It was wild to watch reddit figure out Hogaak. When it first dropped, there was a lot of "that's weird, looks like an interesting commander card"... but then people started actually brewing with it and discovered just how easy it actually was to cast.
Your channel together with Rhystic studies are my fav mtg channels to know about the history of the tcg we all love. Keep up the great work, cheers. 👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻
I definitely appreciate there's next to zero chance we'll ever find out Jacob is involved in some Content Creator drama or some alt-right monster (lol) so it's safe to support the channel
Good list, but I'm a bit surprised Standard Simic Food (i.e. Oko) didn't make an appearance. That was a deck that had three cards banned from it right away (Oko, Once Upon a Time, and Veil of Summer), and each of those cards would go on to get banned in other formats too, so you can imagine how busted they were all in Standard at once!
I think the deck didn’t make the list because of the Field deck which stomped over Oko decks until the ban of FotD. That’s only after that Oko began to shine. Also, they were a lot of variation of this deck so it’s more about broken cards than broken deck in particular
same with Mind's Desire storm decks...cause after memory jar, Mind's Desire is the fast card to get banned in a format which was 6 or so days i think he had a video bout covering the fastest banned cards in a format..infact i think Desire was banned FASTER then Memory Jar i think
Caw Blade was beatable. Like a really skilled or talented high school kid at basketball. These decks are all examples of a grown man playing with boys.
@@Skyotonic There were a lot of Tendrils of Agony decks; even after Mind's Desire there were a lot of nasty ones. I'm also surprised Psychatog didn't get mentioned. But hey, my local metagame was weird. (Our FNMs were Legacy at that time.)
Oh man, now *this* is a list I can get behind. Even though not a single deck from Vintage made the list (which I guess makes sense, since nothing is banned there), I will still find a way to suggest that you should do "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)" by sending you lightly played copies of Memory Jar with requests written in various tones for the video on it!
To this day, I DESPISE Hogaak as a card. I'm a big fan of unique cards like Bridge from Below existing for design tinkering around with in different formats, and when this abomination of a card came out, WotC decided to hit LITERALLY EVER OTHER CARD in the deck until they FINALLY banned it in Modern. It was a clear case of them wanting to push sales on MH1 and for the card to be played and bought. It wasn't until even AFTER they banned all the other cards that they FINALLY banned Hogaak. Even after that, though, they didn't unban the other cards, which is infuriating.
Way back in 1994, I ran a deck at an event on the Queen Mary in Long Beach that never let my opponent take a turn, It had the entire power 9 in it with the basic premise of playing artifacts that generate more mana then they cost and then using Hurkyl's Recall to return them to my hand and repeat the process over and over again until I could fire off a Time Twister (or, alternatively, a Time Walk). Then repeats the process again with even more artifacts and Hurkyl's Recalls. Regrowth returns the Time Twister (or Time Walk) to my hand allowing me to repeat the entire sequence with an ever-increasing amount of mana. Fastbond would let me play multiple lands and Candelabra would eventually get used to untap the lands. Constantly repeating the Time Twister over and over again (or the Time Walk), the whole time building more and more mana until finally Brain Geysering my opponent's entire deck. Since this was in a best 2 out of 3 match format with a one-hour time limit, I could legally take 59 minutes before finally casting the BG because I was mana gathering the whole time (not considered stalling). Typically, I would therefore advance after only one game was actually played without my opponent ever seeing a turn. This deck was ridiculously broken and, appropriately, its contents would cost over $100,000 to reproduce the deck today. People were stunned at how the deck worked. It was about the Time Twister more than the Time Walk. Not taking infinite turns, but one continuously long turn was better. I would use City of Brass and often take 20 damage during this one turn but because death did not resolve until end of phase, when I brain geysered my opponent they lost immediately and so my life total being zero was irrelevant. Since Mark Rosewater and Alan Comer helped design the deck, I think the three of us may have been responsible for the banning of several cards and certain other rules changes that occurred shortly after the event. The power 9 were restricted by then, but running 4 Demonic Tutors and 4 Regrowths was still legal. In any case, that was both the most broken deck in history and the most expensive one. ;)
Hmm I’m trying to remember what event took place at the Queen Mary in 1994… Also, I think Comer was around in 94 but I don’t remember Rosewater designing any decks back then. We’re you running a 40 card deck and hand-shuffling with no sleeves? Demonic Tutor was restricted very early, even before Mind Twist.
@@Rorschachqp It was one Demonic Tutor and 4 Mystic Tutors. I may have the year wrong, but it was definitely on the Queen Mary. Mark, Alan and I all played at the Costa Mesa Women's Club (no women in sight) and I eventually opened a store in Tustin, however briefly, which Mark attended regularly. I recall Mark winning a St. Patrick's Day tournament where the prize was a Black Lotus. Who knew? It was a 60-card deck... and, yeah, no sleeves. Ridiculous right? Alan was the inspiration of the deck. He had built a variation that I tuned. As new releases came out, cards often showed up to improve the deck. But, it was only briefly playable.
@@michaelawilliams Ok if it was Mystical Tutor then we're talking about 1996/97 and that makes a heck of a lot more sense. Alan Comer was there, Mark Rosewater was still in So Cal. I probably seen/met you like 20 times then since I went to just about every Women's Club back then on Saturdays. I'm guessing then that this was Pro Tour Los Angeles, the 6th ever Pro Tour and the 2nd one in Long Beach. I believe I was judging at that event. In fact after I went to bed after making my comment above, I seem to recall someone telling me about a deck like yours at the Women's Club. That's pretty cool.
This deck doesn't mention Long's Burning Desire or Trix. Although, Trix wasn't snap-banned as soon as it emerged, it was pretty dominant, and eventually mitigated by 2 bannings (and it played 6 cards that were ultimately banned/restricted in various formats). But Burning Desire got snap-banned right after Mind's Desire was printed.
@@japrogsch The traditional Necro deck was more Suicide Black than anything else. You were just dumping as many cheap threats into play, using Drain Life to get back some life, and then drawing a bunch of cards to keep doing it each turn with Necropotence. Trix was a dedicated combo deck. Sometimes you even Donate'd Necropotence to your opponent to lock them out of drawing cards. The main package in Trix was Illusions of Grandeur and Donate. Necropotence was just gravy on top of an already solid shell.
@@nekrataali NecroPotence was a card advantage deck. "Hymn to Tourach", "Hippi", "Larrys Nevin Disk/Necropotence" (Place cards on the stack then Kill the board). Its only real weakness was to decks that kill mana supply (Prison decks= Winter Ord + Icy) (Turbo Statis)(Armageddon) or Burn decks.
There was a strange combo with Wall of Roots, because at one point there was something between turns where you could put as many counters on the wall and get the mana in you upkeep.
My friends and I started during urza's saga (i.e. the beginning of urza's block). It was a wonderful time. At the time people were lamenting about combo winter, we had no clue about whats going on in the world and just play with cheap echo critters.
KCI was a problem because: 1) every match you basically have to give a long explanation of how stuff works, then probably a judge is gonna get called 2) the loop isn't deterministic, so you can't just do it once then say "yeah I do that 10 more times", you actually have to play out every rep 3) one of the most boring decks to play against because it's hard to interact with it if Ironworks is down... so you're watching your opponent take 15 min turns and doing absolutely nothing
@@danlorett2184 what do you mean with the loop isn’t deterministic? The loop(s) (its plural, because there are a bunch of different loops to generate infinite mana with that deck) are all deterministic. They don’t need to play it out.
When I saw the title of this video, I was hoping it was going to be a video about the most broken interactions in decks. Like the deck using Mirror Entity to stack triggers - literally winning with stack manipulation. Or Project 420, which abuses the "+1/+1 and -1/-1 counters annihilate each other" rule. There probably have been some other crazy ones that I don't know about though too.
Honestly, I am super surprised vintage Long.dec didn't make an appearance. Sure, it doesn't work with post-M10 rules now, but piloted optimally (which was super hard to do, even at the professional level), it had something like a 60% turn 1 win rate. It also lead to the restriction of a lot of cards in vintage, most prominently Burning Wish. If I recall correctly, the only reason so few players played Long.dec was because it was too hard for most professional players to pilot.
What part no longer works? Long.dec got both Burning Wish and LED restricted in Vintage, the turn 1 win potential rate bordered closer to 70% (against a goldfish). Being able to Crack LEDs in response to your BWish to get 3 Mana and pay for the Yawg Will out of the board was way too strong. Deck should be number 1.
@@davidelrod7865 Exile and sideboard used to be the same zones pre-M10. Burning Wish could originally be used to fetch Yawgmoth's Will from the sideboard and recur Yawgmoth's Will or cards exiled with Yawgmoth's Will. I don't know how important that interaction is though.
@@DeviousPie2 lol, you're totally right, I completely forgot about that because they said "from outside the game" which was both. And to answer your question, it was actually very important because it meant you only needed a single BWish to go off
I used a variant version of an Affinity deck when i was 13-14. I stumbled across the strategy when I got a Skull Clamp in a booster pack and combined it with Nim Shrieker - i was a god. I won a magic tournament and multiple booster packs. Those were the days.
I've been playing standard decks against each other from different eras for more than a decade (we call it Ultimate Standard) and I can confirm that Academy is one of the strongest standard decks ever, also the standard version of Memory Jar, which didn't get played much before it got banned, was very strong. Two more decks that deserve mention: Spiral Blue, which was the version of Academy after the first round of bans - this deck reinvented itself as a draw-go build with lots of counterspells, waiting to play Mind Over Matter when it was time to go off and use Mana Vault instead of Tolarian Academy to generate mana. Spiral Blue actually beats Academy and Memory Jar (counterspells tend to block combo decks) so it might be one of the best ever, except that it does have a weakness to aggro. The other deck is Simic Food, or the Oko deck... also a standard deck... this deck actually beat Academy in our testing, and went undefeated across two years of matches. The Simic Food deck is crazy strong.
One of the most impressive parts about Eldrazi's dominance is that the three best decks in that format were all different variants (UW the best, Colorless, and RG also top decks)
I started MTG just before Mirrodin. I remember pulling an Arcbound Ravager from a pack, having no idea what it was at the time, and someone gave me some shit in trade for it. got ripped off a lot in my early days.
The reason that the Necropotence deck didnt get the banhammer like later stuff was the general idea of banning was not very strong back then. We just suffered through.
Plus stuff was restricted/banned from the deck in Standard, but Necropotence kind of became the marque card from Ice Age so WotC was reluctant to ban it, like how Hogaak survived the initial ban. Zuran Orb was restricted and later banned, Mind Twist went from restricted to banned, and Hymn to Tourach and Strip Mine were both restricted (Standard used to have a restricted list in the early days when it was still called Type 2). When Extended was first created, Ivory Tower, Zuran Orb, Strip Mine, Demonic Tutor, and Mind Twist were on the initial ban list, and Hypnotic Specter was added shortly after. Despite all the efforts, Necropotence was eventually restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy and later Extended too.
@@michaelcarstater2097 people who weren't there have no idea how oppressive it was. I played a tournament where I was the only deck not running it. The. Whole. Tournament.
thassa's oracle in historic. the deck ran 3 treasure hunts 1 oracle 4 mystic sancuary and a ton of islands, but wasn't really a problem until abundant harvest let you splash green and save 1 mana, thassa's oracle was banned shortly after, and historic brawl's card size requirement was changed from 60 to 100.
i have created a year ago (Modern Horizons release) a deck that MtgGoldfish presented two weeks ago...i call it Riot Hunt and it can win in round 3 most of the times. Ruination Rioter (instead of Thassa's Oracle) 3 Tresure Hunts and Phyrexian Tower. Enjoy :)
@@facepalmjesus1608 Im using zenith flair currently, but have been abusing treasure hunt since it was added, back then the win condition was awaken the erstwhile with reliquary tower... have you considered adding abundant harvest, saves a mana at the cost of a bit of consistancy? also subing a hunt for seek new knowlge is pretty good I think, haven't got to play this one much because I don't have the Phyrexian Towers. also mystic sanctuary can prevent you from running out of hunts before you've padded your graveyard enough...
@@simic0racle157 seek for knowledge is a double edged sword...it can seek 2 hunts while you have no other hunt in library available. there i gave a list of my deck in MtgGoldfish video titled ''I won on mulligan to one''
@@facepalmjesus1608 it is for sure, getting the ratios right is tough if you want to improve consistency, adding more cards to start with can prevent mulliganing to zero, but with 1 win con you're basically casting every card in the deck, my testing in the current meta you can spend about 10-14 mana before you die for doing nothing all game, and orwatta, bosiju and the like don't do enough to justify the mana spent on them.
I wasn't able to find it but have you done a video on the most surprising decks? Basically like Decks that were very good but no new cards came out to help them. Someone just discovered them even though all the cards had been out for years. If thats even a thing.
Funny how Flash Hulk is a combo that includes exactly one card of each color, although I guess color fixing is not much of an issue when you're only actually casting one of them.
The most broken deck is the EDH deck my friend created designed to copy Soldier of Fortune's ability to force everyone to shuffle their decks over and over. Most broken decks kill you quickly. That abomination actually caused us repeated physical pain until we conceded.
I'm confused how the locus lands could produce 9 mana on turn 3? Cloudpost and vesuva come into play tapped, so I assume we play those turn 1 and 2. Then glimmerpost gives us our third loci on turn 3 (gaining us 3 life) and giving us 3 (cloud) + 3 (vesuva) + 1 (glimmer) = 7. I must be missing something?
I think long.dec should have made the list Tendrils / Storm based decks have been an archetype ever since, and the original list with Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamonds made turn 1 and 2 wins almost guaranteed! This led to the restriction of multiple cards. For Vintage, this was very rare. Also, Workshop decks with 4 Trinispheres were busted to the point that games would end without the opponent ever being able to cast a single spell. Wizards had to come out and say that they "actually want both players to be able to play their cards"
Other people have been making comments on Storm, Necro, Dredge, and Cawblade, so I'd like to mention: • MUD when it got to play four copies of Trinisphere. Coupled with Crucible of Worlds and Wasteland, the Unholy Trifecta meant you mulligan'd until you found Force of Will. Otherwise, you would be locked out of playing Force of Will before losing to Juggernaut and Sundering Titan. This doesn't factor in the Shops player not having Trinisphere, but dropping Chalice of the Void for 0 and 1, which would still lock the opponent out of mana as they couldn't play moxen, Lotus, or Sol Ring. • Weissman, 4-CC, 5-CC, Keeper, U/W Draw-Go....the deck has many names, but the name it's most frequently known as is simply "The Deck." It was one of the original reasons for creating a format that had a separate banlist and not just a restricted list. Balance, Library of Alexandria, Mana Drain, Strip Mine, Mind Twist, Merchant Scroll, and (of course) the Power 9 all remained on the banned and restricted list, largely due to one of MtG's oldest decks. The last card to get unbanned that was originally banned to stop The Deck was Regrowth. Other cards formerly banned/restricted include Mirror Universe and Recall. I'd honestly put this deck at #1. The number of cards in The Deck that HAVE NOT been banned because of its power is vastly lower than the number of banned cards. And most of the cards that never got banned are the ABUR dual lands lmao
Long.dec? It had an 80% turn one win rate in vintage and lead to LED and Burning Wish both being restricted. It's also partially to blame for the way wishes work being changed completely.
I played on a PTQ against Jar. This was before everything was on the internet so I didn’t even know what I was getting into. I played R/W jank (white weenie burn). If I remember correctly Adrian Sullivan had a hand in making that deck a thing.
Necro should have totaly made it in. The turn 1 hymn or hippie (or multiples) were the oppressive bit, combined with no muligans meant you could often mana screw someone before they even got to play, with no possible counterplay. It was also the origin for 'winter' as a name an era of dominance of a deck.
Everytime I see flash I think I would love to see this evoke-like effect beeing part of blue color pie, maybe on for 4 mana instant spells or 3 manas sorcery.
Flash is one of those cards where it needed that "Power level Errata" to keep it in check but then wotc recalled all the errata then oh boy..things went off the rails..
I kinda expected to see dragonstorm on here. That gave birth to one of my favorite stories about someone getting all the way to finals, only for their opponent to have them combo and let them go through the combo, only for them to be unable to find xD Which they preceded to do in the next game lol. Storm lists usually have a heavy skill component though, so a much lower showing.
I would also put on the list the T2 (also possible it was Extended i do not remember well) black/white combo deck from the Urza block running Yawgmoth will - bargain - academy rector and skirge familiar for mana engine,absolutly mad busted deck from the combo winter I witness the combo winter,i was there I was playing it,it was so brutal but so fun to be involved Great video great list thank you
Tommi Hovi is a legit blue player. I built my Turbo stasis deck around his build and also made a tolarian deck based on his buiild. Too bad the tolarian deck was so OP cards got banned. BUT! building these decks gave me a HUGE cache of valuable cards that i got cheap when they were first released.
super surprised you didnt mention standard kawblade, got jace and stoneforge banned in standard, which for the time hadnt seen a ban since affinity. i remember watching videos of people saying stoneforge and jace will never be banned and then it happening. i think it was "the magic show."
At state tourney for Connecticut Affinity Ravanger literally was the only deck in top 8. The mirror matches would of been unbearable to watch if the venue didn't have a bar in the building lol
Extended High Tide was pretty busted when they printed Time Spiral and Frantic Search. Academy had been banned before Frantic Search was printed and High Tide continued from that. I won multiple local tournaments with tide back then. Wasteland did nothing against it and it sported 4x Force of Will and 4x Counterspell for protection. Kai Budde also won GP Vienna in 1999 with High Tide.
Waiting for Slivers or some kind of insane burn deck...or my particular favorite, a particularly well made counter deck. I haven't played magic in quite some time...
I HEAVILY disagree about Ravager affinity not being too powerful in extended. We were testing a extended Ravager deck that was half normal affinity aggro, half atog/disciple of the vault/fling or ravager combo. You either got the insane combo start and killed people pretty consistently on turn 3, or you got your relatively normal affinity start... and won on like t5 instead. It was extremely consistent, and Ravager itself made the deck extremely resilient. This version of ravager still had Cranial plating and Aether Vial too. Even post sideboard the deck was just bulldozing. You either had your t2 rack and ruin to make it a game, or you were almost always scooping. The deck was EXTREMELY strong.
leaving off cascade Valki seems like an oversight to me. the deck only lasted a few weeks, but got the cascade rule changed, and helped get both tibalt's trickery and SSG banned out of the format.
I don't know what I'm more surprised at, Flash Hulk only being number 2, or Caw Blade not even making the list, just goes to show how brutal a format can get when there is a single dominant deck that rules out all other ways to play.
To me, Academy is the father of them all. It is not the oldest one, but the first which totally gave the sensation of a really broken build, and not just a well-played combo. Especially considering the decks it was against at those times. (and, by the way, a land that gives a blu mana for each ARTIFACT? Really WotC?! :P)
Maybe not a top 10 after seeing the list, but BIG but Caw Blade should of been mentioned somewhere. If we are talking format warping decks, Decks that literally drove people away from the game. It also had put up some of the best or worst depending on who you talk to on top cuts as well. I remember the format and literally went and played legacy because of the deck. But your list is still a really good list.
As a non-Magic player (who loves this channel anyways) I wondering how many of these decks manage to get the key cards that early into their hand? For example for Flash Hulk on turn 2, you must basically have these 2 cards plus 2 lands in your starting hand. Sounds kinda inconsistent but maybe I'm overlooking something
The deck has no lands. It generates mana through artifacts that cost 0 mana Black lotus: (0 mana artifact) - Sacrifice it to add 3 mana of any color Demonic Tutor: (1B sorcery) - Search any card in your deck and put it in your hand How it wins: 1- Deck Build: 4 copies of Flash Hulk, 4 copies of Jar, 4 copies of Demonic Tutor (to place Jar and/or Flash Hulk in your hand) and fill the rest with all 0 mana artifacts that generates mana you can find; 2- Play all cards from the starting hand then activate Jar to get another 7 cards; 3- Set 2 copies of Flash Hulk; 4- Play another Jar: Flash Hulk deals 14 damage each copy for a total 28 damage 5- Congratulations, victory on Turn 1 before opponent even gets to play the game.
Completely off topic, are you from New England? I noticed you wear the Boston Red Sox hats. I'm from New Hampshire myself. Love your videos. Keep the content coming!
Sort of. I grew up mostly in New Mexico, but my parents were divorced and my dad lived in Massachusetts, and I went there two months every summer - during baseball season! The Red Sox are my only New England team.
had to teach a legacy player that let me play with his decks that ravager could sac it self to it self to move all its counters if you had too, he didnt think it could
