One detail mostly lost to history: When I initially submitted my card proposal for the Invitational, purely out of greed, I submitted a series of seven cards, each costing two mana, each targeting a different casting cost. When I did, Mark took about three seconds to consider the proposal, but (I'm guessing) given the depiction of the player on the cards, he insisted I submit only one. That's when the initially designed Artifact of Doom came into the picture.
A quick point of fact, the XX cost template was used on Meteor Shower all the way back in Ice Age, but Chalice of the Void was the first artifact to use it as the entire cost as far as I know.
@@jamiebruner8463 As fucked as this may sound, "Norin the Wary" might be a title bestowed upon certain individuals like the codename James Bond (007), but IDK
A few years back there was a group who were experimenting with unrestricted Vintage where you could play 4 of every card just to see what that meta would look like. After several iterations of deck construction it was agreed upon that Chalice of the Void was the best card in that hypothetical format. It resulted in every game being determined by who played first and could drop all of their moxen and lotuses, fire off their Ancestral recalls, and then drop a Chalice for 0, 1, and sometimes even 2.
I've had it up for a bit but haven't advertised it yet as I'm mostly making and building stuff. Appreciate it though, I'm excited to keep making even more!
I LOVE learning about awesome old plays like this! It's cool to see miraculous top decks and players luck out, but what I love even more are the deep dives and thorough explanations into these little but genius plays. There's so much context regarding the format, meta, and match-up that goes into even the smallest decisions at high level play. Videos like this that succinctly summarize them are perfect!
Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites for MTG content. I love learning about what it was like to play in these past pro events. The meta of the day, the fun moments, and nice little clips of old ESPN coverage. It's all great stuff.
Same here man, reminds me a tad of what got me started playing MTG in the first place, (back in Darksteel!) I randomly bought an issue of inQuest Gamer, and it's cover story was, "What cards would a hypothetical, "Ultimate Core Set Release" feature in it? And it went through each color, lands, and I think Artifacts, and also had a list of the Top 10, "Most money-earning cards in Pro Tour history", which was quite interesting, actually. I know that looking back on it now, it still isn't a typical list of 10 I'd expect (Counterspell was #1, just btw haha). But yea, the "Blue" cards section of that hypothetical Core Set was maybe what drew me in for keeps, ultimately. That issue spotlighted MTG for me, and gave me a jumping-off point, but once I was playing relooking over those Blue cards and seeing that things like Force of Will existed, and that there was a creature as badass as Morphling around prior made me a fan for life (while obviously Morphling doesn't hold a candle to the top creatures of today, it's still a badass card and I'll always think a card nicknamed "Superman" for all it was capable of doing is rad!
I really like this style of content. It sort of gives a history and context for what lead into a memorable moment. There are tons of videos detailing the most exciting and flashy moments in the pro tour, but I'm glad you focus on some that have gone under the radar for the most part and are almost forgotten. That's what originally brought me to your channel - literally because your videos detailed something I hadn't seen before rather than talking about lightning helix for the 10th time.
I’d love to see a video about Deathrite Shaman, a card that was so villainized for so long in constructed, was referred to as “the one mana planeswalker,” and now has kinda faded a bit into obscurity.
The fact that I won a pre-release while having a pretty subpar pool purely off of the back of defender regenerate trolls and Deathrite Shaman, I knew the card was busted then and there. Seeing it run modern and legacy till its ban wasn’t a surprise. The card is easily one of if not the best one drop of all time. To this day it’s played in vintage as a 4 of!
@@DoctorJango And it _dominated_ Legacy for years and years while it was still legal and has been banned in Pauper the majority/entirety of the format's recognition in any formal way.
Great news everyone! The Wayback Machine has unbroken for the time being and you can now read the text coverage of this match again! I've linked it in the video description if you want to check it out.
I love finding this being a fan of Magic and was pleasantly surprised to see you talking about it Pastry. One of the best to ever cast one of my favorite games! Keep killing it man.
Yeah I'm sad I didn't have time to really tell out the full story but Kuroda housed everyone this event lol. Turns out Arc Slogger was kind of a good card and Seething Song is one hell of a Magic card.
Played that Big red/Ponza deck myself as well back then. It really was a force. The slogger gave you so much finishing reach to just body your own deck for like 8 damage. Just had to get through 12-14 damage, and slogger just killshots them. or use an activation or two to insure blockers and threats are kept clear as it keeps slamming in for 4.
LOL I can't imagine being a new player and trying to figure out what this card did. Interesting to think if the Mythic rarity was around then if they would've made it that level of rarity JUST to stop this exact thing from happening as much.
@@HungryOnPlaneI threw together the deck and showed my dad who won the pre release and he was extremely happy to see that I had free rolled the event for him 😂 I’ve got to imagine they would make it mythic, thought just seeing the double XX mana cost was enough to throw me. Regardless of the card text.
Nice analysis. I haven't watched anything from that event in so long that I had forgotten about it, lol. To answer your question at the end of the video, the final match of PT Chicago 1999 is one of my favorite tournament matches ever. Talk about an absolutely insane set of games, holy hell.
as someone who doesnt even play magic i really enjoy these style of vids (and everything else you have made). you have real skill in setting up, contextualizing, and telling a story about the game. really well done, thank you! i have 2 suggestions/requests: 1. sometimes i find you are speaking very quickly and i have a tough time catching just what you said - of course this isn't something you need to "fix" but i just want you to hear the feedback that sometimes you're just a bit too rap god. 2. i would appreciate it if you left cards that are relevant to your current point on screen for just a little longer - of course i can just pause the video but i know you are showing them to help support your point and i want to be able to absorb them.
So my idea is Ancestral Recall, except it costs 1 Phyrexian Blue mana and has Storm. Technically you can't reprint something functionally identical. They're no rule against printing something strictly better.
sigh yes the reserve list precludes strictly better remakes. half the reserve list is overpowered cards and half the point of it was a commitment to not break the game. of course, they print cards that need banning regularly, but there's a reason why there has yet to be any dual land without downside, and that reason is the reserve list.
@@mofomiko This version has storm also, it pretty much wins the game once it is cast. They are too scared to do anything about the reserve list though.
Well, good news(?): with wotc moving to a 3-year, 6-sets-per-year, rotation, standard will have about the same cardpool size as extended, with 18+Foundations versus extended's 20.
enjoyed everything up until the end/payoff - not understanding why the chalice for 0 locked ben out of the game? you explained that it killed the 2 0-drops in his hand, but beyond that, what did it do? why was it such a 500 IQ play? why did it lock him out of the whole game if he only had 8 0-drops in his deck? i think some more explanation here would have gone a long way, as the whole video was building up to this point.
found the info in a comment buried way down the page (ty @thekilla1234). this would have been super valuable to include in the video. gonna paste it here if anyone else is wondering: Playing land > jar > jar basically puts your entire hand face up. You are basically saying you need at least 4 mana in affinity to do anything. This essentially gives Nassif perfect information. If he destroys either jar he is ahead, and also allows him to play Chalice on 1 comfortably on turn 2 because Stark can't have any other 0s or he would have just played them all since he played the jars. So there are 2 situations that basically makes this a coin flip for Stark: 1. Play all jars and give your hand away. If Nassif has no way to deal with them, he is miles ahead. 2. Hold the jars and hide information. This turns off Nassif's removal. The only way Nassif can now stop you is the hard read Chalice on 0, which Stark might not have even considered himself. So he essentially went with the second option because it seems like the play that wins more often, or put another way, he is saying that Nassif is more likely to be able to destroy his jars than prevent him from putting them down turn 2. I would probably agree with him. If he played the jars and Nassif destroyed one of his jars and he couldn't play the game, I would suspect people would say "why did he play the jars if he didn't do anything with them?". People tend to have hindsight bias questions in these situations rather than comparing the two scenarios.
Affinity is a deck that plays expencive cards with "Affinity for Artifacts" ability that reduces their cost by how many artifacts are in play. A quarter of affinitys deck was 0-cost artifacts used to just increase Affinity count to make his 4 mana 2/2 and 7 mana 4/4 also cost 0. Another quarter was artifact lands, very vulerable to both nonbasic land hate and artifact hate, but very useful as both a mana source and an Affinity count increase. So, in game 5 the Affinity player held a had with mostly 0 cost spells that he wanted to just drop all on the field on turn 2 and slap whatever affinity he daws on top of that. But Chalice at X=0 shuts it all off. Having half of hus resources locked slowed Gabriel's opponent enough to let him get a win I think this channel has an explanation video of why Affinity decklists were so dominant, go watch that
I should be able to explain it. "Affinity for *blank*" is an ability that reduces a card's cost by 1 for every *blank* you have. Many cards in Ben's deck had Affinity for artifacts, meaning that for every artifact he had in play, that card would cost 1 less. By being made unable to play his 0-cost artifacts, Ben couldn't place any artifacts on the board, meaning he couldn't cast his big affinity cards for a discounted cost. Normally you could, for example, play a Darksteel Citadel (a land that also counts as an artifact), and any two 0-cost artifacts. This gives you 3 artifacts in play, and 1 colorless mana to work with, allowing you to, for example, cast Frogmite (a 4-cost artifact creature with Affinity for artifacts) for just 1 mana... then you have 4 artifacts in play so you could cast a second Frogmite for free, and so on and so on. Ben didn't play his 0-cost artifacts immediately for whatever reason and got SEVERELY punished for it.
@@GigaHands He didn't play the 0 mana artifacts because Nassif was running so many Oxidizes, so he wanted to give Nassif no targets when he passed the turn. That's why he dropped the indestructible land turn 1 too and what tipped Nassif off to what hand he was facing.
That's fair, I also could've included more of the commentary from the moment too which does a pretty good job of explaining the general situation but was worried it would bloat the video more. Always a balance with stuff like this, but I appreciate your thoughtful feedback.
what are you talking about? extended absolutely exists, it's just called standard now. the old standard went the way of the dodo just like block constructed did. i for myself am very happy with how things have developed, as block constructed and the old standard are essentially just a more costly limited event.
How scary Affinity was in general cannot be understated. Julien Nuyten became the youngest world champion in 2004 piloting the strongest anti-affinity deck.
great video as always! A game that i rewatch often that includes ben stark is 2013 Worlds semifinals against Shahar Shenhar. UWR control mirror, great insightful commentary by LSV and an example of a game where, not much happens on the board, but there's a ton happening in their minds. Could be a great topic for a video.
Gab such a nice guy good to see him win. All I could hear is the Reid duke quote “the genius of Gabriel nassif” that you get to hear on yellowhat’s own channel.
I would love it if you could cover Yuuchi Ichikawa's Golgari Charm play vs Jason Cunningham at Pro Tour M15. There are a lot of famous MTG moments that get brought up whenever people talk about strategy but that one has stuck with me for nearly a decade, and it doesn't get the respect it deserves. I think the context for that Standard environment also really helps set it up: this was the era when Magic moved from a mostly even balance between spells and creatures to being a board-focused, creature-first kind of game. The power level of Scavenging Ooze in a creature-heavy matchup cannot be understated. When you think about it, the GW aggro deck Cunningham pilots is really powerful, and is totally a respectable choice for someone who apparently qualified for the Pro Tour via a limited event. Almost everything in the deck matches up well against the usual MTG instant-speed removal spells: - Experiment One (solid 1-drop that easily grows as you curve out and regenerates) - Boon Satyr (Undercosted flash threat with late game potential) - Lodoxon Smiter (undercosted threat that is immune to hand rip) - Fleecemane Lion (undercosted threat that can become hexproof later) - Voice of Resurgence (2-mana 2/2 that becomes a giant token if you ever dare kill the Voice or interact on its controller's turn) - Roar of the Wurm (undercosted flash threat that has minor token synergies)
He didn't want to risk his affinity enabling pieces getting Oxidized on Nassif's turn, so he was holding it all to have a big explosive turn when he could abuse the affinity to drop bigger creatures
Not sure what his opening hand was, but my guess is that his turn 1 would have been land, 2 jars, and maybe a 1 drop or thopter that wouldn't do much on its own, but with 2 lands he could dump his whole hand. So he was slow rolling turn 1 in order to not show what he had and to try to bait Nassif into playing a Post turn 1 so he wouldn't have Oxidize. I could be totally wrong, though.
@@MrMeltJr This is exactly what it is. Playing land > jar > jar basically puts your entire hand face up. You are basically saying you need at least 4 mana in affinity to do anything. This essentially gives Nassif perfect information. If he destroys either jar he is ahead, and also allows him to play Chalice on 1 comfortably on turn 2 because Stark can't have any other 0s or he would have just played them all since he played the jars. So there are 2 situations that basically makes this a coin flip for Stark: 1. Play all jars and give your hand away. If Nassif has no way to deal with them, he is miles ahead. 2. Hold the jars and hide information. This turns off Nassif's removal. The only way Nassif can now stop you is the hard read Chalice on 0, which Stark might not have even considered himself. So he essentially went with the second option because it seems like the play that wins more often, or put another way, he is saying that Nassif is more likely to be able to destroy his jars than prevent him from putting them down turn 2. I would probably agree with him. If he played the jars and Nassif destroyed one of his jars and he couldn't play the game, I would suspect people would say "why did he play the jars if he didn't do anything with them?". People tend to have hindsight bias questions in these situations rather than comparing the two scenarios.
Remember, he lost games 2 and 4 to playing an early artifact that got Oxidized, leading to a dead Glimmervoid. He was probably getting gunshy about running out his stuff without having a big followup, and figured if he could dodge Chalice for a turn or two he'd be in the clear.
@@TheMCGamer2012 Because playing 1 jar changes nothing, and is in fact just strictly worse than playing 2 jars. Putting down any number of jars and then doing nothing says that you have no play and need the affinity to play. If you play 1 jar, there are 2 scenarios: 1. You actually did play out everything you could turn 1, which means he doesn't have any 1 drops otherwise he would have cast them using the land. So his hand is lands + 2 mana plays or affinity plays. Either way, getting rid of the jar messes with both of these, because removing the jar makes his future plays more fragile, and removing the jar slows down affinity. 2. He played only 1 jar and kept other 0 mana plays hidden in hand, such as a second jar, in order to make a big play turn 2. This has the exact same outcome as the first scenario, since this is a play that is saying he needs affinity to play, so blowing up the jar slows down any game plan massively. Therefore, playing 1 jar is just objectively a worse play because it not only puts your hand face up, it puts a jar out to die AND puts your jar in hand dead to chalice on 0 if that's the only thing Nassif has. He will always play his chalice on 0 since passing with an untapped land means there aren't any 1 drops, so chalice would never be dropped on anything other than 0. If you are going to play any number of jars, you should play 2. Otherwise, play 0 jars. Even if there was a 1 mana spell that destroyed 2 artifacts, you could sacrifice 1 to protect the other. So if you play 1 or 2 jars, the result is that 1 gets destroyed, so the outcome is the same, the only difference is that by playing only 1 jar you open yourself up to getting locked out by chalice, whereas playing 2 jars you don't.
You mention in the video that Extended was your favorite format. Are you aware of Premodern? It is a community run format that uses the cards from 4th to Scourge with its own ban list. Feels pretty similar to Extended right before it was canceled for Modern.
I wonder if any of the various "Can't be countered" cards are good enough to go against a Chalice of the Void deck. Looking at Gatherer Mono-Green looks like it might stand a chance and a Red-Green deck has some good options as well. I guess it really does depend on the format you are playing in and how much you expect to go against counter heavy decks. Thanks for the video.
Cavern can get you some mileage in a tribal build, and the more recent Chimil, the Inner Sun, assuming you have a way to get it out quickly, also shuts it down, but that's a bit of a big ask...
Genuinely not sure, looking at his list I can't see a reason that he wouldn't play them other than to conceal how explosive his hand is maybe? Kinda backfired after tanking on T1 though which is why it's such a banger read from Nassif.
@@HungryOnPlanehe lost game 2 and 4 specifically by getting blown out from Oxidize on his first artifact play. He probably was trying to protect his hand and hoped if he just dodged Chalice for a turn or two, he'd be able to drop everything all at once.
10:56 its so sad that alot of articles ( even some recent ones, example: modern's announcement ( yeah thats quite a bit old now) you cant find through the current mothership. Even the Wiki site about MTG, like most of the end of sources links to articles are broken
Yeah the Wiki is actually GOATED, they're the reason I even discovered a bunch of the old coverage was still reachable in the fancy internet time machine.
I know they've been done to death but I could really enjoy your presentation on the lightning helix top deck of the century Pat chapins ignite memories or the kibler finkle top eight match of pro tour dark Ascension. One one of my favorite matches from when I first started playing was the Guilloume mirror 2010 worlds finals.
There is some very marginal value of your opponent not knowing what those cards are and potentially playing around something more impactful than Welding Jar + the Jar also doesn't protect against Oxidize so Nassif could think any Viridian Shamans in his hand are going to be much more reliable than they actually are and use Oxidize early. I think Nassif only considers making that play if he has two Chalices as well which isn't very likely.
He lost twice to playing an artifact early, getting it blown up, then not being able to cast other stuff later in the game. Affinity needs it's stuff to A) be on the board and B) not get blown up to work. He was slow rolling his hand to do a huge haymaker t2 or t3, he just had to dodge Chalice for a single turn.
@@artemi7 Makes sense, especially if he had a Myr Enforcer in hand since he'd have just enough to cast it with two citadels, two welding jars and Frogmite. I didn't consider that Oxidize your Welding Jar on T1 was a worthwhile play because I was thinking about how it's used in more recent decks like Scales. But it's essentially a mana source that will often "make" 2+ mana in a single turn.
olivier ruel getting charred and then windmill slam burnt out in a great matchup playing ghost dad vs gruul by craig jones pretty epic, too best deck in the meta, untouchable lifedrainer beatstick at a time when creatures with no effects but good stats were still playable and good
I mean turn 1 chalice seems pretty good against affinity. I think most non pro players would have made the same exact move so I'm not sure we can say it was genius.
meteor shower included XX in its casting cost much earlier, but it was the first card i know of to cost exclusively XX. there's a creature in Torment with an activated ability which includes XX. but the most interesting to me is the Beatdown reprint of Fireball, with a casting cost of XYR, and rules text of "do x damage divided any way you choose among Y+1 targets."
Gabriel Nassif said that he played the challice on 0 because his hand was all mapped out and wouldn't be able to play it on 1 or 2 at any point in the match. It's just lucky that Ben was sandbagging 0 costs. Also according to him it didn't even matter :)
So, i was on a long car ride with two frinds. Friend A asked: what is the best two drop in MTG. I was driving, i said "Storm crow" *shocked silence* " it is a two mana flyer that is a 1/2" evasion with a big butt... Why?" Friend A "i was going yo say Chalice for 1". Friend B "freaking storm crow?, i was going to say Gadduk teeg". Fast-forward to next weekly magic event, friend B is going around with several pages of storm crow explaining how good it is. Few month later Storm Crow is trending on Gatherer. About a year later Storm of crows is printed. All of the memes because my tited ass that had been driving for 4 hours could not come up with a better 2 drop in magic. I am sorry and you are welcome.
I love Chalice, buy in Legacy right now, I think Vexing Bauble is the superior choice right now, mostly because you need cheap answers to kill Psychic Frog.
The list of former pros working or having worked for WotC is quite long. Some of the more visible ones include Forsythe, Buehler and Verhey, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think Erik Lauer, Paul Cheon, Patrick Sullivan, Michael Majors, Gerry Thompson, Dave Humperys, Ben Weitz and Zvi Mowshowitz. There's many more I probably don't even know about and some big ones whose name I can't think of right now, like the former co-host of GAM podcast with Thompson and Majors (Andrew something).
Yeah I cherry picked a few relevant examples for the transition but it's not surprising that being REALLY good at Magic made you half decent at designing things for or around the game.
Why did I have multiple Chalice of the Void on the draw in this matchup?
xddShrug
xdding gottem
You were improvising, didn't test the matchup :D
just good at the game :)
One detail mostly lost to history: When I initially submitted my card proposal for the Invitational, purely out of greed, I submitted a series of seven cards, each costing two mana, each targeting a different casting cost. When I did, Mark took about three seconds to consider the proposal, but (I'm guessing) given the depiction of the player on the cards, he insisted I submit only one. That's when the initially designed Artifact of Doom came into the picture.
This should be pinned ☝️
Thanks for this card Gary! This card was so powerful when it dropped I remember the ripples all around Magic!!!!!
That's such a great detail XD! Thanks for all the work you've done to support our favorite game over the years.
Quite interesting deatil. I remember when I first got to see Chalice when the set list dropped back then and was in awe.
This is so awesome, thank you for commenting. I love when the people in the video stop by to give more details to viewers.
A quick point of fact, the XX cost template was used on Meteor Shower all the way back in Ice Age, but Chalice of the Void was the first artifact to use it as the entire cost as far as I know.
Aladdin's Lamp from Arabian Nights, X = 5 :))
And Recall used it before that in Legends!
I wish I could say I lied for engagement, but the truth is never trust Mark Rosewater.
@@HungryOnPlane Yeah he said Norin was dead on a super old blogatog and here he is in Duskmourn.
@@jamiebruner8463 As fucked as this may sound, "Norin the Wary" might be a title bestowed upon certain individuals like the codename James Bond (007), but IDK
A few years back there was a group who were experimenting with unrestricted Vintage where you could play 4 of every card just to see what that meta would look like. After several iterations of deck construction it was agreed upon that Chalice of the Void was the best card in that hypothetical format. It resulted in every game being determined by who played first and could drop all of their moxen and lotuses, fire off their Ancestral recalls, and then drop a Chalice for 0, 1, and sometimes even 2.
I think this is the first time I've seen the Thanks button on one of your videos. These are incredible stories, thanks for sharing them.
I've had it up for a bit but haven't advertised it yet as I'm mostly making and building stuff.
Appreciate it though, I'm excited to keep making even more!
I LOVE learning about awesome old plays like this! It's cool to see miraculous top decks and players luck out, but what I love even more are the deep dives and thorough explanations into these little but genius plays. There's so much context regarding the format, meta, and match-up that goes into even the smallest decisions at high level play. Videos like this that succinctly summarize them are perfect!
Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites for MTG content. I love learning about what it was like to play in these past pro events. The meta of the day, the fun moments, and nice little clips of old ESPN coverage. It's all great stuff.
Same here man, reminds me a tad of what got me started playing MTG in the first place, (back in Darksteel!)
I randomly bought an issue of inQuest Gamer, and it's cover story was, "What cards would a hypothetical, "Ultimate Core Set Release" feature in it? And it went through each color, lands, and I think Artifacts, and also had a list of the Top 10, "Most money-earning cards in Pro Tour history", which was quite interesting, actually. I know that looking back on it now, it still isn't a typical list of 10 I'd expect (Counterspell was #1, just btw haha).
But yea, the "Blue" cards section of that hypothetical Core Set was maybe what drew me in for keeps, ultimately. That issue spotlighted MTG for me, and gave me a jumping-off point, but once I was playing relooking over those Blue cards and seeing that things like Force of Will existed, and that there was a creature as badass as Morphling around prior made me a fan for life (while obviously Morphling doesn't hold a candle to the top creatures of today, it's still a badass card and I'll always think a card nicknamed "Superman" for all it was capable of doing is rad!
I really like this style of content. It sort of gives a history and context for what lead into a memorable moment.
There are tons of videos detailing the most exciting and flashy moments in the pro tour, but I'm glad you focus on some that have gone under the radar for the most part and are almost forgotten.
That's what originally brought me to your channel - literally because your videos detailed something I hadn't seen before rather than talking about lightning helix for the 10th time.
Appreciate it!
Make no mistake though, one day I'll 100% make the Helix video LOL
Same here! Thanks for making videos like these.
bro do more of these. I love rewatching/rereading old coverage. Hope we have another golden age of comp magic soon.
That's certainly the plan!
Been a bit unintentionally afk but am shooting for a floor of at least 20 videos in 2025 so there's plenty more to come.
@HungryOnPlane hell yeah, love to hear that. Excited to see what moment you pick next to unpack. You've got a good presentation style.
I’d love to see a video about Deathrite Shaman, a card that was so villainized for so long in constructed, was referred to as “the one mana planeswalker,” and now has kinda faded a bit into obscurity.
I run it in pioneer!
Only faded because of bans, if it were unbanned it's reputation would come back
The fact that I won a pre-release while having a pretty subpar pool purely off of the back of defender regenerate trolls and Deathrite Shaman, I knew the card was busted then and there. Seeing it run modern and legacy till its ban wasn’t a surprise. The card is easily one of if not the best one drop of all time. To this day it’s played in vintage as a 4 of!
@@DoctorJango And it _dominated_ Legacy for years and years while it was still legal and has been banned in Pauper the majority/entirety of the format's recognition in any formal way.
It's never been in pauper, never printed at common
Great news everyone! The Wayback Machine has unbroken for the time being and you can now read the text coverage of this match again!
I've linked it in the video description if you want to check it out.
Yes the Archive is back up, which is important for my experiments!
Another great video, and a moment I didn't even remember. I'm loving this channel so much.
Love this kind of content and I know my entire play group does too, keep it up, man. It'll for sure pay off in a big way.
this is my new favourite mtg youtube channel, always get hyped to see one of your videos on my recommendeds
Yo man I gotta say these are some of the most interesting magic history videos I have ever watched. Your pacing and writing are perfect. Keep it up!
Absolutely brutal and then the soul crushing follow up...
Handsome Vintage player in that clip
Came down in the comments to see whether you were here! 4:02
I love finding this being a fan of Magic and was pleasantly surprised to see you talking about it Pastry. One of the best to ever cast one of my favorite games! Keep killing it man.
Loved this PT. Nassif Beats the deck he wanted to dodge, then loses in the finals to the deck he meta'ed for (Big Red).
Yeah I'm sad I didn't have time to really tell out the full story but Kuroda housed everyone this event lol.
Turns out Arc Slogger was kind of a good card and Seething Song is one hell of a Magic card.
Played that Big red/Ponza deck myself as well back then. It really was a force. The slogger gave you so much finishing reach to just body your own deck for like 8 damage. Just had to get through 12-14 damage, and slogger just killshots them. or use an activation or two to insure blockers and threats are kept clear as it keeps slamming in for 4.
I love historical moments in magic history, you have me subbed
Chalice to this day is one of my favorite cards. Got me a top 8 at my first GP
Chalice single handedly won me a GP 😂…..”chalice for one” basically turn 1 every round. Enjoyed the Vid. Love watching old re-runs.
@@Chalice4One Maybe I just don't know but isn't Chalace XX and you need two mana to put into it for one?
@@thelunchlady8276 very good 👍
@@Chalice4One You typed "Turn one every round" How do you get two mana on turn one? Maybe with a Sol Ring?
@@thelunchlady8276 Ancient Tomb?
Always happy to see more quality analysis videos!
In early and god it’s about one of my favourite magic cards that also confused a very young me during a pre-release when I opened it.
LOL I can't imagine being a new player and trying to figure out what this card did.
Interesting to think if the Mythic rarity was around then if they would've made it that level of rarity JUST to stop this exact thing from happening as much.
@@HungryOnPlaneI threw together the deck and showed my dad who won the pre release and he was extremely happy to see that I had free rolled the event for him 😂
I’ve got to imagine they would make it mythic, thought just seeing the double XX mana cost was enough to throw me. Regardless of the card text.
Nice analysis. I haven't watched anything from that event in so long that I had forgotten about it, lol.
To answer your question at the end of the video, the final match of PT Chicago 1999 is one of my favorite tournament matches ever. Talk about an absolutely insane set of games, holy hell.
Oh we'll be getting to Chicago '99 eventually, it's too Great to ignore.
as someone who doesnt even play magic i really enjoy these style of vids (and everything else you have made). you have real skill in setting up, contextualizing, and telling a story about the game. really well done, thank you!
i have 2 suggestions/requests: 1. sometimes i find you are speaking very quickly and i have a tough time catching just what you said - of course this isn't something you need to "fix" but i just want you to hear the feedback that sometimes you're just a bit too rap god. 2. i would appreciate it if you left cards that are relevant to your current point on screen for just a little longer - of course i can just pause the video but i know you are showing them to help support your point and i want to be able to absorb them.
Yeah I used to commentate League of Legends professionally so 'slow down' is a very understandable piece of feedback xD
0:42 - Whoa, what is this implication that Ben Stark needs ANY help to be a laughingstock?......
So my idea is Ancestral Recall, except it costs 1 Phyrexian Blue mana and has Storm.
Technically you can't reprint something functionally identical. They're no rule against printing something strictly better.
Some men just want to see the world burn
Phyerican Ancestral Recall is so busted, you just invented Pot of Greed for MtG, playable in every deck ever lmao
did i miss something here?
sigh yes the reserve list precludes strictly better remakes. half the reserve list is overpowered cards and half the point of it was a commitment to not break the game. of course, they print cards that need banning regularly, but there's a reason why there has yet to be any dual land without downside, and that reason is the reserve list.
@@mofomiko This version has storm also, it pretty much wins the game once it is cast. They are too scared to do anything about the reserve list though.
12:04 is what you are looking for
I miss Extended too, brother.
One hell of a vid. Instant sub
Not a format I play, but Pioneer is basically a new extended.
Well, good news(?):
with wotc moving to a 3-year, 6-sets-per-year, rotation, standard will have about the same cardpool size as extended, with 18+Foundations versus extended's 20.
enjoyed everything up until the end/payoff - not understanding why the chalice for 0 locked ben out of the game? you explained that it killed the 2 0-drops in his hand, but beyond that, what did it do? why was it such a 500 IQ play? why did it lock him out of the whole game if he only had 8 0-drops in his deck?
i think some more explanation here would have gone a long way, as the whole video was building up to this point.
found the info in a comment buried way down the page (ty @thekilla1234). this would have been super valuable to include in the video. gonna paste it here if anyone else is wondering:
Playing land > jar > jar basically puts your entire hand face up. You are basically saying you need at least 4 mana in affinity to do anything. This essentially gives Nassif perfect information. If he destroys either jar he is ahead, and also allows him to play Chalice on 1 comfortably on turn 2 because Stark can't have any other 0s or he would have just played them all since he played the jars.
So there are 2 situations that basically makes this a coin flip for Stark:
1. Play all jars and give your hand away. If Nassif has no way to deal with them, he is miles ahead.
2. Hold the jars and hide information. This turns off Nassif's removal. The only way Nassif can now stop you is the hard read Chalice on 0, which Stark might not have even considered himself.
So he essentially went with the second option because it seems like the play that wins more often, or put another way, he is saying that Nassif is more likely to be able to destroy his jars than prevent him from putting them down turn 2. I would probably agree with him.
If he played the jars and Nassif destroyed one of his jars and he couldn't play the game, I would suspect people would say "why did he play the jars if he didn't do anything with them?". People tend to have hindsight bias questions in these situations rather than comparing the two scenarios.
Affinity is a deck that plays expencive cards with "Affinity for Artifacts" ability that reduces their cost by how many artifacts are in play. A quarter of affinitys deck was 0-cost artifacts used to just increase Affinity count to make his 4 mana 2/2 and 7 mana 4/4 also cost 0. Another quarter was artifact lands, very vulerable to both nonbasic land hate and artifact hate, but very useful as both a mana source and an Affinity count increase. So, in game 5 the Affinity player held a had with mostly 0 cost spells that he wanted to just drop all on the field on turn 2 and slap whatever affinity he daws on top of that. But Chalice at X=0 shuts it all off. Having half of hus resources locked slowed Gabriel's opponent enough to let him get a win
I think this channel has an explanation video of why Affinity decklists were so dominant, go watch that
I should be able to explain it. "Affinity for *blank*" is an ability that reduces a card's cost by 1 for every *blank* you have. Many cards in Ben's deck had Affinity for artifacts, meaning that for every artifact he had in play, that card would cost 1 less. By being made unable to play his 0-cost artifacts, Ben couldn't place any artifacts on the board, meaning he couldn't cast his big affinity cards for a discounted cost.
Normally you could, for example, play a Darksteel Citadel (a land that also counts as an artifact), and any two 0-cost artifacts. This gives you 3 artifacts in play, and 1 colorless mana to work with, allowing you to, for example, cast Frogmite (a 4-cost artifact creature with Affinity for artifacts) for just 1 mana... then you have 4 artifacts in play so you could cast a second Frogmite for free, and so on and so on.
Ben didn't play his 0-cost artifacts immediately for whatever reason and got SEVERELY punished for it.
@@GigaHands He didn't play the 0 mana artifacts because Nassif was running so many Oxidizes, so he wanted to give Nassif no targets when he passed the turn. That's why he dropped the indestructible land turn 1 too and what tipped Nassif off to what hand he was facing.
That's fair, I also could've included more of the commentary from the moment too which does a pretty good job of explaining the general situation but was worried it would bloat the video more.
Always a balance with stuff like this, but I appreciate your thoughtful feedback.
Great video! Looking forward to watching more in the future :) I hope you have a great rest of your day
"First time XX was used in a cost"
Meteor Shower : Am I a joke to you?"
I still stand by the fact that I got betrayed by Maro's own article spoiling Chalice for M25 >.>
Looking forward to more videos. Every one has been awesome
Thanks alovingzombie it means a lot
I used to love reading those old match reports. So good!
Me too!
it's how I actually got better at Magic/learned how the pros built and played their decks.
In response to the end of the video, this is exactly what I'm looking for as a viewer, love this style of video lol
Maravilhoso o vídeo! Muito obrigado por, mais uma vez, mostrar esse momento incrível da história do jogo.
I had to use Google Translate for this one, but thank you!
Wonderful vid!
I think Tier 1 Greater Good deserves a virtual relive.
The 'ol Karsten special? It's a pretty interesting Top 8/Final to be fair, always happy to dive back in!
imagine paying 32 mana for a Chalice during a tournament, permanently shutting down every card
what are you talking about? extended absolutely exists, it's just called standard now. the old standard went the way of the dodo just like block constructed did. i for myself am very happy with how things have developed, as block constructed and the old standard are essentially just a more costly limited event.
Yeah, im going to need more of these. I love this, so much
How scary Affinity was in general cannot be understated. Julien Nuyten became the youngest world champion in 2004 piloting the strongest anti-affinity deck.
Shh you're leaking future videos!
Loved this video you have earned another sub my friend😊
great video as always! A game that i rewatch often that includes ben stark is 2013 Worlds semifinals against Shahar Shenhar. UWR control mirror, great insightful commentary by LSV and an example of a game where, not much happens on the board, but there's a ton happening in their minds. Could be a great topic for a video.
This is a great idea thank you!
Is there any advantage to not playing the 0s on turn 1?
thanks for this slice of Magic history
Fun trip down memory lane:)
What was the motivation behind not playing out the 0 drops on turn 1 ?
he already lost two games to an early oxidize. he needs the jars on board to cast his affinity cards T2.
Gab such a nice guy good to see him win. All I could hear is the Reid duke quote “the genius of Gabriel nassif” that you get to hear on yellowhat’s own channel.
I would love it if you could cover Yuuchi Ichikawa's Golgari Charm play vs Jason Cunningham at Pro Tour M15. There are a lot of famous MTG moments that get brought up whenever people talk about strategy but that one has stuck with me for nearly a decade, and it doesn't get the respect it deserves.
I think the context for that Standard environment also really helps set it up: this was the era when Magic moved from a mostly even balance between spells and creatures to being a board-focused, creature-first kind of game. The power level of Scavenging Ooze in a creature-heavy matchup cannot be understated.
When you think about it, the GW aggro deck Cunningham pilots is really powerful, and is totally a respectable choice for someone who apparently qualified for the Pro Tour via a limited event. Almost everything in the deck matches up well against the usual MTG instant-speed removal spells:
- Experiment One (solid 1-drop that easily grows as you curve out and regenerates)
- Boon Satyr (Undercosted flash threat with late game potential)
- Lodoxon Smiter (undercosted threat that is immune to hand rip)
- Fleecemane Lion (undercosted threat that can become hexproof later)
- Voice of Resurgence (2-mana 2/2 that becomes a giant token if you ever dare kill the Voice or interact on its controller's turn)
- Roar of the Wurm (undercosted flash threat that has minor token synergies)
Where exactly was the misplay? What was Ben trying to do by holding the Welding Jars?
He didn't want to risk his affinity enabling pieces getting Oxidized on Nassif's turn, so he was holding it all to have a big explosive turn when he could abuse the affinity to drop bigger creatures
I really miss this period of Magic. Tooth and Nail was so fun
But why did he keep those in hand? Was he trying to protect them from something? Or no creature so no use?
Not sure what his opening hand was, but my guess is that his turn 1 would have been land, 2 jars, and maybe a 1 drop or thopter that wouldn't do much on its own, but with 2 lands he could dump his whole hand. So he was slow rolling turn 1 in order to not show what he had and to try to bait Nassif into playing a Post turn 1 so he wouldn't have Oxidize.
I could be totally wrong, though.
@@MrMeltJr This is exactly what it is. Playing land > jar > jar basically puts your entire hand face up. You are basically saying you need at least 4 mana in affinity to do anything. This essentially gives Nassif perfect information. If he destroys either jar he is ahead, and also allows him to play Chalice on 1 comfortably on turn 2 because Stark can't have any other 0s or he would have just played them all since he played the jars.
So there are 2 situations that basically makes this a coin flip for Stark:
1. Play all jars and give your hand away. If Nassif has no way to deal with them, he is miles ahead.
2. Hold the jars and hide information. This turns off Nassif's removal. The only way Nassif can now stop you is the hard read Chalice on 0, which Stark might not have even considered himself.
So he essentially went with the second option because it seems like the play that wins more often, or put another way, he is saying that Nassif is more likely to be able to destroy his jars than prevent him from putting them down turn 2. I would probably agree with him.
If he played the jars and Nassif destroyed one of his jars and he couldn't play the game, I would suspect people would say "why did he play the jars if he didn't do anything with them?". People tend to have hindsight bias questions in these situations rather than comparing the two scenarios.
@@thekilla1234 How can it be a coin flip if playing 1 Jar is an option?
Remember, he lost games 2 and 4 to playing an early artifact that got Oxidized, leading to a dead Glimmervoid. He was probably getting gunshy about running out his stuff without having a big followup, and figured if he could dodge Chalice for a turn or two he'd be in the clear.
@@TheMCGamer2012 Because playing 1 jar changes nothing, and is in fact just strictly worse than playing 2 jars. Putting down any number of jars and then doing nothing says that you have no play and need the affinity to play. If you play 1 jar, there are 2 scenarios:
1. You actually did play out everything you could turn 1, which means he doesn't have any 1 drops otherwise he would have cast them using the land. So his hand is lands + 2 mana plays or affinity plays. Either way, getting rid of the jar messes with both of these, because removing the jar makes his future plays more fragile, and removing the jar slows down affinity.
2. He played only 1 jar and kept other 0 mana plays hidden in hand, such as a second jar, in order to make a big play turn 2. This has the exact same outcome as the first scenario, since this is a play that is saying he needs affinity to play, so blowing up the jar slows down any game plan massively.
Therefore, playing 1 jar is just objectively a worse play because it not only puts your hand face up, it puts a jar out to die AND puts your jar in hand dead to chalice on 0 if that's the only thing Nassif has. He will always play his chalice on 0 since passing with an untapped land means there aren't any 1 drops, so chalice would never be dropped on anything other than 0.
If you are going to play any number of jars, you should play 2. Otherwise, play 0 jars. Even if there was a 1 mana spell that destroyed 2 artifacts, you could sacrifice 1 to protect the other. So if you play 1 or 2 jars, the result is that 1 gets destroyed, so the outcome is the same, the only difference is that by playing only 1 jar you open yourself up to getting locked out by chalice, whereas playing 2 jars you don't.
You mention in the video that Extended was your favorite format. Are you aware of Premodern? It is a community run format that uses the cards from 4th to Scourge with its own ban list. Feels pretty similar to Extended right before it was canceled for Modern.
What else was in Ben's hand? What was Nassif thinking that made him arrive at Chalice on 0 being the correct play?
As an 8-cast player, I can totally understand the pain of a turn 1 Chalice for 0.
Damn it hurts
I wonder if any of the various "Can't be countered" cards are good enough to go against a Chalice of the Void deck. Looking at Gatherer Mono-Green looks like it might stand a chance and a Red-Green deck has some good options as well. I guess it really does depend on the format you are playing in and how much you expect to go against counter heavy decks.
Thanks for the video.
Cavern can get you some mileage in a tribal build, and the more recent Chimil, the Inner Sun, assuming you have a way to get it out quickly, also shuts it down, but that's a bit of a big ask...
Why would he not play the welding jars turn 1?
Genuinely not sure, looking at his list I can't see a reason that he wouldn't play them other than to conceal how explosive his hand is maybe? Kinda backfired after tanking on T1 though which is why it's such a banger read from Nassif.
@@HungryOnPlanehe lost game 2 and 4 specifically by getting blown out from Oxidize on his first artifact play. He probably was trying to protect his hand and hoped if he just dodged Chalice for a turn or two, he'd be able to drop everything all at once.
recall also had the xx templating in legends. it was then followed up by a series of cards, and eventually chalice
Seeing all those people back then play without sleeves is wild.
10:56 its so sad that alot of articles ( even some recent ones, example: modern's announcement ( yeah thats quite a bit old now) you cant find through the current mothership.
Even the Wiki site about MTG, like most of the end of sources links to articles are broken
The wiki is still very useful for those legacy links as with the way back machine you’ll be able to read them once again!
Yeah the Wiki is actually GOATED, they're the reason I even discovered a bunch of the old coverage was still reachable in the fancy internet time machine.
I know they've been done to death but I could really enjoy your presentation on the lightning helix top deck of the century Pat chapins ignite memories or the kibler finkle top eight match of pro tour dark Ascension. One one of my favorite matches from when I first started playing was the Guilloume mirror 2010 worlds finals.
Ben Stark losing and getting salty always brightens my day😊
What was he trying to play around by keeping them in hand? It's not like Nassif is going to be able to oblivion ring him on turn 1 anyway
There is some very marginal value of your opponent not knowing what those cards are and potentially playing around something more impactful than Welding Jar + the Jar also doesn't protect against Oxidize so Nassif could think any Viridian Shamans in his hand are going to be much more reliable than they actually are and use Oxidize early. I think Nassif only considers making that play if he has two Chalices as well which isn't very likely.
He lost twice to playing an artifact early, getting it blown up, then not being able to cast other stuff later in the game. Affinity needs it's stuff to A) be on the board and B) not get blown up to work. He was slow rolling his hand to do a huge haymaker t2 or t3, he just had to dodge Chalice for a single turn.
@@artemi7 Makes sense, especially if he had a Myr Enforcer in hand since he'd have just enough to cast it with two citadels, two welding jars and Frogmite. I didn't consider that Oxidize your Welding Jar on T1 was a worthwhile play because I was thinking about how it's used in more recent decks like Scales. But it's essentially a mana source that will often "make" 2+ mana in a single turn.
@@insidious in Affinity, Welding Jar is kind of like a Moxen!
Wasnt chalice used to Stop the Menace of Deaths Shadow Decks also?
Another banger as always
olivier ruel getting charred and then windmill slam burnt out in a great matchup playing ghost dad vs gruul by craig jones pretty epic, too
best deck in the meta, untouchable lifedrainer beatstick at a time when creatures with no effects but good stats were still playable and good
One day we'll cover that absolute banger of a moment.
@@HungryOnPlane
Well since you've done a couple entries in the Block Constructed Pro Tour Hall of Fame, I'll just assume the Alex Hayne video is already being made.
Maybe one day we'll do a good Block Top 8 LOL
The Alex Hayne video isn't currently getting made but it's always getting made in our hearts.
"Made in our hearts"@@HungryOnPlane
I can’t believe I just learned that pastrytime has a mtg channel
Nul rod is the best artifact vs mox
I mean turn 1 chalice seems pretty good against affinity. I think most non pro players would have made the same exact move so I'm not sure we can say it was genius.
That read was absolutely disgusting
Damn OG chalice was truly overpowered
Yeah thankfully neither test version got printed as they were 0_0
I can't tolerate the drop in this video where you explain Mirroden was 20 years ago. I refuse.
You should cover the blunder of attacking with hazoret with two cards in hand
Great video!! Make more like this
the nassif v stark game was sick thanks also i(dn't)k that the chalice was the first xx card. well i might have known but i def forgot
meteor shower included XX in its casting cost much earlier, but it was the first card i know of to cost exclusively XX. there's a creature in Torment with an activated ability which includes XX. but the most interesting to me is the Beatdown reprint of Fireball, with a casting cost of XYR, and rules text of "do x damage divided any way you choose among Y+1 targets."
4:43 I recall that Recall cost XXU and that was printed in legends in 1994
I can't believe Mark Rosewater would lie like that to me ON THE INTERNET.
(But good catch, I would NOT have thought of that lol)
Meteor shower 😢 perks ups for a moment and feels the defeat of being forgotten.
1.x was my favorite format back in the day.
At 6:35 you refer to Modern as an eternal format. It isn't eternal, just non-rotating.
Well met.
Gabriel Nassif said that he played the challice on 0 because his hand was all mapped out and wouldn't be able to play it on 1 or 2 at any point in the match. It's just lucky that Ben was sandbagging 0 costs. Also according to him it didn't even matter :)
So, i was on a long car ride with two frinds. Friend A asked: what is the best two drop in MTG. I was driving, i said "Storm crow" *shocked silence* " it is a two mana flyer that is a 1/2" evasion with a big butt... Why?" Friend A "i was going yo say Chalice for 1". Friend B "freaking storm crow?, i was going to say Gadduk teeg".
Fast-forward to next weekly magic event, friend B is going around with several pages of storm crow explaining how good it is.
Few month later Storm Crow is trending on Gatherer.
About a year later Storm of crows is printed.
All of the memes because my tited ass that had been driving for 4 hours could not come up with a better 2 drop in magic.
I am sorry and you are welcome.
Vintage ? Wasn't that still type 1 back then ?
Mirrodin was just so fun.
Yo what pastrytime has an MTG channel???
I love Chalice, buy in Legacy right now, I think Vexing Bauble is the superior choice right now, mostly because you need cheap answers to kill Psychic Frog.
"… ok… I soul read as a special action and cast chalice for 0"
Good news. Standard is now extended.
Wait this is actually kind of true now...
"This is what happens when the Frenchmen don't surrender." 😂
The current standard rotation is pretty close to extended
4:42 meteor shower would like a word
ah man I miss extended. I played The Rock/Reanimator decks mostly, and then of course Affinity when Mirrodin rolled around
I miss Extended everyday honestly, such a goofy, swingy, silly format where you could play almost whatever you wanted.
@@HungryOnPlane at the time it felt like we playing the “grown up” version of standard.
The list of former pros working or having worked for WotC is quite long. Some of the more visible ones include Forsythe, Buehler and Verhey, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think Erik Lauer, Paul Cheon, Patrick Sullivan, Michael Majors, Gerry Thompson, Dave Humperys, Ben Weitz and Zvi Mowshowitz. There's many more I probably don't even know about and some big ones whose name I can't think of right now, like the former co-host of GAM podcast with Thompson and Majors (Andrew something).
Yeah I cherry picked a few relevant examples for the transition but it's not surprising that being REALLY good at Magic made you half decent at designing things for or around the game.
I miss magic when it was older. Whe it was sweaty nerds in their 30s. I miss snappy, i miss old modern
It is hilarious that Chalice became restricted for doing exactly what it was designed to do.
A card that's only purpose is to counter cards is used by control players. 🤯
Truly mind blowing commentary.
Mirrodin block was a high power disaster. Good times
Someone needs to do an Urza vs Mirrodin block versus video stat.
Started to play mtg around Mirrodin/Darksteel. Almost gave up, the affinity was disgusting and everyfreakinwhere.
So he assumed his opponent has a bunch of 0 drops simply because they weren't played on turn 1? What am I missing?
1:23 lower right corner:
"Why 6E will kill MTG"
😂😂😂
Drink every time you heard Charles