Mono Black vs Temur Energy | Semifinals 2 - Quest for the Best Deck Ever 

Andy Magoo?

To be fair a bunch of bad decisions there definitely made it look more fair than it is

@@feritperliare2890 In game one, Mengu could have used the Shadow Guildmage to put the Nekrataal on top & draw it again. That would have helped against the Glorybringers.

Temur drew really bad game 2 lol

I played magic during the ice age format . The black deck brings some memories back

thanks for the spoiler

That deck is crazy for real

I would not have thought it would beat psychatog but proved me wrong. Then goes Into game 3 with the energy deck like mind blowing

I used to play Knight of Stromgald in my suicide black 1.5 deck back in the day, it was an amazing mana sink that blanks (and most black removal of the time) swords and tiny creatures easily. First strike and pump is really strong

And wrong mana-bases.

Not really. The gemstone mines crippled him, and he wasn't in a good position for casting nekrataal every turn. Sadly the deck has awful mana.

yeah it would be great

I want to know what happened to Kai Budde's Wildfire deck.

god please

We played over 50 matches, so they are not filmed and, turns out, rather poorly documented. But we will definitely do this again with a twist, and then we'll take better notes :)

@@CardmarketMagic Even just filming overhead and doing some after-the-fact comentary, I'd adore an hour long video with just 5-10 minutes per match, highlighting key moments!

We could not believe it either. Old design still stands strong :)

@@CardmarketMagic In some ways. Creature wise the 1997 cards were just not comparable on the other hand you just aren't going to get color hosers like Dystopia anymore.

I would add, next time don't just play "World Championship" decks since they are often in the fall - maybe select a strong springtime deck from each year

We will likely be doing this again but have people vote for the deck played each year :) we still won't be shooting the Swiss rounds though because that's 50+ rounds of games and we don't have enough overhead camera rigs to film them 😅

@@bl4klotus Worlds also has never been a Standard-only event as far as I know. The Limited record affects who gets to top 8. & it's a pretty small & specialized tournament. For these reasons, the deck that wins Worlds isn't necessarily the best deck.

@@CardmarketMagic Would this maybe be the moment for some more raw, uncut content? Like the Swiss Rounds as longer, uncut videos (maybe even on a second channel) and the finals as your usual, hight quality videos? :)

​@@CardmarketMagic there are some decks like 1996 Black Summer Neceopotence, Urzas Destiny era Academy, Rec-Sur, Energy with Aethrtworks Marvel, Cascade Jund, Simic Oko Food, GrimJar, Ravager Affinity, and such that were not world championship decks (due either to being eventually banned or simply not making the championship) but were the most powerful and defining standard decks of their era. These decks would be very interesting. I think that 1996 Black Summer Neceopotence or anything from Combo Winter in Urzas block would be more than a match for modern standard decks. In fact it will show the sheer power and brokenness of some of the legendary decks of old and see if they still stack up.

Me neither, but i just cant imagine Prismatic Black winning.

I missed it when playing the game, but I decided not to add it when editing because I didn't want the overlay not to match the game :)

@@CardmarketMagic Totally fair! Just found it interesting. You guys have great content. It's pulled me back into the game, so definitely keep it up!

Thank you :)

Forests like all lands are colorless cards so not legal targets for distopia

Forests are not green. They are colourless and produce green mana.

I was wondering that as well. (Specifically, I wondered if perhaps the rules were different at the time of Dystopia and thus nonland was simply assumed in the text and they were playing in line with that, *or* if they're just so used to more modern cards that always list nonland that no-one thought of it.)

Lands are colorless, so you wouldn't be able to sacrifice them as green or white permanents

@@hxcnoel Oh, I totally forgot *that* little detail. ;)

@cpugwash7085 it was one of the first things I learned rules-wise, because one of my first decks was a mono black deck with Vampire Nocturnus, which gets buffed if a black card is on top of your deck. I was crushed when I realized swamps wouldn't buff it ha

It would not have killed it. Andrea could have grown it's power still with two black mana. It would have depleted my energergy reserve just to tap him out, which would have been a terrible trade 😅

Dimir control won worlds that year, but Caw Blade would have probably done better in this 😅

Colour hate took it all the way there. That and land destruction 🤯 we now know why WotC refuses to print either anymore

Despite them tapping for specific colours, lands are always colourless :) so there was nothing to sacrifice

@@CardmarketMagic Ahh ty for the clarification, old mtg cards before they said non-land permanents confused me for a bit there lol.

I saw a video that morning about how goats have a survival mechanism that makes them faint as soon as they hear a loud noise. It stuck with me 😅

It's a glory bringer, magma spray, Chandra, Aether Hub, Abrade, Chandra's defeat and mountain mirror 😅

@@CardmarketMagic I did not realize the decks were that similar, what a time to play standard

@solidchair4718 people complain about eldraine but we are even playing dumbed-down Kaladesh decks because both are post ban 😅

Actually, we could not find any footage of them playing against each other! We're really excited about the match :)

Despite tapping for specific colours, lands are always colourless unless specified :)

It got a little lucky, but mostly, it gets to abuse something wizard refuses to print anymore, which is colour hosers and land destruction. Many of the creatures have protection from white, and the sideboard is full of cards that simply Trump any cards of a specific colour

During the "credits"? It's Be Free by Rex Banner :)

@CardmarketMagic thanks guys! Your the best! been stuck in my head

We're considering it :)

Indeed, the top8 for both of those worlds was modern. If we do this series again, we'll have people vote for the deck of each year to make sure everything is well represented :)

No, necropotence was in another deck. This one is aggro backed up with some broken coloue hosers

Not even deep down for me I was loudly rooting for black haha. It was very impressive

It's honestly incredible Prismatic Black did so well, given that it's mostly creatures against creatures. & creatures are generally way better now.

i mean it's a strong deck, but with freakin andrea mengucci at the helm, any deck that has ever won a pro tour is pretty damn strong

top comment spoiling Poggers

@@BIGPILGRIM420 imagine reading the comment section of a video you don't want to have spoiled.

​@magerehenk7579 top comment auto shows bozo. sorry I read faster than you.

You do not need broken mechanics, you could just outmuscle it with modern broken 69 for 1 cards like Fable, Invoke despair, meathook etc.

@@Igor369 there was plenty of broken crap back then. Necropotence for example. All the combo decks that emerged (Prosperity Bloom for instance), Strip mine is another great powerful card. Throwing down cheap weenies then blowing up all the lands with Armageddon would make current era players cry. Creatures in current magic are so over tuned that Fable, Invoke, and Meathook aren't even all that offensive IMHO.

Why is it called monoblack if it's clearly not? Just a fun joke?

it’s called prismatic black because it uses filter lands to play a few non black cards but everything in the deck also taps for black

Considering it won the world championship at the time, I’d think it would go pretty well

Except it's splashed with 3 colors 🤣🤣🤣

@@8Smoker8 it's 5 color black. Mainboard splashes blue, green & red. But there's a lot of white in the sideboard too. Most cards are mono color with the exception of the 2 guild mages. That being said, every land taps for at least black & 40% of the the lands tap for all colors. Which is why there was never a "I have lands but can't do anything" moments. I don't remember mana fixing being that good back in the day, but I've slept since then.

I would like to Stifle this opinion. 😉 💧

We could only fly Andrea to Berlin for a few days and we did not expect the series to do well (I am grateful and surprised that my pet project has so much popularity), so we did not film more. But we are planning on doing another one with a twist and then we will go more in depth about the Swiss and with the matches

@@CardmarketMagic It's lovely to hear that you've plans for more videos like this, really great stuff!

@@CardmarketMagic This was my favorite series I seen from you so far! Would love more top 8 or mini series that I can look forward each week, even if not standard :)

@@CardmarketMagic Whose pet project was this? It was a good idea!

@AzuriteCoast me, Carl :) I'm the one who's job it is to manage the RU-vid channel and edit the videos. Jamin is our social media manager and Thoralf co-owns the oldest Cardmarket power-seller account

They played the Tinker deck rather poorly. I believe it could have done much better here. I'm also surprised Kai Budde's Wildfire deck didn't get further. But the most broken old Standard decks didn't win a World Championship, whether because of bannings or the metagame or details of the format. As I recall, Jon Finkel's Tinker deck wasn't one of the Type 2 decks that went 6-0 at Worlds 2000. Unfortunately, data from that period has mostly vanished from the internet. I suspect this Temur Energy deck would have a hard time against a Replenish deck from Worlds 2000, which went 6-0 in the Type 2 portion. With contemporary rules, Opalescence plus Parallax Wave gives unlimited creature removal. & the Energy deck has literally one out in the main. It would have better odds for game two & on. A lot of the results of this tournament, like any other but more so given that the decks aren't designed to play against each other, depend on randomness like pairings. A better way to do it would be to let players choose any of these decks & see what happens after a few tournaments. That'd be more trouble, though.

I too was surprised at the lack of Affinity and Necropotens decks. I guess they must have not been at Worlds.

We'll be likely doing this again with different parameters :) so they might still have another chance

@@CardmarketMagic that would be so cool. It would also be interesting to see how some broken standard decks that got banned before they could win worlds do. It doesn’t fully make sense to have decks compete as the best standard deck when they were only the best deck in their format because a better deck got banned

Randomness is a huge factor in a tournament like this as well. Maybe it just ran into a bad matchup, drew poorly, or was played poorly.

@aar7149 It really isn't. These decks weren't designed to play against each other, so some match ups will be much easier than others. & 5 rounds of Swiss allows for tons of randomness to be important in any case.

B.H. Abbot is right here, only two bad matchups could easily knock you out if top 8. 5 rounds of Swiss allow a lot of randomness. To do this perfectly, we should have done round Robin, but this was already 50+ matches and we did not have that kind of time 😅 mono black did benefit from going against white decks in the Swiss, which is not bad when you have protection from white on many of your creatures

Goats have the "survival reflex" of fainting anytime something loud happens for some reason 😅 I don't know how it has helped them, but I had seen a video about it that morning. It stuck with me

@@CardmarketMagic good magic content and educational, ticking all the boxes! 😂

aww no :( well I'm not surprised, but still I had hope

That's a great point. Returning Nekrataal would been better than casting the Necratog that didn't end up accomplishing anything. Based on that & the dubious choices by the Tinker pilot against Energy, I really wonder if these folks have the experience needed to properly play old decks. I demand a redo with Kai Budde on the Wildfire deck & Jon Finkel on Tinker.

@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 well they just had the lists, and while I assume are skilled players, they wouldn't know the ins and outs like the people who built and piloted the decks back in the day. I'm still gobsmacked that Tinker lost. That deck was insane.

@@raze667 It was strong & I bet would have won in Finkel's hands, but I suspect other Type 2 would do better against Temur Energy. If I recall correctly, Tinker didn't even go 6-0 in the Type 2 portion of Worlds 2000. At least one Replenish deck did. Energy has almost no outs against Replenish in game one, especially now that Parallax Wave has been restored to full power.

Fire design started with Battle for Zendikar (although that set wasn't quite so strong yet 😅) and culminated with both Kaladesh and Eldraine. From what I understand, it was phased out after Theros Beyond Death

Thank you! :)

I absolutely agree that more games would give better representation, but since these videos already take me days to edit, I cannot afford to make more than best-of-3s 😅 sorry - Carl

Andrea put up a good fight :) but unfortunately, 20 years of power creep took its toll

It was knocked out by not being a standard deck 😅

We are not a store, so we don't own any cards. We tried as best we can 😅 it was unbelievably expensive, please understand

@@CardmarketMagic A VIS Nekrataal is 34 cents USD. & I don't think MIR Swamps are very expensive. But I understand that everything adds up when building so many decks. I just love the look of old decks & the frame consistency.