2018, oh man that year doesn't sound real anymore. And yes, I am still from Wraith Games. Thanks for the continued years of excellent content from all of you folks at LRR!
I tried to make Five Alarm Fire work in Standard RDW at the time. Didn't go very well. It now lives in my judge tower. Also notably, FAF cares about combat damage to anything, not just players, so it's less bad than it might initially seem.
MaRo's notes on Cipher's 9 out of 10 Storm Scale rating from 2016: "I don't see cipher returning any time soon. It's hard to design and develop, and it wasn't popular enough to warrant all the hoop jumping we'd have to go through." For those of you that don't know, the storm scale is difficulty of getting the mechanic reprinted in an upcoming standard set. For a direct comparison, This is Convoke's 3 tldr from the same article: "Convoke is a solid mechanic with lots of design space and few developmental issues. I have every faith we'll use it again. (It's already returned once.)"
Five Alarm Fore is slightly better than you were giving it credit for, as it triggers on combat damage to anything, not just players, so bkicked/blocking creatures still contribute
Yeah, it's like Umezawa's Jitte in that way. Easy for someone to miss since that's really not common wording, and our Magic-player-brains shortcut a ton.
Yeah, I think the idea is that it goes into super agro decks so you hopefully have 2-3 counters going onto it on turn 3 right after you play it, so by turn 4 you may have enough to deal 5 to something, either remove their biggest creature or you are building to use it to finish them off. Also Boros loved first strike, iirc, and you get counters on damage so with first strike creatures you will get the counters before normal damage is delt allowing you to save a creature from a big blocker. And double strike would give you 2 counters right? So I don't think you first pick this, but if you are in a really aggressive deck this is probably a good thing to grab at some point.
Love any set with the Simic. Such fun creature type combinations. And I do wish there were some creatures that cared about having cards encoded on them. Possibly one with _"I'm in."_ as flavor text.
Cipher itself is kinda hard to design. There aren't many effects in blue/black that feel right as both an instant/sorcery and a repeatable combat damage trigger. That said, it's the one Gatecrash mechanic that I would most like to see again.
Gatecrash was only the sixth or so set I ever drafted. I thought I was so good for killing someone on turn 6 in a draft. Next round I got killed on turn 5. What a crazy format.
Cipher is such a cool mechanic, but it's benefits rarely outweigh the downsides. It's essentially a way to turn Sorceries into Auras after being used. I have a foil Shadow Slice that looks so pretty as well (the blue flames have the foiling while the figure and blades aren't foiled, so the flames really shine in the dark art). Benefits: 1. Unlike auras, it's hard to remove the encoded card, requiring something like Pull From Eternity or the Processors that came later. Of course, you can still just remove the creature, so it is only marginally safer than auras. 2. The creature doesn't have to stay a creature, it just has to be a creature when the Cipher spell resolves. Auras with Enchant Creature don't work well with temporary creatures such as the Keyrunes in this block, while Cipher works especially well with them as they are harder to remove when not animated (Dimir Keyrune being unblockable meant you could animate it, encode a spell onto it, and guaranteed hit to cast the encoded card again in the same turn and every turn after). Downsides: 1. Cipher cards get exiled when encoded onto a creature, so it's extremely difficult to bring them back later on, unlike auras that will usually sit in your graveyard, and sometimes even have a way to come back by themselves. 2. Cipher cards provide no lasting benefit to the encoded creature. You will get some benefit from the spell when it's first cast, but after that you have to manage to punch in to get any further benefits. And since the benefit only occurs after combat damage to a player is dealt, most Cipher cards don't provide any way to help you actually attack (Hands of Binding is really the only one, as it freezes a creature, so that creature won't block next turn). 3. Cipher cards are expensive for their effects due to their repeatable nature. For example, Paranoid Delusions mills 3 cards compared to Glimpse the Unthinkable that mills ten for the same cost, or Shadow Slice that causes 3 life loss for five mana compared to Bump in the Night that does it for only one. 4. Another downside is that all the Cipher cards are Sorceries. Without a way to give them Flash, you have to spend your turn casting the Cipher spell and leave your defenses down, hoping your creature can immediately get in to cast that spell again and hope it survives to be able to make more use of it. This one is a reasonable downside though, as casting a Cipher spell as an Instant is roughly equivalent to Ninjutsu, except the creature gets progressively more dangerous as more cards get encoded onto it. Writ of Return was an excellent new Cipher card from the New Capenna Commander cards, mostly because it has a more reasonable cost for the effect. I hope they revisit the mechanic every once in a while, maybe make one with a minor effect that can be cast from exile only if you control a creature to allow it to be reusable (maybe {2}{B}{B} for "each opponent loses 1 life", or {U}{U} for "scry 2"; double colored pips to reduce the chance of cost reduction shenanigans).
Gatecrash was my first set and Gutterskulk was the first card I opened in the booster pack that game with my Gruul Rubblehulk starter deck… thanks for the nostalgia
I’ve seen people hype up Dimir Keyrune in cube actually, as UB control decks don’t mind having mana rocks and it’s kinda like a second creeping tar pit
Five-Alarm Fire was actually really busted in that format. It's any combat damage, not just player, so even blocks build it up. So, in the aggressive format, you can just constantly crash in. If you trade, you still kill them with guaranteed, recurring chunks of five damage. If they don't trade, you keep building up charges. It only take 1 to 2 activations to be enough to kill a player, so it is super good. Plus, it makes token swarms busted if you keep crashing in with them.
I think Cypher is a cool ability, basically giving a creature a saboteur trigger that casts the spell again. I guess the difficulty is getting the numbers right, as an unblockable dude with a powerful cypher could feel pretty oppressive.
The only issue I see with Cipher (as someone who wasn't playing back then, and isn't super versed in the intricacies of the rules now) is that it feels like you get close enough to the same effect by making it an indestructible Enchantment that does the same thing as the spell when cast or on damage, without having to define a new keyword to make it happen.
I gotta say, Five Alarm Fire seems great, as long as you have the deck for it. Sure you can play it early and accumulate a counter here and there and score an occasional trigger, but if you can go wide, or especially if you can generate token creatures to throw into the meat grinder, I mean, it wouldn't take a lot of advantage in creature numbers to immediately change the game. Almost makes me want to play red.
If I were to redesign Sipher, I'd probably just make 'em Auras that do a thing on ETB and whenever the enchanted creature deals combat damage to opponent. And probably cost 'em lower.
OH god Sage's Row Denizen haunts me still. In pauper when I first started SRD was the main wincon for the Familiar's combo deck, you'd just keep bouncing cloud of faeries with Snap, returning it with Archeomancer and repeat to mil. It was one of the best decks until Cloud of Faeries got banned. SRD still gets used in that deck, but its not nearly as powerful as it was.
Ah… this takes me back… anyone remember the pilot of _Friday Nights_ Season 2? 😂 - GS: “We’re back!” YJ: “We haven’t seen you guys in _forever!”_ JT: “Yeah, we had a… thing?” GS: “A booster box of your finest Magic cards, good sir.” YJ: “Ooh… *Hey, Ed! Get the **_Portal: Three Kingdoms_** from the safe!”* J&G: “Uh- YJ: “That’ll be…” _(holds out calculator)_ GS: “Ah! N-No, no, I meant, like… um… just the most recent, um… uh… _Gatecrash…_ please.” YJ: “Oh…” _(frowns face)_ GS: “Yeah.” YJ: “False alarm…” JT(?): “Oh…” _(sympathetic tone)_ - #LRR4lyfe
Anyone have the link to the vod of Graham and James ruining the format by picking all the two drops? I've heard about it loads but I've never been able to find the actual vod
I'm pretty sure the Razortip Whip adventure was a royal disaster, but my memories are kind of hazy. Five-Alarm Fire is better than it looks, it triggers on combat damage dealt to creatrures too, not just players. I don't think it ever made any of my decks though, there were other things that were just a lot better.
2018, oh man that year doesn't sound real anymore. And yes, I am still from Wraith Games. Thanks for the continued years of excellent content from all of you folks at LRR!
Creatures only need to do combat damage for the counters, you don't need to connect which is interesting.
I tried to make Five Alarm Fire work in Standard RDW at the time. Didn't go very well. It now lives in my judge tower.
Also notably, FAF cares about combat damage to anything, not just players, so it's less bad than it might initially seem.
Five Alarm Fire in a judge tower? 5/5, no notes.
MaRo's notes on Cipher's 9 out of 10 Storm Scale rating from 2016: "I don't see cipher returning any time soon. It's hard to design and develop, and it wasn't popular enough to warrant all the hoop jumping we'd have to go through." For those of you that don't know, the storm scale is difficulty of getting the mechanic reprinted in an upcoming standard set.
For a direct comparison, This is Convoke's 3 tldr from the same article: "Convoke is a solid mechanic with lots of design space and few developmental issues. I have every faith we'll use it again. (It's already returned once.)"
Ah, makes sense that it’s only for standard. I was confused as Cipher was printed on a card in the Obscura commander precon
Five Alarm Fore is slightly better than you were giving it credit for, as it triggers on combat damage to anything, not just players, so bkicked/blocking creatures still contribute
I might actually have to try it out one day
Yeah, it's like Umezawa's Jitte in that way. Easy for someone to miss since that's really not common wording, and our Magic-player-brains shortcut a ton.
Yeah, I think the idea is that it goes into super agro decks so you hopefully have 2-3 counters going onto it on turn 3 right after you play it, so by turn 4 you may have enough to deal 5 to something, either remove their biggest creature or you are building to use it to finish them off. Also Boros loved first strike, iirc, and you get counters on damage so with first strike creatures you will get the counters before normal damage is delt allowing you to save a creature from a big blocker. And double strike would give you 2 counters right? So I don't think you first pick this, but if you are in a really aggressive deck this is probably a good thing to grab at some point.
It's fun in go wide decks in commander
The joke about how old Gatecrash is made me flashback to the like 3rd episode of Friday Night when Graham and James buy a box of Gatecrash
The keyrune could hold Cipher encoded spells well, since it would be unblockable.
That Crocodile Rock joke really took me a second, but boy did it get me!
I’m glad I’m not the only one 😂
I can't help but laugh whenever someone says "DackFaydenTheGreatestThiefInTheMultiverse." Miss you Dack
Love any set with the Simic. Such fun creature type combinations. And I do wish there were some creatures that cared about having cards encoded on them. Possibly one with _"I'm in."_ as flavor text.
I could see the current high tech Kamigawa moonfolk bringing back Cypher.
Ooh that’s a cool design space. I like it.
Cipher itself is kinda hard to design. There aren't many effects in blue/black that feel right as both an instant/sorcery and a repeatable combat damage trigger. That said, it's the one Gatecrash mechanic that I would most like to see again.
Gatecrash was only the sixth or so set I ever drafted. I thought I was so good for killing someone on turn 6 in a draft. Next round I got killed on turn 5. What a crazy format.
Love these Crack-A-Packs from the earliest sets I remember playing.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Cipher is such a cool mechanic, but it's benefits rarely outweigh the downsides. It's essentially a way to turn Sorceries into Auras after being used. I have a foil Shadow Slice that looks so pretty as well (the blue flames have the foiling while the figure and blades aren't foiled, so the flames really shine in the dark art).
Benefits:
1. Unlike auras, it's hard to remove the encoded card, requiring something like Pull From Eternity or the Processors that came later. Of course, you can still just remove the creature, so it is only marginally safer than auras.
2. The creature doesn't have to stay a creature, it just has to be a creature when the Cipher spell resolves. Auras with Enchant Creature don't work well with temporary creatures such as the Keyrunes in this block, while Cipher works especially well with them as they are harder to remove when not animated (Dimir Keyrune being unblockable meant you could animate it, encode a spell onto it, and guaranteed hit to cast the encoded card again in the same turn and every turn after).
Downsides:
1. Cipher cards get exiled when encoded onto a creature, so it's extremely difficult to bring them back later on, unlike auras that will usually sit in your graveyard, and sometimes even have a way to come back by themselves.
2. Cipher cards provide no lasting benefit to the encoded creature. You will get some benefit from the spell when it's first cast, but after that you have to manage to punch in to get any further benefits. And since the benefit only occurs after combat damage to a player is dealt, most Cipher cards don't provide any way to help you actually attack (Hands of Binding is really the only one, as it freezes a creature, so that creature won't block next turn).
3. Cipher cards are expensive for their effects due to their repeatable nature. For example, Paranoid Delusions mills 3 cards compared to Glimpse the Unthinkable that mills ten for the same cost, or Shadow Slice that causes 3 life loss for five mana compared to Bump in the Night that does it for only one.
4. Another downside is that all the Cipher cards are Sorceries. Without a way to give them Flash, you have to spend your turn casting the Cipher spell and leave your defenses down, hoping your creature can immediately get in to cast that spell again and hope it survives to be able to make more use of it. This one is a reasonable downside though, as casting a Cipher spell as an Instant is roughly equivalent to Ninjutsu, except the creature gets progressively more dangerous as more cards get encoded onto it.
Writ of Return was an excellent new Cipher card from the New Capenna Commander cards, mostly because it has a more reasonable cost for the effect. I hope they revisit the mechanic every once in a while, maybe make one with a minor effect that can be cast from exile only if you control a creature to allow it to be reusable (maybe {2}{B}{B} for "each opponent loses 1 life", or {U}{U} for "scry 2"; double colored pips to reduce the chance of cost reduction shenanigans).
Did I just get called a Gutter Skulk, in the year of our lord 2023.
You're right, but my feelings
3:01 Monowhite police brutality. Yeah, that card isn't getting reprinted for a *bunch* of reasons.
We got a new Cipher card last year in New Capenna commander: Writ of Return!
Gatecrash was my first set and Gutterskulk was the first card I opened in the booster pack that game with my Gruul Rubblehulk starter deck… thanks for the nostalgia
Massive Raid: Shadow Legends...the official Boros sponsor of roughly 88% of UA-cam videos.
Holy cow! It's great to see Adam's pack finally get cracked!
Sometimes it's fun to watch an absolute dumpsterfire of a pack. ❤
Such a nostalgic set for me. Released right when I started playing Magic and it's UA-cam trailer narrated by Lazav was awesome.
Wow, I've never even heard of Five-Alarm Fire.
Hands of Binding. One of key cards I use in in a mono blue tempo pauper I built
I’ve seen people hype up Dimir Keyrune in cube actually, as UB control decks don’t mind having mana rocks and it’s kinda like a second creeping tar pit
crocanura was the nuts in limited. very easy to turn it into a 3/5 for 3 mana and sometimes it gets even bigger
Five-alarm Fire's a little better than expected because it doesn't specify you have to deal combat damage to a player, just combat damage.
Notably, there are five instances of the number five in the rules text of Five-Alarm Fire
I remember getting back into magic for the first time when they were returning to ravnica for the first time. Good memories.
Five-Alarm Fire was actually really busted in that format. It's any combat damage, not just player, so even blocks build it up. So, in the aggressive format, you can just constantly crash in. If you trade, you still kill them with guaranteed, recurring chunks of five damage. If they don't trade, you keep building up charges. It only take 1 to 2 activations to be enough to kill a player, so it is super good.
Plus, it makes token swarms busted if you keep crashing in with them.
I think Cypher is a cool ability, basically giving a creature a saboteur trigger that casts the spell again. I guess the difficulty is getting the numbers right, as an unblockable dude with a powerful cypher could feel pretty oppressive.
The only issue I see with Cipher (as someone who wasn't playing back then, and isn't super versed in the intricacies of the rules now) is that it feels like you get close enough to the same effect by making it an indestructible Enchantment that does the same thing as the spell when cast or on damage, without having to define a new keyword to make it happen.
In format, it was just hard to get the creatures to connect and the spells with cipher weren't costed to reflect that.
I gotta say, Five Alarm Fire seems great, as long as you have the deck for it. Sure you can play it early and accumulate a counter here and there and score an occasional trigger, but if you can go wide, or especially if you can generate token creatures to throw into the meat grinder, I mean, it wouldn't take a lot of advantage in creature numbers to immediately change the game. Almost makes me want to play red.
Massive raid is a wincon for my wart goblins kindred deck
i wish there was more cipher, ciphering is like an enchant that cant be removed
If I were to redesign Sipher, I'd probably just make 'em Auras that do a thing on ETB and whenever the enchanted creature deals combat damage to opponent. And probably cost 'em lower.
I run Crocanura in my Tatsunari deck. Need those frogs
OH god Sage's Row Denizen haunts me still. In pauper when I first started SRD was the main wincon for the Familiar's combo deck, you'd just keep bouncing cloud of faeries with Snap, returning it with Archeomancer and repeat to mil. It was one of the best decks until Cloud of Faeries got banned. SRD still gets used in that deck, but its not nearly as powerful as it was.
cipher seems like a very interesting mechanic! (I was not playing for this set so I have no prior exposure to any of these cards.)
It's not!
@@StarkMaximum how is it not interesting?
RIP Cipher, my favourite mechanic
Ah… this takes me back… anyone remember the pilot of _Friday Nights_ Season 2? 😂
-
GS: “We’re back!”
YJ: “We haven’t seen you guys in _forever!”_
JT: “Yeah, we had a… thing?”
GS: “A booster box of your finest Magic cards, good sir.”
YJ: “Ooh… *Hey, Ed! Get the **_Portal: Three Kingdoms_** from the safe!”*
J&G: “Uh-
YJ: “That’ll be…” _(holds out calculator)_
GS: “Ah! N-No, no, I meant, like… um… just the most recent, um… uh… _Gatecrash…_ please.”
YJ: “Oh…” _(frowns face)_
GS: “Yeah.”
YJ: “False alarm…”
JT(?): “Oh…” _(sympathetic tone)_
-
#LRR4lyfe
Anyone have the link to the vod of Graham and James ruining the format by picking all the two drops? I've heard about it loads but I've never been able to find the actual vod
It's on mtgo academy lrr draft #25 back when they were doing "wacky drafts" for them
@@p5ychop3nguin Very delayed reply but thanks for your help! I just watched it and it was awesome!
Paranoid Delusions was one of the better Cipher cards, in large part because it was in the same Standard format as Invisible Stalker.
Is that forcing 2 drops draft still a thing we can find these days?
force adaptation got that cake.
See graham it wasn't that powercreep rendered gatecrash cards obsolete already, its that gatecrash was extremely weak when it released.
That era of Mtg was absolutely incredible.
Crack! A! Pack!
Never doubt the wurm
Graham has the same PAX hoodie I do!!!!!! 😎
Love.
I'm pretty sure the Razortip Whip adventure was a royal disaster, but my memories are kind of hazy.
Five-Alarm Fire is better than it looks, it triggers on combat damage dealt to creatrures too, not just players. I don't think it ever made any of my decks though, there were other things that were just a lot better.
The rare great for swarming 1/1s imo 👌 commander drop a double or triple non combat dmg 😊
GatecrashAPack
Is it just me or is Graeme weirdly out of focus in this one, but the background is sharp?
I hope you open me.
sup
Terrible packs make for interesting picks, at least.
There are two categories of creatures with Evolve: those that cost 1 mana and the terrible ones.
What a waste of a keyword name
It's not a waste at all. It plays fine in Limited and is easy to introduce.
3:33 Flavour text is a broken ability smh 🫤