It would be interesting to see a video on “noob trap” cards that are actually good in competitive play. As in, cards that new players correctly identify as good, but for all the wrong reasons.
Golgari Grave-Troll makes noobies go "ah, it gets stronger the more creatures are in your graveyard!". Pros forget that it's a creature card, it may as well be "Dredge 6. (this card cannot be played)"
Companion. New players look at lutri and see a cute otter they can cast every game, veteran players read lurrus and start comprehending those untold horrors beyond their comprehension
Honestly it really wasn't as much of a problem of power as it was of the interaction between Restrictions and Companion specifically. It was still very good, but has since not even been unbanned, but also unrestricted and last I checked saw only limited play.
Banned because restricting it does nothing. It's like if we had companion black lotus restricting it would do nothing so it would be banned. I definitely wouldn't put post nerf companions at 1 over dredge or storm though as yes it's an extra card, however, it costs too much mana usually. Having a companion is also like drawing an extra card, but dredge is like drawing many extra cards per turn and all those cards are optimized to beat the opponent down quickly. Storm is a bit closer, but still storm cards are really good in basically every format they appear in no exception. Even if they put storm cards in standard again with no fast mana I'm sure they'd get abused somehow there too.
I was expecting Dredge to be #1, but I somehow forgot about the mechanic so busted it got a card banned from a format that explicitly doesn't ban overpowered cards.
Tbf Lutri was specifically banned in commander because it is free to bring for any commander deck that ran blue and red, arguably speaking it wouldn't have been the most broken card in the format, the rules committee just simply said that there were no good reason to just have decks that ran blue and red to be automatically better for having a free companion. I guessed Companion Storm Dredge with Dredge being top 1, but they are all so broken you could rank them all at top 1 with no issue
@@maxmercurythemm827 Ah, true, ig that works too Commander isn't very good at banning cards and leaves a ton of powerful options, which why I got that confused
I've been using Storm since Time Spiral and I honestly never picked up on that. In our casual group, it probably hasn't been relevant, but I guess I need to think about creating more situations on an opponent's turn.
An aspect important to note of storm is that the storm count considers all spells cast, not just yours, meaning that the opponent trying to interact only feeds the storm count further, ending in the Misstep situation where the way to answer Storm was a counterspell having storm itself (since the ones that counter triggered abilities aren't worth running in formats outside of commander).
The storm scale is actually interesting since, despite the inspiration, it's not just about power level but design space and playability overall, so while storm sits at 10 other mechanics with the same rating are things like fear (that has being replaced several times), -0/-1 (all counters that change stats different from -1/-1 and +1/+1, to streamline it), and the universally loathed and memed banding, all sitting higher than objectively stronger but somewhat more manageable mechanics like infect.
I don't think everyone hates banding, I think people don't understand what it does usually. There is one simple reason banding should never return and that is limited formats. Balancing banding for limited is impossible to do.
@@dark_rit banding is loathed, it's needlessly difficult and doesn't play well with the game, it makes combat slightly safer for you by allowing to attack with less fear, but at the same time makes it a lot safer for your opponent allowing them easy chump-blocks. It theoretically has upsides, but is de facto detrimental, and no one likes a mechanic that is both bad and difficult to understand.
I have no idea how Wizards though that companion would be a good idea; Commander is a format that is centralized on the titular commander cards, because you have them available every game, so any consistent deck is gonna be careful with it's choice of commander and make sure to build a deck that maximizes it's value; Companion is a essentially a commander mechanic for other formats, or a second commander on edh itself.
I'd at least make companion trigger off some game state like 'if you have no cards in your hand and you meet the deck building limit you may add this card to your hand'
Having permanent unlimited access to a particular card as if it is a real life observing friend or your own self insert on the board is a fantasy for a portion of the MTG playerbase. How do you suggest Wizards tap this part of the market?
@@jshtng78Two examples. 1) imagine another magic crossover set with mass effect and the Companion (Say Garus) has the text of "you can only add this companion to you hand if commander shepard is on the battlefeild". This flavor works for commanders or leader or other creatures that do minions or even inventions. Instead of summoning a token you have it enable that companion. 2) This would also work in a commander block, say 'companion if X is your commander' then you can have a sort of two part commander that acts as a pair, say a hero and the companion being it's famous steed or sword or something, but one part you have to play from you hand not like the two partner commanders let you give different balances to each. 3) Un-sets. . .like enough said. Like 'companion: nominate a player outside the game to be your companion, when you play this card your opponent and your companion play a magic subgame' or something silly. it's not something you can do casually and you have to be careful about it, same as storm but there are probably niche applications for it.
I am pretty sure that double strike and indestructible outdo prowess in terms of raw power. But they are more respected by designers, and you don't see them on 1-mana creatures.
I think indestructible is extremely overrated, especially in 60 card formats, as it has no offensive advantage amid a world of exile based removal. but in terms of prowess vs double strike, the fact that there is a 1/1 with haste and prowess for 1 is why it is good. not to mention how every instant becomes a combat trick when you have a prowess creature out.
@@philiphunt-bull5817There's one that needs a dinosaur, one that needs to be equipped, one that's pretty much impossible to trigger, and a few that need additional mana.
I like how he gets to delve and it just feels like the mood has changed. And if there was any doubt, two later is affinity, and then it's just broken stuff.
What's interesting is that storm counts not only your spells but opponents spells as well. If it was an instant spell, you could on opponents turns when they're dumping spells or combo-ing off, you get more value or if they respond on your turn cast something like flusterstorm to negate interaction
When I got to #3 and saw Storm I actually did a double take. I figured Storm and Dredge were locked in as #1 and #2. I forgot about Companion, I was living a better life there for a bit.
Little note; the storm scale is not used by wizzard. Mark Rosewater uses it only to help him (and us) compare the likelyhood of a mechanic returning (which is not always for power-reasons.
12:12: That's... not much of a problem. You can just counter the spell they cascade into. The effect of the cascade spell usually doesn't matter. So unless they also have ways of casting the spell from the graveyard, a counterspell is still an awnser.
There's a mentor deck running around standard right now. It's being run alongside haughty djinn, cheap reanimation spells, self mill and cantrips. Deck is so fun to pilot on Arena, so many triggers.
MTG people : "Doctor Who is not the right feeling for Magic..." Whovian here : "Yawgmoth is literally out of a Doctor Who old school story from the lore I watched summarized in a video." I think it's a fun match. :P Time Counters are so fun
I was expecting Annihilator and Haste to be on the list. Annihilator is unparalleled in its board-breaking power, and Haste is the center of just about any aggro strategy that involves creatures
Im shocked you didn't point out one of the BIGGEST cards for Cascade: First Sliver. Sure, its only in commander that its strong...but when you are giving all your creatures cascade if you are making a sliver deck, it gets out of hand ungodly fast, to the point I have yet to here a single person not say its complete BS lol
My favorite cascade spell is the Sliver that has it and it gives all slivers you control cascade. Now all of a sudden me playing that 4 mana sliver means that there are 4 more slivers on the board.
I'm not the most experienced magic player, but to me, experience counters seem pretty strong, mostly due to the fact that there's (to my knowledge) not much anyone can do to affect them on account of counting up on the player, not the board. As such, once the experience counters start rolling, even though they might not be game winning right out the gate, the fact that they're so untouchable seems quite powerful to me!
Experience Counters issue is mostly just that they're very slow. I believe they were specifically designed for Commander, as Commander is generally a slower format, but even within it most decks I've run into "in the wild," as it were, simply run faster than one can expect to stack up a lot of experience counters for cool effects. I'm sure they're monstrous in slower/more casual play groups, but the fact that, AFAIK, that's mostly where they reside means that while the mechanic is theoretically powerful, the implementation doesn't really live up to it.
Unironically. A uncounterable 15/15 with flying and protection that also takes an extra turn when cast is crazy, but if Emrakul had to lose every last ability save one, Annihilator 6 would be the pick to keep it seeing nearly as much play as it does now.
If you had a 1/1 creature with every one of these keywords, what would its mana cost need to be for it to be balanced? Or would it be too strong even at absurd mana costs because there’s ways to cheat creatures out.
@@Srock8994 It would be if it was a decent mana cost, affinity and delve would probably force it to be a lot of colored pips if it was ever going to be balanced. It might as well not even have the colorless mana cost so I guess the real question is how many colored mana pips would you need for the card to be balanced?
I'd say to balance it all out, you should make it, 13 generic, 2 black, 1 blue, and 1 green, this makes the cascade only effective for the highest of endgame cards, then give it dredge 2 only to make it a little strong because then you give it protection from everything, this would make it very difficult to set up a powerful cascade effect, and dredge 2 was never really that amazing. Then when you add undying you can get the extra cascade, but with the protection you can't force that to happen very easily, and given it's low stats, it won't be too dangerous to let hit you a couple times. The biggest worry then would be the infect prowess, but with the building around endgame bosses, prowess won't do too much, and that gives you 10 hits from it to find a way around it, and it's lock in at 10 unless you get board boosting effects. All in all, it'd be one of the most terrifying looking cards in the game, but building around it requires more hoops to jump through, and it would probably just end up a cascade for big things or a tiny dredger
@@Terrabyte13Legacy Omnitell begs to differ. Even a decade later, Emrakul is still the "delete your board, gg" finisher that wins the game like no other threat.
@@MetallicitySaying that annihilator is powerful because of Emrakul is like saying counterspells are powerful because of Force of Will. If you take the single most broken card that happens to have it, yes, but then it drops significantly.
@@fernandobanda5734 While I get what you're saying, the comment I was replying to claimed annihilator wasn't practical in older formats. Having arguably the best finisher to cheat into play in eternal formats is a clear counterpoint. Rather than trying to say Emrakul alone justifies putting annihilator on the list, I was saying annihilator alone puts Emrakul in contention for eternal play (or to be less hyperbolic, is the most vital piece of the card).
Kinda surprised that phyrexian mana wasn't on this list, considering that cards like mental misstep warp formats around them Edit: I realized that he was talking about keywords specifically lol 🙃
I think that landfall must be on this list. Usually lands just add mana or has not really strong abilities, but landfall adds power to mechanic which every deck uses
Best keyword seems a bit subjective. Your list is about how relevant the keywords have been overtime, but I think it would be interesting to judge keywords based on what they do to an otherwise vanilla 1/1 creature. Just a fun idea .
Im still a newer MTG player so idk when they last time the released cards with a certain keyword, but I heard dredge was so hated WOTC will never touch it again thts why they keep making weaker versions of the effect, idk how true that is though. I play arena so iv never played against it.
While it isn't quite a "never again" keyword, there are only two new cards with it that have come about since it was initially made: Dakmor Salvage (A land in Future Sight with Dredge 2) and Shenanigans (A red sorcery in Modern Horizons 1 with Dredge 1). By all appearances, Dredge can get new cards very rarely, but they will never reach the Dredge numbers of older cards ever again.
I feel like anihilator could be an honerable mebtion- I wouldnt say any of the cards with it became problems because of that over their other abilities, but it sure as hell didnt make them worse.
"There was a time when Black Lotus was legal in more formats than Lurrus", unless you're counting the fact that Black Lotus was released first, this is absolutely false. Lurrus wasn't banned into Pioneer/Modern until nearly two years after the companion errata (it's just that broken anyway), and in fact the first post-errata change in legality for any companion was Lurrus getting belatedly unbanned in Vintage some ~8 months later. All that aside, Lurrus has never been banned in EDH, or Arena-only formats like Historic, and now Timeless, so it really never came close to the dominance of Lotus being restricted in the one single format it's legal in.
I don't really think Prowess should be on the list. Sure they made a few really efficient and overly good Prowess cards, but I don't really think the mechanic itself is overpowered.
Historical note: Infect first appeared as a non-keyword ability in Alliances, all the way back in '96. It was featured in Swamp Mosquito, a black 0 1 flying for 2 with the infect ability, or more precisely, toxic 1.
And poisonous did not add, it stacked, so if you had 2 of virulent sliver, they would both have poisonous 1, poisonous 1, while toxic adds, so if that same sliver had toxic, and you had 2, they would both have toxic 2
I'd like to point out horsemanship as well. While it's not gamebreaking in the normal sense, since there's so few cards with it. But I allows human decks to get better flying since horsemanship can only be blocked with horsemanship.
@@איתןשי yea, but for the most part unblockable is a 1 creature thing. where as theres at least one card that just says "all knights you control have horsemanship"
@@thezerohero9883 that's literally only for knight tribal tho, so that ability is only as good as that niche, which i've never even heard of being played.
Poison counters is such unfun mechanic for the opponent that instantly halves their life total if someone is using it. And all what it takes is few small 1/1 spooders that have infect and a card that has proliferate and its instant KO without a chance to fight back because poison counters are by design permanent.
I don't think companion was that strong or game breaking, it was particular ones that were the problem. Honestly most of them were just fine. Gyruda, Jeganthana, Kaheera, Keruga, Obosh, Umori, and Zirda had the good restriction and effects that were good but not completely busted. I think Kaheera, Gyruda, and Zirda were the strongest of those 7 but had the deck building restrictions that kept them in check. The biggest problems were Lurrus, Lutri, and Yorion. Lutri is actually very weak because of the deck restriction and was only a problem for Commander being an instant include but it pre-banned so its not a problem. Yorion is very strong because it's an ETB when it really should have been a cast trigger or even an attack trigger, it honestly wouldn't have seen much play if it was either. Lurrus is 100% the reason why Companion was changed and is the sole reason why people think its a strong mechanic even though its the effect that is busted. Honestly standard wasn't an issue with Lurrus it was the other formats with completely broken cards that made it a menace.
Dredge in a vcaccum is by far the strongest ability, the fact that a card can read dredge 6 be blank uncastable with nothing else on it and would be plaid in multiple formats proves this. A blank companion is worthless also alot of storm card are worthless. Dredge is #1 and Its not close.
"The storm scale receives it's name by how unlikely a busted mechanic is to appear in new cards, storm being the prime example". WTC-so, you're saying that we should create new storm cards?
That's because the Storm Scale isn't used in design, it's only Mark Rosewater's personal estimate. Also, it only applies to standard, and WotC knows there's a bunch of that-guys that love using Storm, so they use it a lot more than they should in supplemental sets.
White can exile, Blue can bounce then counter (or even steal), Red can steal or just ignore it and burn directly. Green is the only one struggling, but with a bigger creature with trample the keyword isn't much of an issue. Some days ago I managed to get over indestructible+lifelink by blinking Titan of Industry over and over, so the shield counter always prevented their lifelink to work, it was beautiful :D
That's strange because From the Comprehensive Rules (February 2, 2024-Murders at Karlov Manor) 122.3. If a permanent has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it, N +1/+1 and N -1/-1 counters are removed from it as a state-based action, where N is the smaller of the number of +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters on it. See rule 704. So my guess is Arena didn't code that correctly
That's the baked in number for the mechanic tho. Commander is Magic with a different ruleset, not a license to errata cards. You could argue for all infect cards to be banned in principle, but changing what it does is out of the question.
How to fix Companions? Simple. They should start on the board instead of in hand and if they are removed by an opponent's damage or removal, the controller loses the game.
first of all 1,000,000% sure Annihilator is missing in the list (infact this mechanic is so powerful even less likely to appear in sets even supplement set than storm.) second surprised you didn't' mention the lurrus banned forced the commander committee to ditch their shortcut ban list original it just banned every card on vintage ban list but they had to ditch that shortcut as of lurrus since lurrus is not bannable by any means in commander)
>undying is in the top ten >Indestructible is nowhere to be seen I disagree. You just have to give it the same mana cost as if it was a creature token spell.
Every time he pronounced albeit as “ableet” I died a little inside from secondhand embarrassment. He is already so knowledgeable about Magic there’s no reason to try to act more articulate than you are by running your script through a thesaurus. So many TH-camrs do this, it’s ironic because repeatedly mispronouncing a word that they clearly don’t know makes them look less intelligent than if they just used language they’re familiar with.
The only companion I've found viable is Yorion. I want to have larger decks anyway so making Brago and 120 to 200 card deck becomes legal. Most don't care about having larger decks as it the decks that do the same wincon every time that are annoying and want to run as few cards as possible to hit their combo. Play with Yorion or build bigger decks with your groups permission. We shouldn't be limiting ourselves when 100 cards was just an abitrary number to begin with.
It would be interesting to see a video on “noob trap” cards that are actually good in competitive play. As in, cards that new players correctly identify as good, but for all the wrong reasons.
Ooh that’d be neat
Great idea dude 👍🏼
Golgari Grave-Troll makes noobies go "ah, it gets stronger the more creatures are in your graveyard!". Pros forget that it's a creature card, it may as well be "Dredge 6. (this card cannot be played)"
@@Seydaschu I use it for both purposes
Companion. New players look at lutri and see a cute otter they can cast every game, veteran players read lurrus and start comprehending those untold horrors beyond their comprehension
Pre Errata Lurrus was trully something. Getting banned in Vintage is trully an acomplishment.
Specifically, getting banned FOR BALANCE OF GAMEPLAY.
Almost like Black Lotus is good more than once or something
Honestly it really wasn't as much of a problem of power as it was of the interaction between Restrictions and Companion specifically. It was still very good, but has since not even been unbanned, but also unrestricted and last I checked saw only limited play.
Wasn't just the Scary Kitty. The entire mechanic was busted. Zirda went infinite with a ham sando.
Banned because restricting it does nothing. It's like if we had companion black lotus restricting it would do nothing so it would be banned. I definitely wouldn't put post nerf companions at 1 over dredge or storm though as yes it's an extra card, however, it costs too much mana usually. Having a companion is also like drawing an extra card, but dredge is like drawing many extra cards per turn and all those cards are optimized to beat the opponent down quickly. Storm is a bit closer, but still storm cards are really good in basically every format they appear in no exception. Even if they put storm cards in standard again with no fast mana I'm sure they'd get abused somehow there too.
I was expecting Dredge to be #1, but I somehow forgot about the mechanic so busted it got a card banned from a format that explicitly doesn't ban overpowered cards.
Tbf Lutri was specifically banned in commander because it is free to bring for any commander deck that ran blue and red, arguably speaking it wouldn't have been the most broken card in the format, the rules committee just simply said that there were no good reason to just have decks that ran blue and red to be automatically better for having a free companion.
I guessed Companion Storm Dredge with Dredge being top 1, but they are all so broken you could rank them all at top 1 with no issue
@@adamxue6096 He's talking about Lurrus getting banned in Vintage.
@@maxmercurythemm827
Ah, true, ig that works too
Commander isn't very good at banning cards and leaves a ton of powerful options, which why I got that confused
same, I was like, of course dredge... and then it comes in #2, I was like, wow, what? then was like, oh, right, of course.
Something to point out, Storm isn’t just spells that *you* cast, but spells cast at all that turn. So it’s even more powerful.
Which makes Flusterstorm a powerful card for either player when someone is deep into a storm turn
I've been using Storm since Time Spiral and I honestly never picked up on that. In our casual group, it probably hasn't been relevant, but I guess I need to think about creating more situations on an opponent's turn.
An aspect important to note of storm is that the storm count considers all spells cast, not just yours, meaning that the opponent trying to interact only feeds the storm count further, ending in the Misstep situation where the way to answer Storm was a counterspell having storm itself (since the ones that counter triggered abilities aren't worth running in formats outside of commander).
The storm scale is actually interesting since, despite the inspiration, it's not just about power level but design space and playability overall, so while storm sits at 10 other mechanics with the same rating are things like fear (that has being replaced several times), -0/-1 (all counters that change stats different from -1/-1 and +1/+1, to streamline it), and the universally loathed and memed banding, all sitting higher than objectively stronger but somewhat more manageable mechanics like infect.
@@themantyf1116epic. Intimidate. Technically partner, since the storm scale only cares about standard.
I don't think everyone hates banding, I think people don't understand what it does usually. There is one simple reason banding should never return and that is limited formats. Balancing banding for limited is impossible to do.
@@dark_rit banding is loathed, it's needlessly difficult and doesn't play well with the game, it makes combat slightly safer for you by allowing to attack with less fear, but at the same time makes it a lot safer for your opponent allowing them easy chump-blocks. It theoretically has upsides, but is de facto detrimental, and no one likes a mechanic that is both bad and difficult to understand.
I have no idea how Wizards though that companion would be a good idea; Commander is a format that is centralized on the titular commander cards, because you have them available every game, so any consistent deck is gonna be careful with it's choice of commander and make sure to build a deck that maximizes it's value; Companion is a essentially a commander mechanic for other formats, or a second commander on edh itself.
I'd at least make companion trigger off some game state like 'if you have no cards in your hand and you meet the deck building limit you may add this card to your hand'
Having permanent unlimited access to a particular card as if it is a real life observing friend or your own self insert on the board is a fantasy for a portion of the MTG playerbase. How do you suggest Wizards tap this part of the market?
@@jshtng78Two examples.
1) imagine another magic crossover set with mass effect and the Companion (Say Garus) has the text of "you can only add this companion to you hand if commander shepard is on the battlefeild". This flavor works for commanders or leader or other creatures that do minions or even inventions. Instead of summoning a token you have it enable that companion.
2) This would also work in a commander block, say 'companion if X is your commander' then you can have a sort of two part commander that acts as a pair, say a hero and the companion being it's famous steed or sword or something, but one part you have to play from you hand not like the two partner commanders let you give different balances to each.
3) Un-sets. . .like enough said. Like 'companion: nominate a player outside the game to be your companion, when you play this card your opponent and your companion play a magic subgame' or something silly.
it's not something you can do casually and you have to be careful about it, same as storm but there are probably niche applications for it.
The only one that was a problem was Lurrus
@@dragonkingofthestars"companion if X is your commander" is similar to "partners with"
Its a shame that Companion was so busted. Really liked the flavour of having a plane-hopping buddy.
Horsemanship is the most powerful keyword and we all know it even if you don’t want to admit it
Followed by banding
@@pauljimerson8218 then flanking because flanking and horsemanship are definitely different
@@davidhowell1415 What if your on a flanking banded horse?
@@davidhowell1415what about shadow?
@@iankane3732 shadowy band of flanking horseman I guess.
I am pretty sure that double strike and indestructible outdo prowess in terms of raw power. But they are more respected by designers, and you don't see them on 1-mana creatures.
I think indestructible is extremely overrated, especially in 60 card formats, as it has no offensive advantage amid a world of exile based removal. but in terms of prowess vs double strike, the fact that there is a 1/1 with haste and prowess for 1 is why it is good. not to mention how every instant becomes a combat trick when you have a prowess creature out.
I'm pretty sure there's a 1 mana double striker
@@philiphunt-bull5817There's one that needs a dinosaur, one that needs to be equipped, one that's pretty much impossible to trigger, and a few that need additional mana.
21:59 As of June 22, 2024, Lurrus of the Dream-Den is banned in Legacy and legal (not restricted) in Vintage.
Companions are example why extra decks (technically in companions) changes the whole way one plays a game.
What about Eminence, Horsemanship & Annihilator?
Ngl i almost fell for the bait, thats a good one
Annihilator didn't make the list? I would've expected Storm, Annihilator and Cascade to be the top 3
It was more "the most impactful keywords in MtG"‚ rather than the most individually powerful
Prowess was there and indestructible wasn't, so yeah, something was definitely skewed.
I like how he gets to delve and it just feels like the mood has changed. And if there was any doubt, two later is affinity, and then it's just broken stuff.
What's interesting is that storm counts not only your spells but opponents spells as well. If it was an instant spell, you could on opponents turns when they're dumping spells or combo-ing off, you get more value or if they respond on your turn cast something like flusterstorm to negate interaction
When I got to #3 and saw Storm I actually did a double take. I figured Storm and Dredge were locked in as #1 and #2. I forgot about Companion, I was living a better life there for a bit.
Little note; the storm scale is not used by wizzard. Mark Rosewater uses it only to help him (and us) compare the likelyhood of a mechanic returning (which is not always for power-reasons.
12:12: That's... not much of a problem. You can just counter the spell they cascade into. The effect of the cascade spell usually doesn't matter. So unless they also have ways of casting the spell from the graveyard, a counterspell is still an awnser.
ah, companion, the only mechanic to come close to Phyrexian Mana for sheer "what were they thinking" brokenness
Although technically not a keyword, I am a strong believer that the single most abusable word on a card is "untap".
There's a mentor deck running around standard right now. It's being run alongside haughty djinn, cheap reanimation spells, self mill and cantrips. Deck is so fun to pilot on Arena, so many triggers.
It can blitz past the mountains of boardwipes running around rn too because its so fast. Very fun deck.
List?
Im actually happy he mispronounced bogle because thats how i pronounce bogle simply because it sounds better than bogle
Mr. logs, do you ever stream playing MTG arena?
I’d love to see you do a draft or a midweek magic event the themes are usually very fun
MTG people : "Doctor Who is not the right feeling for Magic..."
Whovian here : "Yawgmoth is literally out of a Doctor Who old school story from the lore I watched summarized in a video."
I think it's a fun match. :P Time Counters are so fun
I was expecting Annihilator and Haste to be on the list. Annihilator is unparalleled in its board-breaking power, and Haste is the center of just about any aggro strategy that involves creatures
I don't think any card with annihilator has been even remotely tournament viable except for Emrakul.
Im shocked you didn't point out one of the BIGGEST cards for Cascade: First Sliver. Sure, its only in commander that its strong...but when you are giving all your creatures cascade if you are making a sliver deck, it gets out of hand ungodly fast, to the point I have yet to here a single person not say its complete BS lol
I know it's basic and only combat related, but double strike has been one of my favorite keywords since I started.
My guess going in was that Dredge or Affinity would be number 1. But when I saw number 1, I had flashbacks to "Top 10 keywords we'll never see again"
My favorite cascade spell is the Sliver that has it and it gives all slivers you control cascade. Now all of a sudden me playing that 4 mana sliver means that there are 4 more slivers on the board.
How could you forget banding?
You have to know how it works to break it and no one does
It's obviously far to powerful and would take up the whole list.
I thought banding was abandoned for being too confusing, not powerful. It doesn't sound very powerful.
I'm not the most experienced magic player, but to me, experience counters seem pretty strong, mostly due to the fact that there's (to my knowledge) not much anyone can do to affect them on account of counting up on the player, not the board. As such, once the experience counters start rolling, even though they might not be game winning right out the gate, the fact that they're so untouchable seems quite powerful to me!
Same thing with energy counters.
Experience Counters issue is mostly just that they're very slow. I believe they were specifically designed for Commander, as Commander is generally a slower format, but even within it most decks I've run into "in the wild," as it were, simply run faster than one can expect to stack up a lot of experience counters for cool effects.
I'm sure they're monstrous in slower/more casual play groups, but the fact that, AFAIK, that's mostly where they reside means that while the mechanic is theoretically powerful, the implementation doesn't really live up to it.
Annihilator
The least respected of all keywords
Unironically. A uncounterable 15/15 with flying and protection that also takes an extra turn when cast is crazy, but if Emrakul had to lose every last ability save one, Annihilator 6 would be the pick to keep it seeing nearly as much play as it does now.
This is truly forgotten
If you had a 1/1 creature with every one of these keywords, what would its mana cost need to be for it to be balanced? Or would it be too strong even at absurd mana costs because there’s ways to cheat creatures out.
The stats don’t matter at all when it comes to dredge, all that matters is the dredge number
@@Srock8994 Dredge 1 would be the weakest and would still function with the original intent of being recurable.
@@Meichrob7 a cascade card with dredge sounds like a nightmare
@@Srock8994 It would be if it was a decent mana cost, affinity and delve would probably force it to be a lot of colored pips if it was ever going to be balanced. It might as well not even have the colorless mana cost so I guess the real question is how many colored mana pips would you need for the card to be balanced?
I'd say to balance it all out, you should make it, 13 generic, 2 black, 1 blue, and 1 green, this makes the cascade only effective for the highest of endgame cards, then give it dredge 2 only to make it a little strong because then you give it protection from everything, this would make it very difficult to set up a powerful cascade effect, and dredge 2 was never really that amazing. Then when you add undying you can get the extra cascade, but with the protection you can't force that to happen very easily, and given it's low stats, it won't be too dangerous to let hit you a couple times. The biggest worry then would be the infect prowess, but with the building around endgame bosses, prowess won't do too much, and that gives you 10 hits from it to find a way around it, and it's lock in at 10 unless you get board boosting effects. All in all, it'd be one of the most terrifying looking cards in the game, but building around it requires more hoops to jump through, and it would probably just end up a cascade for big things or a tiny dredger
Storm counts _all_ spells cast this turn, including opponent's.
3:07 .....so about Veyran, Voice of Duality in Commander......
I really thought there would be an annihilator keyword.
Its mechanically powerful, but not practical in faster formats.
@@Terrabyte13Legacy Omnitell begs to differ. Even a decade later, Emrakul is still the "delete your board, gg" finisher that wins the game like no other threat.
@@MetallicitySaying that annihilator is powerful because of Emrakul is like saying counterspells are powerful because of Force of Will. If you take the single most broken card that happens to have it, yes, but then it drops significantly.
@@fernandobanda5734 While I get what you're saying, the comment I was replying to claimed annihilator wasn't practical in older formats. Having arguably the best finisher to cheat into play in eternal formats is a clear counterpoint.
Rather than trying to say Emrakul alone justifies putting annihilator on the list, I was saying annihilator alone puts Emrakul in contention for eternal play (or to be less hyperbolic, is the most vital piece of the card).
Kinda surprised that phyrexian mana wasn't on this list, considering that cards like mental misstep warp formats around them
Edit: I realized that he was talking about keywords specifically lol 🙃
Thought monitor is basically the "I summon Pot of Greed" meme.
I think that landfall must be on this list. Usually lands just add mana or has not really strong abilities, but landfall adds power to mechanic which every deck uses
Landfall isn't a keyword in the same sense as flying.
Kind of expected to see Evoke in there. Maybe even flashback.
Evoke isn’t incredible outside the pitch elementals
Hexproof should be much higher since they said it’s too good to print and changes it to ward a worse version of it
Best keyword seems a bit subjective. Your list is about how relevant the keywords have been overtime, but I think it would be interesting to judge keywords based on what they do to an otherwise vanilla 1/1 creature. Just a fun idea .
Wait I replied to the wrong comment... whoops
Im still a newer MTG player so idk when they last time the released cards with a certain keyword, but I heard dredge was so hated WOTC will never touch it again thts why they keep making weaker versions of the effect, idk how true that is though. I play arena so iv never played against it.
While it isn't quite a "never again" keyword, there are only two new cards with it that have come about since it was initially made: Dakmor Salvage (A land in Future Sight with Dredge 2) and Shenanigans (A red sorcery in Modern Horizons 1 with Dredge 1). By all appearances, Dredge can get new cards very rarely, but they will never reach the Dredge numbers of older cards ever again.
Id argue that persist is stronger than undying, mostly due to an increased number of ways to remove the counter over undying
Give a persist creature undying and sac it to ashnods alter for infinite generic mana. Cast fireball holding priority them cast a split second card
the hard part is giving it undying everytime it comes back. its doable with mikaeus or the undying sticker ig
Amazing❤
I feel like anihilator could be an honerable mebtion- I wouldnt say any of the cards with it became problems because of that over their other abilities, but it sure as hell didnt make them worse.
6 and below are honestly in a league of their own compared to the lower entries
Wait, if a creature had undying and persist, would it basically be unable to get killed?
"There was a time when Black Lotus was legal in more formats than Lurrus", unless you're counting the fact that Black Lotus was released first, this is absolutely false. Lurrus wasn't banned into Pioneer/Modern until nearly two years after the companion errata (it's just that broken anyway), and in fact the first post-errata change in legality for any companion was Lurrus getting belatedly unbanned in Vintage some ~8 months later. All that aside, Lurrus has never been banned in EDH, or Arena-only formats like Historic, and now Timeless, so it really never came close to the dominance of Lotus being restricted in the one single format it's legal in.
Would people hate Lurrus so much if Wizards preemptively banned it
I don't really think Prowess should be on the list. Sure they made a few really efficient and overly good Prowess cards, but I don't really think the mechanic itself is overpowered.
"Frees up card text". Still added the effect explanation making it longer tho its useful for including mana numbers
I think it would be cool to get a top ten “Timmy” cards list
How would you rate them?
@@fernandobanda5734
How closely they resemble either Storm Crow or Colossal Dreadmaw
I see lurrus, i keep removal up. One time i pilfered after they put lurrus into their hand
I love these videos, but one thing I always notice - “albeit” is pronounced like “aal-bee-uht” not “aah-bleet”
Historical note: Infect first appeared as a non-keyword ability in Alliances, all the way back in '96. It was featured in Swamp Mosquito, a black 0 1 flying for 2 with the infect ability, or more precisely, toxic 1.
Infect is not toxic though. Infect is toxic + wither.
Poison counters were first introduced in Legends with the card Pit Scorpion.
And Toxic was originally printed as Poisonous on Virulent Sliver.
Poisonous was on more than just one sliver
And poisonous did not add, it stacked, so if you had 2 of virulent sliver, they would both have poisonous 1, poisonous 1, while toxic adds, so if that same sliver had toxic, and you had 2, they would both have toxic 2
@@Th3Rad10D3m0m no it wasn't. Virulent Sliver is the only creature in the game with Posionious. The only other card with the keyword is a black Aura.
I'd like to point out horsemanship as well. While it's not gamebreaking in the normal sense, since there's so few cards with it. But I allows human decks to get better flying since horsemanship can only be blocked with horsemanship.
Indestructible and Unblockable exist...
@@איתןשי yea, but for the most part unblockable is a 1 creature thing. where as theres at least one card that just says "all knights you control have horsemanship"
@@thezerohero9883 that's literally only for knight tribal tho, so that ability is only as good as that niche, which i've never even heard of being played.
Poison counters is such unfun mechanic for the opponent that instantly halves their life total if someone is using it. And all what it takes is few small 1/1 spooders that have infect and a card that has proliferate and its instant KO without a chance to fight back because poison counters are by design permanent.
Flanking... Have fun
I don't think companion was that strong or game breaking, it was particular ones that were the problem. Honestly most of them were just fine. Gyruda, Jeganthana, Kaheera, Keruga, Obosh, Umori, and Zirda had the good restriction and effects that were good but not completely busted. I think Kaheera, Gyruda, and Zirda were the strongest of those 7 but had the deck building restrictions that kept them in check. The biggest problems were Lurrus, Lutri, and Yorion. Lutri is actually very weak because of the deck restriction and was only a problem for Commander being an instant include but it pre-banned so its not a problem. Yorion is very strong because it's an ETB when it really should have been a cast trigger or even an attack trigger, it honestly wouldn't have seen much play if it was either. Lurrus is 100% the reason why Companion was changed and is the sole reason why people think its a strong mechanic even though its the effect that is busted. Honestly standard wasn't an issue with Lurrus it was the other formats with completely broken cards that made it a menace.
Zirda is still banned in legacy lol
It was pretty much just Lurrus
Dredge in a vcaccum is by far the strongest ability, the fact that a card can read dredge 6 be blank uncastable with nothing else on it and would be plaid in multiple formats proves this. A blank companion is worthless also alot of storm card are worthless. Dredge is #1 and Its not close.
Pre-watch guesses:
Delve
Dredge
Storm
Companion
Convoke
Overload
Scry
Infect and/or toxic
Undying/persist
Flash
Hmm, 6/10, I'll take it
"The storm scale receives it's name by how unlikely a busted mechanic is to appear in new cards, storm being the prime example". WTC-so, you're saying that we should create new storm cards?
That's because the Storm Scale isn't used in design, it's only Mark Rosewater's personal estimate. Also, it only applies to standard, and WotC knows there's a bunch of that-guys that love using Storm, so they use it a lot more than they should in supplemental sets.
Why isn't Miracle here?
I thought Provoke would make the list, as it's not used anymore, for being too strong.
Indestructible should be on this list
Im crying, he forgot why infect is so needed today. It bypasses indestructable, outside of black -x or -13
White can exile, Blue can bounce then counter (or even steal), Red can steal or just ignore it and burn directly.
Green is the only one struggling, but with a bigger creature with trample the keyword isn't much of an issue.
Some days ago I managed to get over indestructible+lifelink by blinking Titan of Industry over and over, so the shield counter always prevented their lifelink to work, it was beautiful :D
Sneed's Feed and Seed
Formerly Chuck's.
Snedge's Dredge and Hedge
I kinda expected annihilator to be on here tbh
Hexproof is number 1 imo
Hot take: Shroud shouldn't even exist. My group has treated it like hexproof for almost a decade now
when even was the last time a brand new card with shroud has been printed?
@@codyhanson1344 My point exactly... Wotc has already implemented the fact that they agree
Its almost like the Graveyard is powerful
Where is absorb :(
The logsssss
Oh right, this video is from two weeks ago now, but hurray! Violent Outburst is banned!
mtg arena showed counters don't cancel each other
That's strange because
From the Comprehensive Rules (February 2, 2024-Murders at Karlov Manor)
122.3. If a permanent has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it, N +1/+1 and N -1/-1 counters are removed from it as a state-based action, where N is the smaller of the number of +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters on it. See rule 704.
So my guess is Arena didn't code that correctly
How the hell is Annihilator not even on the list?
sacrificing your permanents to pay for your opponent's attack is simply a courtesy owed for witnessing an eldrazi in all its glory
Infect should be 15 or 20 in commander. The fact 10 is still death in commander is ridiculous
But you’re one player vs 3 others. If you’re the only one playing infect, you have to come up with 30 poison counters rather than the normal 10.
That's the baked in number for the mechanic tho. Commander is Magic with a different ruleset, not a license to errata cards. You could argue for all infect cards to be banned in principle, but changing what it does is out of the question.
How to fix Companions?
Simple. They should start on the board instead of in hand and if they are removed by an opponent's damage or removal, the controller loses the game.
first of all 1,000,000% sure Annihilator is missing in the list (infact this mechanic is so powerful even less likely to appear in sets even supplement set than storm.)
second surprised you didn't' mention the lurrus banned forced the commander committee to ditch their shortcut ban list original it just banned every card on vintage ban list but they had to ditch that shortcut as of lurrus since lurrus is not bannable by any means in commander)
Ableet
why brain freeze yourself to thoracle when you could just brain freeze your opponents lol
I think it's cause Thoracle wins the game on the spot, while milling your opponent doesn't win you the game until your opponent's draw step.
I am so foolish thinking this would be the fun keywords, like flying, trample…instead we have all the uhh competitive ones
>undying is in the top ten
>Indestructible is nowhere to be seen
I disagree. You just have to give it the same mana cost as if it was a creature token spell.
Maybe he forget and mixed them with hexproof (and protection from)
Eminence isn't so bad after all, i guess...
Where is flying XD
Flying is def one of the best keywords in limited
You are mispronouncing the word “albeit”. Sound it out. It should be closer to “all be it”.
Every time he pronounced albeit as “ableet” I died a little inside from secondhand embarrassment. He is already so knowledgeable about Magic there’s no reason to try to act more articulate than you are by running your script through a thesaurus. So many TH-camrs do this, it’s ironic because repeatedly mispronouncing a word that they clearly don’t know makes them look less intelligent than if they just used language they’re familiar with.
I noticed that too lol
Lol wHeRe's bAnDiNg?
I like these videos but the amount of spelling mistakes does drive me a bit nutty
The only companion I've found viable is Yorion. I want to have larger decks anyway so making Brago and 120 to 200 card deck becomes legal. Most don't care about having larger decks as it the decks that do the same wincon every time that are annoying and want to run as few cards as possible to hit their combo. Play with Yorion or build bigger decks with your groups permission. We shouldn't be limiting ourselves when 100 cards was just an abitrary number to begin with.
P
Dredge, Delve and Companion are very stupid mechanics.