THE POWER 9 - Explaining Every BANNED Card in the Legacy Format in MTG 

Will never forget when I started playing in 94 and I saw a Mox Emerald in the display case for 10 dollars, and said "why would anyone pay 10 dollars for that, you can just use a forest?" Spent my money on packs of fallen empires instead.

I'd argue that Black Lotus is one of the most famous cards in ALL TCG's not just MTG.

To clarify, the power 9 are: The 5 moxen Black Lotus Time Walk Timetwister Ancestral Recall None of those cards have ever received a reprint past Unlimited, the 3rd set of Magic. This is why Wheel of Fortune, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt aren't pieces of power, despite being just as and or stronger than the power 9.

There's a red card called Final Fortune that also allows you to take an extra turn for only two red mana with the downside that you lose the game at the end of the extra turn. That was their attempt to 'nerf' it and it's still insanely strong. Just goes to show you how busted the real Time Walk is.

Even though Black Lotus would shine in combo decks, they would still be an automatic include in any deck if it were unbanned. Going up +3 mana at any point in the game is absurd.

you could also call artifact lands fixed moxen since they're just moxen that take up your land drop instead

You should do a series on broken decks in history. The Memory Jar deck that caused an emergency ban is a great starting point, you can see it in action in the original gauntlet of greatness series. Also the Tolarian Academy deck

There's also Ancestral Vision as a "fix" to Ancestral Recall. Not ban/restricted-worthy but it's definitely still powerful.

If people are wondering why all the broken cards are legal in commander, it's because the format bans for casual fun, rather than competitive balance. This means that if a card doesn't break casual games, then it's really unlikely to be banned. (Flash being the only exception, because it saw almost no play in casual games, and cEDH was almost unplayable with it legal.)

I love that everyone instantly recognizes his voice, but exclusively refers to him as 1 of his 6 channels Like, I love his YuGiOh stuff, but i can ONLY refer to him as Hiru xD

Great analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

I dunno why I’m watching this, I play Commander. But it’s always cool to hear people talk about the Power 9

Timetwister is also really brutally strong now the Sheoldred, The Apocalypse exists too. Adding a Drain 14 on top of everything just wins the game on the spot. Really fun that you can play these cards in Alchemy through Oracle of the Alpha.

Recursion also plays a big part of why the Instants and sorceries on this is list are banned. Especially Time Walk.

Probably not relevant but crypt and ring aren’t power nine. Still incredibly powerful, so it’s fine, plus explaining them is useful for all the people who play against them for the first time. I just find it odd that they were included

Start to another amazing series

3 days ago i searched for a power 9 video from you and now you post one lol

Also, the fixed version of Ancestral Recall is Brainstorm, and it's still insane with fetch lands to shuffle away the cards you don't want

3:10 Let's not forget Mox Opal, Amber, and Tantalite.

Ironically, one fixed version of Ancestral Recall, namely Treasure Cruise is also banned in Legacy along with Dig through time lol Even mindtwist is banned because of some fast mana tools like dark ritual, grim monolith , city of traitors and ancient tomb. I wonder if more old cards will be unbanned for Legacy some day.

To be fair, if Time Warp was a 5 mana card that said “Draw a card, then untap each permanent you control. You may play an additional land this turn.” It would still be very good

I came from the duel llgs videos where you tried to evaluate magic cards in the blind, glad to see you coming to the dark side!

The damage of unbanning Lotus would only be restricted to one archetype of deck? That statement broke my brain. There is no deck in magic that wouldn't immediately mainboard 4 Lotuses if it could. Games would come down to a matter of who drew more of them.

So as someone that plays a lot of Canadian highlander, hearing it in a video made me so happy

I remember once going to something thinking it was like, a casual game and learning it was more an official tournament rules thing with formats when I played Sol Ring and was told that. Borrowed a deck that game while someone sorted out the legal cards. Luckily it didn't mess with my strat and after losing that game, win the rest as generally the cards that were lost were just me going "um... This card is nice ig?" And weren't key to the strat.

You gotta love the legends of these nine. Sooooo powerful!

You know Timewalk is basicly an attempt at making the mtg equivilant of the Uno skip card. Nice to see you doing mtg videos been a big watcher of your wow vids for a long time. Love the research and narrative in your vids. Keep em coming.

Sol Ring is that good! I have tons of Sol Rings, since it's only uncommon, man, I could use it more often.

3:51 Lotus Bloom was played in cascade decks, afaik. And iirc, it's pretty good, since players would just cheese with it by not having cheaper cards than it due to it being virtually 1 mana.

8:38 it was definitely worth mentioning that Brainstorm, Ancestrall Vision, Ponder, and Preordain all have been put on one or more banned and restricted lists and it seems almost inevitable that one day Opt will be banned in Pioneer due to the combined facts that *Scrying offers too much control with any kind of land tutors, even the most basic and weak kinds like Rampant Growth, and most non-rotating formats settle into allowing some kind of fetch lands. Pioneer might ban the rare cycles, but it won't ban the common cycles, at least not yet. Cards like the Alara panoramas that can also be found in New Capenna. *Besides the interaction between scry or fateseal and tutors or drawing, there is also mechanics like Storm and Cascade that are especially well fuelled by drawing quickly into game ending combos and finishers, which leads almost any 1 mana version of this to be overpowered, as well as almost any cheap centrip card at any cost: any card that replaces itself for close to 1 mana per card is used in the same way Brainstorm and Ponder are. This isn't unfair in aggro and midrange, but it's absolutely too good in both control and combo. There have been a decent size list of cards at 2 mana that are close to too good, and its not really until a card costs 3 mana that it's close to being slow enough to be fair if it smells of card draw. 2 mana cards that seem fair....are still so very good that it's very clear the entire ability to draw cards is dangerous and needs to cost extra mana. You could get into why we see the more cards you draw the more likely you are to see a mana ratio of 2 mana per card drawn and that sometimes just isn't enough in cases like Cryptic Command and Jace the Mind Sculptor.

3:58 What is poultry mana? You can only spend it on birds?

Although situational the cheapest take an extra turn is temporal mastery, one may even consider temporal trespass as cheaper

Maybe you could do a video on the best enchant land cards in mtg?

For context. Ancestral recall is the magic equivalent of pot of greed

The Power 9 sounds badass

Correction manacrypt has been recently put up all the way to 5 points in canadian highlander

If there was a tier below the power 9 i think it would include the black equivalents to those op blue cards which would include dark ritual, demonic tutor and necropotence

This looks like cards a CCG video game final boss would use against you. :P

I love these cards with the effect of letting you play the rest of your deck. Exteremly balanced

anyone who is reading this post-December 18th 2022, theres a card in magic the gathering arenas called oracle of the alpha in the brothers war alchemy packs. it summons the power 9 into ur library, reccomend pairing with da kamigawa mythic jin gitaxias progress tyrant so u can duplicate da artifacts and instants. Also u can use it 4 times and summon the power nine four times into ur library 😎 very good card

Black Lotus is scary only for one thing... knowing it's the most expensive piece of cardboard you could ever hold.

4:34 Black Lotus is MtG's Pot of Greed. It provides more resources than the pace can handle.

Does magic have a way to cheat out mana where your opponent controls the outcome? Like a card that lets you cast a spell for free but any targets it chooses are chosen by your opponent. Or generate mana but your opponent chooses colour. I always found those kinds of effects interesting in other games for their mindgame value

If you're going to mention led you have to mention dredge or echo of eons

The music in background came from zelda right?

I love how time walk and timetwister are basically two sides of a coin... Time walk is busted even in the weakest formats, but in a hypothetical format with no restrictions or bans, would not be that strong since you could probably win on turn 1 anyways. On the other hand, if you're in a format where you can't combo off of it, timetwister would (almost) be fair, whereas in a format with no restrictions or bans, it could just allow infinite loops

I'm pretty sure there is a fixed version of Sol Ring, though I can't remember what it's called. It costs (4).

Fixed Power 9 Cards That Actually Worked: 1. Ancestral Recall - Ancestral Vision 2. Black Lotus - Gilded Lotus (or Lotus Bloom ig) 3. Time Walk - Capture of Jiangzhou ig? Any ones I missed? (I know about Last Chance/Final Fortune but they aren’t really balanced)

Surprised you didn't mention the other fixed power nine cards Mox Amber Mox Opal Mox Tantalite Temporal Mastery Gilded Lotus Lotus Lands Time Spiral (though that one's absurd as well) Reforge the Soul Wheel of Fate Ancestral Visions I get why, the video would have taken forever, but you could have went "there are other fixed versions of these cards, lemme put them on screen" and briefly mention them at the end.

Timetwister could literally be unbanned tomorrow. Echo of Eons is unironically a better card than Time Twister and it's just fine in Legacy

Visions of Beyond is another fixed version of ancestral recall, it just need 20+ cards in a graveyard

Amazing

How to make "Take An Extra Turn" gooder? Copy that shit. Chaining one extra turn into another can be brutal.

I saw in Arena a creature who summons the power 9 cards into your deck and shuffle it. Do you think that card will stay around, or do you think it will be banned?

Tendrils is a very common storm finisher but if the twister and wheel effects were unrestricted, Molten Psyche might be even better as it gets around turn 0 Leyline of Sanctity and can theoretically kill with a smaller storm count. If there were no restrictions in vintage, this style of Storm would easily be the most consistent goldfishing FTK on the play in the game. Funny enough, in an unrestricted format dominated by artifact mana, Mind Funeral and Mind Grind become one card combo kills. Mash those two with all the cheapest interaction and that crushes the aforementioned Storm enough to open that theoretical format diversity to archetypes like Stax and even planeswalker control. To expand on the twister and wheel effects strength in going first, giving your opponents a full seven sounds like a drawback but effectively forcing them to mulligan can be quite devastating.

I quit WoW for good I move on I eventually get into Magic again Decide to watch a power nine video WHO DO I HEAR BUT HIRUMAREX, HELLO OLD CHAP Good to see you're still making content

Lets be honest, the way day’s undoing is used makes it both a time walk and a timetwister so timetwister is better for the fornat than day’s undoing

From which set are the cards ?

I played this one guy who had a Vintage deck. I didn't even have a turn. He did Island, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Isochron Scepter with Time Walk.

Better MTG players than me, what would you think of these changes? Moxen with effects that banish them if another card with "Mox" in the name is played Mana Crypt with the cost of dealing 20 damage to oneself on a bad coin flip (high risk for a high reward - basically forcing you to push for game if you can)

I disagree with your Black Lotus assessment. It's not just a combo card; every deck except like Manaless Dredge in Legacy would play it. It would be as bad or worse than the Moxen in terms of warping the format. In Vintage Lotus is played in basically every deck including Null Rod decks and Dredge. There's not really such a deck right now but historically it's been played in pure control decks too (pick your favorite Mana Drain or The Deck variant). Black Lotus is so much more generically powerful than Lotus Petal and LED that you can't use those as your reference point for where it would be played. ETA: quick note on wheel effects, Windfall definitely fits with them and arguably Memory Jar as well. Personally I think Wheel might be safe. Not being blue makes a big difference and it might only end up making Gamble storm better but probably not problematically so. Twister is probably pretty close to being fine but the Hullbreacher decks are so miserable already.

Top 10 Power 9

Also with the fixing of Black Lotus you also have Gilded Lotus that cost 5 to cast and doesn't sacrifice itself.

Sol Rings fix, in EDH anyways, was just to print more LOL. It's fair if everyone has them,right?!

4:50 there are also Lotus Bloom, Gilded Lotus, Lotus Field, Nyx Lotus, and Timeless Lotus.

library of alexandria (honorable power9)

The funny thing about Lion's Eye Diamond is that it's actually BETTER than Black Lotus in grave decks. Possibly the biggest failure of trying to balance an effect in the game's history.

sol ring and crypt arent power 9, but i get why you would include iton the list with the giant amount of manarocks.

I believe the strongest possible 60 card deck remains a mix of approximately 25 black lotus and 35 ancestral recall

So the power 9 are 6 mana generating artifacts and 3 blue spells. Since the beggining of mtg, blue is and will always be the strongest color in the game

Gud stuff

Any deck not using these banned cards killing you on turn 1 sounds completely impossible thats like winning hearth stone on turn 1. Quitting doesnt count.

by the time we get to ragavan, i sincerely hope there's a note about "ragavan was actually banned in legacy BEFORE it was banned in modern..." i can only hope, anyway.

So Moxen are just the MTG version of Pot Of Greed

The wheels are the only card not band in commander

Ahh, the Mega Rayquazas of MTG.

I certainly think Timetwister can be unbanned. I don't think anything going on in Legacy would be broken by it. Wheel I think might just break hollow one and reanimator but Timetwister not so much.

Suprised you didnt mention warriors oath when talking about fixed timewalks, its 2 red take an extra turn but at that turns endstep you lose the game

Imagine if edh became mainstream when legends hit shelves

10:28 But is it better than 2 explores? Ik, that s a terrible joke

Id argue that black lotus is the best magic card. It is simply just good in every deck.

narset, partner of veils

The P9 seems llike YGO's pot of greed: the broken banned card(s) that keep getting fixed versions.

woo letsgo

Shoutout to the typo strat making people algorithm comment.

Commander power 9

Talking about the moxen makes me mad that sol ring is legal in commander

Wheel of fortune would also be busted with dredge,

Are these scripts written by ai?

Why would they make those cards if they aren't supposed to be played?

The way you presented this seems to imply that Time Walk is more broken than Ancestral Recall. This is unlikely to be the case and if you asked most eternal players to rank the top 3 most broken cards I would wager that 95% of them put Ancestral in there while Time Walk would be less than 50%. Every deck that can generate U mana in Vintage plays Ancestral, which is not true of Time Walk (Oops all spells is a good example). The same can be seen when tutoring, Mystical for Ancestral is a very common line while Time Walk happens fairly rarely, generally when there's already a Mentor in play. The floor of Time Walk being Explore is not good enough and it would arguably be worse in Legacy without moxen, that's arguably what's holding the card back. Resolving Time Walk is not as likely to put you ahead in the game as resolving Ancestral is. Needless to say both are very broken but it bears repeating just how much Ancestral stands out even above most of the other Power 9.

I need Emrakul unbanned in EDH

4:33

how was the plural 'moxen' decided on, i'm pretty sure mox was just a word the designers at that time made up.

Given how fast Magic is now I'm forced to wonder why anything is banned at this point. Turn 2 wins are common fare now.

Additionally Windfall is banned in Legacy for pretty much the same reasons as Wheel and Timetwister. Not sure why it wasn't mentioned with it.

MTGs strongest Deck VS Yugiohs strongest Deck power comparison?

Brainstorm is fixed ancestral recall imo. Everything else is just another draw card. Ancestral visions is a pseudo clone.

When I see that Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister are banned in Legacy but not Commander, it makes me go "huh?"

BANNED IN LEGACY HYPE