The casual lifegain to me was really an undertalked and underrated part of uro dominance. The fact that playing it once not only gained you life, but set you up to do the same in a couple of turns, just cut off the legs from under any deck that hadn't the ability to both pressure and keep up in card advantage.
I can explain this one: Companions became infamous, primarily because of how broken Lurrus was. In addition, out of the 10 companions made, 4 of them were too good in various formats (Lurrus, Lutri, Zirda, Gyruda), while several of the others were just free-rolled in decks that didn't have to change to play them. (Obosh, Kaheera, Jegantha, Lurrus again). Basically it was a case of if a deck didn't have a companion, it started down a card. Lurrus in particular was a poorly thought out combination of way too easy to include (you can still play big instants & sorceries for some reason), and way too strong. Lurrus was so good it got banned in VINTAGE for being too strong. (The whole point of vintage is that it doesn't have a banlist)
@@jadedheartsz They did, which tells you more about the stupidity of the ban. Until then, the only cards that were banned in Vintage were dexterity cards, ante cards, and Shahrazad. Vintage was built on cards never being banned because of their power, and Lurrus managed to break that.
@@jadedheartsz Sorta. WoTC decided that those cards were no longer legal anywhere (basically sending a message to people who were playing them to be racist*), and that happened after the Lurrus ban (then unban after the companion nerf). Also, Vintage does have a ban list. It contains cards that don't function in magic anymore for various reasons (ante, physical dexterity, conspiracies), oddball cards that are only used for trolling (Shahrazad and the racist ones). The fact that Lurrus was the first (and only) ban for balance reasons (as restricting it did nothing) was insane. *Most of the cards were unplayable, so the ban only hurt niche decks, and people who thought they were being funny. There were a couple that were playable in singleton formats, but they weren't staples there either.
@@simonteesdale9752 to be fair, vintage does restrict powerful cards from the usual 4 copies down to 1 (so you can only play 1 Black Lotus, for example) which does help reduce the consistency of some of the extra broken cards. Lurrus’ commander status unfortunately made it so reducing it to 1 wouldn’t change how she is played, so the ban was the only way to reduce her dominance.
Back before the errata, companions used to cost 0 mana to bring into your hand. Lurrus caused so much problems in Vintage that it got banned for a little due to how insane the companion mechanic was during that time. After the errata, they unbanned it in Vintage but to this day, companion has been quoted to be the most hated mechanic and arguably the most powerful as well.
Minor nitpick, you didn’t pay to put them into your hand, you could just cast it from your sideboard. Meaning they were an 8th card in your hand that couldn’t be interacted with in any way.
I would like to see the video about companions because it was a mechanic that, as stated, changes the game at a fundamental level. YGO has 15 companions, MtG having one was just too much. Diving into "Why?" these differences exist would be quite interesting, and challenge some paradigms and designs.
One fundamental difference between companions and the extra deck is that companions are effectively an 8th card in hand. While extra deck monsters often let you plus, they at least make you invest resources into bringing them out rather than just giving you a free extra card
You see yugioh get broken by extra deck monsters from time to time as well. Basically the costs for using them end up being negligible to the pay offs you would get from doing so. You also need to invest more to access the extra deck than in a game like mtg, where companions were free cards to be cast.
The first thing that almost everyone thought of when seeing Tibalt’s Trickery revealed was to counter your own spells with it. I think it’s pretty clear that WOTC had that usage as its intended usage, with countering the opponent’s spell as an upside.
Off topic, but i would love you to do a rundown of all legacy bans when you are done with this. I played Magic in the Masques era and a few more years. Now i started again and i am completely lost on all the insane combos you can do in legacy. So yeah... That would be cool...
One of the most frustrating things about Oko was how strong he was out of the gate. Having a +2 ability effectively gave him a loyalty of 6 by the time an opponent can react to it. Every 3MV walker (not counting the WAR ones that only had minus abilities) before it went up to at most 5. This was a problem, as the most recent card they'd designed to deal with walkers like him, Fry, only dealt 5.
I absolutely want to see a video about the companion mechanic, as part of your failed mechanics series. (I would suggest that any mechanic that needs to be errated because of how broken it is, is a failed mechanic)
While I think companion is not the most fun mechanic in the game due to its homogenization, the power level of more than half of the companions is pretty fine with the non-companion effects of the best few being too good with almost no downside from their given restrictions in their best decks. In fact, because WOTC really doesn’t like errataing cards for non-typo reasons (as opposed to Konami who happily does it), it’s almost more in line with their philosophy to errata a keyword than to errata a single card. This is doubly true because WOTC often prints cards in thematic sets so it’s harder for them to reprint an errata or even just a retrain of a single card with an obscure mechanic specific to one set.
Because they didn't realize how strong Elking your opponent's stuff was. Basically during playtesting, they hadn't been doing it to the opponent's cards due to thinking it was bad.
@@KaseyWynne Yeah. That and not realizing how much flexibility Elking *opponents* artifacts has. Basically, they were playing the card as if it was "Elk your food token, or your opponents creature." Honestly, I'm not sure how they missed that given that Eldraine has a cycle of legendary artefacts. It's still more excusable than missing Once Upon A Time, because the phrase "without paying it's Mana cost" has years of precedent in breaking things.
@@Zanzibawrr Oko, Uro, Once Upon A Time were all in the same standard and nobody cared about it. It's also no coincidence that Collector's Boxes started around that time too.
There is actually one good way to convey how insanely broken Lurrus was when it was legal, under the old companion rules where you didn't have to pay 3 first to put it into your hand. It was the only card to be ever banned for power level reasons in Vintage.
The companion mechanic was such a busted mechanic to the point where Ikoria, the set that it got released in would be considered to be an underwhelming set if compaions were never made. The errata not only made you pay 3, but you added it to your hand afterwards. Before that, you were able to avoid cards like thoughtsieze from removing it from your hand since you used to be able to play it straight from the side board. Also, companions were one of the few instances where Wizards completely changed the mechanic of a card in order to nerf it, which was never done before. Usually when WOTC errata'd cards, they usually do so in order to streamline their effects (like giving consider the surveil mechanic so it interacts with cards such as dimir spy bug) or to make the text easier to read. Unlike Yu-Gi-Oh, nerfing cards usually doesn't work because there are multiple sanctioned formats that people play. When a card gets banned in Yu-Gi-Oh, they are worthless. Wizards took a page out of Konami's book by nerfing companions because they dominated every format they played in. A common mantra people would say is "reading the card explains the card", but wizards flipped it on it's head especially how we will never see this mechanic come back. So only one card got it's rules text to be updated, and that is Lurrus. With the rate of companions getting banned, we might never see the updated text be applied to newer cards. Mark Rosewater, lead director, made the storm scale after the mechanic as a way to measure how likely a mechanic will return to a future standard set. It goes from 1 to 10, with 10 being mechanics that will need a huge miracle for it to ever make a comeback. Companion is sitting at a 9 right now.
I once played against a burn player, where the only two spells I cast during one game was a noble hierarch and an Oko. My opponent pretty much spent all his resources trying to kill Oko, but somehow Oko always managed to hang on with at least one loyalty. Just goes to show that Oko could literally solo entire archetypes
Yeah just make Karn's static ability be "Activated abilities of nonland artifacts your opponent can't be activated." Boom. Solved. Instead they were like oh, let's give it the ability to search up lattice or any sideboard/exile card for that matter.
They made Tibalts trickery able to counter your own spells on purpose, so you could do this typically red effect of getting something random or cheating something into play, but they obviously didn't think about these totally degenerate decks of a few Emrakuls, one trickery, 4 violent outbursts and the rest just lands.
fun fact: in the standard tournaments between Oko's printing and his banning there were more breeding pools being played in the top 8 than mountains, plains, and swamps combined, this was also during the time period Uro was legal as well
Best MtG channels are Spice8Rack, Rhystic Studies, and Brewer's Kitchen (now a part of MtGGoldfish). The amount of effort put into those channels is staggering. This channel is more of a middling one, largely due to the narrator not being an MtG player themselves, and therefore flubbing names and card abilities multiple times per video. It's a fun channel, though.
So I have a funny story about Oko. So my brother and I went to the prerelease where Oko was released. It was a small game store maybe 16 people that night total. During the pulls I got a full art Oko, and my brother got a promo Oko so that night we were called the Oko Bros. Kinda wish I sold mine that night for the $90 I was offered but I didn't. I think I placed like 6th or something, I don't remember that well.
I know the feeling! I managed to snag a full playset of Once Upon a Time for £2.50 xD sadly didn’t offload them before the bans though. Had too much fun playing with them xD
Honestly, a video on Companions would be very interesting. From the mechanic being one of the extremely rare cases of errata changing how a mechanic works in Magic to one of the cards in the cycles being banned in Commander the same day it was announced, there's a lot that can be said.
If they hadn't errata'd companion, I think we would be discussing why Umori the Collector had to be banned. The original version was just that strong. No idea how that got past the development team.
Hey manalogs I'm super happy you've dipped into MTG for archetype videos I've watched your yugioh archetype videos for a Long time but now watching you comprehend the madness of mtg to but adding your knowledge into yugioh makes this so satisfying compared to stuff like nizzahons videos
I think the biggest part of why Oko is so broko is because he comes down on T2 and pluses to 6 loyalty immediately. It’s impossible to remove through combat. I think Oko could be fixed by making him come down with 3 loyalty, +1, -1, -5 for the abilities. And prevent Oko from targeting your own artifacts with the second ability, or make it a +1 and remove the ability to target your opponents creatures.
@@fernandobanda5734 idk I still think the process of “make a food, make one of your opponents creatures into an elk, then swap the elk for your food” is totally in line with Oko as a character. Plus it requires a lot of extra work rather than just being an I Win button from turn 2. But yeah it’s definitely not good
@@fernandobanda5734 Why does that murder design. They can design whatever they want, but development department is there to keep cards in line and not too powerful, which Oko being able to target your own stuff is too powerful. The biggest issue with Oko is starting with 6 loyalty essentially, in a color that has mana dorks/turn 2 oko? What can the opponent possibly do about it? You'll just start crapping out 3/3's, food, and being able to swap for anything that would pose a problem to Oko usually or attack it with the 3/3's Oko makes.
I think a cool video idea could possibly be looking at cards which got unbanned, and then talking about why and stuff. Idk if there's enough cards like that to make a video.
Banning Karn instead of Latice would basically be the same as banning both cards. Mycosynth Lattice has zero chance to see any play without Karn, the Great Creator. Banning Lattice stops Karn from being an unreasonable card, while still keeping him in the format. That was a very good decision in my opinion. It would be different if Lattice were a playable card on its own, but it's not.
So they chose to ban the 6-cost artifact with symmetric effect that hadn't given any headache before over the cost 4 planeswalker with starting loyalty 5, really strong passive effect and broken -2 ability.
The funniest part about lurrus is that originally in Ikoria, there was a card printed to counter Companions, Dranith Magistrate, which blocked cards from being cast anywhere but the hand. And then they changed the ability of companions in the first power level errata they did in 20 years to be added to the hand at the cost of 3 mana instead of being castable for free from the sideboard, making Dranith Magistrate literally unable to do the one job it was made to do. Like it wasn't good enough to stop companions anyways, but it's just funny to look at that card in hindsight. And the funniest part about Oko is when someone Slotted him into Mono-red burn as a joke, won the whole-ass tournament, and single handedly created Temur Burn in modern mere weeks before Oko got the axe, because as it turns out, putting any creature your opponent has into bolt range is really really really strong.
Kind of worth noting, elking can be better than actual removal like Lili or Grist for creatures that get value in the graveyard, most notably Uro. If you kill Uro it's just coming back next turn and gaining value along the way. If you elk it then you can just chump it or eat three damage a turn or let it ping Oko for 1 a turn until you ready to deal with it permanently. On a related note, part of the reason why you can just let the 3/3 elk ride for so long is that if Oko comes down, elks something, then just makes food every turn it takes 3 turns to kill him with the elk. Just offensively bad design.
Before Eldraine rotated out of Standard, Oko had the honor of being banned in every format on Scryfall except Vintage and Commander (Standard, Brawl, Pioneer, Historic, Modern, Legacy). It's also now banned in Explorer. Oko does have a bit of a home in commander is it's great commander removal because it doesn't give your opponent the opportunity to return it back to the command zone but Planeswalkers are much weaker in commander so it's not as much of a threat so it's only in like 8% of EDHREC decks
The other thing to note with Lurrus was that, at time of banning, Hammertime was by far the strongest deck in modern. It's a combo deck reliant on assembling a bunch of cheap cards and can win as early as turn 3 while having good resilience and redundancy. Lurrus just made the deck insane because if an opponent managed to deal with its combo, the deck could just bring in Lurrus and set the combo back up again. It was just oppressively strong, and it's still one of the best decks in modern post ban despite being one of the few Lurrus decks that wasn't giving up anything to play Lurrus. I believe just removing the gain 3 from Uro would be enough to get the card unbanned. At that point, it's just a Growth Spiral with an extra mana tacked on for the front half, which makes it considerably worse. The big problem with Uro was how gaining life on a repeatable effect that helps you ramp up to your late game faster just pushed aggro decks completely out of the metagame. This is the kind of card that should lose to aggro, where the deck playing Uro draws some cards and plays some extra lands off of it, maybe even gets a few hits in with the backside too, but the game is just over before they can capitalize on the card advantage. However, the life gain just draws the game out, which means it can better leverage everything that makes the card strong. It also makes removal against it much worse, since just by playing and attacking with it, they've bought time to set Uro back up again.
Forgot to mention the tibalts trickery was one of the cards that made wizards change how cascade works. Since usually you would cascade in Tibalt cosmic imposter because the face card only costed 2 and you could cast either side. So now cascade checks which side you want to cast nerfing the ability as a whole
It shouldn't be banned it was only played in like two decks. And if you can't interact with a turn 4 or later karn or lattice idk what your doing in modern.
@@Mrbananasgfan they are way worst cards printed that Karn right now. A turn 3 or 4 karn is not that threatening compared to turn three living end 20 power of creatures grief you and order the top cards of your library.
@@Mrbananasgfan Ohhhhhh Daniel lol. Are you new to MTG? Asking R&D to do their jobs is like banging your head against a brick wall and expecting the wall to say, "Oops, sorry bout that". Haha
One thing I do have to say: removing the lifegain and maybe upping the escape cost would probably make Uro significantly less powerful. I sometimes play a custom magic format that has a card similar to Uro (draws two cards, gives you an extra land, comes back from the grave once as a 5/6 for 7) which only sees play in blue-green+ control decks. Of course, this is a format that has in the past been dominated by decks like storm, 8sac ha degenerate combo pod deck), and fox tribal, so the presence of multiple Uro-likes is maybe not a huge deal
I also wanna give a shout out to a card thats banned on the commander banlist now that we're talking about companions. Lutri, the spellchaser, is a 3/2 Legendary Creature - Elemental Otter that costs 1, hybrid blue/red, and hybrid blue/red. He has three effects: Companion - Each non-land card in your starting deck has a different name (you can pay 3 mana to add this card to your hand if you fulfill the companion requirement) Flash (You may cast this card at any time you could cast an instant) When Lutri, The Spellchaser enters the battlefield, if you cast it, copy target instant or sorcery spell you control. You may choose new targets for the copy. The issue with *this* companion in commander is two fold that has to due with how commander works. Firstly, your deck is composed of *exactly* 100 cards and that number normally cannot change. In those 100 cards, you are only allowed one copy of *any* card in the game with the exception of basic lands or cards that say you can have more. This means that, by commander's very nature, Lutri's companion requirement is *always* fulfilled. The second issue is that it broke the 100 card limit. It gave you a 101st card that you always had available. There were cards called partners (or friends forever in the case of some event cards) that allowed you to have two commanders if the other had the same ability allowing you to have another commander *but* you had a 98 card main deck and 2 commanders. Still 100 cards. The companion mechanic gave you a 101st card, the companion, that acted like a second or third commander. Meaning there was literally no opportunity cost to include Lutri what so ever if you were playing Blue and Red in your deck (you had to have both colors.) Further, his effect is so good in those two specific colors that any blue and red deck *would* want him in their deck anyways. So he was banned from the format entirely.
FYI, breaking the deck size limit is not an issue. Other formats have a mininum 60 cards and no real upper limit, and there’s rarely a reason for competitive decks to go over 60 cards. The issue with companions are: breaking the starting hand size limit so you start the game with an extra card, the opportunity cost is too low, and it adds too much consistency to decks.
I was wondering if Magic sometimes does a similar thing to Yugioh in banning cards *around* a problem card instead hitting the main offender, but 13:29 - 13:38 answered my question. Seems like the disdain for being floodgated is universal.
They usually ban the card that's most likely to have a fair use. In this case, Mycosynth will never ever be played without Karn, so it's not worth it to ban Karn. Meanwhile, Karn without Mycosynth is still a card that allows for clever (but not broken) things. Standard sometimes has questionable bans (because they are still selling the product) but in general Magic is not shy to ban the direct problem.
Wotc actually gives a lot of insight into their banning reasons. With sojourner's companion for example, they wanted to make its deck weaker, while keeping the deck soul that people enjoyed. Or for one mechanic called the initiative, it was always broken in pauper format, long before the ban. It wasn't usable online for a few months though (programming issues), so no one really noticed.
Just another thing, why Uro is also strong (stronger then his brother): The Ability to play another Land AFTER the Draw (and this at turn 2 with mana dorks, which simic does have enough) is super strong in magic, where Mana advantage is super important. U can play one mana + Dork and the next turn second land and uro if u have him in your hand. While this may not occur every game, the chances are there, also later on more mana is never bad to have, when u want at least 4+ mana for escape and extra card. I play him as a commander and its really funny. Understand why hes banned in Modern
I basicly agree about companion, but could it work if the cards were powered down? For Lurus, i always thought it would be interesting if its ability exiled the permanent it brought back. So.ething like " that permanant gains: "if this card would leave play, exile it insead of putting it anywhere else." Ive never played with or against companions, so maybe im wrong here... I want to see the companion video
The time I joined playing Magic was... Around the time of Ikoria. As such, many Companion cards like Lurrus have a somewhat nostalgic appeal to me - that being said, Lurrus completely destroys any faster formats. I honestly like Companion on paper but in practice it's a mess, especially when you consider that you can just play Brawl or a similar format where Commander can be played 1v1 and have access to better things. It feels like they wanted to give players basically nerfed Commanders, especially with pre-errata Companion rule, but it's just a weird part of the format. I can't say I'm not at least a little fond of them though.
I swear I'm going crazy, I thought you did yu gi oh videos, I thought you did WoW videos, now I see you here doing magic videos. Wanna be friends? We have the same interests apparently on all 3 fronts.
So I bought Uro for my commander deck and spent around 40ish dollars for the card. It was a great deal and I was so happy. About an hour after purchasing it it was banned in almost every format and the price dropped to 20 dollars almost immediately. I was so sad
Oko’s biggest problem for me was always his +1, I’m terrible when I play by the hand (reason I hate blue) and perform much better when playing by the board state, so having someone who can strip my mana creatures of my ramp, cut the reach from my blockers, the stat doubling on my dinos (as well as decreasing their stats) every turn while gaining loyalty was too much bullshit for me
WotC's reasons for banning Tibalt's Trickery are my biggest issue with modern YGO. Too many games feel like "just draw the out" is the only way to win and I don't get to actually make decisions.
I played extensively the big three TCGs, and I am a MTG player since 2012. YGO but also Pokémon imprinted their playerbase much more on an addictive gameplay, rather than trying to make interesting/addictive the interaction between players. Of course you have fun when you do a lot of stuff during your turn, but this separates players and teaches them instinctually that being disrupted is mortifying and not a source of fun. In Magic, players grow up without these feelings inside of them, indeed because interactions during turns is expected and part of both the fun and the strategy.
@@mattkent5869 It's not about reacting on your opponent's turn, it's about getting the time to make meaningful decisions. YGO snowballs more than any other TCG and it's gotten to the point where you have to stop an avalanche. Too many formats become "draw the correct opening hand" and are over before you get a second turn.
The way I've always put it as a game designer: "No one has ever impressed by how strong you can make something, that's trivial. The hard part is making something that's diverse and weighable against different options of competing value". That is how you make a healthy metagame. That's actually were impressive design is demonstrated.
Do you think the issue would be fixed if the companion also required that all cards in the deck were the same color as the companion? As it is with commander. That would limit lurrus to decks with only black/white cards.
I think it's stupid that Lurrus was made the way it was when you compare it to Keruga. Both only interact with permanents but Keruga requires even your non-permanent spells to be 3 or above whilst Lurrus only cares abut permanents being 2 or less
Ya, Karn is the real problem but Lattice ever saw play so the format doesn't miss it, it just allowed this cool but arguably OP planeswalker to become infinitely busted but he does add something to the format for better or worse so either card being banned breaks the combo but banning Karn reduces deck possibilities even if it is oppressive to some other decks but buffing those might be able to add a balance of variety rather than just resetting the status quo
Wasn't Yorion recently banned in modern as well? Also, idk if I'd say that Kroxa is more balanced than Uro. I really think both of them should've been removed, as a 2 or 3 mana 6/6 is really pushing the envelope of design space. Yeah, Uro was a larger problem because you can't control what your opponent discards, but they get bolted in the face. The trade is that Kroxa races MUCH better than Uro does in terms of making an opponent lose the game. Uro races to be able to play spells, and can probably escape more consistently than Kroxa, but Kroxa benefits from low CMC spells and is ready to fill the yard faster than Uro. In addition, it comes in for 9 when it swings- half of someone's life total- after already having done 3 earlier in the game. 1 Kroxa is kind of an enormous deal imo. But it also fuels your opponent by allowing them to fill their own yard, so if they're on Kroxa the race is very real. I guess it is fine as it is for now, but I still see problems with Kroxa's design even though Uro was more difficult to deal with in the late game.
After the modern banlist, videos on the commander banlist would be funny. I'm sure that wouldn't be contentious at all... For YGO players, because commander is a casual format, the commander banlist is about format experience, rather than power level. This is at least partially subjective, and people have **opinions** on it.
Trickerys mill text is actually to make it better Its so yout opponent can't brain storm or another top rearanger in response and put their best spell on top. Like most cards in this video, they clearly didnt think of unintended uses cases these cards in testing.
I tend to not even include Lattice in the 99, as I can just fetch it with the -2, and I free a slot. Karn is a strong asymmetric stax piece by itself, that even without doing anything and dumb as a rock, blocks treasure tokens. It's a Null Rod that costs four mana but also does other things AND impacts only your opponents negatively.
I played against Oko exactly once in a cube format. It was played on turn 2 against my mono red aggro...it was unkillable when put out that early. Imagine not missing a land or creature drop for 4 turns as mono red and losing 20-0. I hate Oko more than any other card bc of that experience.
can someone help me out? I play Vintage where Black Lotus is legal. How does mycosynth lattice work with it. Can I cast a Broko on Turn 1 with Black Lotus if I have Mycosynth lattice in play?
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Lurrus was banned in Vintage before the mechanic was nerfed. Yes, **Vintage**, aka, the format that bans nothing, other than the special exception "universal ban list" that has Ante and racist cards and such on it. And it was banned for **power level reasons**, in the format where the Power Nine are allowed. The last time this happened was in 1996. That's how horrendous this card was before the errata. Currently Lurrus is only unbanned in Vintage, Commander, and Historic. It's banned everywhere else it's legal, and I think there's like 3 other companions banned in some format or another. Considering how problematic and hated Companions are despite the errata, and the fact that Mark Rosewater has already stated they've given up on making any more, they should probably just ban the entire mechanic forever. The cards themselves don't need to be banned, as they can just be shuffled into your deck as normal creatures. It's the mechanic that breaks them and should just be thrown onto the pile with Ante or casual-only formats like Conspiracy.
I took a break from the game for a couple years so I missed the whole companion thing when it was new. I like the idea of it, but it seems the deck building requirements were either too easy or something you were going to do anyway. Here's a few ideas I have for companions: * All nonland cards in your deck are enchantments * All lands in your deck are basic lands named Wastes * Your deck only contains basic lands and vanilla creatures * Every instant/sorcery in your deck says "target" * Your deck contains no nonland cards that can search libraries * Every artifact in your deck is an Equipment (this one might be too easy)
@@williamdrum9899 You're correct in that most of the deck-building rules were hardly even a requirement, but it's also the fact that you originally cast them directly from the command zone for their normal cost. Having a Companion was essentially like having an extra card in your opening hand, that you got to specifically choose every time, and your opponent could not interact with it because it existed outside the game. Changing the rule from "cast it from the command zone" to "pay 3 mana to add it to your hand" definitely fixed that major issue, but the cards are still really useful (effectively like another form of Wishing), and you have no reason not to include one if your deck matches the rule. I believe Maro has already said they've given up on Companions and won't be printing any more in the future. Their rules nerf seems to kept the entire mechanic from being banned, though, so those handful of unbanned companions will probably stick around for the foreseeable future.
tbh the trickery card could be used if it counter by costing health or any other cost tbh, it is unplayable as a counter spell bcz it doesn't really counter the card it just gives your oponent a random carrd instead, the same reason it works on trickery decks since you get the free card instead and it shows that the card isn't really a counter spell
From the sound of it, the Halq comparison seems to be the most apt. Can you get a Tuner and another card on the field and have the Main/Extra Deck space for a few combo pieces? Then you can get three omni-negates on board. Unfortunately, I didn't realize I could easily do this in my Dinosaur deck until a month before Halq got banned in Master Duel, but I used it with zero remorse.
I think the amount that gilded goose synergizes with Oko is understated. Not only can it get Oko out on turn 2, it can also create food to allow Oko to make a 3/3 elk EVERY turn. You can get Oko out while your opponent has only ONE mana, meanwhile you have a 3/3 elk + planeswalker. By the time your opponent has enough mana for removal you will have too many threats to answer.
Honestly, out of all the cards that ever got banned, Tibalt's trickery is the one I am most glad to see it go. Is it the most powerful card? No. Is it the most annoying thing on earth that just makes me rage and absolutely wanna puke every time I see it cast? Hell yea.
Man if twin wasn't in an earlier banned modern cards video it would for sure be in this video. Lurrus-I think this card would actually be extremely good even if it didn't have companion. The ability to just re-cast a card from the graveyard is just way too good. Look at Snapcaster Mage for example. I would say Lurrus needs to have its mana cost be five to make it somewhat justifiable. Three is just too little for a recurring effect on a card, four would be a bit unsafe. Five would be safe enough. Explore sees play in modern????? I think it does but shouldn't it have been power crept out of the format by now? Tibalt's trickery was a thing to a witness when it was around and seeing people trying to pilot the deck in different formats. I think it was Day9 that I mostly watched play it. If you actually go back and read the banlist announcement it would be okay to unban trickery since it didn't have a problematic win rate just needing to change up the effect to not make it one sided would be okay. Can't wait for Simian Spirit Guide's entry into this series, that should be interesting to watch. That Feb 15, 2022 banlist announcement is a crazy thing to go back and re-read.
I enjoy your videos but I'll have you know that when you called out umori for "not seeing any play at all" that in fact run umori in a "mono" green ooze tribal for edh but that is as commander not companion.
Nah not really. Supreme was only banned in the TCG for it's FTK potential by copying effs. Uro was just a really difficult boss monster to out that pushed aggro decks out of the meta game.
Lurrus really is a shame because I honestly believe it gave companions as a whole a poor image in MTG player's minds. The card was cheap & the criteria were easy enough to hit in these higher power formats. If Lurrus had been banned earlier... I wonder if companions would've been doubly nerfed
If Kroxa's hand cost is RB and escape cost is RRBB I never understood why the same proportion wasn't true for Uro. If it's hand cost is 1GU it's escape cost should be 2GGUU. Am I crazy?
![Explaining All Banned Cards in Modern [Part 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aw7yCWymBAo/mqdefault.jpg)
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
Everytime he says “Can X card be unbanned? No” I giggle at the delivery idk why. The way he shuts it down
Same!! It’s my fav part!!
I think it's really cunty. Annoys me.
@@jeremyphillips3087you must be really fun at FNM
sound familiar?
@@santiproductions9318 I'm actually not allowed at FNM anymore because of my bad personality. Thanks for bringing it up. 👍
@@jeremyphillips3087 if that’s true idk why’d you would admit it
The casual lifegain to me was really an undertalked and underrated part of uro dominance.
The fact that playing it once not only gained you life, but set you up to do the same in a couple of turns, just cut off the legs from under any deck that hadn't the ability to both pressure and keep up in card advantage.
Yeah, you should make a video on Companions someday.
I wanna know more about why Lurrus and Companions as a whole became very infamous in MtG.
I can explain this one:
Companions became infamous, primarily because of how broken Lurrus was. In addition, out of the 10 companions made, 4 of them were too good in various formats (Lurrus, Lutri, Zirda, Gyruda), while several of the others were just free-rolled in decks that didn't have to change to play them. (Obosh, Kaheera, Jegantha, Lurrus again). Basically it was a case of if a deck didn't have a companion, it started down a card.
Lurrus in particular was a poorly thought out combination of way too easy to include (you can still play big instants & sorceries for some reason), and way too strong. Lurrus was so good it got banned in VINTAGE for being too strong. (The whole point of vintage is that it doesn't have a banlist)
@@simonteesdale9752 Didn't Vintage ban a few older cards like Invoke Prejudice for being "offensive" though?
@@jadedheartsz They did, which tells you more about the stupidity of the ban. Until then, the only cards that were banned in Vintage were dexterity cards, ante cards, and Shahrazad. Vintage was built on cards never being banned because of their power, and Lurrus managed to break that.
@@jadedheartsz Sorta. WoTC decided that those cards were no longer legal anywhere (basically sending a message to people who were playing them to be racist*), and that happened after the Lurrus ban (then unban after the companion nerf).
Also, Vintage does have a ban list. It contains cards that don't function in magic anymore for various reasons (ante, physical dexterity, conspiracies), oddball cards that are only used for trolling (Shahrazad and the racist ones). The fact that Lurrus was the first (and only) ban for balance reasons (as restricting it did nothing) was insane.
*Most of the cards were unplayable, so the ban only hurt niche decks, and people who thought they were being funny. There were a couple that were playable in singleton formats, but they weren't staples there either.
@@simonteesdale9752 to be fair, vintage does restrict powerful cards from the usual 4 copies down to 1 (so you can only play 1 Black Lotus, for example) which does help reduce the consistency of some of the extra broken cards. Lurrus’ commander status unfortunately made it so reducing it to 1 wouldn’t change how she is played, so the ban was the only way to reduce her dominance.
Back before the errata, companions used to cost 0 mana to bring into your hand. Lurrus caused so much problems in Vintage that it got banned for a little due to how insane the companion mechanic was during that time. After the errata, they unbanned it in Vintage but to this day, companion has been quoted to be the most hated mechanic and arguably the most powerful as well.
Personally I still think Umori and zirda are both really fun but lurrus, yorion, and arguably kaheera are all very good
Minor nitpick, you didn’t pay to put them into your hand, you could just cast it from your sideboard. Meaning they were an 8th card in your hand that couldn’t be interacted with in any way.
They didn't go to your hand it was just a cast.
@@olly123451 Thank you for the correction.
even more powerful than Storm or Cascade?
I would like to see the video about companions because it was a mechanic that, as stated, changes the game at a fundamental level. YGO has 15 companions, MtG having one was just too much. Diving into "Why?" these differences exist would be quite interesting, and challenge some paradigms and designs.
One fundamental difference between companions and the extra deck is that companions are effectively an 8th card in hand. While extra deck monsters often let you plus, they at least make you invest resources into bringing them out rather than just giving you a free extra card
You see yugioh get broken by extra deck monsters from time to time as well. Basically the costs for using them end up being negligible to the pay offs you would get from doing so. You also need to invest more to access the extra deck than in a game like mtg, where companions were free cards to be cast.
The first thing that almost everyone thought of when seeing Tibalt’s Trickery revealed was to counter your own spells with it. I think it’s pretty clear that WOTC had that usage as its intended usage, with countering the opponent’s spell as an upside.
Off topic, but i would love you to do a rundown of all legacy bans when you are done with this. I played Magic in the Masques era and a few more years. Now i started again and i am completely lost on all the insane combos you can do in legacy. So yeah... That would be cool...
One of the most frustrating things about Oko was how strong he was out of the gate. Having a +2 ability effectively gave him a loyalty of 6 by the time an opponent can react to it. Every 3MV walker (not counting the WAR ones that only had minus abilities) before it went up to at most 5.
This was a problem, as the most recent card they'd designed to deal with walkers like him, Fry, only dealt 5.
I absolutely want to see a video about the companion mechanic, as part of your failed mechanics series. (I would suggest that any mechanic that needs to be errated because of how broken it is, is a failed mechanic)
While I think companion is not the most fun mechanic in the game due to its homogenization, the power level of more than half of the companions is pretty fine with the non-companion effects of the best few being too good with almost no downside from their given restrictions in their best decks. In fact, because WOTC really doesn’t like errataing cards for non-typo reasons (as opposed to Konami who happily does it), it’s almost more in line with their philosophy to errata a keyword than to errata a single card. This is doubly true because WOTC often prints cards in thematic sets so it’s harder for them to reprint an errata or even just a retrain of a single card with an obscure mechanic specific to one set.
The only sane version of companion would be that you had draw 6 cards in your opening and it cost 3 to bring from your sideboard into hand
Oko's second ability was at some point in development actually supposed to cost -1, why they made it +1 is beyond me.
Because they didn't realize how strong Elking your opponent's stuff was. Basically during playtesting, they hadn't been doing it to the opponent's cards due to thinking it was bad.
@@simonteesdale9752 Because they thought giving their opponent a 3/3 creature was too good for them?
@@KaseyWynne Yeah. That and not realizing how much flexibility Elking *opponents* artifacts has. Basically, they were playing the card as if it was "Elk your food token, or your opponents creature."
Honestly, I'm not sure how they missed that given that Eldraine has a cycle of legendary artefacts.
It's still more excusable than missing Once Upon A Time, because the phrase "without paying it's Mana cost" has years of precedent in breaking things.
@@simonteesdale9752 bold of you to assume playtesting was done. It’s no coincidence they released 3 of the most powerful cards ever made in a row.
@@Zanzibawrr Oko, Uro, Once Upon A Time were all in the same standard and nobody cared about it. It's also no coincidence that Collector's Boxes started around that time too.
There is actually one good way to convey how insanely broken Lurrus was when it was legal, under the old companion rules where you didn't have to pay 3 first to put it into your hand. It was the only card to be ever banned for power level reasons in Vintage.
Restricting it did nothing since you only needed 1 anyway
@@williamdrum9899 As I said, that shows you how completely broken he was.
The companion mechanic was such a busted mechanic to the point where Ikoria, the set that it got released in would be considered to be an underwhelming set if compaions were never made.
The errata not only made you pay 3, but you added it to your hand afterwards. Before that, you were able to avoid cards like thoughtsieze from removing it from your hand since you used to be able to play it straight from the side board.
Also, companions were one of the few instances where Wizards completely changed the mechanic of a card in order to nerf it, which was never done before. Usually when WOTC errata'd cards, they usually do so in order to streamline their effects (like giving consider the surveil mechanic so it interacts with cards such as dimir spy bug) or to make the text easier to read. Unlike Yu-Gi-Oh, nerfing cards usually doesn't work because there are multiple sanctioned formats that people play. When a card gets banned in Yu-Gi-Oh, they are worthless. Wizards took a page out of Konami's book by nerfing companions because they dominated every format they played in. A common mantra people would say is "reading the card explains the card", but wizards flipped it on it's head especially how we will never see this mechanic come back. So only one card got it's rules text to be updated, and that is Lurrus. With the rate of companions getting banned, we might never see the updated text be applied to newer cards.
Mark Rosewater, lead director, made the storm scale after the mechanic as a way to measure how likely a mechanic will return to a future standard set. It goes from 1 to 10, with 10 being mechanics that will need a huge miracle for it to ever make a comeback. Companion is sitting at a 9 right now.
i appreciate that you consistently pronounce mycosynth lattice with an R
Great video. Just want to point out that it's mycosynth, not microsynth.
Edit: Also it's Emrakul, not Ermakul.
Had to pause and scroll down to see if someone beat me to it. Good work.
I once played against a burn player, where the only two spells I cast during one game was a noble hierarch and an Oko. My opponent pretty much spent all his resources trying to kill Oko, but somehow Oko always managed to hang on with at least one loyalty. Just goes to show that Oko could literally solo entire archetypes
Super easy fix to the Karn/Lattice lock is to make Karn say "Your opponent can't activate the ability of artifacts unless they are mana abilities."
Yeah just make Karn's static ability be "Activated abilities of nonland artifacts your opponent can't be activated." Boom. Solved. Instead they were like oh, let's give it the ability to search up lattice or any sideboard/exile card for that matter.
They made Tibalts trickery able to counter your own spells on purpose, so you could do this typically red effect of getting something random or cheating something into play, but they obviously didn't think about these totally degenerate decks of a few Emrakuls, one trickery, 4 violent outbursts and the rest just lands.
This is a great series, my favorite of any I’ve seen covering the various ban lists
fun fact: in the standard tournaments between Oko's printing and his banning there were more breeding pools being played in the top 8 than mountains, plains, and swamps combined, this was also during the time period Uro was legal as well
My fav moment is when you can hear the naive "Could [card name] be unbanned?" followed by a resounding cuttin "No."
Definitely one of the best if not the best Mtg channels!!
Best MtG channels are Spice8Rack, Rhystic Studies, and Brewer's Kitchen (now a part of MtGGoldfish). The amount of effort put into those channels is staggering. This channel is more of a middling one, largely due to the narrator not being an MtG player themselves, and therefore flubbing names and card abilities multiple times per video. It's a fun channel, though.
Totally love this series. Would you be down to do a Pioneer version?
So I have a funny story about Oko. So my brother and I went to the prerelease where Oko was released. It was a small game store maybe 16 people that night total. During the pulls I got a full art Oko, and my brother got a promo Oko so that night we were called the Oko Bros. Kinda wish I sold mine that night for the $90 I was offered but I didn't. I think I placed like 6th or something, I don't remember that well.
I know the feeling! I managed to snag a full playset of Once Upon a Time for £2.50 xD sadly didn’t offload them before the bans though. Had too much fun playing with them xD
@@tyrusdalet yea, I only play casual Canadian highlander with my brother and a few friends so I still use my copy all the time in my deck
Honestly, a video on Companions would be very interesting. From the mechanic being one of the extremely rare cases of errata changing how a mechanic works in Magic to one of the cards in the cycles being banned in Commander the same day it was announced, there's a lot that can be said.
Companions should be errata'd to be "whenever a companion is put into a player's hand, that player's life total becomes 1."
Can we errata Doomsday to that instead? Lol
If they hadn't errata'd companion, I think we would be discussing why Umori the Collector had to be banned. The original version was just that strong. No idea how that got past the development team.
I believe they stated that they didn't find it overbearing when play testing, which is absurd.
Hey manalogs I'm super happy you've dipped into MTG for archetype videos I've watched your yugioh archetype videos for a
Long time but now watching you comprehend the madness of mtg to but adding your knowledge into yugioh makes this so satisfying compared to stuff like nizzahons videos
I think the biggest part of why Oko is so broko is because he comes down on T2 and pluses to 6 loyalty immediately. It’s impossible to remove through combat.
I think Oko could be fixed by making him come down with 3 loyalty, +1, -1, -5 for the abilities. And prevent Oko from targeting your own artifacts with the second ability, or make it a +1 and remove the ability to target your opponents creatures.
The fact that the previous set's answer to cards like him, Fry, only did 5 was also a factor.
Oko should have 2 loyalty.
"prevent Oko from targeting your own artifacts with the second ability". No, that would murder the design of the card.
@@fernandobanda5734 idk I still think the process of “make a food, make one of your opponents creatures into an elk, then swap the elk for your food” is totally in line with Oko as a character. Plus it requires a lot of extra work rather than just being an I Win button from turn 2.
But yeah it’s definitely not good
@@fernandobanda5734 Why does that murder design. They can design whatever they want, but development department is there to keep cards in line and not too powerful, which Oko being able to target your own stuff is too powerful. The biggest issue with Oko is starting with 6 loyalty essentially, in a color that has mana dorks/turn 2 oko? What can the opponent possibly do about it? You'll just start crapping out 3/3's, food, and being able to swap for anything that would pose a problem to Oko usually or attack it with the 3/3's Oko makes.
I think a cool video idea could possibly be looking at cards which got unbanned, and then talking about why and stuff. Idk if there's enough cards like that to make a video.
Banning Karn instead of Latice would basically be the same as banning both cards. Mycosynth Lattice has zero chance to see any play without Karn, the Great Creator. Banning Lattice stops Karn from being an unreasonable card, while still keeping him in the format. That was a very good decision in my opinion. It would be different if Lattice were a playable card on its own, but it's not.
So they chose to ban the 6-cost artifact with symmetric effect that hadn't given any headache before over the cost 4 planeswalker with starting loyalty 5, really strong passive effect and broken -2 ability.
oko should've NEVER had 4 loyalty. totally agree with those changes too,
3 starting loyalty imo
The funniest part about lurrus is that originally in Ikoria, there was a card printed to counter Companions, Dranith Magistrate, which blocked cards from being cast anywhere but the hand.
And then they changed the ability of companions in the first power level errata they did in 20 years to be added to the hand at the cost of 3 mana instead of being castable for free from the sideboard, making Dranith Magistrate literally unable to do the one job it was made to do.
Like it wasn't good enough to stop companions anyways, but it's just funny to look at that card in hindsight.
And the funniest part about Oko is when someone Slotted him into Mono-red burn as a joke, won the whole-ass tournament, and single handedly created Temur Burn in modern mere weeks before Oko got the axe, because as it turns out, putting any creature your opponent has into bolt range is really really really strong.
What if companion cards had a number on the card you pay instead of a blanket 3? Like Umori companion 0 and Larrus companion 7.
Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
It's my-ko synth lattice, it's supposed to be a fungus (myco)
Kind of worth noting, elking can be better than actual removal like Lili or Grist for creatures that get value in the graveyard, most notably Uro. If you kill Uro it's just coming back next turn and gaining value along the way. If you elk it then you can just chump it or eat three damage a turn or let it ping Oko for 1 a turn until you ready to deal with it permanently. On a related note, part of the reason why you can just let the 3/3 elk ride for so long is that if Oko comes down, elks something, then just makes food every turn it takes 3 turns to kill him with the elk. Just offensively bad design.
Before Eldraine rotated out of Standard, Oko had the honor of being banned in every format on Scryfall except Vintage and Commander (Standard, Brawl, Pioneer, Historic, Modern, Legacy). It's also now banned in Explorer. Oko does have a bit of a home in commander is it's great commander removal because it doesn't give your opponent the opportunity to return it back to the command zone but Planeswalkers are much weaker in commander so it's not as much of a threat so it's only in like 8% of EDHREC decks
The other thing to note with Lurrus was that, at time of banning, Hammertime was by far the strongest deck in modern. It's a combo deck reliant on assembling a bunch of cheap cards and can win as early as turn 3 while having good resilience and redundancy. Lurrus just made the deck insane because if an opponent managed to deal with its combo, the deck could just bring in Lurrus and set the combo back up again. It was just oppressively strong, and it's still one of the best decks in modern post ban despite being one of the few Lurrus decks that wasn't giving up anything to play Lurrus.
I believe just removing the gain 3 from Uro would be enough to get the card unbanned. At that point, it's just a Growth Spiral with an extra mana tacked on for the front half, which makes it considerably worse. The big problem with Uro was how gaining life on a repeatable effect that helps you ramp up to your late game faster just pushed aggro decks completely out of the metagame. This is the kind of card that should lose to aggro, where the deck playing Uro draws some cards and plays some extra lands off of it, maybe even gets a few hits in with the backside too, but the game is just over before they can capitalize on the card advantage. However, the life gain just draws the game out, which means it can better leverage everything that makes the card strong. It also makes removal against it much worse, since just by playing and attacking with it, they've bought time to set Uro back up again.
Amazing,can't get enogh of your videos,thank you
Forgot to mention the tibalts trickery was one of the cards that made wizards change how cascade works. Since usually you would cascade in Tibalt cosmic imposter because the face card only costed 2 and you could cast either side. So now cascade checks which side you want to cast nerfing the ability as a whole
13:48 How to unban Mycosynth Lattice? Make planeswalker's static abilities like Karn's symmetric. (Same for Narset's)
It shouldn't be banned it was only played in like two decks. And if you can't interact with a turn 4 or later karn or lattice idk what your doing in modern.
@@GoldenKid24K Absolutely right.
or better yet R&D could do their damn job and not green light cards like karn.
@@Mrbananasgfan they are way worst cards printed that Karn right now. A turn 3 or 4 karn is not that threatening compared to turn three living end 20 power of creatures grief you and order the top cards of your library.
@@Mrbananasgfan Ohhhhhh Daniel lol. Are you new to MTG? Asking R&D to do their jobs is like banging your head against a brick wall and expecting the wall to say, "Oops, sorry bout that". Haha
Karn and Microsynth kind of seems like the Rhongo and Gossip Shadow of magic to me.
One thing I do have to say: removing the lifegain and maybe upping the escape cost would probably make Uro significantly less powerful. I sometimes play a custom magic format that has a card similar to Uro (draws two cards, gives you an extra land, comes back from the grave once as a 5/6 for 7) which only sees play in blue-green+ control decks. Of course, this is a format that has in the past been dominated by decks like storm, 8sac ha degenerate combo pod deck), and fox tribal, so the presence of multiple Uro-likes is maybe not a huge deal
(All three of those decks were nerfed)
I also wanna give a shout out to a card thats banned on the commander banlist now that we're talking about companions. Lutri, the spellchaser, is a 3/2 Legendary Creature - Elemental Otter that costs 1, hybrid blue/red, and hybrid blue/red.
He has three effects:
Companion - Each non-land card in your starting deck has a different name (you can pay 3 mana to add this card to your hand if you fulfill the companion requirement)
Flash (You may cast this card at any time you could cast an instant)
When Lutri, The Spellchaser enters the battlefield, if you cast it, copy target instant or sorcery spell you control. You may choose new targets for the copy.
The issue with *this* companion in commander is two fold that has to due with how commander works. Firstly, your deck is composed of *exactly* 100 cards and that number normally cannot change. In those 100 cards, you are only allowed one copy of *any* card in the game with the exception of basic lands or cards that say you can have more. This means that, by commander's very nature, Lutri's companion requirement is *always* fulfilled.
The second issue is that it broke the 100 card limit. It gave you a 101st card that you always had available. There were cards called partners (or friends forever in the case of some event cards) that allowed you to have two commanders if the other had the same ability allowing you to have another commander *but* you had a 98 card main deck and 2 commanders. Still 100 cards. The companion mechanic gave you a 101st card, the companion, that acted like a second or third commander. Meaning there was literally no opportunity cost to include Lutri what so ever if you were playing Blue and Red in your deck (you had to have both colors.) Further, his effect is so good in those two specific colors that any blue and red deck *would* want him in their deck anyways. So he was banned from the format entirely.
FYI, breaking the deck size limit is not an issue. Other formats have a mininum 60 cards and no real upper limit, and there’s rarely a reason for competitive decks to go over 60 cards. The issue with companions are: breaking the starting hand size limit so you start the game with an extra card, the opportunity cost is too low, and it adds too much consistency to decks.
@@theemathas Don't forget that that's the errata'd version. Companion used to have no mana cost to put the card into your hand.
Ah yes I see the theme for this video is recent powercreep degeneracy
I was wondering if Magic sometimes does a similar thing to Yugioh in banning cards *around* a problem card instead hitting the main offender, but 13:29 - 13:38 answered my question. Seems like the disdain for being floodgated is universal.
It's even worse here since in Yugioh you can have some way to respond. What do you do against the resolved Karn Lock?
They usually ban the card that's most likely to have a fair use. In this case, Mycosynth will never ever be played without Karn, so it's not worth it to ban Karn. Meanwhile, Karn without Mycosynth is still a card that allows for clever (but not broken) things. Standard sometimes has questionable bans (because they are still selling the product) but in general Magic is not shy to ban the direct problem.
Wotc actually gives a lot of insight into their banning reasons. With sojourner's companion for example, they wanted to make its deck weaker, while keeping the deck soul that people enjoyed. Or for one mechanic called the initiative, it was always broken in pauper format, long before the ban. It wasn't usable online for a few months though (programming issues), so no one really noticed.
Also flash is a terrible bulk card, except in once case where it's a (mostly) two card ftk.
Just another thing, why Uro is also strong (stronger then his brother): The Ability to play another Land AFTER the Draw (and this at turn 2 with mana dorks, which simic does have enough) is super strong in magic, where Mana advantage is super important. U can play one mana + Dork and the next turn second land and uro if u have him in your hand. While this may not occur every game, the chances are there, also later on more mana is never bad to have, when u want at least 4+ mana for escape and extra card.
I play him as a commander and its really funny. Understand why hes banned in Modern
I basicly agree about companion, but could it work if the cards were powered down? For Lurus, i always thought it would be interesting if its ability exiled the permanent it brought back. So.ething like " that permanant gains: "if this card would leave play, exile it insead of putting it anywhere else."
Ive never played with or against companions, so maybe im wrong here...
I want to see the companion video
The time I joined playing Magic was... Around the time of Ikoria. As such, many Companion cards like Lurrus have a somewhat nostalgic appeal to me - that being said, Lurrus completely destroys any faster formats. I honestly like Companion on paper but in practice it's a mess, especially when you consider that you can just play Brawl or a similar format where Commander can be played 1v1 and have access to better things. It feels like they wanted to give players basically nerfed Commanders, especially with pre-errata Companion rule, but it's just a weird part of the format. I can't say I'm not at least a little fond of them though.
I swear I'm going crazy, I thought you did yu gi oh videos, I thought you did WoW videos, now I see you here doing magic videos.
Wanna be friends? We have the same interests apparently on all 3 fronts.
So I bought Uro for my commander deck and spent around 40ish dollars for the card. It was a great deal and I was so happy. About an hour after purchasing it it was banned in almost every format and the price dropped to 20 dollars almost immediately. I was so sad
Dang that sux
I'm joining the chorus here on a vid for the Companion mechanic. People need to see the mechanic that is almost as bad as Storm in its ignominity.
A video about companion could be quite interesting!!
Oko’s biggest problem for me was always his +1, I’m terrible when I play by the hand (reason I hate blue) and perform much better when playing by the board state, so having someone who can strip my mana creatures of my ramp, cut the reach from my blockers, the stat doubling on my dinos (as well as decreasing their stats) every turn while gaining loyalty was too much bullshit for me
WotC's reasons for banning Tibalt's Trickery are my biggest issue with modern YGO.
Too many games feel like "just draw the out" is the only way to win and I don't get to actually make decisions.
I played extensively the big three TCGs, and I am a MTG player since 2012. YGO but also Pokémon imprinted their playerbase much more on an addictive gameplay, rather than trying to make interesting/addictive the interaction between players.
Of course you have fun when you do a lot of stuff during your turn, but this separates players and teaches them instinctually that being disrupted is mortifying and not a source of fun. In Magic, players grow up without these feelings inside of them, indeed because interactions during turns is expected and part of both the fun and the strategy.
@@mattkent5869 It's not about reacting on your opponent's turn, it's about getting the time to make meaningful decisions.
YGO snowballs more than any other TCG and it's gotten to the point where you have to stop an avalanche. Too many formats become "draw the correct opening hand" and are over before you get a second turn.
The way I've always put it as a game designer: "No one has ever impressed by how strong you can make something, that's trivial. The hard part is making something that's diverse and weighable against different options of competing value". That is how you make a healthy metagame. That's actually were impressive design is demonstrated.
Do you think the issue would be fixed if the companion also required that all cards in the deck were the same color as the companion? As it is with commander. That would limit lurrus to decks with only black/white cards.
I think it's stupid that Lurrus was made the way it was when you compare it to Keruga. Both only interact with permanents but Keruga requires even your non-permanent spells to be 3 or above whilst Lurrus only cares abut permanents being 2 or less
Ya, Karn is the real problem but Lattice ever saw play so the format doesn't miss it, it just allowed this cool but arguably OP planeswalker to become infinitely busted but he does add something to the format for better or worse so either card being banned breaks the combo but banning Karn reduces deck possibilities even if it is oppressive to some other decks but buffing those might be able to add a balance of variety rather than just resetting the status quo
I love that absolutely everyone calls it "Micro"synth lattice
Wasn't Yorion recently banned in modern as well? Also, idk if I'd say that Kroxa is more balanced than Uro. I really think both of them should've been removed, as a 2 or 3 mana 6/6 is really pushing the envelope of design space. Yeah, Uro was a larger problem because you can't control what your opponent discards, but they get bolted in the face. The trade is that Kroxa races MUCH better than Uro does in terms of making an opponent lose the game. Uro races to be able to play spells, and can probably escape more consistently than Kroxa, but Kroxa benefits from low CMC spells and is ready to fill the yard faster than Uro. In addition, it comes in for 9 when it swings- half of someone's life total- after already having done 3 earlier in the game. 1 Kroxa is kind of an enormous deal imo. But it also fuels your opponent by allowing them to fill their own yard, so if they're on Kroxa the race is very real. I guess it is fine as it is for now, but I still see problems with Kroxa's design even though Uro was more difficult to deal with in the late game.
I miss Lurrus, not because of its polarizing ability, but because she made my foil Mire Tritons playable.
Personal fix for companion. Having a companion should also reduce your starting hand size by 1
One possible way to fix lattice could be to only make it affect your permanents (and cards and ability to spend mana)
After the modern banlist, videos on the commander banlist would be funny. I'm sure that wouldn't be contentious at all...
For YGO players, because commander is a casual format, the commander banlist is about format experience, rather than power level. This is at least partially subjective, and people have **opinions** on it.
Karn could even destroy one of your opponent's lands with his +1, so you were still screwed even after getting rid of him.
Trickerys mill text is actually to make it better
Its so yout opponent can't brain storm or another top rearanger in response and put their best spell on top. Like most cards in this video, they clearly didnt think of unintended uses cases these cards in testing.
Modern Players: "No fair, my opponent turned all my lands off!"
EDH players: "First time?"
i had a roommate that complained when oko got banned. "well, what did you expect? that card is running the game....." he was so salty
I play karn the great creator and mycosynth lattice in a couple of my edh decks. Especially my edh deck whose commander shares my name.
I tend to not even include Lattice in the 99, as I can just fetch it with the -2, and I free a slot. Karn is a strong asymmetric stax piece by itself, that even without doing anything and dumb as a rock, blocks treasure tokens. It's a Null Rod that costs four mana but also does other things AND impacts only your opponents negatively.
@@mattkent5869 The commander and deck I run it in is all about destroying artifacts.
@@cax1175 fair enough!
I played against Oko exactly once in a cube format. It was played on turn 2 against my mono red aggro...it was unkillable when put out that early. Imagine not missing a land or creature drop for 4 turns as mono red and losing 20-0.
I hate Oko more than any other card bc of that experience.
can someone help me out? I play Vintage where Black Lotus is legal. How does mycosynth lattice work with it. Can I cast a Broko on Turn 1 with Black Lotus if I have Mycosynth lattice in play?
they should make companions a part of a separate constructed format solely for companion cards, similar to commander
Mycosynth lattice with unwinding clock is fun
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Lurrus was banned in Vintage before the mechanic was nerfed. Yes, **Vintage**, aka, the format that bans nothing, other than the special exception "universal ban list" that has Ante and racist cards and such on it. And it was banned for **power level reasons**, in the format where the Power Nine are allowed. The last time this happened was in 1996. That's how horrendous this card was before the errata.
Currently Lurrus is only unbanned in Vintage, Commander, and Historic. It's banned everywhere else it's legal, and I think there's like 3 other companions banned in some format or another. Considering how problematic and hated Companions are despite the errata, and the fact that Mark Rosewater has already stated they've given up on making any more, they should probably just ban the entire mechanic forever. The cards themselves don't need to be banned, as they can just be shuffled into your deck as normal creatures. It's the mechanic that breaks them and should just be thrown onto the pile with Ante or casual-only formats like Conspiracy.
I took a break from the game for a couple years so I missed the whole companion thing when it was new. I like the idea of it, but it seems the deck building requirements were either too easy or something you were going to do anyway.
Here's a few ideas I have for companions:
* All nonland cards in your deck are enchantments
* All lands in your deck are basic lands named Wastes
* Your deck only contains basic lands and vanilla creatures
* Every instant/sorcery in your deck says "target"
* Your deck contains no nonland cards that can search libraries
* Every artifact in your deck is an Equipment (this one might be too easy)
@@williamdrum9899 You're correct in that most of the deck-building rules were hardly even a requirement, but it's also the fact that you originally cast them directly from the command zone for their normal cost. Having a Companion was essentially like having an extra card in your opening hand, that you got to specifically choose every time, and your opponent could not interact with it because it existed outside the game.
Changing the rule from "cast it from the command zone" to "pay 3 mana to add it to your hand" definitely fixed that major issue, but the cards are still really useful (effectively like another form of Wishing), and you have no reason not to include one if your deck matches the rule. I believe Maro has already said they've given up on Companions and won't be printing any more in the future. Their rules nerf seems to kept the entire mechanic from being banned, though, so those handful of unbanned companions will probably stick around for the foreseeable future.
tbh the trickery card could be used if it counter by costing health or any other cost tbh, it is unplayable as a counter spell bcz it doesn't really counter the card it just gives your oponent a random carrd instead, the same reason it works on trickery decks since you get the free card instead and it shows that the card isn't really a counter spell
Lurrus of the Dream Den is the Crystron Halqifibrax of MtG. Or Linkross... or Predaplant Verte Anaconda... No clue.
From the sound of it, the Halq comparison seems to be the most apt. Can you get a Tuner and another card on the field and have the Main/Extra Deck space for a few combo pieces? Then you can get three omni-negates on board. Unfortunately, I didn't realize I could easily do this in my Dinosaur deck until a month before Halq got banned in Master Duel, but I used it with zero remorse.
I wouldn't mind seeing the companions video.
Talk about the companion mechanics please
Heros downfall vs Oko . Or any other destroy target creature or Planeswalker spell
I think the amount that gilded goose synergizes with Oko is understated. Not only can it get Oko out on turn 2, it can also create food to allow Oko to make a 3/3 elk EVERY turn. You can get Oko out while your opponent has only ONE mana, meanwhile you have a 3/3 elk + planeswalker. By the time your opponent has enough mana for removal you will have too many threats to answer.
And you had Once Upon a Time to make sure you could get Goose in case it wasn't in your opening hand.
4:35 love to see a video on this
Honestly, out of all the cards that ever got banned, Tibalt's trickery is the one I am most glad to see it go. Is it the most powerful card? No. Is it the most annoying thing on earth that just makes me rage and absolutely wanna puke every time I see it cast? Hell yea.
I add my voice to requesting a Companion mechanic explained video!
Man if twin wasn't in an earlier banned modern cards video it would for sure be in this video.
Lurrus-I think this card would actually be extremely good even if it didn't have companion. The ability to just re-cast a card from the graveyard is just way too good. Look at Snapcaster Mage for example.
I would say Lurrus needs to have its mana cost be five to make it somewhat justifiable. Three is just too little for a recurring effect on a card, four would be a bit unsafe. Five would be safe enough.
Explore sees play in modern????? I think it does but shouldn't it have been power crept out of the format by now?
Tibalt's trickery was a thing to a witness when it was around and seeing people trying to pilot the deck in different formats. I think it was Day9 that I mostly watched play it.
If you actually go back and read the banlist announcement it would be okay to unban trickery since it didn't have a problematic win rate just needing to change up the effect to not make it one sided would be okay.
Can't wait for Simian Spirit Guide's entry into this series, that should be interesting to watch.
That Feb 15, 2022 banlist announcement is a crazy thing to go back and re-read.
Lurrus could recast a permanent each turn. Snapcaster only got one card at the time it entered.
I enjoy your videos but I'll have you know that when you called out umori for "not seeing any play at all" that in fact run umori in a "mono" green ooze tribal for edh but that is as commander not companion.
You can fix Mycrosynth Lattice making it only affect your side of the board.
I really wanted to play Lattice with Stony Silence (or Null Rod), but then Karn ruined it all.
Oko, Thief of Crowns, the Performage/PePe of MtG.
I love companions, but I only play commander and kitchen table mtg, so take it with a grain of salt I guess.
The fact that you compared Uro to Explore, and not the card it's literally modeled after, Growth Spiral, is....
Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, the Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom... I think, of MtG.
Nah not really. Supreme was only banned in the TCG for it's FTK potential by copying effs. Uro was just a really difficult boss monster to out that pushed aggro decks out of the meta game.
15:32 I wish konami would also implement this to master duel, I'm SO tired of playing the maxx "c" minigame
Lurrus really is a shame because I honestly believe it gave companions as a whole a poor image in MTG player's minds. The card was cheap & the criteria were easy enough to hit in these higher power formats.
If Lurrus had been banned earlier... I wonder if companions would've been doubly nerfed
Gotta make a 2 partner and a companion deck with 97 lands
You keep saying microsynth lattice and my brain explodes
If Kroxa's hand cost is RB and escape cost is RRBB I never understood why the same proportion wasn't true for Uro. If it's hand cost is 1GU it's escape cost should be 2GGUU. Am I crazy?
I don't know, 2GGUU is a bit much
"Decks like Yorion would be much stronger": yeah, about those decks...
Argh! There is no "R" in MYCOSYNTH LATTICE
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