It would be interesting to see a video on “noob trap” cards that are actually good in competitive play. As in, cards that new players correctly identify as good, but for all the wrong reasons.
Golgari Grave-Troll makes noobies go "ah, it gets stronger the more creatures are in your graveyard!". Pros forget that it's a creature card, it may as well be "Dredge 6. (this card cannot be played)"
Companion. New players look at lutri and see a cute otter they can cast every game, veteran players read lurrus and start comprehending those untold horrors beyond their comprehension
Honestly it really wasn't as much of a problem of power as it was of the interaction between Restrictions and Companion specifically. It was still very good, but has since not even been unbanned, but also unrestricted and last I checked saw only limited play.
Banned because restricting it does nothing. It's like if we had companion black lotus restricting it would do nothing so it would be banned. I definitely wouldn't put post nerf companions at 1 over dredge or storm though as yes it's an extra card, however, it costs too much mana usually. Having a companion is also like drawing an extra card, but dredge is like drawing many extra cards per turn and all those cards are optimized to beat the opponent down quickly. Storm is a bit closer, but still storm cards are really good in basically every format they appear in no exception. Even if they put storm cards in standard again with no fast mana I'm sure they'd get abused somehow there too.
I was expecting Dredge to be #1, but I somehow forgot about the mechanic so busted it got a card banned from a format that explicitly doesn't ban overpowered cards.
Tbf Lutri was specifically banned in commander because it is free to bring for any commander deck that ran blue and red, arguably speaking it wouldn't have been the most broken card in the format, the rules committee just simply said that there were no good reason to just have decks that ran blue and red to be automatically better for having a free companion. I guessed Companion Storm Dredge with Dredge being top 1, but they are all so broken you could rank them all at top 1 with no issue
@@maxmercurythemm827 Ah, true, ig that works too Commander isn't very good at banning cards and leaves a ton of powerful options, which why I got that confused
I've been using Storm since Time Spiral and I honestly never picked up on that. In our casual group, it probably hasn't been relevant, but I guess I need to think about creating more situations on an opponent's turn.
An aspect important to note of storm is that the storm count considers all spells cast, not just yours, meaning that the opponent trying to interact only feeds the storm count further, ending in the Misstep situation where the way to answer Storm was a counterspell having storm itself (since the ones that counter triggered abilities aren't worth running in formats outside of commander).
The storm scale is actually interesting since, despite the inspiration, it's not just about power level but design space and playability overall, so while storm sits at 10 other mechanics with the same rating are things like fear (that has being replaced several times), -0/-1 (all counters that change stats different from -1/-1 and +1/+1, to streamline it), and the universally loathed and memed banding, all sitting higher than objectively stronger but somewhat more manageable mechanics like infect.
I don't think everyone hates banding, I think people don't understand what it does usually. There is one simple reason banding should never return and that is limited formats. Balancing banding for limited is impossible to do.
@@dstreetz91 banding is loathed, it's needlessly difficult and doesn't play well with the game, it makes combat slightly safer for you by allowing to attack with less fear, but at the same time makes it a lot safer for your opponent allowing them easy chump-blocks. It theoretically has upsides, but is de facto detrimental, and no one likes a mechanic that is both bad and difficult to understand.
I have no idea how Wizards though that companion would be a good idea; Commander is a format that is centralized on the titular commander cards, because you have them available every game, so any consistent deck is gonna be careful with it's choice of commander and make sure to build a deck that maximizes it's value; Companion is a essentially a commander mechanic for other formats, or a second commander on edh itself.
I'd at least make companion trigger off some game state like 'if you have no cards in your hand and you meet the deck building limit you may add this card to your hand'
Having permanent unlimited access to a particular card as if it is a real life observing friend or your own self insert on the board is a fantasy for a portion of the MTG playerbase. How do you suggest Wizards tap this part of the market?
@@jshtng78Two examples. 1) imagine another magic crossover set with mass effect and the Companion (Say Garus) has the text of "you can only add this companion to you hand if commander shepard is on the battlefeild". This flavor works for commanders or leader or other creatures that do minions or even inventions. Instead of summoning a token you have it enable that companion. 2) This would also work in a commander block, say 'companion if X is your commander' then you can have a sort of two part commander that acts as a pair, say a hero and the companion being it's famous steed or sword or something, but one part you have to play from you hand not like the two partner commanders let you give different balances to each. 3) Un-sets. . .like enough said. Like 'companion: nominate a player outside the game to be your companion, when you play this card your opponent and your companion play a magic subgame' or something silly. it's not something you can do casually and you have to be careful about it, same as storm but there are probably niche applications for it.
I am pretty sure that double strike and indestructible outdo prowess in terms of raw power. But they are more respected by designers, and you don't see them on 1-mana creatures.
I think indestructible is extremely overrated, especially in 60 card formats, as it has no offensive advantage amid a world of exile based removal. but in terms of prowess vs double strike, the fact that there is a 1/1 with haste and prowess for 1 is why it is good. not to mention how every instant becomes a combat trick when you have a prowess creature out.
@@philiphunt-bull5817There's one that needs a dinosaur, one that needs to be equipped, one that's pretty much impossible to trigger, and a few that need additional mana.
Little note; the storm scale is not used by wizzard. Mark Rosewater uses it only to help him (and us) compare the likelyhood of a mechanic returning (which is not always for power-reasons.
What's interesting is that storm counts not only your spells but opponents spells as well. If it was an instant spell, you could on opponents turns when they're dumping spells or combo-ing off, you get more value or if they respond on your turn cast something like flusterstorm to negate interaction
Unironically. A uncounterable 15/15 with flying and protection that also takes an extra turn when cast is crazy, but if Emrakul had to lose every last ability save one, Annihilator 6 would be the pick to keep it seeing nearly as much play as it does now.
When I got to #3 and saw Storm I actually did a double take. I figured Storm and Dredge were locked in as #1 and #2. I forgot about Companion, I was living a better life there for a bit.
I was expecting Annihilator and Haste to be on the list. Annihilator is unparalleled in its board-breaking power, and Haste is the center of just about any aggro strategy that involves creatures
There's a mentor deck running around standard right now. It's being run alongside haughty djinn, cheap reanimation spells, self mill and cantrips. Deck is so fun to pilot on Arena, so many triggers.
I don't really think Prowess should be on the list. Sure they made a few really efficient and overly good Prowess cards, but I don't really think the mechanic itself is overpowered.
Historical note: Infect first appeared as a non-keyword ability in Alliances, all the way back in '96. It was featured in Swamp Mosquito, a black 0 1 flying for 2 with the infect ability, or more precisely, toxic 1.
And poisonous did not add, it stacked, so if you had 2 of virulent sliver, they would both have poisonous 1, poisonous 1, while toxic adds, so if that same sliver had toxic, and you had 2, they would both have toxic 2
My favorite cascade spell is the Sliver that has it and it gives all slivers you control cascade. Now all of a sudden me playing that 4 mana sliver means that there are 4 more slivers on the board.
Im shocked you didn't point out one of the BIGGEST cards for Cascade: First Sliver. Sure, its only in commander that its strong...but when you are giving all your creatures cascade if you are making a sliver deck, it gets out of hand ungodly fast, to the point I have yet to here a single person not say its complete BS lol
I think that landfall must be on this list. Usually lands just add mana or has not really strong abilities, but landfall adds power to mechanic which every deck uses
@@Terrabyte13Legacy Omnitell begs to differ. Even a decade later, Emrakul is still the "delete your board, gg" finisher that wins the game like no other threat.
@@MetallicitySaying that annihilator is powerful because of Emrakul is like saying counterspells are powerful because of Force of Will. If you take the single most broken card that happens to have it, yes, but then it drops significantly.
@@fernandobanda5734 While I get what you're saying, the comment I was replying to claimed annihilator wasn't practical in older formats. Having arguably the best finisher to cheat into play in eternal formats is a clear counterpoint. Rather than trying to say Emrakul alone justifies putting annihilator on the list, I was saying annihilator alone puts Emrakul in contention for eternal play (or to be less hyperbolic, is the most vital piece of the card).
MTG people : "Doctor Who is not the right feeling for Magic..." Whovian here : "Yawgmoth is literally out of a Doctor Who old school story from the lore I watched summarized in a video." I think it's a fun match. :P Time Counters are so fun
12:12: That's... not much of a problem. You can just counter the spell they cascade into. The effect of the cascade spell usually doesn't matter. So unless they also have ways of casting the spell from the graveyard, a counterspell is still an awnser.
I'm not the most experienced magic player, but to me, experience counters seem pretty strong, mostly due to the fact that there's (to my knowledge) not much anyone can do to affect them on account of counting up on the player, not the board. As such, once the experience counters start rolling, even though they might not be game winning right out the gate, the fact that they're so untouchable seems quite powerful to me!
Experience Counters issue is mostly just that they're very slow. I believe they were specifically designed for Commander, as Commander is generally a slower format, but even within it most decks I've run into "in the wild," as it were, simply run faster than one can expect to stack up a lot of experience counters for cool effects. I'm sure they're monstrous in slower/more casual play groups, but the fact that, AFAIK, that's mostly where they reside means that while the mechanic is theoretically powerful, the implementation doesn't really live up to it.
If you had a 1/1 creature with every one of these keywords, what would its mana cost need to be for it to be balanced? Or would it be too strong even at absurd mana costs because there’s ways to cheat creatures out.
@@Srock8994 It would be if it was a decent mana cost, affinity and delve would probably force it to be a lot of colored pips if it was ever going to be balanced. It might as well not even have the colorless mana cost so I guess the real question is how many colored mana pips would you need for the card to be balanced?
I'd say to balance it all out, you should make it, 13 generic, 2 black, 1 blue, and 1 green, this makes the cascade only effective for the highest of endgame cards, then give it dredge 2 only to make it a little strong because then you give it protection from everything, this would make it very difficult to set up a powerful cascade effect, and dredge 2 was never really that amazing. Then when you add undying you can get the extra cascade, but with the protection you can't force that to happen very easily, and given it's low stats, it won't be too dangerous to let hit you a couple times. The biggest worry then would be the infect prowess, but with the building around endgame bosses, prowess won't do too much, and that gives you 10 hits from it to find a way around it, and it's lock in at 10 unless you get board boosting effects. All in all, it'd be one of the most terrifying looking cards in the game, but building around it requires more hoops to jump through, and it would probably just end up a cascade for big things or a tiny dredger
Im still a newer MTG player so idk when they last time the released cards with a certain keyword, but I heard dredge was so hated WOTC will never touch it again thts why they keep making weaker versions of the effect, idk how true that is though. I play arena so iv never played against it.
While it isn't quite a "never again" keyword, there are only two new cards with it that have come about since it was initially made: Dakmor Salvage (A land in Future Sight with Dredge 2) and Shenanigans (A red sorcery in Modern Horizons 1 with Dredge 1). By all appearances, Dredge can get new cards very rarely, but they will never reach the Dredge numbers of older cards ever again.
Best keyword seems a bit subjective. Your list is about how relevant the keywords have been overtime, but I think it would be interesting to judge keywords based on what they do to an otherwise vanilla 1/1 creature. Just a fun idea .
Dredge in a vcaccum is by far the strongest ability, the fact that a card can read dredge 6 be blank uncastable with nothing else on it and would be plaid in multiple formats proves this. A blank companion is worthless also alot of storm card are worthless. Dredge is #1 and Its not close.
Poison counters is such unfun mechanic for the opponent that instantly halves their life total if someone is using it. And all what it takes is few small 1/1 spooders that have infect and a card that has proliferate and its instant KO without a chance to fight back because poison counters are by design permanent.
White can exile, Blue can bounce then counter (or even steal), Red can steal or just ignore it and burn directly. Green is the only one struggling, but with a bigger creature with trample the keyword isn't much of an issue. Some days ago I managed to get over indestructible+lifelink by blinking Titan of Industry over and over, so the shield counter always prevented their lifelink to work, it was beautiful :D
Kinda surprised that phyrexian mana wasn't on this list, considering that cards like mental misstep warp formats around them Edit: I realized that he was talking about keywords specifically lol 🙃
I'd like to point out horsemanship as well. While it's not gamebreaking in the normal sense, since there's so few cards with it. But I allows human decks to get better flying since horsemanship can only be blocked with horsemanship.
@@איתןשי yea, but for the most part unblockable is a 1 creature thing. where as theres at least one card that just says "all knights you control have horsemanship"
@@thezerohero9883 that's literally only for knight tribal tho, so that ability is only as good as that niche, which i've never even heard of being played.
"There was a time when Black Lotus was legal in more formats than Lurrus", unless you're counting the fact that Black Lotus was released first, this is absolutely false. Lurrus wasn't banned into Pioneer/Modern until nearly two years after the companion errata (it's just that broken anyway), and in fact the first post-errata change in legality for any companion was Lurrus getting belatedly unbanned in Vintage some ~8 months later. All that aside, Lurrus has never been banned in EDH, or Arena-only formats like Historic, and now Timeless, so it really never came close to the dominance of Lotus being restricted in the one single format it's legal in.
I don't think companion was that strong or game breaking, it was particular ones that were the problem. Honestly most of them were just fine. Gyruda, Jeganthana, Kaheera, Keruga, Obosh, Umori, and Zirda had the good restriction and effects that were good but not completely busted. I think Kaheera, Gyruda, and Zirda were the strongest of those 7 but had the deck building restrictions that kept them in check. The biggest problems were Lurrus, Lutri, and Yorion. Lutri is actually very weak because of the deck restriction and was only a problem for Commander being an instant include but it pre-banned so its not a problem. Yorion is very strong because it's an ETB when it really should have been a cast trigger or even an attack trigger, it honestly wouldn't have seen much play if it was either. Lurrus is 100% the reason why Companion was changed and is the sole reason why people think its a strong mechanic even though its the effect that is busted. Honestly standard wasn't an issue with Lurrus it was the other formats with completely broken cards that made it a menace.
I feel like anihilator could be an honerable mebtion- I wouldnt say any of the cards with it became problems because of that over their other abilities, but it sure as hell didnt make them worse.
"The storm scale receives it's name by how unlikely a busted mechanic is to appear in new cards, storm being the prime example". WTC-so, you're saying that we should create new storm cards?
That's because the Storm Scale isn't used in design, it's only Mark Rosewater's personal estimate. Also, it only applies to standard, and WotC knows there's a bunch of that-guys that love using Storm, so they use it a lot more than they should in supplemental sets.
How to fix Companions? Simple. They should start on the board instead of in hand and if they are removed by an opponent's damage or removal, the controller loses the game.
That's the baked in number for the mechanic tho. Commander is Magic with a different ruleset, not a license to errata cards. You could argue for all infect cards to be banned in principle, but changing what it does is out of the question.
That's strange because From the Comprehensive Rules (February 2, 2024-Murders at Karlov Manor) 122.3. If a permanent has both a +1/+1 counter and a -1/-1 counter on it, N +1/+1 and N -1/-1 counters are removed from it as a state-based action, where N is the smaller of the number of +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters on it. See rule 704. So my guess is Arena didn't code that correctly
Every time he pronounced albeit as “ableet” I died a little inside from secondhand embarrassment. He is already so knowledgeable about Magic there’s no reason to try to act more articulate than you are by running your script through a thesaurus. So many RU-vidrs do this, it’s ironic because repeatedly mispronouncing a word that they clearly don’t know makes them look less intelligent than if they just used language they’re familiar with.
>undying is in the top ten >Indestructible is nowhere to be seen I disagree. You just have to give it the same mana cost as if it was a creature token spell.
first of all 1,000,000% sure Annihilator is missing in the list (infact this mechanic is so powerful even less likely to appear in sets even supplement set than storm.) second surprised you didn't' mention the lurrus banned forced the commander committee to ditch their shortcut ban list original it just banned every card on vintage ban list but they had to ditch that shortcut as of lurrus since lurrus is not bannable by any means in commander)
The only companion I've found viable is Yorion. I want to have larger decks anyway so making Brago and 120 to 200 card deck becomes legal. Most don't care about having larger decks as it the decks that do the same wincon every time that are annoying and want to run as few cards as possible to hit their combo. Play with Yorion or build bigger decks with your groups permission. We shouldn't be limiting ourselves when 100 cards was just an abitrary number to begin with.
