12:20 Unless they recently changed it, the 21 commander damage rule only applies to combat damage, meaning the ping damage from nekusar wouldn't count.
100% true. That being said, giving Nekusar Infect is a fun time as you can just Glistening Oil/Grafted Exoskeleton/Tainted Strike etc. and Wheel to kill everyone.
@@x10018ro yeah and it seemed like he doesn't entirely know what he was talking about either, with all the bad examples of why Emrakul is banned for instance. No-one ever ran him as a Commander really, the issue with Emrakul lies with cards like Animar and Omnipotence which actively cheat her out.
For anyone that didn’t get the Colossal Dreadmaw joke. Colossal Dreadmaw is the Boulderfist Ogre of MTG. There are way worse cards but they kept reprinting this card in every set for a while and people started to meme the card.
And whats even funnier is that Elder G and Dreadmaw was in m21 set together :D It makes sence if you count limited formats (like draft etc), but still its strange to see this stuff
@Dreadnote1337 The meme started because Dreadmaw was first printed in the same set as Carnage Tyrant. Another 4GG cost dinosaur with trample, but Tyrant is a 7/6 with hexproof that also can't be countered. However, Carnage Tyrant was only ever printed once, while Dreadmaw is in like every set. So obviously Dreadmaw is the better card.
I feel like the thing that threw him about Emrakul is that annihilator 6 was not adequately explained. Annihilator 6 means the player you're attacking has to sacrifice six permanents immediately when you attack them. "What if they don't have enough things to sacrifice?" _Lands are permanents. If you don't have six other things, this monster jellyfish from hell obliterates your mana._
Emrakul is NOT banned because of the extra turn clause. A 15 mana colorless commander is not a good card, and would probably be mediocre in the command zone. Emrakul is banned in EDH because it is the most powerful "cheat" target ever printed. There are so many ways to put Emrakul into play for significantly less than 15 mana, and getting to attack for 15 and trigger annihilator 6 on say turn 5 when your opponent might have barely more than 6 permanents is backbreaking and not a good pattern for gameplay. It is extremely rare for any deck that has Emrakul in it to try and hard cast it, it is nearly always cheated.
@@gregconen And it's STILL pretty bonkers after 13 years. There's a lot of ways to tutor it out into the graveyard and immediately reanimate it, and exactly because of that power creep it only gets easier to do so. As long as there is a way to cheat out Emrakul, it will be done.
@@MagnaDrake You can't put Em into the graveyard unless you have an instant reanimater effect. Honestly with how fast decks like Guteog monster go you are never going to get to even attempt to try to play Em much less set up a combo with her.
It absolutely is banned because of the extra turn clause, what? There’s even more ways to freely bounce a creature back to your hand, and if you can do that + hardcast it, you have a 2 card combo that says “I win the game”. Additionally, I really disliked the way he framed the “this card is one of few that is banned”, because the edh banlist isn’t really directly tied to power level.
there's a bit of a misunderstanding here too, since he seemed to interpret the howling mine-type effect as a mill piece, which it *would be in HS* but is not what MtG considers "mill".
34:25 "not a lot of goblins you can play with this"... I'm sorry what???? I think the real problem here is that, as it was stated, the viability of any given commander is subjective. That said Krenko is a kill on sight commander, you don't let him tap, not once, not ever.
Don't hurt him! He just wants to make some friends! My Goblins just want to have some fun! Anytime I turn 1 Krenko, I will win if it's not handled before my next turn. I play him knowing full well I could ( and should) get ganked for it. I never get mad when it happens, I'm just happy I even had the chance to try.
Yeah, there were some pretty bad judgement calls in there. Even if you wanted to say the actual goblin creatures are bad (they're not, but devil's advocate), the spells that create a ton of Goblins and the Enchantments that pump out goblins turn after turn do enough to turn Krenko into a beast, and he's literally in the color of Haste. If you can't tap Krenko the turn he comes out, there's something wrong with your Krenko deck.
@@VernulaUtUmbra That was my thought, too. Goblin Warchief and Goblin Chieftain are both 3 CMC, curving right into Krenko. There's a reason he was still getting played in Legacy even in 2022.
Edgar is basically the equivalent of your hero having the ability to summon a Patches every time you played a pirate, and patches was one of the best cards in hearthstone
Not exactly... patches was good not because of the free 1/1, but because he thins out the rest of your deck for free, making it more consistent. Patches is still one of the best cards without charge for this reason. Patches would be just as valuable (if not more valuable) in HS if his text read "destroy this card at the beginning of the game" Patches would be like Edgar if he was like a 7 or 8 mana 5/5 that says "if this card is in your deck at the start of the game, each time you play a pirate, summon a 1/1 pirate." It would be strong for pirates but idk if magic has a limit on board space. The effect seems much weaker in HS with a max of 7 minions on board
@@DD-ym3nk Its literally a PVE treasure passive from HS dungeon run. Edgar isnt in your deck, its just a passive you start with. Imagine you have a HS tribal deck that just gets to start with a passive treasure that reads "make 1/1 tribal dood when you play a tribal minion".
Nekusar does not make your opponents draw like 15 cards, it tries to stick multiple pain effects and then wheel like two times to kill everyone at once
It still haunts my dreams. Blink, and you're dead... I love the card, but as soon as I see someone playing it. They'll automaticly become archenemy in my mind.
Kozilek is in no way a Voltron commander. He is there as a big ramp target and so you can stop opponents doing things while pumping out other Eldrazi. The only thing he has going for him with voltron is a big stat line and Menace, which is simply not good enough.
Yep. Though I do often kill with Koz, that's because he kills in 2 hits. I have very few "voltron" elements in my deck. Turn 2 koz will eliminate players. But the draw 7 and free counters are what I like most.
He also works decently well as a commander. Voltron Kozilek was my first commander deck, and apart from the big stat line and menace (which do certainly help), drawing up to 7, and being able to counter stuff can be very helpful too. You typically spend most of the game dumping your hand to try and ramp to him, so when you do play him, you get a full hand of stuff to help keep him alive, especially with the counter ability. So, imo, he works for both, and that's the fun of Magic!
Krenko is insane, what are you talking about? Isn't only a snowball card, is a combo card. Goblins can give haste very easilly, have tons of lords to pump the tokens and have decent tutors and infinite combos. Don't underestimate the Gobos.
Nothing like watching your opponent swing for over fifty damage on turn six because you made the mistake of not having three removal cards turn one. But no, _Braids_ isn't okay, sure.
Fun Fact, with the original online client there was a time period in which they were planning on transferring the design to a prettier more functional version. They prepared for the release of it by allowing players to choose to play a beta client allowing you to help test its features out before replaced the original design. At one point they decided to add a particle effect whenever a creature enters the battlefield with the card flipping onto the screen. This effect would happen for each and every token you summoned. In online play there is a timer connected to your total turn length, same as chess players use to limit the total length of time you can take up through a game. I was able to build a Krenko deck that made enough tokens during a tap that my opponents who were using the beta client glitched and froze thier program. So there was a time were I could tap my Krenko, wait 3 hours and come back, and all 3 of my opponents had timed out.
Great video, lots of fun! Some incorrect details unfortunately. For example, commander damage only gets applied by the commander doing combat damage, non-combat damage does not count.
Hard disagree on Kaalia. Not that she has fallen out of favor, but the reason for that. The real problema od kaalia is that nowadays everyone is running a lot of removal and as a 4 mana 2/2 she dies to EVERYTHING. She also doesn't have haste, which means, you usually have to wait a turncycle to trigger her.
Yeah especially in more powerful EDH Decks, the Commander is either the combo generator or payoff (Urza, Gitrog, Thrasios, etc). There’s some like Winota that are there for value alone, but they generate at an insane rate or rely a lot on stax effects.
Fun concept for a vid, would maybe suggest getting someone from the mtg goldfish crew if you try this again? Tomer would be a great pick especially. He's been playing and making accessible commander focused content for years.
This is a good follow-up from when PVDDR was doing this because he doesn't play a lot of commander so the only way he evaluates cards is through the lens of someone who's used to playing 60/4 formats (60 card main deck, 4 copies per card) and drafting. With this one, though Noah only has the general view and knowledge of most formats, at least he has played other more "casual" formats and knows to evaluate for those as well. Correction on annihilator: you still sacrifice as many permanents as you can even if you have less than the number indicated. So if a player has 4 permanents and another one is attacking with a creature that has annihilator 5, they still sacrifice their 4 remaining permanents. Correction on the 21 damage: You only lose if you take 21 **COMBAT** damage from a commander. So a commander that deals damage via an ability does not count towards this. Opinion on Krenko: Hard disagree. I think playing the card as a goblin commander is the first thought whenever you see it for the first time, but most of the time, you're playing it in a red combo deck with something like Impact Tremors or other cards that say "Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, deal 1 damage to each opponent.". There are also cards like Anger that just give all creatures you control haste.
I have never sat down at a table without someone groaning when they see what im playing, and every time i play him even if I have nothing else on the board I am enemy number 1 for good reason.
@@SwagLord420Pi our friends call th is the Vorinclex test as for the OG vorinclex is another car that is so good you become the archenemy but not quite good enough to beat 3 other players so ends up not actually being a good card to play
Being so strong that every other player works together to eliminate it is, in and of itself, a detriment. It's why it's bad as a Commander: the cost to play it multiple times becomes more prohibitive than it's worth, for a card that does nothing immediately. It's great as a one-of in a deck with a different Commander. Something you throw out (preferably by cheating it out), that the other players then need to deal with. Hinging your whole strategy around it is a trap.
I know Magic Noah is a meme channel but I kinda wish he didn’t have as many mistakes in the Commander video. Don’t really blame him tho MTG and especially Commander is very complicated. Hope Rarran gets to do one of these with other Commander creators as well like Tomer from MTG Goldfish Commander, Any of the hosts from GameKnights, or Mitch from Commanders Quarters.
honestly id rather have someone from a cedh or high power channel not that any of the mentioned creators dont know magic but these channels know more about the "absolute" power of the cards or how they can break commander but most people would say ie phyrexian arena is a good or even great card and well it is once you aply rule 0, that neuters a lot of power from the format and makes a lot of mediocre cards way better back to the example of the arena 1 card a turn seems good if the game goes on for 9-12 turns but its only good if the decks are bad
@@noehonegger4624 cEDH is effectively a different game to normal Commander, though, and hardly follows the format's intended design and play patterns. A lot of cEDH decks also get spanked pretty badly if they're just sitting in a normal Commander round and being pummeled by a bunch of dudes by turn 3
@@Zakading yeah even a cedh deck can loose 3 on 1 yeah it happens id still argue its the stronger deck 9 out of 10 times its gonna win. secondly the initial point still stands powerlevel you can argue about a card being good or bad if its not seen in cedh its most likely a fan favourite card not always a good card. thirdly intended play pattern? whats that? thats gonna be different from lgs to lgs in some its 5 turns of land ramp pass in others its turn 3-4 knock a player out and it has changed drasticly over the years because if not we'd still be hitting each other with 8 mana 7/7 dragons
Krenko is an extremely powerful and popular commander. Noah has clearly not gone against a quality Krenko deck before. The player does some stuff, resolves Krenko, then combos out. He's a huge target and the enabler for so many otk's. Krenko players love to punish people like Noah that do not respect this card. Whenever Krenko hits the board you absolutely need to deal with it.
Came here to say this. Krenko's ability to absolutely go wide and wipe a table is ridiculous. His ability to exponentially grow your board, the ease of multiplying damage in mono red, and both cheap and useful sac and etb triggers for all those tokens...yeah Krenko is a menace. The only time it's not effective is if they're mana screwed, not getting one of their 8 combo pieces, or being completely shut down the entire game. Credit where credit is due, the deck is fairly weak to board wipes and minimal ability to respond to control.
Aside from the obvious mistake on commander damage which has already been pointed out, a lot of this video just seems like Noah's opinions and not proper card evaluation which is a real shame as I think Rarran analysed plenty of the cards pretty correctly and was told he was off the mark. No hate, it just seems like Noah's takes on commander are very insular to his playgroup maybe? Perhaps just a miss in terms of the topic also as it's very hard to analyse 'commanders' in a vacuum. There are plenty terrible legendary creatures but as it's an 100 card format - the other 99 cards are often way more important than the commander itself. An individual decks strength lies not in just the commander at the helm but in the deck's strategy as a whole.
Completely agreed. Would prefer to have someone who has experienced casual, 75% and cedh if you’re going to rate commander cards, as it actually gives the person some room to talk about the landscape of the format; it’s so many different things to do many people. They’d be able to provide context of “this is great in casual tables, but if people are trying to win you’re going to be on the lower end of power” or “in normal games this can be good/fine, but if you build a deck a certain way this card does insanely broken things”. As is, it just feels like I’m talking to some random dude at my card shop that only shows up for casual commander Saturdays. Not that I have anything against that, but this video just feels weird because of that
I used 2 play in several playgroups and all of them where completely different. People played everything, from wanky meme decks (lizard/kavu tribal) to high power or cedh decks. The funny thing was, that we all had different opinions about the power level of our or other commanders 😂 I realy cant blame anyone because everyone has a other understanding or knowledge about the game or even other priorities while playing it ❤
Yea it’s unfortunate that I feel like he really doesn’t understand commander as most of these opinions are just factually wrong lol. ie goblin cards are bad
@@NeverLuckyOP yeah jodah is like a 2.5 / 5 in my book. He's good if you get him rolling. But, he still has a mediocre body and he still makes everything cost 5. Which is often times not that much of a discount. That's already after having to pay the mana for him, resolve him, and protect him.
A few things to help fix it up: There are a LOT of powerful mana rocks. There are constant discussions to ban mana of the 0 mana mana rocks as well as Sol Ring, because they're that good. Getting mana is not an issue as long as you have the budget. To go with this, color is not a restricting cost. Between mana rocks and the "fetchlands" that can search for basic land _types_ (ie, it doesnt have to be a Basic Forest. it can be one of the cycles that are two or even three land types.) You can very easily build a 5 color deck that will practically never run into mana problems simply by tuning the land base well. Because of this, there's a HUGE disparity in the power level between decks simply because of their mana bases... And cost is a big factor of that. If I hadn't proxied my last mana base, it'd have cost $400 by itself. And two, most "strong" commanders are defined by their game plans. Not by how impactful they are when they hit the board. Thrasios, Tymna, and Kraum are all partner commanders and it's extremely hard to deny they're among the best commanders in the game. They're versatile because you can pair either of the other two with Tymna to have 4 of the 5 colors, they all draw you cards, and they usually try to combo out and win the game with counterspell backup. All these three do is draw you cards. Thrasios lets you pay mana for it, Tymna wants you to swing in and deal damage, and Kraum wants your opponents to cast multiple spells in a turn. Typically, if your commander draws you cards consistently and they're relatively cheap... They're probably REALLY good. If they don't, they probably are a combo piece (if a one of 2 combo that wins you the game is in your command zone, it's really hard to interact with,) or generate SO much value that you can take over a game with it. So I'd actually put Kenrith the Returned King from this list, at a 5 out of 5 flamingos. He is the most versatile 5 color commander, he is a mana outlet to infinite combos that wins you the game, he draws you cards, and he strengthens the resilience of any deck he helms because of that reanimation ability. He can pair with a "companion" card called Zirda the Dawnbringer, who reduces the cost of all activated abilities of cards you activate by 2. So this greatly increases the power of Kenrith (3 mana for 5 life is kinda meh, but 1 mana for 5 life adds up over the game if you're just dumping excess mana at the end of your opponent's turn.) Kenrith is just kinda the King of "Good Stuff" and fits at all power levels in the game.
notably Kenrith also states target player. Meaning if you have an infinite mana source you can force your opponents to draw their entire library+1 so they lose the game, or you can use his various abilities to entice other players as commander is a social format and deals can be made with one another.
First of all, only combat damage dealt by a commander counts as Commander Damage to win the game, which means that Nekusar pinging when an opponent draws a card doesn't do much. Secondly, despite this, Nekusar is one of the scarier kill on sight commanders out there. This is primarily because the best things to do with him are A), wheel, and B), give him Infect, and suddenly he's freaking terrifying
12:20 "I imagine that in Magic there is a mill archetype." *eye twitch* It killed me that Noah didn't show him Millstone, the card where the concept of milling as a game mechanic game from.
I couldn’t disagree more about Kalia, she is an example of an agro strategy that works really well in commander. In Noah’s example he says oh in the early game players should be ramping to set up for later game strategies, but you can’t ignore a Kalia that comes down in the early game and just ramp, you will almost certainly lose that game. Kalia is kill on sight, it only takes a couple of triggers before players start getting knocked off the table
@@simonkerstgens6888 You can build her to counter that. A lot of people build her stax with Land destruction which basically spells GG with her cheating. Not to mention you are playing colors which has plenty of protection spells, and reanimation spells.
I think the magic evaluation I have the most issue issue with is calling Kozilek a Voltron commander. When every build I see of him is usually ramp into big colorless spells with the commander as a control piece on thr top end.
Kozilek is the most control/value of the titans. I think Noah just has someone in his play group that plays Kozilek as a voltron deck so he thinks all Kozilek decks are voltron.
Theres a lot of misinformation in this video and I'll give a list whenever I get off work but to start. 1. If you have less than 6 things for Annihilator you just sacrifice everything 2. Commander damage is only combat damage not other sources.
With Nekusar Noah got s/t very important wrong: commander damage (the 21 damage thing) is ONLY on combat damage, the draw trigger on Nekusar does not cause commander damage.
The Kaalia-Master of Cruelties oneshot is the very first commander combo I ever played against and boy did that set the tone for exactly what I built decks to prevent for years afterwards.
The thing with kenrith is that the strongest form of the deck is just a grindy control shell with a combo finish. if you use one of the fifty combos in magic that generates infinite mana, it just wins the game. You draw your whole deck, you play every spell and criature,you give them +infinite/+infinite, haste and trample and swing for lethal. And IF you don't draw one of the 3-4 infinite combos you are running, kenrith can grind value by himself, while also being a beefy beater..You leave all the mana open to counter or kill stuff, and if you don't need to use the mana with anything else, you just draw more cards.
I run mine for fun as cycle tribal. Not the cycling mechanic, but cycles of cards. Bringers, Hondens, Zeniths, Sanctuaries, Beacons etc. Its great because I can tailor my play for the strength of the table. I can durdle forever, gain a bit of value here and there, but then if I need to I drop a few extra permanents and suddenly I'm getting 18 triggers on my upkeep before I even take my actual turn, and gaining so many tokens, so much life and so much draw and incidental damage that its just an avalanche of value to close the game out in a turn or two. Also the opponent's face when I instant speed reanimate a Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, gain 15 life and then cast Beacon of Immortality from 5 life in response to their token army swinging at me for 70 damage is hysterically funny. The villain in me lives for the moment of dawning horror as they realise its not a political durdly deck at all but a monster about to draw 18 cards a turn that they let live far too long is just... chef's kiss.
I didn't care about the accuracy of ratings (given EDH is a casual format), but my god the explanations and rulings were just awful. 1) Emrakul as a commander is complete dogshit. Imagine playing a pure colorless deck where your goal is to take a single extra turn for 15 mana. In Hearthstone, you have a quest that gives you this cool card called "Time warp". Guess what? In Magic, we literally have the exact same card, it costs 5 mana, and you don't need to go on a quest. Emrakul is banned because it gets cheated (either through cast which is rare), but more likely to get annihilator 6. (Also honestly because it feels horrible to be selected for the attack, a lot of cards on EDH banlist are less about power and more about unfun game mechanics). 2) Kaalia of the vast. "Doesn't generate value". Huh? What? We're talking about tutoring cards into your hand, make your board indestructible, getting a billion treasures, or outright gives you combos to win the game. Even in CEDH she's quite strong (like A-tier). The only she's not giga-broken is because in EDH everyone knows they have to kill her the nano-second she enters the battlefield. 3) Nekusar. Not sure how you mess up the 21 damage rule, but okay. I'd say he's closer to 3/5 largely because your plan is to set up a board state where one or two wheels ends the game, but I don't disagree that he's meh. 4) Edgar from a cedh/high power standpoint I'd argue is fine to be rated 3.5/5. Is emininence terrible card design? Yes. Is he that degenerate in modern EDH? No. 5) Terrible explanation for why Evra is shit. First things first, is Rarran thinks in Hearthstone, so the idea that you play this 6 mana card (does nothing) and it dies immediately/is counterspelled is very real. It also forces you to have 8 mana open at all times, because if you ever swap with less than that, someone can kill it in response, so you end up with 4 hp, and you lose the game. Also good luck re-casting your commander for 8 mana in mono white. 6) For Kenrith, probably good to mind Rarran here you can use multiple abilities multiple times. Kenrith is a 5/5 (one of the best commanders in CEDH, very very good in casual). His 3 Blue ability for "target player draws a card", means if you get infinite mana you just outright win the game. Also worth noting the idea that having access to 5 colors means by nature it lets you play all of the best cards in Magic, something Rarran clearly didn't understand. 7) Jodah is okay at 4/5, hard to evaluate cards in a more fine-grained way given how EDH is as a format. Unplayable in CEDH, and even in high power pods has the problem of getting blown out a little bit by counterspells (which doesn't help, because your strategy is very much based around your commander). The emphasis on colors is mostly a bait, most players use land tutors to get The World Tree to never give a shit about the WUBRG, but yeah. 8) Sheoldred.... is just bad. Cards like Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are infinitely stronger, both clearing immediately and also harder to remove. Two rotations of this card isn't devastating, or at least if it is it's worth pointing out you can just play cards like Victimize and do the same thing but immediately. It's a 7 mana card that at this point is just generally outright worse than a lot of 4 mana cards. It's a fun card to reanimate, but not very good at all. 9) Elesh norn as a commander is good but not great? The problem is that being in mono white both restricts your ability to generate a lot of mana (which matters if your commander costs 5 and really likes getting killed), and more importantly play a lot of other broken ETB effects. 10) It seems like the entire reason why Kodama of the East Tree is great got completely ignored here which is a little wild. It's because you just put lands into play, so the moment this lives you are just so ahead in mana. For example, with something like Scute Swarm, with a bounce land you can create infinite scute swarms, and play every land from your hand.
I don't think Kaalia is playable in cedh atm, nor is Edgar. Both uuuuuuussssssseeeedddd to be? (Edgar was pretty fringe iirc) But both aren't really playable. (I think Kaalia might still be Rogue Tier).
You clearly misunderstand how oppressive Emrakul as a commander is. This is a Time Warp on the command zone you can't counterspell on colorless, the "color" that ramps/goes infinite the easiest. You could literally go infinite turn 3-4 then drop this and a sac outlet and your opponents can't do shit. Hell you can drop this at the same rate without going infinite thanks to all the cheap rocks/dorks that generate colorless. This thing really is the poster child of wincon commander that's way too easy to combo
So something about annihilator is that you have to sacrifice the permanents even if you don't have enough. That means if someone has 5 permanents, and emrakul attacks you, you lose everything.
Emrakul isn't banned because it gives you a turn on a creature (Lighthouse Chronologist, Wormfang Manta, and Timestream Navigator are all legal creatures that take extra turns - plus the manta can flicker combo and Emrakul can't [and ETB is easier to abuse over "when cast"]). Emrakul also isn't banned because it is a commander (Narset turns would be infinitely better). Emrakul is banned because it warps the entire game around it. Emrakul invalidates the entire gamestate prior to it touching the stack 90% of the time by starting a "subgame". Whoever can manipulate the zone that Emrakul is in the best gets the advantage, all other gameplans have to warp around that player and what the Emrakul is doing. Tokens and more control oriented decks care less (tokens for chumping and sacrifice fodder, control with boardwipes), but if they can't deal with the Emrakul or the consequences of the Emrakul, they just loose (taking 15 to the face and dying is still relevant even with 100 1/1 soldiers in play, sacrificing 6 lands stops your interaction so your health effectively doesn't matter [any commander capable of doing commander damage will kill you given enough time and you having no way to deal with it even if your health is arbitrarily high]). The major ways to "beat" an Emrakul once it touches the stack is to combo out from under it, or abuse it better than everyone else. The game ends real fast once you see it. Attacking your resources AND life at the same time with evasion and protection is just a real hard ask of any player at many times throughout the game, but especially the early turns (since it isn't all that hard to cheat from the 99 on turns 1-4). If you do manage to cheat it in AND cast it (there's ways to do it but all I'm thinking of at the moment is: cheat out Omniscience into casting Emrakul for 0), bang, extra bonkers that kinda isn't needed at all (bonus, it can't be countered). (Not to mention it forces your opponent to exile-mill you since it's a Shuffle Titan. Plus decks built to tutor it out of your deck reliably, like a Prismatic Bridge deck, just get to loop it forever each turn if you can only get rid of it by killing [delaying] it.) There's also the consideration that just about any deck can feasibly slot it in as it has no colour restrictions, but that's not really the issue here. That's not to say that there aren't a plethora of other insane creatures to cheat into play super fast, MANY creatures fit that description, Emrakul is just too difficult to interact with and does too much. Interaction with it basically has to be an exile (non-spell) effect, specifically Scour from Existence (a bad card), a Mindslaver effect (force your opponent to use it as you want), or a (non-spell) MInd-Control effect (IDk, flicker a Agent of Treachery or something). A ton of decks can't do that at all. Also there's good reason Annihilator "#" is on like 10 cards (and Bane of Bala Ged kinda*) TOTAL (its kinda nuts and real not fun to lose to). ---------------------------------------------------------------- To give an example of what I'm talking about with the "creates a subgame" thing, here's a paraphrasing from the Rules Committee making use of another banned card, good 'ol Prime Time: Primeval Titan is a powerful effect, but it is not unique. There are several cards that let you find specific, nonbasic lands, but they do not do what Titan does. Because Titan is repeatable, as soon as it is cast / revealed / resolved, the focus of the game shifts. Every player at the table is acutely aware that the person who controls and attacks with the titan the most is *HEAVILY* favored to win the game. The war to see who can control, attack with, clone, or blink the titan the most breaks out, and continues until the game ends. This player pattern is what is described as the “subgame” that PrimeTime starts. All other cards played before it become mostly inconsequential, and very few cards played after it matter if they aren’t directed at the Titan, or stopping the player who controls it. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Emrakul makes the entire game of 400 cards revolve around just 1. Stop the Emrakul. Control the Emrakul. Or die to the Emrakul. That is why Emrakul is banned. The game stops being a commander game and starts being an Emrakul game.
Tbh i dont think thats bad. Its a cool flavor, you got this 4 person edh game and one guy is straight up a cultist trying to bring emrakul into the game. And of course the whole battle becomes about trying to get control of this eldritch creature. Honestly a fun scenario and there are so many other cards nowadays that are the same thing. Someone plays agent of treachery? dockside extortionist? The guy who copies the most agents/docksides basically wins too
commander, in simple hearthstone terms, is a super op heropower that is a mix of classes, and you build a 100 card reno deck with the classes you have from that commander (this, as an mtg player, and hearthstone player in the past)
The problem is that Noah rates the cards from a casual perspective witch doesn't make sense if you wan't to know which cards are strongest. Because the value of cards changes from power level to power level. Like Noah says casual commander is about making alot of value and building up to one big turn. But with high power or cedh this is not the case. So if you want to know what the strongest commander is you need to take it into the highest power level like cedh, and in cedh edgar markor is shit but cards like kenrith are way better and even kaalia are more playable than edgar
@@joshuaspector8182 edgar is a better cedh commander than Kaalia . having free material to sacrifice to culling the weak or razaketh is so good. but yeah they are both pretty mid in cedh where kenrith is one of the better ones. jhoira is probably one of hte better budget commanders cause for less than 100 dollars you can build it borderline cedh on down . i had a a budget one that i would regular play in cedh non budget tournaments and i still could hang and get wins , . it would be interesting ofor him to do another video for just cedh . get someone from the Labmaniacs or playing with power or whatever. and do the partners and add in some non actual commander staples to show the types fo cards that see play in cedh vs reg commander vs 1v1 competitive to really get the sense how varied a game magic is and how card power level can be so much more subjective than in other tcgs
Also kinda telling he thinks $500 is a lot for an EDH deck 😬 EDH is a $3,000 format. 9x fetches + 3 ABUR duals is an easy grand. Factor in cards like Lion's Eye Diamond, Yawgmoth's Will, Force of Will, Gaea's Cradle, Mishra's Workshop, or Mox Diamond? It costs more than Legacy and you're killing people on turn 1 when you have your Mana Crypt + Sol Ring opener.
@@sethstephens4777 still think that kalia is better with the printning of hoarding broodlord. Also because if you want to use Edgards abbillity you Will need to play vampires and since there isn't alot of good vampires, its in my mind alot better to be able to put one card win cons on the battlefield through counterspells.
bro edgar is one of the very few creature-based decks that is actually viable in cEDH as it can pretty consistantly win around turn 4-5 and there is not much creature removal in cEDH pods. If other players are distracted countering each others infinite combos for 4-5 turns, he's got a good chance. Kaalia is far off
I was shaky on the opinions untill he said kozilek was a voltron commander, thats when he completely lost me. No one in there right mind would make him a voltron commander outside of a meme deck
Commander is the only format in Magic I've played, so I really liked this episode! Though I think Noah should have explained the rules a bit better at the start for Rarran. At least telling him you have 100 cards, no duplicates except lands and how the Commander works in general. It's like playing a Reno highlander deck in Wild, with Giga Prince Renethal and vs 3 other opponents :P
@@notsogreatjagras4314 no knowledge of the cards and the meta yes. Knowing the basic rules of the game is normally explained, as most of his guests are either old school players like Reynad who stopped playing, or players that played for a bit then swapped to another card game. So I disagree with you
@@notsogreatjagras4314 Thats not what he meant. Rarrans videos are often like if you put an 80 year old mexican grandma in a chinese league of legends team and let her react to gameplay. Its just gonna be a bunch of noises and "whooooaaaaaa", thats boring. I atleast want the guest to have the ability of thinking about the card, not going "well it got text and art look pretty, good card?"
Strongly disagree with many of Noah's opinions here. To be fair, commander is generally a casual format where power is subjective and fun is primary. However, I'm not playing a commander like Nekusar to slowly deal 1-2 damage a turn my opponents, I'm playing Nekusar to immediately cast multiple wheel of fortune effects that will kill the whole table very quickly. Saying Nekusar is just bad without mentioning how many Wheel effects there are in the game is just sloppy imo.
Having played vs Krenko a few times at my lgs? You got the Krenko play pattern very wrong. It doesn't matter that they are trash, goblin have access to a lot of support and lords to buff each others and being trash mean they are cheap and easy to flood the board with. Then you just sack them all and kill everyone.
And the fact there are goblins that allow you to search cards, there are goblins that regenerate creatures, and red has access to burn, draw, removal, and buffs.
I like Noah and his content, but I feel like he's not the best person to be both explaining this format to people and not letting his personal bias get in the way of card evaluation as a whole. The video feels pretty medium as a person who brews and plays the format regularly.
gotta hop in the comments as a magic player to say that while Noah seems like a super nice and enthusiastic dude, his analysis and understanding of EDH/Commander is really not that deep or insightful. His understanding of Kenrith and talking about "playing him as just the colors you want" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how deck construction works. If you want to play White-Black Reanimator and use the graveyard as a resource, there are already 2-color commanders that fit that archetype and will be better than 10 mana reanimate (5 for Kenrith + 5 for ability cost). In other words, the whole point of Kenrith is that he IS a toolbox where you are SUPPOSED to run all 5 colors. tl;dr Playing Kenrith and not running 5 colors is either the sign of a total amateur or the sign of a super-enfranchised player trying to play around a bizarro theme/gimmick for personal satisfaction, and Noah doesn't seem good enough to be the second type of player
Tbh 5c commanders can generally get away with playing mostly BUG or BUGw, red and white generally feel less necessary if you have access to the others. I would agree that playing 2 is generally silly and giving up blue when it’s free is also silly
@@peterkirk8510 Sure, there are going to be some colors that are favored based on the main mechanical engine of the deck, but no Kenrith deck is going to leave something like Anguished Unmaking or BlasAct or Swords or all the other best-in-slot red/white removal out of the mix. Not to even mention all the insanely pushed cards like Terramancer, Loran, Drannith Magistrate and Archivist that white has gotten in the last couple years that Kenny is happy to play. I agree that Red is likely the least represented color.
@@PiquantPan I was thinking more along cedh lines, white and red tend to both offer a lot less in terms of staples, so if you have a choice between all 5, a BUG base seems fine
I feel Noah and I play very different commander games, commander can be grindy, yes, but the extent he is talking about can only be found in the most kitchen table lvls, if we go by true competitive lvls, commander becomes a game of pure speed and tactics, not a grind fest
Even most casual games are way quicker than what he is saying Most games end up I play end around turn 8 or 9, he seems like he doesn't know what he is talking about in this video
Regular commander and competitive commander are completely different. Most of the commanders on this list are a 1 on a scale of 1-5 in competitive commander. It's nearly a completely different format and when someone says they are a commander player they do not usually mean CEDH. Expecting a video like this to cater to CEDH without it being explicitly stated is silly.
The RC mentioned that Kenrith was _on their watchlist as a potential ban._ (In a post where they distinctly failed to mention Najeela!) Anyone complaining that people are insisting that this has to be about cedh are just wrong - Noah just has no clue what he's talking about.
Honestly most of the things he said are plain wrong. - Emrakul is not banned due to the extra turn, it's the fact that it takes out a player from the game even if ot doesn't outright kill the player, it was banned due to "fun" reasons, it slowed games down to a grind or outright ended them right on the spot. - Kaalia is one of the most popular Commanders for a good reason it's one of the most played Commanders in the format, mana cheating is absolutely broken in magic, and there are both angels and dragons that let you attack multiple times. - Nekusar ruling is wrong it was changed years ago (around 8 years ago with the printing of Purphoros, God of the Forge) so that pretty much proved he doesn't know what he's talking about. Failed to mention that Historic is not just artifact matters, Legendary things are VERY VERY important, and check the historic box. Very very basic shit that he got wrong... Please get someone else next time since he's so bad at explaining the damn game.
@@ascendantfiction7220 regular EDH rules are really busted 1v1 so I think it’s a fair claim (there are variants where it works better, but I think that’s just evidence it’s not balanced 1v1). Even 3 player EDH is kind of awkward.
the problem with kaalia is that in no world does she survive 1 turn on the board, everyone that sees you play kaalia with instatly gun her down before she gets to do her thing, thats why some value commanders will do better by just not looking like a threat instantly
With all the respect to noa in the world for his fun content. his card analysis is beyond awful. You can generate resources and be fast at the same time, fast commanders like kaalia and krenko begin considered weak baffles me. Sure we may no longer be in 2015 but cheating mana or create a million tokens for free is still incredibly powerful. How can joda mana cheating be ban worthy and kaalia be weak baffles me. Sure there may be more powerful commanders nowdays but there are also a ton of more powerful dragons demons and angels that werent available before that kept her relevant. I really enjoyed the video you did with Paulo Vitor beacause he knew his stuff very well and presented intresting cards. Noa was really subpar to the task, he was way more funny at evaluating heartstone cards. From an MTG player perspective this was painful
> How can joda mana cheating be ban worthy and kaalia be weak baffles me. Yeah that's wild. Kaalia can be so broken. "She's not generating more resources" kinda feels like he doesn't have any idea what cards to pump out with her. Jodah is super fun but a bit memey. You need a bunch of fragile parts to pull of big combos with him, (orrerys, paradox engine, tons of rocks AND your big spells ontop) otherwise you just got a rainbow pile of do-nothings.
Comments got me mostly covered but one thing I want to point out is that the Commander banlist isn't really made with power level in mind but other, more nebulous reasons. A card being banned doesn't necessarily mean it was overpowered and a lot of very busted cards are still and will probably forever be legal (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt for example).
Seeing Rarran’s reaction to some of the very strong CEDH partner commanders like Tymna/Kraum would be fun to watch. But then throw in some deceptively strong partner commanders like Rograhk/Tevesh Szat would be evil but also very funny.
@@firespirit8026 Those would be good, as would some of the rogue cedh ones (Sakashima, GAAIV). I don't think Codie would be good, he requires such a level of understanding of a specific combo line to get. Same with food chain commanders.
12:24 "I would imagine, in magic, that there is a mill archetype" oh my sweet summer child... The mill archetype derives its name from the magic card "millstone"!
Kenrith is an amazing commander. The more color identities in your commander the better, we're going to assume you have good enough lands to where it's no problem. Also generating infinite, or just a boatload of mana in commander is easy peasy. So infinite mana = auto win, draw your whole deck. 5/5
One aspect not mentioned about Kenrith and commander in general is the possibility of table politics. Because commander is a 4-player format, typically players will make deals with each each other to deal with a common enemy/threat, to get resources, or to stem damage. Kenrith allows you to help all players on the battlefield using his abilities, which enables the possibility of easily making deals. For example, you could make a deal like “I’ll buff your commander with +1/+1 counters if you don’t attack me with it for 5 turns.” Or “I can resurrect your creature if you use its ability to destroy that artifact.”
A lot of tap-to-make-creatures effects are really fun and powerful in standard because you can sacrifice creatures the turn they enter play, so if you can spend mana to untap a creature and you have Ashnod's Altar to sac creatures for mana it turns into an infinite mana combo...but then I remembered that in Commander it's a lot harder to pull of OHKO combos because 3 other players may have counters and worse you have to get all the parts out of a 100-card deck when you've only got 1 of each.
Combo decks usually run multiple replacement pieces and tutors for their combo. They are not hard to assemble, and only anoying to play if you are the only threath on board. There is a reason so much of cedh is combo based
This is the content i'm subbed for, good stuff! Shadowverse has a mini-expansion dropping in 2 days, would be awesome if you could do another comp with Ignideus to garner some hype for the mini and some sweet content! cheers bud
There's plenty of mill in Commander. Maybe not CEDH, but that's like saying they aren't top legend viable. Milling can be a bad strategy, as there are graveyard recursion decks that treat their graveyard as basically a second hand. Self-milling is a lot more common, as said graveyard recursion decks often do that to have more resources. Also, the term "mill" _came_ from Magic. The original card that established the archetype is called Millstone, an artifact with the ability: "(2), tap: Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." They even recently made "mill" into a keyword, so the most recent iteration says "Target player mills two cards".
I've faced some fairly decent mill decks. Nothing mind blowing, but they do put in work if left unchecked. As you said though they do take a beating from graveyard decks.
This would be a fun idea if it was made by someone who had even a slight idea about magic. Emrakul would be a dreadful commander, and the extra turn plays no part in why it's banned, in fact most of the time no one will even see the extra turn because it's not being cast for 15 mana, it's being cheated out by something like quicksilver amulet or ninjitsu. The reason kaalia isn't good is nothing to do with what he said, being fast in commander is obviously amazing, but the issue is everyone knows to kill her as soon as she enters the battlefield and without her the deck doesn't do a lot. Saying "not a lot of goblins are good" is just the most obvious "I don't know what I'm talking about ever". And to top it all off he doesn't even know how commander damage works...
I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m curious as to what will count as a “good” commander if it’s not in the context of cEDH, which I’m guessing it won’t be. There are many commanders that are naturally powerful in casual pods that don’t translate well to how cEDH is played.
I just sat through all of this and I've got to say I really loved it, your guys's chemistry and overall delivery is absolutely fantastic and I would love to see Rarran play some more magic. In fact I think it would be amazing to see Rarran play against Noah in hearthstone, Rarran gives Noah a top-tier deck while he plays a meme deck. And Noah gives Rarran a top tier magic deck while Noah plays a meme deck. Best two-out-of-three for each video lumped into one.
Nekusar can be absolutely terrifying with a deck built around wheeling everyone and increasing that ping. Though commander damage is only combat damage so the ping won't win from that
No offense to magic noah but i feel like he probably isnt the right person for this video. Not that he is bad at magic, just that his explanation of the rules of the format was a bit lacking given how different the rules are from standard. Plus while his understanding of the cards is fine idk if his takes on power level are refined enough given how he misses the point on why specific cards were banned like emerkul being more of a mana cheat to insta win card like neptulon or Thaddeus in hearthstone.
20:40 One thing to know about Commander: if something is good, but it's slow, it's bad. Because if you play a card that could win you the game on your next turn, then you have to wait 3 more turns as all of your opponents do whatever they can to stop you from winning. They can have all sorts of ways to disrupt your strategies. You win in Commander by being in 2nd place, and teaming up with the 3rd and 4th place players to take out the 1rst place player.
I am genuinely surprised that this MTG player doesn't really seem to know a whole lot about the format he is promoting. Evaluations wrong on cards, rules and mechanics wrong, and doesn't know how to pronounce the cards, just seems like a poor choice of guest.
I always love seeing you talk about other card games, its my favorite genre of youtube video! I would love to see a series where you document yourself playing these games in person and getting a feel for the community!
There are quite a few things wrong with his description of commander, specially with Nekusar. Commander damage is ONLY combat damage, Nekusar can't ping people out of the game
i am a seasoned commander player, have been playing at card shops and tournaments for over a decade, and i have to say, i disagreed with noah more than i agreed with him this video. i know haha he said ppl would get mad, but im more upset that the videos quality was lessened by him not understanding how anything above casual commander works. at multiple points he led rarran astray for seemingly no reason, and i dont even think it was on purpose. i simply think he doesnt know what hes talking about fully. no shade, but if ur gonna do another commander video in the future, this is not the dude to bring back. he didnt even know how to pronounce multiple of these commanders names properly.
Protection: a permanent with protection x can't be targeted, blocked, or dealt damage by a source of x. A notable thing about protection is that it does not defend against non-targeting effects unless they are damage based. For example: if a creature my opponent controls has protection from black i can't use the "exile target creature with power 3 or greater" option on Abzan Charm because although it is not only black in color identity, but also green and white, the protection defends against the whole spell because it's a black spell in addition to its other types. But the same pro black creature isn't necessarily immune to innocent blood as it says "each player sacrifices a creature" if the pro black creature is the only creature available for my opponent, they must sacrifice it because I'm not directly targeting the creature.
Mill in magic is not the same as hearthstone unless you have graveyard removal. Some decks want to mill themselves. Also you can have more than seven in hand when it’s not your turn. You only discard on your turn
Hey Rarran! I enjoy the content you guys make together alot. I honestly have to say tho, Noah is not the right guy for this type of content. He made ALOT of rule mistakes and has shown a huge lack of knowledge on multiple of these cards. Please keep collaborating with each other, but not if its based on Noah's Rule or Meta knowledge.
Important parts, Protection also lets it not be blocked by things. Creatures are also spells when cast. Not all creatures that are amazing in the deck is good as commanders. Everyone sees your commander, they can target/prepare for your Sheoldred.
Kaalia is a classic commander. She might not be the best anymore (or ever), but she'll always hold a special place in our hearts. Whether that place will be one of love or hate, it will depend on the person.
Yeah km sorry to say but I think Noah did quite a bad job explaining what commander is. Like he got some rules wrong but things like explaining how commanders. Colours etc work probably made it quite difficult to play. Not trying to hate. Just gonna make it difficult for you rarran
Y'all should reevaluate Krenko. 1. He's a Red commander meaning there are many many many haste enablers that he has access to, some of which are goblins. 2. There several extremely good goblins in commander that pump up other goblins, make more goblins, and give them extra keywords. 3. He has multiple combos where he make literal hundreds of thousands of goblin tokens (highest I got was around 600,000 before I ran out of mana) 4. Goblins are typically cheaply costed creatures and the spells that make goblin tokens make them in multiples. 5. Krenko has been used as a popular entry commander for Competitive Commander, or cEDH (at least that's what I have seen online being shared as well as in my local game stores). Krenko is a kill on sight commander, because eve n one tap of his ability can lead to him stealing the game.
One big thing with kenrith in white black reanimator decks is the color identity. White black reanimator frequently runs cards in other colors in other formats simply to shove them into their graveyard and reanimate them without caring what color they are. Commander doesn't let you do that... unless your commander is actually technically 5 color, which this one is.
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12:20 Unless they recently changed it, the 21 commander damage rule only applies to combat damage, meaning the ping damage from nekusar wouldn't count.
100% true. That being said, giving Nekusar Infect is a fun time as you can just Glistening Oil/Grafted Exoskeleton/Tainted Strike etc. and Wheel to kill everyone.
Came here to comment the same thing. Nekusar surely is strong, but the ping dmg does not count as commander dmg.
That is like literally one of the first things I figured out when playing Commander, and a magic TH-camR doesn't know about this, what teee fuckc.
@@x10018ro yeah and it seemed like he doesn't entirely know what he was talking about either, with all the bad examples of why Emrakul is banned for instance. No-one ever ran him as a Commander really, the issue with Emrakul lies with cards like Animar and Omnipotence which actively cheat her out.
@@x10018ro hey, everybody make mistakes, lol. Magic is a complex game and he knows this for sure, he probably just got confused.
For anyone that didn’t get the Colossal Dreadmaw joke. Colossal Dreadmaw is the Boulderfist Ogre of MTG. There are way worse cards but they kept reprinting this card in every set for a while and people started to meme the card.
Honestly when Noah started praising this card it really sounded like boulderfist ogre meme that its good stats for the cost 😂
GOOD STATS FOR COST
And whats even funnier is that Elder G and Dreadmaw was in m21 set together :D
It makes sence if you count limited formats (like draft etc), but still its strange to see this stuff
@Dreadnote1337 The meme started because Dreadmaw was first printed in the same set as Carnage Tyrant. Another 4GG cost dinosaur with trample, but Tyrant is a 7/6 with hexproof that also can't be countered.
However, Carnage Tyrant was only ever printed once, while Dreadmaw is in like every set. So obviously Dreadmaw is the better card.
Noah getting super defensive and patriotic tipped me in about it
I feel like the thing that threw him about Emrakul is that annihilator 6 was not adequately explained. Annihilator 6 means the player you're attacking has to sacrifice six permanents immediately when you attack them. "What if they don't have enough things to sacrifice?" _Lands are permanents. If you don't have six other things, this monster jellyfish from hell obliterates your mana._
Emrakul is NOT banned because of the extra turn clause. A 15 mana colorless commander is not a good card, and would probably be mediocre in the command zone. Emrakul is banned in EDH because it is the most powerful "cheat" target ever printed. There are so many ways to put Emrakul into play for significantly less than 15 mana, and getting to attack for 15 and trigger annihilator 6 on say turn 5 when your opponent might have barely more than 6 permanents is backbreaking and not a good pattern for gameplay. It is extremely rare for any deck that has Emrakul in it to try and hard cast it, it is nearly always cheated.
when they were talking about Jodah i was actually expecting Noah to say "imagine on turn 5 i have Jodah in play and cast Emrakul for jusut WUBRG"
That, and also it was banned back in 2010 and we've had a lot of power creep since then.
@@gregconen And it's STILL pretty bonkers after 13 years. There's a lot of ways to tutor it out into the graveyard and immediately reanimate it, and exactly because of that power creep it only gets easier to do so. As long as there is a way to cheat out Emrakul, it will be done.
@@MagnaDrake You can't put Em into the graveyard unless you have an instant reanimater effect. Honestly with how fast decks like Guteog monster go you are never going to get to even attempt to try to play Em much less set up a combo with her.
It absolutely is banned because of the extra turn clause, what? There’s even more ways to freely bounce a creature back to your hand, and if you can do that + hardcast it, you have a 2 card combo that says “I win the game”.
Additionally, I really disliked the way he framed the “this card is one of few that is banned”, because the edh banlist isn’t really directly tied to power level.
It makes me smile every time someone asks if there is mill in MtG. The archetype is called mill from a a MtG card
Yeah, that brought a smile to my face. "Is there a mill archetype in Magic?" "Where do you think the name came from?"
The question is more whether mill is currently a viable strategy in [insert MtG format here].
@@maxmichalik4938 *woosh*
"Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch. I was there when it was written."
there's a bit of a misunderstanding here too, since he seemed to interpret the howling mine-type effect as a mill piece, which it *would be in HS* but is not what MtG considers "mill".
34:25 "not a lot of goblins you can play with this"... I'm sorry what????
I think the real problem here is that, as it was stated, the viability of any given commander is subjective. That said Krenko is a kill on sight commander, you don't let him tap, not once, not ever.
Don't hurt him! He just wants to make some friends! My Goblins just want to have some fun! Anytime I turn 1 Krenko, I will win if it's not handled before my next turn. I play him knowing full well I could ( and should) get ganked for it. I never get mad when it happens, I'm just happy I even had the chance to try.
That's why I play Tin Street, because I can actually use him...
Yeah, there were some pretty bad judgement calls in there.
Even if you wanted to say the actual goblin creatures are bad (they're not, but devil's advocate), the spells that create a ton of Goblins and the Enchantments that pump out goblins turn after turn do enough to turn Krenko into a beast, and he's literally in the color of Haste. If you can't tap Krenko the turn he comes out, there's something wrong with your Krenko deck.
I had the same reaction. We have a Krenko deck in my meta that if you don't board wipe it by turn 5 the game is going to end.
@@VernulaUtUmbra That was my thought, too. Goblin Warchief and Goblin Chieftain are both 3 CMC, curving right into Krenko. There's a reason he was still getting played in Legacy even in 2022.
Edgar is basically the equivalent of your hero having the ability to summon a Patches every time you played a pirate, and patches was one of the best cards in hearthstone
Not exactly... patches was good not because of the free 1/1, but because he thins out the rest of your deck for free, making it more consistent. Patches is still one of the best cards without charge for this reason. Patches would be just as valuable (if not more valuable) in HS if his text read "destroy this card at the beginning of the game"
Patches would be like Edgar if he was like a 7 or 8 mana 5/5 that says "if this card is in your deck at the start of the game, each time you play a pirate, summon a 1/1 pirate." It would be strong for pirates but idk if magic has a limit on board space. The effect seems much weaker in HS with a max of 7 minions on board
@@DD-ym3nk Magic has no limit on board space.
@@DD-ym3nk Its literally a PVE treasure passive from HS dungeon run. Edgar isnt in your deck, its just a passive you start with. Imagine you have a HS tribal deck that just gets to start with a passive treasure that reads "make 1/1 tribal dood when you play a tribal minion".
@@DD-ym3nkpatches would not be playable in a 60 health format
@@DD-ym3nk You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about lmfao. Deck thinning has almost 0% impact on why patches was good.
I love how both Noah and Rarran pronounced "Emrakul" perfectly first time and then they both agreed that neither of them could pronounce it properly 😂
Nekusar does not make your opponents draw like 15 cards, it tries to stick multiple pain effects and then wheel like two times to kill everyone at once
It still haunts my dreams. Blink, and you're dead...
I love the card, but as soon as I see someone playing it. They'll automaticly become archenemy in my mind.
Dude imagine saying nekusar is bad😂💀
@@levsi100%
Sooo… it tries to make them draw 14 cards?
@@drakeblood4 and kills them at the same time, so it doesn't matter
Kozilek is in no way a Voltron commander. He is there as a big ramp target and so you can stop opponents doing things while pumping out other Eldrazi. The only thing he has going for him with voltron is a big stat line and Menace, which is simply not good enough.
Ahhh I see you are a intellectual Eldrazi player like me my friend. I tip my hat to you good sir 🍵
Went into comments to find this kind of coment, from a fellow Eldrazi player I tip my hat to ya'll fellas
Yep.
Though I do often kill with Koz, that's because he kills in 2 hits. I have very few "voltron" elements in my deck.
Turn 2 koz will eliminate players. But the draw 7 and free counters are what I like most.
He also works decently well as a commander. Voltron Kozilek was my first commander deck, and apart from the big stat line and menace (which do certainly help), drawing up to 7, and being able to counter stuff can be very helpful too. You typically spend most of the game dumping your hand to try and ramp to him, so when you do play him, you get a full hand of stuff to help keep him alive, especially with the counter ability. So, imo, he works for both, and that's the fun of Magic!
Krenko is insane, what are you talking about? Isn't only a snowball card, is a combo card. Goblins can give haste very easilly, have tons of lords to pump the tokens and have decent tutors and infinite combos. Don't underestimate the Gobos.
And that is if you are doing fair stuff. Krenko can do insanely unfair stuff.
Nothing like watching your opponent swing for over fifty damage on turn six because you made the mistake of not having three removal cards turn one.
But no, _Braids_ isn't okay, sure.
He for real has never run into a Krenko deck that was built well
Fun Fact, with the original online client there was a time period in which they were planning on transferring the design to a prettier more functional version. They prepared for the release of it by allowing players to choose to play a beta client allowing you to help test its features out before replaced the original design. At one point they decided to add a particle effect whenever a creature enters the battlefield with the card flipping onto the screen. This effect would happen for each and every token you summoned. In online play there is a timer connected to your total turn length, same as chess players use to limit the total length of time you can take up through a game. I was able to build a Krenko deck that made enough tokens during a tap that my opponents who were using the beta client glitched and froze thier program. So there was a time were I could tap my Krenko, wait 3 hours and come back, and all 3 of my opponents had timed out.
The "Rating Cards" series is so entertaining and and Magic is my favorite one.
Great video, lots of fun! Some incorrect details unfortunately. For example, commander damage only gets applied by the commander doing combat damage, non-combat damage does not count.
Hard disagree on Kaalia. Not that she has fallen out of favor, but the reason for that. The real problema od kaalia is that nowadays everyone is running a lot of removal and as a 4 mana 2/2 she dies to EVERYTHING. She also doesn't have haste, which means, you usually have to wait a turncycle to trigger her.
When you put it like that this card sounds really underwhelming which i expected because the stats are not so good
Yeah especially in more powerful EDH Decks, the Commander is either the combo generator or payoff (Urza, Gitrog, Thrasios, etc). There’s some like Winota that are there for value alone, but they generate at an insane rate or rely a lot on stax effects.
isn't that though...pretty much what he said in less words and easier to understand for a magic newbie?
For the same reasons, Jodah would also be terrible. I have no idea how he could suggest Jodah is great in Commander.
With no mtg experience: she looks like a card that doesn't often work, but if she does just wins you the game. At least in a 1v1 format.
BTW Nekusar doesnt kill players with commander damage as it's only based by combat damage
Yeah that was a really weird oversight
Lol imagine thinking nekusar is bad😂💀
Fun concept for a vid, would maybe suggest getting someone from the mtg goldfish crew if you try this again? Tomer would be a great pick especially. He's been playing and making accessible commander focused content for years.
This is a good follow-up from when PVDDR was doing this because he doesn't play a lot of commander so the only way he evaluates cards is through the lens of someone who's used to playing 60/4 formats (60 card main deck, 4 copies per card) and drafting. With this one, though Noah only has the general view and knowledge of most formats, at least he has played other more "casual" formats and knows to evaluate for those as well.
Correction on annihilator: you still sacrifice as many permanents as you can even if you have less than the number indicated. So if a player has 4 permanents and another one is attacking with a creature that has annihilator 5, they still sacrifice their 4 remaining permanents.
Correction on the 21 damage: You only lose if you take 21 **COMBAT** damage from a commander. So a commander that deals damage via an ability does not count towards this.
Opinion on Krenko: Hard disagree. I think playing the card as a goblin commander is the first thought whenever you see it for the first time, but most of the time, you're playing it in a red combo deck with something like Impact Tremors or other cards that say "Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, deal 1 damage to each opponent.". There are also cards like Anger that just give all creatures you control haste.
I have never sat down at a table without someone groaning when they see what im playing, and every time i play him even if I have nothing else on the board I am enemy number 1 for good reason.
i have seen krenko very easily one shot players at 40+ health, krenko is NOT to be fucked with
I love that when he gets to sheoldres, Noah goes "its not that strong" and proceeds to explain that is so strong you become the archenemy.
@@SwagLord420Pi our friends call th is the Vorinclex test as for the OG vorinclex is another car that is so good you become the archenemy but not quite good enough to beat 3 other players so ends up not actually being a good card to play
Being so strong that every other player works together to eliminate it is, in and of itself, a detriment. It's why it's bad as a Commander: the cost to play it multiple times becomes more prohibitive than it's worth, for a card that does nothing immediately.
It's great as a one-of in a deck with a different Commander. Something you throw out (preferably by cheating it out), that the other players then need to deal with. Hinging your whole strategy around it is a trap.
I know Magic Noah is a meme channel but I kinda wish he didn’t have as many mistakes in the Commander video. Don’t really blame him tho MTG and especially Commander is very complicated. Hope Rarran gets to do one of these with other Commander creators as well like Tomer from MTG Goldfish Commander, Any of the hosts from GameKnights, or Mitch from Commanders Quarters.
honestly id rather have someone from a cedh or high power channel not that any of the mentioned creators dont know magic but these channels know more about the "absolute" power of the cards or how they can break commander but most people would say ie phyrexian arena is a good or even great card and well it is once you aply rule 0, that neuters a lot of power from the format and makes a lot of mediocre cards way better back to the example of the arena 1 card a turn seems good if the game goes on for 9-12 turns but its only good if the decks are bad
@@noehonegger4624 cEDH is effectively a different game to normal Commander, though, and hardly follows the format's intended design and play patterns. A lot of cEDH decks also get spanked pretty badly if they're just sitting in a normal Commander round and being pummeled by a bunch of dudes by turn 3
@@Zakading a lot of cedh decks just win on turn 3 with protection though lol
@@peterkirk8510 They do in cEDH where most people just don't bother being interactive to rush their combo.
@@Zakading yeah even a cedh deck can loose 3 on 1 yeah it happens id still argue its the stronger deck 9 out of 10 times its gonna win. secondly the initial point still stands powerlevel you can argue about a card being good or bad if its not seen in cedh its most likely a fan favourite card not always a good card. thirdly intended play pattern? whats that? thats gonna be different from lgs to lgs in some its 5 turns of land ramp pass in others its turn 3-4 knock a player out and it has changed drasticly over the years because if not we'd still be hitting each other with 8 mana 7/7 dragons
Krenko is an extremely powerful and popular commander. Noah has clearly not gone against a quality Krenko deck before. The player does some stuff, resolves Krenko, then combos out. He's a huge target and the enabler for so many otk's. Krenko players love to punish people like Noah that do not respect this card. Whenever Krenko hits the board you absolutely need to deal with it.
100%. I like Noah's content, but that comment tilted me more than it should've; since I play a Krenko deck that puts in work.
Came here to say this. Krenko's ability to absolutely go wide and wipe a table is ridiculous. His ability to exponentially grow your board, the ease of multiplying damage in mono red, and both cheap and useful sac and etb triggers for all those tokens...yeah Krenko is a menace. The only time it's not effective is if they're mana screwed, not getting one of their 8 combo pieces, or being completely shut down the entire game. Credit where credit is due, the deck is fairly weak to board wipes and minimal ability to respond to control.
In addition, Goblin is one of the strongest creature types in the game, heck, CEDH Winota is half goblins because of that.
Purphoros and Krenko = GG
Aside from the obvious mistake on commander damage which has already been pointed out, a lot of this video just seems like Noah's opinions and not proper card evaluation which is a real shame as I think Rarran analysed plenty of the cards pretty correctly and was told he was off the mark. No hate, it just seems like Noah's takes on commander are very insular to his playgroup maybe? Perhaps just a miss in terms of the topic also as it's very hard to analyse 'commanders' in a vacuum. There are plenty terrible legendary creatures but as it's an 100 card format - the other 99 cards are often way more important than the commander itself. An individual decks strength lies not in just the commander at the helm but in the deck's strategy as a whole.
Completely agreed. Would prefer to have someone who has experienced casual, 75% and cedh if you’re going to rate commander cards, as it actually gives the person some room to talk about the landscape of the format; it’s so many different things to do many people. They’d be able to provide context of “this is great in casual tables, but if people are trying to win you’re going to be on the lower end of power” or “in normal games this can be good/fine, but if you build a deck a certain way this card does insanely broken things”.
As is, it just feels like I’m talking to some random dude at my card shop that only shows up for casual commander Saturdays. Not that I have anything against that, but this video just feels weird because of that
I used 2 play in several playgroups and all of them where completely different.
People played everything, from wanky meme decks (lizard/kavu tribal) to high power or cedh decks.
The funny thing was, that we all had different opinions about the power level of our or other commanders 😂
I realy cant blame anyone because everyone has a other understanding or knowledge about the game or even other priorities while playing it ❤
Right? I mean..putting Jodah over Kenrith is pretty ridiculous
Yea it’s unfortunate that I feel like he really doesn’t understand commander as most of these opinions are just factually wrong lol. ie goblin cards are bad
@@NeverLuckyOP yeah jodah is like a 2.5 / 5 in my book. He's good if you get him rolling. But, he still has a mediocre body and he still makes everything cost 5. Which is often times not that much of a discount. That's already after having to pay the mana for him, resolve him, and protect him.
"I would imagine in Magic there is a mill archetype..." Dude Mill is called Mill from the card Millstone in Magic lol
Most terms for card games come from magic. Magic is the OG.
I think he meant commander specifically
A few things to help fix it up:
There are a LOT of powerful mana rocks. There are constant discussions to ban mana of the 0 mana mana rocks as well as Sol Ring, because they're that good. Getting mana is not an issue as long as you have the budget. To go with this, color is not a restricting cost. Between mana rocks and the "fetchlands" that can search for basic land _types_ (ie, it doesnt have to be a Basic Forest. it can be one of the cycles that are two or even three land types.) You can very easily build a 5 color deck that will practically never run into mana problems simply by tuning the land base well. Because of this, there's a HUGE disparity in the power level between decks simply because of their mana bases... And cost is a big factor of that. If I hadn't proxied my last mana base, it'd have cost $400 by itself.
And two, most "strong" commanders are defined by their game plans. Not by how impactful they are when they hit the board. Thrasios, Tymna, and Kraum are all partner commanders and it's extremely hard to deny they're among the best commanders in the game. They're versatile because you can pair either of the other two with Tymna to have 4 of the 5 colors, they all draw you cards, and they usually try to combo out and win the game with counterspell backup. All these three do is draw you cards. Thrasios lets you pay mana for it, Tymna wants you to swing in and deal damage, and Kraum wants your opponents to cast multiple spells in a turn. Typically, if your commander draws you cards consistently and they're relatively cheap... They're probably REALLY good. If they don't, they probably are a combo piece (if a one of 2 combo that wins you the game is in your command zone, it's really hard to interact with,) or generate SO much value that you can take over a game with it.
So I'd actually put Kenrith the Returned King from this list, at a 5 out of 5 flamingos. He is the most versatile 5 color commander, he is a mana outlet to infinite combos that wins you the game, he draws you cards, and he strengthens the resilience of any deck he helms because of that reanimation ability. He can pair with a "companion" card called Zirda the Dawnbringer, who reduces the cost of all activated abilities of cards you activate by 2. So this greatly increases the power of Kenrith (3 mana for 5 life is kinda meh, but 1 mana for 5 life adds up over the game if you're just dumping excess mana at the end of your opponent's turn.) Kenrith is just kinda the King of "Good Stuff" and fits at all power levels in the game.
Kenrith is a 10 out of 10 comander. CHAIR TRIBAL REPRESENT
holy shit thats amazing. I'm going to build this.
notably Kenrith also states target player. Meaning if you have an infinite mana source you can force your opponents to draw their entire library+1 so they lose the game, or you can use his various abilities to entice other players as commander is a social format and deals can be made with one another.
First of all, only combat damage dealt by a commander counts as Commander Damage to win the game, which means that Nekusar pinging when an opponent draws a card doesn't do much. Secondly, despite this, Nekusar is one of the scarier kill on sight commanders out there. This is primarily because the best things to do with him are A), wheel, and B), give him Infect, and suddenly he's freaking terrifying
12:20 "I imagine that in Magic there is a mill archetype." *eye twitch* It killed me that Noah didn't show him Millstone, the card where the concept of milling as a game mechanic game from.
And the name obviously xD
Dear Noah, comander damage only aplies yo combat damage
I couldn’t disagree more about Kalia, she is an example of an agro strategy that works really well in commander. In Noah’s example he says oh in the early game players should be ramping to set up for later game strategies, but you can’t ignore a Kalia that comes down in the early game and just ramp, you will almost certainly lose that game. Kalia is kill on sight, it only takes a couple of triggers before players start getting knocked off the table
And she always gets dealt with nowadays player play enough removal and her Stat line is really terrible
@@simonkerstgens6888 You can build her to counter that. A lot of people build her stax with Land destruction which basically spells GG with her cheating. Not to mention you are playing colors which has plenty of protection spells, and reanimation spells.
I think the magic evaluation I have the most issue issue with is calling Kozilek a Voltron commander. When every build I see of him is usually ramp into big colorless spells with the commander as a control piece on thr top end.
Kozilek is the most control/value of the titans. I think Noah just has someone in his play group that plays Kozilek as a voltron deck so he thinks all Kozilek decks are voltron.
Theres a lot of misinformation in this video and I'll give a list whenever I get off work but to start.
1. If you have less than 6 things for Annihilator you just sacrifice everything
2. Commander damage is only combat damage not other sources.
40:34 Rarran read this one as a Brann but also with "Your opponent battle cries don't trigger"
The Krenko goblin is a combo deck. OTK style. Also Colossal Dreadmaw is the Ultrasuar of MTG
Honestly it’s the oger of magic. Good stats for cost
Would be amazing if you could do this with Day9 sometime
With Nekusar Noah got s/t very important wrong: commander damage (the 21 damage thing) is ONLY on combat damage, the draw trigger on Nekusar does not cause commander damage.
That is why infect is a thing, Nekusar wheels is very capable of otking with less than 6 mana.
Is Rarran a Starbucks barrista? Feel like he'd pronounce my name Fea-laixy when reading my cup
I actual used to work at starbucks LOL
@@Rarran I don't know if your life is as weird as mine, but awkwardly guessing a public figures past job feels par for the course for me :/
No offense to Noah but hes more known for his memeing shit posting as opposed to his magic the gathering card knowledge.
There sure are some interesting takes in here. Also he probably should of really explained the command zone and how it works before getting into it.
The Kaalia-Master of Cruelties oneshot is the very first commander combo I ever played against and boy did that set the tone for exactly what I built decks to prevent for years afterwards.
The thing with kenrith is that the strongest form of the deck is just a grindy control shell with a combo finish.
if you use one of the fifty combos in magic that generates infinite mana, it just wins the game. You draw your whole deck, you play every spell and criature,you give them +infinite/+infinite, haste and trample and swing for lethal.
And IF you don't draw one of the 3-4 infinite combos you are running, kenrith can grind value by himself, while also being a beefy beater..You leave all the mana open to counter or kill stuff, and if you don't need to use the mana with anything else, you just draw more cards.
or target your opponent to draw and win at the end of your turn...
I run mine for fun as cycle tribal. Not the cycling mechanic, but cycles of cards. Bringers, Hondens, Zeniths, Sanctuaries, Beacons etc. Its great because I can tailor my play for the strength of the table. I can durdle forever, gain a bit of value here and there, but then if I need to I drop a few extra permanents and suddenly I'm getting 18 triggers on my upkeep before I even take my actual turn, and gaining so many tokens, so much life and so much draw and incidental damage that its just an avalanche of value to close the game out in a turn or two. Also the opponent's face when I instant speed reanimate a Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, gain 15 life and then cast Beacon of Immortality from 5 life in response to their token army swinging at me for 70 damage is hysterically funny. The villain in me lives for the moment of dawning horror as they realise its not a political durdly deck at all but a monster about to draw 18 cards a turn that they let live far too long is just... chef's kiss.
I didn't care about the accuracy of ratings (given EDH is a casual format), but my god the explanations and rulings were just awful.
1) Emrakul as a commander is complete dogshit. Imagine playing a pure colorless deck where your goal is to take a single extra turn for 15 mana. In Hearthstone, you have a quest that gives you this cool card called "Time warp". Guess what? In Magic, we literally have the exact same card, it costs 5 mana, and you don't need to go on a quest. Emrakul is banned because it gets cheated (either through cast which is rare), but more likely to get annihilator 6. (Also honestly because it feels horrible to be selected for the attack, a lot of cards on EDH banlist are less about power and more about unfun game mechanics).
2) Kaalia of the vast. "Doesn't generate value". Huh? What? We're talking about tutoring cards into your hand, make your board indestructible, getting a billion treasures, or outright gives you combos to win the game. Even in CEDH she's quite strong (like A-tier). The only she's not giga-broken is because in EDH everyone knows they have to kill her the nano-second she enters the battlefield.
3) Nekusar. Not sure how you mess up the 21 damage rule, but okay. I'd say he's closer to 3/5 largely because your plan is to set up a board state where one or two wheels ends the game, but I don't disagree that he's meh.
4) Edgar from a cedh/high power standpoint I'd argue is fine to be rated 3.5/5. Is emininence terrible card design? Yes. Is he that degenerate in modern EDH? No.
5) Terrible explanation for why Evra is shit. First things first, is Rarran thinks in Hearthstone, so the idea that you play this 6 mana card (does nothing) and it dies immediately/is counterspelled is very real. It also forces you to have 8 mana open at all times, because if you ever swap with less than that, someone can kill it in response, so you end up with 4 hp, and you lose the game. Also good luck re-casting your commander for 8 mana in mono white.
6) For Kenrith, probably good to mind Rarran here you can use multiple abilities multiple times. Kenrith is a 5/5 (one of the best commanders in CEDH, very very good in casual). His 3 Blue ability for "target player draws a card", means if you get infinite mana you just outright win the game. Also worth noting the idea that having access to 5 colors means by nature it lets you play all of the best cards in Magic, something Rarran clearly didn't understand.
7) Jodah is okay at 4/5, hard to evaluate cards in a more fine-grained way given how EDH is as a format. Unplayable in CEDH, and even in high power pods has the problem of getting blown out a little bit by counterspells (which doesn't help, because your strategy is very much based around your commander). The emphasis on colors is mostly a bait, most players use land tutors to get The World Tree to never give a shit about the WUBRG, but yeah.
8) Sheoldred.... is just bad. Cards like Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are infinitely stronger, both clearing immediately and also harder to remove. Two rotations of this card isn't devastating, or at least if it is it's worth pointing out you can just play cards like Victimize and do the same thing but immediately. It's a 7 mana card that at this point is just generally outright worse than a lot of 4 mana cards. It's a fun card to reanimate, but not very good at all.
9) Elesh norn as a commander is good but not great? The problem is that being in mono white both restricts your ability to generate a lot of mana (which matters if your commander costs 5 and really likes getting killed), and more importantly play a lot of other broken ETB effects.
10) It seems like the entire reason why Kodama of the East Tree is great got completely ignored here which is a little wild. It's because you just put lands into play, so the moment this lives you are just so ahead in mana. For example, with something like Scute Swarm, with a bounce land you can create infinite scute swarms, and play every land from your hand.
could not agree with this comment more if i tried. thank u
I don't think Kaalia is playable in cedh atm, nor is Edgar. Both uuuuuuussssssseeeedddd to be? (Edgar was pretty fringe iirc) But both aren't really playable. (I think Kaalia might still be Rogue Tier).
Not reading all of this shit lmao
UNDERRATED COMMENT THANKS BROTHER I WAS SO TRIGGERED FROM THIS
You clearly misunderstand how oppressive Emrakul as a commander is. This is a Time Warp on the command zone you can't counterspell on colorless, the "color" that ramps/goes infinite the easiest. You could literally go infinite turn 3-4 then drop this and a sac outlet and your opponents can't do shit. Hell you can drop this at the same rate without going infinite thanks to all the cheap rocks/dorks that generate colorless. This thing really is the poster child of wincon commander that's way too easy to combo
rarran laughing out loud when Noah explains rule zero to him is pretty on point
So something about annihilator is that you have to sacrifice the permanents even if you don't have enough. That means if someone has 5 permanents, and emrakul attacks you, you lose everything.
The other thing is that recovering from having no lands against someone who has lands is basically impossible.
btw Magic Arena does have Commander! Its called "brawl" there, it basically has all the Commander Rules, except its a 1v1 format.
Emrakul isn't banned because it gives you a turn on a creature (Lighthouse Chronologist, Wormfang Manta, and Timestream Navigator are all legal creatures that take extra turns - plus the manta can flicker combo and Emrakul can't [and ETB is easier to abuse over "when cast"]). Emrakul also isn't banned because it is a commander (Narset turns would be infinitely better).
Emrakul is banned because it warps the entire game around it.
Emrakul invalidates the entire gamestate prior to it touching the stack 90% of the time by starting a "subgame".
Whoever can manipulate the zone that Emrakul is in the best gets the advantage, all other gameplans have to warp around that player and what the Emrakul is doing.
Tokens and more control oriented decks care less (tokens for chumping and sacrifice fodder, control with boardwipes), but if they can't deal with the Emrakul or the consequences of the Emrakul, they just loose (taking 15 to the face and dying is still relevant even with 100 1/1 soldiers in play, sacrificing 6 lands stops your interaction so your health effectively doesn't matter [any commander capable of doing commander damage will kill you given enough time and you having no way to deal with it even if your health is arbitrarily high]).
The major ways to "beat" an Emrakul once it touches the stack is to combo out from under it, or abuse it better than everyone else. The game ends real fast once you see it. Attacking your resources AND life at the same time with evasion and protection is just a real hard ask of any player at many times throughout the game, but especially the early turns (since it isn't all that hard to cheat from the 99 on turns 1-4).
If you do manage to cheat it in AND cast it (there's ways to do it but all I'm thinking of at the moment is: cheat out Omniscience into casting Emrakul for 0), bang, extra bonkers that kinda isn't needed at all (bonus, it can't be countered).
(Not to mention it forces your opponent to exile-mill you since it's a Shuffle Titan. Plus decks built to tutor it out of your deck reliably, like a Prismatic Bridge deck, just get to loop it forever each turn if you can only get rid of it by killing [delaying] it.)
There's also the consideration that just about any deck can feasibly slot it in as it has no colour restrictions, but that's not really the issue here.
That's not to say that there aren't a plethora of other insane creatures to cheat into play super fast, MANY creatures fit that description, Emrakul is just too difficult to interact with and does too much. Interaction with it basically has to be an exile (non-spell) effect, specifically Scour from Existence (a bad card), a Mindslaver effect (force your opponent to use it as you want), or a (non-spell) MInd-Control effect (IDk, flicker a Agent of Treachery or something). A ton of decks can't do that at all.
Also there's good reason Annihilator "#" is on like 10 cards (and Bane of Bala Ged kinda*) TOTAL (its kinda nuts and real not fun to lose to).
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To give an example of what I'm talking about with the "creates a subgame" thing, here's a paraphrasing from the Rules Committee making use of another banned card, good 'ol Prime Time:
Primeval Titan is a powerful effect, but it is not unique. There are several cards that let you find specific, nonbasic lands, but they do not do what Titan does.
Because Titan is repeatable, as soon as it is cast / revealed / resolved, the focus of the game shifts. Every player at the table is acutely aware that the person who controls and attacks with the titan the most is *HEAVILY* favored to win the game. The war to see who can control, attack with, clone, or blink the titan the most breaks out, and continues until the game ends.
This player pattern is what is described as the “subgame” that PrimeTime starts. All other cards played before it become mostly inconsequential, and very few cards played after it matter if they aren’t directed at the Titan, or stopping the player who controls it.
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Emrakul makes the entire game of 400 cards revolve around just 1.
Stop the Emrakul.
Control the Emrakul.
Or die to the Emrakul.
That is why Emrakul is banned.
The game stops being a commander game and starts being an Emrakul game.
Very true to an Eldrazi titan to warp the world around them to an irreparable extent.
Tbh i dont think thats bad. Its a cool flavor, you got this 4 person edh game and one guy is straight up a cultist trying to bring emrakul into the game. And of course the whole battle becomes about trying to get control of this eldritch creature. Honestly a fun scenario and there are so many other cards nowadays that are the same thing. Someone plays agent of treachery? dockside extortionist? The guy who copies the most agents/docksides basically wins too
13:00 Commander damage counts only as combat damage not through abilities. Great video.
Immagina how broken nekusar wuold actualy be xD
Came to the comment section just to point that out lol he'd be insane if this rule didn't exist.
@@Sonitus523 But infect does exist....
@@matthewjohnson3656 Okay but thats a completely different question? That doesnt change my original statement at all still lol
@@Sonitus523 I know. I was just being coy as to another way to make nekusar really devestating.
commander, in simple hearthstone terms, is a super op heropower that is a mix of classes, and you build a 100 card reno deck with the classes you have from that commander
(this, as an mtg player, and hearthstone player in the past)
The problem is that Noah rates the cards from a casual perspective witch doesn't make sense if you wan't to know which cards are strongest. Because the value of cards changes from power level to power level. Like Noah says casual commander is about making alot of value and building up to one big turn. But with high power or cedh this is not the case. So if you want to know what the strongest commander is you need to take it into the highest power level like cedh, and in cedh edgar markor is shit but cards like kenrith are way better and even kaalia are more playable than edgar
Yeah. I could tell when he said “I’ve seen jhoira win early as turn 5.” I was like damn she must have been tired that game 😂
@@joshuaspector8182 edgar is a better cedh commander than Kaalia . having free material to sacrifice to culling the weak or razaketh is so good. but yeah they are both pretty mid in cedh where kenrith is one of the better ones. jhoira is probably one of hte better budget commanders cause for less than 100 dollars you can build it borderline cedh on down . i had a a budget one that i would regular play in cedh non budget tournaments and i still could hang and get wins , . it would be interesting ofor him to do another video for just cedh . get someone from the Labmaniacs or playing with power or whatever. and do the partners and add in some non actual commander staples to show the types fo cards that see play in cedh vs reg commander vs 1v1 competitive to really get the sense how varied a game magic is and how card power level can be so much more subjective than in other tcgs
Also kinda telling he thinks $500 is a lot for an EDH deck 😬
EDH is a $3,000 format. 9x fetches + 3 ABUR duals is an easy grand. Factor in cards like Lion's Eye Diamond, Yawgmoth's Will, Force of Will, Gaea's Cradle, Mishra's Workshop, or Mox Diamond? It costs more than Legacy and you're killing people on turn 1 when you have your Mana Crypt + Sol Ring opener.
@@sethstephens4777 still think that kalia is better with the printning of hoarding broodlord. Also because if you want to use Edgards abbillity you Will need to play vampires and since there isn't alot of good vampires, its in my mind alot better to be able to put one card win cons on the battlefield through counterspells.
bro edgar is one of the very few creature-based decks that is actually viable in cEDH as it can pretty consistantly win around turn 4-5 and there is not much creature removal in cEDH pods. If other players are distracted countering each others infinite combos for 4-5 turns, he's got a good chance. Kaalia is far off
I was shaky on the opinions untill he said kozilek was a voltron commander, thats when he completely lost me. No one in there right mind would make him a voltron commander outside of a meme deck
Commander is the only format in Magic I've played, so I really liked this episode! Though I think Noah should have explained the rules a bit better at the start for Rarran. At least telling him you have 100 cards, no duplicates except lands and how the Commander works in general. It's like playing a Reno highlander deck in Wild, with Giga Prince Renethal and vs 3 other opponents :P
The point of these videos is how the other person doesn't have any knowledge. Giving them that knowledge kinda ruins the point.
@@notsogreatjagras4314 no knowledge of the cards and the meta yes. Knowing the basic rules of the game is normally explained, as most of his guests are either old school players like Reynad who stopped playing, or players that played for a bit then swapped to another card game. So I disagree with you
@@notsogreatjagras4314 Thats not what he meant. Rarrans videos are often like if you put an 80 year old mexican grandma in a chinese league of legends team and let her react to gameplay. Its just gonna be a bunch of noises and "whooooaaaaaa", thats boring. I atleast want the guest to have the ability of thinking about the card, not going "well it got text and art look pretty, good card?"
Strongly disagree with many of Noah's opinions here. To be fair, commander is generally a casual format where power is subjective and fun is primary. However, I'm not playing a commander like Nekusar to slowly deal 1-2 damage a turn my opponents, I'm playing Nekusar to immediately cast multiple wheel of fortune effects that will kill the whole table very quickly. Saying Nekusar is just bad without mentioning how many Wheel effects there are in the game is just sloppy imo.
Having played vs Krenko a few times at my lgs? You got the Krenko play pattern very wrong. It doesn't matter that they are trash, goblin have access to a lot of support and lords to buff each others and being trash mean they are cheap and easy to flood the board with.
Then you just sack them all and kill everyone.
And the fact there are goblins that allow you to search cards, there are goblins that regenerate creatures, and red has access to burn, draw, removal, and buffs.
The person choosing the cards should rate them before hand to prevent biased nit picking, this is my favorite series on your channel though
I like Noah and his content, but I feel like he's not the best person to be both explaining this format to people and not letting his personal bias get in the way of card evaluation as a whole. The video feels pretty medium as a person who brews and plays the format regularly.
Agreed. I do think Noah would be a fun person to collab with in a different style of video
gotta hop in the comments as a magic player to say that while Noah seems like a super nice and enthusiastic dude, his analysis and understanding of EDH/Commander is really not that deep or insightful. His understanding of Kenrith and talking about "playing him as just the colors you want" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how deck construction works. If you want to play White-Black Reanimator and use the graveyard as a resource, there are already 2-color commanders that fit that archetype and will be better than 10 mana reanimate (5 for Kenrith + 5 for ability cost). In other words, the whole point of Kenrith is that he IS a toolbox where you are SUPPOSED to run all 5 colors.
tl;dr Playing Kenrith and not running 5 colors is either the sign of a total amateur or the sign of a super-enfranchised player trying to play around a bizarro theme/gimmick for personal satisfaction, and Noah doesn't seem good enough to be the second type of player
Tbh 5c commanders can generally get away with playing mostly BUG or BUGw, red and white generally feel less necessary if you have access to the others. I would agree that playing 2 is generally silly and giving up blue when it’s free is also silly
@@peterkirk8510 Sure, there are going to be some colors that are favored based on the main mechanical engine of the deck, but no Kenrith deck is going to leave something like Anguished Unmaking or BlasAct or Swords or all the other best-in-slot red/white removal out of the mix. Not to even mention all the insanely pushed cards like Terramancer, Loran, Drannith Magistrate and Archivist that white has gotten in the last couple years that Kenny is happy to play. I agree that Red is likely the least represented color.
@@PiquantPan I was thinking more along cedh lines, white and red tend to both offer a lot less in terms of staples, so if you have a choice between all 5, a BUG base seems fine
Noah has this energy of "is... is he fuckin' with me?" when he says stuff and I love/hate it.
@@firstnext5482 that’s giving him a lot of undeserved credit, he’s not intentionally being wrong
I feel Noah and I play very different commander games, commander can be grindy, yes, but the extent he is talking about can only be found in the most kitchen table lvls, if we go by true competitive lvls, commander becomes a game of pure speed and tactics, not a grind fest
Even most casual games are way quicker than what he is saying
Most games end up I play end around turn 8 or 9, he seems like he doesn't know what he is talking about in this video
Which blows my mind, because even then he said Kenrith isn't that good. Just maybe one of the best value cards ever printed
Yeah, I dont even think competitive is the right way to put it, most lgs games are significantly higher power from what I've seen.
Regular commander and competitive commander are completely different. Most of the commanders on this list are a 1 on a scale of 1-5 in competitive commander. It's nearly a completely different format and when someone says they are a commander player they do not usually mean CEDH. Expecting a video like this to cater to CEDH without it being explicitly stated is silly.
The RC mentioned that Kenrith was _on their watchlist as a potential ban._ (In a post where they distinctly failed to mention Najeela!) Anyone complaining that people are insisting that this has to be about cedh are just wrong - Noah just has no clue what he's talking about.
This was a great watch, keep it up Rarran, especially love the MTG content as well
Colossal dreadmaw is the boulder-fist ogre meme
Honestly most of the things he said are plain wrong.
- Emrakul is not banned due to the extra turn, it's the fact that it takes out a player from the game even if ot doesn't outright kill the player, it was banned due to "fun" reasons, it slowed games down to a grind or outright ended them right on the spot.
- Kaalia is one of the most popular Commanders for a good reason it's one of the most played Commanders in the format, mana cheating is absolutely broken in magic, and there are both angels and dragons that let you attack multiple times.
- Nekusar ruling is wrong it was changed years ago (around 8 years ago with the printing of Purphoros, God of the Forge) so that pretty much proved he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Failed to mention that Historic is not just artifact matters, Legendary things are VERY VERY important, and check the historic box.
Very very basic shit that he got wrong... Please get someone else next time since he's so bad at explaining the damn game.
Also the assumption that commander is exclusively a multiplayer format is incorrect.
@@ascendantfiction7220 regular EDH rules are really busted 1v1 so I think it’s a fair claim (there are variants where it works better, but I think that’s just evidence it’s not balanced 1v1). Even 3 player EDH is kind of awkward.
the problem with kaalia is that in no world does she survive 1 turn on the board, everyone that sees you play kaalia with instatly gun her down before she gets to do her thing, thats why some value commanders will do better by just not looking like a threat instantly
nobody plays kaalia because shes good xD people read "angels x demons x dragons" on a hot goth mommy and get the timmy-boner
With all the respect to noa in the world for his fun content. his card analysis is beyond awful. You can generate resources and be fast at the same time, fast commanders like kaalia and krenko begin considered weak baffles me. Sure we may no longer be in 2015 but cheating mana or create a million tokens for free is still incredibly powerful. How can joda mana cheating be ban worthy and kaalia be weak baffles me. Sure there may be more powerful commanders nowdays but there are also a ton of more powerful dragons demons and angels that werent available before that kept her relevant.
I really enjoyed the video you did with Paulo Vitor beacause he knew his stuff very well and presented intresting cards. Noa was really subpar to the task, he was way more funny at evaluating heartstone cards. From an MTG player perspective this was painful
> How can joda mana cheating be ban worthy and kaalia be weak baffles me.
Yeah that's wild. Kaalia can be so broken. "She's not generating more resources" kinda feels like he doesn't have any idea what cards to pump out with her.
Jodah is super fun but a bit memey. You need a bunch of fragile parts to pull of big combos with him, (orrerys, paradox engine, tons of rocks AND your big spells ontop) otherwise you just got a rainbow pile of do-nothings.
Thank you I had to stop the video. Sheldred is a bad card because it must get answered or you win. I think that is the definition of a 5 out of 5.
Comments got me mostly covered but one thing I want to point out is that the Commander banlist isn't really made with power level in mind but other, more nebulous reasons. A card being banned doesn't necessarily mean it was overpowered and a lot of very busted cards are still and will probably forever be legal (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt for example).
I think this video would be better with Competitive Commanders
Seeing Rarran’s reaction to some of the very strong CEDH partner commanders like Tymna/Kraum would be fun to watch. But then throw in some deceptively strong partner commanders like Rograhk/Tevesh Szat would be evil but also very funny.
@@firespirit8026 Those would be good, as would some of the rogue cedh ones (Sakashima, GAAIV). I don't think Codie would be good, he requires such a level of understanding of a specific combo line to get. Same with food chain commanders.
Kenrith was in there just for the magic 'expert' to say that its only kinda good despite easily being a top 10 non-partner commander in cedh
@@firespirit8026when I heard "Now I'm gonna show you some partners" I thought about tymna/trasios or smth like this
And now people, we learn how commander damage does not work
Would love to see ranran play commander sometime, I feel like he would thrive in the chaos
And add planechase 😂
12:24
"I would imagine, in magic, that there is a mill archetype"
oh my sweet summer child... The mill archetype derives its name from the magic card "millstone"!
Kenrith is an amazing commander. The more color identities in your commander the better, we're going to assume you have good enough lands to where it's no problem. Also generating infinite, or just a boatload of mana in commander is easy peasy. So infinite mana = auto win, draw your whole deck. 5/5
Noah going: “I could nerf my Jodah deck, but I don’t want to” is kinda me with every commander deck that I’ve upgraded to the point of no return
12:28 Ability damage is not commander damage. Only combat damage.
One aspect not mentioned about Kenrith and commander in general is the possibility of table politics. Because commander is a 4-player format, typically players will make deals with each each other to deal with a common enemy/threat, to get resources, or to stem damage.
Kenrith allows you to help all players on the battlefield using his abilities, which enables the possibility of easily making deals. For example, you could make a deal like “I’ll buff your commander with +1/+1 counters if you don’t attack me with it for 5 turns.” Or “I can resurrect your creature if you use its ability to destroy that artifact.”
RARRAN AND COMMANDER? YES PLEASE 😭😭😭
A lot of tap-to-make-creatures effects are really fun and powerful in standard because you can sacrifice creatures the turn they enter play, so if you can spend mana to untap a creature and you have Ashnod's Altar to sac creatures for mana it turns into an infinite mana combo...but then I remembered that in Commander it's a lot harder to pull of OHKO combos because 3 other players may have counters and worse you have to get all the parts out of a 100-card deck when you've only got 1 of each.
Combo decks usually run multiple replacement pieces and tutors for their combo. They are not hard to assemble, and only anoying to play if you are the only threath on board. There is a reason so much of cedh is combo based
This is the content i'm subbed for, good stuff!
Shadowverse has a mini-expansion dropping in 2 days, would be awesome if you could do another comp with Ignideus to garner some hype for the mini and some sweet content! cheers bud
really need to get people who know more about what they are talking about for these videos, and ones who can actually explain things right
There's plenty of mill in Commander. Maybe not CEDH, but that's like saying they aren't top legend viable. Milling can be a bad strategy, as there are graveyard recursion decks that treat their graveyard as basically a second hand. Self-milling is a lot more common, as said graveyard recursion decks often do that to have more resources.
Also, the term "mill" _came_ from Magic. The original card that established the archetype is called Millstone, an artifact with the ability: "(2), tap: Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." They even recently made "mill" into a keyword, so the most recent iteration says "Target player mills two cards".
I've faced some fairly decent mill decks. Nothing mind blowing, but they do put in work if left unchecked. As you said though they do take a beating from graveyard decks.
This would be a fun idea if it was made by someone who had even a slight idea about magic.
Emrakul would be a dreadful commander, and the extra turn plays no part in why it's banned, in fact most of the time no one will even see the extra turn because it's not being cast for 15 mana, it's being cheated out by something like quicksilver amulet or ninjitsu.
The reason kaalia isn't good is nothing to do with what he said, being fast in commander is obviously amazing, but the issue is everyone knows to kill her as soon as she enters the battlefield and without her the deck doesn't do a lot.
Saying "not a lot of goblins are good" is just the most obvious "I don't know what I'm talking about ever".
And to top it all off he doesn't even know how commander damage works...
I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m curious as to what will count as a “good” commander if it’s not in the context of cEDH, which I’m guessing it won’t be. There are many commanders that are naturally powerful in casual pods that don’t translate well to how cEDH is played.
When he kept giving bad information I thought it couldn't possibly get worse but than he talked about Krenko like that.
He doesn't understand the game does he?
6:40 Tbf, that card is banned for it's application in the 99, not as a commander. And it could arguably come back to the format right now.
I just sat through all of this and I've got to say I really loved it, your guys's chemistry and overall delivery is absolutely fantastic and I would love to see Rarran play some more magic. In fact I think it would be amazing to see Rarran play against Noah in hearthstone, Rarran gives Noah a top-tier deck while he plays a meme deck. And Noah gives Rarran a top tier magic deck while Noah plays a meme deck. Best two-out-of-three for each video lumped into one.
Nekusar can be absolutely terrifying with a deck built around wheeling everyone and increasing that ping. Though commander damage is only combat damage so the ping won't win from that
i love that format, but can we next time have someone in it, that actually knows magic?
Noah obviously never saw real goblins in action. Against a krenko deck, normally 1 or 2 players are dead on turn 5
@@moersertrupp Turn 5 is an understatement. Our goblin friend has mopped the floor with us on turn 3
@@Supercris25 true, but turn 3 is rare and dependant ok a really good Hand. Turn 5 is much more consistent
12:58 expect it's not combat damage, so it doesn't count as commander DMG
No offense to magic noah but i feel like he probably isnt the right person for this video. Not that he is bad at magic, just that his explanation of the rules of the format was a bit lacking given how different the rules are from standard. Plus while his understanding of the cards is fine idk if his takes on power level are refined enough given how he misses the point on why specific cards were banned like emerkul being more of a mana cheat to insta win card like neptulon or Thaddeus in hearthstone.
20:40 One thing to know about Commander: if something is good, but it's slow, it's bad. Because if you play a card that could win you the game on your next turn, then you have to wait 3 more turns as all of your opponents do whatever they can to stop you from winning. They can have all sorts of ways to disrupt your strategies. You win in Commander by being in 2nd place, and teaming up with the 3rd and 4th place players to take out the 1rst place player.
I am genuinely surprised that this MTG player doesn't really seem to know a whole lot about the format he is promoting. Evaluations wrong on cards, rules and mechanics wrong, and doesn't know how to pronounce the cards, just seems like a poor choice of guest.
I always love seeing you talk about other card games, its my favorite genre of youtube video! I would love to see a series where you document yourself playing these games in person and getting a feel for the community!
There are quite a few things wrong with his description of commander, specially with Nekusar. Commander damage is ONLY combat damage, Nekusar can't ping people out of the game
give him infect
@@drsherifff still doesnt make him do commander damage with his ping :P
@@ich3730 Yeah but he can ping people out of the game
I feel like this guys has not faced down most of these built optimally.
I mean, he doesn't even know how commander damage works so I don't think he even knows all that much about magic
i am a seasoned commander player, have been playing at card shops and tournaments for over a decade, and i have to say, i disagreed with noah more than i agreed with him this video. i know haha he said ppl would get mad, but im more upset that the videos quality was lessened by him not understanding how anything above casual commander works. at multiple points he led rarran astray for seemingly no reason, and i dont even think it was on purpose. i simply think he doesnt know what hes talking about fully. no shade, but if ur gonna do another commander video in the future, this is not the dude to bring back. he didnt even know how to pronounce multiple of these commanders names properly.
Protection: a permanent with protection x can't be targeted, blocked, or dealt damage by a source of x. A notable thing about protection is that it does not defend against non-targeting effects unless they are damage based. For example: if a creature my opponent controls has protection from black i can't use the "exile target creature with power 3 or greater" option on Abzan Charm because although it is not only black in color identity, but also green and white, the protection defends against the whole spell because it's a black spell in addition to its other types. But the same pro black creature isn't necessarily immune to innocent blood as it says "each player sacrifices a creature" if the pro black creature is the only creature available for my opponent, they must sacrifice it because I'm not directly targeting the creature.
Mill in magic is not the same as hearthstone unless you have graveyard removal. Some decks want to mill themselves. Also you can have more than seven in hand when it’s not your turn. You only discard on your turn
These videos almost always let me down, noah did like a C- job providing context and evaluating cards.
I’d say that’s being generous
Hey Rarran! I enjoy the content you guys make together alot. I honestly have to say tho, Noah is not the right guy for this type of content. He made ALOT of rule mistakes and has shown a huge lack of knowledge on multiple of these cards. Please keep collaborating with each other, but not if its based on Noah's Rule or Meta knowledge.
Should go onto a podcast with Play To Win and try to guess at cedh cards. Almost completely different format with the exact same rules and cards
That would be funny
Important parts,
Protection also lets it not be blocked by things.
Creatures are also spells when cast.
Not all creatures that are amazing in the deck is good as commanders.
Everyone sees your commander, they can target/prepare for your Sheoldred.
Creatures are only spells while resolving; Once they're on the battlefield they're no longer spells and just permanents.
Kaalia is a classic commander. She might not be the best anymore (or ever), but she'll always hold a special place in our hearts.
Whether that place will be one of love or hate, it will depend on the person.
Yeah km sorry to say but I think Noah did quite a bad job explaining what commander is. Like he got some rules wrong but things like explaining how commanders. Colours etc work probably made it quite difficult to play. Not trying to hate. Just gonna make it difficult for you rarran
Y'all should reevaluate Krenko. 1. He's a Red commander meaning there are many many many haste enablers that he has access to, some of which are goblins. 2. There several extremely good goblins in commander that pump up other goblins, make more goblins, and give them extra keywords. 3. He has multiple combos where he make literal hundreds of thousands of goblin tokens (highest I got was around 600,000 before I ran out of mana) 4. Goblins are typically cheaply costed creatures and the spells that make goblin tokens make them in multiples. 5. Krenko has been used as a popular entry commander for Competitive Commander, or cEDH (at least that's what I have seen online being shared as well as in my local game stores). Krenko is a kill on sight commander, because eve n one tap of his ability can lead to him stealing the game.
For anyone not aware, highlander decks in HS are named after the Elder Dragon Highlander format in MTG (original name for commander)
They're both named after the movie "The Highlander"
One big thing with kenrith in white black reanimator decks is the color identity. White black reanimator frequently runs cards in other colors in other formats simply to shove them into their graveyard and reanimate them without caring what color they are. Commander doesn't let you do that... unless your commander is actually technically 5 color, which this one is.