Now that he knows about Rishadan port, show him Rishadan dockhand! And my favorite Sin Prodder(aka Rob)! Maybe show him right after bob? And how about Bedlam reveler?
I'd love to see a Yu-Gi-Oh player look at a spread of alternate win conditions to find the staples and stinkers: Hellkite Tyrant, Approach of the Second Sun, Battle of Wits, Maze's End, and Thassa's Oracle.
I feel like an important difference between Tibalt and the Dangers is the order of drawing and discarding, I feel like it's easier to commit to discarding a random card when you're guaranteed a new card afterwards, Tibalt might literally do nothing by making you discard the card you just drew.
Yeah the problems of random discard are usually too high in Magic to risk playing Tibalt. You are reliant on lands to play the game, so if you randomly discard them you probably lose. You sculpt your hand with mulligans to fight against whatever the matchup is and you can potentially just discard the card you took time to mulligan to. If you want to play a deck like reanimator you need to have the reanimate in hand and the target in the grave, with Tibalt you can just end up with the opposite. It kind of fits in a deck like dredge, where pretty much every card had madness (you can cast them when you discard them), dredge, flashback, or some other way to get back from the grave, but it is way to slow for those decks when there are cards that cost 1 mana, draw 2 then discard 2 without the random factor. Spending double the mana and hopping Tibalt is alive two turns to still get a worse effect just isn't worth it.
The big thing is not that your hand might not change, it's that you might make it WORSE. In fact, you can very easily make it worse. If you have a lot of cards in hand, your topdeck is likely worse than a random card in your hand. If you only have a few cards in hand, you have a greater chance of just milling one. Basically the only time you want to use Tibalt's +1 is when you have a hand full of bricks, and then you're probably losing that game anyway.
It's also notable that Tibalt is not synergistic with a graveyard strat, and as an agro card the discard didn't provide value success those strats tend not to utilise their graveyard.
Don’t forget, Rishadan Port was in standard with City of Brass, a land that can tap for any color of mana but (because it’s old) deals 1 damage to you when it *becomes tapped* (as opposed to newer pain lands that ping you as part of their mana abilities). So you not only cut your opponent on mana, but also ping them for 1 every turn. This was also when the 2-color pain lands (the ones in Dominaria United and Brothers’ War) were in standard, so your opponent is also taking damage from them every turn too.
And in legacy it is played since legacy has a ton of very powerful lands,so does vintage (bazaar, library of alexandria, mishra´s workshop). You can also use it against mutavault or mishra´s factory. So it really does a lot for just 1 mana.
The big one in Legacy is AEther Vial. You can play a basic land turn 1 (which can't be hit by Wasteland) into AEther Vial, then play turn 2 Rishadan Port and start tapping away. You'll still "curve" out with the Vial, while your opponent can't cast anything because of all your mana denial. You don't see Port in Vintage so much because of Strip Mine + 4x Wasteland is enough. Ghost Quarter is the next best option because so many decks operate off of cheap artifact mana while not having much room for basics. You'll see some nutty MUD variants in Vintage playing 4x Wasteland, 4x Ghost Quarter, and 1x Strip Mine (restricted).
@@GuyIncognito575 ....which reminds me: you won't beat a deck with Port by trying to out-deny them on mana. They have the full suite of Wastelands like you do, then Port to back it up. It can be absolutely brutal for a Delver player who made the mistake of using their own Wasteland early on (Wastelanding your Wasteland with their Wasteland), not realizing you're a Vial deck. They think they're making a strong tempo play, only to get BTFO'd.
Port was brutal back in the day in suicide black in conjunction with Nether Void and Sinkhole. I also saw it in some versions of Prop-Orb with Icy Manipulators.
Arcum astrolabe has to be the hardest card you could use for something like this. I also think some pauper cards, like fall from favor, the urza lands, nettle sentinel, and atog/fling could help spice up the show.
I like the Urza lands and Nettle Sentinel for this. Pauper-only cards might be a bit too niche. Chronatog or Psychatog might be interesting choices too.
@@chuckwagon3718 ÿeah i was thinking about psychatog as well but would it even qualify as a staple today? today it barely sees play, right? Maybe tendrils of agony or mind's desire
It's also important to note that Rahsadin Port came out while the Urza lands were still legal. Gaea's Cradle, and Academy were playable. Tapping that monsterous land during upkeep was POWERFUL.
@@raze667 Oh yeah lol we went from having turn 1 and 2 kills in Standard to having....playing white creatures that put lower costing white creatures into play is the best deck??? 🤣
@@raze667 Considering the entire R&D department went into an executives office after printing Urza's block to get yelled at for a couple hours about how bad the design of Urzas was, the power pull back was needed.
I think a big thing about evaluating Tibalt is realizing how important modality is for Planeswalkers. Even if a Planeswalker has an ability that's markedly more powerful than the others, a lot of their value comes from the fact that they can do multiple different things on the turn they come down and the turn after. Tibalt basically only has one loyalty ability until you've been able to untap with him twice. And he's so much more vulnerable than a 2 mana enchantment with his first loyalty ability.
Yeah, the modality is part of what made walkers like The Wandering Emperor or Gideon Ally of Zendikar so powerful in standard because they could do three relevant things and do them repeatedly.
I mean it's a part of it but also not a big part of it, imagine he could turn things to elks for his +1 or deploy a 1/1 devil thing he'd be perfectly playable as is(3 mana tibalt was a full mana more could only do it twice and still saw play) , because the real key to good planeswalkers is the ability to defend themselves, either by making a blocker or removing a threat or gaining an absurd amount of loyalty while doing that (looking at you Oko and Karn) Consider emperor but she now magically only got the ability to make samurais but as a +1, she'd be absurd, much more so than her current power level, she'd come down end of opponent turn and effectively have 5 loyalty and 2 2/2s before opponent can really do anything. Or consider Ugin for example, he is almost exclusively a board wipe but then he also bolts, however if his board wipe mode was the only one and you gained 3 loyalty minus the x that you chose(meaning you lose 1 loyalty if x is 4 or gain 3 if x is 0), once again it's a singular mode and once again absurdly broken anyway. Tibalt's problem is that he doesn't defend itself AND the one thing he does is bad for you and it really doesn't help that it takes 5 turns of this actively bad for you ability to hit the only good effect on the card.
Adam has such a great approach in evaluating mtg cards, it took me a long time in the nineties to evaluate cards like this! Great reasoning, honestly! And an absolute amazing series, keep up the good work!
@@0xGRIDRUNR I wouldn't describe knuckleblade as bad. If it were reprinted into standard, it very well might see play, siege rhino was just too efficiënt and since knuckleblade cannot get through rhino it was unplayable at the time
@@baukeschenkelaars6555 I kinda would say it's bad to be honest. All of its abilities require extra mana to activate, whereas siege rhino was a one time investment that remained a present threat, no future investment needed. It seems like it would be good due to it's modality, but using those abilities prevents you from doing other things. For example, casting storm breath dragon on curve, or using disdainful stroke to counter the rhino. It was much worse as a tempo piece than the rhino due to those mana intensive abilities. Compared to a threat that was ran in the same deck, storm breath dragon, your initial investment got you flying and pro white for one extra mana if you assume you cast knuckleblade and give it haste. That evasion was huge considering how gummed up board states were in that standard, with the Elspeth tokens and rhinos.
@S V well so has tarmogoyf, but I think it can still be called such. Being a staple of any format for any reasonably long amount of time is enough justification to call a card a staple.
Mother of Runes is a pretty interesting card to judge in my opinion. It really makes you understand the threat of activation better and could seem like a niche tech option to the untrained eye.
So much of the strength of that card comes from the fact that it can target it self. It makes it so you pretty much have to use two removals on it if you are ever gonna kill it.
I particularly like that they introduce cards to players of other tcgs, since they have a frame of reference but also can provide a unique perspective. Thank you for the episode, keep up the good work 👏
It wasn't really though. It simply wasn't in the right colors, where rhino was a center piece to abzan planeswalkers knuckle's only home was 4 color jeskai ascendancy combo which played 4 of him in the board for the match ups he was good for and that deck There was simply no temur midrange to support him enough while you did have abzan and jeskai versions one of which running rhino the other mantis and seeker. Calling him a stinker because the format didn't have a deck to support him is a huge mistake when he served as a backup for the 4c jeskai combo deck (and they ran him instead of seeker or mantis which were jeskai's staples so this goes to show how strong of a card it was that you'd use it if possible over 2 of the format's biggest staples)
I think it's a great suggestion! The fact that siege rhino even saw play in modern shows that this card had everything going for it (I personally pre-ordered 4) and just did not end up seeing that much play!
Savage Knuckleblade is the perfect example of what looks like a powerful card which was weak because of the environment it was printed in rather than any particular flaw with the card itself. If Siege Rhino had been a 5/4 instead of a 4/5 it might have had a chance.
I love these kinds of videos, Adam is also quite good at it with his thought process. Lovely to see. I also have a suggestion: Adanto Vanguard was in 1/3rd of the decks of the Standard Pro Tour for Guilds of Ravinca. By far the most played card. Aggro was ruling supreme, this was one of the staples. While still being an extremely low priced option at that as well. And this seems like a card that would be difficult to judge!
@Blag Blargson: I think we can go one further: Show a Staple, then show a card that looks like it would combo very well with that Staple, and the contestant has to guess if the second card is a Staple or Stinker. First card pairing could be Adanto Vanguard and Font of Agonies.
If Adam likes the "deal damage equal to hand size" as a win condition, there was in fact a time when that type of deck did exist. Using cards like Howling Mine and Kami of the Crescent Moon to force your opponent to draw more cards each turn, cards like Remand and Eye of Nowhere to put cards back into their hands as they play them, and Sudden Impact or Ebony Owl Netsuke to punish them for not being able to empty their hands fast enough (or Spiraling Embers to use your hand size instead), it was a fun deck... 20ish years ago.
If you haven't done Warping Wail, it could be a fun one for this series; even most magic players I knew when it came out had no idea how to evaluate it. It used to be solidly stinker status, but I've seen it keep creeping up in modern Tron, first as a sideboard card and now it's starting to see enough mainboard Tron play that I'd consider it a staple.
A video about sleeper cards would be cool. I remember during Mirrodin block looking at spoilers and thinking Jitte and Chalice were busted. Jitte flew under the radar for a bit but Chalice was the real sleeper. Once people in legacy/vintage figured out that playing first and dropping Chalice for 0 was broken it finally got hit, but it took years for it to happen.
Good one- indomitable creativity. It saw no play in standard when it was released but the rise of tokens and treasures has really helped it become a combo piece. The only problem is Thoralf has played it on the channel so he might see straight through that.
@@joshuagriffith9191 I think it's an easy staple or stinker any way. You still need to build round the energy which will throw someone off and the attune with aether card would be a better choice for staple or stinker anyway. You can also see the power as it casts any card for free in the top six. Creativity on the other hand is more obscure and you have to build around it for a better result (I had to edit this as I thought you were talking about aetherflux reservoir)
@@tedpengu1n Don’t worry. I agree with your assessment as a good choice to evaluate. I was just pointing out why it was bad in standard. Creativity could have been used to get ulamogg or emrakul in an artifact control deck, but it would have been much harder to build around and a lot less consistent. Could have been a fun jank deck.
Äh, Doom Whisperer is played a lot in demon tribal EDH, especially due to the fact, demons are expensive and they almost always go Reanimator theme. He is amazing.
@@aguilefo And Surveil decks of that era. By far one of the best cards in the deck, especially once you had Disinformation Campaign up and running. Ain't nobody killing your 6/6 demon because they don't have any cards in hand.
EDH ... doesn't matter too much. It can't. Almost any card with some powerful efffects can be made functioning in an EDH deck that's built around it. Plus the structure of the format (no meta game) prevents comparisons to some degree. Actually ... the series "staple or stinker" can't represent all formats. The core idea of the series doesn't align too well with Sealed, Draft, EDH, Brawl, Pauper, ... In other words: Tell me how Stinkers work in Pauper.
I think Browbeat would be a good test. On paper it seems like a very amazing card, but turns out that giving your opponent the choice really makes it never good.
@@danlorett2184 Browbeat is actually a classic card for showing new players that giving opponents the choice is almost always worse than the sum of the card's parts.
Suggestion: I think that 1 of the 4 cards each time should be an "It's complicated" card. It should be a complicated card in terms of text, and it should see a decent amount of play, but it isn't format defining or brokenly overpowered. For example: Lantern of Insight. It's cheap (both mana and money), it's not banned anywhere, and the deck named after it is relatively well known, but rarely that important in the meta. Why do I think you should do this? Because there are a lot of times where it's hard to judge a card, but because you *know* it must be a staple or a stinker, that alone can influence the decision and push someone to guess correctly when they don't actually understand the card. Simply knowing that there's an interesting looking but completely normal card *somewhere* in the mix would really throw a wrench in the game. It would also provide you with an opportunity to showcase classic cards that have never been broken but still have some interesting ability or interactions. Another example would be cards that are the "balanced" half of some combo. Melira from the old Melira-Pod deck is a great one. What she does isn't broken by itself, but the way it interacted with the completely nutty card Birthing pod created a powerful modern deck.
The biggest potential issue, I feel, with including exactly 1 "it's complicated" card amongst the 5, is figuring out where in the line-up to put it. If you put it somewhere in the beginning (1st or 2nd), you lose the effect of the non-MTG player second-guessing themselves once they know the "it's complicated" card is gone. If you always put it at the very end (4th, or even worse, 5th), then they don't have to worry about the other cards, plus it makes it easier to guess the "complicated" card when there are only a few chances left. It's probably best to put it somewhere in the middle (2nd-4th), but if Adam or some other non-MTG player is smart enough to figure out this "meta" analysis in the same way that I did, they'll still know that at least the 1st and 5th cards will be absolute staples or stinkers.
@@AhsimNreiziev True, but if it was completely rng where it goes, then it still works on average for half the session. As the series goes on, truly difficult staple/stinker cards will become harder and harder to find so this would also serve to delay the almost inevitable end of the series or help it transition to some other format down the line. Example: Here's 5 cards and they have to guess which format it sees play in. Or if it's terrible.
Doom Whisperer Definitely feels like the sort of card that people would be terrified of during spoiler season, then find out 5 mana is way too late in the game for it to matter once it released.
I used it in my dimir control/surveil/discard deck and I can tell you that it was a blast. By the time it enters the game it was lock for the opponent and it just allowed me to find more and more options so no, it’s not too late. Most of the people like to slap these cards as soon as they get them and therein lies the mistake.
@@dalexa It'll definitely end games if it sticks, protect it and it'll help you find what you need. It's just not a DRC or something that manipulates the top of your deck from turn 1 kinda thing.
@@dalexa Yeah I didn't agree with this video. I also played Surveil for a bit and Doom Whisperer was probably the strongest card in the deck. Pure fucking value with Disinformation Campaign. Combined with Duress and Thought Erasure, nobody was casting no removal spells on your 6/6 demon lol
@@nekrataali Doom Whisperer was cool, but it wasn't good even during its set's standard. When it was released, it was competing against cards like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Niv-Mizzet, Parun, which just do way more, it got out-valued by the explore deck and outraced by Pelt Collector aggro decks, and it died extremely easily to the removal people were packing like Assassin's Trophy and Vraska's Contempt. By the time RNA released, Doom Whisperer was niche, and the busted Simic Ramp Wilderness Exploration or Esper Hero decks could just bury it in value, which were further improved once WAR released with Nissa, Who Shakes the World. It just wasn't well-positioned against the field.
@@nekrataali Thought erasure really felt like the best card in the surveil deck closely followed by disinformation campaign and sinister sabotage. Doom whisperer usually held a 1 of slot for me because I didn’t really do much when I drew it.
I don't think that Doom Whisperer qualifies for stinker. The card was pretty alright in standard and especially good against control decks where your life didn't matter. Neither Staple nor Stinker, but more like Filler.
As I made sure to stress in the beginning of the video, a stinker does not mean it's a bad card. It means it wad very hyped up in spoiler season and ended up seeing almost no play ;) the card is purely good stats. But it simply did not catch up with what the other cards where doing at the time
While it’s true that casual EDH has no real meta competitive commander or cEDH actually does have a pretty well defined meta game, LED for example is a staple of cEDH. Thassa’s Oracle and Underworld Breach are used in a high percentage of cEDH decks (often in conjunction with LED) and are used (and powerful) in other formats such as modern. With that being said my suggestions for the next video are going to be modern cards, Murktide Regent and Violent Outburst
Another really good land to try to assess is Field of the Dead, especially since Yu-Gi-Oh players will be a bit shocked to realise that decks that's okay it tends to want the game to go to turn 10+.
As someone who was actively playing competitive standard at the time, I still saw Doom Whisperer EVERYWHERE. So many people were trying to make it work, or kinda making it work. I'm not sure I'd go so far as labeling it a "stinker."
I think it would be cool to have people evaluate and rank certain card cycles, ala the titans, the primordials, the souls, and the lesser cycles like savage knucks, siege rhino, mantis rider, etc.
Doom Whisperer is actually in 2% of edh decks on edhrec. I run it in Tasigur mainly to fuel delve, and it's served me quite well, it be a 6/6 Flying Trample is mostly just a bonus.
Yeah it seems like a reasonable card for EDH because it seems like a goldilocks, powerful enough to be meaningfully impactful in the right deck, but not so powerful to draw removal, counter magic, or archenemy status.
I found 0% on the EDHRec page, but maybe I looked in the wrong place? Nonetheless, 2% is almost the definition of something not being a staple :) a good example of a commander staple would be rhystic studies
Back in the day when Tibalt was released, I actually called that the card was bad and nobody believed me. I knew that the random discard simply wouldn't work, especially when you needed it to survive two more turns for it to do anything other than its draw+random discard (for those unaware, it was briefly hinted at in the video, but it's actually not easy to cheat extra loyalty counters onto a plainswalker, especially back when Tibalt was printed. Possible, yes, but very tough). And for the record, I don't play much competitive magic and overall I consider my skill to be below average and even I could see that Tibalt was overhyped.
Doomsday, ancient tomb, wrath of God, braid of fire would be great for one of these videos. It would also be fun to have yugioh players look at phyrexian/ashnods altar and have to decide which is stronger
@@dagonhydra I would have said Vintage, but nobody plays that format. Vintage MtG and meta YGO are so hilariously similar, but nobody really talks about it.
@@randommaster06 having recently learned YGO because of Master Duel, I agree! I’d modify it slightly that YGO is very similar to Legacy, Vintage is still a class of its own.
@@dagonhydra I was thinking of Vintage more for the "dead out of nowhere" aspect to the format. Either way, getting a YGO pro to try some of the more busted formats would be great.
Well in Yugioh we have cards that search for equips that made a certain equip deck really good until there were some band, so Stonfeorge wouldn't be that hard, a card that would actually be hard for an only Yugioh player to understand is Field of the Dead, we don;'t have something that similar to that, maybe Black Garden but is not even on the same power level.
Doom Whisperer is hard to judge in some ways because it was often a 1- or 2-of in Golgari in its Standard, which was probably the best deck in that format, so I would argue that it's on the line between Staple and Stinker by that metric, at least if you count Standard. Of course, its time in the sun was short, once WAR came out there were better things to do than Golgari and Sultai because there were so many broken Planeswalkers running around, and even before WAR, when Ravnica Allegiance came out you had to make room for Hydroid Krasis. And it still occasionally sees a little bit of play in some Bolas's Citadel decks in smaller formats like Pioneer, though that's not enough to make it a staple. So overall I think calling it a Stinker is right, but it's not as cut and dry as some other cards.
But what is the answer for Rancor? It was considered a staple where I played, not sure how it was worldwide as magic was a lot less global back then. Today I don't think it would see standard play (but it would probobly be good in limited).
@@vicdark8807 Rancor was/is amazing in boggles. In boggles day in modern it was one of the most powerful cards in the deck. Same with pauper boggles now.
@@joshuagriffith9191 True I guess but boogles is not really a deck outside pauper right (is it a deck in pauper?)? So it is still contextually a decent card but WotC does not want to recreste the context it shines in.
@@vicdark8807 it is not a deck outside of pauper anymore. But it goes up and down popularity in that format. In its day though, it was a scourge of modern.
@@vicdark8807 I'd wager to say if it was reprinted it would likely see play in standard. It's still a good card even compared to today's card strength. What always made it powerful was the fact that you could keep bringing it back. I could see it playing nicely with Quiron Beastcaller.
@@Synedrex12 Well, he's definitely shown knowledge that cheats in the game exist. "Oh this is bad but if you cheat it out or double it it's very powerful." It's a tricky one for sure but Depths has a very interesting MTG history where it was essentially not worth the cardboard it was printed on for the better part of a decade.
Would be great to have Adam play a match of mtg, maybe commander to start him up but also something spikey like modern. His thought process is so good I can see him playing a fun match
You really need to tell him at the end he needs to tap two in order to pay for the G/B. There was another occasion in this video where he was vocalizing a wrong understanding maybe let him know. EITHER WAY I LOVE THESE KEEP THEM GOING!
I was the guy at the card shop that legit traded for oodles of Tibalts when people started ditching him. I had 114 of them before I sold them all out years later for a couple bucks each :D
I think some interesting cards to have yugioh players rate would be counterspells. If I had to pick one, maybe the hardest for a yugioh player to evaluate would be daze.
Great episode as usual, I lost it when Adam said that Hogaak reminded him of a banned card in Yu-Gi-Oh. I don't think I've seen any artifact lands yet and I doubt Yu-Gi-Oh players will appreciate how broken they are, so I'm going to suggest Seat of the Synod, the ultimate artifact land.
@@CardmarketMagic Maybe you couldwork up to the artifact lands by seeding some other staples like Arcbound Ravager or Cranial Plating so they know artifacts matter is an archetype in MTG.
I feel like ledger shredder is a great one for this series. No one had eyes on it, was preordering for 2-3$, then ballooned to 20$ and is a modern/pioneer staple in top tier decks.
Two interesting ones (that probably dont really fit into either category) from an old deck I used to play with 15 years ago Megrim (Opponent takes 2 damage every time they discard) Underworld Dreams (Opponent takes 1 damage every time they draw) Was fun nearly creatureless deck that just was a bunch of cards to try and make opponent deck churn... you get something like: Dark Deal (All players discard hand, draw number of cards discarded -1) Windfall (All players discard hand, draw max number of cards discarded) Jace Archivist (Tap + Blue Mana = Creature version of Windfall) Get an enchantment out and with some of those spells its almost a one move kill. Very fun casual deck.
Possible variation of this game: Identify the Format Staple - present a brief explanation of a short number of MTG Formats and have the other person find what format they are considered a staple in. ex Smothering Tithe in Commander, Time Vault in Vintage, Spellstutter Sprite in its Standard
Spellstutter Sprite ... Eh Pauper? Maybe also Modern before it became effectively a rotating format with Horizons & Co.? Anyway: I like guessing formats. Yet, that's possibly something to ask for to evaluate from a mostly/exclusively EHD player. It's way beyond what a YuGiOh player can do.
@@FR0STBL0D spellstutter was but one of the pieces that made Standard Fairies a powerhouse that was a nightmare for anything besides Elves to play against. Mistbinder Clique, Bitterblossom, Vendillion Clique, etc making it a control powerhouse
i rarely ever comment, but i absolutely love this series, and I've got some suggestions. Smokestack could be interesting, wrenn and six, painters servant, field of the dead, arcums astrolabe, flash, bazaar of baghdad, squee goblin nabob, memory jar, and maybe the fetch lands could all be interesting. i think some of those cards are quite difficult to evaluate, hope to see some in a future video!
It would be cool to try an episode where Adam would know one card is a wildcard that doesn't fit either Staple or Stinker, something like Powercrept (was good for a long time but not anymore, to have iconic cards not being called stinkers), Niche (is only played in one deck or format, could allow Pauper cards to shine, or some wacky combo pieces like Lantern of Insight), Sideboard (cards that look like Staples like Engineered Explosives would be great for this). Adding an extra angle of evaluation could get even cooler lines of thought from Adam than he already provides.
Another thing to note with Rishidan Port that I'm not seeing mentioned elsewhere, especially something not obvious to yu-gi-oh players, is that it can deprive your opponent of the color of mana needed to cast their spells, and with enough format knowledge that ability is very strong. You may be in a position where you know the only thing they can beat you with is a swords to plowshares for example, and if they only have 1 white source in play, you can just tap that down in their upkeep. Unless they top deck another white source, you prevent them from any chance to cast a swords.
Rishadan Port was a HUGE staple, even when it was printed. EVERYONE played a fullset, from Rebels decks, to Fires decks, to the point that they had to print Chabo's Web and Teferi's Response EXLUSIVELY as a anti-Rishadan Port sb tech.
Hey guys, in case you didn't know, that card doom whisperer is part of a deck from the Post Malone event pre constructed decks. It is in the izzetish spell deck and you can play with it for free today.
Here's a fun idea: Open the show by putting an Ancestral Recall on the table. They probably know that card already, but just show them the power level we're talking. Then do the following 5 cards: 1. Ancestral Visions 2. Visions of Beyond 3. Treasure Cruise 4. Brainstorm 5. Reverse Engineer (I don't recall if you've already used Brainstorm, if you have replace it with Painful Truths)
For Yugioh Players or new MTG players after listening to card 4: your lands are your mana. They are considered used when you tap them. They don't untap till your next turn after drawing. If you tap lands during a phase, like main phase or battle phase, you have to use that mana in the phase you tapped it or the mana goes away. If you don't tap any lands on your turn, the lands remain usable durring your opponents turn. You would want to do this if you have an instant spell that can counter cards so you can disrupt your opponent. Think about it like needing to set a trap card to use a hand trap, except the trap card goes back face down on your turn. Hope this explanation helps!
Rishadan Port I'm sure was made as an answer to the OP lands Urza introduced in the block before MM, 3 colours got a special land that added X coloured mana based upon some variable, green (Gaea's Cradle) was how many creatures you control... blue (Tolarian Academy) was how many artifacts you control... White (Serra's Sanctum) was based upon enchantments you controlled. Giving up 2 mana to shut down an opponent who can get 3+ from a single land was a good trade for decks that didn't have access to land removal.
Another thing with rishadan port is that if your opponent plays multicolored it can allow you to deny them their colors or just remove a possibility by taping down a land that has an effect, forcing them to use the effect right away or play something else.
One point missed for port is that it's super easy to cut people off colors. Even if a 3 color deck doesn't need that extra mana, there is a good chance they only have one land of a certain color
Doom Whisperer is a part of an instant kill combo in one of my historic decks. It’s a 3 card combo with Doom Whisperer being the third card that turns it into an instant kill. However the combo is quite good without Doom Whisperer so DW is just ran as a 2 of and the deck heavily relies on assembling the 2 card combo as that is likely to win the game with DW just being kind of the cherry on top. It uses Vilis the Blood Broker and Quaza Auger of Agonies. Every life you lose draws you a card and every card you draw gains you a life and deals 1 damage to your opponent. So the life gain cancels out the losing life and instead you draw a card for every life you lose and your opponent takes the damage while your life total stays the same. With Doom Whisperer you can trigger his ability at instant speed as many time as you want and as long as you have more cards in your deck than your opponent has life you win the game
Vexing Devil was a long time burn staple and I think that's a hard card to judge I'd think. Especially since he's already in the life doesn't matter mindset. Love the way you do this kind of video! Good information and explanation. Keep 'em coming.
We did vexing devil already! You'll be disappointed to know we rated it as a stinker. The card is bonkers is burn specifically, but people expected it to see play everywhere and, even in burn, it only saw some fringe play :( got me fooled for sure, I bought a bunch of them
@@CardmarketMagic Must have been before the RU-vid algorithm pushed you! I remember it being bigger then that, but then again it was in one strategy and the long term memory might be playing tricks on me. Very valid to put it as a stinker.
I think Spreading Seas could be a fun one to assess, see if Adam picks up on the potential for hosing your opponent's mana in blue moon decks or shutting down a vital utility land
