5 Bad Magic Cards That Broke The Game 

Check out the insight article here: bit.ly/3Ihi0l6

Second Sunrise did give us one of the greatest moments of MtG coverage ever...Brian Kibler setting a piece of paper with f6 written on it on the table and then literally walking away from the table to do something else while his opponent comboed off for the next several minutes...absolute legend right there 😂

My favorite legend about eggs is the guy who in semifinals of a pro tour put an F5 token in play to go use the bathroom

I remember they printed the only new dredge card only to kill the lantern control

Given the cards WOTC have been printing in the last few years, saying "a 1-mana 6/6 will never not be good" feels like tempting fate...

Goblin Lore and Burning Inquiry enabled hollowvine BS to explode out of nowhere.

Demonic Consultation+Thassa's Oracle Just name a card not in your deck...

It's funny with Demonic Consultation, because the same sort of thing happened in Yugioh regarding Pot of Desires. Desires says "Banish the top 10 cards of your deck face-down: Draw 2", and there's still people that are scared to run it because "what if they banish all the cards they need", but the math works that it's way more useful to have this card, since the games are fast and having a 6 card opening hand is way stronger than 5 (7 vs 6 for if you're going 2nd). Decks that do run garnets (1 ofs you don't want to draw but are engine requirements), naturally can't run this card, but any deck that runs 3 ofs for all its engine and has some redundancy, should because the card advantage is so strong, even if it does cut you off some resources.

Gotta love lantern number 1!! So much fun to play!

3:57 that's a weird point to make, considering that just about every recent planeswalker has a static ability.

The fact that Lion's Eye Diamond was never mentioned seems like revisionist history. The card was a bulk rare that saw little to no play up and until Infernal Tutor was printed. It was designed as a bad black lotus, and was seen as a bad black lotus for a long time. It was basically seen as the equivalent of One With Nothing. An effect so odd, and yet it must be powerful somehow, and it never found a home, that is until Infernal Tutor was printed and eternal formats realized that they could use LED to pay for the thing that the tutor got and could discard their hand before the spell was resolved. And now, at this point, people realize how powerful the card is outside of infernal tutor shenanigans and it has maintained a $500+ cost as a result.

Tarmogoyf was a $1 card for a long time when Future Sight was released and then skyrocketed for obvious reasons when Tribal and Plainswalkers were released and became so popular

Ahhh yes, risk it for the stroopwafel…. 🍪 Ancient Dutch saying 😂😂😂

love the inclusion of clips from previous videos, great job :)

I remember when Dark Depths, Mishra's Bauble, and Counterbalance were all bulk, while Orhan Viper was the chase rare in Coldsnap

Surprised Lion's Eye Diamond didn't make the list.

Amulet of Vigor used to be a bulk rare. I built around it with a Standard 5 color charm deck that ran all of the Shards of Alara tap lands, alongside all of the alara charms and some planeswalkers. The deck was cool, but definitely only worked due to the Amulet. I thought I had mined the maximum value out of a junk rare, so I put the cards away, satisfied that I had given the card it's due. Imagine my surprise when I return to the game 5 years later, and it's a $8 card, and then $25+ just a few years after that. Amulet titan is such a force in Modern that the deck has seen half a dozen cards banned from it (although, not always exclusively because of Amulet Titan itself, it's just a deck that is good at using any powerful expensive wincon in the format). Definitely one that's worth mentioning in my book.

Love these interesting types of videos, fantastic. Also saw you guys on Magic the Noah, was hilarious how kind you were to each other, normally he's expecting people to gang up on the winner and be petty about past minor slights etc. Conversely, you all tied at 0 points so who's to say what's better.

Lantern won a GP I played in Australia, it was oppressive in the final

On the Karn/Lattice lock. There was a funny screenshot floating around where someone had reversed the lock by casting CoCo in response and putting in a Collector Ouphe.

Hey guys! Loved the video! Thanks for the great content! An idea for you all is maybe the mirror of this video? "5 Cards that COULD break the game" - Basically cards that are simply untested [due to lack of support or etc]

There's also Flame Fusillade that ended up being a creating a combo deck - when Time Vault got its next errata to basically say "Skip a turn: Untap Time Vault", turning it into a two-card infinite damage combo.

I don't understand the comment about Planeswalkers being limited to pluses and minuses after WAR. Quintorius Kand in LCI literally has a triggered ability. Kaya in MKM also has a triggered ability. Ashiok in WOE has a static ability that applies a replacement effect on paying life. It's just simply not true what Jamin said.

I always loved Mycosynth Lattice with March of the Machines..... kill everyone's land.... Had a deck with gilded lotus and pemmin's aura for infinite mana, with Memnarch to take everyone's things. Fun times back when Mirrodin was around.

I enjoy that we've now entered the Cardmarket Extended Universe where older videos can get clipped into the new videos for additional context / for the lols

Mycosynth Lattice is one of my key pieces in a new deck I've made recently around abusing cards that aren't artifacts that you've made into artifacts!

Demonic consultation also found a use as a combo piece (most notably in commander) to exile your entire library and win via labmaniac-like effects.

Bazaar of Baghdad went from unplayable to one of the strongest cards in the entire game's history

I used to use the latice and the first karn (silver gollem) to blow up lands for 1 mana

I recognized how good Death's Shadow could be in Standard. I came up with a surprisingly effective list. But I was super-paranoid about the burn matchup, so I made sure I was prepared to sideboard against it.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Tarmogoyf. A card that was a bulk rare at first, but then became THE MOST powerful creature in Modern for over a decade.

I made an EDH Group Hug Deck that used Mycosynth Lattice to do opposite...It gives lots of mana, card draw, land draw, lands work no matter mana, and lands count for more mana (mana flare + mirrorworks is fun)... It is an Enabler Group Hug deck. I love it. Usually end the game by giving everyone 20 cards at once plus infinite handsize...and others just do their thing.

The lantern of insight deck reminds me of the Mystic Mine deck from Yugioh. Essentially, they would play a permanent called "Mystic Mine" that locked both players out of creature abilities and then play a permanent called "Goddess of Skuld's Revenge" that would let you look at the top 3 cards of you opponent's deck and place them back in any order. With these 2 cards, you can prevent your opponent from using creature abilities to remove the "Mystic Mine" while also preventing them from drawing into any non-creature outs due to stacking their draws with "Goddess Skuld's Oracle".

Pretty interesting to put second sunrise here, people usually just chalk it up to being time and ignores power. But super appreciate the context :D

I'm glad you had Trix in teh honorable mentions. that was one of my favorite decks of all time.

The number 1 spot should absolutely go to Balustrade Spy/Undercity Informer, two cards that at first glance look like pack filler but in the right deck literally win you the game on the spot the moment you use their ability.

Don't forget Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle. That one is just nuts.

Early into me playing magic, before EDH got big when my friends and I just played 60 card kitchen table, I came up with the lantern of insight deck on my own. I didn't know anything about competitive magic at the time and I don't think the deck had been played competitively yet anyway. I didn't get mine to work, probably because I wasn't good enough at the game yet to know how to effectively control the top card of my opponent's deck in different situations. I felt really validated a few years later when I heard the same idea using lantern and codex shredder had made a pro tour.

I like the little Black Lotus price show up, made me audibly chuckle.

I would add Liquid Metal Coating to this list. Typically not a great card but once you consider all the cheap mana cost cards that destroy artifacts, it becomes a powerful maneuver. I've won many games just because my opponent's gets fed up and scoop

Lantern Control is every true control players wet dream. I must say, nothing is more enjoyable than an ensnaring bridge, a bunch of pithing needles, codex shredders, and bojuka bogs to deal with graveyard decks. And in the mirror match, Stony Silence, and Altar of the Brood.

My first thought is how we mentioned the play pattern of the eggs deck without the immortal kibler F6 . 2nd I'm surprised Lion's Eye Diamond didn't show up here

Great video! But I have to ask, Carl - where did you get that jacket? Gotta have one :O

6:20 This is super Interesting, because this is the exact reason I don’t use stitchers supplier in my yawgmoth edh deck. it has a huge graveyard subtheme but only for creatures and nothing hurts me more than feeling like I’m not in control of my gameplan when I accidentally mill one of my mass recursion spells or a super synergistic piece that I can’t access anymore

Great content!

Bazaar and LED really slept on here, I was expecting Bazaar to be the #1 on the lost the whole video.

The best part of all these cards is just the joy of unleashing a brand new rogue deck that no one's ready for, and leaving them asking how they just lost to a pile of bulk rares.

I made a deck arround demonic consultation back when it came out. PPl laughed at me a lot. I also won a lot. Cause as it turns out. Drawing into your combo even if it is the last card you draw is game winning,

Technically it wasn't "bad", but Oath of Druids was significantly less consistent/useful before Forbidden Orchard. Tarmagoyf was considered almost unplayable on release and was a bulk-rare for a few years. Same with Stoneforge Mystic which was "just O-K" until Sword of Feast and Famine and later Batterskull. If we're counting very-short-term "considered bad", Psychatog was a proxy until folks realized they'd rather have it than the card it was subbing for. You could pick up a Force of Will for a few cents when it came out because losing a card was considered too high a cost to be playable at first.

Most important question here, where did you get that hoodie? That is 🔥

I actually watched the vid of Cifka winning the pro tour with eggs, and it was great. Not necessarily the gameplay itself, but he was so freaking elated to win - it was a great moment for Magic IMO.

Surpised to not see Lion's Eye Diamond in this video or in the article. I liked the video though! very interesting.

Sad to see no mention LED considering it was mostly unplayable before Yawgmoth's will

Demonic Consultation did get better just by people realizing it's still better to risk losing with it than to need an out and have no chance of getting it, sure, but where it really shines is once lab maniac and Thoracle style cards started to come out. Naming a card that's not even in your deck while the thassa's oracle trigger is on stack may be more of a commander play than any other format, but it does work really well.

(I'm assuming there's an errata, but I'll say this anyway) With the phrasing of Second Sunrise, it should bypass graveyard exiles. It says "Each player returns to play all (X) that were put into his or her graveyard from play this turn." It doesn't say it returns from the graveyard, it says returns to play. So even if you exile them from the graveyard, they still went there from play this turn, so they should come back. If that wasn't errata'd, then this card would definitely be in OP territory.

I didn’t play many tournaments but I took a burn deck into a tournament and lost to an eggs deck and that was actually one of the reasons why I didn’t play in many tournaments. It was not so much the fact that it was a consistent combo that was faster than my burn deck. It was the fact that it could fizzle at any time and I just had to sit there and watch and hope for the combo to fizzle which had a low chance of happening. It was a very very unfun deck to have around. And I was very happy when it was banned.

I like how "1 out of 6 times" is majorly unlikely to Toffel.

My friend once traded four Tarmogoyfs for a Bitterblossom. A week later, Tarmogoyf was worth $60.

I was active in the forum where the Lantern thread started. The thread exploded pretty quickly and became the most popular thread in the Modern sub-forum almost immediately. I remember being almost dumbfounded by the fact that so many people got interested in such a stupid idea and stuck with it for so long. It was such a weird experience eventually being proven wrong to *that* extend and I haven't experienced anything remotely close to this ever since. Of course after the deck won its first tournament the creator of the original thread went to the Legacy sub-forum and tried to convince people there that a Legacy version of the deck he was working on would soon take over that format as well. None of the other Legacy players took him seriously that time and I guess the nay-sayers won that particular round.

Carl looks so happy in the thumbnail lol

Lattice was kind of always broken. "Everything is X" is already great. Everything being the type that has SO MUCH synergy was amazing. There's cards like "artifacts are indestructible" that can shut down your entire opponent's deck, or the dragon that steals all artifacts when it attacks and, surprise, you win the game if you control 15 or more artifacts. It was well and truly busted always and has only gotten stronger

i think at n.1 there should be tabernacle at pendrell vale. When legends came out, and for several time it was worth 50 cents. people taking it out from a booster pack was like "why am i so unlucky?"

Wonderful insights! So much fun, love the vids! You just earned another sub.

I'm almost certain elsik isn't the one who first spoke about lantern on forums, merely the first person to see what had been written on forums, adapt it, and win a tournament with it. He was not original poster though

Mycosynth Lattice/darksteel forge was a combo used in EDH pretty much right away. Add in a Nevinyrral's disk and you wipe out your opponents' everything while your stuff is indestructible.

Could you make that 1 mana 13/13 into a 50/50? Somehow take your life into the negative and not lose because of a platinum angel or similar card?

'Planeswalkers don't get non-loyalty abilities' Except for Kaya, Ashiok, Quint, Teferi, Chandra, Tyvar.... Actually, most planeswalkers in 2024 have non-loyalty abilities...

"Risk it for the stroopwafel" xD, love it!

I might be a bit off on some of these as they were before my time, but: Lion's Eye diamond was bad until infernal tutor. Dark depths was bad until vampire hexmage. Nourishing Shoal was bad until Grisebrand. I guess there are also a ton of halves of a+b combos that were bad until they got another combo piece printed (chain of smog, sword of the meek, grindstone, etc)

Commander would extend this list by a lot starting with Rhystic Study.

HARD disagree with Lattice, in itself it is still a "bad" card, it just happens to combo with a broken card. Otherwise I remember looking at the Death's Shadow in my binder for years and thinking "Man this is a cool card, I'm sure a deck that uses it would be so cool". And yeah, love that deck !

He said PW’s are limited to +/- abilities, but almost every key set PW since then has had a static

Huh, I figured Lion's Eye Diamond and then also Necropotence would have made this list. When those cards came out they were trash. I remember throwing LEDs away with other cards cause it wasn't even $0.75 and we just tossed it out at the end of a day.

Lattice + vandalblast is one of my top wincons of my eldrazi commander deck ;)

I would love a video, where everybody can design a magic card with no limitations and you vote, which would be the best one. Like 0 mana instant: you win the game.

The problem is that Karn could also wish for the lattice from your sideboard on top of having thr powerful static.

Long before karn in kitchen tabletop I would run mycosynth lattice, mirari's wake for the anthem (obviously double mana helped, but it wasn't the combo) and March of the machines, suddenly everyone else's lands are 0/0 Artifact creatures...

For "Second Sunrise" I was expecting "Armageddon" or "Fall of Thran" to wise opponent lands :'D but that works just as well !

LED and Bazaar never being mentioned is insane

8:40 as described if TBR "doubled the power of your creature" DS would do 4 more damage as a 14/5 and not a 5/5 with double strike

I played Mycosynth Lattice in standard with March of the Machines as a combodeck. The Combo kills all lands and lets me win with some manarocks afterwards. :)

Man this channel is great

Mycosynth lattice locks existed before Karn thanks to stony silence, but obviously that’s symmetrical so it wasn’t really played anywhere. Plus with karn you can -2 to get it from the board, making it technically a 1 card combo

Demonic Consultation was "fixed" in Spoils of the Vault. If you are playing a combo deck, you tutor for a vard that has 4 copies in your deck, and lose an average of 13 life if your library is full. Occasionally, you die. But realistically, you win a lot more because you have a strong combo.

Did Varolz, the Scar-Striped ever get played in deaths shadow? Seems like a great combo.

Cant believe KCI wasnt on this list, its basically the definitive "nobody knew how this card worked but it turns out its busted" card.

My pick was Tarmogoyf. When the set was spoiled it was considered one of the worst cards in it, until a player brought it to a pro tour...

Ohhh yeah eggs deck, i remember when i tried playing it and when i decided to finally throw the combo my draws would be like "land, land, land, land, land, land, land, land, land oh yeah yet another land" and i'd only get to combo 1 each 7 times, but then a friend of mine would be like "yes turn 3, let's go for the combo" and would get it just fine.

Lantern of Insight would've been among my top picks for this!

Caaaaaarl where did you get your Jacket from?

Cifka is a special guy. Not so many people can claim to be Pro Level in Mtg, Chess and Hearthstone in the same lifetime.

The second i saw deaths shadow at the worldwake prerelease, i called it. I said out loud "somebody is going to break this thing"

woah demonic consultation sounds so much like pot of desires in yugioh. pot of desires is obviously fantastic great amazing card that goes +1 for "free" but it banishes facedown (which is the yugioh version of exiling) the top 10 cards of the deck first. so it can potentially banish all copies of a certain monster that you need or a combo piece. and while that's a very real risk that means it's not playable in every deck, in a lot of decks desires is objectively correct. the odds of banishing all 3 copies of an important card is so low that even though it could mean you lose the game on the spot if u do banish all copies, desires is still worth playing. sometimes even if decks plays only 1 copy of a combo piece, as long as that combo piece isn't super necessary for the deck to play to still function, the free +1 is so good it's just worth the risk.

Hard to imagine " Lion's Eye Diamond " is not on the list

Shadow was always one of those cards where people knew it would have its day in the sun. It never was "bad"

I did it all for the stroopwafel! (Come on!) The stroopwafel! So you can take that Toffle, and stick up your YEAH! Stick it up your Yeah! Stick it up your!

no mention of LED anywhere? that's the single most fitting card in magic's history

Lantern control was my favorite deck to face. I played mill at the time. Stick a crab and they can't control much due to every card in deck being a mill spell

Absolutely loved my Mycrosynth Lattice deck like 10 years ago, vandleblast, mimnarc, hellkite tyrant, hurkyl's Recall, what's not to love haha

I Think i might have spotted a small mistake. At 5:30 you wrote on the screen that black lotus is 24.199€ insted of what im guessing is 24,199€