After lots of research about the oldest "trading card game" ever, this video is my findings about the most powerful "Magic: the Gathering" cards of all time, and what they can teach us. Here’s some timestamps of different chapters: 0:00 - Intro 2:20 - Explaining the game rules 7:57 - The color wheel of Magic 9:38 - The "Power Nine" and the early years 14:20 - The most imbalanced "cycle" 16:25 - The different "formats" of Magic 18:40 - What new players expect to be powerful 21:48 - Analyzing the 35 "superbanned" cards 33:40 - Investigating the 44 "hyperbanned" cards 39:20 - The most powerful "ante" card 43:23 - The crazy history of "companion" cards 50:15 - The cards that broke other formats 55:35 - My overall conclusions 1:00:27 - Outro (Thanks for watching! See video description for more info and links)
What are the odds that Chaotic Neutral Bill Nye makes a 60 minute video on one of my favorite games??????? Thank god I got a lot of free time cuz it's time to video essay
@@fezzes304I'm just waiting for him to recreate the LWT Green New Deal section lol He's already burned a globe, now we just need some f--king Mentos, and some diet Coke.
The power of ante cards when you aren't playing for ante is that they remove themselves from your deck at the start of the game, thereby reducing deck size to cheat randomness.
I pondered that but you are supposed to remove them from your deck before the game starts and when the game starts you still need a minimum deck size of 60 so it doesn’t work that conveniently
I suppose so (assuming the tournaments specify they don’t include ante). Perhaps they are included on the ban-list mostly since there’s just 9 of them so calling them banned makes it clearer to players
@bodaciouschad It isn't so much the ante cards that are banned and more the ante mechanic that is banned. By removing ante from the rules, and banning cards that mention it from all sanctioned play, the publishers can legally say that it is not part of the game. This is important because, at its core, the ante mechanic is gambling. When playing for ante, you wager objects (that can be worth thousands of dollars) on a game of chance. Magic is a card game for children. Games which encourage children to gamble get banned.
Despite it being true that the mechanic is banned too, the 9 ante cards are also each labeled as "banned" in those formats. Perhaps just for clarity. And about the gambling thing, yeah, that one reason it was removed from the game was that cards became more expensive and once they reached a certain price it would have had to be labeled as a higher or more official level of "gambling" cards. Lots of interesting history @@jasonsampson3379
This whole episode was produced by me and 1 friend I hire to help film/edit, in a few weeks. I’m glad we made it look/sound good! Over this grade, I’ve been testing out things like visiting more cool background locations, and trying to improve things like audio quality too
I played as a kid with my older brother and his friends back in the 90's for about the first 5 years of the game. I had a red/green deck and my brother played blue/white/black so we would buy packs together and then swap out the appropriate colors. It was a lot of fun but over time I got good enough that my brother and his friends stopped wanting to play with me because I won so often. I always loved the big creatures and definitely played those giant growth, scaled worm, and grizzly cards you showed.
One of the reason Tutor are more likely to be restricted in vintage is that they act as extra copies of restricted cards, for example Merchant Scroll is restricted in vintage but legal in every other format because it can go get other restricted blue instants like Ancestral Recall or Flash acting like a second copy, in other formats these cards are just banned outright so Merchant Scroll is safe
I don't really want my channel to be about any singular topic, which is one of the reasons I put "combo" in the name. But I like doing game theory episodes once in a while and Magic will certainly return again at some point
I play with my dad to usually 100 life, so cards like Planar Portal and Door To Nothingness are more of an issue, as games often last long enough for that amount of mana to actually be achievable. edit: also, we haven't banned or even restricted a single card - up to 4, no matter what. That being said, we don't have any conspiracies or companions.
I was a huge fan of Magic for many years. It was great to really understand why these card were banned or restricted. I wasn't a hardcore tournament player but more just a casual "play at home with friends" player. Love that squirrel!!! More about Magic would be great!
I haven't watched this video yet but before I do I just wanted to say I've been loving your videos for the past few months, Chaotic Mathematician is now one of my favorite topics to share with one of my friends! Thanks for the super interesting topics, I was always good at math but never cared for it nor found it exciting, but thanks to mathematicians like you I've been finding some really cool stuff in math that just puts a smile on my face!
Ah yes, ancestral recall was instrumental in my deck designed to make them draw cards from thier deck then discard cards from thier hand. It was long ago I played MTG. 95/96 is when I started and played for a while.
I've put some thought into why cards being too powerful is considered a bad thing. An obvious reason is the monetary cost. If everyone wants the most powerful cards, the price of those cards can skyrocket. But the phenomenon of "X is too OP" applies to many games that aren't monetized in the same way, so we can disregard this idea. I think the core reason why people dislike overpowered cards is because it removes variety. If you want to win, you have to put those cards in your deck, which means everyone sees those cards and that strategy all the time. The companion mechanic is a perfect example of this; not only is it a card that you drew for free, but it made games play in a similar way every time. If you face the same thing over and over, the game gets rather stale. Variety is the spice of life, and when a game is well balanced, you can theoretically play tons of different strategies to similar results. Games are ultimately meant to be fun, and seeing fresh strategies will be much more fun than seeing the same overpowered cards again and again.
@@cameron7374 It's normal for people to have varying likes and dislikes. That's the nice thing about having different formats: people who like different things than the majority can play their own way.
@@rivetace I was more joking about how, if you have cards in a TCG that are overpowered to the point where they just improve any deck, you'll see those few cards being played almost all of the time. But yes, different formats are good.
One reason why I think Black Lotus wins out is because the argument used against it was that it would be weaker later in the game. Except, there regularly is no late game. With a Black Lotus it is possible to win on Turn 1. In fact its possible to win on turn 1 against any number of players through playing a card like Underworld Dreams (Deals 1 damage to any opponent for each card they draw.) and a process of wheeling (From the card 'Wheel of Fortune': All players discard their hands and draw seven cards.) With the kind of cards available in such formats you are capable of dumping most of your hand in to play finishing by wheeling in to 7 more cards, rinse and repeat. You can of course start this process without the Black Lotus with the right mix of land and Mox, but its the Black Lotus that makes such strategies far more consistent. (and this is just one of a few of them.) Also, while it is true that you can just splash some blue and be ready to play Ancestral Recall, I do think the fact that a Black Lotus can be more or less put in any deck that has ever been made that is even remotely functional, and it will be improved, is a pretty awesome thing.
Good points, but one thing is that Black Lotus can only do those things if you have other useful card in your opening hand, whereas a single land and Ancestral Recall can help you draw more cards that can include Black Lotuses and/or the powerful cards you want to use with them. They certainly both have similarly overpowered levels though.
Even with two decks that "play fair" late game isn't really a big consideration except in multiplayer formats and kitchen table. Ancestral recall is played in some decks that otherwise would not include blue, but black lotus would be played in _every deck in a format where it is legal_ if people could more easily get their hands on one. It's somewhat close, but it's not _that_ close, Black lotus and the moxen if we're allowed to treat all of them as one combined slot on the ranking are both powerful in more decks, and more powerful overall, then ancestral recall.
It was hard for me to choose one of them as my personal "best" pick, and although I personally believe Ancestral Recall is better under the most different metrics, it is VERY close and I understand people who think Black Lotus is more powerful@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles EDIT: and as a note about "late game", although many decks can win in the first few turns, there are also decks like control decks that do often go to late game. And as another note, Ancestral Recall can often be the best way to draw the Black Lotus from your deck (you could theoretically have a weak hand except for Ancestral Recall, play that with a basic Island, and draw something like a Black Lotus plus two other cards).
@@ComboClass Honestly no, control doesn't really go to the late game anymore. The days of expensive control payoffs are pretty far behind us now and control decks in vintage generally cap out their mana curve at ~3. Just looking at the latest vintage top 8 the only card I can see being played in control with mv>3 is lorien revealed, which has islandcycling {1}. And they all play black lotus, too, and ancestral recall to be fair. Iunno, black lotus is played more then recall in vintage where they're both legal, and while there are certainly decks that would cut lotus for recall, I don't think that's the case for most. Also, card draw doesn't inherit the value of the best card you can draw with it. You seem like you've made that argument a few times here, but while ancestral recall _could_ draw you a black lotus, it only can do so because you're _playing_ a black lotus, and it could also happen to draw you the three cards that are the worst for the position you're in when you play it. Card draw is really good, one of the best things you can do in magic even, right alongside ramp, but the specific argument that ancestral recall must be better then the best card in your deck, because it could draw you that card _plus_ more cards, isn't really a valid argument. Ancestral recall gets you +2 card advantage, only black lotus gets you black lotus, even if you happened to draw it off a recall.
I'm replying late here, but: I do agree with most of those points, and essentially I just think each of those cards could be considered the "most powerful" under different metrics, and perhaps we are using different metrics. Also to note, it is not just Black Lotuses that Ancestral Recalls can help you draw, but also cards like Mana Crypt and Sol Ring which are close to Black Lotus's level of mana-ramp (Ancestral Recall would often draw you at least 1 overpowered mana-ramp card in some Vintage/Legacy decks), whereas Ancestral Recall may have fewer cards that match a similar level of card draw ability. So I am still in the Ancestral Recall camp, despite it being very close. But thanks for the thoughts, and overall, the fact that it's even a debatable topic shows how well-developed the game is!@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandlesEDIT: and as an additional note to anybody following this thread, remember that Black Lotus vs. Ancestral Recall is not the main topic of this episode, and that although I picked Ancestral Recall, the bigger point was how powerful both of those resources (mana and card-draw) are compared to other aspects of what makes cards "powerful"
This was very interesting, I don't play MTG, but for a while I have been playing a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh, I think you should give it a try to see what happens when a card game doesn't have a mana system, and therefore you are allowed to do a 1st turn combo and how the opponent either tries to prevent the combo by using "handtraps", or break the board in the second turn. It feels more like a fighting game, I like it but I understand why some feel that is has become too fast. Another big difference is the existence of a extra deck, basically a separate pool of powerful creatures that you don't have to draw but can summon if you fullfil the requirements. Finally I would recommend to you to research the card "Maxx C", while is banned in the western format because is the strongest card ever printed, it somehow is still legal in Asia and the automated simulator, Master Duel, and as you can imagine, it warps deck building around it.
It was extremely offensive, so I had to blur it in editing. Just kidding, the actual card is blurred like that. I made them as a young kid so I forget if it was made like that on purpose or got smudged by water.
Khodok made a similar video comparing mechanics from different TCGs. Card draw is strongest in Yugio because it is basically the only resource. You can play almost every card for free and if they do have a cost if you draw multiple cards it is very likely that you can use them to pay for each other. Card draw is weakest in Pokémon because of the resource system. It is similar to Magic’s resource system, except energy is discarded after use. Without card draw, the games would just take longer, and I think drawing three cards a turn instead of just one would actually make it more fun. There are multiple cards that draw over seven cards for free that are essentially as powerful as basic lands. Tutors are universally broken, since they cheat randomness, something that is equally balanced across TCGs. Some games might have better combos, but that has more to do with a bigger card pool than anything else. The card pool is more about how old the game is and less about mechanics and balancing
Lol. Did you find any? I like to add any clarifications/corrections to the video description. I did have to oversimplify some things due to the complexity of the rules but I think/hope I made it accurate
41:08 This card doesn’t let you “pick which one of those you want to ante off” out of the 8 you draw. On the card it says you have to add the first card drawn to the ante which matters because you get less selection and you might ante a card you would’ve rather not. The card is still OP regardless.
Glad you watch those! (For anybody confused about this, my other channel @Domotro has tons of subscribers from shorts but it's also where I do livestreams, and TH-cam hasn't decided to love those in the algorithm yet so they are basically just bonus teaching/ranting for fun)
I played MTG with friends for a couple years starting with M12 through M14. Innistrad is still the coolest block they ever made IMO, glad I got to collect a good amount of it in the time I played.
32:32 if you have 4 black lotuses in your deck, and only 60 cards total, then the chance of starting the game with at least 1 black lotus is pretty good: * starting hand has 7 randomly drawn cards * probability of 1 or more black lotuses in hand: ** P = 7 / 60 = 11.667%
That’s not how to calculate the probability of it. If you do have 4 copies of a card, including “mulligans” you have a good chance of drawing one, although Black Lotus is either banned or restricted to 1 copy in all main formats
Speaking of overpowered draft cards, the real award goes to City in a Bottle from Arabian Nights, which immeditely exiles all nonland cards in both players' fields and decks, and as long as you built your deck with plenty of lands, ensures you win by opponent decking out.
I noticed that there were no creatures in the power 9 group, so I suspected that there would also be no creatures in the superbanned 35. Pretty interesting
I think Necropotence is prolly more powerful at drawing cards relative to it's cost than Recall, but you don't necessarily need so many cards and would rather pay less.
Blessed Wind only seems awful if you’ve never played against a Mass Life Gain deck I have before, several times, one of my best friends had an Elf deck that did that amongst other insanely overpowered strategies And oh boy would this have been one of the most useful cards to have had at the time
I think it's a pretty bad card, even for life-gain/reduction cards but it certainly has uses. I mostly meant that as a child I misinterpreted it as an automatically powerful card, when it's actually bad in many/most situations.
@@ComboClass that’s a fair point I’m surprised you didn’t go into the Infect mechanic from the Scars of Mirrodin block, that one was insane when it dropped
Infect is a broken mechanic and it messed up formats like “standard” but doesn’t have any specific cards that are overpowered in “eternal” formats like vintage and legacy
This is a video I never expected to see uploaded by a channel that is run buy a person who I would 100% be able to recognize as a magic the Gathering player if I met them on the street
my manager was just telling me the other day about how he loves the specific combos in magic that allows for infinite looping and also having defense for those infinite loops (like if they have a million monsters, then you dmg them for how many monsters they have). ill have to tell him to check this video out edit, so cool your cat is chill with the squirrels!
Cool. I also mention infinite combos (and "arbitrarily large" combos which are sometimes confused with "infinite" but actually different) in an episode earlier this grade (about 10 episodes ago) [EDIT: it's exactly 10 episodes ago, so I guess I'm a skilled estimator]. EDIT: and yes I love how much the squirrels trust Dandelion since he's the chillest animal ever!
Yes, I was using "infinite" casually, but you technically couldn't have an infinitely large deck haha, just an arbitrarily large deck (and even that can only be used in tournaments if it can be properly shuffled in a short time span)
@@ComboClass Watching this channel has conditioned my brain to automatically correct myself when I use the word "infinite". I keep hearing your voice go "arbitrary large" XD
Perhaps I already shared this on your channel. But I had a build around a certain card. Yavimaya Enchantress By Matthee D. Wilson In other words, a green enchantment deck. Let's just say the second most important card in my deck was Blanchwood Armor. Then, Lure, Molting skin and Spider Umbra were also important. I am sure there are instant kill cards or mind control cards. Or whatever there is to stop a 20/20 creature. But against new players. I reigned supreme.
"Attack strength of a card". I could eat that card, Im not impressed. My favourite card was the one in the MAD Magazine version of Uno. When you played it you switched hands with any other player of your choice. My whole bunch of junk cards for his two exit cards. That's how to make friends while enjoying a good card game!
Skullclamp would be pretty close to an honorable mention. Definitely overpowered, but especially during in its era of Mirrodin artifact decks, and overall not on the level of some other draw-effect cards
Haha I do wash my coat, the damage is mostly inkstains and burn marks that don’t wash out. I replace it once per “grade” and we are near the end of this grade
it doesnt matter which card game it is, a card saying "discard 2 cards from your hand and then draw 2 cards", is always going to be a good card! now imagine you just draw not 2, but 3 cards and dont have to discard anything... lol
That is on the "superbanned" list I showed. One thing to remember is that it doesn't completely turn the deck into 56 cards since having it in your hand makes it harder to gauge mulligans when starting the game. Still, I agree that it's one of the best cards ever (it was very close to making my "honorable mentions")
Yes and also it's only actually good if other broken stuff exists, it def deserves a call-out in my opinion but if lotus and recall are in a format git probe matters a lot less. I think that makes it really interesting as a design mistake though. Obviously {u} draw three is insane, but on its face probe seems much more innocuous. Also vis mull decisions, that is true, but the flip side is seeing your opponents hand. I'm not sure how to compare the information trade there but it's not trivial. Compare with mishra's bauble which is much worse and also totally playable with very similar downside
A few years ago I went through my old cards from the 90s. Found and sold a Desert Island. I also found an Invoke Prejudice. But I can't sell that one. It is a racist card and banned from the game. No reputable dealer will touch it and people who want it... I don't want to talk to. It's worth some money, but I don't really know what to do about that.
Yeah like I mentioned on a title card in this video, the card Invoke Prejudice had art designed by a literal neo-nazi (ugh) and is a different type of banned. And for the other card, I don’t think Desert Island is a card, but if you mean Tropical Island yeah that’s worth a few hundred dollars
@@ComboClass Yes, Tropical Island. I sold it for a few hundred. I sold most of my cards in the late 90s. I built custom decks and sold them for the same price as new decks, but they were guaranteed playable and guaranteed a certain number of good cards. But they didn't include my best cards, which I sold separately. By doing that, I ended up turning a profit on the game over my period playing it. Some people objected and thought it was somehow immoral. But an ethics teacher bought one for his son, so... I guess not.
in 20 years we banned less cards then we have in the last 5. magic is getting power pushed to make money. thats it. thats the only reason you need to understand now, its to sell packs and nothing less.
After lots of research about the oldest "trading card game" ever, this video is my findings about the most powerful "Magic: the Gathering" cards of all time, and what they can teach us. Here’s some timestamps of different chapters:
0:00 - Intro
2:20 - Explaining the game rules
7:57 - The color wheel of Magic
9:38 - The "Power Nine" and the early years
14:20 - The most imbalanced "cycle"
16:25 - The different "formats" of Magic
18:40 - What new players expect to be powerful
21:48 - Analyzing the 35 "superbanned" cards
33:40 - Investigating the 44 "hyperbanned" cards
39:20 - The most powerful "ante" card
43:23 - The crazy history of "companion" cards
50:15 - The cards that broke other formats
55:35 - My overall conclusions
1:00:27 - Outro
(Thanks for watching! See video description for more info and links)
What are the odds that Chaotic Neutral Bill Nye makes a 60 minute video on one of my favorite games??????? Thank god I got a lot of free time cuz it's time to video essay
I’m aiming for “chaotic good” haha. But thanks!
@@ComboClass you almost burn too much stuff to be 'chaotic good'
@@fezzes304I'm just waiting for him to recreate the LWT Green New Deal section lol He's already burned a globe, now we just need some f--king Mentos, and some diet Coke.
I absolutely need a video about that card game you made as a kid. You mentioned it in a video awhile ago and I’m still hoping for it.
Absolutely!
I finally got to the end and the closing scene was so good. I would definitely be down to see "Worst Magic Cards Ever Made".
The power of ante cards when you aren't playing for ante is that they remove themselves from your deck at the start of the game, thereby reducing deck size to cheat randomness.
I pondered that but you are supposed to remove them from your deck before the game starts and when the game starts you still need a minimum deck size of 60 so it doesn’t work that conveniently
@@ComboClass oh! Shoot. I thought they still had a utility. Why ban them at all, then? Wouldn't their own text ban them?
I suppose so (assuming the tournaments specify they don’t include ante). Perhaps they are included on the ban-list mostly since there’s just 9 of them so calling them banned makes it clearer to players
@bodaciouschad It isn't so much the ante cards that are banned and more the ante mechanic that is banned. By removing ante from the rules, and banning cards that mention it from all sanctioned play, the publishers can legally say that it is not part of the game. This is important because, at its core, the ante mechanic is gambling. When playing for ante, you wager objects (that can be worth thousands of dollars) on a game of chance. Magic is a card game for children. Games which encourage children to gamble get banned.
Despite it being true that the mechanic is banned too, the 9 ante cards are also each labeled as "banned" in those formats. Perhaps just for clarity. And about the gambling thing, yeah, that one reason it was removed from the game was that cards became more expensive and once they reached a certain price it would have had to be labeled as a higher or more official level of "gambling" cards. Lots of interesting history @@jasonsampson3379
Yeah, consistency and tempo are the most important factors in TCG's in general from my experience. Great video!
The production value definitely looks improved, great to see it!
This whole episode was produced by me and 1 friend I hire to help film/edit, in a few weeks. I’m glad we made it look/sound good! Over this grade, I’ve been testing out things like visiting more cool background locations, and trying to improve things like audio quality too
I played as a kid with my older brother and his friends back in the 90's for about the first 5 years of the game. I had a red/green deck and my brother played blue/white/black so we would buy packs together and then swap out the appropriate colors. It was a lot of fun but over time I got good enough that my brother and his friends stopped wanting to play with me because I won so often. I always loved the big creatures and definitely played those giant growth, scaled worm, and grizzly cards you showed.
Your videos are so good that I didn't even notice it was an hour long until 45 minutes in.
One of the reason Tutor are more likely to be restricted in vintage is that they act as extra copies of restricted cards, for example Merchant Scroll
is restricted in vintage but legal in every other format because it can go get other restricted blue instants like Ancestral Recall or Flash acting like a second copy, in other formats these cards are just banned outright so Merchant Scroll is safe
Seamlessly becoming an MTG YT channel speedrun!
I don't really want my channel to be about any singular topic, which is one of the reasons I put "combo" in the name. But I like doing game theory episodes once in a while and Magic will certainly return again at some point
@@ComboClass Maybe a peek at how M:tG is so complex that one can create a Turing machine inside a game of it!
Excellent content my dude. Appreciate the deep dive long format. 🎉🎉🎉
Amazing video, I love the chaotic energy you have. Also You have got such a cut cat
I play with my dad to usually 100 life, so cards like Planar Portal and Door To Nothingness are more of an issue, as games often last long enough for that amount of mana to actually be achievable.
edit: also, we haven't banned or even restricted a single card - up to 4, no matter what. That being said, we don't have any conspiracies or companions.
Domotro, you are awesome. Can't get enough of your stuff!!
Your channel gives me so much anxiety
Sorry lol, being chaotic relieves my own anxiety.
@@ComboClass no need to apologise. Embrace the chaos. Revel in it
but burning a storm crow is going too far!
@@DissonantSynth
@@ComboClass Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.
It's calming
I'm about to binge watch this channel. I always went to it for the more academic education, but this magic the gathering rundown was awesome :D
I was a huge fan of Magic for many years. It was great to really understand why these card were banned or restricted. I wasn't a hardcore tournament player but more just a casual "play at home with friends" player. Love that squirrel!!! More about Magic would be great!
I haven't watched this video yet but before I do I just wanted to say I've been loving your videos for the past few months, Chaotic Mathematician is now one of my favorite topics to share with one of my friends! Thanks for the super interesting topics, I was always good at math but never cared for it nor found it exciting, but thanks to mathematicians like you I've been finding some really cool stuff in math that just puts a smile on my face!
Ah yes, ancestral recall was instrumental in my deck designed to make them draw cards from thier deck then discard cards from thier hand.
It was long ago I played MTG. 95/96 is when I started and played for a while.
This is a very nice video! Appart for its subject, what we see on screen is very esthetic. Thanks!
I've put some thought into why cards being too powerful is considered a bad thing.
An obvious reason is the monetary cost. If everyone wants the most powerful cards, the price of those cards can skyrocket. But the phenomenon of "X is too OP" applies to many games that aren't monetized in the same way, so we can disregard this idea.
I think the core reason why people dislike overpowered cards is because it removes variety. If you want to win, you have to put those cards in your deck, which means everyone sees those cards and that strategy all the time. The companion mechanic is a perfect example of this; not only is it a card that you drew for free, but it made games play in a similar way every time.
If you face the same thing over and over, the game gets rather stale. Variety is the spice of life, and when a game is well balanced, you can theoretically play tons of different strategies to similar results. Games are ultimately meant to be fun, and seeing fresh strategies will be much more fun than seeing the same overpowered cards again and again.
But what if Ancestral Recall is my favourite card game?
@@cameron7374 It's normal for people to have varying likes and dislikes. That's the nice thing about having different formats: people who like different things than the majority can play their own way.
@@rivetace I was more joking about how, if you have cards in a TCG that are overpowered to the point where they just improve any deck, you'll see those few cards being played almost all of the time.
But yes, different formats are good.
@@cameron7374 I don't get the joke 😅
One reason why I think Black Lotus wins out is because the argument used against it was that it would be weaker later in the game. Except, there regularly is no late game. With a Black Lotus it is possible to win on Turn 1. In fact its possible to win on turn 1 against any number of players through playing a card like Underworld Dreams (Deals 1 damage to any opponent for each card they draw.) and a process of wheeling (From the card 'Wheel of Fortune': All players discard their hands and draw seven cards.) With the kind of cards available in such formats you are capable of dumping most of your hand in to play finishing by wheeling in to 7 more cards, rinse and repeat.
You can of course start this process without the Black Lotus with the right mix of land and Mox, but its the Black Lotus that makes such strategies far more consistent. (and this is just one of a few of them.)
Also, while it is true that you can just splash some blue and be ready to play Ancestral Recall, I do think the fact that a Black Lotus can be more or less put in any deck that has ever been made that is even remotely functional, and it will be improved, is a pretty awesome thing.
Good points, but one thing is that Black Lotus can only do those things if you have other useful card in your opening hand, whereas a single land and Ancestral Recall can help you draw more cards that can include Black Lotuses and/or the powerful cards you want to use with them. They certainly both have similarly overpowered levels though.
Even with two decks that "play fair" late game isn't really a big consideration except in multiplayer formats and kitchen table. Ancestral recall is played in some decks that otherwise would not include blue, but black lotus would be played in _every deck in a format where it is legal_ if people could more easily get their hands on one. It's somewhat close, but it's not _that_ close, Black lotus and the moxen if we're allowed to treat all of them as one combined slot on the ranking are both powerful in more decks, and more powerful overall, then ancestral recall.
It was hard for me to choose one of them as my personal "best" pick, and although I personally believe Ancestral Recall is better under the most different metrics, it is VERY close and I understand people who think Black Lotus is more powerful@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles EDIT: and as a note about "late game", although many decks can win in the first few turns, there are also decks like control decks that do often go to late game. And as another note, Ancestral Recall can often be the best way to draw the Black Lotus from your deck (you could theoretically have a weak hand except for Ancestral Recall, play that with a basic Island, and draw something like a Black Lotus plus two other cards).
@@ComboClass Honestly no, control doesn't really go to the late game anymore. The days of expensive control payoffs are pretty far behind us now and control decks in vintage generally cap out their mana curve at ~3. Just looking at the latest vintage top 8 the only card I can see being played in control with mv>3 is lorien revealed, which has islandcycling {1}. And they all play black lotus, too, and ancestral recall to be fair. Iunno, black lotus is played more then recall in vintage where they're both legal, and while there are certainly decks that would cut lotus for recall, I don't think that's the case for most.
Also, card draw doesn't inherit the value of the best card you can draw with it. You seem like you've made that argument a few times here, but while ancestral recall _could_ draw you a black lotus, it only can do so because you're _playing_ a black lotus, and it could also happen to draw you the three cards that are the worst for the position you're in when you play it. Card draw is really good, one of the best things you can do in magic even, right alongside ramp, but the specific argument that ancestral recall must be better then the best card in your deck, because it could draw you that card _plus_ more cards, isn't really a valid argument. Ancestral recall gets you +2 card advantage, only black lotus gets you black lotus, even if you happened to draw it off a recall.
I'm replying late here, but: I do agree with most of those points, and essentially I just think each of those cards could be considered the "most powerful" under different metrics, and perhaps we are using different metrics. Also to note, it is not just Black Lotuses that Ancestral Recalls can help you draw, but also cards like Mana Crypt and Sol Ring which are close to Black Lotus's level of mana-ramp (Ancestral Recall would often draw you at least 1 overpowered mana-ramp card in some Vintage/Legacy decks), whereas Ancestral Recall may have fewer cards that match a similar level of card draw ability. So I am still in the Ancestral Recall camp, despite it being very close. But thanks for the thoughts, and overall, the fact that it's even a debatable topic shows how well-developed the game is!@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandlesEDIT: and as an additional note to anybody following this thread, remember that Black Lotus vs. Ancestral Recall is not the main topic of this episode, and that although I picked Ancestral Recall, the bigger point was how powerful both of those resources (mana and card-draw) are compared to other aspects of what makes cards "powerful"
This is such a beautiful video, at a time I play Hearthstone. I believe a lot of people from a lot of different TCGs would love the video.
I love MTG!!! Great long form video and I’m so excited to see more about this topic from you!!
This was very interesting, I don't play MTG, but for a while I have been playing a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh, I think you should give it a try to see what happens when a card game doesn't have a mana system, and therefore you are allowed to do a 1st turn combo and how the opponent either tries to prevent the combo by using "handtraps", or break the board in the second turn. It feels more like a fighting game, I like it but I understand why some feel that is has become too fast. Another big difference is the existence of a extra deck, basically a separate pool of powerful creatures that you don't have to draw but can summon if you fullfil the requirements. Finally I would recommend to you to research the card "Maxx C", while is banned in the western format because is the strongest card ever printed, it somehow is still legal in Asia and the automated simulator, Master Duel, and as you can imagine, it warps deck building around it.
Great content again! Keep it up!
0:26 - why has that blurred rainbow card been blurred and when did it happen?
It was extremely offensive, so I had to blur it in editing. Just kidding, the actual card is blurred like that. I made them as a young kid so I forget if it was made like that on purpose or got smudged by water.
That homemade card game looks sick
Amazing, hope theres more
A math channel I love uploads a MTG video! Score!
Khodok made a similar video comparing mechanics from different TCGs. Card draw is strongest in Yugio because it is basically the only resource. You can play almost every card for free and if they do have a cost if you draw multiple cards it is very likely that you can use them to pay for each other. Card draw is weakest in Pokémon because of the resource system. It is similar to Magic’s resource system, except energy is discarded after use. Without card draw, the games would just take longer, and I think drawing three cards a turn instead of just one would actually make it more fun. There are multiple cards that draw over seven cards for free that are essentially as powerful as basic lands. Tutors are universally broken, since they cheat randomness, something that is equally balanced across TCGs. Some games might have better combos, but that has more to do with a bigger card pool than anything else. The card pool is more about how old the game is and less about mechanics and balancing
I imagine that any MTG-related video you might decide to make would be enjoyable to watch
I'm a HUGE fan of magic, looking forward to watching this video and pointing out all the inaccuracies in it
Lol. Did you find any? I like to add any clarifications/corrections to the video description. I did have to oversimplify some things due to the complexity of the rules but I think/hope I made it accurate
@ComboClass you don't get to choose which card you ante off of Contract From Below. you discard, ante 1, then draw 7
Love your channel and mtg! Fun crossover
41:08 This card doesn’t let you “pick which one of those you want to ante off” out of the 8 you draw. On the card it says you have to add the first card drawn to the ante which matters because you get less selection and you might ante a card you would’ve rather not. The card is still OP regardless.
Yeah I already have a correction about that in the video description since I realized that while editing
@@ComboClassOh cool! I didn’t think to check there my bad.
There are technically 11 kinds of basic lands if you count snow basics as different from the standard five, and the eleventh is the Wastes.
wait what the hell I had no idea this was your channel when i clicked on this
😊all 12 of us who watch the live streams have been waiting on this... you people should watch the live streams.
Glad you watch those! (For anybody confused about this, my other channel @Domotro has tons of subscribers from shorts but it's also where I do livestreams, and TH-cam hasn't decided to love those in the algorithm yet so they are basically just bonus teaching/ranting for fun)
How did you get the U/G deck that I learnt MTG with when I was 12 in 2002?
Haha. Blue/green are probably my favorite magic colors and i picked some old classic cards like grizzly bears and storm crow on purpose
I played MTG with friends for a couple years starting with M12 through M14. Innistrad is still the coolest block they ever made IMO, glad I got to collect a good amount of it in the time I played.
32:32 if you have 4 black lotuses in your deck, and only 60 cards total, then the chance of starting the game with at least 1 black lotus is pretty good:
* starting hand has 7 randomly drawn cards
* probability of 1 or more black lotuses in hand:
** P = 7 / 60 = 11.667%
That’s not how to calculate the probability of it. If you do have 4 copies of a card, including “mulligans” you have a good chance of drawing one, although Black Lotus is either banned or restricted to 1 copy in all main formats
@@ComboClass yeah.
Speaking of overpowered draft cards, the real award goes to City in a Bottle from Arabian Nights, which immeditely exiles all nonland cards in both players' fields and decks, and as long as you built your deck with plenty of lands, ensures you win by opponent decking out.
I don't think they did drafts/limited back then. But yeah if they had, it would have been very overpowered haha
Yes please! More magic videos
I noticed that there were no creatures in the power 9 group, so I suspected that there would also be no creatures in the superbanned 35. Pretty interesting
You must be the biggest nightmare of your local insurance company
Did I tune out, or did he never mention Stuffy Doll or Guilty Conscience?
Plays a forest, ok he's playing green. Next turn, plays a island. Shit, another Simic player. Proceeds to play Storm Crow. This guy is unhinged.
I think Necropotence is prolly more powerful at drawing cards relative to it's cost than Recall, but you don't necessarily need so many cards and would rather pay less.
yes more magic the gathering videos please!
I almost, almost, ignore this video. Thanks for this magic.😅
Blessed Wind only seems awful if you’ve never played against a Mass Life Gain deck
I have before, several times, one of my best friends had an Elf deck that did that amongst other insanely overpowered strategies
And oh boy would this have been one of the most useful cards to have had at the time
I think it's a pretty bad card, even for life-gain/reduction cards but it certainly has uses. I mostly meant that as a child I misinterpreted it as an automatically powerful card, when it's actually bad in many/most situations.
@@ComboClass that’s a fair point
I’m surprised you didn’t go into the Infect mechanic from the Scars of Mirrodin block, that one was insane when it dropped
Infect is a broken mechanic and it messed up formats like “standard” but doesn’t have any specific cards that are overpowered in “eternal” formats like vintage and legacy
What other games do you enjoy besides Magic the Gathering?
Spice8Rack + Internet Pit Stop = Combo Class
This is a video I never expected to see uploaded by a channel that is run buy a person who I would 100% be able to recognize as a magic the Gathering player if I met them on the street
If a fire marshal that plays magic watches this video they will go insane.
+1 for a video on your game project!
my manager was just telling me the other day about how he loves the specific combos in magic that allows for infinite looping and also having defense for those infinite loops (like if they have a million monsters, then you dmg them for how many monsters they have). ill have to tell him to check this video out
edit, so cool your cat is chill with the squirrels!
Cool. I also mention infinite combos (and "arbitrarily large" combos which are sometimes confused with "infinite" but actually different) in an episode earlier this grade (about 10 episodes ago) [EDIT: it's exactly 10 episodes ago, so I guess I'm a skilled estimator]. EDIT: and yes I love how much the squirrels trust Dandelion since he's the chillest animal ever!
Enjoyed this a lot…. Any chance of D&D analysis content? With proper maths…
I know less about d&d but probably someday!
I love magic the gathering! I knew it would only be a matter of time before a math video would be made about it
21:08 guest cat appearance
2:53... don't you mean "arbitrarily large"?
Yes, I was using "infinite" casually, but you technically couldn't have an infinitely large deck haha, just an arbitrarily large deck (and even that can only be used in tournaments if it can be properly shuffled in a short time span)
@@ComboClass Watching this channel has conditioned my brain to automatically correct myself when I use the word "infinite". I keep hearing your voice go "arbitrary large" XD
I love magic the gathering
Mtg X Combo Class?! 😮❤
Soon 100k. Soon
Perhaps I already shared this on your channel. But I had a build around a certain card.
Yavimaya Enchantress
By Matthee D. Wilson
In other words, a green enchantment deck.
Let's just say the second most important card in my deck was Blanchwood Armor.
Then, Lure, Molting skin and Spider Umbra were also important.
I am sure there are instant kill cards or mind control cards. Or whatever there is to stop a 20/20 creature. But against new players. I reigned supreme.
I love your videos, but please don't die in a fire.
"Attack strength of a card". I could eat that card, Im not impressed.
My favourite card was the one in the MAD Magazine version of Uno. When you played it you switched hands with any other player of your choice. My whole bunch of junk cards for his two exit cards. That's how to make friends while enjoying a good card game!
No S̶t̶o̶r̶m̶ ̶C̶r̶o̶w̶ Skullclamp? I'd say it's a contender.
Skullclamp would be pretty close to an honorable mention. Definitely overpowered, but especially during in its era of Mirrodin artifact decks, and overall not on the level of some other draw-effect cards
Loved the video great content, but damm wash that coat 😂, im a veterinary so seeing yours was trigerring me because i keep mines all cleaned up
Haha I do wash my coat, the damage is mostly inkstains and burn marks that don’t wash out. I replace it once per “grade” and we are near the end of this grade
it doesnt matter which card game it is, a card saying "discard 2 cards from your hand and then draw 2 cards", is always going to be a good card!
now imagine you just draw not 2, but 3 cards and dont have to discard anything... lol
YES
i love how you could continue talking despite the distractions hahahahah
i didn't know about the rats!
Do D&D next! Longer videos! LooooongerrrrrrrRrrrRrr
Ok but gitaxian probe is still better, pay 8 life and start with 56 amplifies everything else and that's ignoring the cast and draw events it creates
That is on the "superbanned" list I showed. One thing to remember is that it doesn't completely turn the deck into 56 cards since having it in your hand makes it harder to gauge mulligans when starting the game. Still, I agree that it's one of the best cards ever (it was very close to making my "honorable mentions")
Yes and also it's only actually good if other broken stuff exists, it def deserves a call-out in my opinion but if lotus and recall are in a format git probe matters a lot less. I think that makes it really interesting as a design mistake though. Obviously {u} draw three is insane, but on its face probe seems much more innocuous.
Also vis mull decisions, that is true, but the flip side is seeing your opponents hand. I'm not sure how to compare the information trade there but it's not trivial. Compare with mishra's bauble which is much worse and also totally playable with very similar downside
Oh also great video, I really enjoyed it
A few years ago I went through my old cards from the 90s. Found and sold a Desert Island. I also found an Invoke Prejudice. But I can't sell that one. It is a racist card and banned from the game. No reputable dealer will touch it and people who want it... I don't want to talk to. It's worth some money, but I don't really know what to do about that.
Yeah like I mentioned on a title card in this video, the card Invoke Prejudice had art designed by a literal neo-nazi (ugh) and is a different type of banned. And for the other card, I don’t think Desert Island is a card, but if you mean Tropical Island yeah that’s worth a few hundred dollars
@@ComboClass Yes, Tropical Island. I sold it for a few hundred. I sold most of my cards in the late 90s. I built custom decks and sold them for the same price as new decks, but they were guaranteed playable and guaranteed a certain number of good cards. But they didn't include my best cards, which I sold separately. By doing that, I ended up turning a profit on the game over my period playing it. Some people objected and thought it was somehow immoral. But an ethics teacher bought one for his son, so... I guess not.
Holy hell no way
Love the old white borders, but hate what you’re doing to some of these cards
I tried to only damage cheap easy-to-get cards in the filming of this
There are 6 basic lands, you missed wastes in the vid.
Oh yeah that one is a lot newer and isn't printed in every set, so I forgot it was assigned the term "basic" along with the main 5
@@ComboClass No worries, wastes will continue it's tradition of being forgotten about since it's release.
SLEEVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and yea. Yes. And yep.
I recommend Hearthstone Battlegrounds as card game, really fun, and because it is online it is easy to follow the rules
MTG is also online where it's easy to follow the rules.
This video does not deliver what the title suggests.
Please stop setting fire to things in videos. It freaks me out to the point it makes your videos hard to watch
that's his brand! We love it
in 20 years we banned less cards then we have in the last 5. magic is getting power pushed to make money. thats it. thats the only reason you need to understand now, its to sell packs and nothing less.
Confirmed: Domotro is a based Simic player
Yeah if I had to rank my favorite Magic colors (from favorite to least) it would be something like: blue, green, red, black, white
@@ComboClass and indeed blue and green were used for the "math mages" in the strixhaven magic set