Im 15 years old at the tempest prerelease. My opponent has a circle green and black on the board. Every turn for the last 4 while we are stalemated I am saccing my spike drone placing the counter on my lighting elemental and recurring him with disturbed burial. On turn 5 of time being called I rip spontaneous combustion and clear the board for my 1000/996 lighting elemetal to secure my first real top 8. Thank you for doing this video and giving me a place to share one of my greatest early memories
Activating cursed scroll when I had two of the same card in hand and watching my opponent get more and more salty as I kept "getting lucky" will always be one of my favorite legacy tournament memories.
you absolutely can intuition for 3 creeping chill and they will take 6. they don't go to any zone in between library and graveyard during the resolution of intuition.
@@TheResleevables People would sometimes include a Gaea's Blessing in their Intuition pile for this same reason. A Gaea's Blessing that his the graveyard if it's not chosen after a Fact or Fiction also triggers.
First time viewer, but playing the game since 94. This is a great dose of nostalgia and I enjoyed all 2.5 hours. I can say that this was my favorite period of magic (97-2001). These early power creep sets were very exciting and the game felt magical. Modern magic lacks identity, it’s a hodgepodge that has lost its immersive nature.
couldn't agree more, I quit around 2014, but I also think before 2005 was the best time in magic. In the past decade I only play a few old format drafts if they are offered online, and cube draft if nothing else.
The reason Gerard didn't get a card until Apocalypse is that characters got Legend cards almost always after they were killed or transformed or disappeared or something terrible happened to them. Among the crew, Ertai gets a card when they leave him at the Portal in Exodus (and then he is later captured and corrupted--and then killed), Mirri gets hers in Exodus when she falls out of the ship (after she is badly wounded earlier in the story) trying to stop Crovax, who got a card in the previous set when he was cursed with Vampirism, etc. Hanna gets hers in Invasion when she gets compleated (before that word was used). In the Odyssey storyline, all the main characters don't get their cards until after they're dead (e.g., Jeska), and same in Onslaught--Phage and Akroma come only after they get merged in the storyline and Karona gets her card in Scourge because that's when she shows up and is defeated. There are some exceptions. Orim gets a card in Tempest and she lives the entire saga, surviving the invasion and marrying Cho-Manno...who gets a card in Mercadian Masques despite never having anything bad happen to him either. Starke of Rath gets a card in Tempest too and he's not killed until Mercadian Masques by Xantcha, which we see on the card Vendetta. Gerard, Sisay, etc. all live until the very end of the Weatherlight story; Sisay gets her card in Invasion for I'm not sure what reason as she doesn't lose the ship until much later in Apocalypse (when Yawgmoth is defeated). She never dies and is alive after it's all over. Gerard is killed in Apocalypse and gets his card then, though.
That's a hilarious quirk of early Magic I didn't realize, I get making cards to note a change but I wonder what the thinking was behind not giving them an initial card
I really feel like I'm getting the best insights about what it was like to be there durring these sets. Amazing content for someone like myself who lived overseas when mtg was getting rolling and couldn't start until Odyssey. Tempest was a solid set for sure.
I used to be a huge lore nerd, and the weatherlight saga is a sad tale. MaRo actually came up with it and everything through stronghold was his baby, but WotC got cold feel as players were confused by the out of order story on cards. There was no real consistent way to get the story back then-even the novelization of tempest block didn't arrive until years later! Everything exodus onward was a different story team, and that's where a lot of the inconsistencies come in. I'd love to see the original plan fleshed out! Loving this series even if I think you gave short shrift to weatherlight. 😅 if you wanted a good resource for lore for the rest of the weatherlight saga, look up the old article series "remember the weatherlight"!
If you line the cards up in a certain order, it tells the exact story card-by-card. Sadly there's no way to know this order from the cards themselves. The Duelist published the set in order with little captions that provided more of the story--I really liked that! It made me learn and get super invested in the story. They only did that for this block because they started selling novels for the story with Saga block....I was big sad about that.
I can't even begin to describe how much I adore this series. I love that the videos are getting longer, 2 hours and 44 minutes is a wonderful length and I could easily consume more per episode. This series really feels like going down memory lane with competitive nerd friends; a treat that is rare for me these days. This show is as S tier as it gets.
I have absolutely nothing but fond memories of this set. Went to the prerelease at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center in Seattle, my 15th birthday. My first real Magic tournament and gateway drug toward one of the most financially debilitating habits of my life. Wouldn't trade it for anything.
The problem Patrick mentioned about precons persisted even into Premier type products. Commander 2013 had one deck that sold multiple times the amount of the others because it had True Name Nemesis in it. It was so much of a problem they changed on the fly how retailers could order product.
I love Tempest, so much! I remember getting a bunch of cards from the wrath cycle and urza block when I was 11/12. I remember reading the cards for the lore and the lands, oh the lands!
my guess is pretty well, although i think shadow and buyback are gonna get panned from a gameplay perspective. buyback especially, good buyback cards are really boring and stagnant.
Very disappointed the decklist showcase from the Weatherlight show didn't become a permanent feature. This set has so many constructed staples and I would have loved to see some of those decks.
In the LORE section when Patrick mentions the Enterprise and the Borg Cube, they show a picture of the NCC 1701-A Enterprise, which is Captain James T. Kirk's Enterprise. The version Patrick is referring to is the NCC 1701-D and to a lesser extent NCC 1701-E versions of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: First Contact, respectively. Kirk's Enterprise never encountered the Borg. Jean-Luc Picard's Enterprise only encountered the Borg because Q, the omnipotent antagonist of The Next Generation, wanted to teach Jean-Luc and the Enterprise crew a lesson that the universe isn't safe and teleported them to the Delta Quadrant. Guinan, the bartender in Ten Forward, mentions towards the end of the episode that they encountered the Borg far earlier than they should have, but now that the Borg know that Humans exist, they'll be coming for them. Just wanted to throw this out there, since clearly Patrick wanted all this to be understood with the reference. I'll see myself out.
My first set yay. Other things were still around to buy, but this was the best available among Fifth Edition, Fourth Edition, Mirage block, and Ice Age Block plus Fallen Empires.
19:28 All of the Slivers in Tempest were either common or uncommon so I guess it makes some sense that the deck's rares seem pretty disconnected from the theme.
This was the best of times, loved the art and themes so much. I remember playing a bounce deck with equilibrium, man-o-war, gilded drake, tradewind rider and of course capsize good times
I started to play during the 4th edition - mirage block era. When Tempest came out I really liked the set and got a lot of packs. Also, no one considered Lotus petal a good card back in the day, so I got mysellf a full playset for pennies. Still have them 😎
I recall the counterplay to Vineyard causing mana burn was somehow even more people main decking Mishra's Factory, as if that card didn't already see enough play.
Love the notable cards feature, definitely worth keeping. Many cards from these older sets have since gone by the wayside but were very important in their time; I feel like this segment allowed the guys to talk a bit about many of them in that context and I really enjoyed it.
Tale as old as time. The problem described with precons, buying a case and having one best seller and a bunch rotting on the shelf. That still exists today with Commander product. Really great in depth review though. Despite some really punishing designs and a harsh limited format, the set is home to some very indelible, iconic pieces of the game's history.
Really loved this episode. When I first got into magic, tempest block was no longer in T2 but it's impact was still being felt in older formats I didn't play, so much of my experience of the set was seeing the cards at the local card shop and seeing the tournament results for extended in magazines. Seeing the game modernize and get much more direction going forward as it starts to transition into my era of play is going to be fun.
I don't remember how I got it, I didn't start playing til 2008, but I have a *pristine* Tempest rulebook in my collection. definitely a fun little piece of MTG history
Oh man, I had that green precon. My store had a league where you were only allowed to modify 15 of the cards in the decks and play the other 45 as is with the other 15 in your board. I use tempest basics because it's from a time where I felt like I was above average player at my lgs. Big nostalgia set
I started Magic looking through my brother’s shoebox of loose cards around 1999. I distinctly remember being captivated by Phyrexian Splicer. The creepy art, the name (what’s a phyrexian?) the flavor of the effect. I think this card contributed early to my love of the game.
This is awesome! Please do more of these. If you keep doing 1 block every 6 months, it will be like 10 years until you catch up 😂. I hope you can go faster! I’m dying to hear Invasion and Odyssey blocks!
I played Type II regularly at this time and can confirm that Cursed Scroll was initially a bulk bin card. I got a playset for $1.50 at my local store for my mono-red sligh deck I copied from The Dojo and proceeded to BEAT FACE. Basic mountain in hand never felt so good.
For what it's worth, the Boros Gerrard card printed in one of the Commander precons sees cEDH play, as it goes infinite with Saffi Eriksdotter and a sac outlet. You see it used in Naya Protean Hulk piles.
I absolutely remember getting wrecked by Legacy's Allure playing kitchen table magic in the 90s. I also loved the Jamie Wakefield shout-out, I read so many of his tournament reports playing "Secret Force".
I attended Atlanta's prerelease. It was eight rounds of Swiss followed by top 8. I went 7-1 with GRW, including six sweeps, and DID NOT make top 8. As I conferred with the judges, trying to figure out how tf that record could possibly not be good enough, the top overall seed after Swiss decided to mouth off to me, a total stranger: "Relax. If you'd snuck in at 8th place, you would have had to play ME." That was my introduction to Mike Long.
Tempest block was the last block I collected while it was current, but I didn't play it much. It was clearly a better block than the Mirage block. I was fed up with Magic at this point, and I made the mistake of dropping out completely after this block. Look forward to your take on this.
After being introduced to Magic very soon after it started, Tempest was the last set I bought a lot of before falling out of the game for a long time. By the time Stronghold was around I’d finished high school and didn’t really have anyone to play with, so there didn’t feel like much reason to keep up with it. Held onto my cards though, which proved to be a smart decision. Funny thing about the Weatherlight crew: I really liked the ambition of the big new story push and I thought the legendary creatures were cool, but the cards were almost always bad. Seems like a weird way to get people to like your main characters. Maybe give the important people a little more juice, Wizards.
When you get to Exodus please talk about how somehow there are two absolutely busted 1G rare enchantments in the set to go with the busted 1G rare enchantment in Tempest.
Nooo. The aside of you two knowing next to nothing about Portal 2nd Age is devastating to me. It's the set that got me into Magic and I was really looking forward to learning more about its behind the scenes. Would it be possible to get a guest expert for that episode? I have so many questions: - What are the nightstalkers and why did they never come back in any expansion (despite being rad af)? - What was the controversy surrounding the depiction of firearms on the cards? This is especially interesting because while the Warhammer cards depicted guns on Magic cards, in universe, WotC has stuck to the no gun policy. The new Outlaws at Thunder Junction set specifically works around this by replacing guns with "thunder" (basically a magical equivalent of firearms). So even in a gunslinger, Wild West setting, WotC still treads carefully around this issue; I guess to not clash with the high fantasy setting of Magic (shutting the stable door after the horses have bolted, if you ask me). - How successful was the set - especially compared to the other two Portals? I never hear much about it and your limited knowledge about it, despite being experts on all the sets surrounding it, seems to reinforce that impression.
listening while on a walk back to my dorm, and I hear Cedric (presumably being facetious) say “Circle of Protection: Shadow”. Made me laugh out loud. Pulled my phone out of my pocket and rewound to see the actual name of the card and laughed even louder
My favourite Jackal Pup moment. Playing in a legacy tournament with a loam deck. My opponent is on UR delver with barely any new cards. Turn 1, jackal pup go. I go fetch, mox diamond loam pass. Turn 2, Jackal pup. Vents untapped, delver. I dredge loam, play a land and cast Knight of the Reliquary. Turn my opponent flips delver off a chain lightnimg, sttscks for 3 snd lightnings my face. Turn 4 i play land, cast loam up to 8 cards in hand cast devastating dreams for 7 and 14 my poor opponent off hid Jackal Pups, and attack for like 8 or 9 with Kotr.
Maybe my favourite episode so far. I didn't start playing until Urza's block (truly a wild time to open boosters) but it was watching friends play Tempest and Mirage blocks that piqued my interest. Gerrard taking the beating of a lifetime here was very enjoyable. Also made me realise I know more lore than I'd thought - Gerrard (and the whole Weatherlight saga) gets a lot of very fair criticism but he's essentially an immature orphan who wants to live a fun life and get his stuff back, then slowly processes the fact he's a eugenics baby who's supposed to save the world, and the fact his best friends (and then his girlfriend) die around him. It is extremely weird he doesn't have a more thoroughly representative card at this point. We get multiple cards a month for minor characters, new and old, with even less depth than him lol; the supposed saviour of Dominaria has one of the most disappointing legendary cards ever and a somewhat more playable but ultimately combo-focused one. That said, I'm very glad to be looking back at this era (which teenage me absolutely *loved* - vanilla cards and flavour text were the keys to accessible lore but that's a conversation for another time) rather than witnessing the absolute horror of mono-black players as Light of Day hit the table again.
I learned of the existence of Chill while playing Mono-Red Burn in a Legacy SCG event. Holy cow, was that disappointing! The first Chill is rough; the second one is even worse.
'this is definitely power creep. you could make a competitive deck from just this set. which is fine, but you can't do that until the end of time' Pokemon TCG in the corner:
@57:00 He trembled and clutched his toy. He came. It was so warm, but he was glad. (That's the flavor text of the card Squee's Toy, with numerous words strategically redacted. Many a Squee's Toy was defaced this way in 1997-98.)