Wurm stayed at pretty decent 12 to 20 depending the version and got a 200 Masterpice, while the Skaab sits on a sad 1.
Seems wild now but once upon a time Balduvian Horde was considered a huge deal. People thought it was a Juzam Djinn clone (which was once arguably the best creature in the game). Then everyone realized it kinda sucked.
About doom whisperer, I remember it being everywhere until Ixalan shifted out with the rotation. As soon as Ixalan shifted out, people stopped playing Doom Whisperer. The card on it's own is decent, but I think what hurt it was the explore package going out, and of course the war of the spark teferi meta.
Alchemist's Gambit is great in Mizzix of the Izmagnus Commander. You can cast the cleave cost for just UUR and have lots of ways to copy spells. Along with other Time Magic spells, it is just another way to steal turns and win games.
Nahiri's Wrath saw some gimmick play in Modern. You'd play cards like Boros Reckoner, a creature with an effect to reflect the damage it takes back to the opponent, and would blow them up with Nahiri's Wrath to OTK your opponent. It wasn't good, because it required to play big bricks like Emrakul whose only purpose is being ridiculously expensive, and any interaction would stop you, but it was a thing at some point.
I loved Dreadhorde in standard. I had a mono black dreadhorde deck on arena that got so many wins because they wasted removal on the army and I'd have other things to amass. My only real weakness with the deck was enchantment based removal which was few and far between at the time
Doom Whisperer is one of those cards that would have good value if it was released in a future set and not when it released Doom Whisperer should have been released in Dominaria United since it is the Set where Sheoldred the Apocalypse released since it would allow you pay those 2 life and Sheoldred would get you 2 life back the moment you draw which neutralizes the cost of Doom Whisperer's Effect
I'd argue that an even more problematic aspect of Nexus is that it was an instant, meaning it synergized with Wilderness reclamation extremely well. Add in the fact that Growth Spiral was legal in the same standard format and you had the very real possibility that the opponent could start taking extra turns as early as T4. The fact that it would shuffle back into the deck was also important for cards like Tamiyo, Collector of Tales and some of the blue dig spells like Anticipate, so I will give credit where it is due on that front.
Thank you for the lesson about Browbeat. I was running it in my Modern Boros aggro deck, and this explains why I don't seem to close out the game after playing the card. I've found your videos help me increase my levels of understanding in the game. I've played since 2003, but I always get between 4 and 6 wins at 9 game Events. Hopefully this new knowledge will help me break through the 7 win barrier.
Probably the coolest thing I ever saw done with Alchemist's Gambit was actually indeed using its normal 'you lose the game after this' cost - but then, once that trigger activated, flashing in Ertai Resurrected to negate it. ...but I think I still actually won that game so it probably speaks to that kinda only getting you marginal value.
I remember when I first started playing mtg. War of the Spark was my first set to play on. I ended up building an Amass deck that ended up being really decent in standard until Throne of Eldrane came out. Those were good times
15:52 I'd like to give a quick mention here to Risk Factor, from the Guilds of Ravnica set. It has the same mana cost and concept behind it as Browbeat, but it differs in the following ways: - It deals 4 damage, rather than 5 - It only targets a single opponent, rather than everyone at the table - It's an Instant, rather than a Sorcery, meaning you can cast it at the end of your opponent's turn - It also has the ability Jump-start, which lets you cast it from your graveyard by paying its mana cost and discarding a card, and then exiling it
ohhhh, i was wondering about that. I remember Risk Factor being played pretty widely in red decks at the time, it's probably the combination of the Instant speed and the Jump-start that made it see play. funny how the little differences can add up to a big difference!
About alchemist gambit, I dont really remember people expecting that much out of the card except a groaning at standard having another extra turn option. And personally? Yeah I mostly dreaded the annoyance of seeing it paired with Alrudn epiphany. It didnt look super good by itself, but I was annoyed at yet another extra turn spell and having it come on top of Epiphany was potentially viable. Still a relief that the card didnt see play, the extra turn mostly annoyed me, it wasn't that big of a deal.
When I saw the card for the first time today I thought wow this card is awful. Either it's final fortune for another mana, or it's 7 mana time walk when at 5 mana time walk is just okay. Only reason it could be good is if you could chain many of these together in something like an alrund epiphany deck to make tokens, then utilize the tokens more with consecutive extra turns.
It is sad to think a 6/6 flying and trample demon for five mana is just not good enough. Back in the early days of Magic, Doom Whisperer would of had some insane drawback like double phasing or losing 1/3 of your life when it entered the battlefield.
I’ll say about bitter blossom - they have flying. I’ve played the dread horn invasion in commander. It’s useful but not some blowout. More useful for the whole tribal life link thing.
I think the biggest issue with Dreadhorde was that the token it generated didn't have flying, which is so good on a token generator. Bitterblossom, at it's worst, said "Your opponent's best creature can't attack." At best, it could deal increasing amounts of damage to your opponent without needing to invest any more mana. Speaking of "Almost as good as Bitterblossom" is Skrelv's Hive, as being unable to block with the tokens is a huge issue. Even in draft, it doesn't do anything on a really clogged board, as you often can't attack with the tokens without them just being eaten by blockers.
I can't recall hearing anyone say that Alchemist's Gambit, Nahiri's Wrath, Confounding Conundrum, Dreadhorde Invasion, or Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh were good cards when they were spoiled
I actually won many tournaments at my local during Doom Whispers' standard rotation, it was a fantastic engine for my Dimir Disinformation Campaign control deck. I ran 2 Crucible of Worlds because I was surveiling a lot, and could just pitch every single land into the yard and draw only gas, meanwhile my opponents had to top deck the entire game once I was online. Between spot removal and counterspells, dealing with a single top deck each turn was piss easy while Doom Whisperer guaranteed I drew good stuff and usually gave me a 3 turn clock after opponents used any sort of shock land at all.
How did Phyrexian Obliterator not make the list? It's an extremely powerful card upon release but never saw any place thanks to Dismember and other removal spells being super common. It still to this day has seen very fringe play in every format.
I play doom whisperer in my greven predator captain edg deck because being able to nearly kill yourself at instant speed is really good in that deck. Also top was especially good in miracles for temoral mastery bc miracle cares if it is the first card you have drawn that turn, allowing you if you like to use top to draw temporal mastery on your opponents turn and cast it so it returns to your turn for 2 turns with all your mana
How does browbeat work with multiple players? Does each player in order of priority declare whether or not they want to take the damage? Do they have to secretly decide independently and then reveal their answer? Can they discuss it between themselves to decide who takes the 5 damage? Obviously it's pretty bad regardless but I'm curious
Provided my sleep lacking brain recalls the rules correctly: Spell is cast; priority based responses; target is declared; more priority based responses; then in priority order, players (including the caster of Browbeat) decide whether to take the damage or not. Talking is a free-ish action, so players could discuss before any priority is passed.
Room whisperer actually does a tone of work in my old stick fingers commander deck, it fills up my graveyard so fast, and if I find a living end I can just keep that on top, I tap with it, and basically win
Browbeat saw A LOT of play in Standard back in the day. It's ability to draw 3 cards or deal 5 damage was quite good and I do remember seeing this regularly back in the day. This card didn't really start tapering off till Goblins took over the format about a year later, then it was basically dead from then on out. This card is only bad now because Magic in general has gotten MUCH faster with much more power efficient cards, but this card was considered VERY efficient both in the damage department and card advantage department and much of the time, both choices were bad choices for the opponent.
I remember the hype around the card Hex when it was announced because it let you destroy six creatures at once. Then the devs had to cool that by pointing out it didn’t say “up to” meaning you had to have six creatures you wanted dead that turn to cast it.
Dreadhorde Invasion was a sad but understandable inclusion considering I ran a Dimir Control deck throughout all that standard and made the same comparison to Bitterblossom then. I found, however, that lines where I could stabilize against any aggro or midrange deck with an ETG on a 2/2 token were so so common, and other control decks were very unwilling to use kill spells on a token that will just come back. All in all, it was no Bitterblossom, but still a very strong card in its meta.
The card on it's surface looks really, really bad as a 3 mana 2/2. Like it would die to almost all removal spells except the smallest ones like gut shot. The payoff was also pretty small since the flipside can shock players or creatures and once in a while give some form of inevitability with the emblem.
Dreadhorde invasion is still use alot in historic MTGA There are some crazy ways to combo with it, if they play no enchant removal or you can protect it.
doom whisperer was not a flop this card with dream eater was just the tier 1 deck at time the dimir surveil strategy And now in commander is busted in "non CEDH" graveyard strategy (living death or similar)
This, I played x4 doom whisperer and 2 dream eaters as finishers in UB control during that set. The second ravnica set that block kinda pushed it out hard though, with vivien and hydroid krasis. Traded with carnage tyrant well which was in BG mid.
@@AzurielMist yeah and with unmored ego the deck was pretty consistent dealing with teferis and extra turns exiling any potential finisher and with the amount of discard (duress and thought erasure) there fell decks who can withstand dimir in that standard
A correction on Commander: green isn't the best color because it ramps, but because it does EVERYTHING. It has ramp, creature plays to either go wide or go big (or both, often) and excellent artifact/enchantment removal as baseline, but then it also got card draw, excellent general removal and graveyard interactions (both to return your cards and exile other players), and even stax pieces. Basically the only thing its missing right now are player burn (not really relevant, burn is used more against creatures and planeswalkers, which green can do), counterspell, hand discard or generic tutors (but it has some busted creature tutors), but that's it. And it has a lot of either busted or pie-breaking effects on creatures using the excuse of it being the "creature color".
Don't need tutors when you have greater good and stuff that just lets you go infinite. Not to mention the most broken repeatable tutor in survival of the fittest and gaea's cradle to fuel it all because why ban gaea's cradle, it's not like they banned academy over 10 years ago. Such a silly color.
Beauty of nature is everlasting in anything it does. No wonder it's the best color. Meanwhile in Yugioh, our green, WIND, is just plain weak in most cases.
Doom Whisperer is one of my best cards in Brawl. Being able to throw cards in the graveyard for reanimation and guarantee a seventh land drop or a board wipe at the same time is pretty nuts for an ability that only costs life Even if the opponent immediately tries to remove it you can just respond with the card's activation and still get value from it that turn
The only time I put Extra turn spells in a deck was when I made my Jin Gitaxias progress tyrant deck because then the spell gets copied giving me multiple extra turns instead of just one.
I've won a lot of games off of Dreadhorde Invasion in Historic Brawl on Arena. It's the kind of card where if it actually lands on turn 2, its really hard to get out from under unless they kill it right away. (The deck I run it in is a Teysa Orlov black/white tokens deck, for the record, with a ton of token generation and buffing).
nahiri's wrath can target players right? in the rules "players are planeswalkers having a duel" cuz if you had 4 of them in deck and filled your deck with high cost cards isn't it just a turn 3 win[except vs blue] there's no rulings at all
My first magic set was Khans of Tarkir so my first year in the community was me excitedly gushing to all my friends about any above-rate creature with upside because "it could be the next siege rhino!"
I like browbeat in my Obosh deck cause it's a 3 mana deal 10 damage which no one wants to take and 3 mana draw 3 which means I can run few less black card draw that costs life
Got admit, I was a bit surprised to see Doom Whisperer on it. I mean I'm no MTG Expert, I only played Arena for two years or so, but when I played some Dimir Surveil deck I did decently well with it. Though I used it less for the intel and more to load cards like Thoughtbound Phantasm and Dimir Spybug, and cycle Disinformation Campaign. But I guess that's because I never played on a high level...
Kozilek’s return.. when it was first spoiled, a lot of people were high on the card for some reason.. also it was one of the most expensive cards in the set… then the price started getting lower and lower
I used to play a deck I called instant speed Naya. It used huntmaster of the fells and a bunch of instant speed cards to flip him over and over. Aurelia fury was amazing, let me constantly get in by tapping down creatures on my opponents turn and summoning creature Tokens too for the double cast on huntmaster
Temporal Mastery is pretty good for turn decks in edh. I play it in my Jeleva deck. Also I love to abuse it by casting Mystical tutor, Vampiric Tutor, or Imperial Seal to set it up. I also set it up with Brainstorm, Top, or Scroll Rack from hand.
Nobody seems to mention that Conundrum not only was too slow but actually just kept the landfall strategies rolling. Even if they lost a small amount of tempo it balanced out by being in thr same atandard as Lotus Cobra AND Omnath
Weird comment, I know. One of my least favorite memories of playing mtg was being the victim of predatory players. I pulled a playset of Jace, vryn's prodigy from magic origins. I was a pretty novice player and didn't understand how good it was. I ended up being conned out of all 4 copies by a local more competitive player like a week before it absolutely exploded in price. He was older and much more experienced than I was. Once the price spiked I legit felt kind of violated. Looking back at the trade, it was so clear he knew exactly what he was doing. He walked away with $350 worth of cards and I $5-$10. This interaction contributed greatly to me never trading again. To this day I buy singles I need and sell on tcg player but do not carry a "trade binder" with me anywhere.
Lol yes, the cycle of cards where Browbeat was in was where I learned control was very important and the ONLY way to circumvent this loss is if the effect was WAY above rate! Im glad I bought my playset of Browbeat when it was being sold at less than 1Usd. For a short while, it went up to about 4 - 5usd apiece before dropping down to like 50cents apiece The cycle even had its own Wrath of God (Breaking Point)... but again: you can only really rely on it as a board sweeper if your opponent is around the 10 life or less mark... which is an unlikely state if your opponent is ahead in board presence... Although this DID happen to me before and I had a Fireblast in my hand... so when my opponent risked it and took the 6 damage, I sacked 2 Mountains for the Blast's alternate cost and took the game. Yea, ONE game... out of maybe 344332543??? One card I did remember overrating thanks to being as sharp as a marble was Wild Wurm. I know it NEVER reached the level of hype as ANY of the cards on this list, but I DO know some people who genuinely thought it was good. It was a R3 5/4 creature with the effect that when it enters the battlefield, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, return this card to hand. Please remember that this was an era where Ernham Djinn was considered Tier 0 and "balanced" versions of this card was being ran by decks (ie Stampeding Wildebeests) ... so we DID think this was a "balanced" version of that Djinn. Until, of course, I discovered there is a 50% chance (and more if RNGesus / God hates you) that you're paying 4 mana for NOTHING... so yea... Hey at least Rathi Dragon was a thing... and this DID actually do a LOT of work since my red deck then had that card as the top curve already
Confounding Conundrum is really good. Maybe it was over hyped, it's still really good in control decks. It may not be the go-to piece in every scenario, but the main reason it's so powerful is it replaces itself while being a powerful passive ability sitting on the table that your opponent has to deal with.
I can say Aurelia's Fury is useful for the battalion decks as a weaker form of gridlock. Wait until blockers are declared, drop Aurelia's Fury and deal 1 point of damage for each blocking creature. Considering the average mana cost for creatures in that deck type, you could potentially swing for game pretty quickly if you time it right...that said, it _IS_ a weaker gridlock.
16:35 As someone who played risk factor mono red, you have to play it as a burn spell and expect them to choose choose. I built my deck in such a way so I wanted them to choose the damage. Then late game they would be forced to let me draw. I topped the build out with 2 Oxes to guarantee card draw later. Today the deck would be meh, but it slapped back in standard.
PS You could play risk factor at instant speed letting you hold mana on your opponents turn. Then if your opp got low you could play it with jumpstart at their end step and draw 3. With runaway steamkin, the deck had extra mana letting you combo off really hard by turn 3 or 4.
Its strange the browbeat is on here, but in standard at the time i specifically remember alot of people playing risk factor which is more or less the same.
Better, because there's a chance that everyone will expect someone else to take the damage, and then nobody bothers, and much, much worse, because 5 damage one-off doesn't count for much in commander. If the other players respect you and your deck, it will almost always be a mildly undercosted burn spell that only hits the player with the most health. Which is to say, completely useless.
Really badly, someone will pay 5 life unless the whole table takes pity on you to let you draw 3 in some political games. It's even easier to pay 5 life there because you start with 40/5 is so trivial.
I got second place in a ptq playing a big red burn deck with flip Chandra. I played a ton of burn spells with the deck topping out with goblin dark dwellers. I didn’t have much problems flipping chandra, but she acted as a great lightning rod so ppl would try to remove her and not swiftspears. I prob flipped her 5-6 times that day. My only loss was to rally the ancestors and I had a close win of hardened scales. Everything else got stomped even siege rhino decks
Dreadhorde invasion functions as a bitterblossom #2 when I'm feeding the token to smokestack every turn and getting a white spirit off of Teysa, orzhov scion
I was really excited about Doom Whisperer. Historically, black has a very weak 5cmc creature slot, where the best cards are probably Gary and Shriekmaw. I was hoping that the surveil would be strong enough to make it cube viable, but it just isn't that good. The black 5cmc slot is historically a weird one. It's too expensive to be really good for black aggro, and reanimator doesn't usually care too much about cmc, so it's often better to run prohibitively expensive reanimate targets. I've wondered if WotC has always been afraid of making a great 5cmc black creature so legacy doesn't have too brutal of turn 1 play off dark rituals.
I can say that i don't remember there being lots of talk about how these cards will blow up the format and be crazy strong but i do believe it. Us as Magic players do have a bad habit of seeing a card in and thinking it is crazy good or real bad. Lots of time it is hard because unlike something like yugioh where there is only one format we have plenty of different ones and they all play different. "Walk" spell are power but you need to know how to use them it is not a scene of oh we have a mana system Nexus is real power because it is the only instant speed extra turn spell this mean you can cast it on your opponents turn and then get 2 trun right away. And the other one made birds and it had fortell meaning if was harder to interact with. All cards in magic can be used in and made better in some way thats why lots of people say "this card is real good for me." Giving your opponent the choice is not like a bad thing it is how it is given fact or Fiction like card have been good because most of the time it doesn't matter where the cards go hand or graveyard they are both things you can use. Gifts ungiven same thing or you fail to find and us it like that. Magic cards sometimes are hard to evaluate without using them even card that people think are good sometimes are bust i don't think when Omnath was spoiled people new it was good but not so good it was every single deck during one tournament. Just some thoughts from a long time magic player
I saw a lot of people using Risk Factor (Browbeat, but an instant with jumpstart and dealt 1 less damage) in Izzet Wizards and RDW around guilds of ravnica, though I was mostly playing at very low levels on arena at the time. It seemed to work pretty good there, could have been because you'd get to play it twice
As a long-term player, most of these cards being over-hyped looked extremely silly to me even back when they were hyped. This was especially true for Alchemist's Gambit, Nahiri's Wrath, Dreadhorde Invasion and Chandra for me. I did, however, think Aurelia's Fury would be great and that Doom Whisperer would see a lot more play than it did.
when i was playing t2 a long time ago, browbeat was functional in Sligh taking the damage brings you within burn range, so either eay the game ends faster
At least most of them were mono type. If an effect is niche (Aureila's Fury can target many things and maybe do some chip damage perhaps to that thing that survived with 1 after blocking or wahtever, as opposed to a straight downgrade like 3 mana silence is a downgrade over silence) then it might see play in the future in a strange deck as a splash in Legacy. Making something require two colors mean that the designers really need to find a deck in mind for it to have a home since it probably isn't going to be splashed in a future deck in Legacy unless it is broken. And of course, in Standard, unlike Legacy you really need the card to have a home when it is released not just something that is potentially interesting that could see play later like how Yu-Gi-Oh's Neo Spacian Aqua Dolphin started seeing play with every warrior archetype once Ash started getting out of control.
I have to disagree on browbeat. Admittedly I'm a casual player and we don't really play in any format. However, I've used browbeat in a r/g fires of yav. deck with great success. Usually I'll have some creature(s) by the time browbeat is cast. Either they give me more fuel or be down 25% of their life. With 5 power accelerated creatures, that's a tough choice. Whatever they choose is good for me.
Talara's Battalion. Hey, it was a 4/3 you could case on turn 2...if you cast a Birds of Paradise on turn 1...and it lived...and you had the Battalion in your hand in the first place...and...and...I remember the hype...and the flop.
Oh god was that card a steaming pile. I forgot about it until you reminded me and now I remember a friend of mine having a conversation with a stranger in Seattle where the stranger was hyping the card up and my friend was like this card is awful and bad.
Nahiri's Wrath looks like a really funny card to make a win condition in some jank EDH deck with a Reliquary Tower and some way to make spells uncounterable. I want to make that happen now
I guess it can't compare with how hype a card would be since I wasn't there but I can't help but think temporal mastery is still a really good card. Even if you can't control when the effect goes off, besides starting with it or having it be your first draw, it's bad situations are still good. If you played this for it's miracle cost at turn 2, it's a free draw and land drop, so it sounds like a good tempo swing.
Doom Whisperer was actually not broken, but with a decent success in historic, which had more powerful cards and graveyard synergy while not being as powerful as modern, so the card isn't too slow. But even there it wasn't that scary.
in the same category of Browbeat you have Vexing Devil which I remember being talked about a lot with players wanting to play it as an agressive 4/3 and the argument similarly being that if you needed the creature you're opponent will take the 4 and you dont progress your board and if you need the damage to win you will get the 4/3 and that 4/3 can be removed or blocked so you would be better off just playing a burn spell
@@dark_rit I played Vexing Devil in standard RDW and the actual issue is this. Well 1st off, It's definitely a card that helped me win games at times but it cost me some too, similar to Goblin Guide in Modern but Guide is better. So Vexing Devil was best on turn 2. Turn 1 you wanted to play a 1 drop that was gonna stick and attack every turn and you hope to win around t4-t6. If you follow up on t2 with another 1 drop attacker and a Devil they usually already played their 1 drop removal, or they didn't have 1 so even better. (Ideally your 1 drop gets in early dmg and sticks, that's why you play it over Vexing 1st, but you can reverse order if you are playing against control with good 1 drop removals. Assuming they used it already, they have to eat the 4 plus still get attacked by another 1 drop. I would usually win as long as I only got 1 or 2 Devils, (I played 4) and I played them both by t3. The reason I played 4 is I loved getting 2 of them early and I hated when I only drew into them late which could happen often if I had only run 2 or 3. The longer the game went, the more likely they draw another removal or could block and trade, so it became a stall blocker until I drew a burn spell or evasive creature with haste to close it late. 3 or 4 Devils was pretty bad since any more after the 2nd generally came out too late to close. Even if I open handed 3, I usually burned out because they would play around them too well and I didn't have the board state to put enough pressure on to close. 1 or 2 early with a good flux of other cheap creatures and burn worked out well every time whether they ate 4 or used a removal. They generally never just gave me a 4/3 early and let it stick but I never expected that anyway and it was still decent.
I mean, doom whisperer wants you to fill your graveyard with good creatures for future reanimation, it's not about ""scrying"" (to be fair, reanimator decks usually don't need a 5 mana to fuel their graves... but the whisperer clearly was aiming at those decks)
THe Underworld Cookbook and Asmoranomardicaistinaculdacar both see play in a Tier 2 deck in Modern called CookBook Time, I'd say that makes them not flops.
I think people would look upon Aurelia's Fury more favorably if it was, say, an uncommon: it's a RW instant Rolling Thunder with extra text that may sometimes be relevant, and should be played accordingly. At mythic rarity people expected it to do big, splashy things and it just doesn't.
Yeah, they were also forgetting that rolling thunder was more of a powerhouse in limited formats like sealed/draft in constructed I'm not sure if it even saw play. Thunder was also way better back then because creatures were all small as crap/way easier to kill multiple creatures. Then you have 3, 4, and 5 toughness things everywhere and fury was woefully inadequate to deal with them all, usually was just a way to tap creatures for a pseudo overrun like turn.
2:38 There's gonna be a lot of Time Warp Knockoffs on this list isn't there? I haven't kept up with magic much since Greedy of the Coast decided to release 80 products a year, controversy with MTG30 Anniversary aside, but when I did play, I always remembered people would lose their shit over these extra turn with drawback spells that either always costed waaaay too much many or had a drawback you couldn't do anything about. And the vast majority of which never really did anything aside from janky gimmick decks. 4:00 Nexus of Fate was also an Instant, so you could start the cycle at the end of your opponent's turn, and that was a pretty BIG upside since it mitigated the inherent downside of spells like this, namely that they always have huge mana costs so you can't really do anything the turn you cast it. By making it an instant, you could still hold open mana to interrupt your opponent's plays, and then if they didn't do anything, then you could force them to have an answer or lose. Which would also clear the way for whatever you might do during your actual turn. 6:15 Another reason Doom Whisperer was overhyped was due to it being comparable to a card called Desecration Demon from the previous Ravnica Block. Desecration Demon was a 6/6 Flyer for 4 mana that had the downside that your opponent could sacrifice a creature to tap it and put a +1+1 counter on it. Not only did it cost one mana less, but it put your opponent on a clock to either have removal/fodder for it or just die to the flying beat stick. On top of this, it had two black symbols in its mana cost which made it amazing for the Devotion mechanic, making it an auto 4-of in any variation of Mono Black Devotion, with the B/W version combining the normal Black devotion engine of thoughtseize, t2 packrat, t3 Whip/Make a rat token, t4 Demon, T5 Grey Merchant that could often just straight kill your opponent if they hadn't removed any of the creatures, with evasive/hard to kill threats like Elspeth Sun's Champion or Blood Baron of Vizkopa. Doom Whisperer not only cost an additional mana, but it didn't have any real pressure onto the opponent as they could just kill it. It's card advantage wasn't good enough to make up for this loss, not to mention that even though Grey Merchant had received a reprint in Theros 2 leading into Ravnica 3, the devotion mechanic was not strong enough to beat out the aggro or control decks of the time, resulting in Doom Whisperer only really seeing play in midrange or hybrid control decks that could leverage its damage potential. Source: This was the last time I was a competitive player. 13:13 Lmao I still remember pulling one of these and selling it to an idiot for like 20$. Funnily enough, due to how fast Gatecrash Standard was, and the lack of efficient, instant speed removal spells outside of red, the primary colors for control decks during this format was W/U/R instead of traditional esper colors (W/U/B). That color combination used to be called American Control, until WOTC forced all the article publishers and content creators to refer to the color combination as "Jeskai" after the Khans of Tarkir faction of those colors. They did this with all of the Wedge Color combinations, with RUG now being Timur, BUG now being Sultai, and Junk now being Abzan. The color combination of Mardu didn't have a name prior to this. 15:08 Which is why the Miracle Mechanic only ever really saw play in Vintage and Legacy, two formats where it was absurdly easy to stack the top cards of your deck thanks to cards like Sensei's Divining Top and Brainstorm. That being said, the only Miracle Cards that ever saw significant play were Terminus (which basically won you the game for 1 mana if you hit it) and Entreat the Angels, which let you make a board of 4/4 flyers for XWW if you miracled it. Miracle as a mechanic, was kinda bad as most of the cards with it were absurdly overcosted for what they did if you didn't miracle them. Only the most broken ones ever really saw play. Unfortunately, Wizards killed the Vintage and Legacy formats not very long after this, so Miracles kinda just disappeared. You could probably make an entire video over how bad Avacyn Restored into Return to Ravnica Block was. Even in the standard format of the time, there was only about five AVR cards played heavily (Entreat, Terminus, Avacyn herself, Griselbrand, and Slayer's Stronghold) in the best decks, and a smattering of others like Silverblade Paladin and Wolfir Silverheart or whatever the 5 mana dude that put a bunch of counters on a creature it soulbounded with. Return to Ravnica notoriously only really contributed the Shocklands to standard format until Innistrad block rotated which allowed limited all-star Pack Rat to rule standard. Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze, on the other hand, were INFAMOUSLY AWFUL sets. One of the reasons Gatecrash standard was completely overrun by no-brain aggro decks is that the only good removal spell in the entire game was a 4 mana wrath that got countered by a 2 mana card that could make your entire team indestructible. All the good removal rotated with Mirrodin. You no longer had good efficient cards like Go For The Throat or Doom Blade, you had "Warp Physique" which had an awful color requirement, or 3 mana bs like Tribute to Hunger or Devour Flesh. By the time you got to 4 mana, you'd be dead on board if they had Boros Charm to make their guys indestructible. Which, since their decks were all 4 ofs, they always did. And this block was also pretty much when WOTC introduced the "One Card is gonna be worth a ton and everything else is gonna be shit" design that they've become known for. I still remember paying 40$ a piece for Voice of Resurgences who is now like a 2$ card lol.
I feel like browbeat could be good in burn. On like turn 4 you probably would have them down to at least 5, and this would do a great job of either ending the game right there or stopping the burn deck from running out of cards.
Confounding Conundrum literally does nothing against a ramp deck, god forbid that they are playing landfall triggers. Lets say your opponent just plays an explore and 2 basic lands, they still get the mana from the second AND first land, BOTH landfall triggers, and now they have another card in hand to pay for discard cost, or any number of other cards that care about having cards in hand, and they can just play the land again next turn, which effectively does nothing. I have absolutely no clue how anyone saw that bulk rare and thought "this sure beats literally anything".
I managed to win my last commander game with aurelias fury, took someone out with 5 direct damage and tapped the other players 4 creatures so I could get through with mine for lethal, it's very good!
Mentioning Aurelia's Fury reminds me of Rakdos' Return, which makes sense because it and Sphinx's Revelation are part of a mini cycle in Ravnica. Everyone I knew at the time thought Rakdos' Return would be a standard staple while Sphinx's Revelation was just kind of mediocre. Turns out the reverse was true, and Rakdos' Return was actually pretty terrible.
I remember sphinx's revelation being like $2 or something on release with return being some big thing that was compared to mind twist/thought to be pretty good until you realized that paying 4 mana to discard 2 cards and deal 2 is slow and bad. Then revelation was like oh, I'm so good we'll run elixir of immortality and completely dominate the meta until mono black devotion came around next block.
It's kinda hilarious how every card basically ended up being "not as good as you though" but Asmo's motivation was "yeah it's as busted as you think but not busted enough for MH2"
@@XCodes 😢😢uj😢
The issue with Asmo food is NOT that it was not enough busted for MH2, but that it durdled a lot, creating lots and lots of gamepieces without doing much about them. After creating the 20th food token and got Asmo bolted you ran out of options and could get piled on by a lot of decks.
Respect for getting Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar right, out of all names.
Mispronouncing Chandra is difficult but he managed to do that
second this
All the times where he mispronounced "catastrophe" and other words have been redeemed
What a flex, one of those nerds who spent way too long practicing to show off to their magic mates
Unfortunately he mispronounced Dreadhorde Invasion.
Seems like a lot of the cards on this list can be summed up with "This card seemed insane, but then Magic players remembered that Mana exists"
More like "This card seems insane but the deck that wants it can't use it on time"
@@rolandking640 that’s the same thing
I can't really see temporal mastery being a flop when it was a main deck 4 of in the deck that won the pro-tour that season lol
Yeah I disagree with that, it also has a presence in edh decks that can interact with the top like Pako & Halda !
The point of the list is more for cards that were severely overhyped rather than just bad cards people thought were good. Temporal mastery was expected to be a an unbelievably broken blue staple card, but only really wound up seeing play in very specific decks, those decks being good, but having to be built around temporal mastery rather than the expectation it would just get slotted in every deck, which to me feels correct as overhyped.
@@romansrevengethethirdstrik8086Disagree. The card still proved itself to be an extremely powerful one and created its own archetypes. Just because it wasn’t as splashable as people were expecting doesn’t mean it under preformed when it became a defining card/archetype.
@@Beaudunk same, i have it in my Aminatou blink-deck, and it's great there.
@@Capsr1990 thats a great inclusion
Browbeat taught people more than just that. The original Browbeat read "Unless a player has Browbeat deal 5 damage to him or her, target player draws 3 cards." People kept putting a comma after Browbeat so it would read "Unless a player has Browbeat, deal 5 damage to him or her, target player draws 3 cards." It had people asking their opponents if they had the card Browbeat at FNMs which is they the card's text was changed.
Yes, I remember this occurring during the pre-release tournaments. The poor judges had to explain again and again and again, sometimes to the same player. that it isn't how the card works! I do remember falling for that too.
That's a nifty bit of history, thank you, I love these moments, I used to want to be a judge but then... Yeah, anyway I find all the quirks of a developing game system interesting.
Have a wonderful time! Thanks again!
Works on contingency?
No! Money down
@@bluedestiny2710 punctuation is a big part of MTG.
Blazing Salvo, Browbeat, and Book Burning dealt a fk ton of damage along with making my cabal therapy's 100% accurate... 2 decades ago. Yikes the time has really flown!
Ok so we all know he put the first one in there just to prove he could right? Like he probably won a bet for this.
He was close to the correct pronunciation, but got the "daistina" part wrong. The dai is pronounced like die, not day. Other than that, he did well.
@@connorhamilton5707 🙄
I was just gonna say, how many takes do you think it took to get that right?
@@Yuutsu6 He is right though
@@connorhamilton5707 real pronunciation of a fake word?
Another funny thing about confounding conundrum in casual EDH is that it can accidentally make an opponent's lands deck gain infinite land drops with the right board state
High power landfall decks sometimes include conundrum on purpose because of the whole conundrum can feed infinites though the ravinca bounce lands can do the infinite however the additional land drops are still great
and i know "Vorinclex, Monsterous raider" had a similar problem but for undying/persist/Luminous Broodmoth stuff
my roomate was so excited to show me how he was gonna stop my omnath deck with confounding conundrum and i just smiled and and told him it was gonna sure mess with my deck :)
They really needed to add a "that player can't play lands for the rest of their turn" clause to it. It feels like the card was made to punish landfall and fetch land heavy decks, and it ended up just helping landfall and only slowing down sorcery speed fetch land decks. Complete failure of design.
EDH sets ruined multiple formats. They turned vintage and legacy into a rotating format
I've been gaining an interest in Magic since I've learned of Sagas, which look really cool. Because of that, I would like a top ten best and worst sagas in MTG, if that's possible.
The best one is 100% urza's saga. It makes a reasonably large token, and has a few really good cards to search. Lands have a low bar to clear for being playable, and this one passes that by a mile.
There's also the phasing of zhafir. Pretty much every deck in edh wants a card that destroys every creature. And this is the ONLY card in blue to do that.
I don't know if these next two are played a lot, but they got a lot of people interested.
Kiki jiki is a really broken and well loved card. And it's contributed to the game's history. Fable of the Mirror Breaker is a fixed version of this. They put the same character on the final saga chapter so it's fair.
Finally hidetsugu consumes all just has a unique effect, that atleast seems better than most other sagas (or cards in general).
I don't know which sagas are the best and worst, but my favorite ones are The Cruelty of Gix, The Eldest Reborn, Michiko's Reign of Truth, Boseiju Reaches Skyward, and The Restoration of Eiganjo
It might not be the most accurate by now as it is a year old and a lot of sagas were printed since then, but there's this: th-cam.com/video/eOlmQ1huPiY/w-d-xo.html
Here's a list of the top 10. (My personal opinion)
10) The Eldest Reborn
-Saw niche standard play, and does things in commander, if a little slow.
9) Kumano faces Kakkezan
- Staple in Mono-red in standard right now. Good turn 1 play that falls off quickly.
8) Showdown of the Skalds
A 4-mana draw four is good, with the counters being an acceptable bonus. Saw play in multiple RW decks while in standard, and was a draw to the colour pair.
7) Restoration of Eiganjo
One of the better saga's on power level, it's seen very niche play in legacy, as well as a significant amount of commander play.
6) The birth of Meletis
- A staple in controlling white decks, allowing you to keep hitting land drops, while providing multiple speedbumps against aggro decks.
5) Hidesugu consumes all.
A theoretically powerful saga without a good home. Devastating against the right decks in Modern/legacy, but BR midrange decks often want to use their graveyard to fuel Kroxa.
4) Elspeth conquers death
Another control staple with commander applications, ECD removes a threat on their side, and requires an answer before it provides more value.
3) History of Benalia.
The best Aggro saga ever printed, history fuelled white-based aggro for as long as it was legal in standard, with the second history being even more terrifying than the first.
2) Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
Fable sees heavy play in every format (except vintage). The goblin token provides immediate impact, and threatens to ramp you. The looting provides an important consistency boost to balance out the inconsistency of fast mana, then the reflection threatens to take over the game with various ETB creatures (Bloodtithe harvester in standard and Fury in eternal formats)
1) Urza's Saga
Because it's a land, Urza's Saga is uncounterable, has a low opportunity cost and is hard to interact with. The constructs threaten to win the game on their own, and fetching out any 0 or 1 cost artifact allows for a versatile toolbox to answer anything. Urza's Saga is one of the strongest cards in Legacy, and even sees play in vintage shops.
Browbeat works in mono red bolts. Put it in a deck where the mana curve tops at three and every card deals around 3 damage for 1 or 2 mana and you're good. Goes especially well with Fireblast.
Every single card in this video works. Such a misleading title...
problem is that your opponents will always get to pick the option, so it never does what you need
@@TheRengarde Therein is the beauty of using it in such a deck. Your opponent's choice will always advance you towards a win.
@@qawamity no browbeat is just bad.
It doesn’t do anything until turn 3. Burn wants to win on turn 3/4. On turn 3 it’s bad because 1. Burn might not have third land up 2. If you need the damage 2 bolts is cheaper and does 1 more point, while also proccing prowess twice 3. It can’t kill a creature or be used as a combat trick 4. You always get the option you don’t want (cards when you need damage or damage when you need cards)
Drawing cards in this way doesn’t help burn win because yes potential 3 bolts is good but your opponents deck is going to have ways to either win in that span of time or shut you down. They aren’t just sitting there waiting for you to burn them out.
What you’ll find is that this card only wins you games you would’ve won anyway.
@@kentmiller808 Prowess? Why the fuck are you using creatures? It does nothing until turn 3? Wow, no shit? So that's how casting costs work. Amazing... See, in a bolt deck, Browbeat ALWAYS does something that advances the deck to victory. It literally does. Not. Matter. What your opponent chooses. As for drawing cards not mattering, dude, why aren't you running any cards like Fireblast? Sac lands, damage to enemy dome. Easy peasy.
Hey, for episodes like this which have a historical perspective, might I recommend you use the relevant printing of the card? Its a nice bit of service for knowledgable players who can read the set symbols and understand the timeframe the card was introduced in! Just a suggestion, love the content dude!
14:00 Aurelia's Fury did end up finding a home in EDH, particularly in Feather, the Redeemed decks. Feather basically returns any instant or sorcery spell you cast that targets at least one of your creatures back to your hand at end of turn. Getting this good effect every turn made it much more useful, especially as you only needed to do 1 point of damage one of your creatures to recur it.
Every card has a place in EDH, though.
Sorrows Path sees use in dinosaur enrage tribal, One With Nothing is in some Anje Falkenrath decks, even Wood Elemental sees a little play with Titania, Protector of Argoth decks.
@@calemr Wood Elemental sees play in Titania decks as a joke.
I agree with everything else you said, but there is no use case where Wood Elemental is better than 99 other cards you could have slotted in instead of it.
It's also great in Hinata decks.
@@rinbin9772 Jup i have it in my hinata deck :D I also run feather in my Hinata deck so i can be the biggest asshole out there.
I may be looking into getting this card for my Hamster Bomb deck as another kill condition.
How many takes did that first card take?
It's pronounced exactly as spelled though
I remember there was this guy I knew who pretty consistently played a Boros deck whenever we did a casual game. He kept trying to find a way to make Aurelia's Fury work, because he liked the artwork a lot, but most any game he played it he ended up losing.
Side note, possible idea for a future video: Maybe for Christmas/the holidays, there could be like a 'Toybox Special' and you could take a look at some of the cards Wizards has printed based on preexisting franchises (Transformers, D&D, Street Fighter, etc.), be it just ones that might be interesting or which would be best if they could be used in a meta environment.
That Skaab Ruinator as the first image works perfectly. I got it in Dark Ascention pre release and it was a day one $15 USD, this guy wanted it and i was sure why not and i got from him 2 Wurmcoil Engines which were $10 USD at the time. The following week the Skaap crashed and burned to $4 USD while the Wurmcoil sky rocketed to its stop price of $35 USD. Now days, the Wurm stayed at pretty decent 12 to 20 depending the version and got a 200 Masterpice, while the Skaab sits on a sad 1.
Seems wild now but once upon a time Balduvian Horde was considered a huge deal. People thought it was a Juzam Djinn clone (which was once arguably the best creature in the game). Then everyone realized it kinda sucked.
I remember that! Long time ago..
About doom whisperer, I remember it being everywhere until Ixalan shifted out with the rotation. As soon as Ixalan shifted out, people stopped playing Doom Whisperer. The card on it's own is decent, but I think what hurt it was the explore package going out, and of course the war of the spark teferi meta.
Alchemist's Gambit is great in Mizzix of the Izmagnus Commander. You can cast the cleave cost for just UUR and have lots of ways to copy spells. Along with other Time Magic spells, it is just another way to steal turns and win games.
Nahiri's Wrath saw some gimmick play in Modern. You'd play cards like Boros Reckoner, a creature with an effect to reflect the damage it takes back to the opponent, and would blow them up with Nahiri's Wrath to OTK your opponent. It wasn't good, because it required to play big bricks like Emrakul whose only purpose is being ridiculously expensive, and any interaction would stop you, but it was a thing at some point.
I loved Dreadhorde in standard. I had a mono black dreadhorde deck on arena that got so many wins because they wasted removal on the army and I'd have other things to amass.
My only real weakness with the deck was enchantment based removal which was few and far between at the time
Doom Whisperer is one of those cards that would have good value if it was released in a future set and not when it released
Doom Whisperer should have been released in Dominaria United since it is the Set where Sheoldred the Apocalypse released since it would allow you pay those 2 life and Sheoldred would get you 2 life back the moment you draw which neutralizes the cost of Doom Whisperer's Effect
I'd argue that an even more problematic aspect of Nexus is that it was an instant, meaning it synergized with Wilderness reclamation extremely well. Add in the fact that Growth Spiral was legal in the same standard format and you had the very real possibility that the opponent could start taking extra turns as early as T4.
The fact that it would shuffle back into the deck was also important for cards like Tamiyo, Collector of Tales and some of the blue dig spells like Anticipate, so I will give credit where it is due on that front.
Thank you for the lesson about Browbeat. I was running it in my Modern Boros aggro deck, and this explains why I don't seem to close out the game after playing the card.
I've found your videos help me increase my levels of understanding in the game. I've played since 2003, but I always get between 4 and 6 wins at 9 game Events. Hopefully this new knowledge will help me break through the 7 win barrier.
Probably the coolest thing I ever saw done with Alchemist's Gambit was actually indeed using its normal 'you lose the game after this' cost - but then, once that trigger activated, flashing in Ertai Resurrected to negate it. ...but I think I still actually won that game so it probably speaks to that kinda only getting you marginal value.
I remember when I first started playing mtg. War of the Spark was my first set to play on. I ended up building an Amass deck that ended up being really decent in standard until Throne of Eldrane came out. Those were good times
15:52 I'd like to give a quick mention here to Risk Factor, from the Guilds of Ravnica set. It has the same mana cost and concept behind it as Browbeat, but it differs in the following ways:
- It deals 4 damage, rather than 5
- It only targets a single opponent, rather than everyone at the table
- It's an Instant, rather than a Sorcery, meaning you can cast it at the end of your opponent's turn
- It also has the ability Jump-start, which lets you cast it from your graveyard by paying its mana cost and discarding a card, and then exiling it
ohhhh, i was wondering about that. I remember Risk Factor being played pretty widely in red decks at the time, it's probably the combination of the Instant speed and the Jump-start that made it see play. funny how the little differences can add up to a big difference!
I was surprised that you didn't mention the Browbeat with jumpstart that come in the last Ravnica block.
Risk factor
About alchemist gambit, I dont really remember people expecting that much out of the card except a groaning at standard having another extra turn option. And personally? Yeah I mostly dreaded the annoyance of seeing it paired with Alrudn epiphany. It didnt look super good by itself, but I was annoyed at yet another extra turn spell and having it come on top of Epiphany was potentially viable.
Still a relief that the card didnt see play, the extra turn mostly annoyed me, it wasn't that big of a deal.
When I saw the card for the first time today I thought wow this card is awful. Either it's final fortune for another mana, or it's 7 mana time walk when at 5 mana time walk is just okay. Only reason it could be good is if you could chain many of these together in something like an alrund epiphany deck to make tokens, then utilize the tokens more with consecutive extra turns.
It is sad to think a 6/6 flying and trample demon for five mana is just not good enough. Back in the early days of Magic, Doom Whisperer would of had some insane drawback like double phasing or losing 1/3 of your life when it entered the battlefield.
Dreadhorde Invasion seems like it'd be really good in my Thraxiumundar EDH.
It's a lowkey house just because the zombie token lifelink text is amazing
I’ll say about bitter blossom - they have flying. I’ve played the dread horn invasion in commander. It’s useful but not some blowout. More useful for the whole tribal life link thing.
I think the biggest issue with Dreadhorde was that the token it generated didn't have flying, which is so good on a token generator. Bitterblossom, at it's worst, said "Your opponent's best creature can't attack." At best, it could deal increasing amounts of damage to your opponent without needing to invest any more mana.
Speaking of "Almost as good as Bitterblossom" is Skrelv's Hive, as being unable to block with the tokens is a huge issue. Even in draft, it doesn't do anything on a really clogged board, as you often can't attack with the tokens without them just being eaten by blockers.
I can't recall hearing anyone say that Alchemist's Gambit, Nahiri's Wrath, Confounding Conundrum, Dreadhorde Invasion, or Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh were good cards when they were spoiled
I actually won many tournaments at my local during Doom Whispers' standard rotation, it was a fantastic engine for my Dimir Disinformation Campaign control deck. I ran 2 Crucible of Worlds because I was surveiling a lot, and could just pitch every single land into the yard and draw only gas, meanwhile my opponents had to top deck the entire game once I was online. Between spot removal and counterspells, dealing with a single top deck each turn was piss easy while Doom Whisperer guaranteed I drew good stuff and usually gave me a 3 turn clock after opponents used any sort of shock land at all.
How did Phyrexian Obliterator not make the list? It's an extremely powerful card upon release but never saw any place thanks to Dismember and other removal spells being super common. It still to this day has seen very fringe play in every format.
I play doom whisperer in my greven predator captain edg deck because being able to nearly kill yourself at instant speed is really good in that deck. Also top was especially good in miracles for temoral mastery bc miracle cares if it is the first card you have drawn that turn, allowing you if you like to use top to draw temporal mastery on your opponents turn and cast it so it returns to your turn for 2 turns with all your mana
Would Browbeat be too good for current Standard (2024)?
How does browbeat work with multiple players? Does each player in order of priority declare whether or not they want to take the damage? Do they have to secretly decide independently and then reveal their answer? Can they discuss it between themselves to decide who takes the 5 damage?
Obviously it's pretty bad regardless but I'm curious
Provided my sleep lacking brain recalls the rules correctly: Spell is cast; priority based responses; target is declared; more priority based responses; then in priority order, players (including the caster of Browbeat) decide whether to take the damage or not. Talking is a free-ish action, so players could discuss before any priority is passed.
Room whisperer actually does a tone of work in my old stick fingers commander deck, it fills up my graveyard so fast, and if I find a living end I can just keep that on top, I tap with it, and basically win
Browbeat saw A LOT of play in Standard back in the day. It's ability to draw 3 cards or deal 5 damage was quite good and I do remember seeing this regularly back in the day. This card didn't really start tapering off till Goblins took over the format about a year later, then it was basically dead from then on out. This card is only bad now because Magic in general has gotten MUCH faster with much more power efficient cards, but this card was considered VERY efficient both in the damage department and card advantage department and much of the time, both choices were bad choices for the opponent.
Anyone else notice he said demonhorde invasion not dreadhorde invasion? Just wondering. Either way great video, keep up the good work
It's funny seeing Browbeat topping this list knowing Risk Factor was one of the best draw spells of it's time in Standard.
I remember the hype around the card Hex when it was announced because it let you destroy six creatures at once. Then the devs had to cool that by pointing out it didn’t say “up to” meaning you had to have six creatures you wanted dead that turn to cast it.
Dreadhorde Invasion was a sad but understandable inclusion considering I ran a Dimir Control deck throughout all that standard and made the same comparison to Bitterblossom then. I found, however, that lines where I could stabilize against any aggro or midrange deck with an ETG on a 2/2 token were so so common, and other control decks were very unwilling to use kill spells on a token that will just come back. All in all, it was no Bitterblossom, but still a very strong card in its meta.
I'm pretty sure Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh was still good in mono-red decks, just not nearly as OP as people initially speculated.
The card on it's surface looks really, really bad as a 3 mana 2/2. Like it would die to almost all removal spells except the smallest ones like gut shot. The payoff was also pretty small since the flipside can shock players or creatures and once in a while give some form of inevitability with the emblem.
0:16 perfectly pronounces this cards name while in previous videos gets other easier names incorrect lol. a true legend.
Almost perfectly
9:32 Demonhorde? 🤨
Wasnt Doom Whisperer played in dredge in modern for a while though?
Dreadhorde invasion is still use alot in historic MTGA There are some crazy ways to combo with it, if they play no enchant removal or you can protect it.
doom whisperer was not a flop this card with dream eater was just the tier 1 deck at time the dimir surveil strategy
And now in commander is busted in "non CEDH" graveyard strategy (living death or similar)
This, I played x4 doom whisperer and 2 dream eaters as finishers in UB control during that set.
The second ravnica set that block kinda pushed it out hard though, with vivien and hydroid krasis.
Traded with carnage tyrant well which was in BG mid.
@@AzurielMist yeah and with unmored ego the deck was pretty consistent dealing with teferis and extra turns exiling any potential finisher and with the amount of discard (duress and thought erasure) there fell decks who can withstand dimir in that standard
A correction on Commander: green isn't the best color because it ramps, but because it does EVERYTHING. It has ramp, creature plays to either go wide or go big (or both, often) and excellent artifact/enchantment removal as baseline, but then it also got card draw, excellent general removal and graveyard interactions (both to return your cards and exile other players), and even stax pieces. Basically the only thing its missing right now are player burn (not really relevant, burn is used more against creatures and planeswalkers, which green can do), counterspell, hand discard or generic tutors (but it has some busted creature tutors), but that's it. And it has a lot of either busted or pie-breaking effects on creatures using the excuse of it being the "creature color".
Don't need tutors when you have greater good and stuff that just lets you go infinite. Not to mention the most broken repeatable tutor in survival of the fittest and gaea's cradle to fuel it all because why ban gaea's cradle, it's not like they banned academy over 10 years ago. Such a silly color.
Beauty of nature is everlasting in anything it does. No wonder it's the best color. Meanwhile in Yugioh, our green, WIND, is just plain weak in most cases.
Doom Whisperer is one of my best cards in Brawl. Being able to throw cards in the graveyard for reanimation and guarantee a seventh land drop or a board wipe at the same time is pretty nuts for an ability that only costs life
Even if the opponent immediately tries to remove it you can just respond with the card's activation and still get value from it that turn
The only time I put Extra turn spells in a deck was when I made my Jin Gitaxias progress tyrant deck because then the spell gets copied giving me multiple extra turns instead of just one.
I've won a lot of games off of Dreadhorde Invasion in Historic Brawl on Arena. It's the kind of card where if it actually lands on turn 2, its really hard to get out from under unless they kill it right away. (The deck I run it in is a Teysa Orlov black/white tokens deck, for the record, with a ton of token generation and buffing).
nahiri's wrath can target players right? in the rules "players are planeswalkers having a duel"
cuz if you had 4 of them in deck and filled your deck with high cost cards isn't it just a turn 3 win[except vs blue]
there's no rulings at all
My first magic set was Khans of Tarkir so my first year in the community was me excitedly gushing to all my friends about any above-rate creature with upside because "it could be the next siege rhino!"
I like browbeat in my Obosh deck cause it's a 3 mana deal 10 damage which no one wants to take and 3 mana draw 3 which means I can run few less black card draw that costs life
This and risk factor are some of my favorites in obosh for that reason no one's taking that damage when it's doubled lol
Got admit, I was a bit surprised to see Doom Whisperer on it. I mean I'm no MTG Expert, I only played Arena for two years or so, but when I played some Dimir Surveil deck I did decently well with it. Though I used it less for the intel and more to load cards like Thoughtbound Phantasm and Dimir Spybug, and cycle Disinformation Campaign. But I guess that's because I never played on a high level...
Kozilek’s return.. when it was first spoiled, a lot of people were high on the card for some reason.. also it was one of the most expensive cards in the set… then the price started getting lower and lower
I used to play a deck I called instant speed Naya. It used huntmaster of the fells and a bunch of instant speed cards to flip him over and over. Aurelia fury was amazing, let me constantly get in by tapping down creatures on my opponents turn and summoning creature Tokens too for the double cast on huntmaster
Temporal Mastery is pretty good for turn decks in edh. I play it in my Jeleva deck. Also I love to abuse it by casting Mystical tutor, Vampiric Tutor, or Imperial Seal to set it up. I also set it up with Brainstorm, Top, or Scroll Rack from hand.
Nobody seems to mention that Conundrum not only was too slow but actually just kept the landfall strategies rolling. Even if they lost a small amount of tempo it balanced out by being in thr same atandard as Lotus Cobra AND Omnath
Weird comment, I know. One of my least favorite memories of playing mtg was being the victim of predatory players. I pulled a playset of Jace, vryn's prodigy from magic origins. I was a pretty novice player and didn't understand how good it was. I ended up being conned out of all 4 copies by a local more competitive player like a week before it absolutely exploded in price. He was older and much more experienced than I was. Once the price spiked I legit felt kind of violated. Looking back at the trade, it was so clear he knew exactly what he was doing. He walked away with $350 worth of cards and I $5-$10. This interaction contributed greatly to me never trading again. To this day I buy singles I need and sell on tcg player but do not carry a "trade binder" with me anywhere.
Lol yes, the cycle of cards where Browbeat was in was where I learned control was very important and the ONLY way to circumvent this loss is if the effect was WAY above rate! Im glad I bought my playset of Browbeat when it was being sold at less than 1Usd. For a short while, it went up to about 4 - 5usd apiece before dropping down to like 50cents apiece
The cycle even had its own Wrath of God (Breaking Point)... but again: you can only really rely on it as a board sweeper if your opponent is around the 10 life or less mark... which is an unlikely state if your opponent is ahead in board presence... Although this DID happen to me before and I had a Fireblast in my hand... so when my opponent risked it and took the 6 damage, I sacked 2 Mountains for the Blast's alternate cost and took the game. Yea, ONE game... out of maybe 344332543???
One card I did remember overrating thanks to being as sharp as a marble was Wild Wurm. I know it NEVER reached the level of hype as ANY of the cards on this list, but I DO know some people who genuinely thought it was good. It was a R3 5/4 creature with the effect that when it enters the battlefield, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, return this card to hand. Please remember that this was an era where Ernham Djinn was considered Tier 0 and "balanced" versions of this card was being ran by decks (ie Stampeding Wildebeests) ... so we DID think this was a "balanced" version of that Djinn. Until, of course, I discovered there is a 50% chance (and more if RNGesus / God hates you) that you're paying 4 mana for NOTHING... so yea... Hey at least Rathi Dragon was a thing... and this DID actually do a LOT of work since my red deck then had that card as the top curve already
Confounding Conundrum is really good. Maybe it was over hyped, it's still really good in control decks. It may not be the go-to piece in every scenario, but the main reason it's so powerful is it replaces itself while being a powerful passive ability sitting on the table that your opponent has to deal with.
I can say Aurelia's Fury is useful for the battalion decks as a weaker form of gridlock. Wait until blockers are declared, drop Aurelia's Fury and deal 1 point of damage for each blocking creature. Considering the average mana cost for creatures in that deck type, you could potentially swing for game pretty quickly if you time it right...that said, it _IS_ a weaker gridlock.
How's Cinematic Phoenix sound?
16:35
As someone who played risk factor mono red, you have to play it as a burn spell and expect them to choose choose. I built my deck in such a way so I wanted them to choose the damage. Then late game they would be forced to let me draw. I topped the build out with 2 Oxes to guarantee card draw later. Today the deck would be meh, but it slapped back in standard.
PS
You could play risk factor at instant speed letting you hold mana on your opponents turn. Then if your opp got low you could play it with jumpstart at their end step and draw 3. With runaway steamkin, the deck had extra mana letting you combo off really hard by turn 3 or 4.
Its strange the browbeat is on here, but in standard at the time i specifically remember alot of people playing risk factor which is more or less the same.
Really curious how brownbeat tends to play out in commander
Better, because there's a chance that everyone will expect someone else to take the damage, and then nobody bothers, and much, much worse, because 5 damage one-off doesn't count for much in commander.
If the other players respect you and your deck, it will almost always be a mildly undercosted burn spell that only hits the player with the most health. Which is to say, completely useless.
Really badly, someone will pay 5 life unless the whole table takes pity on you to let you draw 3 in some political games. It's even easier to pay 5 life there because you start with 40/5 is so trivial.
I got second place in a ptq playing a big red burn deck with flip Chandra. I played a ton of burn spells with the deck topping out with goblin dark dwellers. I didn’t have much problems flipping chandra, but she acted as a great lightning rod so ppl would try to remove her and not swiftspears. I prob flipped her 5-6 times that day. My only loss was to rally the ancestors and I had a close win of hardened scales. Everything else got stomped even siege rhino decks
Dreadhorde invasion functions as a bitterblossom #2 when I'm feeding the token to smokestack every turn and getting a white spirit off of Teysa, orzhov scion
I was really excited about Doom Whisperer. Historically, black has a very weak 5cmc creature slot, where the best cards are probably Gary and Shriekmaw. I was hoping that the surveil would be strong enough to make it cube viable, but it just isn't that good.
The black 5cmc slot is historically a weird one. It's too expensive to be really good for black aggro, and reanimator doesn't usually care too much about cmc, so it's often better to run prohibitively expensive reanimate targets. I've wondered if WotC has always been afraid of making a great 5cmc black creature so legacy doesn't have too brutal of turn 1 play off dark rituals.
Nailed it on Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, Mr Logs. Expertly pronounced.
I can say that i don't remember there being lots of talk about how these cards will blow up the format and be crazy strong but i do believe it. Us as Magic players do have a bad habit of seeing a card in and thinking it is crazy good or real bad. Lots of time it is hard because unlike something like yugioh where there is only one format we have plenty of different ones and they all play different. "Walk" spell are power but you need to know how to use them it is not a scene of oh we have a mana system Nexus is real power because it is the only instant speed extra turn spell this mean you can cast it on your opponents turn and then get 2 trun right away. And the other one made birds and it had fortell meaning if was harder to interact with. All cards in magic can be used in and made better in some way thats why lots of people say "this card is real good for me." Giving your opponent the choice is not like a bad thing it is how it is given fact or Fiction like card have been good because most of the time it doesn't matter where the cards go hand or graveyard they are both things you can use. Gifts ungiven same thing or you fail to find and us it like that. Magic cards sometimes are hard to evaluate without using them even card that people think are good sometimes are bust i don't think when Omnath was spoiled people new it was good but not so good it was every single deck during one tournament. Just some thoughts from a long time magic player
Decent analysis video. Thanks for uploading!
It's always tragic to see a neat card fail....
I just have a question for that first card. Why? Not the effect, just the name.
Rhystic Studies talks about it's story: th-cam.com/video/pukpaxSBeAE/w-d-xo.html
I saw a lot of people using Risk Factor (Browbeat, but an instant with jumpstart and dealt 1 less damage) in Izzet Wizards and RDW around guilds of ravnica, though I was mostly playing at very low levels on arena at the time. It seemed to work pretty good there, could have been because you'd get to play it twice
As a long-term player, most of these cards being over-hyped looked extremely silly to me even back when they were hyped. This was especially true for Alchemist's Gambit, Nahiri's Wrath, Dreadhorde Invasion and Chandra for me. I did, however, think Aurelia's Fury would be great and that Doom Whisperer would see a lot more play than it did.
when i was playing t2 a long time ago, browbeat was functional in Sligh
taking the damage brings you within burn range, so either eay the game ends faster
At least most of them were mono type. If an effect is niche (Aureila's Fury can target many things and maybe do some chip damage perhaps to that thing that survived with 1 after blocking or wahtever, as opposed to a straight downgrade like 3 mana silence is a downgrade over silence) then it might see play in the future in a strange deck as a splash in Legacy. Making something require two colors mean that the designers really need to find a deck in mind for it to have a home since it probably isn't going to be splashed in a future deck in Legacy unless it is broken. And of course, in Standard, unlike Legacy you really need the card to have a home when it is released not just something that is potentially interesting that could see play later like how Yu-Gi-Oh's Neo Spacian Aqua Dolphin started seeing play with every warrior archetype once Ash started getting out of control.
I have to disagree on browbeat. Admittedly I'm a casual player and we don't really play in any format. However, I've used browbeat in a r/g fires of yav. deck with great success. Usually I'll have some creature(s) by the time browbeat is cast. Either they give me more fuel or be down 25% of their life. With 5 power accelerated creatures, that's a tough choice. Whatever they choose is good for me.
Talara's Battalion. Hey, it was a 4/3 you could case on turn 2...if you cast a Birds of Paradise on turn 1...and it lived...and you had the Battalion in your hand in the first place...and...and...I remember the hype...and the flop.
Oh god was that card a steaming pile. I forgot about it until you reminded me and now I remember a friend of mine having a conversation with a stranger in Seattle where the stranger was hyping the card up and my friend was like this card is awful and bad.
What was bad about it?
Nahiri's Wrath looks like a really funny card to make a win condition in some jank EDH deck with a Reliquary Tower and some way to make spells uncounterable. I want to make that happen now
I guess it can't compare with how hype a card would be since I wasn't there but I can't help but think temporal mastery is still a really good card. Even if you can't control when the effect goes off, besides starting with it or having it be your first draw, it's bad situations are still good. If you played this for it's miracle cost at turn 2, it's a free draw and land drop, so it sounds like a good tempo swing.
10:50
I remember facing these on arena and just blowing them out with mono red burn. Honestly, mono red burn and feather back then were insane.
Doom Whisperer was actually not broken, but with a decent success in historic, which had more powerful cards and graveyard synergy while not being as powerful as modern, so the card isn't too slow. But even there it wasn't that scary.
in the same category of Browbeat you have Vexing Devil which I remember being talked about a lot with players wanting to play it as an agressive 4/3 and the argument similarly being that if you needed the creature you're opponent will take the 4 and you dont progress your board and if you need the damage to win you will get the 4/3 and that 4/3 can be removed or blocked so you would be better off just playing a burn spell
Ahh, vexing devil. The classic issue of being an awful topdeck and even on turn 1 can just pay 4 life or still remove it with bolt/plow.
@@dark_rit I played Vexing Devil in standard RDW and the actual issue is this. Well 1st off, It's definitely a card that helped me win games at times but it cost me some too, similar to Goblin Guide in Modern but Guide is better. So Vexing Devil was best on turn 2. Turn 1 you wanted to play a 1 drop that was gonna stick and attack every turn and you hope to win around t4-t6. If you follow up on t2 with another 1 drop attacker and a Devil they usually already played their 1 drop removal, or they didn't have 1 so even better. (Ideally your 1 drop gets in early dmg and sticks, that's why you play it over Vexing 1st, but you can reverse order if you are playing against control with good 1 drop removals. Assuming they used it already, they have to eat the 4 plus still get attacked by another 1 drop. I would usually win as long as I only got 1 or 2 Devils, (I played 4) and I played them both by t3. The reason I played 4 is I loved getting 2 of them early and I hated when I only drew into them late which could happen often if I had only run 2 or 3. The longer the game went, the more likely they draw another removal or could block and trade, so it became a stall blocker until I drew a burn spell or evasive creature with haste to close it late. 3 or 4 Devils was pretty bad since any more after the 2nd generally came out too late to close. Even if I open handed 3, I usually burned out because they would play around them too well and I didn't have the board state to put enough pressure on to close. 1 or 2 early with a good flux of other cheap creatures and burn worked out well every time whether they ate 4 or used a removal. They generally never just gave me a 4/3 early and let it stick but I never expected that anyway and it was still decent.
I mean, doom whisperer wants you to fill your graveyard with good creatures for future reanimation, it's not about ""scrying"" (to be fair, reanimator decks usually don't need a 5 mana to fuel their graves... but the whisperer clearly was aiming at those decks)
Doom Whisperer is an MVP in my Sephris Commander deck. Being able to trigger her every turn for life is super good
RDW was pretty big when Doom Whisperer came out. Never really felt like I had the life to spare for it’s effect
fun thing with asmo is to use the last ability with a stuffy doll
ping your ops for six damage for the cost of a card and two food
Request: Ten Worst Cumulative Upkeep cards, followed by Ten Best Ways to Counteract the Cost Ramp.
THe Underworld Cookbook and Asmoranomardicaistinaculdacar both see play in a Tier 2 deck in Modern called CookBook Time, I'd say that makes them not flops.
I would def say all of these cards have a solid place in the game from niche edh pick to completely undervalued sideboard card for modern
I think people would look upon Aurelia's Fury more favorably if it was, say, an uncommon: it's a RW instant Rolling Thunder with extra text that may sometimes be relevant, and should be played accordingly. At mythic rarity people expected it to do big, splashy things and it just doesn't.
Yeah, they were also forgetting that rolling thunder was more of a powerhouse in limited formats like sealed/draft in constructed I'm not sure if it even saw play. Thunder was also way better back then because creatures were all small as crap/way easier to kill multiple creatures. Then you have 3, 4, and 5 toughness things everywhere and fury was woefully inadequate to deal with them all, usually was just a way to tap creatures for a pseudo overrun like turn.
2:38 There's gonna be a lot of Time Warp Knockoffs on this list isn't there? I haven't kept up with magic much since Greedy of the Coast decided to release 80 products a year, controversy with MTG30 Anniversary aside, but when I did play, I always remembered people would lose their shit over these extra turn with drawback spells that either always costed waaaay too much many or had a drawback you couldn't do anything about. And the vast majority of which never really did anything aside from janky gimmick decks.
4:00 Nexus of Fate was also an Instant, so you could start the cycle at the end of your opponent's turn, and that was a pretty BIG upside since it mitigated the inherent downside of spells like this, namely that they always have huge mana costs so you can't really do anything the turn you cast it. By making it an instant, you could still hold open mana to interrupt your opponent's plays, and then if they didn't do anything, then you could force them to have an answer or lose. Which would also clear the way for whatever you might do during your actual turn.
6:15 Another reason Doom Whisperer was overhyped was due to it being comparable to a card called Desecration Demon from the previous Ravnica Block. Desecration Demon was a 6/6 Flyer for 4 mana that had the downside that your opponent could sacrifice a creature to tap it and put a +1+1 counter on it. Not only did it cost one mana less, but it put your opponent on a clock to either have removal/fodder for it or just die to the flying beat stick. On top of this, it had two black symbols in its mana cost which made it amazing for the Devotion mechanic, making it an auto 4-of in any variation of Mono Black Devotion, with the B/W version combining the normal Black devotion engine of thoughtseize, t2 packrat, t3 Whip/Make a rat token, t4 Demon, T5 Grey Merchant that could often just straight kill your opponent if they hadn't removed any of the creatures, with evasive/hard to kill threats like Elspeth Sun's Champion or Blood Baron of Vizkopa. Doom Whisperer not only cost an additional mana, but it didn't have any real pressure onto the opponent as they could just kill it. It's card advantage wasn't good enough to make up for this loss, not to mention that even though Grey Merchant had received a reprint in Theros 2 leading into Ravnica 3, the devotion mechanic was not strong enough to beat out the aggro or control decks of the time, resulting in Doom Whisperer only really seeing play in midrange or hybrid control decks that could leverage its damage potential. Source: This was the last time I was a competitive player.
13:13 Lmao I still remember pulling one of these and selling it to an idiot for like 20$. Funnily enough, due to how fast Gatecrash Standard was, and the lack of efficient, instant speed removal spells outside of red, the primary colors for control decks during this format was W/U/R instead of traditional esper colors (W/U/B). That color combination used to be called American Control, until WOTC forced all the article publishers and content creators to refer to the color combination as "Jeskai" after the Khans of Tarkir faction of those colors. They did this with all of the Wedge Color combinations, with RUG now being Timur, BUG now being Sultai, and Junk now being Abzan. The color combination of Mardu didn't have a name prior to this.
15:08 Which is why the Miracle Mechanic only ever really saw play in Vintage and Legacy, two formats where it was absurdly easy to stack the top cards of your deck thanks to cards like Sensei's Divining Top and Brainstorm. That being said, the only Miracle Cards that ever saw significant play were Terminus (which basically won you the game for 1 mana if you hit it) and Entreat the Angels, which let you make a board of 4/4 flyers for XWW if you miracled it. Miracle as a mechanic, was kinda bad as most of the cards with it were absurdly overcosted for what they did if you didn't miracle them. Only the most broken ones ever really saw play. Unfortunately, Wizards killed the Vintage and Legacy formats not very long after this, so Miracles kinda just disappeared.
You could probably make an entire video over how bad Avacyn Restored into Return to Ravnica Block was. Even in the standard format of the time, there was only about five AVR cards played heavily (Entreat, Terminus, Avacyn herself, Griselbrand, and Slayer's Stronghold) in the best decks, and a smattering of others like Silverblade Paladin and Wolfir Silverheart or whatever the 5 mana dude that put a bunch of counters on a creature it soulbounded with. Return to Ravnica notoriously only really contributed the Shocklands to standard format until Innistrad block rotated which allowed limited all-star Pack Rat to rule standard. Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze, on the other hand, were INFAMOUSLY AWFUL sets. One of the reasons Gatecrash standard was completely overrun by no-brain aggro decks is that the only good removal spell in the entire game was a 4 mana wrath that got countered by a 2 mana card that could make your entire team indestructible. All the good removal rotated with Mirrodin. You no longer had good efficient cards like Go For The Throat or Doom Blade, you had "Warp Physique" which had an awful color requirement, or 3 mana bs like Tribute to Hunger or Devour Flesh. By the time you got to 4 mana, you'd be dead on board if they had Boros Charm to make their guys indestructible. Which, since their decks were all 4 ofs, they always did. And this block was also pretty much when WOTC introduced the "One Card is gonna be worth a ton and everything else is gonna be shit" design that they've become known for. I still remember paying 40$ a piece for Voice of Resurgences who is now like a 2$ card lol.
I feel like browbeat could be good in burn. On like turn 4 you probably would have them down to at least 5, and this would do a great job of either ending the game right there or stopping the burn deck from running out of cards.
Confounding Conundrum literally does nothing against a ramp deck, god forbid that they are playing landfall triggers. Lets say your opponent just plays an explore and 2 basic lands, they still get the mana from the second AND first land, BOTH landfall triggers, and now they have another card in hand to pay for discard cost, or any number of other cards that care about having cards in hand, and they can just play the land again next turn, which effectively does nothing. I have absolutely no clue how anyone saw that bulk rare and thought "this sure beats literally anything".
I managed to win my last commander game with aurelias fury, took someone out with 5 direct damage and tapped the other players 4 creatures so I could get through with mine for lethal, it's very good!
Mentioning Aurelia's Fury reminds me of Rakdos' Return, which makes sense because it and Sphinx's Revelation are part of a mini cycle in Ravnica. Everyone I knew at the time thought Rakdos' Return would be a standard staple while Sphinx's Revelation was just kind of mediocre. Turns out the reverse was true, and Rakdos' Return was actually pretty terrible.
I remember sphinx's revelation being like $2 or something on release with return being some big thing that was compared to mind twist/thought to be pretty good until you realized that paying 4 mana to discard 2 cards and deal 2 is slow and bad. Then revelation was like oh, I'm so good we'll run elixir of immortality and completely dominate the meta until mono black devotion came around next block.