Every multiplayer trade secrets story I've heard went like this: "I play blue, you play blue, screw the other players, we both draw our whole deck and see who wins" and then the game continued to be a 2 hour 1v1 between two blue players.
I can absolutely see two people doing that... but I also can't understand the reasoning. Literally every other format is a 1v1 except commander. Why pick the only 4 player casual format and then conspire to prevent 2 players from playing the game? Even if you *really* want to play with the higher life total, deck size, and commander mechanic, just play a 1v1 with commander rules and don't invite those other 2 people to begin with! It's a physical card game, you can make up house rules all you want as long as the other person is ok with it.
Fun story about Trade Secrets. One day i showed up at our local MTG place in college and someone made a mill deck. He was beating everyone with it. But he wasnt subtle and that player could be easily read. Meanwhile I had assembled a Bear Deck. Basically just green buffs, and basic bears. I decide to challenge the mill player, saying it couldnt be so bad. On turn 2 i play a Basic Bear, 2/2 for 2 no abilities. On his turn he plays Trade Secrets. I pretend to be dumb. ''Wait i can keep going?'' ''yes''. So i start drawing my entire deck basically. At this point my opponent calls in the whole room to see me get wrecked when he mills this oblivious noob into the ground next turn. I draw all my cards but one. Turn 3, i draw the last card of my deck and declare my bear as an attacker. ''you know you're dead next turn right? You lose when you cant draw any cards''. Everyone is laughing. sure they lost to this guy, but im gonna lose in a dumber, more spectacular fashion so everyone is kind of waiting for me to learn how mill works. To which i reply ''There's no next turn.'' I pay 3 mana, play 3 scents of ivy, show my entire hand to my opponent, and hit him for 120 damage. Scent of ivy: reveal as many green card as you want from your hand to your opponent. Target creature gets +x/+x where x is the number of cards revealed that way.
Lol that's the problem with mill decks. If you can establish even a mediocre board state, you're gonna kill em before the mill. First I encountered and lost a million deck, I almost cried. Had only been playing less than a month when I asked some guy at the store to play. He breaks out his hyper tuned lorwyn merfolk deck. He played forced fruition and I just drowned in the draws.
Best story i have was in college way back in early 2000 It was against a rich spoiled kid who was also later confirmed to be a cheater First Game: He plays mono black, open with Dark Ritual + Hypnotic Specter combo I discard Spirit of the Night and follow with a T2 Exhume, he draws exactly Diabolic Edict wich forces me to sacrifice it, Hypnotic continues to put my creatures into the graveyard. T5 i play Living Dead and win Second game: T1: He opens with Dark Ritual + Hypnotic combo (again) I play nothing (not even a land) T2: He plays Batman (Black Knight, get it? get it?) and hits me with Hypnotic, i discard a land because i had no creatures in hand, he mockes me how much of a bad player i am because i "forgot" to play a land in my past turn My turn: Basic Plains + Land Tax (gave him a REALLY big smile) T3: He thinks for a while on what i just did and plays Bad Moon. Attacks with both monsters. I discard another land My turn: I play Circle of protection: Black. He yells like a madman because all his monsters are black creatures and he has no outs to remove PFB. He scoops and leaves cursing how bad my deck was Edit: Land tax allows me to draw 3 basic lands at the start of my turn if the oponnent owns more lands then i do. Since i played nothing on T1, he now has more lands wich activates Land Tax which gives me more then enough plains to fuel Circle of protection: Black It was beatiful, even better when other players later discovered he was a cheater
"A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander. If you’re playing a companion, it must adhere to color identity and singleton rules. While it is not part of the deck, it is effectively a 101st card."
If left as is they will soon find themselves playing in solitude. That being said, these puns are really lacking in subtlety. I hope you have enough endurance to put up with it.
Panoptic vs Isochron was a super mean one though, since Isochron is way faster to whip out and Mystical Tutor your Nexus of Fate, or make infinite mana with Dramatic Reversal.
@@jozefkeresturi2139 Nope, if you have a companion it won’t count as being in the deck. I only learned that after playing with one for over a month when a buddy of mine told me.
I enjoy CGB's content, but this seems to happen frequently - which isn't abnormal for Magic, I've said some wild shit about the rules and just assumed I was correct, but at least I wasn't doing it while being recorded to be quoted forever. For future notes: If you meet the companion requirement, it does not take up a slot in your 99 cards, it is in the "sideboard", which doesn't exist in commander, but the rules just kind of handwaive it for this specific instance.
@@Dessarius It's not "in the sideboard", it's outside the game. The commander rules do allow for cards to be outside the game: there are millions and millions of cards in existence and they're spread all over the globe, so it would be pretty difficult to require that all of them had to be in a game of commander. I think what's confused you is that sideboards are also (like most cards) outside the game. To sum up: being in the sideboard means a card is outside the game, but being outside the game does NOT mean a card is in the sideboard.
@@DessariusSideboards only matter in official tournament play… Tournaments literally have an extra rule that says “outside the game” can only refer to your Sideboard. But in casual play, it can literally be any card you own No hand waiving required. (Though what is required, in the case of Companions, is for you to take it out of your “binder” and show everyone your selected Companion before the game starts. And you can only select one)
I think CGB is off-base for why Lutri is banned. The issue isn't that it would push more decks to be red/blue because of the extra value. The issue is that every deck that is already a red/blue deck has 0 reason to not play Lutri unless they're specifically playing one of the few cards that can break the singleton rule of commander. Red/blue decks having a free 101st card is the issue.
Yeah I think a lot of people don’t understand that with Lutri. Like Lutri is fine, Lutri as companion is a free 101st card for no cost and and 8th card in hand.
Exactly - I think a lot of people are incredibly poor at evaluation so they don't understand just how unfair it is to have a literal card up your sleeve. Doesn't matter if that card isn't used in 2 out of 3 games - you're playing with it up your sleeve so you can slam it down when it really matters at no additional deckbuilding or opportunity cost to you.
Big thing with limited resources vs mana breach is if your removal spell costs 3 mana and you’re stuck on 2 lands with limited resources you just can’t do anything. But against mana breach you can make the choice to not cast anything, wait a turn, then kill mana breach
You can also just save up lands to start casting bigger things, and if you don't have any left in your hand you just use your land drop to replay the one you bounce so you can play one spell a turn.
Yeah lands with enter the battlefield effects getting bounced for benefits doesn't feel as bad as being locked on 2 or 3 lands in a format built on big mana for the most part. Killing mana breach sets you back one land, but the table thanks you for it.
there's also proactive synergy with mana breach in a landfall strategy. Combine it with a bunch of "play an additional land" effects (like, say, Burgeoning) and lands which do stuff on ETB and you functionally break parity. It's significantly harder to break parity on limited resources.
What's the significance of the first part of the card, where the cards have different names??? Does that just say that to use it as a companion you have to play a highlander deck?
Trade Secrets is bad because you turn to one opponent and say "How about we both draw 50 cards each? To make it fair every time you draw 2, I'll only draw 2.". While this is 'fair' between the two players, this is almost insurmountablely unfair for the other two. This basically makes the game a 2-player game between the two that drew cards.
Diplomacy-style cards sounds like they could make for an interesting game for people who are slightly more serious. Maybe not "draw 50", but maybe like "wanna share the cost of casting this spell for half the effect?".
The comment of "you're getting a who's who of the most toxic cards" gave me an idea. After seeing all of these cards in commander, it could be fun to do a palate cleanser of some of the more popular cards in the commander format. Some might still make players kind of salty, but it would be nice for him to see that commander isn't just a game of feelbads lol
They just have to make cEDH and official casual edh bans. Fuck Sol Ring and every other statistically snowbally manarocks, tiers 6-8 are very polluted by staple cards that also ruin the deckbuilding side of it
@@nekrataali the limit of green creatures wont work forever, it takes just something like green griselbrand or iona to break some format at least, hell og jin-gitaxis would likely work as well.
@@Shimatzu95 Given WotC's recent design choices, it's probably a green version of Griselbrand, Iona, and Jin-Gitaxis all combined that will be printed in Modern Horizons 4. Oh, and it will have lifelink and flash just in case.
1:31:30 correction: Thassa's Oracle was printed BEFORE Flash was banned (in January, the ban was in April). In fact it was probably what pushed Flash to be banned, since Thoracle combined with some other creatures in the Hulk combo would present the win. This led to the creation of the "Sushi Hulk" deck, which was helmed by Thrasios and Tymna, and used Flash+Hulk to get out a combo involving Thassa's Oracle and win the game, but which also ran the Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact to win with Thoracle, and had two card advantage engines as commanders, leading to an extremely dominant deck. Other decks were practically unplayable at the time. Additionally it was trivially easy to execute the flash combo on Turn 1, or even Turn 0, and while it's still possible to do that with Thoracle Consult combos, it is significantly harder. The Flash banning pushed Thrasios Tymna decks to being Tier 2 decks in the meta and Tymna Kraum became the new dominant deck, so the meta shift was pretty large.
Another important factor is that the mainline sushi hulk package was actually quite cheap, unlike most cedh decks. You could get a core for 100USD. So it began showing up at _casual_ tables. It was an unmitigated disaster.
@@casteanpreswyn7528 People showing up to pubstomp locals because it was cheap _absolutely_ had an impact. cedh players just proxy, it didn't impact them.
Companion was inspired by a cut idea from the set Onslaught. Both Mark Rosewater and Richard Garfield basically said the game would've died if they printed that ability.
@@sQuibleable I cant post the link, because youtube doesnt allow those normally. I know Mark mentioned it back in 2021 - 2022-ish, but for some reason I cant find the article anywhere. Hopefully it wasnt part of the article archive nuking of 2023.
@@dangottsacker2061 Deck Construction Rules 1. Players choose a legendary creature as the commander for their deck. 2. A card’s color identity is its color plus the color of any mana symbols in the card’s rules text. A card’s color identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects. The cards in a deck may not have any colors in their color identity which are not in the color identity of the deck’s commander. 3. A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander. If you’re playing a companion, it must adhere to color identity and singleton rules. While it is not part of the deck, it is effectively a 101st card. 4. With the exception of basic lands, no two cards in the deck may have the same English name. Some cards (e.g. Relentless Rats) may have rules text that overrides this restriction.
I think the thing about Mana Breach is that in Commander having no lands in hand by mid to late game is not that rare so playing one high cost big impact spell, bounce a land, and replay it is not actually hurting you. Also it's the sort of enchantment that will draw removal from everyone at the table so it is unlikely to last that long.
@@edwardlasso3092 its probably the saltiest card in my tatyova deck, and yes it is useful for landfall, i believe i used it to win once with a summer bloom/mystic sanctuary loop. I'm in blue so im legally obligated to make my opponents lives at least a little bit miserable, right? :)
@@jackveith2416making opponents miserable is optional, i don't usually even run counterspells when in blue. People just assume i have them and play around what doesn't exist. When i am just in white on the other hand 😈.
But important that Hulk was banned for a long time with Flash combo being the justification, they released him and he became a powerhouse as expected with cries for a reban. Thoracle was just the last straw
Love these videos gents. It's so enjoyable watching a really skilled player from another game try and figure out the inner workings of MTG, and he gets SO much right and is so clever with his reasoning that any time he's wrong or slightly off on his logic it hurts my soul. I always feel like I'm rooting for the underdog to figure out the trick and successfully reason his way to victory. Plus even though he's never played MTG you can tell how good Rarran is at card games in general, as just from these videos he's already demonstrating decision making and threat analysis that the vast majority of longtime players I know are not able to do. He would be an absolute menace at a proper high power EDH table! I saw Panoptic and instantly knew the pair was gonna be Isochron haha. Love that stupid card. Can do so many silly things with it. Watching Rarran try to figure out which one was banned was agonizing though haha. The moment Panoptic popped up on screen I was saying "Remember that there are extra turns spells in the game Rarran. This thing loops infinite turns at instant speed! You can hold the mana open to protect it and then tap it on your upkeep to exile an extra turn spell!" out loud haha! Then CGB very "subtly" picks five as the "example" value for X and I was dying. Time Warp Rarran! He's shown you Time Warp before! Please keep making these videos as long as you can, they're so fun, and Rarran you're getting so good at this! Cheering for you my guy :D
If you haven't yet, watch the early videos. My favorite part was watching his logic literally be "if there is a card in the format that does X it's A, but I haven't heard of an effect like that anywhere, so B" And its magic with 30+ years of cards. Of course we have a card that does X. But he's learned so quickly and you can SEE how clever he is.
Something important to note about Sylvan Primordial that you do not mention is what it can destroy. Non-creature permanents. Do you know what is not a creature? *Lands*. Lands are not creatures. You can play it, kill 3 lands and get 3 lands. And then blink it to do it again. I got this card house banned in our second C13 game we played as a play group. We had a rule where we bought pre-cons and added one card per game. I played Roon as the commander, and before game 2, this was the card I added. I played it, blinked it with Roon and then with Conjurors Closet and had killed 3 lands for each of my opponents, and netted 8 (I don't know exactly, I just know I ran out of forests) before the next player had their turn. Precons, remember, not a lot of counter play. Yeah. If I can play that card with any type of counterspell backup, it would be groan city. The optics are much more "feels-bad" with this type of card, because the game doesn't end. It just tilts the board and the opponents.
it's even worse, because it can kill lands *and* the biggest threatening thing. it both destroys your resources and your value. and it's highly blinkable
@@jiaan100 The problem is that you haven't actually won yet when you do it and it could be dozens of turns of you just stopping your opponents from having lands while you try to kill them.
@@jiaan100black, especially, can get nearly any creature it wants onto the battlefield on like turn two or three trivially, and turn one with specific setups. Edit: ... Well, I guess it depends on your definition of "trivial". Persist, Exhume, Victimize, Reanimate, Animate Dead... Actually, that's a lot. So yeah, trivially.
Maybe someone mentionned that, but having a companion does in fact let you have a 101 cards decks. Companion doesnt count toward the 100 card restriction
It basicly meant there was no reason not to run Lutri, even after the nerf. His restriction was "play commander" so no matter how bad, it was a free "3 mana get a card". He could be a 1/1 that did nothing and still see play.
@@colboy1fish Oh I know my point was more that CGB got it wrong in saying that it count in the 100 card restriction. I think the ban is alright but I thought it would still be fine as "banned as companion"
CGB explained the companion mechanic wrong. If you play a companion, your deck is 1 Commander + 99 cards + 1 Companion. It is not included in your 99 deck. Because of the nature of its companion restriction, Every deck that is at least RU would have to run it, or be objectively weaker. It's not like a card like Sol Ring, which DOES have a deck-building cost (being that it's one of the 99 cards in your deck). If you include Sol Ring, that means that there's another card that you don't play in your deck. Lutri is not like that, as it's not included in your regular 99 deck.
FWIW there's an argument that lutri (and companions in general) would be even stronger if they were part of the 99 *but* set aside in your command zone, as they would make your deck denser. Essentially you would literally start with an 8 cards hand, just one of them being an overcosted but guaranteed sorcery (well it's a bit more complicated since you can pay in two installments but you get the point).
@@Bob-nc5hz You're absolutely not wrong, but that ignores the biggest problem with companions and why Lutri absolutely should be banned as one - if they took up a deck slot, then the decision to add them or not is just that - a decision. Since they functionally don't change your deck whatsoever, however, there is no decision to be made. Run it as a companion or be objectively at a disadvantage to somebody who has that option. If they took up a slot then they probably would be better, but they wouldn't be literally completely free from a deckbuilding perspective. Without taking up a slot its just a price/availability check. Do you have the 8th card up your sleeve this game or are you playing at a disadvantage objectively speaking?
@@eewweeppkkthe problem I do have with this logic is why then wouldn't decks in 60 card formats run more cards in their decks to fit more in? And if commander had a 60 card minimum would people still play 99?
@winter945 That doesn't make sense here because the companion exists outside the deck. It isn't a 101st card - it's an 8th card in hand that doesn't take up a deck slot or kill any consistency through draws. Decks run fewer cards for more consistency and companions don't disrupt that consistency, they just provide a free extra option.
Fun fact : Yawgmoth's bargain is MaRo's attempt (back when he was a fresh recruit) at fixing necropotence because he found the wording and delay clunky. He said in an article that it's one of his top mistakes in magic, and was a searing reminder of "sometimes things are this way for a reason, don't try anything before knowing the whole story."
It’s funny how arrogant he is sometimes… Like he was barely able to explain how Companions work, yet he thought he knew better than the Rules Committee 😂
On Flash: Thassa's Oracle was printed before Flash was banned, and is what pushed it to the point for everyone to lobby for the ban. Before Oracle there were several different hulk piles competing for the title of "best", with the only instant speed one requiring you to run 9-10 cards purely to enable it. Thassa's Oracle killed all of that by immediately being the best version by a mile and letting it layer with one of the other top tier combos of the time.
And it's also noteworthy that the current way to use Thoracle requires you to do it at Sorcery speed, and due to the nature of the cards it combo with, the risk is very much there. Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact will kill you if the Thassa's Oracle trigger gets countered. It's a very mana efficient combo in UUB and/or 1UUB, but thats still much more paletable than 1U at instant speed.
@rarran - fun fact: I’m the author of one of the most upvoted posts in /r/EDH posts in the history of the subreddit. That thread, was why we needed to ban flash. The TL;DR, was a lot out of what the video talked about. This was the only time the competitive community felt a card needed to be banned both for power level and play pattern. I will disagree slightly about the comment about the meta. The cEDH meta is WAY more wide open now that flash is banned. There’s mono colored commanders putting up results, the second best deck in the format doesn’t use Thassa’s Oracle at all, there’s partner commanders in the top 10, there’s commander centric decks in the top 10. The game is definitely healthier now that you can’t win with flash. Ironically, albeit a magical Christmas tree scenario: flash let you win on turn 0. Meaning you could win before the first player drew their first card.
@@darthmunck Gemstone Caverns as a a pregame action, pitch either Elvish or Simian Spirit Guide for the 2nd mana, cast flash, let Protean Hulk die, grab Thassa’s Oracle, Spellseeker, Blood Pet, trigger Spellseeker find Demonic Consultation, sac Blood pet, make one black mana, cast demonic consultation, exile your library, trigger Thassa’s Oracle, you win. This is before your first turn.
@@darthmunckSimian Spirit Guide + gemstone caverns. Notably I don’t think you even get priority before the beginning of your upkeep, so it’s still technically a turn 1 play. It just feels like turn 0 because nobody has had a chance to play any permanents yet? Idk
I think something CGB doesn't explain to Rarran that's important to understand is the concept of "exemplary bans" in Commander. The committee has stated that some of their bans are "Don't play cards like this", not just "don't play this". They don't want to have to ban every card Wizards makes that's unfun, the ban list is meant to be more of a guideline on what they want the format to look like with a measured hand. People don't learn that lesson obviously when they're min-maxing, but it helps to understand debates like Sylvan Primordial vs Vorinclex. The committee wants you to go "Oh wait, Vorinclex is the same vibe as Sylvan Primordial and Primeval Titan, this is probably something I shouldn't include."
@19:25 Whenever these command ban videos play, I can only think of the Unglued card "Look At Me, I'm the DCI!" I don't know the context, we can't exact rank them for bans or competition, but you really gotta show Rarran the Un-set cards.
8:34 well… this conversation’s certainly changed a lot now, ‘is banned card that lets me cast banned card more likely to be banned than this other banned card’? 😂😂
As someone who played in the PrimeTime and Sylvan Primordial era I will tell you it’s more egregious than you realize. The blue player casting Bribery almost always went for Titan or Primordial. If you played green one or the other was played in the deck and games became warped around who could steal/copy/blink them the most which gets very old, very fast.
I missed the titan era but I played in the Prophet Era, and I can easily imagine. Blue decks ran Bribery if they had it, and clever impersonator, phantasmal image, phyrexian metamorph just in case opponents ran Prophet.
Sylvan can also hit lands, when it was legal I would flicker it in my Roon deck, blow up 3 lands and get 3 lands each time. As soon as I got a flicker engine everyone would scoop.
That's stiull just an A+B combo that doesn't win the game. You can do far better things, far cheaper. The only reason to be worried about this was that casual players played it, and they don't play mike+trike, heliod+ballista or chain of smog+witherbloom apprentice. Or even just Glacial Chasm+Crucible of Worlds (infinite fog). Stopping Sylvan Prim + blink combos is a case for rule zero, not the ban list.
@Taeerom when you argue power only, it proves you don't understand the banlist. Its not JUST power. It's power + Timmy attractiveness. Sylvan Primordial is a card attractive to Timmirs but warps the game around it's existence in a miserable way.
@@Sivarias When the reasoning in the ban is based on pwoer (the mana differential creates an imbalance in power), the rebuttal shouldn't argue about much more than power. And why should only one way of being timmy be relevant, and not other ways of being a timmy or a johnny? And even then, being a "big dude" timmy opposite of a looping fog effect isn't much fun.
@@Taeerom The other issue with Sylvan was the game devolving into a tug-of-war as people build around it by just taking it. It's insane value on a permanent's ETB and if one person is going to get it, may as well try to do the same and take advantage of it.
@@synckar6380 The problem with this line of reasoning is that, well, it's not at all unique. We can say the exact same thing about Dockside. There are so many creatures now that Prim is no longer "insane value" for its cost. It's good, but not that good. Regardless, cards aren't banned for power level, whatever that means when the argument is "it creates a mana differential".
Fun fact! Mushroom clouds aren't actually exclusive to nukes, any sufficiently big explosion will create one. It's just how that much smoke and dust ends up traveling up the atmosphere. There was a mushroom cloud in Britain once when an entire ammo depot exploded. So it follows that a sufficiently big magic explosion could actually cause a mushroom cloud.
I have never seen Mana Breach played, and so I think that's why it misses high spots. Most people don't want to deal with it either, so they don't build around it and play it in their decks.
Mana breach is not nearly as bad as people thing. Because it does not stop you from using removal. And if you only play one card a turn then you don't actually go down on mana. Plus many decks have a lot of mana rocks so almost all non-green decks have cards to break parity
yea a big advantage is that most removals can actually be played while limited resourced in a 4 player format can keep the manapool low enough to make removal difficult (possible with non-land mana of course but that is a factor that makes limited resources a lot more annoying potentially)
The specific reason for the companion tax was Lurrus in Vintage. It was their first ever actual ban in Vintage for power level. Normally they just restrict cards to 1 copy in Vintage, but as Lurrus decks only played a single copy in the sideboard for companion, restricting it would have done nothing.
"Well ackhshully..." They've banned cards for power reasons in Vintage, it's just been a really long time. Shahrazad and the ante cards are all banned for power level reasons. Shahrazad because you can win game one, then just go to time by making subgames within subgames. Ante cards all have one line of text on them that make them busted: "Remove CARDNAME from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." Since you're not playing for ante in tournaments, you would put all 9 ante cards in your deck as four-ofs, turning your 60 card deck into a 24 card deck. That being said, pre-errata Lurrus is probably the strongest card printed since Arabian Nights or Unlimited. It's at least on-par with Tolarian Academy, Tinker, Yawgmoth's Will, Necropotence, Mana Drain, Jace the Mind Sculptor, and Mishra's Workshop. The ability to go turn one Black Lotus/Lion's Eye Diamond -> Lurrus -> replay Lotus/LED -> do something stupid often means you start the game with a free 3/2 with lifelink and essentially Guilded Lotus. It gets worse if you have moxen, Sol Ring, or Mana Crypt to cast even more spells on turn one.
@@seandun7083 They banned Lurrus until the rules change was in place because they had no other option. Any other format they could just ban companions that were too good, but Vintage had to fundamentally break its own rules to address the problem. So Vintage, more than any other format needed the rules change. Some of the impetus was very likely that they didn't want to ban a headlining mechanic out of every format entirely, but I don't know if that would have quite prompted something as drastic as changing the rules as written on a card. They likely would have gone about banning key pieces for the decks using companions to try and stem their power level.
"Nukes are cannon to Magic" Rarran 2024. Oh, my sweet summer child, if only you knew. Magic has probably over a hundred books making up Part of the lore. We don't just have nukes - we have variations on nukes.
Yawgmoth's Bargain is hilarious because it was the Wizards R&D Team's attempt to create a new version of Necropotence that wasn't broken. Narrator: it was broken as hell. When Isochron Scepter was printed and introduced to Standard, it was expected to be one of the most powerful cards in the format. The set Scepter is from? Mirrodin. LOL. Ravager Affinity player: "nice Scepter set to Mana Leak/Naturalize/Shatter. Kill you on Turn 3."
I think Rarran misunderstood the last line of Vorinclex. I think he thought the lands dont untap EVER instead of having to wait an extra turn to untap them.
The trade secrets and sphinx pairing was actually really funny to me. I had a game where two players had sphinx and they colluded with each other so they both drew like 50 cards lol. It very much felt like trade secrets
People might be confusing partner commanders (or backgrounds) with companions. The prior means you have 2 cards in the command zone and a 98 card deck. Companions exist in exile as a 101st card at the start of the game.
Even if Lutri was a vanilla creature (except for the companion ability) it would still be banworthy. Regardless of how powerful it is, it just doesn't feel right for a specific color combination to automatically start with an extra 3/2 that they can cast purely by virtue of being those colors, when the other color combinations don't have an equivalent.
Not in the slightest, having to pay 3 to put it into your hand and then another 3 for a simple 3/2 would not be worth the include at all, its not card advantage its a mana sink trap at that point, if you have nothing else to do with 3 mana then to put a 3/2 into your hand with no ability you have built a bad deck.
@@samanderson6488 It definitely wouldn't be that good, but it would still be worth banning simply because it feels weird for almost every single Izzet Commander deck to automatically get an extra 3/2 in their companion zone, regardless of the contents of the deck, while the other color combinations don't have something like that.
@olvynchuru1663 just because one color combo gets an arbitrary bad thing doesn't mean it's ban worthy, I would argue that with the companion change he should be unbanned as is. Paying 3 mana to get a spell copier that you have to then pay 3 mana to use isn't great. Pre companion change it made sense. If you put him in your hand you either wasted a 3 mana play, or are setting up for something bigger. This is telegraphed and easy to stop at that point.
@olvynchuru1663 the only real reason they have for banning him is he would be an auto include in any izzet deck, but the same goes for the common rocks you run in any izzet deck too. So it really doesn't give you any advantage and therefore isn't an amazing ban anymore.
@@samanderson6488 There's DEFINITELY going to be times where you have 3 mana to spare and nothing to spend it on. Letting any deck that runs UR have a literally free extra card is pretty busted even if the expected value isn't utterly game ending by itself. It's a FREE card, mana rocks take up space in the 99 when Lutri does not. The only time you won't take Lutri is if you have one of the Relentless Rats-like cards, and that's such a niche thing that it's barely worth even considering.
Its amazing how he talks about how good a card is, how it should be the one banned, then swaps to the other card last second as his choice. He has a habit of screwing himself out of a correct answer LOL
Some notes: If playing optimally, any deck including the colors red and blue should have a Lutri, as it isn't part of the 100. The saltiest card list is also the cards people play against the most, so some one sided strong cards end up there, where as these really disgusting cards like Mana Breach, many people haven't even seen.
Salty cards are mostly strong cards that see a lot of play like Rhystic study or cards that see little play but are really staxy like stasis or mass land destruction. Mana breach falls more in the second category but is not as bad as many of the other stax pieces.
The thing with Vorinclex is that if you have instant speed interaction you don't even need to bite the bullet. Just tap for mana while Vorinclex is on the stack and kill it after it resolves before the phase changes and you lose floating mana.
@@jacobisbell9388 Yeah, that is more obvious, but depends what color you are playing. Many of my decks don't have many mana rocks because they are green or white or even my chandra deck mostly ramps other ways.
Not gonna lie, I've been checking for this video ever since Rarran mentioned it during his Bloomburrow box opening. it didn't disappoint - great content. Do all the banned lists - Modern, Legacy. Is it restricted in Vintage? Banned in Pauper? As long as he doesn't cheat and study the lists, it should be good content. With some prep, you can probably knock out a few videos in a couple hours.
As of now, Companion doesn’t actually reduce the size of your deck (though that would make sense.) it is instead your 101st card(which makes no sense but that’s what they decided fsr.)
This is because in 60 card formats companions take up a spot in your side board as opposed to your main deck, it would be very strange for a side boarded card to also count as a card in your main deck. Most notably this would make yorion's comapnion requirement 1 card less as it would count itself
@@dreamsalongthepath7377 Wait... What about for cards that have those "graft" mechanics (i've only seen them played digital so wasn't sure. But Wouldn't the card they combine into be in sideboard like in yugioh?
@@ghostkill221You’re thinking of meld. The melded card doesn’t actually exist anywhere, at least, not in one piece. It’s on the back of the two cards you melded into it. Notably, if you use an effect that exiles the creature and returns it to the battlefield, you get the two unmelded front halves.
actually so good they banned lutri before the card came out - almost every player especially in cedh would have gotten this card since a free copy/counterspell would be auto include. The price would have been high only for it to then get banned a week later or so. I remember to highly appretiate this move to not even make me think about buying this.
I remember the times when Sylvan Primordial was legal. It was always game warping: every Clone became Sylvan Primordial and every player's reanimation spells targeted it after it died. As soon as it hit the battlefield, the effect got repeated every turn for the rest of the game.
It's also important to note for Lutri that the social nature of Commander means if you ask a friendly table if it's okay to run it in the 99 not as a companion, most people will say "sure".
@@luscarora703 What are you talking about? Companions aren't included in your 99. If you're playing with a companion, you have 1 Commander + 99 cards + 1 Companion. Your deck size isn't reduced in any circumstances.
@@Registeel1234jack is saying that it not counting towards the 100 cards is an upside Lucas is saying there isn’t a circumstance where you would want it to not count towards the 100 cards so it is a downside if it doesn’t count
@@luscarora703 But it is in those 1%. The absence of an upside is not a downside - Lutri as a companion literally has no downside because you either have it up your sleeve or you don't, and you deck is functionally identical in either case.
Well today this video is a bit outdated because jewelled lotus is banned now. Also the compagnion isn't in your deck it's an EXTRA card so you have a 101 deck (1 being the commander and the other the compagnion) : "Although the Commander variant does not use a sideboard, a companion is not counted as one of the deck's 100 cards". A compagnion is a card that is in the "sideboard" in a way so because commander doesn't have a "sideboard" the compagnion zone IS the commander "sideboard" so not in the deck.
Rarran nodding along saying 'that makes sense' about lutri's ban justification without even understanding it has nothing to do with the card and only the companion restriction lol
Also, limited resources only stops players from PLAYING lands, so say a green/white deck can now rampant into harrow into, etc etc etc and blast out big spells while everyone else is locked at 2-3 lands and maybe an artifact.
He had been told the chaos orb story in an earlier video on this subject which is why he made that joke. He has also been shown the joke card "Chaos Confetti". He just happened to completely forget WHY chaos orb was banned. It forces all players to take up 2-3x the usual board space.
@@osmium6832 Dexterity cards had tons of logistical problems to using. All sorts of house rules/rulings about 1 when and how people could subsequently move their cards once a player cast one and/or before activating, 2 the physical questions of if the card flipped or just spun or half-flipped+flipped-back and 3 what counts as touching after it lands. You basically need a a multi-camera system and judge watching the game to use them successfully.
I love how with lutri rarran made the classic math mistake, he was wrong in how he reached the answer but right in the answer 😂😅 it put a big smile on my face
Other people have mentioned it, but I'll be the 101st: Companions don't count against deck limit like partners or backgrounds do. Without a companion, you have commander + 99 (or 2 commanders + 98) for 100 total. With a companion, you have commander + 99 (or 2 commanders + 98) + companion, for 101 total. Which makes Lutri even more bannable -- it doesn't even eat up a slot in your deck. You can build the deck out exactly like you want, all 99 cards, and then just slap a literally free Lutri on top of it and call it a day, with the restriction of "be playing Izzet or any 3+ color combo that includeds UR".
Every multiplayer trade secrets story I've heard went like this: "I play blue, you play blue, screw the other players, we both draw our whole deck and see who wins" and then the game continued to be a 2 hour 1v1 between two blue players.
I can absolutely see two people doing that... but I also can't understand the reasoning. Literally every other format is a 1v1 except commander. Why pick the only 4 player casual format and then conspire to prevent 2 players from playing the game? Even if you *really* want to play with the higher life total, deck size, and commander mechanic, just play a 1v1 with commander rules and don't invite those other 2 people to begin with! It's a physical card game, you can make up house rules all you want as long as the other person is ok with it.
@@osmium6832 First and Second place out of two players feels worse than First and Second place out of four players.
This is the way.
This is why Forgetful Fish is a format people!
Blue supremacy
Fun story about Trade Secrets. One day i showed up at our local MTG place in college and someone made a mill deck. He was beating everyone with it. But he wasnt subtle and that player could be easily read. Meanwhile I had assembled a Bear Deck. Basically just green buffs, and basic bears. I decide to challenge the mill player, saying it couldnt be so bad. On turn 2 i play a Basic Bear, 2/2 for 2 no abilities. On his turn he plays Trade Secrets. I pretend to be dumb. ''Wait i can keep going?'' ''yes''. So i start drawing my entire deck basically. At this point my opponent calls in the whole room to see me get wrecked when he mills this oblivious noob into the ground next turn. I draw all my cards but one.
Turn 3, i draw the last card of my deck and declare my bear as an attacker. ''you know you're dead next turn right? You lose when you cant draw any cards''. Everyone is laughing. sure they lost to this guy, but im gonna lose in a dumber, more spectacular fashion so everyone is kind of waiting for me to learn how mill works. To which i reply ''There's no next turn.'' I pay 3 mana, play 3 scents of ivy, show my entire hand to my opponent, and hit him for 120 damage.
Scent of ivy: reveal as many green card as you want from your hand to your opponent. Target creature gets +x/+x where x is the number of cards revealed that way.
I freaking love everything about this story
Lol that's the problem with mill decks. If you can establish even a mediocre board state, you're gonna kill em before the mill.
First I encountered and lost a million deck, I almost cried. Had only been playing less than a month when I asked some guy at the store to play. He breaks out his hyper tuned lorwyn merfolk deck.
He played forced fruition and I just drowned in the draws.
It was an Ayula deck??
Best story i have was in college way back in early 2000
It was against a rich spoiled kid who was also later confirmed to be a cheater
First Game:
He plays mono black, open with Dark Ritual + Hypnotic Specter combo
I discard Spirit of the Night and follow with a T2 Exhume, he draws exactly Diabolic Edict wich forces me to sacrifice it, Hypnotic continues to put my creatures into the graveyard.
T5 i play Living Dead and win
Second game:
T1: He opens with Dark Ritual + Hypnotic combo (again)
I play nothing (not even a land)
T2: He plays Batman (Black Knight, get it? get it?) and hits me with Hypnotic, i discard a land because i had no creatures in hand, he mockes me how much of a bad player i am because i "forgot" to play a land in my past turn
My turn: Basic Plains + Land Tax (gave him a REALLY big smile)
T3: He thinks for a while on what i just did and plays Bad Moon. Attacks with both monsters. I discard another land
My turn: I play Circle of protection: Black.
He yells like a madman because all his monsters are black creatures and he has no outs to remove PFB. He scoops and leaves cursing how bad my deck was
Edit: Land tax allows me to draw 3 basic lands at the start of my turn if the oponnent owns more lands then i do. Since i played nothing on T1, he now has more lands wich activates Land Tax which gives me more then enough plains to fuel Circle of protection: Black
It was beatiful, even better when other players later discovered he was a cheater
He should have realized something was wrong when you purposely elected to draw your entire deck turn 2...
To quote the Gatherer comment: “It must flip like a coin and not like a Frisbee.” (2004-10-04)
"A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander. If you’re playing a companion, it must adhere to color identity and singleton rules. While it is not part of the deck, it is effectively a 101st card."
Rarran's (not unreasonable) assumption that "Yawgmoth" refers to a type of moth and not someone's name is pretty funny
Yeah, that kinda broke my brain, thinking of Yawgmoth as an actual moth
How is it reasonable?
Yawgmoth and Yawg moth are not the same words
@@HaloNeInTheDark27 you mean like blinkmoths?
Sundering Titan is "Dear Sir/Madam"
Global Ruin is "To whom it may concern"
I'd say having "global" in the name firmly places it in the "@everyone" category.
To whom it WILL concern
@@GumshoeClassic Absolutely this, except it's more like finding out on the news why your servers are down, because Crowdstrike things...
"You're doing WHAT with your goblin welder?"
"Modern players are FURIOUS about that!" Actually CGB, they can't be, Fury is banned
Underrated comment
Modern players are in constant grieving.
If left as is they will soon find themselves playing in solitude. That being said, these puns are really lacking in subtlety. I hope you have enough endurance to put up with it.
@@bigbrainenergyguy aight, Imma mulldrift outta here
@@wickederebus i dont have enough endurance to keep on taking theese jokes
You’re so clever with these pairings, they’re so mean. Bravo, sir. The moment I saw Fastbond I knew you were doing it right.
That was a very easy one though
Panoptic vs Isochron was a super mean one though, since Isochron is way faster to whip out and Mystical Tutor your Nexus of Fate, or make infinite mana with Dramatic Reversal.
When do we tell him companions aren't a part of the 100 card deck
About 4 minutes before you 😂
They are part of the 100. What are you talking about?
@@dangottsacker2061 if you play a companion as a companion and not in the maindeck, it will not count towards the total 100 maindeck+commander(s)
@@alexanderficken9354 Wait I thought It was 98 cards + commander + companion.
@@jozefkeresturi2139 Nope, if you have a companion it won’t count as being in the deck. I only learned that after playing with one for over a month when a buddy of mine told me.
3:47 Rarrararan: "Is that an otter?"
Me: "Oh, this must be Lutri!"
Same for me 😂
Threeses
CGB seeing the 101st card comment about Lutri and not even slightly pausing before boldly declaring the RC wrong is hilarious
Man could not fathom being wrong
Peak Blue player behavior
I enjoy CGB's content, but this seems to happen frequently - which isn't abnormal for Magic, I've said some wild shit about the rules and just assumed I was correct, but at least I wasn't doing it while being recorded to be quoted forever.
For future notes: If you meet the companion requirement, it does not take up a slot in your 99 cards, it is in the "sideboard", which doesn't exist in commander, but the rules just kind of handwaive it for this specific instance.
@@Dessarius It's not "in the sideboard", it's outside the game. The commander rules do allow for cards to be outside the game: there are millions and millions of cards in existence and they're spread all over the globe, so it would be pretty difficult to require that all of them had to be in a game of commander.
I think what's confused you is that sideboards are also (like most cards) outside the game. To sum up: being in the sideboard means a card is outside the game, but being outside the game does NOT mean a card is in the sideboard.
@@DessariusSideboards only matter in official tournament play…
Tournaments literally have an extra rule that says “outside the game” can only refer to your Sideboard. But in casual play, it can literally be any card you own
No hand waiving required. (Though what is required, in the case of Companions, is for you to take it out of your “binder” and show everyone your selected Companion before the game starts. And you can only select one)
I think CGB is off-base for why Lutri is banned. The issue isn't that it would push more decks to be red/blue because of the extra value. The issue is that every deck that is already a red/blue deck has 0 reason to not play Lutri unless they're specifically playing one of the few cards that can break the singleton rule of commander. Red/blue decks having a free 101st card is the issue.
Yeah, you could say that it is more of an argument whether to play sol ring or not than to add lutri, since sol ring costs a slot in your deck.
Yeah I think a lot of people don’t understand that with Lutri. Like Lutri is fine, Lutri as companion is a free 101st card for no cost and and 8th card in hand.
Exactly - I think a lot of people are incredibly poor at evaluation so they don't understand just how unfair it is to have a literal card up your sleeve. Doesn't matter if that card isn't used in 2 out of 3 games - you're playing with it up your sleeve so you can slam it down when it really matters at no additional deckbuilding or opportunity cost to you.
But that's what he said
@@yoyoguy1st Lutri would be your 9th or 10th card in hand.
Big thing with limited resources vs mana breach is if your removal spell costs 3 mana and you’re stuck on 2 lands with limited resources you just can’t do anything. But against mana breach you can make the choice to not cast anything, wait a turn, then kill mana breach
You can also just save up lands to start casting bigger things, and if you don't have any left in your hand you just use your land drop to replay the one you bounce so you can play one spell a turn.
@someguy1ification and possibly get a really nice effect from it coming into play... "oh, no, guess I'll just scry/surveil again".
Yeah lands with enter the battlefield effects getting bounced for benefits doesn't feel as bad as being locked on 2 or 3 lands in a format built on big mana for the most part. Killing mana breach sets you back one land, but the table thanks you for it.
@@dark_rit it's relay nice, to combo mana breach with glacial chasm, you never need to sac all your mana, for total combat immunity :D
there's also proactive synergy with mana breach in a landfall strategy. Combine it with a bunch of "play an additional land" effects (like, say, Burgeoning) and lands which do stuff on ETB and you functionally break parity. It's significantly harder to break parity on limited resources.
for the record, companion does not count towards your deck size, so it WOULD be a 101st card.
What's the significance of the first part of the card, where the cards have different names??? Does that just say that to use it as a companion you have to play a highlander deck?
@@DD-ym3nkcompanions all haveva 'restriction' on deckbuilding
@@DD-ym3nk correct. other deckbuilding requirements you might see would be like "all cards in the deck have 2 or less mana value"
@@DD-ym3nk Yes, that is what that means
U7?7???
Trade Secrets is bad because you turn to one opponent and say "How about we both draw 50 cards each? To make it fair every time you draw 2, I'll only draw 2.". While this is 'fair' between the two players, this is almost insurmountablely unfair for the other two. This basically makes the game a 2-player game between the two that drew cards.
yeah its way more about the collusion aspect than power between it and the sphinx for sure
softttttttttttt
Diplomacy-style cards sounds like they could make for an interesting game for people who are slightly more serious. Maybe not "draw 50", but maybe like "wanna share the cost of casting this spell for half the effect?".
@@monsterwub9635 banning a 3 mana card that reads "2 opponents lose the game" isn't soft LMAO
@@dectilonthat’s a mechanic, from battlebond. It’s called Assist
The comment of "you're getting a who's who of the most toxic cards" gave me an idea. After seeing all of these cards in commander, it could be fun to do a palate cleanser of some of the more popular cards in the commander format. Some might still make players kind of salty, but it would be nice for him to see that commander isn't just a game of feelbads lol
That's an amazing idea! Use EDHrec to compare popularity, and let Rarran try a completely ftesh game. I want to see this.
Idk what format you've been playing but commander is miserably sweaty in my meta
They just have to make cEDH and official casual edh bans. Fuck Sol Ring and every other statistically snowbally manarocks, tiers 6-8 are very polluted by staple cards that also ruin the deckbuilding side of it
@michaelcollins4534 that seems like a problem of you and your friends being miserably sweaty and not the format.
@@casteanpreswyn7528 Was gonna say, pretty sure we're playing the same format lol.
I love the comparison between Natural Order and Tinker. It's one that you think should be close, but god it isn't at all.
Honestly, considering how much power-focus has shifted to creatures, i belive its just a matter of time untill they are equal or maybe even reversed.
@@Shimatzu95 They'd have to print something really stupid like Bolas's Citadel or Time Vault on a body, so you're probably right.
@@nekrataali the limit of green creatures wont work forever, it takes just something like green griselbrand or iona to break some format at least, hell og jin-gitaxis would likely work as well.
@@Shimatzu95 Given WotC's recent design choices, it's probably a green version of Griselbrand, Iona, and Jin-Gitaxis all combined that will be printed in Modern Horizons 4. Oh, and it will have lifelink and flash just in case.
Once it was Yorion, then Jin Gitaxis, now it’s Mesa Falcon
Jin Get his ass
I’ve been calling him “Jin Get his ass” ever since Rarran named it
Am I Benjamin Buttoning? That order hurts my brain
1:31:30 correction: Thassa's Oracle was printed BEFORE Flash was banned (in January, the ban was in April). In fact it was probably what pushed Flash to be banned, since Thoracle combined with some other creatures in the Hulk combo would present the win. This led to the creation of the "Sushi Hulk" deck, which was helmed by Thrasios and Tymna, and used Flash+Hulk to get out a combo involving Thassa's Oracle and win the game, but which also ran the Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact to win with Thoracle, and had two card advantage engines as commanders, leading to an extremely dominant deck. Other decks were practically unplayable at the time. Additionally it was trivially easy to execute the flash combo on Turn 1, or even Turn 0, and while it's still possible to do that with Thoracle Consult combos, it is significantly harder. The Flash banning pushed Thrasios Tymna decks to being Tier 2 decks in the meta and Tymna Kraum became the new dominant deck, so the meta shift was pretty large.
Another important thing to note is Protean Hulk was previously on the ban list, and was only unbanned a few months before Oracle
@@Arrcu99 No it wasn't? It was let off *years* earlier, in 2017.
Another important factor is that the mainline sushi hulk package was actually quite cheap, unlike most cedh decks. You could get a core for 100USD. So it began showing up at _casual_ tables. It was an unmitigated disaster.
@najawin8348 it being cheap, monetarily, had no bearing on the banning and is/was in fact a good thing.
@@casteanpreswyn7528 People showing up to pubstomp locals because it was cheap _absolutely_ had an impact. cedh players just proxy, it didn't impact them.
Companion was inspired by a cut idea from the set Onslaught. Both Mark Rosewater and Richard Garfield basically said the game would've died if they printed that ability.
Companion is just "hey you know those formats you play to get away from commander? What if they were commander too?"
Out of curiosity is there an article that explanada further on that original idea?
so, what you're saying is they could have made the commander format without even knowing it.
@@dmaster1213 No actually, it was more like companion, where if you met the deck restrictions, you got to start up to 4 extra cards in hand.
@@sQuibleable I cant post the link, because youtube doesnt allow those normally. I know Mark mentioned it back in 2021 - 2022-ish, but for some reason I cant find the article anywhere. Hopefully it wasnt part of the article archive nuking of 2023.
The companion is the 101st card, so literally free
True, although free in this case is (marginally) weaker than the alternative. Smaller decks are more consistent.
@@brennanclement8582No. the companion starts outside your deck. So it doesnt impact consistency
Wrong. It's included in the 100.
@@dangottsacker2061
Deck Construction Rules
1. Players choose a legendary creature as the commander for their deck.
2. A card’s color identity is its color plus the color of any mana symbols in the card’s rules text. A card’s color identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects. The cards in a deck may not have any colors in their color identity which are not in the color identity of the deck’s commander.
3. A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander. If you’re playing a companion, it must adhere to color identity and singleton rules. While it is not part of the deck, it is effectively a 101st card.
4. With the exception of basic lands, no two cards in the deck may have the same English name. Some cards (e.g. Relentless Rats) may have rules text that overrides this restriction.
@@dangottsacker2061oh no it isn’t mate, it’s outside the game meaning not in the 99
I think the thing about Mana Breach is that in Commander having no lands in hand by mid to late game is not that rare so playing one high cost big impact spell, bounce a land, and replay it is not actually hurting you. Also it's the sort of enchantment that will draw removal from everyone at the table so it is unlikely to last that long.
I went infinite with an opponents man breach once, lol
Not to mention, some decks want lands back in hand to trigger their landfall effects.
@@edwardlasso3092 its probably the saltiest card in my tatyova deck, and yes it is useful for landfall, i believe i used it to win once with a summer bloom/mystic sanctuary loop. I'm in blue so im legally obligated to make my opponents lives at least a little bit miserable, right? :)
@@jackveith2416making opponents miserable is optional, i don't usually even run counterspells when in blue. People just assume i have them and play around what doesn't exist. When i am just in white on the other hand 😈.
@@Shimatzu95 Bring on the laps of certainty and mana tithe lol
notably flash was actually banned after thoracle was printed, the protean hulk piles had incorporated thoracle as well
But important that Hulk was banned for a long time with Flash combo being the justification, they released him and he became a powerhouse as expected with cries for a reban. Thoracle was just the last straw
This comment
@@marpj6138 While thoracle made it better it was the fact that it was a turn 0 win con to if they didnt have force the game was over before turn 1
Love these videos gents. It's so enjoyable watching a really skilled player from another game try and figure out the inner workings of MTG, and he gets SO much right and is so clever with his reasoning that any time he's wrong or slightly off on his logic it hurts my soul. I always feel like I'm rooting for the underdog to figure out the trick and successfully reason his way to victory. Plus even though he's never played MTG you can tell how good Rarran is at card games in general, as just from these videos he's already demonstrating decision making and threat analysis that the vast majority of longtime players I know are not able to do. He would be an absolute menace at a proper high power EDH table!
I saw Panoptic and instantly knew the pair was gonna be Isochron haha. Love that stupid card. Can do so many silly things with it. Watching Rarran try to figure out which one was banned was agonizing though haha. The moment Panoptic popped up on screen I was saying "Remember that there are extra turns spells in the game Rarran. This thing loops infinite turns at instant speed! You can hold the mana open to protect it and then tap it on your upkeep to exile an extra turn spell!" out loud haha! Then CGB very "subtly" picks five as the "example" value for X and I was dying. Time Warp Rarran! He's shown you Time Warp before!
Please keep making these videos as long as you can, they're so fun, and Rarran you're getting so good at this! Cheering for you my guy :D
Thanks for the love, these videos have been my favorites too
@@covertgoblue
If you haven't yet, watch the early videos.
My favorite part was watching his logic literally be "if there is a card in the format that does X it's A, but I haven't heard of an effect like that anywhere, so B"
And its magic with 30+ years of cards. Of course we have a card that does X. But he's learned so quickly and you can SEE how clever he is.
Something important to note about Sylvan Primordial that you do not mention is what it can destroy. Non-creature permanents. Do you know what is not a creature?
*Lands*. Lands are not creatures. You can play it, kill 3 lands and get 3 lands. And then blink it to do it again.
I got this card house banned in our second C13 game we played as a play group.
We had a rule where we bought pre-cons and added one card per game.
I played Roon as the commander, and before game 2, this was the card I added. I played it, blinked it with Roon and then with Conjurors Closet and had killed 3 lands for each of my opponents, and netted 8 (I don't know exactly, I just know I ran out of forests) before the next player had their turn. Precons, remember, not a lot of counter play.
Yeah. If I can play that card with any type of counterspell backup, it would be groan city. The optics are much more "feels-bad" with this type of card, because the game doesn't end. It just tilts the board and the opponents.
it's even worse, because it can kill lands *and* the biggest threatening thing. it both destroys your resources and your value. and it's highly blinkable
If you can get a 7 mana creature in play and blink it a bunch, you deserve to win. Btw unban primeval titan
@@jiaan100 The problem is that you haven't actually won yet when you do it and it could be dozens of turns of you just stopping your opponents from having lands while you try to kill them.
@@jiaan100 Defense of the Heart proves otherwise.
@@jiaan100black, especially, can get nearly any creature it wants onto the battlefield on like turn two or three trivially, and turn one with specific setups.
Edit: ... Well, I guess it depends on your definition of "trivial". Persist, Exhume, Victimize, Reanimate, Animate Dead...
Actually, that's a lot. So yeah, trivially.
Maybe someone mentionned that, but having a companion does in fact let you have a 101 cards decks. Companion doesnt count toward the 100 card restriction
Correct, and the reason why this is true is that companion acts from outside the game entirely
It basicly meant there was no reason not to run Lutri, even after the nerf. His restriction was "play commander" so no matter how bad, it was a free "3 mana get a card". He could be a 1/1 that did nothing and still see play.
@@colboy1fish Oh I know my point was more that CGB got it wrong in saying that it count in the 100 card restriction. I think the ban is alright but I thought it would still be fine as "banned as companion"
CGB explained the companion mechanic wrong. If you play a companion, your deck is 1 Commander + 99 cards + 1 Companion. It is not included in your 99 deck.
Because of the nature of its companion restriction, Every deck that is at least RU would have to run it, or be objectively weaker. It's not like a card like Sol Ring, which DOES have a deck-building cost (being that it's one of the 99 cards in your deck). If you include Sol Ring, that means that there's another card that you don't play in your deck. Lutri is not like that, as it's not included in your regular 99 deck.
FWIW there's an argument that lutri (and companions in general) would be even stronger if they were part of the 99 *but* set aside in your command zone, as they would make your deck denser. Essentially you would literally start with an 8 cards hand, just one of them being an overcosted but guaranteed sorcery (well it's a bit more complicated since you can pay in two installments but you get the point).
@@Bob-nc5hz You're absolutely not wrong, but that ignores the biggest problem with companions and why Lutri absolutely should be banned as one - if they took up a deck slot, then the decision to add them or not is just that - a decision. Since they functionally don't change your deck whatsoever, however, there is no decision to be made. Run it as a companion or be objectively at a disadvantage to somebody who has that option. If they took up a slot then they probably would be better, but they wouldn't be literally completely free from a deckbuilding perspective. Without taking up a slot its just a price/availability check. Do you have the 8th card up your sleeve this game or are you playing at a disadvantage objectively speaking?
It's free real estate.
@@eewweeppkkthe problem I do have with this logic is why then wouldn't decks in 60 card formats run more cards in their decks to fit more in? And if commander had a 60 card minimum would people still play 99?
@winter945 That doesn't make sense here because the companion exists outside the deck. It isn't a 101st card - it's an 8th card in hand that doesn't take up a deck slot or kill any consistency through draws.
Decks run fewer cards for more consistency and companions don't disrupt that consistency, they just provide a free extra option.
Fun fact : Yawgmoth's bargain is MaRo's attempt (back when he was a fresh recruit) at fixing necropotence because he found the wording and delay clunky. He said in an article that it's one of his top mistakes in magic, and was a searing reminder of "sometimes things are this way for a reason, don't try anything before knowing the whole story."
☀️ MESA FALCONS ☀️
Reporting for duty! Ready to join the flock whenever we take off!
Edit: Ca-caw!
In English: Falcons Table
FALCONS TABLE .. thanks google
SKREEEEE
CAWWWWW 🦅
Sylvan primordial is egregious because you can target your opponents lands to push your advantage a little too hard
Additionally, Sylvan Primordial isn't legendary, so it can be cloned many times without ever triggering a state-based action death.
@@ian-yorkmaxam328cloned, blinked, reanimated
I came to comment this. Nothing like getting a turn 3/4 primordial and just constantly flickering it.
@advilnight1441 why wait until turn 3 when you can turn 1 or 2 it? Lol
still think Vorinclex should be banned as well. :D
Companion doesn't count towards deck size. As it said in the ban notes
It’s funny how arrogant he is sometimes…
Like he was barely able to explain how Companions work, yet he thought he knew better than the Rules Committee 😂
Wow... CGB does NOT understand how Companions work in Commander...
It's NOT one of the 99, it IS a 101st card...
I never used one in commander, I was going off brawl on arena
@@covertgoblue I'll confess, I've not played Brawl with a Companion, but I would have guessed it worked that way there too...
@@s4ad0wpi it should work like that in brawl
@@covertgoblue”Each Historic Brawl deck may include a chosen companion. It starts outside the game and doesn't count as one of your 100 cards” 👀
On Flash: Thassa's Oracle was printed before Flash was banned, and is what pushed it to the point for everyone to lobby for the ban. Before Oracle there were several different hulk piles competing for the title of "best", with the only instant speed one requiring you to run 9-10 cards purely to enable it.
Thassa's Oracle killed all of that by immediately being the best version by a mile and letting it layer with one of the other top tier combos of the time.
And it's also noteworthy that the current way to use Thoracle requires you to do it at Sorcery speed, and due to the nature of the cards it combo with, the risk is very much there. Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact will kill you if the Thassa's Oracle trigger gets countered. It's a very mana efficient combo in UUB and/or 1UUB, but thats still much more paletable than 1U at instant speed.
@rarran - fun fact: I’m the author of one of the most upvoted posts in /r/EDH posts in the history of the subreddit.
That thread, was why we needed to ban flash. The TL;DR, was a lot out of what the video talked about. This was the only time the competitive community felt a card needed to be banned both for power level and play pattern.
I will disagree slightly about the comment about the meta. The cEDH meta is WAY more wide open now that flash is banned. There’s mono colored commanders putting up results, the second best deck in the format doesn’t use Thassa’s Oracle at all, there’s partner commanders in the top 10, there’s commander centric decks in the top 10.
The game is definitely healthier now that you can’t win with flash. Ironically, albeit a magical Christmas tree scenario: flash let you win on turn 0. Meaning you could win before the first player drew their first card.
Okay, I gotta hear how :o What let you play the 2-mana instant before you got through your own upkeep?
@@darthmunck Gemstone Caverns as a a pregame action, pitch either Elvish or Simian Spirit Guide for the 2nd mana, cast flash, let Protean Hulk die, grab Thassa’s Oracle, Spellseeker, Blood Pet, trigger Spellseeker find Demonic Consultation, sac Blood pet, make one black mana, cast demonic consultation, exile your library, trigger Thassa’s Oracle, you win.
This is before your first turn.
@@darthmunckSimian Spirit Guide + gemstone caverns. Notably I don’t think you even get priority before the beginning of your upkeep, so it’s still technically a turn 1 play. It just feels like turn 0 because nobody has had a chance to play any permanents yet? Idk
@@xTobsecretxTurn 0 because it's before the first turn of the player who does it. That's the idea the phrase is meant to convey.
@@xTobsecretxYou go first. You pass priority on your upkeep. I win on my turn 0 (before my first turn) before your drew a card.
i'm noticing that part of why Rarran misses some of these commander themed quizzes is the multiplayer aspect of the game
I think something CGB doesn't explain to Rarran that's important to understand is the concept of "exemplary bans" in Commander. The committee has stated that some of their bans are "Don't play cards like this", not just "don't play this". They don't want to have to ban every card Wizards makes that's unfun, the ban list is meant to be more of a guideline on what they want the format to look like with a measured hand. People don't learn that lesson obviously when they're min-maxing, but it helps to understand debates like Sylvan Primordial vs Vorinclex. The committee wants you to go "Oh wait, Vorinclex is the same vibe as Sylvan Primordial and Primeval Titan, this is probably something I shouldn't include."
@19:25 Whenever these command ban videos play, I can only think of the Unglued card "Look At Me, I'm the DCI!"
I don't know the context, we can't exact rank them for bans or competition, but you really gotta show Rarran the Un-set cards.
Same here 😂
8:34 well… this conversation’s certainly changed a lot now, ‘is banned card that lets me cast banned card more likely to be banned than this other banned card’? 😂😂
As someone who played in the PrimeTime and Sylvan Primordial era I will tell you it’s more egregious than you realize. The blue player casting Bribery almost always went for Titan or Primordial. If you played green one or the other was played in the deck and games became warped around who could steal/copy/blink them the most which gets very old, very fast.
I missed the titan era but I played in the Prophet Era, and I can easily imagine.
Blue decks ran Bribery if they had it, and clever impersonator, phantasmal image, phyrexian metamorph just in case opponents ran Prophet.
@@Sivarias I’ve many copies of Prophet that have sat in a box for nearly a decade now
11:53 Yep, that's what I expected from Rarran! That half a second pause to assimilate was also really funny. I'm with CGB: I missed Rarran. XD
Sylvan can also hit lands, when it was legal I would flicker it in my Roon deck, blow up 3 lands and get 3 lands each time. As soon as I got a flicker engine everyone would scoop.
That's stiull just an A+B combo that doesn't win the game. You can do far better things, far cheaper. The only reason to be worried about this was that casual players played it, and they don't play mike+trike, heliod+ballista or chain of smog+witherbloom apprentice. Or even just Glacial Chasm+Crucible of Worlds (infinite fog).
Stopping Sylvan Prim + blink combos is a case for rule zero, not the ban list.
@Taeerom when you argue power only, it proves you don't understand the banlist.
Its not JUST power. It's power + Timmy attractiveness. Sylvan Primordial is a card attractive to Timmirs but warps the game around it's existence in a miserable way.
@@Sivarias When the reasoning in the ban is based on pwoer (the mana differential creates an imbalance in power), the rebuttal shouldn't argue about much more than power.
And why should only one way of being timmy be relevant, and not other ways of being a timmy or a johnny?
And even then, being a "big dude" timmy opposite of a looping fog effect isn't much fun.
@@Taeerom The other issue with Sylvan was the game devolving into a tug-of-war as people build around it by just taking it. It's insane value on a permanent's ETB and if one person is going to get it, may as well try to do the same and take advantage of it.
@@synckar6380 The problem with this line of reasoning is that, well, it's not at all unique. We can say the exact same thing about Dockside.
There are so many creatures now that Prim is no longer "insane value" for its cost. It's good, but not that good. Regardless, cards aren't banned for power level, whatever that means when the argument is "it creates a mana differential".
8:13 This aged well.
lol jeweled lotus is now also banned
Fun fact! Mushroom clouds aren't actually exclusive to nukes, any sufficiently big explosion will create one. It's just how that much smoke and dust ends up traveling up the atmosphere.
There was a mushroom cloud in Britain once when an entire ammo depot exploded.
So it follows that a sufficiently big magic explosion could actually cause a mushroom cloud.
I have never seen Mana Breach played, and so I think that's why it misses high spots. Most people don't want to deal with it either, so they don't build around it and play it in their decks.
"If you exile a spell with mana value 5, for example," is hilarious
Mana breach is not nearly as bad as people thing. Because it does not stop you from using removal. And if you only play one card a turn then you don't actually go down on mana. Plus many decks have a lot of mana rocks so almost all non-green decks have cards to break parity
yea a big advantage is that most removals can actually be played while limited resourced in a 4 player format can keep the manapool low enough to make removal difficult (possible with non-land mana of course but that is a factor that makes limited resources a lot more annoying potentially)
The specific reason for the companion tax was Lurrus in Vintage. It was their first ever actual ban in Vintage for power level. Normally they just restrict cards to 1 copy in Vintage, but as Lurrus decks only played a single copy in the sideboard for companion, restricting it would have done nothing.
I mean, they did actually ban Lurrus in Vintage at first. Companions were breaking every format they were legal in though.
"Well ackhshully..."
They've banned cards for power reasons in Vintage, it's just been a really long time. Shahrazad and the ante cards are all banned for power level reasons. Shahrazad because you can win game one, then just go to time by making subgames within subgames. Ante cards all have one line of text on them that make them busted: "Remove CARDNAME from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante." Since you're not playing for ante in tournaments, you would put all 9 ante cards in your deck as four-ofs, turning your 60 card deck into a 24 card deck.
That being said, pre-errata Lurrus is probably the strongest card printed since Arabian Nights or Unlimited. It's at least on-par with Tolarian Academy, Tinker, Yawgmoth's Will, Necropotence, Mana Drain, Jace the Mind Sculptor, and Mishra's Workshop. The ability to go turn one Black Lotus/Lion's Eye Diamond -> Lurrus -> replay Lotus/LED -> do something stupid often means you start the game with a free 3/2 with lifelink and essentially Guilded Lotus. It gets worse if you have moxen, Sol Ring, or Mana Crypt to cast even more spells on turn one.
@@seandun7083 They banned Lurrus until the rules change was in place because they had no other option. Any other format they could just ban companions that were too good, but Vintage had to fundamentally break its own rules to address the problem. So Vintage, more than any other format needed the rules change.
Some of the impetus was very likely that they didn't want to ban a headlining mechanic out of every format entirely, but I don't know if that would have quite prompted something as drastic as changing the rules as written on a card. They likely would have gone about banning key pieces for the decks using companions to try and stem their power level.
The really crazy thing is that even with the companion tax, Lurrus is STILL fringe playable in Vintage. I don't know what they were thinking
0:24 is the most genuine, from the heart laugh I've ever heard come out of Rarran. Made me smile immediately!
The first one didnt age well lmao
Absolutely diabolical to give Rarran the confusing early 90s text for these cards instead of Oracle text
"Nukes are cannon to Magic" Rarran 2024.
Oh, my sweet summer child, if only you knew. Magic has probably over a hundred books making up Part of the lore. We don't just have nukes - we have variations on nukes.
"that's not a moon, it's a space station"
-Geralf probably
Yawgmoth's Bargain is hilarious because it was the Wizards R&D Team's attempt to create a new version of Necropotence that wasn't broken.
Narrator: it was broken as hell.
When Isochron Scepter was printed and introduced to Standard, it was expected to be one of the most powerful cards in the format. The set Scepter is from? Mirrodin. LOL.
Ravager Affinity player: "nice Scepter set to Mana Leak/Naturalize/Shatter. Kill you on Turn 3."
8:12 well this video aged well rofl
Huge props on these pairings. The theming on each question is excellent
1:18:45 Sylvan Primordial is not from a Commander product. It's from Gatecrash, the second set in Return to Ravnica block.
"So nukes are canon to Magic?"
me turning to Three Dog "Wait a minute, are they"
I think Rarran misunderstood the last line of Vorinclex. I think he thought the lands dont untap EVER instead of having to wait an extra turn to untap them.
CGB: “if it says ‘players can’t’ then it is probably the banned card”
Me: “Drannith Magistrate coming soon to a commander banlist video near you!”
Keep em coming, I love rarren doing the commander ban list bc it’s so wild.
The trade secrets and sphinx pairing was actually really funny to me. I had a game where two players had sphinx and they colluded with each other so they both drew like 50 cards lol. It very much felt like trade secrets
People might be confusing partner commanders (or backgrounds) with companions. The prior means you have 2 cards in the command zone and a 98 card deck. Companions exist in exile as a 101st card at the start of the game.
"That appears to be a mushroom cloud or a wedding cake out of control" made me giggle, ty!
Even if Lutri was a vanilla creature (except for the companion ability) it would still be banworthy. Regardless of how powerful it is, it just doesn't feel right for a specific color combination to automatically start with an extra 3/2 that they can cast purely by virtue of being those colors, when the other color combinations don't have an equivalent.
Not in the slightest, having to pay 3 to put it into your hand and then another 3 for a simple 3/2 would not be worth the include at all, its not card advantage its a mana sink trap at that point, if you have nothing else to do with 3 mana then to put a 3/2 into your hand with no ability you have built a bad deck.
@@samanderson6488 It definitely wouldn't be that good, but it would still be worth banning simply because it feels weird for almost every single Izzet Commander deck to automatically get an extra 3/2 in their companion zone, regardless of the contents of the deck, while the other color combinations don't have something like that.
@olvynchuru1663 just because one color combo gets an arbitrary bad thing doesn't mean it's ban worthy, I would argue that with the companion change he should be unbanned as is. Paying 3 mana to get a spell copier that you have to then pay 3 mana to use isn't great. Pre companion change it made sense. If you put him in your hand you either wasted a 3 mana play, or are setting up for something bigger. This is telegraphed and easy to stop at that point.
@olvynchuru1663 the only real reason they have for banning him is he would be an auto include in any izzet deck, but the same goes for the common rocks you run in any izzet deck too. So it really doesn't give you any advantage and therefore isn't an amazing ban anymore.
@@samanderson6488 There's DEFINITELY going to be times where you have 3 mana to spare and nothing to spend it on. Letting any deck that runs UR have a literally free extra card is pretty busted even if the expected value isn't utterly game ending by itself. It's a FREE card, mana rocks take up space in the 99 when Lutri does not. The only time you won't take Lutri is if you have one of the Relentless Rats-like cards, and that's such a niche thing that it's barely worth even considering.
Its amazing how he talks about how good a card is, how it should be the one banned, then swaps to the other card last second as his choice. He has a habit of screwing himself out of a correct answer LOL
Some notes:
If playing optimally, any deck including the colors red and blue should have a Lutri, as it isn't part of the 100.
The saltiest card list is also the cards people play against the most, so some one sided strong cards end up there, where as these really disgusting cards like Mana Breach, many people haven't even seen.
Salty cards are mostly strong cards that see a lot of play like Rhystic study or cards that see little play but are really staxy like stasis or mass land destruction. Mana breach falls more in the second category but is not as bad as many of the other stax pieces.
Thanks Libby, those editor’s notes about Rarran’s cat absolutely sent me.
Watching this a week after the new banlist and the first pair is two banned cards 😂
I dont care what outro cgb had planned it doesnt top the fade from laughing at the absurdity of the last ban
Lol the answer to the first is now "both"
Technically, Jeweled Lotus is now also banned 😂
I've been waiting for a new part of this. I'm so hyped!
"It IS way worse, and it's legal." The commander banlist in one sentence.
The thing with Vorinclex is that if you have instant speed interaction you don't even need to bite the bullet. Just tap for mana while Vorinclex is on the stack and kill it after it resolves before the phase changes and you lose floating mana.
I never even considered that that is a way to get around that. Thank you :)
@@Orkimtor You can also just use your mana rocks we already know you have, vorinclex doesn't touch those and most removal spells cost very little.
@@jacobisbell9388 Yeah, that is more obvious, but depends what color you are playing. Many of my decks don't have many mana rocks because they are green or white or even my chandra deck mostly ramps other ways.
Well now... This episode hasn't aged well
*Cough cough jeweled lotus cough nadu*
I think "Limited Resources" is Spice8Rack's style guide 😆
Not gonna lie, I've been checking for this video ever since Rarran mentioned it during his Bloomburrow box opening. it didn't disappoint - great content.
Do all the banned lists - Modern, Legacy. Is it restricted in Vintage? Banned in Pauper? As long as he doesn't cheat and study the lists, it should be good content. With some prep, you can probably knock out a few videos in a couple hours.
As of now, Companion doesn’t actually reduce the size of your deck (though that would make sense.) it is instead your 101st card(which makes no sense but that’s what they decided fsr.)
This is because in 60 card formats companions take up a spot in your side board as opposed to your main deck, it would be very strange for a side boarded card to also count as a card in your main deck. Most notably this would make yorion's comapnion requirement 1 card less as it would count itself
Good point. However, commander doesn’t have sideboards, so all this loophole does is confuse people. I mean, just look at the comments section rn.
I get the reasoning though, I just personally wish it was different.
@@dreamsalongthepath7377 Wait... What about for cards that have those "graft" mechanics (i've only seen them played digital so wasn't sure. But Wouldn't the card they combine into be in sideboard like in yugioh?
@@ghostkill221You’re thinking of meld. The melded card doesn’t actually exist anywhere, at least, not in one piece. It’s on the back of the two cards you melded into it. Notably, if you use an effect that exiles the creature and returns it to the battlefield, you get the two unmelded front halves.
Companions are your 101st card
actually so good they banned lutri before the card came out - almost every player especially in cedh would have gotten this card since a free copy/counterspell would be auto include. The price would have been high only for it to then get banned a week later or so. I remember to highly appretiate this move to not even make me think about buying this.
I remember the times when Sylvan Primordial was legal. It was always game warping: every Clone became Sylvan Primordial and every player's reanimation spells targeted it after it died. As soon as it hit the battlefield, the effect got repeated every turn for the rest of the game.
It's also important to note for Lutri that the social nature of Commander means if you ask a friendly table if it's okay to run it in the 99 not as a companion, most people will say "sure".
That goes for everything on the banlist
Most people would also be okay if you played the companions without the 3 mana tax to put it into your hand. Like literally nobody cares.
This should have been called "CGB shows Rarran 20 cards that *deserve* to be banned."
Companion doesn’t count towards the 100 cards which is why it’s broken. Literally no downside
decreasing your deck size isn't a down side in 99% of cases
@@luscarora703 What are you talking about? Companions aren't included in your 99. If you're playing with a companion, you have 1 Commander + 99 cards + 1 Companion. Your deck size isn't reduced in any circumstances.
@@Registeel1234jack is saying that it not counting towards the 100 cards is an upside
Lucas is saying there isn’t a circumstance where you would want it to not count towards the 100 cards so it is a downside if it doesn’t count
@@Registeel1234 Even so they're right. Decreasing your deck would've been an upside in most circumstances.
@@luscarora703 But it is in those 1%. The absence of an upside is not a downside - Lutri as a companion literally has no downside because you either have it up your sleeve or you don't, and you deck is functionally identical in either case.
Man, serious props to CGB on this one for finding these card comparisons and props to Rarran for navigating these impossible choices lol.
Mesa falcons unite
Well today this video is a bit outdated because jewelled lotus is banned now. Also the compagnion isn't in your deck it's an EXTRA card so you have a 101 deck (1 being the commander and the other the compagnion) : "Although the Commander variant does not use a sideboard, a companion is not counted as one of the deck's 100 cards". A compagnion is a card that is in the "sideboard" in a way so because commander doesn't have a "sideboard" the compagnion zone IS the commander "sideboard" so not in the deck.
Rarran nodding along saying 'that makes sense' about lutri's ban justification without even understanding it has nothing to do with the card and only the companion restriction lol
My most favorite series of your channel at this moment. Thank you. ❤
I am a proud mesa falcon and no one can convince me that mesa falcon is not the best mtg card in existence
What about a 6/6 dinosaur for 4GG with TRAMPLE ?
@@pangopod2969 That sounds exciting, tell me more :)
Also, limited resources only stops players from PLAYING lands, so say a green/white deck can now rampant into harrow into, etc etc etc and blast out big spells while everyone else is locked at 2-3 lands and maybe an artifact.
Unrelated to the video, Congrats to CGb for winning the first Mystery Booster 2 Draft!
Every time it seems this happens:
Rarran: "This card is so annoying, it should be banned"
CGB: "arguably, but it isnt for some reason"
1:34:39 The fact that Rarran immediately thought of what essentially happened with Chaos Orb is hilarious.
He had been told the chaos orb story in an earlier video on this subject which is why he made that joke. He has also been shown the joke card "Chaos Confetti". He just happened to completely forget WHY chaos orb was banned. It forces all players to take up 2-3x the usual board space.
@@osmium6832 Dexterity cards had tons of logistical problems to using. All sorts of house rules/rulings about 1 when and how people could subsequently move their cards once a player cast one and/or before activating, 2 the physical questions of if the card flipped or just spun or half-flipped+flipped-back and 3 what counts as touching after it lands. You basically need a a multi-camera system and judge watching the game to use them successfully.
Lol, Rarran realizing that the Commander ban list has no consistency is priceless.
This first choice aged well 😂
Vorinclex suffers from a classic amount of: "Dies to Doom Blade" x)
When do we get a commander deck building episode with rarran
I love how with lutri rarran made the classic math mistake, he was wrong in how he reached the answer but right in the answer 😂😅 it put a big smile on my face
Aged like fine wine 😂
Other people have mentioned it, but I'll be the 101st:
Companions don't count against deck limit like partners or backgrounds do. Without a companion, you have commander + 99 (or 2 commanders + 98) for 100 total. With a companion, you have commander + 99 (or 2 commanders + 98) + companion, for 101 total.
Which makes Lutri even more bannable -- it doesn't even eat up a slot in your deck. You can build the deck out exactly like you want, all 99 cards, and then just slap a literally free Lutri on top of it and call it a day, with the restriction of "be playing Izzet or any 3+ color combo that includeds UR".