I play platinum angel and Abyssal Persecutor so that both players can not lose or win the game then I play Thousand-Year Storm, and get the storm count up to 10 and cast 10 copies of shahrazad.
gabe juhasz: That's evil, you're a horrible person, and it's so beautiful. But remember, I'm pretty sure timestamping will rule over which effect takes priority, so unless you Tooth and Nailed both creatures onto the battlefield at the same time, one ability might override the other's.
Fun fact: The Spanish version of Dead Ringers actually added reminder text to explain what the hell they meant. I don't know if this was true of any other translation but it was a nice touch.
I will ALWAYS like your subjective lists. Because you spend a good amount of time diving into the cards I've never heard of and MtG continuing to surprise me is one of the reason it owns a portion of my brain space. Keep it up.
Maybe I’m misreading it, but the ice cauldron effect makes sense to me? You store a spell and some mana on it (and tap it and put a charge counter on it), and then later you can use that mana (and also mana from other sources) to play that spell. Basically, allows you to split the casting of a spell across two different turns. Putting it “on ice” if you will. You exile the card and pay some portion of its mana cost at some point (and I guess you could also put other mana in there that can’t contribute to that card, but not sure why you would), and then later (probably on a later turn, unless you untapped it somehow, but idk why you would do this), you can finish casting the card, possibly providing more mana to it. I don’t play mtg, but the intent behind the card seems fairly clear. Seems like a neat card imo.
That one is one I can give you on confusion level. I remember that card well. If I remember correctly it was banned for a time because people just didn't get it edit: and it delayed the game
I think I figured out ice cauldron! Ok, so since you can activate ice cauldron's first ability at instant speed, it serves two purposes: First, storing the leftover Mana from your opponent's end step, at the cost of declaring what card you're going to use it on. This can be a card whose Mana cost is more than what you paid into X. Think, you play the cauldron on turn 4, on turn five you draw Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, play a land, and end turn. On your opponent's end step, you pay 5 Mana for X, exile Ulamog, start up your turn, play a land, and cast Ulamog, on turn six. The other purpose is to temporarily protect a card in your hand. After all, it can't be discarded or exiled from your hand if it's not there when the spell or effect resolves.
Ice cauldron just seems confusing, it literally just stores a spell and the needed mana for casting it. After that you just kinda "release" the spell from the cauldron at the time you seem adequate.
The Cauldron is much better than it seems....if used in a certain way. Specifically, you spend zero on X. This effectively give you an "extra hand". Even if the Cauldron leaves the battle field you can still play the cards in your "extra hand". So you pay zero, tap, then exile a card. Next turn tap add zero mana AND do nothing with that zero mana. Next turn pay zero, tap, exile a card. Rinse and repeat. Works very good with Ensnaring Bridge and hellbent.
Grendel Nin What about the “use this ability only if there are no charge counters on Ice Cauldron” line? Don’t you have to get rid of the charge counter before you can use it to store another card?
Don't forget that in 1001 Arabian Nights, Shahrazad didn't just tell a new story every night, she told stories-within-stories, and stories-within-stories-within-stories, and.... you get the idea. That's the true power of this card if you're playing it in an unrestricted (home table game) format; not just the time-wasting subgame, but the subgame-within-a-subgame, repeated multiple times. A single full game of MTG could literally take hours, so it's very easy to win with this card; your opponent concedes the entire game long before anyone actually wins it. But that strategy only works once: usually your opponent tells you afterward to never play Shahrazad again against him or he will never play MTG with you again.
Elegance is one of the most difficult things to achieve in game design. That is, an object that when interacted with provides emergent outcomes that are unique, deep, simple to understand yet difficult to master.
You completely misunderstood what ice culdron does. Long story short, it puts a spell on layaway. I could pay 5 mana for its effect on turn 5 and exile ulamog, next turn I tap it, add 5 mana and cast ulamog tapping only 6 lands this turn. It's a pretty cool card, with a really cool effect.
Back in the early days - Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights - we played any card, no matter how confusing. I don't recall banding or the Camouflage card being all that difficult. That said, only one of us ran a white weenie banding deck with and regularity and I only recall two players running Camouflage with any regularity. Eventually, better cards came along and these decks or cards never saw play again.
Scheherazade- modern Arabic(German spelling translation, first appeared 1801) Cehrazad- from middle Persian Shirazad and Shahrazad- earliest Arabic forms Sahrazad- standard 19th century Arabic spelling(with different pronunciations by country) So, you're pronouncing the word "correctly" only from a modern linguistic sense. The spelling on the Magic card hearkens back to one of the original forms. "Correct pronunciation" seems to be a very subjective thing. I personally choose to pronounce it as written on the text I'm reading.
I was watching this going "I can't believe ice cauldron hasn't come up yet" - lol. It was in one of the first ice age packs I ever bought. I never played it once. Just figured when I was older I'd understand. I still don't.
It lets you store mana in it, but the mana can only be used to cast that spell. You can still cast the spell as normal and you can also pay mana in addition to the stored mana.
Honestly don't think banding is THAT complicated. Like yeah, it's not as clean as flying, but when you break it down, it's pretty understandable. Like, A) it lets you assign damage rather than your opponent B) you form literal bands when attacking / blocking, and C) one blocking creature needs banding or all attacking creatures except one need banding.
Oh man, I know it's a confusing mechanic, and it's probably best that it was, well, phased out, but I love phasing. I play a couple of phasing cards in my Merieke Ri Berit EDH deck, and my personal favorite is Teferi's Realm. It makes games wildly hilarious.
Maybe I've been playing Magic for too long but I didn't any of the cards all that confusing (although, some I did have to read twice to get the full impact). The exception is Number 1, that one was a little more confusing...a little.
Dredge. I know what it does, I know how it works, but I still can't wrap my head around it's viability. What if you dredge your lands? Or your win conditions? I know it's strong, I know why it's strong, I just can't figure out how to play a dredge deck myself. Guess I'm just a dumbass
Along the same lines as this stuff, anyone that wants to read a novels worth of oracle text can go look at opalescence... Specifically how it interacts with humility.
Uhhh.... Ice Cauldron says nothing about exiling a card and nowhere does it say you can use it like a generic mana rock. The spell card in question is placed FACE UP on top of Ice Cauldron, not exiled, and the mana produced when removing a counter from the Ice Cauldron can only be used to cast the spell that is on top of it. It's more akin to an Isochron Scepter than a mana rock. Mana rocks produce mana to be used freely. It says all of this right on the card. Really straightforward card tbh. Idk why you added all those things in, you didn't show any oracle text.
The best/worst part is that they could've put it with simple "destroy two non-black creature of the same color", but no - they decided to get into this multi-level negations mess.
@@wojtektaracinski7977 your wording would be a different card, less confusion might be worth the change but it would be different. Your version would let me destroy a RW creature and a RG creature. or a UR creature and WUR creature. the existing version would not. Contrarily the existing version would let you destroy 2 colorless creatures but your version would not.
Why noone wants to play against my shaharazad deck? It's 4 times the fun of a single game Also wouldn't it be cool if magic released 5 players themed decks all containing 4x sharahazad? It would be called "the one thousand and one sub-games"
@@chaossquall In a sense yes. But with camouflage; they still remained the same power; toughness, and their abilities. It was just to randomize the blocks and make your opponent sweat when choosing which one to block with what
The other problem with the old text is that the defender "block" with some creatures, and then "impossible block are cancelled", which causes a lot of stupid problem if you have an effect that trigger on blocking, or target blocking creatures. While the new text say that the defender "assign pile of creatures to the attacker", and "creatures in those pile than can block have to block". Which is works better since you don't have to roll-back anything.
10:20 actually she started a new story every night and finished it in the next day so her husband would not kill her because he was curious how the story would end.
@@sdfkjghYup, and (1) Shahrazad herself is part of the nested stories, which was the whole joke of the book and (2) is the whole reason the card makes sense.
I like the way Ice Cauldron works. You pay X, exile a Banefire, then on your next turn you tap it to get that X back and you can then make even more mana for X and make your banefire more massive. It's the single most roundabout way to make your X spells bigger and I love it.
Yeah, the way it is written is super complicated, but it makes sense once you understand what they were trying to do. You put a spell in the cauldron along with some or all of the mana to cast that spell. On a later turn, you can use that mana as well as more mana if needed to cast that spell. It’s great for casting a spell that takes more mana than you have land or if you just want to pay now and use it later.
I remember showing my husband my old cards. "What's banding?" He asked. I tried to explain it. The best I could do... "Uhmmm... It's... You... Nevermind. You'll never use it."
Precisely. It was used to combat a deck in those times called the "Flying mutation" deck. Flying men:1/1 flyer for 1 blue. Unstable mutation:enchanted creature gets +3 +3. During each upkeep; put a -1 -1 counter on the creature...also 1 blue. It was a terrifying duo since also in that time you weren't restricted to only having 4 of a certain card in a deck except if it was restricted by WOTC
Remove Enchantments is one of those cards that's confusing because someone wanted to go for a specific flavor. It removes all of the Enchantments IN YOUR REALM. That's why it only effects your opponent's attacking creatures. Basically, everything in your kingdom, including invaders, has their enchantments removed.
I used Ice Cauldron and Illusionary Mask in my "Seven Lines of Text" deck. Aside from basics, every card had at least seven lines of text and most were very confusing for my opponents. Usually, I'd get a concession in a few turns. I never really found these cards that confusing. I guess it's because I took the time to use them.
A lot of these cards are simpler conceptually than they are in terms of wording. Despite the mess of text that appears on Ice Cauldron, it's actually a pretty simple card in what it does; it lets you pay for a single spell across two turns. Also, good job Oracle text on making Camouflage infinitely more confusing.
Exactly on both. Camouflage wasn't hard to understand at all. It just randomized the blocking and made your opponent sweat when choosing blockers because they didn't know what creature was what
Ice Cauldron is at least good for casting a spell over the course of two turns. For instance, you could put 3UU into it, exile Omniscience, then next turn pay the other 4U and cast Omniscience off the Cauldron. Doesn't make it any less confusing.
I used to use Ice Cauldron to store mana in order to cast spells with X in their casting cost, usually red damage cards. I don't think they took this into account when they made the card. It was quite overpowered back then.
It’s also useful to save a card in a pinch if your opponent tries to make you discard. Like, if they use Duress or a wheel effect and you have your wincon or something else you just really can’t afford to not cast, you can exile it in response. The Cauldron lets you play the card as long as it’s exiled, whether Cauldron is still on the field or not, so the only risk to exiling it is that your opponents gain some info on a card you have.
I've always liked Raging River since I found out about it, and it made sense to me at least. You basically make two separate battlefields for combat. I even think the Oracle text makes it more confusing.
Another idea you could do is a Top 10 list of cards whose original text does not hold up well nowadays. One card that comes to mind for me is the original Rukh Egg printing from Arabian Nights that needed an entire paragraph printed on the card to basically explain what a token is.
The thing is if remove enchantments was in modern it would actually be insane in Bogles. Think about it: it protects all your enchantments from board wipes for 1 mana at instant speed, it’s an incredible combat trick against the mirror: say you have some Bogle on Bogle violence in combat, your opponent has a super buff Bogle and you have a Bogle with only 1 or 2 auras. You can ensure they trade in combat by removing all the auras and since your auras go back to your hand you get straight up card advantage from a 1 mana instant in WHITE! This basically gives all your auras the last text of rancor. You know what now I wanna build Bogles if remove enchantments is a common I’m brewing green white Bogles.
Raging River actually seems cool and pretty good. I might throw it in a commander deck both to confuse my opponents and to make some big creatures have some “evasion”
It was last printed in unlimited, is on the reserved list, and it's average market price is about $110. So unless you have it already it seems like a silly thing to buy. I traded a mox diamond for one back in 2000 and I'm still an idiot for making that trade.
agentofashcroft Ouch. Yeah that would sting for years to come. And if that’s the price then I’m afraid my master plan will have to fall into the shadows
Also; not too hard to understand imo. I run 2 in my legacy deck. In a nutshell; any card a player draws beyond the first must first discard a card before drawing it or must mill a card from their library if they have no cards in hand
Recon 0326 Not quite, excluding the first card a player draws on their draw step, any time they would draw a card... Essential any time you would draw a card other than the one you’re required to draw by the core rules if the game you have to discard or mill, which is important if you would draw on your upkeep or someone else’s turn. It’s also important to be aware all card draw us done individually. So if something says ‘draw two cards,’ you discard, draw, discard, draw; you don’t discard two, draw two. Finally the discard effects stack, but the mill doesn’t.
@@Welverin Correct. That was what I was trying to say. Let's take a card for example: brainstorm. If chains is on the battlefield and you have already drawn your card for your draw step; then you cast brainstorm, before you can draw those three cards, you must first discard for each one drawn. Then you still have to put two back on top of your library. It essentially punishes harshly decks that rely on card draw
@@Recon-cv1fe I figured, but I wanted to clarify for others. It's not hard once you get it, but getting there... It's great fun stopping other people from drawing cards, I actually locked someone out of the game with it and Anvil of Bogardan once. Admittedly I didn't even realize I could before that, he went through his draw phase and said 'I can't do anything.'
@@Welverin Eesh. That's a nasty duo there. Beside the concedement; how did you win that? Because chains affects both players. Did you have a creature on the battlefield or was it just "we go until one of us runs out of cards in our libraries" ?
I knew Camouflage had to be on here. I get why the text was changed, (Morph, etc.), but BOY is that errata text confusing. One of the few times the errata text actually makes the card MORE confusing and less easy to understand. AAAND that's what makes Camouflage my favourite "Worst" card!
Yeah there are only 3 cards with phasing that are any good though and 2 of them are Teferi related. Oubliette, Teferi's Protection, and Teferi, Time Raveler as far as I know.
Lmao but that's cheese though. A lot of the silver border cards are meant to be confusing. Look at "bureaucracy". That thing confused the hell out of people lmao
I played shahrazad... My friend at the time also played shahrazed Four turns later I played my second shahrazed First card my friend plays after that turn was there second shahrazed This went on until both of our 4 copies of shahrazed where all use so we where playing like... A game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game of magic
The best part about Scheherazade is that you can cast one in your subgame, leading to layers and layers of subgames. Then when you go back to your main game you can cast the card if you have extra copies/ways to enable flashback.
How do Camouflage and the Raging River interact? You have two piles of creatures, and creatures of each of these will be randomly combined with their respective blockers?
I think you explained Ice Cauldron a little wrong. You dont have to pay the cost of the card when exiling it, you can pay part of the cost, none of it, or more than it when you first tap it. You get to cast the card from Exile no matter what (even if Ice Cauldron gets removed) but can tap the ice cauldron for the mana you spent to tap it before. This sorta lets you split up card costs between turns, or set up a sorcery speed play during an end step using available mana. Not super good, but nothing else does what it does.
You can still play the exiled spell even if ice cauldron is removed? This surprises me, because the text says to put the spell “on” ice cauldron. However, I don’t play mtg, so that could be why I’m surprised. So, if you could cheaply bounce it to your hand and play it again repeatedly, could you hypothetically use this card to make a really big set of cards that you can play as if in your hand, but which don’t contribute to your hand size? That’d be quite something..
@@drdca8263 the card being exiled is in the oracle text, which this is the one card he chose not to show it for. as for using it to make a set of cards you can cast that aren't in your hand, yes, that would work, it also works if you have a way to repeatedly untap it, though it takes more steps. you use it's first ability paying 0, then untap it somehow, use it's second ability to add 0 mana, then untap it again and you can exile another card. the second ability doesn't require you to cast or get rid of the exiled card, it just restricts the mana you create to only be usable on that card.
Cool video man! Just one thing, you said you pronounced it closely to the Arabic way. but unfortunately, you didn't. you kinda mixed it with Persian/Farsi, as the original character comes from Iran :) and it is written: Scheherazade. But, as this is "Shahrazad" card (in Arabic شهرزاد) and it has the Arabic spelling... so, it's pronounced: ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːd (IPA/English). written: Shaherrazad (the first 2 a is pronounced as in "about" last a pronounced as in "father") Cheers mate!
the thing about ice cauldron is...it is really good with X spells like braingeyser or fireball. at end of your opponent's turn you can set it up for your turn. if you put a braingeyser with a charge counter for 5 mana on the cauldron at the end of their turn, during your turn you can geyser for at least 3 cards, but usually 7 or more (you can add more mana to X when you cast the geyser). not exactly amazing, but not entirely useless either ;)
It's also great for board wipes like armageddon and wrath of god. Put a creature in the cauldron if it's full mana cost was paid; wipe the board with wrath of God, then you got a creature ready to play
I have very fond memories of my old Shaharazad deck. I won more games with that from people just giving up than me actually winning. Four Sha and a fork, we took up an entire table at our game shop at one point with five games deep. One guy just wanted to beat it and we went on for several hours. By the end, he was so stressed out. We finally make it back to the main game with me winning the subgame set and eventually the actual game. We had people occasionally just staring at us and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. After that, no one wanted to play it. I would get asked if I was playing the Shaha deck and if yes they would get up and say no.
You think Ice Cauldron is confusing? Take a read of any creature card printed in the last few years. They’re all like this now. What ever happened to the days of Kird Ape and Serra Angel? :(
For me, the most complicated card is Humility. The text box is pretty damn clear, but the possible interactions in the game are such a pain... E.g. How does it work with Enchantment-Gods?
The Enchantment Creature -- God would lose it's "ability" of not being a creature unless you have X devotion and be a creature, turning it into a 1/1 vanilla.
Maybe I’m the weird one here but phasing always felt kind of intuitive to me? Like I get what the designers intended for those cards and have never been confused by seeing it on a card.
Ice cauldron is easy to explain mechanically. Tap it, pay some amount, exile a card and put a counter on it equal to the mana paid. Can only be used if it does not have a counter. Tap it, remove a counter, add the amount paid above to your mana pool, it can only be used to play the most recently exiled card. You may play any card exiled by ice cauldron as if it was in your hand.
@@kumabear5229 Terrain? You mean lands? Terrain reminds me of the card type from Wyvern back in the day. I never played but I have some cards. Is that where you're getting the card type names juxtaposed? It's so obscure, I would think not. Probably from some newer game. I used to do the same thing when I switched from Yu-Gi-Oh to MTG though with creature and monster.
I LOVE Ice Cauldron, and use it in several of my EDH decks, especially Mayael Eldrazi. It serves as a way to cheat on mana costs for those big monsters, and also gives cards pseudo-flash, since you can leave your mana up until end of turn, then charge the Cauldron and use the charge to play the card "for free" on your own turn.
Your explanation on Ice Cauldron is wrong. The mana it creates can only be used in the exiled card. In other words, the use of IC is to divide the cost of a card over two turns. You can exile a Ulamog with 5 mana then the next turn use the caudron to cast it and pay the other 5 mana as the caudron will give back the mana used the last turn. Its not a very good card, but it does have some uses
pre-watch, will edit after: I'll guess we see Sharazad, Naked Singularity, Oubliette, Chaos Orb (maybe), and Raging River on this list edit: 2-for-5, man I had forgotten some real doozies here...
Very nice list :) Even though I personally never thought of Phasing as complicated - to me, the mechanic made perfect sence from the moment I read what it does..
All of those cards are not too hard to understand. I wish they would print more of these unique cards instead of the copypaste ones today. Only Shahrazad is a bad card, but it is not confusing.
For the love of god, Banding isn't that difficult. Not any more difficult than "Enchantment Creatures" that are both creatures and auras at the same time.
You have never had an opponent exile a card from your hand to Force of Will or Misdirection their resolving Word of Command then. Or have them play the wrong land for you on your upkeep (or any other timing nightmare) Or have a judge call on the card, with a judge not already familiar with it@@Recon-cv1fe
My favorite phasing interaction is when you tide charm a token with an equipment and the equipment is just gone forever. Quick edit here, was unaware this was changed a few years back, apparently tokens no longer state based poof away when they phase.
Ice Cauldron did have the record when it came out for most number of words on a text box, at 105. That said, it honestly plays really simply. Instead of paying 4GG for your spell at once, you pay 2GG this turn at the remaining 2 the next turn. That's it, that's the whole card. (Also hilarious that for all the meming people have done on Ice Cauldron's wordiness, several cards from recent years have surpassed it, largely thanks to 2-sided cards)
Ponder, portent, preordain. Gitaxian probe. Dig through time, treasure cruise. Consecrated sphinx, rhystic study, phyrexian arena, sylvan library, necropotence. Brainstorm, divination, faithless looting, harmonize.. just to name a few
I like how Wall of Caltrops' flavor text starts immediately on the same line as the rules text instead of on the next line, it makes me imagine that the rules is being read off by some narrator who gets cut off mid-explanation by the character in the art going OW OW OW
