MTG Top 10: Fallen Empires | The BEST Cards in one of Magic's WORST Sets | Episode 303 

Having Hymn to Tourach in Fallen Empires is like watching a B-movie and seeing an A-list actor giving a performance like an Oscar is on the line.

Looking at Orgg makes me realized how pushed Doom Whisperer was and how shocking it is that it saw basically no play. We've come so far.

I really do love the art of older sets. Goblin Grenade really shows off just how (self)destructive Goblins were, instead of simply painting them off as mindless goofs.

I really enjoy these types of a little more quirky top 10s.

I started playing MTG with Fallen Empires and as a kid I really enjoyed that set, especially with the flavor text stories and the different art pieces for the same card and so on.

Alternate title: Hymn to Tourach... and nine other magic cards.

Fallen empires is one of my favorite sets for flavor and art. And I think the set is better than people give it credit for.

Ron Spencer is without a doubt my favorite MtG artist, and he did a number of amazing works in Fallen Empires.

The Ron Spencer's illustrations were ahead of their time.

*first turn* Me: forest, llanowar elf, go Opponent: swamp, ritual, duress, hymm Me: *%#@

Aeolipile if I'm not mistaken was essentially the first basic engine. It was a sphere filled with water and put over a fire to boil said water and then tubes led out of the sphere to direct the steam produced and spin the sphere Made in ancient Greece

If I remember right, there was an early Pro Tour that required every deck to include cards from every expansion printed up to that point. I think it happened after Alliances, but before Mirage. This would explain why so many FE and Homelands cards appeared in the pro tour.

orgg is dope. i love big ugly bad creatures from more obscure times. he will make an excellent addition to my crappy goblin deck.

Hymn to Tourach and Goblin Grenade and High Tide are some of the most OP cards ever printed in the game.

Hymn is still one of my absolute favorite discard spells, such great value, and honestly 2 at random is often better than a single targeted discard.

I love the story of the Thrull Uprising. Sure would be cool to see what happened to Sarapadia at some point. The Thrulls apparently kicked Phyrexian ass at some point and Gix called them dangerous if left alone (if the wiki is to be believed) so I can see them reappearing at some point.

The first pack of cards I ever bought was Fallen Empires, and Orgg was in one of the first decks I ever put together. It's still one of my favourite cards of all time.

I hope we see more good cards from bad sets videoes in the future. It's interesting to see which cards saw play and which cards were considered impressive at the time

What about Breeding Pit? I remember players used to use that card to feed creature sacrifice for upkeep.

Fun fact: Every death metal band member has a tattoo of the art from Order of the Ebon Hand somewhere on their body. It's a requirement.

Best Goblin Grenade art ever.

Used to run a deck that would first turn double ritual, hymn, and summon a hypnotic spectre. The tempo loss alone would finish people off.

Fallen Empires was a terrible set for competitive players, but I had many many fun games when we played FE and Revised only cards. Was before draft formats were about. We each got a Revised starter and six FE packs for the nights gaming. Didn't hurt that I recall FE packs at .50 cents at Babbages.

Wow I would have thought hymn and goblin grenade would be 1-2. Those were used so much when I was playing locally during fallen.

Javeliners wasn't overlooked, White Weenie seems to never made the top 8 back then. It was in all the WW decks back then.

Fallen Empires isn't a bad set. I think the biggest problem is that most of the good cards were common. Almost every card on this list was common, even Hymn to Tourach. The only rare cards here are Orgg and Aeolipile (which should have been common or uncommon). The Orders, Golblin Grenade, and Hymn to Tourach were later reprinted as uncommon. Most of the rares in the set were terrible or underwhelming for rares. So there was no reason to buy a lot of the set and chase the best cards because you only needed to open a few packs to get the best cards. Fallen Empires has a bad rap because the set was overprinted due to the previous expansions being severely underprinted. I remember how hard it was to even find Legends and The Dark. However it's far from Magic's worst set. Homelands is the worst set, IMO, as far as good playable cards go, although the lore is fantastic. If only only they had put as much effort into card design for that set as they did the lore. I'm happy to see Baron Sengir making a return in Commander Legends because he's one of my favorite characters from Magic's pre-planeswalker lore. Oh wait, you did do a video on the best cards in Homelands (the worst set). Heading there now!

Goblin grenade is nearly as efficient as lightning bolt over 2 red, and more efficient than most 1 mana red burn.

Even knowing what Nizzahon's about the lore dweller I am made me want to see stuff like Phyrexia 1.0, Serra's Realm etc.

Way to be spot on with the art. This was when I was a noob. Thanks.

Fallen Empires has many iconic nice cards, it is nothing like homelands. Great top 10!

6:00 Order of LiteBeer!

I loved the lore of Fallen Empires. It's such a cool concept. I thought it would be a great starting spot for a story.

Orgg Vs Bob from Accounting (This should be an unset card) the raging Goblin was out sick

A video on the best cards from the worst sets overall might also be cool.

It's funny to see how the language of the game has changed over the years. For example, "deal X damage to any target" became "de X damage to target creature or player" so as to be more specific. But then it changed back to "any target" because "target creature or player or planswalker" would be too verbose to put on a card.

#1: 72 points #2: 7 points Need I say more?

That goblin grenade art is pretty sick

I’d definitely be running orcish spy in my edh playgroup I tap top Cool what you got

This is my favorite set in the game due to the lore, multiple arts, and the tools it gives aggro decks in Old School and casual decks. It's got very little going for it but was made in reaction to the stupefying power of spells like Balance and the Power Nine so it has few strong spells and the creatures are still very Early Magic. Their inefficiencies made up for by the fact that the stick around and have more uses to them. Honestly I kinda wish more sets had the sensibilities of FE; turning down the power, with more of a focus on the world and flavorful set interactions over powerful ones but that doesn't make money nor is it fun for most people.

Miss these cards still get to play goblin grenade at least in my krenko deck

Sometime I wish I could’ve experienced Magic from its beginning because even the worse sets seem like a fun time to experience.

I mean... We have a non-Foglio, non un- set card that’s an EFFING giant bunny, a viashino and a merfolk thing being judged by a praetor...

When you sac a goblins of the flarg to the grenade and kill a Shivan Dragon or Serra angel

That little creature infront of Orgg is the stuff of nightmares.

I remember a really fun deck with 4x White Knight/4x Black Knight 4x Order of Leitbur/4x Order of the Ebon Hand There was another pair of 2/1 first strike protection cards that I forget the name of. It was just a wall of first strike, it was fantastic

The art from this set is one of my favorites despite the dumpster fire

I love how you call it "one of Magic's WORST Sets," knowing that you've already done Homelands. I don't have as much of an attachment to Fallen Empires as I do Homelands, but I do love playing shitty cards in EDH. Although I actually thought Homelands might have had more points total than this set, if only because of Merchant Scroll. Although Hymn to Tourach has a crap load of points itself, it (and no other cards in this set) have any points in Vintage, so this set is dead to me. Speaking of, do "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)!" Or "Top 10 Portal Three Kingdoms" works given the crappy set theme.

Who can say Fallen empires is the worst? There are interesting cards there, maybe not powerful, but interesting, and I really like the alternate art that was done for the set. I wish that was still a thing.

I want Aeolipile to come back and find a home in tier 1 decks so bad. That thing was amazing back in the day.

Holy cow Fallen Empires 😂

Watch MTGRemy's Fallen Empires "preview" video!

Top 10 Worst Alpha Top 10 Hellions

Nothing quite like the feeling of hitting 2 lands with Hymn to Tourach, and then watching people squirm with no or few lands. Bonus points for cheating it out early in some way! Can still win a legacy game sometimes.

How about the top ten best sets. The sets with the highest scores and then do a bottom 10 sets

Fallen kingdoms was my first set. half of these i have fond memories of.

Love the art from Homelands and Fallen Empires at least. XD

I'm voting Thallid. Specifically the one with the staff. He's King Fungi! I know it's not going to win, but it's my favorite card of all time.

... Icatian Javelineers are in the top10? o_O I hated that card

I might be interesting and more playable in red to have, for example, a 1/1 haste that can see the top 5. But it doesn't seem very red in approach.

Let’s remember that Hynm to Tourach was considered the most efficient discard spell only because Mind Twist was either restricted in Type I or Banned in Type II. HtT is not even close in power to the MT.

Even back then Fallen Empires was crap. I do remember seeing the Ebon Hand (love the buzz saw shield artwork), Gob Grenade (spiked grenade on a leash is the best), Order of Leitbur (love the art you showed on at one too) and of course Hymn was pretty huge and in most black decks. But I think a lot of us were sleepin on High Tide (I like the coral reef art the best) as I dont remember seeing it that often. Fallen Empires was the first set to really go for the alternate arts which is a pretty huge contribution to MTG but Wizards/Mattel seems to be squeezing it for all its worth. That being said, I do like a like of the alternate arts, just Wizards needs to take it easy. I cant get over on how Throne of Eldraine is rotated out already. It seems just like a couple weeks ago we went and bought a box at our local game store.

I miss playing Legacy... Land, Mox Diamond into Hymn.

This is one of the editions I know the better since I was playing in the day. Really surprised to see the lookout there 😅

Steam Engines famously doubled up as impressively powerful explosives that'd blow you into little pieces if you screwed anything up.

You mentioned that, based on your criteria, Fallen Empires is better than Homelands (given points gained by cards in the set). It would probably be a lot of work, but have you considered doing a "Top 10 Worst Sets (according to the math)" video? See how many points the top 10 cards of each set represent, then count down the bottom 10 sets (maybe do the inverse for the best sets as well).

I want some Fall Empire cards with the wryvn backing

I cannot believe that Goblin Grenade is so low. That card looks nuts to me.

*me looking around cautiously since I still play with homeland's baron sengir, irini sengir and ishan's shade.*

A theme heavy goblin Edh deck will have goblin grenade in there.

Came in going 'well number one has to be Hymn to Tourach', was not disappointed.

Fallen Empires may be one of the worst sets in MtG but solely judging on the art, it is one of the best sets in Magic history, imo

The best thing about Fallen empires is the artwork of Ron Spencer.

Fallen Empires was a financial failure for Wizards and was really overprinted, so the cards aren't worth much. In term of power level, it wasn't the worst set. Empires still has cards like Hymn, Goblin Grenade, and High Tide that still see regular play in cube, tabletop, EDH, etc. This already makes Fallen Empires better than all of Masques Block, Odyssey Block, and of course Homelands. Ice Age is only better thanks to reprints.

Lol I loved this set . I was poor as a kid and boxes of this was so cheep back then I bought 3 of them. It had some ok thalls and Thaliads . saporlings lol

Yeah, but I still love Fallen Empires. More fun than the stuff we have now.

A point you made cause my brain to stutter a moment. In old school magic, green and black opposed each other, blue and red opposed each other, and white kind of dipped around in the middle. So the fact that the "2 drop opposite" cards were black/white is kind of odd. You would think they would be blue/red and black/green in the old sets.

I built a rebel EDH deck and it is so bad but so fun at the same time

Where are the card images from? Some of them have the "any target" wording. I didn't think they used that format back then?

Nobody gonna mention Goblin War Drums??? (Richard Kane-Ferguson, best artist) Hmmm, who invented Menace?

Fallen Empires was when I started playing magic and it the set I have the most cards from. 😀

Idk what Hymn is worth today, but i got an old MTG collection in 2016 from a friends dad and it literally had like 30 of these in it XD It wasnt worth much at that time, though. The whole collection was nice, but just funny that this card is so good(i knew it was at the time too) yet it wasnt worth anything. I ended up with 7 FoW's which is still one of the best blue cards ever!

Everyone’s talking about Hymn, but I forgot High Tide was in this set

Where do you get your data?

do top 10 magic cards of all time

35 seconds, earliest I've ever been

Ah High Tide. Love my legacy high tide to the date.

I’m confused. The points from the formats of the last two add up to less than the total points. #2 should be 16 based on the bracketed numbers, and #1 should be 79. Am I missing something?

My favourite fallen empire are the Aztecs with their child sacrifice and cannibalism

Next do the top ten worst rares/mythics from one of Magic's most powerful sets (Urza's Saga, Darksteel, Eldraine)

Title made me immediately think of merchant scroll from homelands

I just find it funny they actually had to specify that the opponent has to discard their entire hand if the only have 1 card in it lol. duh

Is Orgg the strongest creature in Fallen Empires? Even with its rule limitation.

Fallen Empires actually only has 102 unique cards. Scryfall gives an incorrect number because it lists the different art for the same card as different cards. No one claims kamigawa neon dynasty has 553 which is the total number if you count all variant arts. Given that the set has only 2 cards more than antiquities and a handful more than Arabian Nights I think fallen empires is fine. If you base things on the ratio of cards in the set that are good and consider that the set was a heavily creature focused tribal themed set, I don’t think WoTC did much better a decade later when they did Onslaught block.

hymn is a fucking sick card I love it

Kamigawa next?

Homelands and Fallen Empires are both bad. I would have to say Homelands would be worse as Fallen Empires had some nice artwork and the ones he listed. Homelands had pretty much nothing.

Anyone remember "hymn, hymn, I win"?

AEOLIpile. It's a mayonnaise bomb?

Wait I didn't know cards could get restricted in standing

Order of light beer