Top 10 Mechanics that Won’t Ever Come Back 

Shout out to two other never-again mechanics: Gotcha, from the silver-bordered sets, for discouraging any form of interaction both in gameplay and IRL; and Ante, for being literally illegal.

Epic would be far better if it snowballed. Long ago, when it first came out, my playgroup tested it by making it provide you one more copy every turn and that added flexibility or power made it so that all of them truly felt you had cast a single game ending spell but gave the opponents just enough time to maybe find a solution before the card advantage was simply too great.

When I played as a kid, Banding was still around, and we all had our own ideas as to how it interacted with flying, protection from a color, etc. It was basically an argument waiting to happen whenever someone played a creature with Banding.

Islandhome is responsible for one of the most interesting formats of magic: forgetful fish. It's a mirror of mono blue tempo where you share an 80 card deck with 10 very special creatures: Dân Dân, a 4/1 fish with islandhome. The mechanic is important because the way to kill the fish while playing mono blue is to change de type of terrain.

Braid of Fire is one of the most interesting cumulative upkeep cards I’ve ever seen. It was released in Coldsnap in 2006 and its effect has you adding one red mana for each age counter on it during your upkeep. This was, of course, balanced around the mana burn mechanic before that rule got removed in 2009. Nowadays, it’s quite easy to abuse by running Vedalken Orrery so you can cast all the spells you want for the turn during your upkeep or by running Horizon Stone so you can stockpile the extra mana it generates

Fun fact about banding, it's the only mechanic that has an 11 on the storm scale

I think the word “worst” should be in the video title. Top 10 Mechanics that will never come back makes me think of Storm or Dredge (except for companion)

Some more entries: Fateseal - manipulating your opponent's top cards causes too much of a feelsbad, and allows too much control of the game state Haunt - they've said the memory issues were bad, and the fact the cards worked differently when first cast vs when the haunt triggered was also an issue Horsemanship - literally flying with a different name and no reach equivalent, originally made as the flying replacement in the [real-world ancient China] sets of Portal block (yes, I know about the new Knight that gives Knights horsemanship, that one-off card was just a flavorful way to print a card that functionally said "Knights you control are unblockable") Surge - WotC _really_ dislikes putting words relating to other formats in sets aimed at 1v1 formats, so Surge mentioning "teammate" relegates it to only Two-Headed Giant sets (this is why there's never any "this can be your commander" on non-creature cards that aren't in EDH pre-cons) Storm - the very reason the Storm Scale exists, it is the very signpost of "overpowered mechanic that can _never_ come back" (excluding one-offs in Eternal-only supplemental products) Provoke - honestly I'm not really sure why this mechanic was entirely retired Mechanics that were made obsolete by newer ones that played better: Chroma - replaced by Devotion, even though Chroma also worked with cards in other zones Fear - replaced by Intimidate, which was then replaced by Menace Regenerate - replaced by "this gains Indestructible until end of turn" Sunburst - replaced by Converge since the latter is more widely usable and more flavorfully generic ("sunburst" is specific to Mirrodin) Small note on Banding: it did have some beneficial effects, such as the controller of a Band decided how combat damage was divided amongst the band. So in your example of Benalish Hero and Storm Crow being blocked by Grizzly Bears, the attacking player could decide how to have the Bears deal its 2 damage, instead of the Bear's controller deciding.

Banding is complicated, but it's definitely not a bad ability! It's just that the creatures that do have banding are quite weak in general. If you added banding to many of the more playable creatures today, people would respect the strength of banding a lot more.

I can imagine if this was made a few months ago Eminence would have made the list. Never say never 😄

I remember playing a rampage deck back in the day with lure, rancor, and regeneration. It was insane

Banding was actually pretty good in Limited. Especially when blocking. One single bander wildly changes what happens when your opponent attacks you. Albeit at some risk - if they killed your single bander after blockers were declared you could be screwed. Banding never saw much Constructed play - but that was because it doesn't do anything unless you have at least 2 creatures and your opponent has at least 1 creature. In Constructed decks with constant removal of creatures, and some decks playing little or no creatures, that was far from guaranteed to happen.

Missing some pretty big ones. Like Ante and Storm. Ante being illegal to reprint, and storm being one of the most broken mechanics in Magic's history. There's a reason why the "Storm Scale" has it's name

I still miss Rampage and Banding Gorilla Berserker was a reliable hitter because it was typically unblockable back on the day.

I'm pretty sure you forgot Clash from the plane of Lorwyn. It was horribly random just like Ripple was. There are also several mechanics that were "fixed" but would pretty much never appear in the original form, like Chroma (which turned into Devotion).

The following lists count non-reserved cards. 10. The most valuable forecast card is Pride of the Clouds. And not gonna lie, a creature token creator every turn is VERY good. As for buyback, it's either Whim of Volrath (a niche color and basic land type hate card), or if we go by modern borders, it's Wurmcalling (big wurm tokens all the time). 9. Intimidate's most valuable card is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (No Mercy on humans and an auto reanimator and buffer in one package), and fear's Wort, Boggart Auntie (Goblin recycler, anyone?). 8. Dauthi Voidwalker is the most valuable shadow card. But it's a good stealer card that has shadow, and not proof shadow is a good mechanic. 7. Rampage should be mixed with menace or force-blocking mechanics, and even then, it becomes a dull mechanic. 6. Banding is proof that a flavorful mechanic can end up becoming too convoluted. And I had seen better takes on that idea too on custommagic. 5. The best cumulative upkeep card is Braid of Fire. All upsides ever since mana burn is obsolete. Also, echo does the idea better too. 4. You know the mechanic's off when the best card is the one that gives the ripple keyword with relentless cards like Relentless Rats. 3. Funny how white, considered the weakest color as of now, has the best epic card. 2. You know the keyword's bad when it's defunct. And a showcase of how Wizards GREATLY overestimated creatures back then. 1. The idea of a commander in constructed is fun. But that means you also changed the whole way you play Magic. There's a reason why removing the extra deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! can change the gameplay as well.

I think that miracle was the fixed version of epic where you'd get an AMAZING card if it was your top deck and could swing the game in your favor. They just needed to avoid decks built around stacking the top card and drawing on the opponent's turn

Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if Companion came back with a focus on Commander. The mechanic can be an interesting fix to Partner, which seems to be too good. The requirements would have to be very specific though. It would also be nice if the requirements refered to your Commander so you dont feel like you have to do a deck check. I could see something like "Companion - Your Commander must chare a creature type with this creature and must also have First Strike." This is just a basic example.

IDK, the -home mechanics might be tweaked to work, like adding a conditional effect to the creature that mimics Blood Moon for their home or something like that (besides having high power/endurance compared to the mana cost)

I have to imagine something like Ante is on an internal banlist, because it seems like the most obvious contender for #1 here, even above dexterity cards.

Honestly I'd bet they'll eventually come out with a new Companion card in some Modern Horizons-style set in several years. It just seems like the type of mechanic some designer is going to spend a ton of time working on to see if they can be the ones to 'fix' it.

I think "protection" is a good honorable mention. It's on some really good cards but it hasn't been printed on like any in years. There's this one newer card that gives a creature "hexproof from spells and abilities of a chosen color and it can't be blocked or dealt damage by creatures of the chosen color" which is just non-keyword protection...

I suggested this topic a bunch. Glad to finally see it.

A card that makes rather good use of the Cumulative Upkeep ability in commander imo is Hibernation's End. While not being the most powerful by any means it is extremely flavorful and also quite useful in creature focused strategies that run a lot of value pieces.

I feel like there could be some other companion card as a one-off for commander. Something like “your deck contains no instants and sorceries” which would be way more fair than stuff that kaheera enables

"Thrumming Stone is not a viable strategy." Laughs in Dragon's Approach

Combination of trample and rampage feels like it was designed to be a lethal threat when combined with lure effects . You can lure all your opponent's chaff into blocking rampaging creature, and then it will trample all over them into opponent's health.

As far as I understand... banding had special rules for attacking as a band but also had special rules for when you block with a creature that had banding. I heard it was actually quite powerful defensively - maybe a little too powerful defensively. When you blocked, as long as one of your blockers had banding, you could assign all the damage of the attacking creature(s?) to, say, a 1/1 blocker of yours, even if the attacker was a 5/5. If you blocked with four 1/1 creatures plus a 1/1 creature with banding, you could kill the attacking 5/5 and only "sacrifice" a single one of your own creatures. It apparently got around trample, as well, because you were the player assigning the damage and the ability to assign trample damage to players is optional? So your force of a single 1/1 creature with banding could block all the damage from even a really big, trampling creature. It was very wordy and confusing, quite strong defensively, and problematic offensively (as explained in the video) so... it would probably draw things out quite a bit, even if everyone was on the same page about what banding even did, which was probably rare. ^^;

I played a lot at the times with or against rampage, fear, shadow (it was my main deck for a long time by the way), banding, cumulative upkeep and islandhome. The only troublesome one was banding, because almost nobody understood it. I don't know if the rules say that, but the advantage of it was that you could assign how damage was distributed among the creatures of the band (not the adversary, as normal), at least it was how people played. If it actually works like this, this is useful sometimes, because you can turn your weenies into a fatty to force an exchange of creatures or band battering ram with something else to keep striking the opponent that only has weenies or walls. I miss magic before mirrodin. Now everything seems average to high power level. Tried to return to magic a few years ago and met an RG agro infect deck. No way old decks could pair with that, and that's not even overpowered by "modern format" standards.

11:18 - 11:35 The thought of casting a million squirrels or shadowborn apostles immediately made me smile. Then 7 seconds later you shatter my dreams with one sentence.

Banding is actually very good when blocking, since it allows you to spread out damage however you want. So if your opponent attacks with a 5/5, you can block it with a two 2/2s and a 1/1 with banding and assign ALL the damage to the 1/1. Or five 1/2s, and assign 1 damage to each. I believe Benalish Hero saw at least a tiny bit of constructed play, and the Banding mechanic is just generally strong in limited. If it was on better creatures, we might have a different view of it!

Lovely! Next video idea: ways to repair / rethink unplayable / forgotten mechanics. Like: a creature with Plainshome and "W, TAP: Gain 1 life for each Plains on the field" ; a druid creature with cumulative upkeep 1 and "G, TAP: Each player adds GG for each age counter on this creature. Nobody lose that mana at the end of phases and subphases. Activate only during your main phases." Also, Absorb was considered way too broken, such that appears only in Lymphatic Sliver and very few other cards

I think Rampage/Bushido could come back on something like a piece of equipment, where it gets to combine with some other effect. Itll never be a common mechanic again, but its not really inherently broken or anything and does allow some funky strategies that care about the buffs the mechanic will provide.

banding broken on blocking you can shut off trample dmg During the combat damage step, if an attacking creature is being blocked by a creature with banding, or by both a [quality] creature with “bands with other [quality]” and another [quality] creature, the defending player (rather than the active player) chooses how the attacking creature’s damage is assigned. That player can divide that creature’s combat damage as they choose among any creatures blocking it. This is an exception to the procedure described in rule 510.1c You can choose not to deal the excess damage from trample if you don’t want to. This works because trample is an optional keyword ability. Additionally, you can simply assign all the trampler's damage to the blocking creature even if it is over lethal damage. i use this to piss of green decks in edh Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts+Hundred-Handed One+Cathedral of Serra and/or Unholy Citadel your welcome for a way to agravite the living shit out of elf players

Banding is actually quite useful when used correctly. I couldn't figure out why so many people were unable to understand how it worked. I mean, it really isn't that complicated. While banding while attacking isn't as powerful as while blocking, it can be useful when dealing with a larger blocker. Example: Defending player has a 2/4 Giant Spider in play. You have a 2/2 vanilla flyer and a 2/2 flyer with banding. If you attack with the two as a band, and the defending player blocks with the giant spider, you can assign one damage from the spider to each of the two attacking creatures while dealing four to the spider, killing it, but sparing both of your creatures. BTW -- Banding while blocking is not the same as while attacking as you described it to be. While attacking, yes -- one or multiple banding creatures can band with a single non-banding creature. However, only one creature with banding is required when blocking alongside any number of banding or non-banding creatures to be able to use the ability and apply the damage as the player wishes.

Banding was simple to learn, use, and useful. I learned it as a 13yo in 1995 and had no problem. Use a low CMC creatuure with banding as a 'meatshield' in attack or defense -- especially if there was an attack or defense trigger that you wanted to activate from the 'shielded' creature.

Top 10 creatures most like a Yu-Gi-Oh boss monster. Two off the top of my head are Kozilek, the Great Distortion (omni-negate that discards cards to negate) and Visara the Dreadful (taps to destroy creature).

The biggest drawback with Forecast cards is the severe timing restriction of only being able to use it in your upkeep, so it becomes a guessing game about your card draws. Shadow creatures can be good for attacking, and you can use normal creatures to block. With banding, apart from the rules complexities, most creatures with banding were over costed for their power/toughness. With CU, it sometimes was applied to cards that it shouldn't have been, where either normal upkeep or no upkeep would be better, such as Firestorm Hellkite. Jotun Grunt is an interesting case, as sometimes it would be better if it was just upkeep, but other times that CU could be an advantage. Braids of Fire has a CU whose disadvantage was removed by the elimination of the mana burn rule. Whilst many cards with CU are bad, also many of them had the CU to balance a very powerful ability.

You forgot the one beneficial cumulative upkeep: braid of fire. It is horrifying. It's cumulative upkeep is to generate one red mana per age counter. It was made during the mana burn era, so it did have a possible consequence. Maybe.

I think that there could be space for Companion as a Commander-only mechanic, since in other formats, it basically gives you a nerfed version of a Command Zone. Companion (or a retrain of it) could be like a one-sided version of things like Partner or Background, where if any deck meets certain requirements then it can run the Companion as a second Commander. Of course two of the existing Companions would be left behind by this, since they weren't designed with Commander rules in mind. No Commander deck can run Yorion, with the strict limit on deck size, but 99.9% of Commander decks with UR in them could run Lutri (if it wasn't banned) because it's a singleton format barring Relentless Rats shenanigans. If the idea were to be revisited, it would probably be best with a new cycle of Companions that were actually designed for it.

Rampage combos perfectly with any "all creatures able to block target creature this turn do so" effects like Taunting Arbormage's ETB kicker effect. This turns a creature into a pseudo board wipe vs one opponent.

Astonished that Storm didn't top the list, since the design team literally named their internal "this will never come back" scale the Storm Scale.

Enduring Ideal is always so good in my Shrines commander deck. Its extremely versatile, as the Enchantments in that deck can do anything

Rampage wouldn't be bad as a combat trick. It's situational but if it were to come back that would be the way

There was a red enchantment with cumulative upkeep I don't think people ever talk about when mentioning the keyword, which is technically if not broken at least really powerful right now. It was a 2 cost card from ice age with cumulative upkeep - Add a Red Mana to your mana pool. Originally, if you had unspent mana in your pool at the end of the turn, you took damage, but they removed that rule at some point, so that card now just becomes an exponentially bigger and bigger mana source for raml with no side effects.

So Companion would be like if you could cheat out really powerful Extra Deck monsters by just having any materials for it in your deck. Not having to use any Spell cards, go through any combos, getting materials on the field or in the hand, just "I summon Baronne de Fleur".

Forecast could be great, but the payoff in the current state of the game would have to be so drastically powerful for the cost of showing your cards to your opponent that it might just be impossible to balance safely.

Ante!

As the number one banding fan in the world, I expect its return *IMMEDIATELY.*

I mean... Landhome just says "can't attack", if you put a good passive effect on the card alongside it, it could be a good drawback

I run banding in a few decks, it is a great anti-trample and can save a strong power creature with 1 toughness with a 1/1 token when attacking

I mean it's funny that you made Companion the top slot when they did straight up re-print all of the ten Companions for MOTM limited and it was just kind of a funny side thing alongside all the other funny side things going on in that format. OFC part of it was a place to reprint the errata-ed companions /somewhere/ but I really don't think given the clear intent to still have it be /used/ in the most recent format that it's 'never coming back', they'd likely just change the conditions for why it's used. All of the companions printed had a 'deck building' requirement, but the while the rules state it's conditional on deckbuilding, all of the individual cards also allude to it, and I think it'd be easy to exclude that specific aspect and print companions where the text could very easily be something more like 'You control 5 or more enchantments' or 'You have exactly 13 land cards in your graveyard' or even a simpler cost like 'Sacrifice 3 artifacts', at which point you can pay the 3 and put it in your hand.

I remember Cumilitive upkeep Shadow, and Echo, Banding, and Rampage

Love your videos

The home keyword would be great if the mechanic allowed the blocking of that landwalk. "Oh? Your forestwalk is attacking me? I'll block with my foresthome"

I get what you're saying on rampage but when the those cards came out "Lure" was a relatively common card to use with that craw giant. You could put a lure on it and attack to have every creature your opponent had block, allowing you to choose who you'd kill with all that pump. Was fun and made it so your opponent would attack/tap/ stall with first strikers. Rampage was fun back during 5th.

I had mentioned that I wanted to go back to Lorwyn because tribal was an awesome mechanic, someone said that it was a dead mechanic that they wouldn’t bring back. Idk didn’t seem to op and it didn’t seem terrible.

i have to say rampage sounds gameplaywise like a neat mechanic. like questing beast has for example "cant be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less" which just denies you the ability to throw 2/2 in its way completely. But rampage 1 would mean you can throw 2/2 in but you get only diminishing return for it so it can be sometimes worth to do so even if its inefficient.

Ok, small knee jerk reaction here, "fuck you , Umori the collector is playable. He is my bestest ooze commanding my mono green ooze tribal deck."

For cumulative upkeep, there's the card braid of fire that was just bonkers with that mechanic, which the cost was to add red mana per turn and would increase as you went on. Funny how this is never mentioned in these videos

The Rebel/Mercenary mechanic is probably less likely to return than Cumulative Upkeep. Sure it may not be a keyword, but it is still a mechanic, and Cumulative Upkeep, while unlikely, could still be a possibility for cards with a very strong ability that they don't want to be able to last very long if it isn't interacted with, like the Fish is.

You say never come back, I saw MH3. I actually really like how these sets revisit old ideas and give them modern updated cards. For exampe, piercing rays for forecast, Recruit the Worthy for buyback etc

does MTG have any keywords that lets creatures attack each other like in Yu-Gi-Oh? and is there way to make that effect stay permanently on the field?

I was in the process of making a Relentless Rats EDH deck where more then half of the deck is just Relentless Rats the rest is rat support and a copy of Thrumming Stone that gives your spells Ripple 4. Sadly never finished the deck and it was more of a one hit wonder.

Oh, there won't be 2 years before companion will be back. Mark those words. They won't be as easy to play as they are now but I hope for Zada with "your deck has only instant or sorcery spells" :)

When Rampage came on the scene a very popular card at the time made it function, Lure. Drop a Lure onto that Craw Giant and that can be a lot of damage, especially if you have a Berserk in hand. Anyone that says banding is a bad ability has obviously never played with or against it. If creatures with landhome were also unblockable against said land type it would have made for a better ability. Another bad thing about landhome is that it turns Magical Hack into a kill spell.

Honestly Forecast, Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage are all things that could do well in a commander or Modern Horizons product. Forecast is one that has potential outside of commander or MH but it really needs support to bring it up. Something like cost reduction, able to do it on other upkeeps, or even something like when you cast it after you used Forecast something happens. It would also help if it had better effects. There are ways to make it better it just needs something more than nothing. Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage could be used sparingly for great effect but need specific cards to thrive. Companion should never have been in standard, should have only been used in commander and should have been balanced better. I do like the idea but some the cards were broken. If you really think about it the problem was Lurrus and Yorion not the others. Out of the 10 of them: 2 were broken taking over the game, 3 saw some play but not much outside of standard, and the rest either saw rare niche play or never were played. The mechanic at first was fine but had problematic cards which soured the mechanic.

One companion Lutri the spell chaser had to be pre emptively banned in commander as his companion requirement was basically play commander I.E. only one copy of each none land card in the deck. So basically he would have been am auto include in any blue/red deck.

Amazing!!!!🎉🎉🎉

There was a niche legacy deck called matyr of frost that did use a sky hussar, another forecast card, as its backbone.

Ten controversial judgement calls in tournaments (if you can find that many) I love the story of the player who played Pithing Needle, naming "Borborygmos" instead of "Borborygmos Enraged", and the judge ruled "No Take-Backsies". The player claimed his play was valid since Enraged was "implied".

I think you're being a bit too harsh on Rampage/Bushido, it's an underutilized and interesting design space, especially for limited. It's not a great mechanic nor a mainstay but rampage feels like something we could see more of on green and red cards, it might not help push for more damage but it does changes the maths and can actually synergies with other things. Banding is also not as bad as you made it out to be, it's certainly complex AF but it allows you to decide how combat damage is assigned which has many uses, from protecting important creature in the band, to ignore blocking when combined with trample and passing by getting through a deathtoucher.

I can see Rampage being redesigned to give a +X for each creature or even each permanent on the opponent's side of the field.

I can imagine Rampage coming back in spirit specifically as an X pump spell. It's still not good, but I can imagine it.

Most of those "failed" mechanics like landhome sound cool for single player campaign MtG game if it ever existed.

I doubt we'll ever see snow-covered landwalk again. Not unless Wizards decide to revisit Ice Age yet again. There were some setups that made Rampage worth while but they depended on the Lure enchantment (All creatures able to block target creature must block target creature.) there was also an instant that did the same thing for that round only, but I don't remember what it was called.

I am designing a deck that abuses cumulative upkeep cards (and other such counter based cards) by making a deck with solemnity. They all cumulative upkeep cards never cost a thing. The other way around is to skip the upkeep. There are ways around it, so gonna be fun.

while i agree cumulative upkeep was a bit of a failure, it certainly still has strong cards, i think notably Mystic Remora and Braid of Fire both still seeing some play in a few formats as remora is a great early game counter to punishing certain decks an braid of fire for mana for combos or getting that extra mana for a turn.

Cumulative Upkeep is the least of Juju Bubble’s problems. You could give it Braid of Fire’s beneficial cumulative upkeep, and it would still be stone unplayable.

Before I watch the video, #1 spot is banding. Edit: banding is #6 and companion is #1. I forgot companions existed. It’s just too painful to remember those dark times lol

IIRC, didn’t banding allow an attacker to decide how damage was divided between banded creatures at one point? I thought that was the major draw-though it’s been literal decades since I read the gameplay examples from the MTG manual that explained banding.

Interesting how so many people do not understand Banding and think it's bad to use based on the impacts to attacking. However, banding is best used in defense to allow the damage to be directed to a source that is immune.

Lurrus was banned from Vintage for power level reasons, a feat no other card has accomplished. That cat was nuts.

I would have thought landwalk would also be up there since like fear it is evasion that only sometimes works.

Islandhome was intended to be used along with an effect like Phantasmal Terrain to change an opponent's land into an island. The real problem was that even when you went out of your way to try and do this, the cards weren't worth it.

Splice on Arcane. The ability to add the effects of cards to other cards was a lot of fun, but it won't ever show up againm

Banding isn't bad as a whole. Banding is terrible on offense but pretty spectacular on defense. It completely cancels out trample and makes attacking into a board with banders a nightmare--there's a lot of board states on which no way you can make a profitable attack because the defender has such a massive advantage if he has a few banders. With a indestructible creature, you can ensure that you never lose anything in combat and always take out the opponent's best attacker (and if that creature tramples, never take any damage). You have the rule wrong--on defense, you can band one bander with *any* number of non-banders. The above, the fact that it works different on offense and defense is a problem because it's completely unintuitive but even if you fix that, the mechanic is really strong in limited because of what it does to combat. The only thing that holds it back is that creatures of the time were terrible; if you put that on anything good, it gets really obnoxious and grinds the game to a halt quickly.

Cumulative upkeep exist: Most people: "This is garbage." Jon Irenicus players: "Phyrexian Soulgorger, mah boi. Im going to make you a star!" Zedruu players: "Illusions of Grandeur and Thought Lash are my favorites."

surprised you didn't mention that lurrus was so broken it was the first ban in vintage in years and it forced the commander rules committee to ditch their shortcut on using the vintage ban list

For Banding to be useful, the creature needed to be at least 1/2, but they mostly made 1/1s or made them cost way too much (war elephant was a 2/2 for 4 mana). A 1/1 banding with another creature either dies or doesn't help the other creature survive. A 2 mana 1/2 with banding would have been useful. But it would have discouraged attacking.

I’m a little sad about Ripple when I first saw it I was hoping for more support and more cards. Though I have no idea how to balance it. My first take I thought of would most likely be WAY to OP. “Ripple X when you can this card reveal X cards you may play any cards the have ripple without paying its mana cost” Though that might be cascade. I have never played with cascade so I don’t know exactly how that one works.

These were a fun list, and the choices do make sense, but there are a few other Keywords I guess I expected to see here, and didn't. They are keywords I like, and so of course I'd want Wizards to use again, so not seeing them here can let me dream, but based on what they do, I just expect that we'll see little to no revisits again. Infect, Level Up, and Eminence. I think we can agree that Infect is gone for good? They invented a new mechanic, Toxic, to sub in for it, but they HAD to invent a who new mechanic, even when FINALLY revisiting the place Infect came from, because Infect couldn't just come back, along with Phyrexian mana. Level Up...okay, it's not a good mechanic, but I liked D&D a lot more than I liked MtG, for a long time, and since Wizards owned both, it felt neat. Since creatures die all the time, I liked the option of getting more profit from them if they survived, and it wad better than having to acquire a second card, like an Equipment, slot it in, draw it, play it, and attach it, then protect it, too. Sure, the LU creature took the progress with them, while the Artifact stayed after their death, but that made it different. It's not great, but I still really like Lighthouse Chronologist and Joruga Treespeaker. Eminence. We all know why it's not coming back, for the most part; the lack of interactivity irritates people, as does the free starting Enchantment-analog, but I learned to love the mechanic in my own limited play group. I'm a more reserved, slow game, avoid conflict-type; I want to build up a major presence before I commit, as early attacks garnered retaliation, and I could marvel others with my deck stalls, so that could hurt. More than that, though, our group seemed to REALLY target Commanders. Maybe it's the right call, but literally every time someone played theirs, it was probably going to die, and then Commander tax made it an uphill battle, no matter how necessary, or not, your Commander was to the deck strategy. I didn't attack often, but still got attacked when I'd play my leader, to the point there were times I could almost just pick it for color identity, and then nor plan to use it, and then the four Eminence decks came down. I love Wizards, and I love Dragons, so these were easy purchases, and then Eminence gave me an extra perk, that my destructive opponents couldn't stamp out. I get that it can irritate players, even while things like Emblems continue to persevere, but for my own experience, I liked it, and it made the game better for me.

Banding works different attacking or blocking. Attack needs for each attacking group band on all creatures of the group plus one without, block groups just need one creature with band.

Say what you will about epic, enduring ideal is awesome. When it came out there probably wasn't enough support to make them even remotely close to viable, but now there's so many ways to get effects from cards without technically casting them that building around the downside is technically doable now

I had a blue black epic deck. Getting 3-5 copies of Neverending Torment each turn thanks to cards like Echo Mage was... Still pretty terrible, but it worked sometimes!

I am shocked that Ante didn't make this list. At first, I thought of Storm, but it's actually still viable. Ante is literally illegal, so has no possible way it could come back.

I'd love to see Rampage return, it was a very flavorful and fun mechanic, and I'd argue it's actually more useful now with other added abilities like Menace, Deathtouch, Toxic, and Wither (if they ever bring back Wither). Also how in the world is there no mention of Storm? It's literally the poster-child of "mechanic we'll never bring back".

Companion was a horrible idea. It seemed like someone at WotC saw the success of Commander and said "Hey, I know! Let's put commanders in standard!" This, of course, completely ignored the fact that Commander was balanced around having a larger 100 card deck made completely of singletons because having a commander for a 60 card constructed deck would be broken. Then they were completely shocked to discover that 60 card constructed decks being able to run a commander was, in fact, broken.

Oh man, I wouldn't be so sure about companion never coming back. They'll definitely try it again, thinking they can get it right this time.

The companion errata thing is really disappointing when it comes to Commander - since it really makes deck-building way more restrictive, so I feel like adding more companion cards with Commander-Companion or something would be cool and you can get rid of the 3 generic cost thing. Companion is kinda meh power-wise, but fun in Commander.