I used to run leeches in edh specifically because one player announced they were building an infect deck. Four months later, I actually got to play it at seven poison. They were so impressed we forged an alliance for the rest of the match.
@@pyrotempestwing it's hilarious sometimes how the most innocuous cards can be devastating to a game. I got beat the other day in my ziatora treasures deck by patron of the nezumi. I had it in a rat deck for memes and it nearly beat one of my stronger decks on its own
@@zakbrooks7354 I've got a short rat story. Have you ever been given an infinite combo by multiple inattentive players? Was playing Marrow-Gnawer, the opponent diagonal from me played Intruder Alarm, next player created a random token during combat, untapping my commander.
Leeches is not the only card that can remove poison counters, sun cleanser can remove poison counters from an opponent, but you probably are not using it for that reason.
Its funnier to know that when Great Wall was released theres only one creature with plainswalk, and the creature was released in the same set as Great Wall.
Kinda surprised Break Open didn't make the list. It's worse than a do-nothing hate card; it's a hate card that actively BENEFITS your opponent 99/100 times you cast it
Brownie get even worse when you remember that it only target one creature. So if you are facing down two wolves of the hunt and you turn off one, the other can still band with blanked one just fine. So you need more then one brownie to shut down your opponent unless they have only one legend of a color on the field. And on top of that, unlike normal banding with can only add one non-bander to the band, band with others have no limits. So if you have 100 brownie somehow vs 101 wolves of the hunt, your foe can still have the one who still has their ability gather up every other wolf into a canine ball and roll into you.
Technically this was not true at the time of printing, because 'Bands with Other' did not actually used to do what it does now. See... currently, Bands With Other (Foo) lets the creature it is on form bands with other (Foo) creatures, just like you might expect. But at the time of printing, Bands With Other (Foo) meant "This creature can form bands with other creatures that have a matching Bands With Other (Foo) ability". So "Wolves of the Hunt" actually would not be able to band with another "Wolves of the Hunt" if that second one were to lose its Bands With Other Wolves Of The Hunt ability. Yes, this meant that under one of those lands giving, say, White Creatures 'Bands With Other Legends', said white legend would not be able to band with a blue legend, because the blue legend did not also have 'Bands With Other Legends'. This state of affairs persisted until the 2010 rules update, where quietly it was quietly changed in the background, along with a handful of other weird old rules, as part of a general cleanup. The ability is now still bad, but at least it's bad in a way that makes sense. :)
Fun Fact: you almost never use Banding to form an attacking band, you use it to form a defending band Banding really just translates to: You assign all combat damage This turns off Trample as well
Way way back in the days of yore, I had an opponent that loved playing a monogreen trample-focused stompy deck. so I put together a 'white weenie' deck focused around Banding, and included Prismatic Ward, because being able to take a Benalish Hero and stop a 7/7 trample wurm as well as all of its trample damage was worth the headache of having to explain how banding worked, how protection worked, and how they two interacted, every single time I played the deck... okay, well maybe it wasn't 'worth it', but it was funny the first few times :P
Stranglehold: Quite powerful in Commander since it specifies _opponents_. So you can still search your library and take extra turns and you'll be hindering multiple players at the same time, instead of having to hold 3+ counterspells to stop extra turns/tutors. And as an Enchantment it's one of the harder types permanents to get rid of. Teferi's Response and Tsabo's Web are both better than Pyramids.
Its extremely niche but i ran teferis response in my noyan dar deck back then. People were bloodthirsthy for my lands and getting a 3 for 1 made people trully impressed and really put the poor deck very ahead.
Both the Leyline and Stranglehold were odd inclusions on the list because Leyline of Singularity is a useful sideboard card depending on the meta, and Stranglehold's anti-tutor effect is almost always going to be useful and I'm not sure what other options red has for that. Also one of his two examples of "better anti-tutor" cards just... charges a tax to tutor, and hits you as well. Plus the ability that shuts off extra turns is insanely good, considering that if your opponent gets them, they probably had some way to get infinite turns through blue shenanigans.
I wanna give honorable mention to Trapfinder's Trick, which forces an opponent to reveal their hand and discard all Trap cards in it. Terrible card, but excellent for confusing YuGiOh players.
Leyline of Singularity was played with the Hunted cycle of creatures that were undercosted for their size in exchange for giving your opponent a bunch of token creatures. Also, at the time of Ravnica block the legend rule killed all legendary permanents with the same name, not just all but one controlled by the same player.
@@menoflowicz He's a beefy dude who beats over most creatures used in the format and can be played for only W. Might be better win cons these days, but he's a pretty good one.
Stabilizer, if legal in modern, could basically shut down many Living End decks since all their creatures have cycling and use it to fill their grave. Other than that, it's not really that useful
Another really bad hate card is Kor Castigator (3/1 with "Kor Castigator can't be blocked by Eldrazi Scions"). It seemed like a card that was either only put in for lore reasons or because they needed something to fill in a slot for the BFZ set.
@@iankane3732 The only thing I could see it being good for was swinging for 3 damage but even in limited, there was plenty of other ways to block it and some that gave advantage so it seems more like below average card even for limited.
@@AngryFloridaManvanilla blades are unexciting but playable even in today limited. Castigator was close enough to "cant be blocked by tokens" in its limited and its a competent curve filler regardless of that.
@@Blackvolttage Sure it would be useful in limited if you were facing a deck that produced the tokens but even when I did drafts, I rarely saw anyone reliably use the tokens. I also know a lot of the cards that produced the tokens were creature cards which means that unless you remove the other creature, being unblockable by the token wouldn't matter. Even in the limited format, I would rather pick any number of the white 2 drops than one that only matters when facing a token
Honorable mention goes to Goatnapper, which takes control of target Goat until end of turn. There's less than 10 creatures with that type, and that's when you are being charitable and counting cards that look like they are goats but it's not stated on the card.
Stranglehold has one of my all time favorite flavor texts. I wouldn't put Leonin Arbiter as a "better version with upside" as it hamstrings you and is an more easily removed creature.
I have a deck that runs Teferi's Response because the only nonland permanent it runs is Child of Alara in the command zone and the three main win conditions (manland swarm, Maze's End, and the Magosi/Karn's Bastion/Nesting Grounds combo) are all comprised entirely of lands. Seeing the look on people's faces when they finally find their land-hitting removal and it plows into that of all cards is priceless. (Plus we get to do the rishadan port history lesson!)
Banding's value is that the player that controls the Banded creature gets to assign combat damage. So a 1/1 with Banding can block an 11/11 Trample Infect and simply assign all 11 damage to itself.
Banding's true value is that 95% of the time, the opponent does not understand what banding does, and so will very likely make misplays while trying to play around what they presume is a meaningful mechanic that they just don't understand how you're going to be taking advantage of. :P
"But it gets even worse. If you had to guess how many creatures in the game that have Plainswalk, how many do you think there are?" Me: Uhhh, four I think? "If you guessed four, well then, good job of having memorized this hilarious bit of trivia." Me: :D As a big fan of collecting bits of trivia, I take that as a genuine mark of pride.
If you've never played a limited format with Banding creatures, it's easy to think Banding is bad. Creatures in those formats are pretty small, so banding frequently dominated combat.
Why would it do that though? Attacking as a band is still almost always terrible, since you're just begging to be chump blocked, and only if your largest creature in the band can survive the damage, you're still just making a 1 to 1 trade.
@@FinetalPies You're thinking about combat from a modern-day limited format. Old limited formats were much more about card advantage, so throwing away a creature for no value was more significant. Also, Banding lets the controller of the band assign damage, so at most, only one creature in the band will die. Banding is similar to Werewolves, Ninjas ad Celebration today. It was a significant part of the limited format at the time, but not good enough for Constructed.
Before starting the video, I want my guess for #1 to be...Mudhole! It's amusing how I thought about this card when Knight of the Reliquary became dominant at some point.
Rebels did break into extended, even making at least one top 8 appearance, and Lin-Sivvi has appeared in the final rounds of some legacy tournaments. I don’t recall Cursed Totem ever getting banded about as a counter (especially given white’s access to artifact hate at the time). I don’t remember Brutal Suppression ever seeing serious play either, and it was in block.
I do think something like Leeches does need to be in the game but not in that current state. I would like to see other cards that remove poison counters. I would also like to see something that removes counters from stuff in exile and players including emblems, not just time counters. More support cards like that could be added into anything Commander, Horizons, or Core sets if they ever return in order to make those strategies have more interaction with as well as be able to support those strategies since there would be counter-play to them.
The banding lands are hobenestly pretty strong in legendary tribal decks. I run both in my frodo baggins legendary deck and the banding they give make combat so much more difficult for them since you can make so many attacks and blocks end in your favor. Theyre worth the land drop for the turn if you dont got anorher land anyways. Theyre more like a spell card if anything. Bamding is actually a damn strong ability.
Against poison counter better than the creature one there is solemnity its an enchantment for 3 mana (harder ro remove) that have "player can't get counter"
Other cards that could have made this list: Tripwire: Destroy target creature with horsemanship Cephalid Snitch: Sacrifice it to to remove protection from Black from target creature this turn Nine-Ringed Bo: Tap to deal 1 damage to target spirit Great Wall: Had a corresponding card in each colour (ie Crevasse, Deadfall, Quagmire, Undertow) Withering Hex: Enchanted creature get -1/-1 whenever a plyer Cycles a card Break open" Turn opponent's target card that is face down into face up Takeno's Cavalry: Tap to cause 1 damage to attacking or blocking Spirit There were also a couple cards that only targeted cards from a specific set... which made them relevant for about a week in draft format... but I can't remember what they were... does anybody else know?
Teferi’s response seems like it’s only real use would be if you know you’re in a format where people love Wasteland and other land destruction. 2 mana might be a bit expensive for those formats though.
Teferi's response is a niche sideboard card in premodern, which is a format where wasteland, dust bowl and rishadan port exist. 2 mana save a land / destroy the enemy's port + draw 2 is a huge punish.
It's great in decks with manlands. It counters spot creature removal and nets you an additional card. And if it's a permanent tapping or try to kill your manland it destroys that permanent.
I run the Leyline in my Ramos Historic Cascade deck. It hits tokens and specifically Treasure decks at my table, sure, but now all those Historic procs are popping off like crazy. Artificer's Assistant for the scry and Teshar for graveyard. Mmmm. Spicy.
Leyline of Singularity is fantastic to keep utility tokens in check. Treasures are MUCH less of a problem when a player can only ever have one of them at a time, to say nothing of other random things like Blood and Food.
Considering how the Toxic mechanic works, Leeches might actually be a little better now than it was. Not by much, but since toxic creatures are dealing regular/poison damage, there maaaay be a niche home for Leeches now.
l only ever use Teferi's Response whenever l cast Tempt with Discovery, since most of the time at least one person will search for a land like Field of Ruin. Still VERY niche, but pretty hilarious when it happens
It's hilarious to me that some of these cards manage to actually be worse than the two Trap cards that specifically counter Monster Reborn and nothing else. Monster Reborn has been limited to 1 for damn near the entirety of Yugioh's life, but at least it's a really good card you'd want to use. I don't know who thought making a card that counters something six cards no one uses was a good idea.
Singularity can do work in commander. Even if you aren't a token deck, you probably still make treasure. Also leeches isn't the only card that removes poison counters, it's just the only card that specifically by name does it. There are a couple other cards that remove all counters from permanent and players, those hit infect and experience.
They did leyline of singularity dirty. It's more relevant now due to the amount of token strategies getting big in commander, and is the reason I added blue to a yoshimaru deck
So funny update: Leyline of Singularity can be a combo enabler in EDH (admittedly not a fast one, but still) with Ioreth of the Healing House (LotR). Basically, have Leyline, Ioreth, a dork, and an untapper on board, and you have infinite mana.
Stranglehold is coming back a bit considering the commander staples of “search for basic land” and the commonalities of using blue or black for tutoring.
Stabilizer was used alot in sideboards when Astral Slide was a top tier deck in the meta, so was everywhere. But yeah, nowdays is too specific to be useful.
I would submit Grip of Amnesia, as it was overlooked at the time, and it has one real use, and that is to counter a different counterspell, circular logic, and that is about the only time you would ever use it.
You could probably play Leeches in a very janky aggro deck with some aggressive toxic creatures from March of the Machine, using it as a burn spell. It's far from ideal trading off poison for damage, but so long as you're dealing more damage than poison counters, it's technically efficient. (I'm grasping at straws here) Bloated Contaminator, Jawbone Duelist, and Skrelv come to mind
I'm really not that big a fan of considering singularity as anywhere near the top 10, there are just so many niche hate cards out there. Edit: looking at this list it feels like the writer overlooked a lot of very bad hate cards, just see Suleiman's Legacy
Stranglehold in commander single handedly won me games by both shutting down tutors and ramp spells and stopping extra turns. Extra turns are a lot more common in commander then you think they would be
I wish they printed a card similar to leeches in All Will be One, especially one that is colourless as you need a way to remove poison counters against the Rotpriest/Toxic decks aside from the new Melira (I say this as someone who plays poison counters, it needs some way to remove the poison even if its one at a time)
I will haft to disagree with 1 part Poison decks in commander are actually fairly common. The best mono green commander Fynn, the Fangbearer. Is probably one of the most aggressive poison commanders in the entire game and in commander with him being in the command zone makes this even stronger. As any creature the Fynn player controls with death touch has Toxic 2 Fynn can run away with games incredibly fast and green has no shortage of allowing the fynn player easily win games. Wizards should print more ways of removing counters from players, as leaches is the only card in the game that actually does. I would be more comfortable with poison decks if there was actually ways to remove the poison. But in reality there isn’t and I think a lot more people would be ok with it if they had ways of removing counters from themselves. As poison counters is some of the most uninteractive mechanics in all of magic.
Some of these were hate against what was supposed to be a signature mechanic from a set, so they should have been useful in their block format. However, if the mechanic doesn't actually turn out to be all that good, that doesn't happen. And they become worse afterwards.
Wizards needs to make Table 500 Constructed an official format with a ludicrously large prize pool just to see how it would skew any card tiering based on tournament results.
leeches is worse if you take into account that in a normal game you have 20 life points, if you get 9 poison counters and use leaches you would leave yourself at 2 hp, meaning in reality you did nothing in the best case scenario
@@arturomorenomoreno5666 702.90b Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect doesn’t cause that player to lose life. Rather, it causes that source’s controller to give the player that many poison counters.
Honestly surprised magic doesn't have even more specific hate cards like yugioh does, we need something like "if your opponent would cast Death's Shadow, while they have less than 13 life, it enters the battlefield under your control, and you swap life totals with your opponent.
Gavi? Even there, it wouldn't do enough to matter and that's LITERALLY the best case scenario for this card. Jeskai has access to TONS of artifact removal.
Dream scenario, have vedalken orrey on the battlefield, deal 9 poison to an opponent with a blighted agent you pumped and gave first strike, activate leeches, then on normal damage deal another 10 poison just to flex
(0:48) I'm not sure why you showed Pit Scorpion there, as it doesn't have anything to do with tokens, and you're not talking about poison counters here, which aren't tokens. (7:20) Now this is when Pit Scorpion becomes relevant. I wonder if you meant to show an entirely different card at 0:48 that had something to do with tokens?
Brownie definitely earns its top spot, but I would like to make dishonorable mention of an old 'favorite' bad hate card: Pale Moon. If your opponent happens to be playing "nonbasic lands that make colored mana" AND also has such a glut of them that not being able to use them will prevent them from playing anything of use, then congratulations, you now have a card that will inconvenience your opponent for a turn in exchange for two mana and the shame of having actually cast this pathetic excuse of a card. Not only does your opponent have to be relying on nonbasic lands for mana color fixing, but they have to be in a situation where not having that fixing would actually matter to them (which probably means the early game), which means you've spent a large chunk of your mana for one of your critical early turns to also slow down your opponent by a turn, in an incredibly narrow way... which is assuming they don't have the ability to just play around it, or aren't just playing a deck that doesn't rely on color-making nonbasics (monocolored decks, decks that use artifact mana, etc)
Brutal Suppression was big back un the day, as you say Rebels were dominating. It's an unfair comparison, considering the power Creep that has happened since it was printed.
Leyline of singularity is stronger than you give credit, You mention it stopping token strategies but you didn't mention it stopping treasures and clues which basically means it can stop some ramp strategies that are getting more and more popular and getting more and more cards made for them. It just turns off smothering tithe.
I think Great Wall is actually a worse hate card than the Brownie, if only because as a two mana 1/1, there is actually a (very small) chance that it actually mildly impacts the board. But, in terms of the specificity of what the card is hating on, yea, it probably is number one.
One of the instant fail of leeches is that converting poison to damage sucks from the offensive perspective. Since you need half as much poison counters as player's maximum health to kill him, poison just kills your opponent quicker than health damage, and converting poison back to health damage is just stupid. Maybe you can target yourself with that, but it's still stupid.
i have to disagree on stranglehold the other options are a lot easier to remove than an enchantment which is why the better versions of lock effects are enchantments
To be fair, you can't consider Teferi's Response bad when it countered such an opressive, overplayed to shit card back in the meta. It's like if they printed a 4 mana instant removal that said "exile target fucking Sheoldred and every single fucking copy of it from the library of the cumstain playing it", which would be a 4-of in any standard deck.
The claim that Leeches is the only card in the game that can remove poison counters from a player is VERY TECHNICALLY false! Suncleanser is a 1/4 Human Cleric for 1W, that, when it enters the battlefield, lets you target a creature or an *opponent* (not any player, can't pick yourself). You than remove all counters of all kinds from the selected creature or player, and that creature or player can't get counters of any kind while Suncleanser stays on the battlefield. Is this card even slightly worth using in 99% of situations? No. But the 1% of situations where it IS hilarious was when I was able to use it as a politics piece in my Alesha deck in games of Commander. I could use it to wipe counters off of big dudes that use counters, like Reyhan, Atraxa decks, etc. etc., or save a useful ally from poison, or, hilariously, take one of the very few "experience counter" commander precons (like Ezuri Claw of Progress and Meren of Clan Tel Noth) and make them start over at 0 experience. Alesha made Suncleanser very recurrable, and black has a lot of specific self-mill like Buried Alive, so I made my friend who played Ezuri absolutely fed up with my bullshit. Not a good card, but a funny one for sure. It can be a neat politics piece in very toolboxy builds of Alesha and probably nothing else. But yeah, as far as I know, that's the ONLY other way to remove poison counters from a player, and you can't even pick yourself.
I understand the wider context for this list, but I have such fond memories of Teferi's Response in Masques/Invasion Standard. Rishadan Port was so heavily played in my area that a fair number of people, myself included, played some number of Teferi's Response in the main.
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I used to run leeches in edh specifically because one player announced they were building an infect deck. Four months later, I actually got to play it at seven poison. They were so impressed we forged an alliance for the rest of the match.
I always like to say that every card no matter how insignificant it may look can do something at some point. Living proof right here
You two are straight up Yugioh protagonists. (That’s not a bad thing in this case.)
@@pyrotempestwing it's hilarious sometimes how the most innocuous cards can be devastating to a game. I got beat the other day in my ziatora treasures deck by patron of the nezumi. I had it in a rat deck for memes and it nearly beat one of my stronger decks on its own
@@zakbrooks7354 I've got a short rat story. Have you ever been given an infinite combo by multiple inattentive players? Was playing Marrow-Gnawer, the opponent diagonal from me played Intruder Alarm, next player created a random token during combat, untapping my commander.
The leeches gave you immunity!
Leeches is not the only card that can remove poison counters, sun cleanser can remove poison counters from an opponent, but you probably are not using it for that reason.
Price of Betrayal.
They also released a card for removing poison in MOM
Its funnier to know that when Great Wall was released theres only one creature with plainswalk, and the creature was released in the same set as Great Wall.
Kinda surprised Break Open didn't make the list. It's worse than a do-nothing hate card; it's a hate card that actively BENEFITS your opponent 99/100 times you cast it
But can you call break open a "hate card?" Like, it isn't hating, it does nothing but help. You could also just play a one man's shock instead, lol
Brownie get even worse when you remember that it only target one creature. So if you are facing down two wolves of the hunt and you turn off one, the other can still band with blanked one just fine. So you need more then one brownie to shut down your opponent unless they have only one legend of a color on the field. And on top of that, unlike normal banding with can only add one non-bander to the band, band with others have no limits. So if you have 100 brownie somehow vs 101 wolves of the hunt, your foe can still have the one who still has their ability gather up every other wolf into a canine ball and roll into you.
Technically this was not true at the time of printing, because 'Bands with Other' did not actually used to do what it does now.
See... currently, Bands With Other (Foo) lets the creature it is on form bands with other (Foo) creatures, just like you might expect. But at the time of printing, Bands With Other (Foo) meant "This creature can form bands with other creatures that have a matching Bands With Other (Foo) ability". So "Wolves of the Hunt" actually would not be able to band with another "Wolves of the Hunt" if that second one were to lose its Bands With Other Wolves Of The Hunt ability.
Yes, this meant that under one of those lands giving, say, White Creatures 'Bands With Other Legends', said white legend would not be able to band with a blue legend, because the blue legend did not also have 'Bands With Other Legends'. This state of affairs persisted until the 2010 rules update, where quietly it was quietly changed in the background, along with a handful of other weird old rules, as part of a general cleanup. The ability is now still bad, but at least it's bad in a way that makes sense. :)
Fun Fact: you almost never use Banding to form an attacking band, you use it to form a defending band
Banding really just translates to: You assign all combat damage
This turns off Trample as well
As a banding i agree with this statement
Way way back in the days of yore, I had an opponent that loved playing a monogreen trample-focused stompy deck. so I put together a 'white weenie' deck focused around Banding, and included Prismatic Ward, because being able to take a Benalish Hero and stop a 7/7 trample wurm as well as all of its trample damage was worth the headache of having to explain how banding worked, how protection worked, and how they two interacted, every single time I played the deck... okay, well maybe it wasn't 'worth it', but it was funny the first few times :P
Stranglehold: Quite powerful in Commander since it specifies _opponents_. So you can still search your library and take extra turns and you'll be hindering multiple players at the same time, instead of having to hold 3+ counterspells to stop extra turns/tutors. And as an Enchantment it's one of the harder types permanents to get rid of.
Teferi's Response and Tsabo's Web are both better than Pyramids.
Its extremely niche but i ran teferis response in my noyan dar deck back then. People were bloodthirsthy for my lands and getting a 3 for 1 made people trully impressed and really put the poor deck very ahead.
Both the Leyline and Stranglehold were odd inclusions on the list because Leyline of Singularity is a useful sideboard card depending on the meta, and Stranglehold's anti-tutor effect is almost always going to be useful and I'm not sure what other options red has for that. Also one of his two examples of "better anti-tutor" cards just... charges a tax to tutor, and hits you as well. Plus the ability that shuts off extra turns is insanely good, considering that if your opponent gets them, they probably had some way to get infinite turns through blue shenanigans.
I wanna give honorable mention to Trapfinder's Trick, which forces an opponent to reveal their hand and discard all Trap cards in it. Terrible card, but excellent for confusing YuGiOh players.
I don't need to watch, I already know #1.
"Lamp oil. Rope? Bombs? You want it? It's yours my friend. As long as you have enough rupees."
Sorry Link, I can't give credit. Come back when you're a little
MMMMMMMMM
RICHER
Leyline of Singularity was played with the Hunted cycle of creatures that were undercosted for their size in exchange for giving your opponent a bunch of token creatures. Also, at the time of Ravnica block the legend rule killed all legendary permanents with the same name, not just all but one controlled by the same player.
Leyline of Singularity is a key part of a fun 3-card blind deck: Leyline of Singularity, Karakas, Ivory Giant.
What for is there giant?
@@menoflowicz He's a beefy dude who beats over most creatures used in the format and can be played for only W. Might be better win cons these days, but he's a pretty good one.
Wat? Karakas is legendary...
Stabilizer, if legal in modern, could basically shut down many Living End decks since all their creatures have cycling and use it to fill their grave. Other than that, it's not really that useful
Street Wraith :D
@@LhynkalTheFool Wraith has cycling yes
Yeah, but 2 mana is too slow for that. If it was 1 mana it'd be a potential option (tho leyline of the void is still probably just better)
I think "shut down" is putting it way too strong.
Another really bad hate card is Kor Castigator (3/1 with "Kor Castigator can't be blocked by Eldrazi Scions"). It seemed like a card that was either only put in for lore reasons or because they needed something to fill in a slot for the BFZ set.
Card was actually pretty good in limited.
@@iankane3732 The only thing I could see it being good for was swinging for 3 damage but even in limited, there was plenty of other ways to block it and some that gave advantage so it seems more like below average card even for limited.
@@AngryFloridaManvanilla blades are unexciting but playable even in today limited. Castigator was close enough to "cant be blocked by tokens" in its limited and its a competent curve filler regardless of that.
@@Blackvolttage Sure it would be useful in limited if you were facing a deck that produced the tokens but even when I did drafts, I rarely saw anyone reliably use the tokens. I also know a lot of the cards that produced the tokens were creature cards which means that unless you remove the other creature, being unblockable by the token wouldn't matter. Even in the limited format, I would rather pick any number of the white 2 drops than one that only matters when facing a token
Stabilizer was printed in Scourge where some cards had abilities that triggered when you cycled a card
Honorable mention goes to Goatnapper, which takes control of target Goat until end of turn. There's less than 10 creatures with that type, and that's when you are being charitable and counting cards that look like they are goats but it's not stated on the card.
Changlings
Stranglehold has one of my all time favorite flavor texts. I wouldn't put Leonin Arbiter as a "better version with upside" as it hamstrings you and is an more easily removed creature.
When I had a deck with Blinkmoth/inkmoth Nexus and Mishra Factory (And other manland) I was using Teferis's response. and it worked pretty well
I have a deck that runs Teferi's Response because the only nonland permanent it runs is Child of Alara in the command zone and the three main win conditions (manland swarm, Maze's End, and the Magosi/Karn's Bastion/Nesting Grounds combo) are all comprised entirely of lands.
Seeing the look on people's faces when they finally find their land-hitting removal and it plows into that of all cards is priceless. (Plus we get to do the rishadan port history lesson!)
Banding's value is that the player that controls the Banded creature gets to assign combat damage. So a 1/1 with Banding can block an 11/11 Trample Infect and simply assign all 11 damage to itself.
Banding's true value is that 95% of the time, the opponent does not understand what banding does, and so will very likely make misplays while trying to play around what they presume is a meaningful mechanic that they just don't understand how you're going to be taking advantage of. :P
"But it gets even worse. If you had to guess how many creatures in the game that have Plainswalk, how many do you think there are?"
Me: Uhhh, four I think?
"If you guessed four, well then, good job of having memorized this hilarious bit of trivia."
Me: :D As a big fan of collecting bits of trivia, I take that as a genuine mark of pride.
If you've never played a limited format with Banding creatures, it's easy to think Banding is bad.
Creatures in those formats are pretty small, so banding frequently dominated combat.
Why would it do that though? Attacking as a band is still almost always terrible, since you're just begging to be chump blocked, and only if your largest creature in the band can survive the damage, you're still just making a 1 to 1 trade.
@@FinetalPies You're thinking about combat from a modern-day limited format. Old limited formats were much more about card advantage, so throwing away a creature for no value was more significant. Also, Banding lets the controller of the band assign damage, so at most, only one creature in the band will die.
Banding is similar to Werewolves, Ninjas ad Celebration today. It was a significant part of the limited format at the time, but not good enough for Constructed.
Teferi's Response was great against wasteland effects back in the day as well
And Noyan Dar decks
Yeah. It was played in some Legacy LandStill Decks.
I've actually ran Teferi's Response in the SB during INV/ODY standard. It was a decent answer to Opposition, which was popular for a while.
Before starting the video, I want my guess for #1 to be...Mudhole! It's amusing how I thought about this card when Knight of the Reliquary became dominant at some point.
Rebels did break into extended, even making at least one top 8 appearance, and Lin-Sivvi has appeared in the final rounds of some legacy tournaments. I don’t recall Cursed Totem ever getting banded about as a counter (especially given white’s access to artifact hate at the time). I don’t remember Brutal Suppression ever seeing serious play either, and it was in block.
I do think something like Leeches does need to be in the game but not in that current state. I would like to see other cards that remove poison counters. I would also like to see something that removes counters from stuff in exile and players including emblems, not just time counters. More support cards like that could be added into anything Commander, Horizons, or Core sets if they ever return in order to make those strategies have more interaction with as well as be able to support those strategies since there would be counter-play to them.
The banding lands are hobenestly pretty strong in legendary tribal decks. I run both in my frodo baggins legendary deck and the banding they give make combat so much more difficult for them since you can make so many attacks and blocks end in your favor. Theyre worth the land drop for the turn if you dont got anorher land anyways. Theyre more like a spell card if anything. Bamding is actually a damn strong ability.
Against poison counter better than the creature one there is solemnity its an enchantment for 3 mana (harder ro remove) that have "player can't get counter"
I think that it's hillarius that the brownie looks so full of him self. He's like damm ain't i amezing.
Other cards that could have made this list:
Tripwire: Destroy target creature with horsemanship
Cephalid Snitch: Sacrifice it to to remove protection from Black from target creature this turn
Nine-Ringed Bo: Tap to deal 1 damage to target spirit
Great Wall: Had a corresponding card in each colour (ie Crevasse, Deadfall, Quagmire, Undertow)
Withering Hex: Enchanted creature get -1/-1 whenever a plyer Cycles a card
Break open" Turn opponent's target card that is face down into face up
Takeno's Cavalry: Tap to cause 1 damage to attacking or blocking Spirit
There were also a couple cards that only targeted cards from a specific set... which made them relevant for about a week in draft format... but I can't remember what they were... does anybody else know?
Teferi’s response seems like it’s only real use would be if you know you’re in a format where people love Wasteland and other land destruction. 2 mana might be a bit expensive for those formats though.
Teferi's response is a niche sideboard card in premodern, which is a format where wasteland, dust bowl and rishadan port exist. 2 mana save a land / destroy the enemy's port + draw 2 is a huge punish.
It's great in decks with manlands. It counters spot creature removal and nets you an additional card. And if it's a permanent tapping or try to kill your manland it destroys that permanent.
I run the Leyline in my Ramos Historic Cascade deck. It hits tokens and specifically Treasure decks at my table, sure, but now all those Historic procs are popping off like crazy. Artificer's Assistant for the scry and Teshar for graveyard. Mmmm. Spicy.
Dude keep it coming! I love the content 🫡
5:35 - there was also very similar card from same set - "Rend Spirit", which destroyed target spirit for 2B.
"None of the Leylines are really worth paying 4 mana for"
You ever heard of Leyline of Anticipation?
Leyline of Singularity is fantastic to keep utility tokens in check. Treasures are MUCH less of a problem when a player can only ever have one of them at a time, to say nothing of other random things like Blood and Food.
Until Leeches came up, I had absolutely no idea that Poison was that old of a mechanic.
Considering how the Toxic mechanic works, Leeches might actually be a little better now than it was. Not by much, but since toxic creatures are dealing regular/poison damage, there maaaay be a niche home for Leeches now.
Teferi's response was actually played quite a bit in the sideboard during its era which is hilarious considering how narrow it is
l only ever use Teferi's Response whenever l cast Tempt with Discovery, since most of the time at least one person will search for a land like Field of Ruin. Still VERY niche, but pretty hilarious when it happens
Banding is a good mechanic.
It's hilarious to me that some of these cards manage to actually be worse than the two Trap cards that specifically counter Monster Reborn and nothing else. Monster Reborn has been limited to 1 for damn near the entirety of Yugioh's life, but at least it's a really good card you'd want to use. I don't know who thought making a card that counters something six cards no one uses was a good idea.
Singularity can do work in commander. Even if you aren't a token deck, you probably still make treasure.
Also leeches isn't the only card that removes poison counters, it's just the only card that specifically by name does it. There are a couple other cards that remove all counters from permanent and players, those hit infect and experience.
They did leyline of singularity dirty. It's more relevant now due to the amount of token strategies getting big in commander, and is the reason I added blue to a yoshimaru deck
So funny update: Leyline of Singularity can be a combo enabler in EDH (admittedly not a fast one, but still) with Ioreth of the Healing House (LotR). Basically, have Leyline, Ioreth, a dork, and an untapper on board, and you have infinite mana.
Re Great Wall, also the card Aysen Highway grants plainswalk, though given *that* cards mana cost, that is a *very* bad idea...😮
Stranglehold is coming back a bit considering the commander staples of “search for basic land” and the commonalities of using blue or black for tutoring.
Stabilizer was used alot in sideboards when Astral Slide was a top tier deck in the meta, so was everywhere. But yeah, nowdays is too specific to be useful.
Strangely curious why Shelkin Brownie was errata'd to an ouphe, seeing as Faerie is a completely valid creature type.
I would submit Grip of Amnesia, as it was overlooked at the time, and it has one real use, and that is to counter a different counterspell, circular logic, and that is about the only time you would ever use it.
I would argue that Banding is a GOOD mechanic... they just overcosted the heck out of most of the stuff they put it on.
What about Apocalypse Chime!!!
You forgot one thing about Stranglehold. It does see play in casual and low power EDH
You could probably play Leeches in a very janky aggro deck with some aggressive toxic creatures from March of the Machine, using it as a burn spell. It's far from ideal trading off poison for damage, but so long as you're dealing more damage than poison counters, it's technically efficient. (I'm grasping at straws here)
Bloated Contaminator, Jawbone Duelist, and Skrelv come to mind
I'd like to see videos about the best Sliver cards and the best Myr cards, please.
I'm really not that big a fan of considering singularity as anywhere near the top 10, there are just so many niche hate cards out there.
Edit: looking at this list it feels like the writer overlooked a lot of very bad hate cards, just see Suleiman's Legacy
Stranglehold in commander single handedly won me games by both shutting down tutors and ramp spells and stopping extra turns. Extra turns are a lot more common in commander then you think they would be
Old....Foggy?
Amazing!!!!
Another card that fit this list is Trapfinder's Trick.
For 1U you can discard all Trap cards from your oponent hand. Only 1 trap see any play
Stranglehold and similar effects are funny in EDH because it essentially reads "Screw over each player who spent >50$ on their mana base"
Same in Modern really. D&T was a deck before MH came about.
I wish they printed a card similar to leeches in All Will be One, especially one that is colourless as you need a way to remove poison counters against the Rotpriest/Toxic decks aside from the new Melira (I say this as someone who plays poison counters, it needs some way to remove the poison even if its one at a time)
stranglehold is extremely powerful in stax edh decks, especially in high power
I will haft to disagree with 1 part
Poison decks in commander are actually fairly common.
The best mono green commander Fynn, the Fangbearer.
Is probably one of the most aggressive poison commanders in the entire game and in commander with him being in the command zone makes this even stronger.
As any creature the Fynn player controls with death touch has Toxic 2
Fynn can run away with games incredibly fast and green has no shortage of allowing the fynn player easily win games.
Wizards should print more ways of removing counters from players, as leaches is the only card in the game that actually does.
I would be more comfortable with poison decks if there was actually ways to remove the poison. But in reality there isn’t and I think a lot more people would be ok with it if they had ways of removing counters from themselves. As poison counters is some of the most uninteractive mechanics in all of magic.
They made a card in march of the machines made for removing poison counters and a lot of other cards remove counters in general
Some of these were hate against what was supposed to be a signature mechanic from a set, so they should have been useful in their block format. However, if the mechanic doesn't actually turn out to be all that good, that doesn't happen. And they become worse afterwards.
Stranglehold likes hanging out in blood moon lol.
Wizards needs to make Table 500 Constructed an official format with a ludicrously large prize pool just to see how it would skew any card tiering based on tournament results.
leeches is worse if you take into account that in a normal game you have 20 life points, if you get 9 poison counters and use leaches you would leave yourself at 2 hp, meaning in reality you did nothing in the best case scenario
There is 9 damage lost in this calculation.
@@malakimphoros2164combat damage from
@@Cheerwine091 Infect has warped my thinking way too much
@@malakimphoros2164despite one could belive infect does not replaces the damage it does to players, it does to creatures but not player
@@arturomorenomoreno5666
702.90b Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect doesn’t cause that player to lose life. Rather, it causes that source’s controller to give the player that many poison counters.
Feroz's Ban! How many decks in any format run cards that originated in Homelands?
Kamigawa is the only set my card shop discounted the boosters for.
Honestly surprised magic doesn't have even more specific hate cards like yugioh does, we need something like "if your opponent would cast Death's Shadow, while they have less than 13 life, it enters the battlefield under your control, and you swap life totals with your opponent.
Imagine if stabilizer existed against the ikoria cycling deck though :o
Gavi? Even there, it wouldn't do enough to matter and that's LITERALLY the best case scenario for this card.
Jeskai has access to TONS of artifact removal.
Dream scenario, have vedalken orrey on the battlefield, deal 9 poison to an opponent with a blighted agent you pumped and gave first strike, activate leeches, then on normal damage deal another 10 poison just to flex
(0:48) I'm not sure why you showed Pit Scorpion there, as it doesn't have anything to do with tokens, and you're not talking about poison counters here, which aren't tokens.
(7:20) Now this is when Pit Scorpion becomes relevant. I wonder if you meant to show an entirely different card at 0:48 that had something to do with tokens?
"Leylines aren't worth it for 4 mana, however they're a steal for 4 mana." Dude needs better error checking
Didn’t leyline of singularity see play in modern sideboards when splinter twin was legal?
Brownie definitely earns its top spot, but I would like to make dishonorable mention of an old 'favorite' bad hate card: Pale Moon.
If your opponent happens to be playing "nonbasic lands that make colored mana" AND also has such a glut of them that not being able to use them will prevent them from playing anything of use, then congratulations, you now have a card that will inconvenience your opponent for a turn in exchange for two mana and the shame of having actually cast this pathetic excuse of a card. Not only does your opponent have to be relying on nonbasic lands for mana color fixing, but they have to be in a situation where not having that fixing would actually matter to them (which probably means the early game), which means you've spent a large chunk of your mana for one of your critical early turns to also slow down your opponent by a turn, in an incredibly narrow way... which is assuming they don't have the ability to just play around it, or aren't just playing a deck that doesn't rely on color-making nonbasics (monocolored decks, decks that use artifact mana, etc)
Brutal Suppression was big back un the day, as you say Rebels were dominating. It's an unfair comparison, considering the power Creep that has happened since it was printed.
Leyline of singularity is stronger than you give credit, You mention it stopping token strategies but you didn't mention it stopping treasures and clues which basically means it can stop some ramp strategies that are getting more and more popular and getting more and more cards made for them. It just turns off smothering tithe.
I feel like leyline also works well with another clunky mechanic of Legendary sorcery
I think Great Wall is actually a worse hate card than the Brownie, if only because as a two mana 1/1, there is actually a (very small) chance that it actually mildly impacts the board. But, in terms of the specificity of what the card is hating on, yea, it probably is number one.
imagine building an entire deck based on Shelkin Brownie just to shut off your own creatures "Bands with other" ability.
Leyline of singularity is a based token counter, good in EDH as a sideboard card
One of the instant fail of leeches is that converting poison to damage sucks from the offensive perspective. Since you need half as much poison counters as player's maximum health to kill him, poison just kills your opponent quicker than health damage, and converting poison back to health damage is just stupid. Maybe you can target yourself with that, but it's still stupid.
Leyline of singularity is an extremely powerful and useful card it is great token hate and has role in commander
Suncleanser can remove poison counters but you can't target yourself with it.
Break open could count, it tries to hate on Morph, but flips over an opponents creature only.
When you play leyline of singularity and your opponent retorts with mirror gallery
i have to disagree on stranglehold the other options are a lot easier to remove than an enchantment which is why the better versions of lock effects are enchantments
it's quite strange how rare Plainswalk is compared to the other Landwalk keywords
Probably because Planeswalkers exist
It's difficult to create the concept of a creature that hides in clear flat land. Plains are not the best terrain for sneak attacks
There are other ways to remove poison counters. Like glissa sunflayer or that selesnya legend in MOM
To be fair, you can't consider Teferi's Response bad when it countered such an opressive, overplayed to shit card back in the meta. It's like if they printed a 4 mana instant removal that said "exile target fucking Sheoldred and every single fucking copy of it from the library of the cumstain playing it", which would be a 4-of in any standard deck.
Man it might be bad but I would have paid money to have stabilizer when zenith flare was in standard. That was the most annoying deck on arena.
kinda surprised break open isn't here
But without Teleri's Response, how can I counter my opponent's Erosion?
Brb, building a deck that has all of these cards and a bunch of tutors.
The claim that Leeches is the only card in the game that can remove poison counters from a player is VERY TECHNICALLY false!
Suncleanser is a 1/4 Human Cleric for 1W, that, when it enters the battlefield, lets you target a creature or an *opponent* (not any player, can't pick yourself).
You than remove all counters of all kinds from the selected creature or player, and that creature or player can't get counters of any kind while Suncleanser stays on the battlefield.
Is this card even slightly worth using in 99% of situations? No. But the 1% of situations where it IS hilarious was when I was able to use it as a politics piece in my Alesha deck in games of Commander. I could use it to wipe counters off of big dudes that use counters, like Reyhan, Atraxa decks, etc. etc., or save a useful ally from poison, or, hilariously, take one of the very few "experience counter" commander precons (like Ezuri Claw of Progress and Meren of Clan Tel Noth) and make them start over at 0 experience. Alesha made Suncleanser very recurrable, and black has a lot of specific self-mill like Buried Alive, so I made my friend who played Ezuri absolutely fed up with my bullshit.
Not a good card, but a funny one for sure. It can be a neat politics piece in very toolboxy builds of Alesha and probably nothing else. But yeah, as far as I know, that's the ONLY other way to remove poison counters from a player, and you can't even pick yourself.
I understand the wider context for this list, but I have such fond memories of Teferi's Response in Masques/Invasion Standard. Rishadan Port was so heavily played in my area that a fair number of people, myself included, played some number of Teferi's Response in the main.
i feel Leyline of Singularity is just waiting to be broken by Something that can benefit from legends dying or with mirror box.
Leyline is very good in itself in a Empress Galina deck.