Overrated CEDH Cards | Episode 076 

Opposition agent and notion thief also have the effect that Lavinia and Boromir do where your opponents won’t play the cards that give them value so in a way you’re making it so that cards in your opponents hands can’t be played

Opposition Agent is the best black card and probably the best piece of interaction a deck can run. It is interaction that gets you ahead and leaves a stax piece in play. There is no counterspell I would play instead of oppo agent.

Borne Upon a Wind also doesn't lose you the game if things don't work out

Isn't eating counterspells a symptom of a good card? If I get to decide when my opponents use their interaction, then I get to decide when they are weak.

Something i desperately wanted to hear in the Gemstone Caverns discourse but didnt recieve was in what deck would one NOT run GSC? If it's overrated and/or overplayed, where ought it be cut? I feel like the downsides cited arent big enough to warrant cutting; at the end of the day its still a land. Playing Gemstone Caverns on turn 2 holds more positive momentum than missing a land drop, but we moan and complain about having not gotten the pregame action *Edit: grammar*

Oppo agent is best in a stax deck as a "you cannot tutor" with a gotcha. Its an effect that's worth running but it's a stax peice. Not a counterspell

I strongly disagree with your takes on Oppo and Thief you don't play them because of the "gotcha moment" you play them because they stop arguably the 2 most powerful things you can be doing in cedh: tutoring and drawing cards. I would tend to agree than more often than not the "I got your fetchland with my Oppo" isn't always the optimal play and that people really need to capitalize more with their Oppos, but to say that doing that is worthless is a stretch. keeping an T1 Oppo into a fetch can absolutely destroy an oponent gameplan while you make sure you don't miss your 3 next land drops while dropping a powerful stax piece on turn 1 (and we all know how much people like to fetch) with Thief, I understand that it has fallen out of flavor but not because of what you said but because of Orcish Bowmasters. again, you're not playing Thief because of that gotcha moment, you're playing to stop the most powerful thing a cedh player can do: drawing extra cards and I also disagree with your take on how everyone's gonna be unhappy to see it in play especially in today's meta. I mean if I see a Thief and the U farm player has a Rhystic and a Remora in play, me as a Naya or Mardu player will be more than happy you resolved your Thief, cause you're not drawing extra cards with it you're just stopping others from drawing and getting ahead with the game (hell, I might even try to protect it if the U farm player wants to remove it) good and entertaining video nonetheless ❤

Ooh boy there are some HOT takes in here about cards that have pretty well proven themselves.🔥I do love the discussion though, and we should be questioning why we play certain cards. As far as borne, I’ll give you some more solid ideas stronger than “pitches to force” lol. There are plenty of scenarios where it’s quite a bit more useful than Ezone and Final Fortune. Ezone cant be used if you draw into it during someone else’s turn. You also can’t breach Ezone back from the graveyard and win over there top of a boseiju. Imo final fortune is a completely different type of card and shouldn’t be compared to borne, and borne has more versatility than you give it credit for. An end step grand abolisher so you don’t have to spend that mana on your own turn is pretty good… All of this said, I am playing Blue Farm and borne is particularly well suited for the deck (and probably most grixis decks).

If they unbanned prophet of kruphix, would you call it overrated the same way you did seedborn muse? Or is the added benefit of flash good enough to make it justifiable?

Ragavan is a 1mv dork. It creates more consistency in enabling t2 rhystic. It's not a busted card, it's just played in all the red decks because it's a solid roleplayer, and outside of green, there aren't other options to do the same thing. Then it's sac fodder later when there are no open attacks. Also a lot of the creatures people play they want to stick around, and won't often block if it's a trade. I don't see anyone calling DRS or BoP overrated because they are put in every deck in their color identity. Ragavan is just another entry in this class of cards. Oppo is a way for non red decks to swipe a dockside. It's pretty bad if you're only ever stealing a fetch land or a weak tutor, or just snapping it off because you can, for all the reasons you guys mentioned. If people are playing around it, that means they aren't tutoring, that's good for the oppo player. It's like another counterspell, but it also promotes your own gameplan by replacing itself with something useful. Most games wincons are tutored for when there's a window, saving it to interact with win attempts stops those situations. Borne isn't amazing card that goes into all blue decks. Borne is a concession to the midrange engine tournament meta, so it goes in all blue decks so that you can sit back and pass and let someone else initiate teh stack war and then win on top. It's just sign of the times. You think gemstone is overrated? Do you think mox diamond is overrated too? Exploration isn't the same, you have to pay G to cast it. Gemstone is another way to enable an early draw engine which is one of hte most powerful things to do in the meta right now. Maybe it shouldn't be in every deck, but it definitely warrants the high inclusion rate for the play patterns it enables.

final fortune is over rated. ive seen more wins from borne than final fortune. ive seen final fortune lose more games than ive seen it win.

I've seen a turn 1 Opposition Agent win games singlehandedly.

Sylvan is bad in 4C or 5C, sure. I find it to still be pretty decent in Kinnan though. We don't have Demonic Tutor or some of the other cards you guys mentioned

A lot of people are tutoring for rhystic early and i use my oppo to basically steal that or steal a win con if the game goes to a grind. Idc if the oppo dies after i got the rhystic or win con 🤷 it staying on the board is basically upside at that point and you could also politic your way to keeping it on the board under certain pod compositions. Deff not over rated imo.

Quite agree with defense grid. I also see Lavinia also comes up with the same problems quite often when my opponent plays its, and it helps another player win. The tcards are good but t timing of playing it is really important.

Completely disagree on Seedborn Muse and Gemstone Caverns, somewhat disagree on Muddle and Sylvan Library. Seedborn is great in Thrasios decks because it usually wins by itself and it's played because green has so many creature tutors. You find Muse, stick it and win. It only requires a single tutor and protection. Sylvan Library is one of the worst playable draw engines, but still strong in low color lists. Muddle is great but only in lists without black tutors. Gemstone is an autoinclude in every deck. My top 2 overrated cards: 1) Thassa's Oracle. It's the best wincon in the format, yes - but only in decks with black. People are putting it in Kinnan, in Urza, in Thrasios decks without black and whatever. Stop. You can only get rid of your library by drawing it or by milling it all with a Breach line. If you have access to your entire deck, there are better more compact lines without dead cards. 2) Wheels. Wheels belong in turbo lists and almost nowhere else. The amount of times I've seen people commit suicide by casting a wheel and passing only to have someone else win with those 21 cards they handed out for free...

Honestly, i feel this is not a great topic of discussion. Saying you arent calling these cards bad, then in the same sentence literally saying its such a bad card.

over an hour of bad takes. no mention of wishclaw talisman, lavinia, urza's saga, chain of vapor, mana drain, dauthi voidwalker, serra ascendant, sensei's top, dispel. save your time and watch a gameplay video where all these "overrated" cards win games instead.

I feel like your idea of cEDH is different than many others. Just as an example, based on what you guys said about Oppo.. yea someone casts/resolves it and the tutoring stops there and it becomes a stax piece that doesn't do much. I agree it does rely on the gotcha effect. Nonetheless.... There are SO MANY new players in cEDH, people who started playing cEDH less than 2 or 1 year ago and, truth to be told, some new MTG players i know started learning MTG immediately with cEDH. My point being: the amount of people who play cEDH and won't deal with Oppo, forget about Oppo and therefore cast a tutor with it on the table, can't do proper threat assessment and therefore will allow the Oppo player to win the game because nobody else can tutor... It's overwhelming in my opinion. It happens a lot in my community. So yea back to the beggining, if you guys always play cEDH at the upmost perfect level yes i agree. But when i play in lgs or tournaments, it's clear the amount of players who lack game experience and end up making these overrated cards much better and less overrated. What i just said about Oppo also applies to some other cards in this list (Notion Thief gets forgotten, Ragavan is left constantly unblocked because one player doesn't want to trade...) In a utopia near perfect experienced cEDH community i agree with this list though.

Completely disagree on Opposition Agent, I have won more games when I cast it and protected it than it has been "useless" or was just dealt with very easily. This is, however, just my own empirical experience and not backed by stats. Also for people using necro, it is the only other instant apart from Final Fortune that cost 2 and is cheaply castable on your end step. I'm not advocating for playing it OVER final fortune, but if I'm in grixis and use necro I'm playing both. Statistically if you pull up edhtop16 cedh decks playing those three also have higher win percentages compared to playing only one effect to capitalize on necro, and they also seem to be above average on winrate overall (i.e. over 26% wr). The guy from Cedh TV actually did a comparative analysis on this with data from major tournaments if you're interested in hearing more about it, but I dont remember the video name.

Borne apon the wind can win over other players wins also can be played over an exhausted counter war

Topic of video isnt bad, tone of video is, including snarky responses in comments. From the viewers standpoint it looks like you are talking down to them. You're literally rolling your eyes when referring to conversations about cards with people on the internet. And If you come with hot takes, you gotta assume there will be rebuttle. Just my opinion of course (:

Mostly hard agree. It’s pretty easy to assess these cards in face value and ppl do the thing twice out of 10 instances of seeing it and will swear by it, disregarding the lack of consistency the card presented in the 8/10 instances when it could have been any other card, even a land and it would’ve been better. Only card I’m inbetween on is Faerie Mastermind, it was the opposite. There was probably 7/10 where it drew 3+ cards and a couple where it carried me. But those 3 games I was so frustrated at my opps for not playing any card advantage engines… also same thing happened with Lotho & Oghma some games where it’s turn 7 and they’ve done nothing due to the nature of how the game turned out.

nah i agree to defense grid, rag, sylvan, muddle, and most of the 2 drops. valid points on most of these. i feel like borne is alright but im still more high on emergence zone

Agree with a good amount of this, Birgi, Ragavan etc. Not bad, just not slam - dunks. Borne...hmm. It isn't huge for everybody. Zur obviously, Breya is insane with it with her combo density allowing her to sandbag on top of people consistently. Gotta say even though I don't agree with all of these, the reasoning the both of you brought up certainly had me thinking. Some really good points here.

There's also some confliciting logic. You say that people misplaying into oppo doesn't make it better but then later with notion thief you're fine letting misplays count to make a card worse? Like i agree that notion thief is over rated but people holding up 4 mana and doing nothing instead of progressing their board is deff a skill issue/misplay. I personally think including people misplaying into a card is something to consider in terms of strength. EDH and cEDH doesn't exactly have the strongest perfect players. Even some of the best tournament grinders be making some wild mistakes due to playing all day or just forgetting something.

I agree 100 percent with Defense Grid. I mostly agree with Gemstone. It’s great on turn 0 when you don’t go first, have something you’re willing to exile, and then have the one mana interaction still in your hand. Otherwise, it’s the worst land in your deck.

Going back to this after todays episode, when Born Upon a Wind won a game and in the game review was said that it did what Flash was trying to do but better, is kind of amusing

Ok, but Ledger Shredder is actually not overrated. It was the best out of the three that you listed. People are just excited to play with the newer ones. It's legitimately a baby Kraum; no card advantage but it does the Kraum thing increasing card selection. The floor of Ledger Shredder is higher than Faerie Mastermind because it doesn't require your opponents to do anything to get benefit. Every game I play a Ledger Shredder I draw typically 3-4 cards MINIMUM. Malcolm is the worst of the bunch, literally only use is pitching to FoW.

Opposition Agent= your ops cant search. or it means an "attempt" to remove is made because tutoring is key to winning for alot of strategies. even OP at sorc speed is powerful. I really enjoy PwP but this take was pretty dog shit lol

38:35 did he say it can tutor for 2 drops?

Something that really bugs me about magic discourse is the whole "it dies to interaction, therefore it's bad" especially in regards to creatures. Dying to interaction is not a really valid reason to not like a card, because aside from very few cases, every card is vulnerable to interaction. Not really a pointed criticism at this podcast, just something general I've noticed come up a lot. Opposition Agent as overplayed in particular is kinda laughable, it's the best tutor hate that exists because it's asymmetrical and is at worst, ramp. I've blown out people by sniping their blue mana source or stealing a crucial Sisay activation. What was missed in this discussion is that it hits all tutoring, not just from spells but also from abilities, which is something that happens constantly in cEDH. I agree that it is very easy to misplay, and just grabbing a land off a fetch is rarely the right call, but the fact that there will never be a game in cEDH that Oppo won't at least have a better target than a fetch activation is why I disagree completely with that take. Nothing does what Oppo does at it's rate and with it's flexibility. Agreed on Birgi, it's powerful but is very win more more often than not. Agreed in principle on Notion Thief, it's very situational and is the biggest OBM target ever. However, if I'm paying more mana for a game changing big blue creature, I'm playing Hullbreaker Horror 9 times out of 10 over Consecrated Sphinx. It's uncounterable, flash speed, polices the stack and goes infinite with a pile of dirt. Sphinx is good no doubt, but it's wayyyyy weaker than HBH and does not have the potential to do end games quite as quickly. Agreed on Ragavan. It's a good early game piece but falls off really hard in more midrangeish metas. Feels like a card that only should be in low color red piles. Agreed on Sylvan Library. Only viable in low color green decks that don't have black or blue. Hell, even Red can generate a lot of impulse based card advantage. As others have said Borne Upon a Win let's you win over the top of other people's win attempt. Final Fortune does not let you do that. I love FF but I think URX turbo piles want both because they do allow turbo decks to find their windows. Sometimes you have to jump in line which FF does, sometimes it has to be on the stack, which BUW does. Plus it cycles at worse :P. Emergence Zone has major problems as a colorless land which should be played very, very sparingly. Agreed though that it's not a staple. Muddle is also pretty mid and suffers from a lack of flexibility for how weak both halves of the card are. If it was a regular counterspell or an instant speed tutor it'd be a staple. Faerie Mastermind is very tricky. I've seen it do a lot of work, I've also seen it only draw 3 cards. I think it's the best of these Blue Fliers. Ledger is only good with Breach decks I've found. Otherwise, great point. Defense Grid is pretty much only good in non white non blue turbo/storm lists. Outside of those circumstances, I'd rather run a real silence or counterspell in it's place. Or a more devastating stax piece like trinisphere. Gemstone Cavern and Mox Diamond are the lotto tickets of the format. Yes, they are terrible to draw, but they help make more mulligans keepable and help the early game in a way very few other cards are capable of. Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Caverns and The One Ring are the colorless staples of the format IMO and will stay that way for a long, long time because they all accelerate the early game in the way that is so uniquely cEDH (or are a fantastic card advantage engine that is very easy to play).

i wish there was more talk about what to run instead of, or what you’d be replacing with. especially a suggestion in the same colors.

They were not lying about some hot takes!

The thing you said about seedborne in retrospect that no one will let you have it and you love the fact it forces people to interact and deal with it is almost the same reason you dislike opposition agent and notion outside people "misplay" it. 👁👄👁

Saying Notion Thief is overrated is wild considering how much people wheel in cedh.

I think borne upon a wind is actually not bad . yes the pitch to fow fon misdirection chrome mox blah blah blah is part of the reason . I do agree is a win more card . But with rhystic and mystic in play after drawing ton of cards you can actually win on top of someone else . Being a player i would rather play a command tower for the turn then playing a e.zone or a.refuge for the turn .

Is this a serious video or a troll video? Because I didn't even want to watch it after the first 3 cards they read off . ... opp agent then birgi? ... yea... this video sounds like a video from command zone/game knights about how you should buy ultra pro sleeves and save money shopping on card Kingdom ... I think I'll stick with play to wins videos for now on 👌

I once one a game during someone's winning combat with Emergence Zone... think it's overrated like Born Against the Win lol

Stop the cap

I say you are 100% with Sylvan Library and I was roasted for having the same opinion aswell. Carpet of Flowers is also a good candidate for being overrated

I've been off Sylvan Library for over a year, and once The One Ring came out it was bulk to me.

Is such a bad argument to say that there is another card on ANOTHER COLOR that does something similar... color pie is a think and redundancy is a must in CEDH

I completely disagree with your argument against borne upon a wind. As well as opposition agent "gotcha factor" are you kidding? Four colored decks are dominating the format and have been for years now.. any sane person is going to run fetches tutors/ ramp. And by the way forcing your opponent to counter your opposition agent or path it away or something is way better than losing a way more important game piece to your strategy. If you're fully dependent on whether or not you're opposition agent resolves then you are a bad magic player. Plain and simple. Literally the whole purpose behind opposition agent is to slow the game down to put yourself in a winning position.

Sure playing a four mana card is the reason y’all lost that counter war, not because y’all countered the non game winning spells.

Opposition agent overrated ?? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAJAHAAH NICE TAKE

The Seedborn Muse reasoning to why it’s overrated isn’t right… against a live Kinnan activation it’s generally correct threat assessment to get rid of it if you can… games spiral out of control very quickly and let’s say you get 3 additional activations per turn cycle… it’s bc cards like Void Winnower and consecrated sphinx exist and can rear their ugly heads and takeover the game and all of a sudden your breech, dual caster twin flame isn’t live, your thoracle isn’t live, your dockside, gilded Drake you were gonna cheese them with, your witherbloom… you cannot risk seeing those cards bc then the Kinnan gets untapped lands and is possibly drawing more interaction and counterspells while you’re time walking yourself and functionally throw cards away from your hand bc the game is slipping away… This is also the reason Winota isn’t having success bc players respect Winota and know their deck can’t function if Winota exists with rule of laws and Thalia’s and tapped treasures/artifacts. Generally speaking, You kill Winota, & you kill seedborn.

Until green gets its own version of rhystic, mystic, esper sentinel type of draw engine Sylvan Library ain't goin nowhere. I'm surprised it hasn't already been outdated in green by power creep! They should make a green rhystic card that lets you draw when your opponents play a land!

Mostly I agree with you guys, but it is my firm believe you punted hard on Oppo. agent, either that or we are playing totally different games of cEDH, this is effectively a 400-card singleton format, you cannot just "play around" it, if you assume your opponents all have their 1-ofs available at any time, then you wouldn't ever tap out. Tutors happen every time, every game, most decks run about 10 of them, catching a demonic/vampiric and leaving oppo on board most times means it will not go away as most of your available answers to many threats usually come from fetching them into your hand/top via tutors, that's just my honest take.

I do love my sylvan library in azorius

A card I think is good enough for cEDH is painful quandary. Puts people into a rule of law situation except they will allow themselves to lose life under 20 before they respect it. Completely stops combo or storm wins and provides pressure throughout the game.

The Opposition Agent argument could be applied to Dockside right? Also another blessed day with TK & Ryan debating/upsetting players by picking on their cards.

What is this hypocrisy? "Opposition Agent isnt good because it relies on your opponents to mess up and play into it" while at the same time "I dont like Bourne, Ezone being a land is so much better". If your opponents try to sit there and jam a win while you literally have Ezone on the battlefield, that is so much worse than playing into an oppo. Even good players sometimes have to risk playing into an oppo, considering its hidden information. While literally just playing into a known Ezone is asinine. I had to make sure this wasnt a joke episode, these are some of the worst takes I've ever heard.

birgi is bonkers in zada.

I'm run oppo agent in sisay and no one can say i'm into it cause i can always hold mana for sisay activation

All i can say with this topic is, to each his own

Lets see that overrated commander episode!

In most games i Play ragavan is just a better mana Dork. If that counts as overrated I dont know what to say. Born upon a wind is a solid card especially if you are playing Necro. Also what Deck in red blue Plays Born upon a wind and not final fortune???

Saying that notion thief, opposition agent and born upon the wind are overrated seems like hating on control deck/cards.

Ragavan makes treasures and sometimes hits funny things

I seen your guys opinions on these cards. Now what im wondering is what should be ran in there place? And its all subjective to as well. Rog si loves borne. And i run oppo agent in my build as well. But i run oppo as a black mindcensor. Oppos strength is as a stax piece not a gotcha card. Turn one oppo in the first chair is brutal. Been there and seen it unfold. If you run necro. You run borne the synergy can cause a win before you discard. And if its in your necro pile luckily then you got counters to back it up. Defense grid is a beast in rogsi. Trinisphere is shit in rogsi. Why would i want my dark ritual to cost 3? We all need to remember that in certain builds some of these cards are monsters. And in some decks they are garbage as you said. Its all subjective to the build being played. Love the channel as always but rog si is a unique build that in the first 3 turns is the scariest deck at the table. And some of these BAD cards are the reason why. But i agree....gemstone sucks. I run e zone in rogsi instead.

I play like 5 of thease cards in thr new saruman

Your arguments of "you can play around it and others use it poorly" aren't great. Sure, you can play around it by never tutoring unless every single person is completely tapped out of all possible sources of black mana, but then just the *threat* of an opposition agent is doing its job. Sometimes you just can't play around it either because your life total is being pressured or others are set up for a win next turn cycle. Or just the fact that it's only 1-3 card in 98/99 so it's more likely someone doesn't have it than having it. As Ryan said, using it to gotcha a fetchland is bad almost every single time so saying it's an overrated card *because* someone does that doesn't make sense. As for the point of "it just eats a counterspell or removal/bounce," so does almost everything else. But the fact that it's a creature means is gets around a majority of the counterspells in the format. A hard removal spell means one of your other important creatures (commander, combo piece, etc.) isn't getting hit. And bouncing it stops it being relevant most of the time unless its controller has mana to recast it. My last two points are that it's not "just a counterspell" to a tutor, it effectively a commandeer. You're getting something relevant from them as well. Then, the "invisible" effect it has on the game. Once its on board, all tutors (including fetchlands) cease to be meaningful cards until its removed. And since tons of decks run 10+ tutors, that's a significant amount of dead draws. And of course, just like every other stax piece, it must be backed up with pressure, whether it's a combo or beats. So when it's not, that also disputes the "played poorly" argument.

These takes are so cold, except about notion theif, that card is hot garbage

Also, i feel validated for a lot of these. I've never been tempted to run gemstone cavern, and i felt like i was missing something.

If anything notion thief has become way more valuable thanks to the one ring and creature strategies leaking more into the meta. Sorry you have horrible timing for yours

So many of the arguments on here for why these staples are overrated are extremely cringy. Also just the presentation as a whole. Like, let’s get clicks by talking about BoaW (which is nonsense). Then we’ll fill content by talking about cards people aren’t even playing like Muddle the mixture

Agree with almost everything. I'm even making changes to my decks now. The one I think you're a little too hard on is sylvan library. Maybe it should be cut from blue decks, but if you don't have blue, I feel it makes the cut for draw effects.

9:15 man just described 99% of stax decks yet we still call those cedh.

Have either of these hosts ever won a cEDH tournament? FreedomWaffle has one of the highest winrates in cEDH and runs Opposition Agent, Borne Upon a Wind, Gemonstone Caverns, and Ragavan in his Tymna/Kraum deck. Should I trust him or just two guys who haven't won anything? "The card's intended purpose in the list could be fulfilled by a better card" -- which card fulfills Opposition Agent's role better? Also, 19:00, did you just argue that Notion Thief would be ... better ... without .. flash? You do know that you can cast other cards with your open mana on the end step before your turn, right?

Often times you said there are better cards for all of these situations but most of these cards are the 2nd or 3rd redundant copy because it is 99 cards. Optimizing the chance to get these effects is what cedh is all about. Use redundancy to get your combo as soon as possible. Though they are the worst copy, they are still another copy.

Love the channel but not sure I agree on the opp agent and thief being overrated unless you just mean overplayed in decks that don’t want it. The decks that play them should want them as stax pieces primarily - meaning you would want them in play even if you didn’t steal any searches or draws. I’m afraid the rational you guys were using on thief and opp agent would also be valid critiques against hullbreacher which is so good it’s banned. I’m with you on them not being worth a slot in non-stax decks.

Bro has never won the game on top of someone's thassa's oracle trigger

borne upon a wind is extrictly better because if someone combos u can combo in response using it's effect, if you would play final fortune u don't have that oportunity at all

Sorry but I definitely win with Kinnan because of Seedborn. It makes a huge difference if I drop 3 to 4 huge threats a turncircle instead of 1. Of course its bad if they interact to get rid of Seedborn, but they wouldve interacted with everythings else either way. If Seedborn stays, try to interact (for example) with a turn 2 Woid Vinnower, Concecrated Sphinx and Koma. Thats close to unstoppable.

Yeah ragavan is super overrated but as a sissay player I legit can't cut it cause there isn't a better legendary creature I could slot for it.

I mean the idea that an entire table has to band together to get rid of or play around an opposition agent gives it value. 3 mana to slow the game down for a turn or two or to make someone waste a counterspell on a card that isnt even a wincon in your deck? I dont see how thats bad. But with anyhing i guess it's how you look at it. The same thing can be said about notion thief. Literally almost everything in cedh is everyone trying draw out their deck in a single turn. Idk how its overrated when for the longest 90% of the games on here were which deck could resolve a boring Oracle first. Everything with a wincon in cedh becomes a counter fodder...i think it's more you just dont like the two cards because everyone has to react to them or the game is irritating. But dont feel that way about oracle or underworld breach and every card that every deck in cdeh plays. Yall also act like a consequeted sphenix isnt getting yeeted off the field as soon as someone tries to play it....or a rhystic study...like what are we doing here.

You bet your buckets I want an over rated commander episode! 😂

Carpet of flowers is really bad in the current meta, I'm surprised that didn't make it on the list. I disagree with ledger mostly because it doesn't die to bowmaster and you can trigger it yourself on the turn it comes out but agree Malcom and F mastermind are no good.

Lol it's one thing to be mistaken, but another thing to sound arrogant while doing it. Some of these takes are frustratingly obtuse, and the defenses for much of what they are saying are cherry picked strawperson arguments. Tbh, I think PWP videos have a too many questionable commanders, card inclusions, and misplays for these types of pontifications to evidence any real worth.

Wait since when is slowing the game down so you can win a bad thing? Like no you Opposition in response to a tutor snag a nice wincon ir engine piece for yourself and just like any counter spell you slow things down

Mate i would rather play Defense Grid over Trinisphere as at least the Grid allows my stuff to not cost 3 more on my turn. But then again Stax is always you have to be certain that you can get away with playing that card otherwise your opponents will win not you Though i will say i did not know Conqueror's Flail never existed, ima add it to my mono black storm

27:36 ryan running sylvan library in azorius? Dirty cheater!

So oppo is overrated because someone might remove it. Lol In cedh games it is very rare that oppo gets counterspelled. And you cant really play around it. It slows the game down until someone removes it. Ideally they remove it when theyre ready to win/make a big play. People who unnecessarily remove Opposition Agent just to not have to worry about it have bad resource management. Doesnt make the card less good, just requires careful thought when interacting with it

good talk. all of those things were words and topics. n that we can all agree baahahaha

With so many card draw engines - notion thief has been doing damage in my meta lately

The argument with Sylvan Library really made me think...I'm still gonna play it because it's a 2 mana card advantage engine, but I'm not going to fight over it anymore if someone tries to blow it up.

Birgi is so awsome in like kark sakashima but yes in most decks its overrated

Sylvan Library seems good enough still in non-dimir decks like Rocco or Minsc. Blue and black have better draw options, but I think it is up there for card draw outside those colors

Endurance is overrated :)

Isn't quicken better?

oppo being overrated because it "dies to removal" is such a bad take, oppo is overrated because we're in a rhystic/mystic meta rn and when you draw 20 cards after a stack fight you don't really need to tutor anymore

I’m currently working with Necro and borne upon a wind in blue farm replacing ad naus. If I can get the two together, great! If I can’t, I can cast borne and win on top of someone else’s attempt with a breach line. Does it belong in every blue deck? Nope. But it does have some homes I feel

100% I think Mnemonic Betrayal should be on the list. Yeah, it can be nuts sometimes, but I may have imprinted it to Chrome mox more times than I’ve actually a cast it

Nahhhhh

this episode is literally cope, honestly how can any of these cares be overrated if there is no other card that does anything similar in the 100 singleton format

Will you ever delve into Duel Commander again?

Love this episode! I completely agree with these assessments. I wish the community understood that "good" is rarely good enough anymore. Cards have to be almost perfect to gain deck slots these days. Of course, there are exceptions such as low color decks whose best tools are still the aforementioned cards. But, as a general rule we need to be more aggressive in evaluating cards. Thanks for putting this information out there. Keep creating content that encourages new thought. [Next up: when should I play Mystic Remora, turn 1 or...?]