The biggest memory I have of how in demand the Jitte was is that there were Rat's Nest decks out of stock for £7.50 next to unsold "Rat's Nest minus Jitte" for 50p. Also made the other rare in the pre-con (Patron of the Nezumi) super easy to get ahold of. I also own a lot of Kamigawa swamps.
@@hyperchord Umezawa's Jitte is still a staple in the Canadian Highlander format, which the RU-vid show North 100 Showdown showcases. It's great, you should go watch it.
The dumbest decision I ever made was trading away a Jitte I pulled from a booster I cracked back then, because I didn't have Toshiro Umezawa and my friend did.
i never pulled a Jitte (was too young to recognize its Power anyway), but i pulled a Toshiro Umezawa and traded it away because i back then i wasn't playing black and had no use for that card. Reading it today i'm like "damn, i could use this in my Tor Wauki Commander"
One thing to note is that there were a lot of strong less creature centric decks in Jitte's time in Block/Standard (by the end of its Standard run, countertop was a thing). In Block, there no good dual lands, but some of the best ramp spells ever printed. So those ramp decks became dominant, as aggro decks ended up being limited to one color, whereas it cost nothing for the ramp decks to go multicolor. The Aggro cards for Black Hand included the likes of Takenuma Bleeder and Sink into Takenuma. White aggro doesn't look as bad today, but still was heavily reliant on Charge Across the Araba. On the other hand, the most dedicated ramp deck could consistently hardcast Myojin of Seeing Winds (Though most didn't go that hard into ramp and tended to prefer that 6-7 mana range). Kami-Rav might've fixed the land issue, but aggro decks were still playing the likes of Skyknight Legionnaire. At the same time, cards like the guild signets and remand and the like were in common supply and you had your pick of acceptable boardwipes from Wrath of God, Kagemaro, Wildfire, and smaller ones like Pyroclasm. Essentially, Jitte was allowed to stay because there was concern that aggro in those formats might not exist at all without it. Post-Mirrodin, Kamigawa formats tended to enable decks that had the ability (but not necessarily the intention) to go to very skill intensive, grindy late games, and Jitte helped aggros decks to play in that area.
I was there, back when 25€ was the most someone would pay for a card in Standard. People ran Jittes in combo decks just to counter opposing Jittes due to the old legend rule. It was insane. Jitte was incredible (still is). Among the best cards for limited ever.
I hate Lost Jitte, solely because the art clearly depicts a dagger with an edge and a sharp point, and lacking an edge or point is essentially the only defining feature of a jitte
I started playing shortly before the Guilds of Ravnica release and I still have PTSD of this card. The only other card I remember being so dominant against me was Jace the Mind Sculptor .
I remember getting this card in the pre-release... I had to read the card a few times to make sure I was reading it right, it seemed too good. Such a strong card! It was truly a bomb in limited.
to me, the biggest trip-up of assessing this card is the charge counters - they go on the equipment, not the creature. i played a release booster draft where someone opened a jitte and got *passed* a jitte (yeah... a lot of people didn't understand jitte's power), and they correctly assessed the card and included both. playing against their deck, my first read was "huh, ok" and then i killed their equipped creature after one combat exchange. and then when i saw the charge counters still on the card, i'm like "huh?" and the other person offered the card for reading again, and then i had this sudden sinking feeling that i still clearly remember, as i suddenly had a realization that i had no real answer to this and the game was going to spiral out of control.
I’m glad you explained it because I never got the power of this card originally. Just bad reading comprehension and lack of understanding on how it actually worked. Definitely appreciate it now!
Jitte battles were especially intricate with damage on stack, and this is why some sacrificing creatures (Sakura Tribe Elder) was so powerful. It can block an opposing X/1 wielding Jitte, kill it, AND don't add counters to it.
I remember having Jitte in my first Betrayers sealed pool. It didn't even make the cut because at first read, it looked too clunky. It wasn't until a week or so later that I realized just how busted it was.
Being a Commander player only anymore, I can say this card is very underrated. Every deck could play it, but I very rarely see it. It's so useful and it can be an all star in many decks. My Vhal+Clan Crafter deck very much loves it.
Huh, that's super interesting about a modal ability not being able to be both mana and non-mana. I had never really thought about it before this, but that isn't something that's in the game despite it being definitely something that, from a design instead of rules perspective, seems like it would be fully on flavor and normal. Little things like that are why I love this channel.
I had a friend who ran a Rafiq of the Many EDH deck and it seemed like he got Jitte on him 9 out of 10 games. Rafiq is already a problem, but Rafiq with Jitte is insane and if nobody was able to deal with it by the time it got back around to his turn, he'd just start smashing every face in sight.
Honestly, if you made it so the mana ability could only be activated as an instant (another fix to the problem of it being a mana ability)...itd be way more busted than it ended up being. "You need other stuff to spend it on" is a silly reason to say it's less powerful, since you also need something to give -1/-1 to for the ability it ended up being. And 2 mana is a lot more powerful overall than giving something -1/-1 (which itself isn't even a whole 1cmc effect usually - 1 mana buys you -2/-2 at least).
I wasn't playing magic at the time when this came out, but I remember a friend of mine constantly complaining about Jitte for years, and then later his ire switched to JTMS.
The two mana thing would have been waaaay more broken. That's two mana per charge counter, so that's fucking 4 mana for any deck from one swing that goes through . People would find a way to infinite that pretty quickly
I just categorize arguing with people confident that it’s pronounced “jight” the same way I do WoW players who insist it’s a HURTHstone and D&D players who like to double down on their declaration of a “coup de gras”
It would be interesting to see whether Lost Jitte is as much a bomb in its limited format as the OG Jitte was in its format. I encountered it only once in OTJ, but it seemed to really take over the match.
This card was in a preconstructed Rat Deck sold in stores and I really wanted it, but one of my MTG playing friends bought the last ones from the store before I had a chance. I still do not own a Jitte.
Looking at the effects it's a bit surprising we haven't seen a card called Umezawa's Charm, because that's more or less what this card does, it gives you manaless casts of a very versatile modal spell.
@@joshuastark6712 Wait, really? I completely forgot about it then 💀💀💀💀💀 god MH1 was so long ago... Maybe if it costed a single B it would be more notable 😅
@makenshao9886 Ye, tbf tho, Diet Disfigure, Diet Giant Growth, Diet Healing Salve isn't bad for being your choice of three 1cc spells for 2 lol. Charms are super fun to analyze power-level for thanks to modality lol.
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Jitte was so good that so many people would cheat it into there packs in limted.
Maybe it was in "you have to play with it to know how good it is" territory in constructed, but in sealed, I walked into the prerelease desperately hoping I'd open one and fearing my opponents doing so. It was immediately obvious from the spoiler that it was the best card in the format by miles-- we'd just gotten off of a format where things like Sword of Fire and Ice and Loxodon Warhammer were just insanely good, and this format had far less (indeed, almost no-- this was during a weird, brief era when white didn't get Disenchant anymore) artifact removal. So there was like a 60 percent chance your opponent had no way to remove it at all, and most of the remaining decks were hoping to draw a single card capable of dealing with it. Not great!
With all the Proliferate and counter adding abilities today, think about how good this can be today??? You don't even have to even have a creature or equip it to use two of its abilities. You can play it along say an Energy Chamber and other types of cards and just use the abilities and control other creatures and your life for free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention how the "damage no longer uses the stack" rules change made this card significantly worse. I guess it's still a good ca d after the changes but before the changes it was broken. Attack, opponent blocks, you get 2 charge counters, damage goes on the stack, remove 2 charge counters to buff your creature and nerf the opponents. Now yours survives for combat and theirs doesnt
This card made me quit magic for a year back in 2005, white weenie decks were unstoppable! Latern kamis, suntail hawks first strike stuff smh, the only card I never wanna see unbanned.
Such a demoralizing card. Once it connected one time and it got counters, the game was practically over. It was impossible to keep up with. Even if you manage to destroy it, every deck has four copies so the next one isn't far behind.
