Sorry for the re-upload, the last version lost a few tracks during export, hence the random unintentional blanks. It should be fixed now with card images and all. Now back to our totally non-controversial opinions on Modern Horizons 3 😅.
Thanks for clearing that up. I thought you were gaslighting me. I swear youtube autoplayed a video where one of you said "This is the list for the 99". I turned it off intending to listen later. Later, the video was gone.
@@nomeacuerdo That will never happen. I think that's why Richard is somehow always smiling while speaking. He knows how bad his takes are so he can't help but laugh at himself.
I kinda want an entire podcast dedicated to Richard's deck building and game play philosophy. we keep getting it in chunks across multiple videos but to have it all in 1 cohesive podcast would be sick. and it would be funny to see the looks of horror from Tomer, Crim and Seth as they hear the ramblings of a mad man
@@rough111 I mean.. no? If you listen to what he said specifically, he said that Cultivate is the better turn 3 ramp play because you're not guaranteed to have the second green source while you're ramping initially. He didn't say anything about the mid to late game, which is around the time Archdruid's Charm is at its best. Unless you're mono green, you aren't casting the charm that early
@@rough111 exactly what I was thinking. Crim: {G}{G}{G} for a spell outside of mono? Uncastable. Everybody else: It’s green. Every ramp opportunity ramps you at least a forest. And now {G}{G}{1} seems uncastable.
Richard: 4 mana is too much for talon gates. Also Richard: 4 mana for Urza Cave is UNSTOPABLE. Tomer: 4 Mana for urza cave is SO TOO MUCH! Also Tomer: 4 Mana for Talon Gate? CUTTING BASICS Reality: Urza cave can find Talon Gate. The Richard-Tomer land Kaldra is complete.
Notably talon gate has value the turn it enters play even if you don't pay the 4 mana for it, while urza's cave needs to have 4 total mana spent into it and has its target etb tapped. Cave is still good though if you have really strong lands you want to find
The thing is that richard views every land with the perspective that he has lands that tap for 2 or 3 mana already on the battlefield since he plays so many bouncelands and lotus lands
@@winter945 I'm fully on board with Talon Gate - S tier. It's giving a lot of colors access to phasing based protection that didn't have it before, providing counter play to even the strongest board wipes (farwell, sunfall, final showdown). It allows decks to deploy relevant threats early with some expectation that they can protect them by the time the big wipes can be cast.
@@Phearzmeh1 I can't wait for Tomer to come back and bring a reckoning to Richard's manabase greed. We already saw a taste of it when Richard's mono-black mana base got wrecked by ruination.
I’m normally okay with Tomer’s takes… But I can not, for the life of me, understand how Shifting Woodland is somehow “Worse than a Basic Forest”. In Mono-Green it comes into play untapped 99.9% of the time. In any competently built 2-color deck it’ll come into play untapped 99.9% of the time. Even in 3 colors it’ll come into play untapped more often than not. Even with all the green ramp, you can go from 15 forests to 14 and Shifting Woodland and the opportunity cost is just straight up 0.
I love how each member has a different role: tomer is probably the closest to the average player, crim is the control guy, Richard is wierd and Seth is Richard but an optimist
Ye Richards arguments seem a bit detached at times. Like the "Urza's Cave can get Cradle" argument. As if that's the type of card the average player is worried about. Most decks don't have the budget for a single land worth fetching with that probably.
It pains me so much to hear Richard of spiritted companion fame not talk how green has a bunch of low cost etb dorks like Rec Sage, Elvish Visionary (literally a spirited companion in green), wood elves, the other wood elves, the other other wood elves, wall of roots (literally a wall of omens), satyr wayfinder, the dudes that explore on etb. Like the gren flare is a build around card in the sense that you want to lean green (ie play the wall of roots over the wall of omens) but the options to sacrifice are ample. Also I would totally sac a manadork if you run those. Two basics is better than a llanowar elves every single time.
Re-commenting: I don't see why you wouldn't just sac' a Llanowar Elves to Flare of Cult. You're turning it into a land and "drawing a card" before it gets wrath'd or pinged. If it has tapped for mana a few times, it seems worth giving it up a little later.
especially hilarious because RIchard is the one saying Mana dorks are bad because they die to a board wipe. it basically turns your Dork into a land and replaces itself with another land.
Do you really want to build your deck around a "free" ramp spell. Yes you can sac a dork but his point is dorks are not worth it to run unless you have a specific synergy in the deck. so to just add bad dorks to your deck to turn one card on seems.bad
@@cloudroth6 I run mana dorks in my Pantlaza deck and have no issue with them. Sure, it's not cEDH, but they're not useless. This is also the guy that doesn't like Path/Swords.
@@cloudroth6 I run dorks in every green deck since my playgroup is way faster than the usual edh group. so Im not building my deck around 1 card. It turns cards like rec sage into destroying something+ramping and fixing. turns on earthcraft if multi colored. Sac Fanatic of Rhonas and Eternalize it next turn.
i feel like their ignoring stuff quite a bit. They say they rate it for general useage, but basically only looked at it from a 4-5 color Deck pov. Most of the decks played are 2-3 colors tho, which means they usually contain more than enough basic lands and you have less issues with 2 pips. Manadork turn 1? you can either play it like a normal cultivate turn 2, or you sack it and can probably cast any 3 mana spell turn 2 while at the same time getting a cultivate trigger to set up perfect mana for turn 3+. Golgari and Sultai are eating the shit out of this. sure it aint great for 4-5 color decks most of the time, but just being able to let you play that 1 or 2 mana hand
Isn’t Six absolutely insane? To put it in MTG goldfish terms, giving all your spells retrace basically turns every land you draw into an MDFC with an untapped land on the front and ANY spell in your graveyard on the back? LIKE, WHAT???
As the person who introduced them to the "it's so good it's bad" bit, I actually think it's applicable for Soultrader. I don't super agree, but it is a specific brand of card with a reputation of combo that precedes it.
Yeah, the thing with "so good it's bad" cards is that normally, they're actually good enough to somewhat offset the aggro. Like, Sea Gate Restoration for 7 will probably make you archenemy, but you just drew 7 so it's probably fine. But if you're playing a notorious combo piece for middling value, you're drawing all the aggro with almost none of the payoff.
Richard is out of his mind, the phasing in talon gate is super relevant. Especially for commander like Lucea Kane that have no protection and need you to untap with them on the board to go off. With this land you play Lucea then you play talon gate as your land of the turn and you're sure to untap with her next turn. And you can use it to phase out your opponent stuff, or as a 4 mana instant protection or a 4 mana ramp. It's such an easy S.
Richard is amazing! If we all had a dollar for every time we were wrong, id have almost as many dollars as richard! ❤ he right about the green land though
Don’t play cards that are good because they will make you lose -> loses because you didn’t play cards that are good while everyone else was (you got one Farewell per deck btw)
I think a big word on Sunken Palace was skipped over and that it also copy's abilities as well as spells. Not sure how many activated abilities we're looking to copy but it is there.
Richard "playing cards like this get you killed" meanwhile, the whole group lets things like bowmasters and esper sentinel go unanswered for multiple turns
Agree with Richard, Sunken Palace is great. I checked all my blue (dimir) deck, basically all of them will be benefit from this card. Grey Merchants, Exsanguinate, Breach the multiverse, etc.
I'd test it in Nymris, but I have a hard time seeing this beating dig through time. I'd rather dig further through my deck than copy something but yeah another commander will care much more for this card
1:10:56 Urza's Cave doesnt work with Mystic Sanctuary bc MS needs to come in untapped to get a card back, and cave makes it enter tapped. Edited: Also, it's way easier to grab MS with any of the blue fetchlands. 1 life vs 4 mana.
Saw the first video in my feed, thought I'd watch it later. I come back, it's gone. Thought I was delusional until the reupload. Glad to have you back!
The frequency in which Richard says something "nobody plays" so confidently that I see literally every week in casual play at my LGS is every single episode. And he is so confident and argumentative about it that it makes me shut off the episode.
@jeffe2267 is it though? You are sitting on 5 mana turn 2 with only 2 cards. You are easily buying good will at the table. And lastly if you are playing the explorer then your deck is probably best set up to take advantage of it.
I actually feel sorry for Richard because EDH players will be like "hah I counter your take with this one god awful card that in magical christmas land proves you wrong!" You can't argue with people who think that taking two good ramp spells out of their deck so that they can play an average card and a truly awful 1 drop *hoping for the one christmas land game where they have both cards at the same time*. So yes, unironically, Veteran explorer is absolutely a joke and using that as some sort of proof for your argument makes it worse, not better. 9/10 times you have explorer out and people are just trying to hit you so sack it.
Seth, wanting to protect his win, should like the red flare because if someone tries to counter your stuff when you’re trying to win that counters, the counter
Richard logic: “Don’t play game winning cards like Rise of the Dark Realms or Aminatou’s Augury because they make you the target and you lose the game.” Also Richard logic: “Put Fork in your deck so you can steal Rise of the Dark Realms or Aminatou’s Augury and win the game.”
This is sound logic and why Richard is such a great player. If someone casts a Rise it baits out answers from the table and if nobody has one you just Fork it. Let others pay the mana, be scary, draw the attention, and then just win. It's how Richard has been playing for years now and the fact that people still don't see through it is mind blowing to me. He is really just great at politics
The fact that toner isn’t hot on Urza’s cave is wild to me, if you believe in talon gates of madara as I do, you want to run Urza’s cave to tutor it in response to a bird wipe or offensively to remove a blocker. If you’re in green you’d also want to run crop rotation as well, getting around the 4 cost “channel” activation.
Richard is definitely right about sunken palace, I think everyone else in the group is way too scared of the downside of a tap land. Being slow in commander while not missing land drops isn’t necessarily a downside, it means you’ll be less scary and then you make up for it by popping off late with something like palace
Final Act properly designed would have looked like this: Choose one or more - Players sacrifice all artifacts. Players sacrifice all creatures. Players sacrifice all enchantments. Players sacrifice all planeswalkers. Exile all opponents graveyards. would have been a bomb card like farewell with a little bit of counterplay since there's some anti-sac stuff, plus you do still get death triggers etc happening still so it's weaker than farewell but it'd be a giga-staple in black, especially for artifact & enchantment removal which since colorpies dont matter so much these days WHY NOT put them on a super crazy card honestly lol (enchantment removal & sacrifice exists in black, artifact removal not so much which I'd be okay with removing from the design but everything else should stay) hire me as a consultant WotC ;)
I’m adding 10-12 new cards to the Mycotyrant and Muldrotha a piece from this set alone. They went heavy for Golgari this time around and I’m here for it.
Alright guys we need to stop weighting everything as it it applies to a 5 color deck. 4+ colors should not be our metric for playability. There are 264,543 5 color decks on edhrec and 137,832 4 color decks for a grand total of 402,375 4+ color decks which at first looks like a lot until you consider there are 1,572,705 2 color decks and 1,332,058 3 color decks for a grand total of 2,904,763 2 and 3 color decks. What this means is 4+ color decks only make up 12.7% of all multi-cloro decks so when evaluating a card we should be looking at how it will play in 2 and 3 color decks more often than not. So if we are looking at flare of cultivation with its 1gg cost and we judge that it will be good in 2 color decks and mono green that 753,609 decks which means its actually quite good. As opposed to saying its bad becuase its hard to cast in 11.72% of decks that can play it.
For me the flares go Fortitude > Malice > Denial > Duplication > Cultivation. It bothers me greatly that Cultivation is the only sorcery in the cycle, the pieces don't fit together!
Tomer on dog ranking podcast: " You couldn't sacrifice (insert dog) it's too cute, that text just doesn't exist " Tomer on this podcast: "I mean its good if you have a spirited companion to throw under the bus"
They mentioned it briefly, then glossed over it like it wasn't worth mentioning, but turn one grazer sac grazer to flare is absurdly busted. 3 lands in play and a fourth in hand on turn 1.
Seth on Tomer's Urza's Cave grade: No?!?! Why not Tomer? What is...? Oh, I guess that's right.... What are you gonna get? This island or that island? 🤣🤣🤣
Doesn't Urza's Cave's ETB tapped overrides Mystic Sanctuary's ability, making it entered tapped? Urza's Cave fetching Urza's Saga is an interesting combo at instant speed. Or fetching a Gaea's Cradle on your opponents turn just in time to play some big tings on your turn.
There was a problem where for a lot of the time when the crew were talking about some cards they didn't have the card(s) in question on screen. There may be other fixes I didn't catch but thats much better now.
I think Warren Soultrader is one of those cards that can only be played as a combo piece because as Seth said, it’s going to get you killed unless you combo with it. No one is going to believe it’s not part of a combo wincon.
I desperately want to have an opening in Commander where I have a Veteran Explorer and the Green Flare. Five lands on turn two sounds sweet to me, even at the cost of giving mana to the opponents.
What the hell is richard smoking on flare of cultivation, its at least a tier. Use it to sac veteran explorer, viridian emissary, or primal druid. Not to mention the easiest pick being child of alara as a sac outlet plus ramp. This card is awesome.
Come on, no one is playing those creatures unless they're some kind of aristocrats deck. B rank seems fair as far as needing a specific deck archetype to make it shine. Otherwise, its just a harder to cast cultivate.
@@yggdr9sil you can replace the sac creatures with simple etb ones like Reclamation sage. destroying an Enchantment/Artifact+ramping 1 land and getting another land in your hand is pretty good. every green creature with a good etb just turns into free ramp.
"Use Flare of Cultivation because it allows me to sac awful cards that I've filled my deck with" is really not the argument for it that you think it is.
@@light-chemistry turn 1 ramp spell into a bigger ramp spell for little investment. Seems fine to me. But if you must, insert whatever dies trigger or leaves the battlefield trigger creature you feel is appropriate. But even still, turn 1 veteran explorer, sac to cultivation to have 6 mana by turn 2 seems decent to me
@@dboeify you're describing the magical christmas land where you have a saccable creature and flare of cultivation. Otherwise you're just describing a graveyard/aristocrats deck, which is fine, but makes it a niche card that goes in specific decks. The vast majority of green decks are not graveyard decks.
I think the biggest single factor for the "flare" cycle is how likely is a given color to have a creature sitting around that can be sacrificed. This inherently puts certain ones above others, such as cards where a cheap creature creates an ETB token, like Thraben Inspector, Dockside, etc.. I think the team is severely underestimating the red one, as getting rid of a spent Dockside to then copy a tutor, ramp spell, etc. is going to be very good.
@18:38 I agree with Richard here. I play Elsha Control and if I had the choice of either countering a Torment Of Hailfire or Fury Storming it I would Fury Storm it every time.
I never knew that my playstyle was so much like Crim's, the decks the colors the everything. I used to totally be on board with Richard but I have realized I have not changed since way back when I used to play standard during Meriden besieged. Got me in touch with my control roots. I seriously think they undervalue control
Richard making that “what’s the probability” point about rhystic studies like his counterpoint to every card being good isn’t “what if your opponent has the perfect answer in hand” was a wild moment to me
I think flare of cultivations power doesn’t come in the early game. How many times do you draw cultivate-like cards mid to late game. You would love to get a couple more lands but can’t B/C it would screw up your game plan. Mid to late game this allows you to still ramp when you have some left over etc creatures while not taking half a turn off. It also is great in any aristocrat or grave yard decks which want to sacrifice creatures. Golgari and Abzan both will utilize it to great effect. The two green mana in the beginning is not that hard. A strict upgrade to cultivate.
I think you guys keyed in on the right heuristic for judging the Flare cycle; 1) will you have something you want to sacrifice? Then 2) is it worth sacrificing something you don't otherwise want to sacrifice? I think the answer to 1) is more often than you might think for a lot of Blue decks, to be honest; ETBs in particular. Obviously the answer for many, many Black decks is 1) duh and 2) what do you mean, don't want to sacrifice? So that one is best. You guys judging lands is hilarious. But then, those lands are all interesting because they're potentially so powerful that you might twist your deck building or play strategies around them a little (or a lot) - or maybe, you're not willing to because you don't see the value. They're easy A power with B downside.
I'm going to play Flare of Denial in my merfolk deck. More than 20 blue creatures, barely any one of which is worth keeping when push comes to shove. But I understand the problem of having something sackable in play, so it's certainly not for everyone.
22:48 Crim: "my commander is a way to cast free counterspells" as someone who uas cast their commander specifically to hold up Boltbend, Fierce Guardianship, and deflecting swat, i feel that. And as long as you dont mind sac the commander (maybe cause you really only cared about its etb or something), the free spells are pretty good
Sac mana dork for land in hand and land on board, in a format where no one removes lands but everyone removes creatures, how is Flare of Cultivation not excellent?
I think it bears mentioning that hitting double green mana has different percentages based on the amount of colors in your deck. If you’re at mono or two colors, you are going to have two of a flare’s colors pretty consistently.
Not sure why this needed to be reuploaded bit I still think the Flare cycle is better than they give credit for. It's not overbearing but all 5 are very good in the decks that will want them
Okay Hear me out on the green flare though, turn 1 we go green source mana dork into turn 2 float a green and freecast the green flare, then we cast actual cultivate/kodamas reach off of the land drop. Now we untap with up to 5 mana on turn 3. There are some great ceilings to this this card if we get around the fact that the sac feels bad. Same downsides as all ramp cards as well and the more restrictive mana cost definitely makes this an A for me
The card that has the cEDH community talking that the casual side has completely overlooked is Volatile Stormdrake. This card is bonkers and could easily be a blue staple, though most people will probably only ever look at it for cEDH or for energy decks. But the card could be thrown into any blue deck and slap. Most commanders these days cost 4 or less, some of the best value creatures cost 4 or less, and, worse case scenario, it becomes a blue removal spell.
Regarding Charitable Levy, it can legitimately time walk players who come after you in turn order who were hoping to curve into a turn 2 mana rock or ramp spell. That sounds rough.
Imagine turn 1 land, play llanowar elves. Turn 2 play a land, play regular cultivate/kodamas reach. Then play flare sac-ing the elves then you have 4 lands turn 2 with 2 additional lands in hand. It's insane how often you'll cast it for free
People HATE lands that filter mana. I wonder how efficient it would have to be to be good. For example, would a land that could tap for colorless or: tap, pay x: get x mana in any combination of colors be good? (Meaning you lose 1 mana as the land itself doesn't produce mana)
I feel like none of the top comments explain the problem with the way Richard (and sometimes Seth) view arguments about topics like running non-basic hate. They both view the cards as if a single person in their pod started playing them, while the actual discussion is about the cards being worked into a meta. Richard views strong cards the same way. He will look at card and say “wow this is way to scary this will get you killed” as if no one else at the table would be playing equally scary cards. It makes sense in their playgroup, since usually Phil is the only one ramping fast to then play haymakers, so they just focus him. But if two players are doing that, the situation changes. Also calling strip serenade bad because “it’s pointless to just snap it off on the first commander you see” when his favorite card pact of negation isn’t any better in that situation is funny to me. Of course counters aren’t going to be good if you are snapping them off early on the first thing that scares you
For the sacrifice cards, no one seems to be taking into consideration the value of sacrificing your chump blocks. Declare block, then sacrifice to cast a flare or to Soultrader etc. having a sac outlet is useful in non aristocrats decks
Shifting woodland is GREAT in every deck that can legally run it. Delerium is not hard to turn on at all and it has the upside of winning the game. It is on par with Boseiju. 0 opportunity cost for it too. It is S tier no question and these guys are delusional to think B tier.
Flare of Malice isn't the strongest card, but its the most staple. It slots into any black deck as one of the first removal options. Many of the other cards are stronger for specific decks, but Flare/malice is good for practically every deck.
